Recent reviews by sleepyrivertroll

Choo Choo

The game excels when you have the freedom to move and run as you see fit. Chaining wall runs, vaults, and grapples gives you a wonderful sense of flow to everything. When that flow is uninterrupted, it's a marvelous thing. When you are presented with combat, you can normally just run by and ignore the fights, maybe knocking away a guy that was in your way. Unfortunately, you are sometimes presented with fights where you must fight and those can be abrupt, awkward engagements that take you out of the free running experience. The combat isn't that difficult, most fights can be finished with wall running, back ejecting and landing a kick over and over again, but it isn't really why you're here. Finding new vistas, exploring new paths, and just enjoying the feeling of speed and control are the pulls of the game.

The story forces you to retread several paths, over and over, with missions starting in one local but requiring you to make it to another location to actually begin it. The issue with that is many times you'll have to go through transitional environments and travel becomes a chore instead of a joy. A player using the fast travel feature regularly in a game about movement is not a good sign with regard to the mission locations. The missions themselves are pretty fun with a good mix of free running, climbing puzzles, and combat (even if it's a bit awkward) but the story is nothing special. I enjoyed the characters but I can't really recall their names after finishing the game.

The timed missions were initially rather difficult for me. It seemed like I would either make it or fail by a half second. It turns out that the Frostbite engine enters slow motion if your frames drop beneath 30. This means that doing certain moves (spins, rolls, high jumps) would slow the game down but the clock would still tick like normal. After turning the settings all the way down and squashing the resolution, I was finishing missions I was struggling to pass with 4 or so seconds to spare. I'm really not sure how I feel about that...

Overall I enjoyed the game as it appealed to my sense of freedom and adventure but if combat or story are your focus, I would suggest maybe getting it on sale.

The game places you in the shoes of civilians trapped in a warzone. You aren't soldiers but frail people just trying to survive. You do what you can. I'm not sure I enjoyed the game but I do think it was a positive experience.

I managed to guide my group through it and am completely content with leaving it at that. It can be a powerful game depicting the terrors of being stuck in the crossfire.

You get to explore space, customize and upgrade your fleet, and fight zombies.

Plus, Totalbiscuit is the narator.

I played through the story on medium.

The story was pretty good but nothing stellar. If you've watched a lot of mob movies (Godfather, Goodfellows, etc.) then you'll get a good idea of what will happen. The end bits feel a bit rushed and they do jump around a bit but it's above average, even if it doesn't cover new ground.

The open world that's in the game is beautifully done. Everything from the shops to the kitchens are filled with details. The problem is that there isn't much to do in the world. You can steal cars and rob shops to gain money but there isn't much to do with it that many times it's not even worth it. The main reasons you need moeny are story based and the story will provide and take away from you as it sees fit. There were a few times where I loaded up with guns before a mission only for that mission to have me stripped of them. A few story events have you gaining and losing large sums of money so your previous work doesn't really matter.

The gun play is ok but nothing special. The driving is good but driving laws are enforced and the police will chase you for speeding, meaning you won't have the oppurtunity to really test them out. You have to pay for the repairs so you can't go too out of control with cars from your garage. A lot of the missions involve you driving people around and doing it safely. Pressing "L" makes it so your car doesn't go over the speed limit so that helps a bit but it does get kinda boring driving everywhere.

The game had a few graphical glitches for me and sometimes characters would get stuck, forcing me to restart missions. A few cutscenes lacked characters and had a voice coming out of nowhere. Most of these were solved via restarting the game or mission. It was frustrating but I've had worse.

Overall the game is pretty good but probably not worth full price to you. If you can get it cheap and like mob movies, go for it. Otherwise you aren't missing much.