Recent reviews by jacob

The writing in this game is so good. It's like playing an incredible novel. Highly recommended.

Concise review:
+Great, well written story.
+Interesting companions.
+Often interesting tactical combat...
-...marred by occasional totally broken encounters designed by a sadist.
-'Core' difficulty misleading and not at all the core Pathfinder rules (many enemies have crazy buffs for no reason).
-Lots of this game requires a deep, intimate knowledge of the ruleset for any chance of success (even on lower difficulties).
-Too long (one playthrough took me 170 hours on turn based mode)

Why do I keep putting myself through this?

we're all connected

Cyberpunk 2077. We've all been hearing about this game for years, and I think it's safe to say that it would be pretty much impossible to live up to the level of hype it's generated throughout that time. For me, the levels of hype have ebbed over the years, and by the time I was actually preloading it on my computer, it was more of a surreal experience than anything. I was beyond excitement, and had entered the realm of "huh, it's actually here." What it ended up delivering was a mixed bag-- at times, brilliant, and other times totally baffling.

It's hard to break the game down in to simple pros and cons, as many facets of the game are intertwined with both. Take the graphics, for example. They often look great-- the city is vibrant, some of the characters (especially key characters) are rendered in excellent detail and look great... but the animations are pretty wooden and characters clipping through things is common, which tends to dampen the effect of the quality graphics. No amount of RTX lighting (which does look great) will make a character stiffly doing the same smoking animation four times look good.

The writing is, for the most part, excellent. The main story is good, and while V is a bit of an abrasive character, I grew to like his brash charm. I don't want to spoil too much of the main narrative, but it brings up some interesting and very cyberpunk topics about the digital realm, consciousness, etc. It might not win any awards for original cyberpunk narratives, but it's handled well. Where the game really shines, though, is the characters. Many of those you come to befriend throughout your journey are well written and acted, to the point that I found myself genuinely wanting to know more about them and hang out with them. This includes Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, whose constant input leads to some great moments in the story. He's not even my favorite, though! I can't stress enough that there is some great characterization in this game. That isn't to say the writing and characterization are without issue. I was often left wanting more (a good sign) and there's no way to further those friendships in the game. Finish their quest lines and all you'll get is canned dialogue after. You can't do anything with them, there's not any extra dialogue lines asking how you've been or what they've been doing, nothing. You'll finish their quest, get a couple texts the next day, and that's usually it. If you call them on the phone or go visit, you'll get the same dialogue options that you did 30 hours earlier. What a wasted opportunity. This sort of lack of attention to detail is prevalent throughout much of the game.

The gameplay is... okay. It's had to play it without making comparisons to other games, especially those that came out during the development window of Cyberpunk 2077. What we ended up with is a mishmash of the modern Deus Ex games and something akin to Borderlands, but unfortunately not as interesting as either. Almost all of the RPG stuff feels superfluous, and you'll often be switching out gear just for higher numbers. I truly think the game would be better if it had went the RPG-lite route, ditching the health bars and floating damage numbers for something more akin to Human Revolution. On top of that, you've got a crafting system that really doesn't need to exist and piles of items to sort through. Lots of loot would be fine if it felt like the loot was interesting, but checking to see if any of the revolvers have more DPS and then dismantling everything else doesn't really feel like a worthwhile or rewarding experience.

The quest design is mostly good, although a bit uneven. There's a lot of open world checkmark style quests (go here, steal thing/kill someone/use a computer), but some of the side quests are truly great. I laughed, I felt uncomfortable, I got sad, and I missed people. Some of the best moments in the game are throughout these quests, when the game stops trying to be an incremental number simulator and instead uses the medium to explore some interesting (and sometimes weighty) topics. Unfortunately, like the rest of the game, the quests are pretty uneven. The boxing quests were especially tedious, with enemies who would two-shot me but took hundreds of punches to knock out. Doesn't really make sense when I could stand before the final boss getting bullets dumped into my face, but a boxer hitting me twice is enough to knock me over. Okay.

The open world bits feel like they were designed five years ago and never iterated upon. We've seen so many hugely detailed open world games with immersive worlds that feel alive. Inhabitants who walk around and do things, have schedules, and seem to exist regardless of the player. While I don't expect the quality of the open world and level of detail to necessarily live up to the exceptionally high bar of something like Red Dead Redemption 2, even Gothic (released almost 20 years ago) had NPCs who functioned on a schedule. There's nothing else in this world to make it feel alive once you're in it... there's no activities, no random events, nothing interesting happening that isn't in the structure of a mission. It just feels like such a missed opportunity.

The sound design is excellent. The game features some excellent voice acting, and, come to think of it, I can't think of any bad voice acting in the entire game. There's quite a bit of music, with the highlight being the near-legendary punk/hardcore band Refused making an appearance as Johnny Silverhand's band, SAMURAI. The sound effects are also good, and despite the gunplay not feeling great, the guns all sound awesome.

As I'm sure you've read, the game is a buggy mess at the time of writing this. Most of the problems that I had were minor-- characters walking through stuff, voice lines not playing, NPCs just hanging out when they were supposed to walk to the next objective, etc. I did experience a few hard lockups that required me to reboot my machine, but those were rare. While I wouldn't really say I had any game-breaking experiences, I think it would be unfair to say that it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game somewhat. Give CDPR's track record, I imagine the bugs will be fixed, so I guess I wouldn't worry too much about this part.

The problem then is simple-- is this good? Is it worth playing? Yes, I do think so, but I wouldn't make that recommendations without some strong caveats. This isn't the next generation of open world games. The gameplay isn't going to blow your mind. It isn't worth seven years of hype. But, if you can look beyond all that, you'll find an interesting story and some excellent characters. It's just a shame that they didn't flesh out those excellent bits and instead focused on... what? I don't really know what they've been doing for all these years, but it sure feels like they stopped making design decisions years ago. So, there it is-- after so much time, we've got some quality writing on top of a totally average game with a pile of bugs that will likely get ironed out.

Thanks for reading. If you liked this review and would like to read more from me, check out Cob Curates.

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I had bounced off of this game a while back, not entirely taken by the narrative or the gameplay. After my extremely positive experience with Control, I decided to take another shot at it.

Quantum Break is an interesting mixed media project, trying (and mostly succeeding) in branching the gaps between television and video games. For trying something new, I think it should be applauded. It's nice to see a game, especially from a larger studio, attempt something new. This mashup of television and gameplay is easily the most interesting part of the game.

The story is sort of your typical time travel tale, except with lots of guns and time manipulation powers to spice it up a bit. The game is broken up in to five acts, each separated by a 22 minute episode of the corresponding television show. In an interesting move, the things you do in the game can change the way the show plays out. I thought that was a nice touch. I'm not sure how much the story changes based on your decisions, but seeing small things I did during the gameplay change scenes in the show was pretty cool. The production of the game (and show) is good. The characters are all well acted, and the game still looks great a few years later.

The gameplay itself, is fine, but not super interesting. The shooting is functional, and although you do get some time manipulation powers, none of them are particularly interesting to use. This is, unfortunately, the weakest part of the game. As such, it makes recommending this come with a few caveats. First, it's mostly interesting as a mashup of the different media types, so if that doesn't sound interesting, you can give this a pass. Second, it's not very long (maybe 8-10 hours in total), and while the game does have a few branching narratives, I doubt it's worth the full ticket price tag.

All that being said, if the game / TV mashup sounds interesting to you, I'd recommend picking it up for 10 bucks or whatever. There's some fun to be had lurking in the time-stopped bubbles of Quantum Break.

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I'll start by saying that this is a very soft recommendation. It's not bad, but it falls short in way too many areas to heartily recommend.

If you've played any of the other modern Far Cry games, then you've basically played this. It's a large, open world shooter where you trundle around doing mostly goofy missions for people with the looming Big Bad hanging out in the background waiting for you to come shoot him in the face.

The gameplay part is all fine. The shooting, driving, exploration, etc. are all here in full force and easily the game's best asset. The game performs well on a technical level. The graphics are good, the game is stable, and the sound is well done. The voice acting is quite good, despite some of the dialogue leaving a lot to be desired. I especially liked how the open world map worked compared to previous Ubisoft games. Instead of just having a map full of icons, you discover things more organically by speaking to people who give you tips as to where outposts / missions are. So the game part is good. Where it falls short is the execution and the story.

Far Cry 5 seems like it's going to try and say a lot of things regarding the current political climate of the US, religion, cults, and the like. It sets this all up in an opening sequence that puts you in directly in the middle of a conflict involving a death cult who seem bent on the end of the world. It's a great setup. Joseph Seed, the main antagonist, pretty much nails the creepy charisma of a cult leader. I was in it.

But it all quickly falls in to nonsense. Instead of using this setup to try and say anything of import, we're instead left with seas of nameless goons who spend their time literally torturing people and burning them alive, shooting us on sight. Later, we'll be monologued at by the villain. "You've seen the news! You know how it is. The end time is coming and we'll usher in the change." It's like, yeah, okay dude. Yes, things are bad. I get it. Clearly your answer of Roving Band of Lunatics Hellbent On Murdering Everyone isn't better. There are many, many instances where they try to get us to empathize with the antagonists, but it's all tough to swallow when they spend their free time wantonly murdering folk. This sort of tonal disconnect exists throughout the game and many of the game's characters. It's jarring to go from this ultra-serious death cult thing to accepting a side quest from a guy who calls the player an 'Obama loving libtard' and tasks us with helping his dumb son blow stuff up while wearing American flag sweatpants.

Despite the narrative shortcomings, I did like the ending quite a bit. "I was right."

So, I guess, if you just want a sandbox to cruise around in shooting dudes, you can do worse. If you're expecting any sort of interesting narrative, look elsewhere. It just feels like Ubisoft can't decide want kind of game they want to make, or maybe like half of the development team want to make some biting political commentary and the other half want to make a bunch of butt jokes. In the end, that leaves us with a some heavy questions like "what should we do about the current divisiveness of the nation?" and answering them with a wet fart.

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Code Vein is, at its core, a super anime Dark Souls. It does have some interesting ideas it brings to the table, and quite a few areas it falls short. After playing through it, I felt like it was decent, but not great. Most of the good points are countered by bad, which I'll explain below.

The ability to change your Code (class, sort of) and gear on the fly allows you to instantly respec your character. This encourages experimentation and doesn't lock you in to a single play style, nudging the player to trying new things. Unlike Dark Souls and more akin to something like Fable, your character has access to many different activatable abilities that you can swap out and experiment with. Unfortunately, the game was easy enough that I found the most success in sticking with the same build through the majority of the game. It wasn't uncommon for me to beat a boss on the first try, and I'm no pro. The combat is functional and the gameplay itself is fine.

The world design, while clearly influenced by Souls games, isn't nearly as interesting nor cohesive as the giants it lives in the shadow of. There are a few different biomes of varying degrees of interest. There's the broken down city, a frost area, some caves, a fire area, a desert, etc. There is one particular level section that is extremely long and tedious. Every time you thought you were done there, you had to go back. The game also features some extra dungeons called 'depths', but these are mostly reused assets and recycled boss fights, and thus, completely forgettable.

The game runs well and the graphics are good, assuming you embrace the ultra anime stylings. Many of the anime character tropes you'd expect make an appearance-- the ultra-buff ex-soldier guy, the grizzled older guy, the bookish leader, and a whole slew of ridiculously sexualized women with mega-anime proportions. Some of the enemy design is interesting, although a lot of the bosses do boil down to 'sexy lady except this time she has ____ animal features'.

The story is fine. It has some unique ideas and a few interesting characters, and there are multiple endings available.

The online component is easy to use and works great, making summoning a friend to play with you pretty painless.

Should you play this? Maybe. This is a pretty soft recommendation. If you're looking for a souls-like game, you can do worse... but you can definitely do better. If the anime thing really appeals to you, maybe you'll find something extra to like here. If not, you should probably just play through Dark Souls again.

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Jedi: Fallen Order is what would happen if the new Tomb Raider games had a baby with Dark Souls while Castlevania shouted about Star Wars from the next room.

And it's good! The gameplay is both challenging and fun, with many planets that are interesting to explore and return to when you have more tools at your disposal. This portion of the game, as well as the narrative exposition, are what reminded me most of the modern Tomb Raider games (or Uncharted, etc.). Beautiful vistas, cinematic moments, and navigating precarious environments. The Castlevania influences show themselves in the form you'd expect-- areas blocked off until you get access to a certain power / tool.

The combat and death penalties are the bits most reminiscent of Dark Souls. You have a stamina bar (although here it doesn't affect your attacks, just defense), timed parries, and the need to learn enemy behavior. I played on the highest difficulty, and with the exception of a few glitches, the combat always felt fair and challenging. The other comparison to the Souls games comes with the way death and recovery is handled. Die and you need to go collect your XP, rest and the enemies respawn. This will be familiar territory for people accustomed to this sort of game.

The story is probably one of the better Star Wars stories to come out anytime recently, although it does suffer from the common "it's a prequel/sequel" issue in that we know some of how it ends, much like Rogue One. Still, I enjoyed the story and felt like it was well acted with some great characters.

My main and really only complaint is relatively minor. The game's map is designed in a way that it encourages the collection of loot and secrets, and it is designed quite well. Each sub-zone tells you how much of it you've explored, how many treasure chests are left, and how many secrets are left to find. All of that is good. My problem is, were you someone off hunting these or looking for 100% map completion, you'll often end up treading to the back end of these levels... and then have to walk all the way back. The game really would have benefited from a 'return to ship' option to save that long (often) long run back.

The game has four difficulty levels, a new game+, and many achievements / collectibles to gather. A single playthrough on the hardest difficulty with a fair amount of collectible hunting took me about 23 hours.

It's really quite good. Easily the best Star Wars game I've played since who knows when, and one that stands on its own quality, with or without the huge franchise backing.

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I didn't know much about Control going in, only that it was a shooter with supernatural elements, shared ties to the Alan Wake universe, and was supposed to be good.

And, as it turns out, it is quite good. The game presents a very interesting world full of the paranormal, one that I was interested in enough to read all the extra lore bits floating around the game. I don't want to go into too much detail, as discovering the weird is part of what makes it awesome, but expect to find lots of interesting paranormal business as you deal with interdimensional issues.

The gameplay itself is also quite good. You'll develop lots of interesting powers, a varied arsenal of weaponry, and utilize your environment to neutralize your enemies. My favorite ability, by far, was the telekinetic throw. Eat garbage can, knaves! The controls are tight and functional on mouse and keyboard.

Graphically, the game looks and performs very well and comes with a wide variety of options. Full support for nvidia DLSS and ray tracing means it can both look and perform very well. The only technical issue I encountered through my 30ish hour playthrough was the occasional texture not loading the higher res version. Not a big deal at all. The characters are all acted well, and I came to like quite a few of them.

The steam version has the DLC baked in, but I thought both of them were pretty good. The game also allows you to continue playing after completion, letting you wrap up side quests or run end-game "expeditions". Quite a bit to do here. Playing through the base game, DLC, getting most of the achievements, and doing some other extra stuff took me in the realm of 30 hours. I was expecting a linear game, but there's quite a bit of freedom as you explore the world presented.

Control is a bombastically good time that I think you'll get much enjoyment out of, especially so if the world of the paranormal presented is something of interest to you.