Recent reviews by Cringe Lord

GAYLO 3

48 VITALITY
66 ENDURANCE
12 ATTUNEMENT
16 F*CKING STRENGTH
10 DEXTERITY (BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE U LVLED THAT UP U FOCKIN F***OT
WHAT R U CASUL?
GIANTS GIANTS GIANTS (BECOME UNSTOPPABLE)
WHAT RING U GOT BITHC? - HAVELS RING,
RING OF FAVOR AND PROTECTION -
STAMINA HEALTH ENDURANCE - EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT
BLACK FLAME, BLACK FLAME (THAT MEANS NG+ BITHCES)
"SO WHAT IS IT" GESTURE,
ARE WE COOL YET?

This game is simply unfinished. If you can get gamepass, get it on there. Not worth full price right now. This is my review few weeks after the release and the opinion might change as developers are patching the game out (which is abysmal for a 60euro game). I really enjoy the game, but there are huge reasons why i don't recommend this game.

Objective Reasons:
1. The most important and most essential part of the game is movement - and it's broken on release. Using WASD is glitchy and stuttery. The character seems like skipping frames whenever you move. If you use a controller it's less apparent but frameskip still occurs.
2. Bots are very bad. They are the most brainless, lifeless and pathetic piece of AI that i've seen in the game. For a solo player its crucial for immersion. And immersion is broken the moment you start playing. They move like maniacs, get stuck in everything, their behaviour is sporatic. stuttery and glitchy. They don't really do anything other than look at walls and sometimes just get left behind and teleport back to your location if you move too far. In contrast L4D bots felt like real characters that you could do whole solo campaign with and rely on. They behaved and communicated almost like real people. How they could do bots worse than a 2006 game is beyond me.
3. Performance is very strange. This game can stutter on a monstrous rig and behave nicely on budget rig. It can microstutter, microfreeze, crash. There are no explanation or fixes so far.
4. Online matchmaking for solo players barely works (doesn't find matches for a long time), and if you wanna play offline - the progression is turned off, meaning you are not earning anything, other than watching how story plays out, which is not bad.
5. Rebinding is broken and doesnt work for some inputs. e.g. Binding jump to a mousewheel simply doesnt work.
6. Broken event animation (pre-chached physics explosions that play out at 15fps, the chopper at the end of ACT2 that flies around at 2fps, etc.)
7. No Story PvP mode. Only arena-type pvp where you fight in the same location.

Subjective reasons and a rant:
It's really hard to play this game and not compare it to it's predecessor in the every gameplay and artistic aspect, and that's what i am going to do here.
The characters lack originality and facial animation is worse, if it even exists. If we are talking about the cutscenes - it's worse, the lipsync is off, feels like it was outsourced to the people who don't speak english. The facial animation on the characters in the game is simply non existant. In L4D you could even see characters eyes moving and reacting at you whenever you would interact with them. Here characters feel like ragdoll bricks with no emotions with stone faces. It's 2021 and the 2006 game still beats it. Was it the Source engine that gave it so much life? i don't know, the fact is, i don't want people to forget that the details are important, and the more we go further, the more people start to forget that newer games can't even copy what was already great and build up upon it. They somehow manage to do it worse with all this technology.
The way bots or players would move in the environment is also much smoother in L4D, here everything is choppy and glitchy, feels like a cheap unity game than a big studio project.

The horde physics in B4B is also off, zombies feel like plushy ragdolls and dismemberment is also too floaty. in L4D each zombie death felt real and grounded, the way they fell or died from a shot wound, or a grenade, and their behaviour also felt realistic.

I forgot to mention that there are no water physics or even splashes whenever you move inside large bodies of water. They feel like reflective glass that doesn't react to anything which is a big shame.

Pros:
Lenghty campaign that makes you feel important in saving the town as it is set-up as a series of "saving private ryan" scenarios that start from the same camp. It wins in terms of interconnectivity, but looses in terms of variety of scenery you will see.
Amazing shooting mechanics
Great COOP experience which has new mechanics that will come as a surprise for the L4D veterans.
Surprisingly good card system that doesnt feel like a chore or a pay-to-win system.
Great lighting and very detailed locations that would make you drop your jaw sometimes.

I want this game to be good.

If you are into dota and league - battlerite is an amazing arena pvp game

I played Heroes 3 for the first time more than 15 years ago and it is still one and the only strategy game i love and play to this day. This HD re-release is still worth it, especially for the new-comers. The graphics are updated and re-drawn from scratch and it doesn't strain the eye as much as the old one and makes the game look gorgeous. The online play just works through steam (even invites through steam overlay work) and doesn't require any dance with a tambourine around the computer and TCP/IP Hamachi or Tunngle work-arounds.

Yet it is a shame that this version of the game lacks of the expansions such as Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death which means it misses some multiplayer maps and the final kingdom called "Conflux" (which was one of my favorite).
We can only hope that Ubisoft doesn't play lazy (even without the source code from NWC) and could just add the expansions by themselves (if fan's decrypted source code and managed to do fan-made expansions, why ubisoft can't rework the old ones?)

Pros
-Same Heroes III you love
-Online play just works through steam
-HD Resolutions and re-worked graphics
-Music sounds much cleaner

Cons
-No expansions and no Conflux castle
-While in online play the game doesn't auto-expand when minimized, when it's your turn (old ones did)
-When the game set to English language and the host of the online lobby is set to different (Russian for instance) the game dialogues and names are displayed with weird computer simbols.

I am god in the first game and would be able to speedrun through it very easily. This one is more tactical which is less fun. First game allowed both tactical and massacre approaches which were both fun at the same time. Here rooms are larger and some enemies stand in the middle of the room making it trickier to do a "massacre" approach. I used to complete HM1 without stopping once. This one requires many stops and planning between another enemy interaction which takes away a lot of fun, in my opinion. But still the design and style has elevated to an huge extent(bits and pieces like VHS glitch pause menu), soundtrack became even more headpounding and its just rocks. So defenitely recommend it, but a bit leaves me a bit bitter. I went through 6 levels so far, but maybe if I will complete the whole game, then my view would change drastically!

>Le me. Playing CS for 15 years.
>Get into competitive
>7 kills in a row 2nd round
>Teammates butthurt and call me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ for not playing team and not doing "save" round

10/10

9/10 - One of the best novel/epistolary driven game experiences since Dear Esther. If you are looking for action - it's not for you.

I've completed the game just now, and I would say that I am freaking amazed how a simple idea can make such a wonderful, soul-soothing, but at times - heartbreaking experience. It is a wonderful story about a family, the story that is shaped by YOU. You are a ghost, indeed, but it is not really about that. The game is called "The Novelist" because, despite the fact that Dan - the father in this family - is trying to write a book, you are actually the one who is writing a novel. You are writing a novel about the life of this family, and you make actions that are shaping the story, and I am sure this game has multiple endings, depending on what choices you make.

Dan is trying to write a novel, his wife Linda is trying her luck at painting pictures. Their kid Tommy is trying to adapt to the new environment in new school and tries to deal with dyslexia. You choose who gets the momentum, and who will be dissapointed with their days. Sometimes you will try to make VERY TOUGH descisions.... Thats how the gameplay works, and your actions will lead to different branches of the story...

I cried in the end, most of the actions I did were trying to help everyone... But that is not always how it is in real life. I cried in the end because I am going through the exact moment of my life right now. It's either my career, or my family. And in this game - i chose family. And now I am quite sure that this is what I am going to do in my life.

I salute you Orthogonal Games for writing and developing such a good, mesmerising story that could actually make me think about my choices, and maybe think about life and family in general.

I am giving this game 9 out of 10 for creating one of the best emotional experiences i've had in a while. This game made to shed a tear even though I am a grown man. *<[:D I will take 1 point from this game because I didn't feel the gameplay gave me just a little bit more freedom to explore the house or the outsides and sometimes it felt a little bit repepetive and very straightforward. I felt it could have a bit more on the visuals, i mean the outside terrain could be improved (sometimes i am very picky on details) But other than that - it is amazing.