Recent reviews by Johnny_Suspicious

tl;dr, the game is an easy 8/10, although another missed opportunity for SEGA

Overall this is one of the best racing games I've played. I mean, it's a racing game with Sonic characters. What else does one need?
Pros:
-The game's campaign is good and makes the learning curve of the game smooth.
-The team-based mechanics are fun and rewarding.
-The driving mechanics are smooth.
-The characters are charming (obviously) and their cars have iconic designs.
-The soundtrack is masterpiecefully crafted.
-The art style of the game is simply amazing, full of colorful enviroments and places that welcome you with cheerful vibes.

Cons:
-Multiplayer is dead. I managed to play 2 matches with 1 person each.
-Cream, Espio and Charmy are missing.


This game could be the definitive Sonic multiplayer experience, but it ends up as another Sonic game that didn't unleash its true potential...

This is the definitive way to experience the LOTR trilogy in a game, since all movie based games of the past are no longer supported on Steam.

I hope they make this remastered. The only con I noticed is that the hub world (in which you are located in between every story segment) is very small. It's a huge missed opportunity.

Last time I played this game was in late 2022.

One of the most underrated games of all time.

It's not a masterpiece, but it is unique, impressive and it has good potential.
(Yes, I know Overwatch exists, but at least Paladins isn't an unbalanced rock paper scissors with too many stun and knockback mechanics.)
The community and the developers are very passionate, but sometimes that's not easily noticable.
That is because it is easy to encounter toxic behaviour and I can get why. As someone who played since 2016, I can tell this game will become infuriating if you get too invested in it, but I see no reason to do so in the first place. Ranked is kind of abandoned (at least last time I checked).
Instead, what I appreciate about this game is the gameplay, the gunplay, the map design and how it syncs with the abilities of the champions, the visual designs of the champions, the lore (in that order).

The game has many champions. Many of them are great, from a gameplay and visual perspective. Although I think the roaster's quality declined due to the new additions ever since 2021 began, the game is still worth grinding on.

The game's biggest drawback is how team-based it is. It requires the cooperation of 5 people, and that is quite a red flag, because... If a teammate leaves the match intentionally, gets a game crash or goes AFK, it is almost impossible to win game, a 4v5 in this game is almost unwinnable. Many will tell you that a 5v5 teambased shooter is reasonably cooperative based and losing a 4v5 is just "the way it is". I'd say that this is not how it should be, because the 4 people that are still on the match are simply having a bad experence becuase of that 1 person. For the devs, this means 4 customers that will potentially stop playing entirely. It is also why many modern looking shooter like CSGO or COD are popular. You can carry in those games.

Overall, this game is definetely not perfect, but it is a high time-to-kill hero shoother done right... relatively.

I can't recommend the game anymore, because it forces you to cooperate with your team mates in a specific way, plus there are way too many champions...

Story is too generic
Gameplay is too repetitive (but at least a bit action-packed)
Characters have too complex designs, unmemorable and not iconic enough
and for some reason First Person is missing

This game is a timeless masterpiece, a marvel of a game, an excellent example of how to make an FPS class based shooter and a brilliant way to have fun, no matter how you choose to play.
Other than that, the game:
• is Free
• has a dedicated Community
• features tons of high-quality maps and game modes
• has a lot of weapons and unique playstyles, and in general varying character customization, with only 9 lovable and memorable classes
• and a distinguishable skill ceiling, but even more importantly, a low skill floor

Before talking about the gameplay, I'd like to talk about the game's visual appeal. This game has an amazing art style, to say the least. Not only is it iconic and memorable, it is also tying perfectly with the game's good visibility. This game is one of the Source engine games that have become cultural phenomenons due to their iconic and well-written characters, as well as the game's aesthetical appeal. Thanks to this, the game is not only enjoyable while playing, but the game's Intellectual Property is constantly being shared, while bringing joy to a great amount of people on the internet.

I think that keeping a hero shooter fresh with new weapons instead of heroes is extremely underrated, and that the idea that TF2 brings on the concept of Hero Shooters is unfairly overshadowed by other games' inferior game design.The only "con" I can tell this game might have, is the lack of frequent balance changes, although I've gotten used to it and not to mention, the game is already relatively balanced.

Talking about balance: "This game is one of the last bastions of classic FPS where you can just frag, hang out, and have a good time without needing to sweat over some artifitial ranking." And that is one of the reasons I fully endorse it's casual nature and don't have issues with it, not even with RNG mechanics like random crits and random bullet spread, that make the game surprising and therefore replayable.

A reason why I would call this game a masterpiece is that this game fully captures the nature of "balanced chaos", which means that it has a set of balanced mechanics that make each PVP encounter fair (like proper weapon balance, visibility, map design, fun time-to-kill etc), as well as the chaotic nature of every 12v12 server, which can even be 16v16 if you join in community servers. These 2 things are so contradicting, yet perfectly create this package of endless fun and replayability. As a result, each person's experience in TF2 is unique (provided they have spent enough time in the game to become invested in it).

I can easily recommend this game to anyone.

CS2 REVIEW
Recommending this game to any friend is gonna be hard. The free version of the game is nothing more than a trial that is subpar to what the Counter-Strike experience is supposed to feel like, and the game is too resource intensive to recommend to anyone that doesn't have a recently upgraded rig.

The only reason my play time is this high is because I only keep playing to get the free cases to sell on a weekly basis.

Also, this game lacks some content compared to CS:GO, which I would excuse if it was more stable, but it's much less stable instead.

Any outdated setup will struggle to run this game, which I would understand if it was a franchise like Call of Duty, but this is Counter-Strike. People used to plug a copy of CS 1.6 in their school computers to play there, and this installment can't even play good enough.

Breakdown of my issues: This game suffers from stability and visibility.
The visibility is ok, but it used ot be much better in previous Counter-Strike games, it's infuriating. I still play old CS legularly, and CS2 seems more and more off. Regardless of how much settings you tweak, the game will always infuriate by stuttering when you spray at an enemy or when you want to peak a corner. And what makes the visibility even worse is how much clutter this game has comapred to previous games. I get that CS doens't want to just put boxes everywhere, but the ammount of detail the enviroment has for a game where you only move with WASD Ctrl and Space is insane. CS used to look simple and easy to understand and now it's a game that requires a mid range modern setup. The game is so much resource intensive, that a lot of people will have to lower the resolution or apply FSR, which makes the game look like a blurry mess. Regardless of how much I tweak my graphics settings, the game will look painfull and it's not even gonna be worth it, because the stuttering will still occasionally happen.




CS:GO REVIEW
tl;dr This game is almost perfect. It's all fun and games until you die from an AWP shot too many times
I recommend playing in lower ranks only.

This game does a lot of important things right... and just a few things wrong.

In competitive, the only way to have fun is to win, because this game is NOT one of those that is fun enough to enjoy it even when you lose, unless you trick yourself into doing that (like me). In order to win, the key is to become at least average with the mechanical skill this game requires, but the most basic way to do that is to shoot only when you're still. Unfortunately, this means that Run & Gun is rarely a viable tactic (unless you're using an SMG in lower ranks). Camping is encouraged to a discusting degree, as well as headshots. Head is the only thing the enemies aim at (especially in average/high ranks, which is reasonable) and I just wish this didn't happen to such frustrating extent. When you die, chances are, the kill feed will mention it was a headshot. Lastly, spread is the reason you will most likely miss your shots. Even when you fire a pistol, if you use the firerate to its full degree, that will be the reason your shots didn't go where you expected them too. I wish this wasn't the case for a lot of pistols but here we are.

Unlike most, I simply enjoy the content the game has to offer, the guns, the maps, the modes and the social interaction (that may happen once in a while), which makes it sad for me that the only mode that is mostly getting attention by bot the devs and the players is competitive. Literally everyone plays competitively. Worst than that, people always tend to pick maps based on how well they know them, which means that new or fun maps can hardly become permanent additions. Heck, most maps that have been permanently added are maps that cater more to the try-hards.
Not to mention, any other mode other than Competitive hardly gets updated, because people just don't care about fun apparently and all they want is Source 2 (fair enough), 128 tick servers and better anti-cheat. Like, I get it, 2/3 of these are important and reasonable to ask, but I believe there are other stuff worth mentioning too. Casual and other fun game modes are neglected. Competitive will never "die" because ranks are the reason people play this game, which is sad to see. There are game modes I wish had official matchmaking queues, like Fight Yard.

Talking about maps, this game used to be good at adding maps, until you become attached to a map, only for Valve to take it away from the official matchmaking. Multiple maps, like Santorini, Season, Tulip and Coast have been in and out of the game, sadly.

The AWP is getting it's own paragraph. Why? Because it's that awful to see an AWP in a match, especially if it's user is a skilled one. A sniper that can insta-kill if it shoots the head or the body? So, if you like getting eliminated, just because someone on the enemy team decided to save 4500$+, this is a game for you. No matter how good you are, you can't prevent an enemy from saving $. Insta-kill guns aren't fun to play against and despite being someone who has been a CS fan since 1.6, I can understand any newcomer's frustration on the AWP. I can tolerate CS:GO's AWP, but that's partially thanks to the fact that I don't see it that often, as well as it's mag capacity.

I would normally not recommend this game, at least until Valve added enough classic maps back in the game, and hopefully made proper changes to make the fun modes even better, and give players incentive to play a mode that isn't associated with a ranking system. However, an important reason why I easily choose this game over others is because of the massive amount of players in Competitive and the social interaction that comes with it, since people use voice chat, as well as the solid movement and shooting mechanics, which simply can't be found in other games and is too good to pass up. Despite this game not being a masterpiece, it is one of the best games out there, far better than most. Heck, the Source engine by itself is one of the best things that happened to the gaming industry.

This game is fun, although most fun can be found in Conquest rather than the other game modes. That's because the game was made around this game mode. That doesn't mean other modes are not fun, but they surely haven't aged as greatly as Conquest, and that goes especially for multiplayer. The reason I'm saying this is because this game has a lot of small parts of it that are dated for a modern shooter, and that includes lightsaber duels, stationary cannon handling, turning while sprinting and maybe main weapon handling (but the latter one to a small degree, you can still pretty much use any weapon just fine). The part of the game that aged the worst is Heroes vs Villains, because lightsabers are unbalanced as heck. So, I recommend this game, while also recommending the new Battlefront 2, even at the state it has been left at. Lastly, one of this game's greatest strengths is map design: The maps in this game are not only balanced, but they are also iconic, since it's easy to memorise them. Since this game is based on the 6 first Star Wars films, every map in this game has a great setting and there is large variety when it comes to scenery of the worlds in which you play. Even when you want to play with bots in "instant action", there's a significant amount of choice presented to the player, which I think is what ultimately makes the game worthy even after all these years.

If you decide to get the game, however, I also recommend checking mods for the game. There are mods that try to modernise and expand the experience the game has to offer.