Recent reviews by S'mores the Deer!

Specs are rough to say the least. I have an i9-9900k and a 3080 and after getting to around 300k population, the game is basically unplayable. It runs perfectly fine until around 100k population but once you get there it really starts to chug. Game is just too resource intensive to be worth the electricity in my opinion. I think it's entirely due to the pathfinding system, and the pathfinding system has issues that haven't been resolved yet. The population can't seem to figure out picking a lane on a highway, it's pretty awful in that regard. It artificially causes traffic jams where there shouldn't be one.

Controls are abysmal, it's incredibly unpolished compared to Detroit: Become Human. Controls feel stiff, character movement at times looks like they're robots, way more so than the game featuring actual robot characters. Crashes extremely often, especially between chapters. Not in a way that loses progress, so far, but very frequently you can only move through the game once chapter at a time. Game's color palette is beyond bad. Mocap is good, story is interesting enough, but some QTE sequences are ridiculously long, and there is a LOT of interactions in the game that give you absolutely nothing in return for them. Game feels like a lot of effort went into it, but not in ways that resulted in a particularly cohesive product, one that falls apart if you look at it wrong. Some voice lines have become memes, because of bad delivery, or bad directing, coupled with substantial reuse: "JAYYY SON!" or "SHHAAAWWWNN!" were memes since this game was created. Heavy Rain is nothing but a very heavy handed attempt at interactive story based experiences, and honestly this would have made a better movie than game.

For the love of all that is good an holy, separate the games. Good lord, another 70GB update for a game I don't even have, a game I will not even play, when I just want to play MW2? What the hell is this? Separate the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ games

Not the most stable, but visually impressive and much more open world than its predecessor. This entry improves upon it in almost every way, while also continuing the story of Cal Cestis. The worlds and the visuals are stunning, and the game allows you much more free roaming right out of the gate. Score is stellar, sound effects, it's everything that the first game set up so well. I am running a 3080 and i9900k, and while I occasionally see performance hiccups, and crashes, so far the game has been worth the trouble, and it hasn't been that much trouble. Hopefully it remains that way.

I love this game, I love this trilogy. I want to give this game a positive review because the game that is here is stellar. But I cannot give this game a good review. No idea if the Epic release is better, but every once in a while, I will get constantly disconnected from the game server, and it will go on for hours. For a single player game, that is absolutely unacceptable. I could accept always online DRM (even though I DEFINITELY should not have to) if the service was reliable, but even years later this is still an issue? How? How is this still a problem? I have extremely stable internet, I have numerous servers on my network and they've never had issues, I am a network engineer by trade and all of my networking equipment is top of the line SMB grade stuff. I can absolutely state that the disconnection is on the hosting side. Not even getting into how unacceptable always online DRM is in a mainly single player experience in the first place, I will add that I never had this issue with Hitman 1 or 2, and as far as I know they utilize the same exact DRM system. The fact that getting disconnected ruins what is otherwise an amazing experience is genuinely frustrating, infuriating when it happens with the frequency it still can occur with. I don't know if it's the game or its integration with Steam's backend services, and the fact that this game, unlike 1 and 2, was ported to Steam rather than originally released on Steam has to with the problem, but hopefully, eventually, this will not be a problem years from now when all of 5 people are playing it actively, because with the game having been out this long I do not see this getting fixed at any point in the future. As dedicated as the team seems to be for creating new content, an infrastructure problem such as this should have been fixed at least within the first year.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

CVE-2018-20817

https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/161657
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-20817
https://github.com/RektInator/cod-steamauth-rce

BLOPS2 is tied to CVE-2018-20817, allowing an attacker to achieve remote code execution. By playing online and matching with the attacker in game, you are exposing yourself to a severe vulnerability, see GitHub link above for proof of concept. This vulnerability is caused by a a missing size check in the SV_SteamAuthClient component, a remote attacker could take advantage of this by sending a steam authentication request, allowing the attacker to inject specially crafted authBlob data and overflow the buffer, resulting in arbitrary code execution. There is no fix, and this issue has been public for over 4 years. I wouldn't even recommend buying this game with such a severe vulnerability going unfixed. This issue affects Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops 1, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

pls giv mor bend studio game thank

Wow, I can't believe it's been a full year since the game's tumultuous release. I have to say, it's been a ride just watching the news for the game, seeing aallll those patch notes, the settlement they have finally reached, and the fan feedback shifting from negative to positive. I still remember the insane "feedback" people were giving the developers, and the discussions about that in and of itself.

But enough about that. Let's talk about the game. I want to start off with why I recommend it first: the game runs much better now, and it's very visually impressive, with dynamic gameplay that truly sets itself apart from other games. The story is rich, the environment is engaging and immersive, and the characters are diverse and detailed. There's a lot to love with this game. Even the vehicles are fun. I can go on, but I think you get the picture.

Now for the negatives. It's been a year since the game's release and all of the known bugs (from what I can tell) have been patched, so it is no longer a buggy mess. But the game still needs some work to be all it can be. For example, you *still* cannot alter your appearance whatsoever after character creation. Not even get a haircut. It's not like it matters much in a first person game, but it's annoying in a game world all about limitless body modification that you cannot modify a single aspect of your character's appearance. With regard to what modifications are available, it's centered around your clothing, which I wouldn't say is particularly great in terms of personality. You may be able to craft better versions of clothing you like, once you get enough crafting skill, and enough materials to do it, but it's going to take a long time. Other than that, your clothing will likely be entirely dictated by its in game stats, not its appearance.

I think if I wanted to nitpick, it is the only major AAA game I've ever played that didn't get any DLC or content updates but only bug fixes for the first year after its release. But given the game's release, I think it's understandable. I do think the game is now at a point where I can recommend it, but I am excited to see what CD Projekt Red does with the title in the next year.

Okay, I put three minutes into this but here we go, let's do this

So I'm running a 980. Not a crazy 1080, 1070 or even a 980 ti or a 1060 or whatever.. basically the what, 7th or 8th best possible graphics card to own? One that is so far ahead of the curve it's insane? Yeah, anyways, I launch this game. Immediately greeted with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GFWL screen and had to mash my buttons to get out of it. Whatever, I thought it was dead and done with since RE5 doesn't even have the GFWL in it at all anymore. But okay, I guess this game is pretty old, figures it hasn't been updated since nobody plays this game anymore. Anywho, time to start the game. So the difficulties are Aspirin, Codeine and Morphine. Like, wat. So I choose Morphine like any good chap would like after they get their appendix removed. And behold, first cutscene. Then somehow the game transitions into the game world, very, very slowly, as things start to slow down a lot. I couldn't quite tell if it was supposed to be this way until I see Lynch hitting this dude with the butt of the shotgun and it takes like two seconds for it to cycle through the three visible frames that occupy that scene. Next thing I know, after the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slideshow comes to an end, I'm in the game, and it's just as bad. The mouse scrolled probably one of the biggest distances so I knew right away this is meant for a controller but moreover it was completely, and utterly unplayable in this state. Like people were running this on 460's back in the day. Like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I'm on a 980 why in god's name is it running like molasses, leaking from my very monitor. Like, oh my god, what an awful game. It needs an update so badly, it's insane to imagine it is being sold like this. Save yourself the 50 cents that this game will inevitably be sold for when it's on sale because you can't even run it.

Game has some errors, many of which are persistant. If you play through the game, it will crash several times and will also have one error where your keyboard inputs won't be recognized forcing you to quit the game. The graphics look a bit dated compared to even older games like Resident Evil 5 or The Witcher 2, though this isn't nearly as high of a production budget so it's to be expected to some degree.

I really think the games level scaling system is one of the worst things. You level up, enemies level up, making the level up basically ineffective, especially without weapons to support it. I won't lie, though, for level scaling, it's well done; the proption of weapon damage to your level is based on two things, how high the level is and how high your skills are, meaning if your skills that affect your damage are high a lower level weapon can be useful for longer but that's still rather annoying as it's obviously still more effective to have a weapon that matches your skill level. And the fact that the max level is so hard to get, getting to level 60 is a grind fest. Even modding, it will still take time. And the best weapons are level 60. Oh, and the epitamy of the level scaling system being terrible is the fact that not even every skill can be purchased with the skill points gained by leveling up. You actually cannot completely max out every skill tree without modding. That pretty much defeats the point of the leveling up and having scaling to begin with. And there's a pretty big gap, I needed I think 20 more skill points than I was given.

That system alone drives you to play the game quite a bit at least for me it did. The story was okay, I found it interesting at times and then mediocre and expected at others. Overall the story is *okay* but they don't let you make your own decisions and there's a ton of opportunity there. It's insane to think they don't let you do that. The amount of change that could be felt by simply not feeling like just some guinea pig doing as the game commands would be impressive.

The weapon diversity is sorta meh. All the weapons perform somewhat similarly asside from guns are useful but only against humans and shotguns are good against thugs. Then you use melee combat for everything else. You use stamina for running and fighting, and different weapons have different melee ranges, damages, effects and stamina usage. I must admit, I think the melee weapons are well done except that the weapons are disposable until you get to the maximum level. Guns don't do enough damage except shotguns, when you shove the barrel basically through the skull of a thug or zombie, will one shot them. So shotguns are useful, rifles and pistols are really good for humans. I did find auto rifles were powerful but you go through ammo very quickly.

So the game is a grind fest, and the story lacks individual choice, the two biggest complaints I have about it other than performance issues, which are also pretty much unacceptable. The game also could've used more optimization, it pushes my hardware harder than I would think is really appropriate given its age and the fact I'm running a 980.