Senaste recensioner av BarrelRider

This game originally released on the Xbox One back in April earlier this year, i was keen to play it but one game was not compelling enough for me to fork out a few hundred dollars to buy the console in order to play it... and we all know the Windows store is dreadful. So i gave this title a miss and moved on, however when i read that the game was going to be released on steam (as well as windows 7) my excitement returned and i hoped the issues that plagued the windows store version were resolved and made the game great.

Let me be honest first before i summarise my experiences and thoughts. While i do very much like this game it is not perfect and some of my thoughts are both a pro and a con. So i will explain this as best i can.


[STORYLINE] While the story may have been nothing ground breaking, it is surely above average. I do very much like time travel stories so naturally the story was a better experience to me compared to someone who just thinks it's ok.

[CHARACTERS] As much as i enjoyed this game, i believe the characters were not given enough depth for us (the player/viewer) to truly care about them, regardless of that though... Hatch is a mystery i want to know more about.

[GAMEPLAY] While very fun and pretty good looking, i felt very limited on variety. Stop him, shoot this, speed here shoot and maybe shoot some explosives to defeat the enemies etc. While this is simple and maybe easier for younger minds.. i like to mix stuff up and get a bit creative. Perhaps something like controlling objects (Like debree or something) to use in an encounter could have been utilised for a bit more variety. Anyway that's just what i think.

[OPTIMISATION] While i believe (at least from what i have read about the windows store version) that this does have less issues, however there are a few things i would have liked fixed. 1) The 30Fps cutscenes 2) The time rush takedowns can be a bit stuttery during the animation (maybe this was intended i don't know). 3) Lock to 30Fps... really?. Otherwise for me choosing my approriate settings and finding what worked best. (btw i7 3770, GTX 970 & 16GB DDR3) High-Ultra settings and get usually 70-90Fps. Again my settings are only highest on what features i really care about.

[GAME/SHOW COMBO] While i applaud this idea and very much enjoyed taking a break for a little bit and soaking in the story.. i personally felt that i was kind of robbed of some fun gameplay. adding all episodes together during the games full runtime i simply felt like i was missing out on a lot of fun time. Don't get me wrong, i really liked it. The quality of it was good and the very idea of it is awesome, i just simply felt a bit robbed of gameplay. It wasn't short, but the game did feel shorter due to the less time available to "play" it. Maybe if the game was longer i wouldn't have this issue.

Despite a few issues i have with the game, Overall I thoroughly enjoyed it. Something a bit different and unique is always welcomed. Bravo REMEDY you have made a very good title and i do not regret paying $52 AUD for it. However anyone who is interested in buying this game and doesn't want to pay $52 AUD or $39.99 USD then put it on your wishlist and keep an eye out for a sale. It is worth a play :)

8/10

Updated 4/08/2016


Note the hours in total are not 100% from multiplayer as campaign and zombies count towards the total hours played and i have friends and family who use my steam account too.

Activision Presents

Oh man, when Activision announced Black Ops 3 after the last 2 entries to the franchise (Ghosts & Advanced Warfare). I had hoped that we would finally get a COD worth the money and time... Sadly i believe this is not the case. If you are considering buying this game, than I cannot recommend this game to you or anyone else. I will explain why in detail, and remember this review expresses my experiences and my opinions. So here we go:

• No exo-suit and the limited thrusters make you more grounded than Advanced Warfare.
• The Specialists w/ weapons & abilities is an interesting move (but more on this in cons)
• Interesting Melee weapons added (more on this in cons)
• Customisation of your character/Specialist is a nice feature
• Hero Armor is a cool idea but... (More on this in cons)
• Some cool designed Black market Call signs and emblems.
• Ability to Perform gestures at the Winners Circle.
• Decent selection of Options in the Graphics Settings.
• Split-screen play.
• Controller Support works well (Con to this as well)
• The Change from 75 Points in TDM to 100 Points is a very good move IMO

oh boy, here we go

• Micro-transactions, weapon unlocks via Blackmarket and just 1 map for zombies is for some reason a FULL PRICED GAME!?

• The Weapon balancing has been improved upon by altering the Kuda and VMP and a handful of the others, however people still resort to roughly the same selection of weapons in the game leaving the others to collect In-game dust.

• Team Balancing is still an irritating experience. While lately I have encountered this issue a bit less but you can still easily come across a team with really skilled players versus a team with bad or unskilled players.

• Boring Recycled Map Designs: only 4/13 maps I enjoy playing on (12 without Nuk3town) and personally I loathe Metro with a passion. but everyone feels differently on designs.
[The 4 maps are Combine, Evac, Fringe & Havoc]

• Overpowered Specialists. The Purifier and Ripper are still pretty much the dominant choices among the specialists.

• Hit markers: or Hit Detection is AWFUL. Countless times I have shot at a player and either it takes too long to register that I am shooting them or doesn’t register the amount of shots I have put into them.

• Short amount of players, every lobby I run into at least 2 people I have seen before. You would think you were playing a beta or something.

• Only a Single map included in Zombies and the rest are only available through the DLC packs... I think you get what’s wrong here.

• Optimisation hasn’t changed much. The game still has the odd frame drop and stutters randomly. I have a GTX 970 installed so that could be why it stutters, but still that means this game has a VRAM leak and i confirmed this in MSI afterburner.

• Mechanics How many times have you attempted to slide but end up crouching? Too many, now you may think “well you need to build up momentum before you can slide”. Normally that would be correct however why do you need sprint momentum to slide with thrusters? Answer YOU DON’T. Also auto mantle is a terrible idea because it’s a slow enough animation to put 10 bullets in your ass. They simply could have made it that you double tap the space bar to mantle so that you don’t get forced into the animation.

• The Blackmarket. It takes you a bit to earn 30 Crypto-keys just to unlock a Rare Supply Drop, and that doesn’t guarantee you anything good just that you will get a quote “Rare or better item” which can easily be a Rare callsign or gesture you don’t give two sh*ts about.

• Controllers with Aim Assist: While I applaud the idea allowing the use of controllers in game, I do not appreciate you giving the controller users Aim Assist in multiplayer. I am not sure if this is true but I have heard of a trick where people can remap the controller buttons to their Keyboard and mouse through an outside 3rd party program. If this is true than shame on you!

• Hero Armor & Dark matter is a nice little acknowledgement of achievement but let’s be honest, they look kind of boring, if you want me to do some ridiculous get 2 rapid kills 4 times or get gold on every single (unlocked) weapon in the game... Then put some more effort into the looks.

• Longevity. Now with the introduction of contracts you can do challenges that you complete to gain access to a time restricted specialist that basically permits the use of all other specialist abilities or weapons. On top of blackmarket unlocks, crypto-keys, COD points & the extra 1,000 levels after the Prestige Master rank... It seems whoever decided to allow all this seems to know that COD games are getting worse and want people to stay on their older titles as long as possible to keep people playing them and to keep a flow of income.

I'm not saying this to bad mouth the game or the franchise but it seems they are building quite an ego and thinking they can make whatever they want and we will buy it because it's labelled Call of Duty. However if you want to play the game regardless of all of the cons, then try it out and judge for yourself.

To all fanboys of the game, this is not cod hate it's just objective criticism and some irritating experiences i have had with the game.

They may develop, but WE make the game.

Episode 1 Reviewed 4/08/2016 (AUS)


When i first heard of Telltale developing a batman game using their style of story telling i thought to myself "That's a peculiar choice" (Considering their past titles like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us & Game of Thrones). However, so far this has been a refreshing breakaway from those worlds and taking on the Batman Universe is definetly grasping another portion of the audience. Now let's get to why you are here.


I only began playing the first episode after a few small updates were released (like the 2-40mb ones) so improvements could have been significant to non-existent. Regardless on my system which i will list briefly underneath this topic was mostly good. I hear of some codex bug but i have not encountered it and the only real complaints are the sometimes stuttery cutscenes. Audio is well in sync with movements, no crashes or freezes and framerate never dipped below 80 for me (on G-sync). Now my rig is fairly good, not beastly but a good gaming PC so anyone using a decent gaming PC should be fine. I cannot speak for integrated graphics because well.. why would i use it when i have a dedicated graphics card?

Specs: Win7 64bit, i7 3770, GTX 970, 16GB DDR3.


+ A bold move after arkham Knight :P
+ Simple yet satisfying detective work
+ Playing as both Batman & Bruce Wayne
+ A Batmobile that transforms into a sports car
+ Morality choices that have a larger affect on your story

- Shift + Q or E QTEs? maybe because i grew up using a console it is a bit harder for me on K/M but thats a bit annoying.
- Slightly too short timer for some of the QTEs. but that might just be me
- The batmobile looks a little boring but the fact it transforms is a nice feature
- The game shortcut you create doesnt work for me (have to open game in library)
- Game launches everytime asking Win7 or Win8+... really? come on.
- No apply option for Resolution until you go back to the main menu then you get the prompt to apply it.


Only episode one is available at this time but i like the way this game is going, hopefully the future episodes are even better. So if you are on the fence about buying this game, well you could wait until it's on sale or maybe get a friend to buy it and overwrite his or her saves :P. However so far i do recommend this game to Telltale fans and batman fans, although what kind of batman you are into may provoke consideration.

The game while looking much better and graphically pleasing is so pushing the stealth aspect of this game... it was so BORING! I had to push myself so damn hard just to finish the story. Now as a sniping game, I understand as a sniper... situations require this, so let me elaborate.

Generally when you are going to kill a target (or targets) you have a few choices:

1) Relatively close with the welrod or a up close and personal takedown.

2) Masking your shots e.g. a passing aircraft or a conveniently placed generator you can damage to make sounds that somehow mask a shot.

3) Take a shot, enemies will hear it and become aware of your presence and will try to pinpoint your location. So what do you do to stay silent and keeping sniping? Get up and move to another location (generally fairly far away)

Now I appreciate the depth (somewhat) in the sniper realism, but for a game that is not combined with the title “Simulator” this made for an utterly BORING GAME. Comparing this game to the previous title (Sniper Elite V2) I found the setting quite boring and frankly it didn’t feel like it suited the game.

Now my issue with both games (but more this one now) is that your choices are quite limited. When you play the game it feels way too scripted, it felt impossible to be immersed because all your choices are pretty much laid right out in front of you. While you have the choice to try other ways, the game pushes you so hard to play the way it wants you to play it... and not the way you would like to play it.

Now the obvious, the game is so damn repetitive that I had to push myself so hard to finish the campaign, the levels are boring and the story is awful (for lack of a better word) and predictable. The fact that there are DLC weapons of course is quite stupid and without them your current selection of weapons are so minimal and you will definitely never use any other pistol except the welrod.

But I will give the developers credit where it’s due.
• The X-ray cam while almost the same is improved and awesome.
• The Graphic options are pretty good.
(although Low/Medium/High AA settings doesn’t specify which AA it uses, But Super Sampling is always a fantastic option to add. Love that)
• Game runs smooth on my GTX 970 + i7 3770 (although some odd bug where if I don’t enable Anti-aliasing the game crashes after a few minutes of gameplay)


While I loved Sniper Elite 2, this felt like a horrible entry to the Sniper Elite series. They needed to keep the game fun while balancing stealth aspect; this game had too much busy work just to take a couple of sniper shots and too much use of the welrod that you get annoyed of the game really fast, while story and mission objectives do nothing to combat this. Minimal choice of weapons that can only be expanded by buying the DLC packs.

The optimisation is pretty good with some decent graphical options; unfortunately this does not redeem the game of its fatal flaws. I would not recommend this game to anyone at full price; if you are currently on the fence about purchasing this game than most likely you are better off taking your money elsewhere. If not then wait until a 75% off sale is active and pay as little as possible.

If you liked Sniper Elite V2 and wish it was stealthier along with the added busy work to remain quiet and continue sniping, then you will love this! For everyone else it will be a chore.

This game has been an emotial rollercoaster from the start. Not a lot of games can suck you into a fantastic story as well as this game does. I've gone on marathons to complete each episode avoiding any possibilites to stop playing until the episode was finished, and now having completed episode 5 and choosing the Morally Correct Ending i am mixed with emotions... I couldn't stop thinking about the ending for hours after finishing.

I Recommend this to anyone who likes a good story. If you cry easy then prepare yourself because you will cry in this game (especially the morally correct end). I seriously hope the creators can one day make a fantastic sequel and once again put their heart and soul into it. Well Done DontNod!

10/10 would f**k up time again :P

• Parkour Acrobatics
• Awesome Weapons
• Great Free roam
• Co-op
• Good level(s) of challenging
• Plenty of Missions and side quests
• Decent Graphic Options (but options like Anti-Aliasing On/Off sucks)
• MODs Support
• Easter Eggs
• THOSE DAMN VOLATILES!! :P


• No Easy Difficulty (However coming from the Dead island games this is not surprising)
• Not everything is explained or shown, you will need to learn or research a few things yourself (e.g. house with red smoke or quarantine zones)
• Survivor Points death penalty (although i understand why they did this, it still feels like a kick in the nuts)
• Recycled Combat system (and yes i say the same for games such as Assassin's Creed)
• Predictable story
• Rank Progression is a little slow (not recommended for people without patience)
• THOSE DAMN VOLATILES!!! :P

Overall I very much enjoyed this game.
Techland has made a very enjoyable game.

9/10