Recent reviews by socco

Amazing game. Sony, please just backpedal already instead of ruining things for no reason

EDIT: Yay, thank you! Now go play helldivers ♥

Same vibe as the first game, way more polished and expanded. If you like the first, you'll like this too.

Definitely recommend

Pretty fun way to hang out with friends

Definitely get a group together though, randoms are almost entirely 10 year olds

I've been playing this game since release on bethesdanet, and I honestly cannot understand how anyone would say 76 has had its "redemption arc"

The combat is noticeably laggy and unresponsive, the story is as basic as it gets, camp building is restrictive af, inventory management is awful, most of the game's progression is capped behind grind, etc etc. And you can't use mods to fix any of those issues like you can in any other bethesda game.

Can you have fun? Absolutely. But there's so many other games that better respect your time and wallet. Play literally any other fallout, 76 exists only as a vessel to try to sell you obscenely priced microtransactions, and I'd barely recommend it for free, let alone at near-AAA prices.

The game's concept is really cool, but I feel like the game's balance is really off at the moment.

Small resource pockets run out really quickly and infinite deposits are really spread out and require a lot of investment to actually exploit. Workers, power, air, light, etc etc, all for a slow trickle of payout. Actually locating them and then building an outpost on them is a really slow ordeal too, and cloned crew only live so long, so after a certain point I found myself stuck in a constant cycle of maintenance, rather than progressing through the game or having something finally finish me off for good.

Maybe given enough time I could work my way out of it, but meanwhile it's just a slog, and I don't know if there's even much to look forward to if I do stick with it, since you don't really have a long term goal to aim for. It feels like a fun challenge at first, but at a certain point it stops being something you think you can overcome and turns into something you have to just deal with, since what little there is on the progression tree largely seems like minor +_% stat increases, rather than anything really interesting or gamechanging.
There's a lot of early access bugs and lack of polish too that don't help. Crew randomly suffocating even though there's plenty of air, power cables randomly not working, the game constantly dramatically warning you you're low on coal even though you're fine, etc etc.

TL;DR, There just doesn't seem to be much here, and what is becomes tedious and mundane pretty quick. That said, there's no typical early access red flags like awful performance or questionable content, so I have faith in the devs, and I'll definitely be returning after it's out of early access. I just have a hard time recommending it in its current state.

TL;DR The story is great but linear, the actual gameplay is kinda lacking.

I haven't bothered with RDR Online, this is only a review for the singleplayer
The actual game itself is great. It's a huge open world with a lot of care and detail put into each character. Unfortunately it is pretty linear, you don't have a lot of choice, and you basically can't really do anything if you go to an area earlier than you're supposed to, but despite that the story itself is pretty great. A lot of the quests feel very cinematic.

Unfortunately this game suffers from your standard console port symptoms though. It's not very well optimised (albeit not the worst I've ever seen), and the controls are pretty awful and nonstandard. You do get used to them eventually, but it can be really clunky at times. The UI is pretty bad too, everything is buried under it's own little tab. It doesn't sound that bad, but when the game is constantly unequipping your weapons and you have to tab through a list of 15 guns while you're being shot at, it gets pretty annoying. Movement in general is also pretty slow clunky at times, it can be hard to do anything precise, and it's annoying to die just because your character got caught on a little piece of geometry or won't stop spinning around when you're trying to go through a door. There's also Rockstar's launcher too as an added bonus

There's also the survival mechanics. You have your usual health/stamina/etc meters and ones for your horse as well, but also more unique ones like wearing warm clothing or brushing your house. Ik some people like survival mechanics, but all of them are really easy to deal with here, food is very plentiful, you literally carry a brush for your horse with you at all times, etc. So dealing with them is never something you actually have to worry about, it just means you have to pause what you're doing every so often to click on a button in your inventory. It only takes a few seconds, but waiting for Arthur to slurp down a can of beans for the 100th time so you can get back to playing isn't really my favourite. To me it just felt like more of a hassle than anything else
The game also tries to stuff you into a lot of hunting/fishing/etc type activities. Thankfully most of them are optional, but you do miss out on a lot of crafting if you choose not to go around grinding for pelts, since there's no real alternative to it. Some people might not mind, but it's something to be aware of

All and all it's a great game, even despite a lot of it's flaws I'm still enjoying the vast majority of my time with it, and I definitely recommend it. I've seen a lot of people say this is the best game ever and an absolute 10/10 masterpiece, and while you could definitely make a case for the story alone, the rest of the game still has plenty of issues for me.
If all you care about is the story, definitely get it. If you're looking for a great gameplay experience with great shooting, maybe wait for a good sale

This game is still very early access, there's a lot missing and a lot of things lacking polish. Knowing the devs, I'm sure the end result will turn out amazing, but I'd still recommend waiting until it's at least mostly complete to save your first impressions. And if you haven't played the first Subnautica, definitely play that before considering this.

Take a shot every time Ulysses says either "bear" or "bull"
Take two shots every time he personifies something

Setting, loot and difficulty are pretty good, probably the best DLC behind Old World Blues, plus you can leave whenever you want.
But the plot is pretty cringy. Like, really cringy. Cringier than me. Imagine a 14 year old boy's IMVU bio and you basically have Ulysses. Dude speaks in constant metaphors, gives barely any straight answers besides cryptic riddles, and ignoring that his ideologies are hypocrytical and completely illogical. Best part though, you can't even question him about it without him insulting you, since the only dialogue choices you get either make you out to be ignorant or in full support of his genius.
Still recommend it, was a fun experience, but don't go into this expecting a similar story to the rest of NV. I forgot how bad listening to Ulysses can be sometimes.

So, I love this game, I loved FC4 too and this is a lot like 4 was. If you didn't like 4, don't bother with this. 5 has improved on a lot of things though, it has great movement mechanics, some of the smoothest I've seen in an FPS game, along with amazing graphics and a hell of a lot to do. The NPC companions are even somewhat competent.

But there are a few things you should be aware of before you buy this game:
-Silent protagonist. They're great in RPG games, but I don't understand why they've chosen one for this game, which is mostly linear. It feels very unimmersive to me, but idk
-A lot of awkward controls. Loot and switch weapons are the same button for example, so you can end up throwing your gun away to pick up some crappy pistol by accident in the middle of a fight
-Menu music doesn't fit with the rest of the game. The fight music is great, but once you open your inventory you're hit with loud melodic country music, and there's no way to change it without turning off all music
-Deneuvo
-Outposts aren't nearly as challenging as they were in 4, especially for a stealth run. Most outposts have less people and a less interesting layout.
-Increasing the difficulty just seems to mean you die quicker, which encourages stealth. But it's pretty clear that a lot of situations encourage you to go in guns blazing, which seems a bit weird to me.
-Physics are iffy, especially with planes. It's not usually an issue, but if you're buying this game for the planes, be aware that they're easy as hell to use and not very useful outside of transportation and a couple of missions. I've landed and taken off from in the middle of a dense forest with a seaplane before.
-Weapon variety is fairly limited in terms of what you can find in the world. 4 was kinda like this too, but it feels more obvious here. There's still a lot of options in the store, but in game it's pretty much always the same rifle and same pistol on everyone.
-The story isn't exactly deep. There are some interesting characters, but you never really learn more about them or develop much of a connection with any. At most they're added in for a couple missions, then you'll never see them again

I'd definitely still recommend this, but for 80$ you should know what you're getting into. And personally, I don't think this game should be worth that much. Best to wait for a sale. This is a great game, but it's not outstanding or anything. I'd wait until it drops to 60$ at most.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend this unless you're already a pretty fan of the fallout series and really want more.
TL;DR: Don't play this as a first fallout experience, just buy new vegas. The game is just filled with poorly implemented painful mechanics, topped with a lackluster story. New Vegas is an improvement on this in almost every way. Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, I'd rate it as mixed if I could, but it has a lot of issues that I just can't get over. I love the fallout series, but please, save yourself the pain and just play new vegas. Don't bother with this unless you really really want more fallout.

Pros:
-Lots of lore
-A massive map with a lot of exploration value
-A plethora of mods to choose from, a lot of them fix or at least lessen the impact of the cons I'll mention

Cons:
-Very little meaningful choice. The choices that are present are usually very black and white too. Yeah you can play as a bad guy, but it hardly has an affect on anything.
-Very clunky combat and movement mechanics
-Boring combat. Fallout 3's idea of increased difficulty is basically just make enemies take half an hour to kill. This plus the poor overall combat systems make a lot of fights unfun. What's even worse is bullet sponges aren't even implemented well. Instead of reserving bullet sponges for large enemies and bosses, they're randomly thrown in with other weaker enemies.
-A lot of characters have painful voices to listen to. I get this might have been done on purpose, but it gets annoying when every character you talk to is like listening to a kid's middleschool play
-Boring and ugly environments. I guess this is more of a personal thing, but constant yellow and brown hurts to look at after a while
-Crashes a hell of a lot. I've only tried it on windows 7, and even with some workarounds it's still pretty bad.