Recent reviews by PhoenixWombat

I, personally, would not call this game easy. I found the ease of every session is extremely dependent on what buffs you start with/roll every day when you wake up, making the ease of every mission very situational. It's a simple little mechanic that can drive up the difficulty if you roll poorly. The overall game is a relatively short, with each session lasting an hour to an hour and a half long to complete. The sound's not bad. The graphics are simple, but still easy to discern what is what even at night. Overall I did enjoy it. I do question the long term replay-ability of the game, but I would also like to encourage the devs to expand on this game. It feels like a solid start with a lot of room to grow.

278 hours later I have 100% of the achievements. I've done every quest. Romanced all the npcs, Maxed out all my skills. Fully upgraded every iconic weapon I could get my hands on. I even experienced every heartbreak, of where there are a lot of in Cyberpunk 2077. The game does a good job of showing how grey the world can really be.

The game is not perfect, quest progression can occasionally be glitchy requiring multiple in-game rests or even a hard restart to make things continue as intended. There are also parts of the game that feel like the devs had more planned, but ran out of time/motivation. (I'm looking at you beginning of the game timeskip montague) But despite these two, in my opinion, minor issues, the characters, quests, choices, and story line still make the game more than worth a personal run in the neon filled world of 2077. This is not always a happy world, but you will still find reasons to smile.

The radiation zone was a pain in the ass, but the overall game is spectacular

Game is gorgeous, everything wants me dead. 10/10 would die of exposure to a sandstorm again.

Tried to shoot a t-rex with a revolver and got eaten. 11/10 would get t-rekt-xed again.

Jesus Christ everyone in this game acts like such a ♥♥♥♥

Why can't I select yes more then one time!

beaten

Here is my review of the game:
http://phoenix-wombat.livejournal.com/837.html

(Sorry for the link, my review was longer than steam allows)

My (Spoiler alert) Review of Crysis

If I were to pick one sentence to describe Crysis, It would be:

"A beautiful game, with creative game play, that suddenly falls short in the end."

First off let me just say that the game is absolutely gorgeous. There were probably half a dozen times that I was killed because I was too busy looking around me to notice the hail of gunfire coming my way. Despite the growing age of the game, there where still a few times were I honestly found the in game views to be nearly photographic. Also before I forget, its a Crytec game so pretty much everything but the ground you're standing on can be destroyed if you desire to do so.

The armored suit your character "Nomad" wears uses a power system that is simple and streamline, yet still well thought out. You have access to four different abilities that you can more or less change on the fly: super speed, super strength, body armor, and invisibility. Your not a constant walking god though, all the abilities except for the armor have a timer. Once they run out they have to recharge before they can be used again. The weapons all seem to have a minimum of four customizable upgrades available to them (some have up to six) Things like laser targeting, type of bullet, sights/scope, and a grenade launcher are just a few of your options.
The A.I. in the game isn't perfect, That award for me still goes to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl (which I will someday also cover), but it's still pretty good. Enemies will hide, try to flush you out with gunfire and grenades, and will move to intercept you if your hiding/sneaking. Their aim is neither awful, nor is it perfect, so it balances out pretty well.

The story is quasi-believable, a group of archaeologists excavating in Korea come across ancient artifacts that appear to be more technologically advanced than anything we currently, modern day, have available. So the Koreans kidnap the archaeologists to try and find out more about the discovery. You play as a secret commando sent in to rescue the hostages. And the game takes off and is wonderful up until the end of the first mission were your like "why did a mechanical squid just violate and kill my partner?" but then you quickly forget about it as you get back into the awesome game play. And this keeps up until I figure its about halfway-ish through the game when you get transported into an alien space ship. Yep that's right....

Me In Real Time [imgur.com]

And all I could think was "are you f**king kidding me?" So the next hour or so is you trying to escape a zero gravity playground of flying naked blue squids shooting you with psychic energy or whatever is is they use that hurts so damn much.

But its ok because you do eventually escape....only to find out that the alien ship has flash frozen a three mile (radius) area while you were inside. Which at first was really neat concept. The entire area was deathly quiet except for the sound of my own footsteps. I found deer frozen solid among ice covered trees. Soldiers both friend and foe stopped in their tracks. Even vehicle's with their passengers still inside, their faces frozen in fear, as if someone had hit a pause button to their lives. And then I start getting attacked by mechanical squids again and it breaks both the mood and focus of what just happened. Also I have to empty on average two thirty round clips of bullets into each mechanical squid before they even consider going down.

Anyways the rest of the game is you trying you survive and escape the alien attack. Right up to the final boss which is composed of you shooting a large alien craft to death on the deck of a air craft carrier with a mini nuclear missile launcher (which was so easy that when I killed it, I though it was only the first part of a much larger fight and then the end cut scene started)

So yeah in closing this was one hell of a ride but it left me strangely disappointed. The game looked so cool, none of the screen shots that I had seen prepared me for the surprise alien attack that quickly dominated the game. In the end it was still a good game... assuming you can ignore the buckets of bullets you'll have to pour into any alien you stumble across. But I for one just wish they had never been there in the first place.

Final score: 7.0/10