Recent reviews by CrazyDoc_SW

Imagine a game that requires an unofficial patch, such as Bethesda's Elder Scrolls or Fallout games. Now imagine it with none of the redeeming qualities, minimal if any modability, and multiple issues related to the base game systems that can't be fixed by the unofficial patch. This is that game.

While there can be some fun in sniping bad guys from range, there are too many issues that prevent me from playing any further. Multiple controls that are hardbound to specific keys, with no option to unbind unused functions or rebind certain actions. Yet another game that doesn't understand that if I can tap a key to instantly select a weapon, I don't need to scroll through them with my mouse wheel, thank you very much.

Additionally, some of the controls are unnecessarily obtuse in some situations, adding unneeded steps to a process that do nothing but slow things down. The developers seem to think that a simple hotkey is insufficient, but considering their ineptitude at programming a customizable control system, they might have a point.

In the end, there are a multitude of other games that present similar experiences to this one, and do a much better job of being fun and uncomplicated. If you want to play what this game seems to be trying to be, play one of them instead, this one doesn't have anything to elevate it over the other choices.

I found out about this remake less than a week after reminiscing about the original with a friend. Made my day then, and made my week when it released. Still fun to start up a quick game and run around leveling a city in the Saucer.

While not exactly my usual style of game, I have enjoyed what I've played so far. Mostly.

The problem comes less from the gameplay, but from some of the decisions of the UI and interface design. While I completely understand the need for loading screens, the addition of unskippable animations and scenes is hard to forgive, considering that plenty of other games have not only skippable, but PAUSABLE cutscenes. A relatively minor gripe in the face of how good teh rest of teh game is, but it is a constant irritant that follows the entire game so far.

Finish loading into a battle? Unskippable camera pan around your fleet, since apparently you may have forgotten which ships you sent to the fight.

Won or lost a battle? Another unskippable camera pan.

Lost an auto-resolved battle and lost your main character ship, losing the campaign? Well, you can't just hit Esc and reload, you have to wait for the map battle animation to complete before you can, and then wait for the "Yooooooooou... Haaaaaaave...... Loooooooooost...." animation to play out.

Please, developers, stop doing this. This is a FUN GAME, and I like playing it, but I have to stop much sooner than I want to because of irritations like this.

Bottom line, this is a fun game and I do recommend it, but please, PLEASE, stop adding unskippable crap to games.

Similar enough to the old Escape Velocity games to cause me to reinstall them, while also being fun enough to finish the game first before doing so. The shipyard itself was a nice feature, and I spent at least an hour total trying out various designs of ship. The only downsides I could find with this game, are the inability to rotate ship parts in the shipyard, restricting placement since there are a couple modules that block placement in front or behind them, and the fact that the same button is used for hailing other ships, scanning planets, and using jump nodes, leading to scans or jumps being blocked when friendly ships all clustered around my ship to say hello. Weighed against all the positives of this game, I can heartily recommend this to people who enjoy this genre. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find where I buried my copy of EV Nova.

I've lost track of how many times I have accidentally killed myself by setting something on fire or falling into toxic sludge, and I imagine that number will only grow. The only thing that could be improved in my opinon, is the ability to re-map the controls, since I've also lost count of the number of times I've accidentally thrown a flask instead of firing my wand, or pulled out a thunderstone underwater because I can't change my swap item control. (Controls can now be changed more easily, and I no longer have any issues with them)
The introduction of mod support and content updates have kept the game interesting and fun, and I still play it a couple times a week. Absolutely worth getting as long as you don't mind dying repeatedly.

During the opening, you choose your starting stats through dialogue. It would have been nice if, during the following tutorial, you didn't need to put ALL points into speech to convince the town drunk to pay his debt, or put everything into strength to be able to know how to throw a punch. I'm not expecting Jet Li here, I just want to be able to throw a quick jab at a guy's face, not wait more than a full second after clicking the button for my character to lift his arm from where it is hanging at his side and halfheartedly flail it in the opponent's general direction.

Combined with the fact that the tutorial quest you are following has this potential fist fight between where you start off, and where you can get combat training (a quest that is not mentioned through dialogue, simply appearing in your quest log), this tutorial seems very underwhelming. This could be forgiven back in the day of games being shipped with manuals to read through, where the book described all the controls and gameplay features, but today that just doesn't work. You need to teach your players how to play the game, not punish them for not already knowing, in the game itself.

I shouldn't have needed to go online to see what that star thingy was in the middle of the screen during my first fistfight, or have to ignore the quest given to me by my character's father through dialogue, in order to follow a quest that popped into my log with nothing more than a quick pop up in the corner of the screen, that was past the location for the father's quest.

Bottom line: To reuse a phrase I have unfortunately been having to use FAR too often, I'm not about to wade through ♥♥♥♥ to find the potential diamond later on. I can't recommend this game right now, though if anyone has any advice that would actually help, I might give it a try later on.

Decided to give this game a try since I had heard it had VASTLY improved.

Apparently, this universe hates me, since after landing on my second planet, with all equipment still at level 0 and not even finished with the tutorial, it landed me in a group of hostile lifeforms that tried to eat me, and sentinels that killed me when I tried to defend myself. After dying, I was stuck. Hungry aliens still surround me, angry sentinels still preventing me from recharging my gear, and the planet itself trying to kill me so I can't run away to mine somewhere else. Yeah, not going to give this a recommendation, since I don't feel like dealing with this any more. It might be fun for other people, I might even be able to enjoy it myself if I got further, but I'm not going to put up with the annoying parts to get to any potential good parts.

Final Verdict: Start wasn't fun enough to get me to keep playing until it 'got better.' Refunded, not worth my money or the headache.

The entire Metro series is one of my all time favorites, and one I revisit fairly often. Enjoyable gameplay, immersive atmosphere, and an interesting setting. Despite any shady actions in relation to more recent titles in the series, I would still recommend the first two entries of Metro.

Great fun with friends in Online, though the occasional modder makes it a bit of a gamble between a great time and an aggravating one.

As someone who has played all the previous titles in the series, imagine my cautious optimism when I heard this game announced. Finally, another of my favorite series was gettting a modern release! Deus Ex Human Revolution had done a great job at recapturing the feel of the original, so my hopes were bolstered further.

Surely, the developer that had succeeded so well at recreating the world of Deus Ex, could do the same with Thief. All they would need to do is continue to respect the world building and gameplay elements that made the originals great, as they had done with Deus Ex... Apparently, someone forgot to let Eidos know that.

While the world itself fits with the established series, the game falls a bit short in gameplay, and further technically.

- Let ME do it damnit! - Too many QTEs. Far too often, instead of allowing the player to simply DO something, the game inserts a completely pointless button mashing segment into it. Opening windows (more later), passing through narrow spaces, knocking out guards in combat, all require too many button tapping or button holding events. Pick a pocket? Sneak up behind a guy, and HOLD a button down for a bit, to add that extra bit of challenge to grabbing it... even though sneaking up behind him and aiming at the loot without being spotted could have been challenging enough (if the AI worked right anyway). Simply put, far too often an button mashing or holding prompt unneccesarily takes the place of a simple tap or press.

- Let me DO IT damnit! - Similar to the first, the game has an OBSESSION with fancy animations. Want to oppen that window to climb through? Hold on, your character has to look carefully at the window to decide that 'Yep, that's a window!' Grab a fancy piece of loot? 'Yep, that a nice shiny!' In some places I actually welcome the system, having to reach out and grab a piece of loot from a desk, actually opening the drawers and chests, adds a level of thought and planning to every grab. 'Will that guard turn around before I get this piece of loot?' But, far too often, the extra animations are pointless and waste time, seemingly for no reason other than to show off the work the developers put into the animations themselves. Good job! Can I PLAY the game now?

- Who said that? - In game cutscenes are a double dissapointment. On a purely subjective level, I greatly miss the original storyboard style drawn cutscenes from the earlier games. Though not a huge loss on their own, the lack of effort put into the rendered cutscenes of this title make me miss them all the more. A forgivable change, if the current replacement WORKED. They don't. Out of sync audio, video and subtitles make it harder to follow what is happening than it should be. The sad state of the cutscenes makes me wonder if the original style was planned, until some idiot decided that nobody would like the old style, because 'reasons'.

- Who's there? I heard you Taffer! - Cutscenes aren't the only place the audio suffers. multiple times I noticed sound having little to no relation to distance or obstructions. There are points where the player can look through key and peep holes, yet any sound from the other side if MORE muffled after peering through, an almost clear when simple standing near the hole. Other times, a pair of characters can be talking to one another, but for some reason one sounds clear, and the other sounds as if they are buried under a pile of blankets. I have many memories of avoiding guards and knowing when the coast was clear simply by listening to their footsteps in previous Thief games. Doing so now is nearly impossible, as what I hear can no longer be trusted. More than once, I have heard a guard move away from his position, only to be a couple steps away when I turn the corner.

-Where am I going? - Lastly, but (unfortunately) not least, are the tools the player is given to navigate the world. That is, all one of them. Objective markers. The map you have access to is unlabeled, marked only by quest markers and shop locations. No indication where the level transitions are. Several places appear to be passable, but are in fact closed off, with the player needing to find an alternate route, with no indication where it is. A memorable moment to me was going along a stretch of the map trying every window since I knew that one of them was the level transition to my destination (Keep in mind, I had to OPEN each window to find the right one, and the wrong ones had to be opened TWICE. That's a lot of 'Yep, thats a window!'). The lack of any visual indicator, both on the map and in game meant that finding the level transition became purely based on memory, as it is not possible to make your own notes on the map. Combined with the lack of a compass other than the mini map, it becomes very easy to become lost in the twisted, multi leveld streets of The City.

- What the F*** was that? - More than once, I was a guard get 'stuck' on a piece of world geometry, and end up a spinning character model as the AI tried to continue the patrol. Funny the first time, not so much once I realized that spinning guard could see all around themselves, and a stealthy approach was no longer possible (re-loading the area fixed it, but still annoying). Several times guards somehow failed to notice me when caugt in the open, or spotted me from across the room in deep shadows. While not game breaking on their own, bugs like this are merely the glitchy icing on a cake of indifference.

That right there, I think, is the perfect word for this game. Indifference. The developers showed it while making the game, not caring to put the effort into creating a worthy sucecssor to the previous titles. Only cranking out just enough for an okay game, when it could have been great. In the end, I will complete the game entirely, simply because I am compelled to finish the games I start. But that word, that perfectly describes the developers attitude towards creating this game?

It describes my feelings towards playing it.