Recent reviews by GrahfShiro

For a while I figured I'd give this game a thumbs down when came review time. But I can't; its core gameplay is just too damn satisfying. That said, I wish they had done a better job representing Mordor; it's uninspiring.

Now, I understand; it's Mordor. The first half of the game takes place in the valley of Udun, and its representation is in line with how it was shown to be in the movies. However this is an open world game and these games often live and die on how fun their terrain is to traverse. I have to say that Mordor in this game truly is no fun to visit, especially the first half of the game in Udun, although Nurn isn't much better. Udun is an arid wasteland, with almost nothing of worth to visit or look at. The land's scale is also very small; it takes no time at all to run from one end to the other, which doesn't feel right. The scale really hurts some of the important landmarks, for example the Black Gate or the Gorthaur; these should be monuments that inspire awe in the player, but instead they get lost in the shuffle. There's like 4 strongholds/fortresses tightly grouped together. It feels incredibly busy, and unimpressive. As traversal goes, Shadow of Mordor fails, and is a definite step down from its Batman Arkham cousins, as well as other somewhat similar games like the Assassin's Creed series. Assassin's Creed Unity came out in the same year, and is visually more impressive; Paris is truly a sight to behold. And Gotham City is also quite the sight in the Arkham games. But Mordor? Not so much.

So traversal is not great, and certainly other games released in the same timeframe did it better. Okay. But Shadow of Mordor likely beats all of them in sheer gameplay; it certainly does beat Unity on that front. Shadow of Mordor is basically the Arkham games on steroids; Talion is so savage with his sword, he cuts down everything in sight. He's incredibly satisfying to play as. Now, a word of warning: the game feels rather sluggish when played at 60fps or below; for maximum fun, try and play the game at its maximum FPS limit of 100. Then you are free to cut everything down with glee. Thus traversal is meh but the gameplay is savagely satisfying. The story is okay; I'm kind of an LOTR nerd and thus I enjoyed the narrative. I especially enjoyed the liberties they took with Tolkien's characters; the wraith's motivations in particular seem to deviate significantly from the books. Some of the boss battles are cool as heck.

Other things I enjoy: the game is rather constrained. I played for 30 hours and I think I would have completed the game 100% with 5 or 10 more hours of gameplay. I like it when a game can be almost fully completed within an acceptable timeframe; it's encouraging and you feel like you are making meaningful progress as you play. Otherwise it's like being lost in a sea of nothing.

Overall, don't play this if you want to tour Mordor; play it because you want to kill orcs in the most satisfyingly brutal way possible. For the latter, the game works beautifully.

Steam says I've played this for 75 hours, but if you count the number of hours I've poured into this title and all its variations in the past 20 years, we're looking at above 200; heck likely above 300 hours.

The crazy thing about this is that I don't love this game. I like it, don't me wrong, but I don't love it. Icewind Dale is an iconic game of my late teen years for me, and will forever be an important part of my gaming life, but I don't love it.

Why is that? Because it's dry AF. The story is very poor, and you have no narrative agency; you solve main quest after main quest until the job is done. The storyline is very simplistic and you just follow it. Icewind Dale is a throwback to an era where D&D RPGs were about dungeon delving and not branching narrative threads. And I like dungeon delving, don't get me wrong, but I think I prefer my dungeon delving to be rather brief; think something like The Legend of Grimrock. Or, heck, first person helps with dungeon delving as it makes you feel like you are lost in the dungeon; makes for a very immersive experience. I loved Eye of the Beholder growing up. But Icewind Dale is an isometric party RPG using Baldur's Gate's Infinity Engine. Listen, it works. It works well. But through playing it for around 300 odd hours over 20 years, I've only manage to finish it for the first time this year. Yeah, it took me 20 years to finish this. In contrast I finished Planescape: Torment the first time I tried to, way back in 1999. And I've finished the original Baldur's Gate like 5 times in the past 20 years.

Now that the negative stuff is out of the way, this is still a really good game. Its dungeons are well made and atmospheric. Also sometimes you do want a dumb game; both Baldur's Gate games are way longer than this (especially 2, which is a mammoth sized adventure compared to this), and are way more involved. Icewind Dale is about creating your party of adventurers and messing monsters up; that's it. You mess monsters up and you grab loot. Sometimes that's all you want. But personally, if given the choice, I'd rather play Diablo than this. But I still like this.

The music is nice, and the game looks pretty good in its enhanced form (good job Beamdog). If you like this sort of game it's definitely worth playing. I like it, and I recommend it. But, again, I don't love it. Now that I've managed to finish it I might never play it again, relegating it to my life's history. I once saw a poll on Beamdog's forums (I think it was there) asking users which Infinity Engine game was their favorite; Icewind Dale ranked last. I understand; it ranks last for me too. However, I have yet to play Icewind Dale 2. And with the source code being lost to time, it seems like we might never get an enhanced version of IWD2. Still, I'll have to play it eventually.

Thus, I recommend Icewind Dale, but know that you're about to embark on a simple and straightforward adventure that is about creating characters and messing monsters up, and little else.

This game is extremely underrated.

Now, I understand; it was extremely buggy at launch. Buggy to the point of being unplayable. It's hard to be positive about an unplayable game, since the point of gaming is to be playing. No playing, no gaming, and no gaming entails gloom and doom. I understand why this game wasn't received positively.

But gosh in 2020, with most of the bugs fixed, this game is truly a gem. What the heck? I was not expecting this. First, its graphics really old up. Batman himself looks pretty good, and it's amazing to navigate Gotham City at what seems to be dusk tiem. There is light but not too much so, and since it's Christmas (I'm reviewing this on December 26, good timing), it's snowing. There's a light fog. After playing two Arkham games set at night, I loved this new vibe. Plus the fog takes full advantage of the game's PhysX system, much more so than the previous games did. It's truly a mood. Speaking of PhysX, this game does not mess around; some of its physics effects are still astounding by 2020 standards. Some of the game's scenes (when running with PhysX set to HIGH) are mind blowing, with some of the craziest fog effects that I've ever seen You should see the smoke effects coming out of your electrogloves late in the game; amazing. This game is still a sight to behold when run at maximum settings. The only issue is that it seems poorly optimized, but it might be due to running PhysX to high; that's likely to hit any system. But still, for a 2013 game, I was rocked by these graphics.

Second, the story is amazing. Far superior to the story in the first two games I feel. The Batman in Origins is younger and more aggressive than Kevin Conroy's Batman from Asylum and City; the Origins Batman truly gave me some serious Christian Bale feels. I love how it's a prequel and nobody knows the Batman yet; it made for some spectacular story bits. Bane's representation is so much superior here than how he was portrayed previously, I freaking love him here. Heck, all characters are arguably better portrayed with the possible exception of the Joker, and I have to say that Troy Baker did a fantastic imitation of Mark Hamill's Joker; I did not feel like we lost out in the swap.

This game is very cool to play right after having played through City, as it takes places in most of the same areas but years prior to the events of the previous game. You recognize places and locations, and it's fun to revisit classic scenes. The Joker's base of operation in Arkham City (The Steel Mill) is completely abandoned and literally stuck in ice in Origins, for example. The city still looks functional for the most part, while it had been transformed into a massive apocalyptic prison complex in City. Revisiting locations was a blast.

Oh and speaking of story, the motion capture is way improved here from what we saw in Arkham City; it really helps the narrative flow. In particular I really enjoyed the scenes between Bruce and Alfred, which felt natural and seamless to me. Really good stuff.

Overall I can't say anything bad about Arkham Origins; it's truly good in 2020, with most of the bugs fixed. I say most because some did remain; it's buggier still than Arkham City. I had a few crashes. But overall it's extremely playable, and extremely recommended. Give it a go!

I'd been wanting to play Arkham City ever since it came out in 2011, but I never had the chance. Well, that's a lie; I did have the chance, but never did. In part it's due to how demanding the game felt to run graphically back then; my Radeon HD 7950 seemed to buckle at times, and I don't like to play games at medium graphical settings. I'm a max settings or bust kind of person, you see.

So anyhow, I jumped into the series a few months back, and Arkham City was second on the list. And, after waiting so long to play it, I have to say that I came out of it sort of disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but I prefer Arkham Asylum. Interestingly, Arkham City's much more ambitious scope shows the game's age, something which was not an issue for Arkham Asylum. In particular, Arkham uses less FMV than Asylum does to enact its narrative sequences, and it hurts the game a good deal; some of its story bits look downright ancient and clunky. It breaks the narrative and immersive feel of the game at times, frankly. And there's way more story sequences here than there were in Asylum, which further adds to injury. I didn't enjoy the few switches from Batman to Catwoman and back to Batman as much as I should have, and in part I feel that it's due to how story heavy these switches tend to be; again, they look crummy.

However on a gameplay basis the game truly holds up. Arkham City can feel a bit empty at times, but it's fun to traverse. The stealth sequences are very strong; stronger than in Arkham Asylum. The fighting received some mild upgrades, and in particular they've gained a little bit of oomph, making it feel more impactful in action. The story I found rather uninteresting overall, but there are good bits here and there.

Overall, it's still a very good game, but it showed its age, surprisingly so considering that I didn't feel the same about Asylum. Oh and make sure to install the legacy PhysX Nvidia driver if you want to enable PhysX on a modern Nvidia GPU when playing this game. It truly adds to the whole vibe!

I still recommend the game but... it doesn't hold a candle to Arkham Origins in 2020. There, I said it. Arkham Origins is something else!

Still holds up.

I've recently played through the first three Batman Arkham games, namely Asylum, City, and Origins. Yes yes, I know, many people don't consider Origins to be a 'proper' Arkham game, but I do. Plus I'm from Montreal and Origins was made in Montreal, so, there.

Anyhow, I originally played Arkham Asylum way back when it came out on the Xbox 360 in 2009. I liked it at the time, but didn't love it. I was surprised that I didn't like it more, as I love Metroidvania titles, and Arkham Asylum very much follows that formula.

Flash forward 10+ years later, and I played through Arkham Asylum again. I feel like I enjoyed it a lot more. Why? I am not sure. I think I now have the experience to know what I am getting into when I start new games, and thus my expectations are set accordingly. I also play games with a clearer purpose; purpose always heightens your enjoyment of things. The game's graphics surprisingly hold up, and it uses a fair amount of FMV to enact critical story moments, which works in its favor (more on that when I review Arkham City). Furthermore the game's content is tightly scoped, as it takes place entirely within the confines of the asylum proper. This also helps with structure. It's short, it's fast, it's focused, and most of all, it's pretty fun. This is the most 'Metroidvania' title of the series, and I like it quite a bit. For those trying to play it with a recent Nvidia GPU, make sure to download the legacy PhysX driver if you want to enable PhysX physics in the game; it can truly enhance the experience (but not as much as in the sequels), and most recent GPU's can handle the high or normal setting just fine. Give it a go!

Recommended.

Amazing. I received a review code for DOOM in 2016 when I was writing for Girls on Games. I wrote a rather positive review [girlsongames.ca] of the title, but I was not crazy about it. First, my PC was getting a bit long in the tooth and I was playing it at 1080P Ultra quality at around 45 fps. Also it was, I felt, an unusual game; its arena structure was different from what I had been playing at the time, it lacked a solid storyline, etc. The consensus in my surroundings was that the game was fun but repetitive, and I kind of agreed with the sentiment. That said, somehow, DOOM never left my psyche; I always figured I would go back to it to finish it.

Years later, with a new PC in tow, I jumped back. And this time I was a different gamer. These days I tend to play games at the hardest difficulty settings and I openly seek out challenges. Thus I set DOOM to Nightmare, and I experienced it at 1440p Ultra at 165fps. And I have to say: it is glorious. Truly something to behold. Once you immerse yourself in the idea of an arena shooter that is more about frenetic action and challenging yourself to survive hectic battles, and not seeking out a tightly scripted storyline or a good narrative flow, you truly see what this game has to offer. And it's a lot. Frankly, DOOM 2016 has become one of my favorite games ever, and I feel that it stands proud and tall next to its kin, the original DOOM games. Plus, its engine has aged very well, it still looks great, and it runs silky smooth. Fun, beautiful, savage, stimulating.

Highly recommended.

Stands the test of time. The voice acting quality is poor, sounds like they recorded the entire thing while sitting in a tin can, but aside from that everything else is superb. The puzzles are very logical, as in they make sense and they don't require you to warp your mind on a dimensional plane in order to figure out the solutions. For the few harder puzzles there is a nicely integrated hint system. Also, and this is a matter of taste of course, but I tend to dislike it when adventure games overload you with lore and text. I like my games to move quickly, so I struggle with very text heavy games that require you to talk to each character for what seems like an hour. A good example of such a game would be The Longest Journey. The conversations in Broken Sword however feel just right; not very wordy, but enough so that characters feel like they have a nice, distinct personality.

Broken Sword isn't especially hard, moves at a brisk pace and doesn't have a ton of dialogue, and usually that's a recipe for a short game. And yet it still took me 10 hours to finish it, so it has some meat on its bones. Highly recommended.

Absolutely terrific game, especially when played in 1999 mode. I finished the game on hard my first time through and I found it too easy. I'm a lazy gamer, you have to force me to use spells and abilities otherwise I won't use them. The game was easy enough on hard that I just shot everything in sight, making my first run through the game not that interesting. But the characters, OMG. Elizabeth and Booker have amazing chemistry, and the voice acting is off the chains!

So after my not that interesting first run, I played through the DLC in 1999 mode (hardest difficulty in the game, unlocked after finishing it once) and I LOVED IT! Now I couldn't just sit on my ass and shoot everything, I had to use every power at my disposal, I had to lay traps and lure enemies into them, I had to use the skylines (never really used them the first time around). The game truly came alive.

But really the meat of this game is the story and characters. There are some issues; the game has some pretty racist undertones in the main game. They tried to rectify it in the second DLC but it felt kind of forced. Personally though it didn't really affect my enjoyment, I was just totally engrossed by the two main characters. I highly recommend Bioshock Infinite. Just make sure you play the game on the hardest setting you can handle!

Good game but inferior to its predecessor. It's extremely short, took me 10 hours to go through it, that's half the time it took me to get through season one. The choices you made during season one ultimately didn't matter much, but at least that game tried to make you feel like they did. Season two doesn't even bother, feels like you're strapped in tight and snug, ready for the rollercoaster ride. Can't really call it an adventure game, by this point it's more like an interactive novel. Still, I enjoyed the story. All in all I liked it but it just doesn't have the impact that season one had.

First, the good: The world of the Witcher is pretty interesting. It's dark and gritty, feels like a mix of high fantasy and low fantasy. I've read The Last Wish and liked it, and I'm a big fan of Geralt of Rivia. He's a great character. I like the mature tones of the game. And chapter 4 is freaking fantastic.

Now, the bad: from a gameplay perspective The Witcher is pretty horrible. It's very clunky, especially in combat situations. It feels like the devs wanted to make an action game but settled for this weird rpg/action rpg mishmash. When the number of opponents is low it's not too bad, but when you get into the big action scenes with multiple opponents it can quickly get out of hand. You could be trying to hit a monster in front but for some reason Geralt is trying to hit the monster at your back. It's really not intuitive. Part of the blame falls on the OTS camera, which doesn't allow for precise aiming like the isometric camera, but then again it's near impossible to play this game using the latter. Using signs (magic) is a total PITA as well. Often you try to launch a spell but for some reason the game doesn't register your input. Maybe you're being interrupted by hits (it's never really clear when you get hit), or maybe your positioning is bad, or maybe your click just didn't register? It's never really clear why your action failed. Overall, bad gameplay.

Graphically, the game is getting a bit long in the tooth. The original version of The Witcher was released in 2007, and it shows. But then again, Mass Effect was released in 2007 and it still looks quite good. I know it's unfair to compare what was at the time a pretty new dev in CD Projekt Red to the more established BioWare, but it is what it is. The characters look really off in dialogue scenes, like they don't know what they're supposed to do with their limbs while talking. Also, this game is not well optimized. In fact it's a disaster on that front, a game that old and who looks like that should not have fps dips, ever. But in The Witcher's case, the fps is all over the place, I even had to turn off anti-aliasing in Chapter 4 because the game would noticeably slow down. So I can run a game like Farcry 3 at max settings with a solid framerate, but can't do so with The Witcher? Eh. Chapter 4 does look fantastic however, it's the highlight of the game.

Storywise, the game starts out more interesting than it ends. That last boss is very underwhelming, as well as the last 'stage'. It just drags on and on and it just won't stop. While I'm at it, The Witcher is too long. I'm sure some will disagree with this, because there is a sentiment out there that the longer a game is the better, but I don't agree. There's a tremendous amount of filler and fetch quests, most of which aren't really interesting. When I got to Chapter 4 I thought I was about to be done with it, so I pushed forward like crazy but it ended up taking me another two days of intense gaming the finish the darn thing. The Witcher is the game that refused to end. They could have cut 10-15 hours out of it and it would've been much better for it. Nowadays with PC games being as cheap as they are there is no excuse to have games who outstay their welcome.

Oh and did I mention that the game is very buggy? It crashed my system multiple times, and some of the scripting was broken by a save folder that had grown too large for its own good. See, unlike other games The Witcher does not overwrite the same save file when you do a quick save, it creates a new one everytime. And each save is 20 to 30 megabytes in size. You might very well end up with a save folder 2 gigabytes large at one point, and then the game starts acting wonky. These bugs coupled with the poor graphical performance of the game shows that it just wasn't programmed well.

Overall, a disappointment. Hopefully the sequel will be better.