Recent reviews by Spykeeboy

I like

A true re-imagining of the legendary Half-Life. If you are getting nostalgic or have not played the fantastic original, this is as good as it gets. Serious congratulations to the devs for creating an amazing product, their enthusiasm is truly admirable!

I would not recommend this game at present for two reasons, one of which I believe is subjective:

1) The story turns into an inconsequential mess by Act 3. I found myself not engaging with the characters at all and could not get past scene 2 of Act 4.

2) The above is not helped by the atrocious way these developers - I struggle to call them that - engage with their customers. It is NOT okay to take over 7 years to create content for this game, and I do not, for a second, accept the "When it's done" mentality when it is used so shamelessly. The king of all excuses for this behaviour is "well, at least it will be good, games are art" - absolute drivel! At this stage, "finished" is miles better than "perfect", and the only way to respect paying customers.
What's worse, while Act 5 is a being worked on (or is it?), the developers are making money from their patron-exclusive posts on Patreon, which include updates for the conclusion to this game. What are people paying them for? Is it not enough to cheat, at the very least, the buyers who purchased this game when the first 3 acts were out, and have been waiting for years? Apparently not, they need to earn extra money for updates on a game that was supposed to be finished years ago, by their own admission.

The game has an original art style, and had my attention in the first two acts (this is very subjective, however), but I simply cannot support developers who show such lack of care and outright exploitative behaviour towards their customers. The only thing I believe they can undoubtedly finish off at this point is anyone's patience.

I also urge anyone who reviews the game to consider the above when they do.

Pretty good as a Co-Op game, would not recommend it to anyone who appreciate a good single player experience though...

This "game" is a steaming pile of putrid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Absolutely exhilarating experience.

Sound design: 10/10.
Level Design: 8/10 (would have been great to see more open spaces and beautiful views).
Visuals: 8/10.
Combat: 8/10 - a lot of mechanics to get used to, all of which look stunning; however, enemy variety could be better.
Story: 10/10 - the game explores the diseases of the mind in a very meaningful and, more importantly, AUTHENTIC manner. The developers clearly did their homework on mental illness, and must have worked with people who suffer from these.

Bravo, Ninja Theory! Cannot wait for more.

I enjoy the game, while it is a bit overhyped I somehow managed to avoid ALL media about it except for the 2012 E3 demo. However, it is nowhere near worth the money and is overall very mediocre and not what was promised to the players.

PROS of the game:
- Good graphics (although nowhere near the E3 2012 demo quality)
-New hacking concept is pretty entertaining, especially during car chases and side-quests/collectibles.
-Going back to the collectibles, some of those are actually entertaining to collect (e.g. the eavesdropping/spying on random people)
-Overall, a lot of content in this game
-The game somehow runs at 50-60 FPS on Ultra settings on my Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 AMP! edition and an old 3rd gen i7-930 2.80 GHz (with 10 GB of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1333 MHz RAM).

CONS:
-All of the above gets old very, VERY quickly.
-Big letdown in terms of "unique, living city" and "car chases, parkour". The only parkour in this game includes jumping over a fence or climbing onto a low rooftop through a pre-determined path, the car handling physics feel like I'm playing GTA III (GTA IV is heaps better on PC). The city is by no means "living" - again, GTA V has a much better atmosphere to it.
-Uninspired, generic vehicles, nothing unique and entertaining.
-No hand-to-hand combat system beyond "press a button to take a guy down before he alerts the others".
-Stealth is very shallow (see the point above), even the hacking doesn't save it.
-Terrible, very very generic gunplay (even the "bullet-time" doesn't save it) with a mundane collection of weapons.
-There is a stupid and completely unnecessary "reputation system", which ruins all encounters with the police by making the player "hated by the public"/diminishing your reputation. In short, you can't even go into a killing spree.
-Terrible ragdoll/pedestrian physics. Yet again, GTA IV kicks ass in this department.

-From what I have heard, the game runs terribly on much better rigs than mine (which is very surprising but unacceptable nonetheless).


VERDICT: Get GTA IV and EFLC bundle and be done with it. Much, much, muuch better story, gameplay, driving physics, gunplay, not to mention tons and tons of humour, a big city with far more "life" to it, plus the huge potential modding gives it (want to become Iron Man? No problem! Want to have telekinesis? No problem! Want to take a dump in the street and then have a smoke after executing a prostitute? No problem!)

Despite what people say about this one not being up to par with the Rocksteady-developed installments, I personally consider Arkham Origins to be if not quite what I expected, then a pretty damn good game nonetheless. The combat is flawless, the city if full of details (even though some of the "love" is absent), the plot and (quite surprisingly) the voice acting is absolutely superb. Took me a while to realize that wasn't Mark Hamill voicing the Joker.
Definitely recommend this game to any Batman fan, and needless to say to every Arkham series fan.