Recent reviews by NewBlood

All is forgiven. 2K wins E3. I'll buy all your map packs, also here's my first born. Bye!

Game is great, publisher is being an arse

2K Games keeps updating the game (and its superfluous launcher) with unnecessary and unskippable EULA/Privacy Policy additions while ignoring several severe and game-crashing bugs for years.

By the Collective, it’s a single player-only game from 2016 with its original multiplayer component stripped out. Why am I forced to accept more unenforceable legalese just to play the same game I bought eight years ago? What possible purpose does it serve?

Are you not ashamed? No, seriously. You, 2K employee, who thought it a great idea to release 2 KBs worth of text from your legal department in the form of a hefty 100 MB update to an eight year old single player game. Are you not ashamed of your behaviour? Fix the bloody game, don’t force old customers to agree to more data extraction so that you can prop up the margins for your anaemic and failed game launcher.

Peak Half-Life!

Just like I remember it!

yes it is good

This game was formative for me and it still rocks. 10 conc grenades out of 10.

Reproducible and reliable crash by segmentation fault on macos. The issue is known for years and has not been fixed.

You know the drill. Dark Souls 3 single-player is great and worth price of admission alone. Contrary to the memes, the game is not that difficult. It’s true!

Then why the negative review, you ask? Because Dark Soul 3’s thoroughly lacking net code for online play is extremely dangerous.

At the time of writing, at least two different unpatched Remote Code Execution (RCE) exploits in Dark Souls 3[duckduckgo.com] have been found. RCE exploits allow bad actors to execute arbitrary code on a player’s PC remotely. RCE exploits are the Dark Souls of cyber security. I cannot understate the severity of this. And Dark Souls 3, when connected to online multiplayer, leaves your system wide open.

The first RCE exploit, found and detailed in April 2021, has persisted for almost a year without any reaction from Bandai Namco & FromSoftware. It fell on the community to provide unofficial anti-cheat software (entitled “Blue Sentinels”)[www.nexusmods.com] to protect Dark Souls 3 players from malicious actors online.

The second RCE exploit was made public in January 2022 by members of the Dark Souls community. (The exploit had already been previously reported to Bandai Namco & FromSoftware in December 2021[www.fanbyte.com].) As of today (2022-02-09) online play in FromSoftware’s Souls games (DS, DS2, DS3) has been disabled for more than two weeks[www.theverge.com] following a public demonstration of this second RCE exploit on twitch[clips.twitch.tv], ostensibly to mitigate risk and give FromSoftware time to fix the issue before the launch of ELDEN RING (2022), which is assumed to share a considerable part of its net code with the older games.

The fact that the revelation of the first RCE exploit last year did not warrant an immediate and coordinated response from Bandai Namco & FromSoftware is frankly unacceptable. Adding insult to injury, it took a second RCE exploit and the resulting financial risk of it torpedoing the launch of their highly anticipated next title to actually spur Bandai Namco & FromSoftware into action. Needless to say, this is extremely irresponsible behaviour by a software firm selling its product to millions of customers.

The only silver lining is that the temporary take-down of online functionality at least mitigates the present security risks. A much belated software patch to fix the exploits might be incoming.

Buyers beware.

It's SWAT 5 a spiritual successor to SWAT 4 (2005), but very rough around the edges. I'm looking forward to seeing what the final product will look like.

A surprisingly solid (and dare I say authentic?) experience if you’re willing to play along. I am continuously impressed with the broad scope of experiences Virtual Reality enables. Dominatrix Simulator: Threshold is one such unique experience, and you owe it to yourself to try it out if you have even a fleeting interest in the subject material.

As noted by other reviewers, the game is still light on content given the game’s meagre development budget. On the other hand, it is obvious that the development team is committed to expand the game going forward. It’s a passion project done by a couple themselves well-versed in BDSM, and it shows!

I won’t make any suggestions for new kinky game content (as that would reveal deeply personal information, lol), but it suffices to say, that I look forward to what comes next in the pipeline, if current rumours on Discord are to be believed.

I was also pleased that the game does not require any kind of smooth/natural locomotion to play. With the player’s position in scenes remaining static, aside from the physical ‘positions’ you’re required to follow and the occasional point-to-teleport, the game can be played in a relatively small space. In addition, this meant I could immerse myself in the action without worrying about the type of seasickness that usually sets in for me when I skip along in first-person VR shooters. I know that many VR veterans frequently clamour for the inclusion of smooth/natural locomotion in every game that only has point-and-click teleporting, but its absence here, I’d argue, strengthens the experience rather than detracts from it.

PS: The headmistress is an absolute riot! I can’t help but grin widely from ear to ear during her scenes given how intentionally over-the-top her lines and voice acting are. Thank God that we’ve yet to achieve automated face expression detection on our VR headsets. She would have given me even more of a spanking, hurr hurr!

I bought this collection expecting to be wowed. "Finally, the Halo saga on PC; the FPS series that defined a console generation!" Well, the single-player campaigns (H1:CE, H2, H3, H3:ODST, H4) are decent, but frankly not as good as I expected. Aside from the surprising and welcome tonal shift in H3:ODST, the campaigns following Spartan 117 (or the Arbiter) have an oddly stiff, boilerplate presentation that belies the games’ importance in FPS canon. Maybe this is simply the games showing their age, or maybe you should not expect too much from standard FPS single-player adventure romps that mainly serve as preparation for multiplayer. In any case, the legendary soundtrack by Martin O’Donnell always seemed to outshine whatever happened on the screen, whether it was emotional cinematic cutscenes or high-octane action set pieces. I am reluctant to say that I expected more, given the games’ reputation.

More specifically, the remastered Halo: CE, which I played in the original Gearbox version on PC quite a while back, felt a bit off in this remake. The enemies and the combat move differently, Martin O'Donnell's amazing soundtrack has been remastered (not necessarily for the better), the guns don't behave and sound like they should and the classic graphics appear uncanny.

And more importantly, what is it with Halo games and the absurdly low amount of available ammunition in your inventory? The gameplay is tuned to you swaping out your weapons roughly every other encounter, because you'll simply have run out of ammunition by then if there aren't any options for restocking nearby. The same is true for those specific moments when you're equipped with a cool, new weapon. If you're lucky, the weapon''ll last you all of five minutes before you'll have to ditch it again, thus severely limiting the impact of and fun to be had with said weapon. Halo 4 is especially egregious in this regard, as it matches this absolute dearth of inventory space for ammunition with several sections of unfun, bullet-spongy enemies. You'll have to take them on with the weapons you're able to scavenge in the moment-to-moment fighting, but there is no guarantee that the weapons you'll find are fit for purpose or even fun to use. Admittedly, Halo 4 tries to make up for its lack-luster weapon balancing by augmenting your tools of destruction with a slew of weapons belonging to a new faction, but they feel and sound weak, and generally lack the necessary punch to be effective.


The multi-player mode is, of course, where the meat of the package is at. While it might initially be disorientating if you queue with all games enabled – you'll be thrown into Halo 4's multi-player first, Halo 3's multi-player next, one of the other games third, each with their own quirks (loadouts!) and default key-bindings – the shooting mechanics remain generally as you would expect. A mainstay across all of the games (aside from H:CE) is the Battle Rifle, which is the undisputed favourite weapon amongst halo veterans and newcomers alike. Pro tip: Getting the hang of the BR constitutes your first step towards online dominance. (Note: I personally can't stand the weapon; it makes kills feel cheap and firefights boring. Assault Rifle & Pistol or bust!)

The slew of game modes available is awesome and should be commended. It hearkens back to a time where mutators and creative (but not always seriously balanced) game modes were deeply woven into the fabric of arena shooters.

Match-making is an issue, though. Although I currently (late 2020) have no trouble joining games – which apparently constituted a frustrating issue at launch – I often find myself in completely lopsided matches with high-skilled players (clans?) either completely devastating the opposing team, or mine. There appears to be a progression system of some sort for the multi-player, but I haven't been able to ascertain to what extent this plays a role in matching you with players of similar skill, so expect a certain level of “git gud”. Your persistence will be rewarded with some of the best gameplay the Halo series has to offer if you can live with the regular match-making ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.


All in all, this is a weak a recommendation for the current price of 40€. I’ve gotten my money’s worth, but just barely. I'd give this a "thumbs to the side" if I could. That being said, if you're looking to find out what the hype of yesterdecade was all about, have some fun along the way in some by all accounts archetypical single-player campaigns (with a legendary soundtrack) and classic (but a little worn-out) multi-player mayhem and do not mind the old-school match-making, the MCC is a decent value proposition. If you’re not really in it for the nostalgia, however, I’d suggest waiting for the inevitable 30-50% discount down the line.