Recent reviews by Casual

I really wanted to like this game, but I think I am going to give up for the simple reason that I am just not having fun. The only thing that kept me going was being a Warhammer 40k fan, but after a bunch of hours I need to come to terms with the fact that the game itself is really mediocre. I genuinely have nothing good to say about a single aspect of this game except the faithfulness to the Warhammer 40k universe, which is very high.

The quests are boring, the leveling system is incredibly unappealing and confusing both because of the design itself and the atrocious UI, the fights are boring, the camera is actively messing with you all the time and it takes an inexplicable amount of time and dialogue to get things going. The first chapter is pretty much a tutorial and it can still take you easily 10 hours or more, it is an absolute slog. Couple these impressions with the apparent consensus that the last leg of the story is even worse and any trace of motivation I might have had left to finish this game goes out the window.

Plenty of other CRPGs out there that mop the floor with this one in every single aspect.

Very fun RTS with simple but fun mechanics. It captures the theme of the movie brilliantly, with good comic-style mission briefings that look and sound just like the cheesy propaganda messages from the movie, including the enthusiastic narrator.

There is a very healthy variety to the missions, from infiltration with limited resources to larger scale battles like the classic siege mission where the bugs try to swarm a base and you have to fend them off until evac is ready, just like the movie. A typical mission consists in capturing positions on the map while the bugs send wave after wave of enemies from their hives, which you can locate and deactivate for good. The layout of the maps and the way the swarms work make the gameplay very similar to tower defence games, I think it is a very interesting formula that works perfectly with the setting.

The only downside (which I hope will be addressed in the future through DLC) is the lack of coop multiplayer. I really think that this game lends itself very well to a narrative campaign where each player gets different objectives and they have to support each other to win.

Best Far Cry yet.

-Beautiful graphics
-Good characters
-Interesting plot with an original setting
-Very solid gunplay and weapon selection
-Fun coop play
-Not as repetitive as previous instalments

8/10, would rouse the engines to fury again

(MINOR SPOILERS)

TLDR: The absolute peak of the series.

Let me say beforehand that I am one of those weirdos who thinks Origins was not bad at all, and it even improved on several aspects since City like the boss fights, which remain the best in the series. I am convinced that each title generally improved over the previous one, and Arkham Knight blows them all out of the water.

After the horrible PC launch, we now have a stable piece of software with incredible graphics that hold up even today. The animations are very good and extremely varied, the light effects are great and the water effects are simply astonishing thanks to the extra effort Rocksteady dedicated to them, with a bunch of people working on the cape effects alone.

Freeflow combat and predator missions have all been improved. In both of them, the enemy variety and the different moves, gadgets and tactics you can use have been extended, and this is applicable to the fact that you can tackle every AR challenge with several playable characters, each with their own flavor. A special mention is due for the predator missions, where enemies have more ways to react to the player's tactics and have an amazing degree of interaction between them and the environment. Enemies no longer wander around the place occasionally making generic comments over radio or reacting only when they engage the player: they will work in pairs when they feel outnumbered, request help when they find a fallen comrade (with specific voice lines where one soldier requests the position of his friend and the other answers with the exact spot in the room), check grates and make nervous comments about how that grate should not be missing, etc... I even found a "hidden" reaction on Youtube that is so clever it's almost an easter-egg: there are enemies who can track your position if you stay in detective mode for too long, so they will see your exact position and report it back to the rest of the enemies. If you stand right behind said enemy and wait for his tracking device to see you, a unique reaction will be triggered where the soldier will nervously turn around like in a horror movie as he utters something like "this can't be right, it says he is... behind... me?"

The story is quite good. Many fans from the comics were let down by a certain plot twist, but for those of you who (like me) know nothing about that part of the lore, the twist will very likely surprise you. The side missions are good, and they integrated them very well into the open-world box that is this game's Gotham. The Joker part, while rejected by some who think Rocksteady should have let it go after the ending in City, is excellent, and it works well with the game's premise of Batman feeling guilty about the events in City.

The controversial Batmobile is a good addition. It is true that there's perhaps too many forced tank missions, but the vehicle itself is well incorporated into the game. The puzzles with it are clever, the driving is fun and, in general, it's is up to the task of providing that missing piece we had of the complete Batman experience.

I would like to wrap this already long review with my opinion on what is, IMHO, the part that makes this game so great: the attention to detail. The interactivity I wrote about before with the predator missions can be also seen throughout the rest of the game, with tons of voice lines and animations for all characters for pretty much each and every development in the game. Open world games usually have the problem that, while they might be big and full of stuff to interact with, the NPC's seem largely oblivious to what's happening around them, having only voice lines for either the story or generic flavor dialogue. In this game, every NPC has dialogue for pretty much everything that happens. Radio chatter around the city is constantly keeping up with the the developments of both the main missions and the side quests, the characters you interact with outside of combat will comment on the latest news, go about their business and even have unique interactions between them. The Joker is a good example of this, with Mark Hamill delivering deliciously voiced dialogue both in key scripted story moments and in random situations as you roam around the city. It's stuff like this that makes the game world feel organic.

Amazing game and my favourite one in the Arkham series.

A wonderfully crafted gem. Every aspect of it is of excellent quality: story, art style, sound (both soundtrack and voice acting), card gameplay mechanics, etc...

The one complain I would have is that resources are never really a problem, so the resource management part is a bit boring and unchallenging, which makes most of the secondary decisions a bit irrelevant.

In short, an excellent game.