Recent reviews by rEvo

What is a Kakaroto?

An RPG. One that faithfully recreates the story of Dragon Ball Z, in the most pleasant of ways, but isn't without its faults.

The Good
In-depth storytelling and cutscene direction that's actually worth a buck. Kakaroto's take on each and every saga, & some of their most iconic beats, have been, for the most past, faithfully recreated alongside a soundtrack that's been lifted straight from the show.

Visuals be no slouch either (albeit some "engine.ini" tweaking was required to tone down the crappy bloom), attention to detail is abundant throughout, and the sheer amount of love and care put onto some of the most iconic landmarks is tangible.

Speaking of maps, the game's been divided into a dozen or so explorable area's, and they've been sized just right. Not one is either too big and empty or too little and claustrophobic. Traveling from one side to the other is often a quick affair.

Character modeling is on another level though. Each boasting crazy high polys and all intricately detailed.

The more you progress through the story, train, and attain new moves & transformations, the greater, more impactful your actions will be. Some to the point of brokenness, like the maxed out versions Vegie's Big Bang Attack, Goku's Spirit Bomb. It's amusing.

There are two distinct types of "currency" (kind of), and each serves its distinct purpose.

Zeni (money). You earn it by farming for ingredients (meat, fish, spices, vegetables, fruit...), minerals, mechanical parts, even gifts (which can be used to upgrade your community boards), and all can be sold for prices of the variable type.

Z balls (of which there are 6 types in total), easy to come by, they're scattered everywhere & can be used to upgrade your skill trees.

With that said, there's one set of special balls to collect, 7 of them actually, and these are of the wish guaranteeing type. They allow you to ask for severe amounts of all of the above. Or you can wish your enemies back to life. Like Rasditz and Napa. King Cold and The Gunyu Force. ...and so on. These "what ifs" are the best kind of side mission you can get.

The Bad
Skill trees too. Unlocking more and new upgradable slots/techniques (ones specifically marked by an icon), requires the beating of training sessions. But to beat each training course, one must be at a similar level as of the required. Which wouldn't be too much to ask.

Problem is, reaching higher levels, needs story progression, and even though farming's a bit of a requirement (but not overly imposed), what comes out of it the most, is Z Balls, maybe some items, but not much else.

Generic battle encounters, other than Vilaneus Enemies (and even those), barely give any meaningful amount of XP, making all of the leveling process, feel not only a tad little bit on-rails, but never truly satisfying.

Speaking of battles. The game's severely lacking in enemy variety. Each random encounter (can usually be avoided) consists of the same 2 or 3 types of robots, a drone or two, and colour swapped Frieza soldiers. Not fun.

Combat in of itself, ain't anything to write home about... It's fluid and does the job, but is simple and button mashy, which leaves a lot to be desired given the game's colossal size.

Sub Stories, aka, side missions. They serve their purpose and earn the player decent amounts of XP. At their best, they give insight on the littlest of details, raging from early Dragon Ball to later Z, even some the most obscure facts are thrown around.

But they're just not fun, and can be divided into 2 types.

It's either, go there and fight the same random enemies over and over. Or... go there and collect some rare items. Maybe a mix of both if lucky.

It's a bore fest, really.

The Ugly
Menus, menus, and more menus! Oh man... There's a butt load of them and they never go away. The more you play, the more chapters you beat, the more menus you get introduced to!

It got odd, fast... and for each one, a pop-up tutorial or two.

Speaking of tutorials, they're everywhere, for everything you do, for everything you earn, for everything you unlock, you get a random tutorial pop-up for it, constantly breaking the flow of the game.

Making Kakaroto's all the more confusing, a lot of it overlaps after a while, making it hard to keep up.

What about battle buffs?

Oh my... You can get some characters to make you the most delightful meals, and each meal earns you exclusive buffs of variable stats and duration. But the problem stems from the fact that there's just too many, each requiring all sorts of ingredients, some more common than others.

Some cutscenes suffer from pre-render syndrome, and their resolution was capped at 1080p & rendered at the lowest possible bitrate imaginable.

Final Verdict
Kakaroto's a long, long game, that tells the story of DBZ exceptionally well, and is fully loaded with fan service, but falls short of being truly great.

Therefore earning a rEvo's rating of 6/10.

Reviewing a Stray.
What is a stray?
It's a video game, silly. One that's neither a thumbs up nor down, it stuck right in the middle.


The Good
To be this tiny is to possess the ability to turn little hubs, into some of the most massive, densely packed of maps around.

Stray manages in fact, a distinct look for each corner, overloading the screen with props, next level foliage galore that impresses. Texture detail and bump mapping techniques are no slouch either & neon like lighting effects shower the world in colour and personality.

Visuals aside, Stray's a bit of an adventure game, and verticality's the name. It relies on observation and deduction to make your way through each area, although "jumping waypoints" MUST be turned off to get the full experience. Otherwise, forget about what I just wrote above.

Solving puzzles should be required every now and then, albeit to a much lesser extent.


The Bad
Automated, failure proof jumping mechanics disappoint and bring the whole experience down a notch or two.

The game's length, little use of certain mechanics (that light gun was fun as heck), and even questionable depth, to some of them later in the story (baby's first stealth game really), take away from what could've been a much more dynamic, engaging experience.

The camera struggles to keep up at times, mostly when exploring the game's many interiors.


The Ugly
Dithering. Dithering everywhere!

Disabling Temporal Anti-Aliasing reveals the "ugly" hidden deep inside the game's rendering techniques and makes it all the more obvious.

Pushing the rendering resolution up to 200% sort of helps and rids the screen off the smugness (give TAA is disabled). But dithering never truly goes away, and doing it tanks the frame rates down to 30.


Final Veredic
Stray's a bit of an exploration kinda game that could've been a bit of a platformer, but isn't due to automation, and is lacking in depth where it really counts.

Therefore, earning a rEvo's rating of 5/10.

On the bright side, the game's a visual spectacle (for the most part), pushes respectable polycounts, plays fluidly and is, from my experience, buggless (nothing's buggless, but you get the idea).

Twenty five years after the original debuted on Sega's magnificent Saturn console; MegaPixel Studios has come forward to give us, old Sega fans, a remake of Panzer Dragoon, and one that is both a blessing, and a course.

Ranging from the gameplay to the visuals, what we've got here is a bit of a product that's not only rough around the edges, but seems to misunderstand the original vision for its artistic direction.

In its current state; the game controls pretty decently, but the thing as a whole, now lacks the visual clarity, the original once had; it is often difficult, to tell what exactly is an enemy model, projectile and just plain scenery; and as a result, I find myself looking at/playing the radar far more frequently than I ever did in the original.

Even then, spotting your targets in the midst of all chaos, isn't always a given... Nor is it avoiding enemy fire, as their shots can blend in on their surroundings.

Now I ask; could its visuals, have had something to do, with the fact that this new interaction of the original, also appears to be a whole lot more accessible than ever before?

Cuz let me tell you; you'll be breezing through the entirety of Panzer Dragoon, no sweat.

I found, too, the lack of the 3 different camera options available on the 1995 release, to be disappointing; it shouldn't have been the most difficult of tasks to implement I believe.

Visually speaking; I find the Remake to be a mixed bag of sorts; it can certainly look beautiful during the course of its length; but at times, it manages to not only missunderstand the originals intentions; but to look downright amateur.

For the latter, look no further than the very first level in the game, and not only for how mindless the positioning of certain props, such as random rocky formations, really are; ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ does the inside of the palace look terrible; but how little of the original's theme seems to have been preserved.

...and whatever happened with the fourth stage and the static glow around the dragon, must go away.

With that said,, the Remake does have its moments, and despiste some mistakes, I gotta say, that the second, third, fifth and sixth levels as well as the last episode, do look pretty decent, and each can make up for some great photographs.

Speaking of which; Remake here, presents the player with a simple, yet servisble in-game phone mode for all the screenshot affictionados, to sink their teeth onto.


Final Verdict
My thoughts on this new version of our lovely, unbelievably replayable, Panzer Dragoon; are that, it is, all in all, a fun experiece to be had, albeit, and despiste the higher framerates, not as polished as the original, dropping the fun factor a few notches; it lacks too in the art direction, and clarity of visuals, when compared to the original.

Therefore earning a rEvo's rating of 7/10.

I treasure the original WipeOut to this day, and its two sequels only got better with time; It wasn't until BallisticNG, that I finnaly got to play a worthy successor to the phenomenal trilogy of mad racers, and three of the best ever released for the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn.

This one captures not only the aesthetics, but most importantly, the control, physics, mechanics all around, and so much more.

Game's a clear labour of love by, not only a team, that still supports its creation to this day, but also, the creative community of modders that can't get enough of it!

...if, way back in the 90s, the futuristic racer was your thing; do your own a favor, go onto grab hold of this magnificent gem, dive in, explore all it has to offer and give the workshop side material a spin.

Master it all once more! You shall not regret it.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1840398665

For all the gaming simulation aficionados out there, pondering whether they should purchase the newest, most up-to-date edition of Train Simulator; Don't!

...it saddens me to say what follows, but you might as well save your hard earned greens, and better off looking elsewhere for your gaming needs; Train Simulator's an old game, powered by an old engine, and it shows; Bad.

Providing the player with anything but subpar visuals, which do not, in any way or form, justify neither the most atrocious performance imaginable, nor the longest, most absurd load times to be experienced in gaming; Upwards to 10 minutes plus...

Once in game, if lucky enough not to experience a suden crash; What it provides the player, is indeed impressive in terms of detail and scale, such however, cannot excuse what's been said above, not in this day and age...

Technology has come a long way; There are, in this moment in time, vastly superior lookers out there, and there have been for years; Games of all sorts and kinds one can imagine, providing the player not only vastly larger, but far more dynamic areas to roam their way through and interact with...

Train Simulator 2019, has been tested on more than capable hardware too; Game is, in its current state, barely playable, unstable and crashes more often than not... as such, I cannot, for the life of me, stress this enough, the product in question's but an absolute disgrace in terms of functionality! ...a train wreck of sorts messily held together, and most definitely not worth your attention..

...again, nothing but a tired product way past its prime and in clear need to be scraped entirely; All just so a new project, built from the ground up, powered by an entirely new engine, and properly coded can rise...

Duke 3D's back yet again in a new package; It's the exact same game as before, but still a magnificent one at that;

...a game built on everything that makes a lighting fast arcadey shooter good; Such as allowing the player to rely on their own skills, pushing their reaction times to the limit, projectile avoidance, and situational awareness; Sporting too, some of the most intricate, yet open to exploration, achievements in level desing for its genre; An absolute must for any fan!

...but that's not all you get, as it's packing a whole new, never before seen episode, this time around; Plus developer commentary to satisfy the gamers curiosity.

Still one of the greatest First Person Shooters around, and most definitely a game that's always fun to revisit!

Shenmue... a dare devil of a game; a mighty roar of revolution; a colossal project of such undeniable ambition by a team of visionaries, it is dificult to believe, that the final product even found itself onto store shelves, but most importantly; that it did so in such a polished, playable state.

Not many developers can tell a tale of such similarity about their very products, and maybe even less so in this day and age.

With that said, what exactly made Shenmue such a monumental mark in the gaming industry?

The Good
Individually speaking; Vast open world's weren't particularly unheard off at the time; dynamic day/night cycles had been experimented with before; side quests, branching paths, dialog options and multiple endings weren't exactly new to gamers all over the world, either.

Cinematic story telling via cutscenes was, too, just raising in popularity, not only due to the rapid advancements in 3D technology, but too, the people in charge, getting the hang of the tools they were handed.

Driving games of any kind were in an all time high, as were fighters; as for mini-games, what kinda major blockbuster didn't come packed with some, at the time, either?

What really makes Shenmue in particular, so special; is that it might have, very well been, the first one, not only to combine such a tremendous amount of features and game modes, all in one single, interactive package, but also the one to make each and every element at its disposal, seamlessly accessible in-game via its open environment; that, was unheard of!

...and despite its multitude of mechanics, everything made sence, it all worked well and did so cohesively, in a seamless manner! ...the possibilities for personal entertainment, in one single playable experience, within such a dynamic virtual living world, were now endless from a gameplay standpoint.

...unique to both Shenmue games, to this day, are the variety of interactive, individually disigned, modeled, textured and programmed NPC's, that inhabit this world; each and every single one of them, live their lives, their own way; have their own schedules, duties, personalities, friends, and homes to go to; none of them randomly generated, all individually named, all independed from each other.

One such person, is Yuji Nito; a man, that works a job at You Arcade, on Dobuita Street; an NPC that doesn't play a role in the storyline; but does provide the player with a handful of playable gems in the local arcade, to distract themselves with, such as AfterBurner, Hang-On, Outrun and Space Harrier; each fully playable from start to finish; darts and QTE machines are, too, available at our very disposal.

Gambling distractions such as arm wrestling, lucky hit, street fights and more, too, can be accessed on the fly via the open world the game provides, and last but not least; a capsule toy collection can be acquired, expanded and even sold in pawn shops throughout the entirety of both games.

Early in the game, and akin to Sonic Adventure's chao garden or maybe even Nights Into Dreams nightopians, but far, far simpler in depth here; is this fun side activitie, that allows the player to look after a tiny kitten; such can be accomplished by shopping for the right foods, feeding it daily, petting the fella, and calling for its name.

Yet another important element in Shenmue, is its unique combat mechanics, much akin to Virtua Fighter, but somewhat watered-down, adapted for an all new environment, scale, and new mechanics to be implented, such as 3D movement and massive dynamic battles against multiple foes at one given time; but still allowing the player to dodge, grab, guard, kick, punch as well as multiple combos to be input, as is the norm in fighters.

...many technique scrolls will be made available in different shops too, and each can be obtained at a price, paid with in-game currency earned by taking part time jobs or gambling; All new moves can also be learnt through NPC's as the adventure moves on; some mandatory, others optional.

Speaking of part time jobs; taking place later in the first game, the player will be required to take on two mandatory tasks, both taking place over the course of five in-game days straight, and such is required to progress the story.

The first, is a fun, lighthearted, but somewhat repetitive forklift race, that allows the player to get the hang of things, but does not shake things up in a particularly interesting way past the first day.

...as for the second mandatory task in hand, the player will be required to work as a forklift operator; as one, materials must around multiple warehouses, on a daily basis and on a timer; the later increases in difficultly each day as more of the harbor opens up to be explored on wheels!


The Bad
Driving physics and collision dettection are quite flawed to say the least; During the daily forklift race in Shenmue 1, getting stuck in geometry's quite the norm; As for the motorcycle physics, during this one off sequence, nearing the end of the first game; Well... it leaves a lot to be desired.

Although that ain't the only thing to leave such and after-taste; For one the sound quality's quite awful; There's no way around it, it was bad back then, it's worse now, all due so to the porting processes, voices sound muffled and so do sound effects and everything that comes with it.

...and don't even get me started in the voice acting; Some will tell it's part of the charm, I won't; It is downright terrible, and there were games back then that fared far better than either the English or Japanese dubs of Shenmue 1, as for Shenmue 2, its English dub's just as bad if not worse, the Japanese dub however's pretty good for the most part.

The Ugly
...there are certain specific in-game events crucial to advance the plot, that can only be triggered at a specific point in time; Unfortunately, in the original Shenmue, the option to simply skip a few hours in to the future if needed be, has not been taken into consideration; As such, the game forces the player to wait minutes on end, and make the most out of what its virtual world has to offer...

Thankfully though, the sequel does allow for an option to skip such a burden by the press of a button, while, in the bright side of things, still allowing those looking to freely explore, to wait until said point in time; Offering then, the best of both worlds.

Vinal veredict
Shenmue's an undeniable gem and in many aspects, it surpassed all odds and expectation at the time, and shaked up the entire industry all over; What the team behind its development attempted and succeeded at, is deserving of the utmost respect and admiration.

Props too, for the absurdly masterful cinematic direction in Shenmue 1 and 2!

From striking camera angles, to proper, dynamic fields of view, movement and animation... for such an old game, it holds up, holds up a whole lot better than expected; Minus the voice acting, I was genuinely impressed.

...funnily enough, and speaking of cinematography and gameplay variety...

I'd like to mention Sonic Adventure, as it did something quite similar, yet completely apart from Shenmue, just a year before!

...to a much lesser extent however, and too, to variable degrees of success.

It was of course and entirely different kind of game, but, was too attempting a mix up of different things in a single package, and was also an early one at athempting any sort of in-game cinematics.

...why mention that game though?

Well, just thought it'd be fun to point that out; As Sonic's first adventure's somewhat ridiculed by many in this day and age, undeservingly so in my point of view; You probably had to be there at the time to understand...

Bioshock Infinite's a modern game in the sense that it is a step backwards for the Shock series in almost every way possible.
It's what happens when a developer decides it's about time to simplify (or remove) certain mechanics in the pursue of success; Turing said product (in this case) into yet another stock shooter with very few ideas that might (or not) stand out.

The Good
Columbia's an absolutely beautiful virtual world from an artistic standpoint; It's unfortunate to have such a place spoiled by flashing items/corpses, and so, the developers gave us the magnificent option to turn'em off.

...the new Sky-Rails are fun and provide some much needed variety, versatility and speed to the combat; On the not so bright side, they went somewhat underused.

What doesn't go underused are the Vigors; Most of them overlap and feel a bit to similar to each other, which is quite unfortunate but they do provide moments of pure joy.

Performance wise, the game runs great and no problems nor crashes were experienced in its entirety.


The Bad
In contrast to popular belief, Bioshock Infinite plays a whole lot like the modern shooter; Gameplay mechanics have been dumbified, scripted events take the control off of your hands to often, meaningful player choice has been taken away (instead of being built upon and improved) and the combat is (still) slow if somewhat clunky.

Now, admittedly, the shooting has never been its predecessors strongest point, however and unlike Infinite, it wasn't the previews titles main focus (though Bioshock 1, specially 2 were leaning a bit more towards shooting than System Shock).
While such does NOT excuse poor combat in the earlier games, its predecessors gave the player, more often than not, the option to be creative, plan and aboard different situations their own ways; In certain instances, maybe even avoid shooting altogether.

Here however, the main focus is shooting, in an arena after arena fashion; There's barely any strategy to it and it's unfortunate how the main gameplay element it focuses on, has barely been improved.
Enemies are still robotic bullet sponges that barely react to being shoot and most weapons feel and sound about as bland as they ever did, providing nearly no satisfaction on use.

Speaking of weapons, such brings me to the awful fad that is the two weapon system.
...an annoying feature that brings absolutely no benefits what so ever, nor does it make the gameplay more tactical (many believe it does), since the game is simply not designed a in a way that let's you plan ahead...

Instead, it limits the fun you can have, forcing you to stick with certain weapons, since dropping one of your favorites, might result in it vanishing, never to be seen again.
Different types of ammo are gone too, making each weapon less interesting and varied than before...

On top of it, just like its predecessors, you have an upgrade system; An upgrade system in a game with a weapon limit, in a game that could and will make you drop a certain upgraded weapon at any time, either to deal with a situational occasion, or simply because one might ran out of ammo!
...a two weapon limit has absolutely no place in a game like this; That's bad game design.

Now, moving onto a different subject; The levels has been severly linearized and simplified, to the point it's like going through a corridor that gives you acess to a few tiny rooms here and there so one may loot for items.
While such might give the illusion of freedom, the main path is still a corridor and exploring won't lead you anywhere else; On certain ocasons, the player might stomp uppon an arena.

Just like many modern shooters, Infinite too, felt the need to become more "cinematic".
Therefore, it now incorporates intrusive rollercoaster like scripted events that have the bad habit of taking the control off of our hands; They're significant throughout the game.
...but so are are moments that get us to do a whole lot of nothing, while some one somewhere feeds you exposition.
Such events might as well have been skippable cutscenes all together, since at the very least those wouldn't bother the player on a second run.

Speaking of intrusive moments, our companion, Elizabeth, has the habit of conveniently throwing you salts, ammo and health in the middle of combat (money after a vending machine).
Now while the idea behind this might be interesting, it simply breaks the flow of the game.
Such ain't executed in a convincing manner either, as it's clear she's not looking nor looting for said items, but instead appears to regenerate them randomly.
...a better system would still keep the ability to carry a certain amount of salts, weapons, health and have them actually scattered around the levels; With that, maybe also remove the regenerating shield reminiscent of the typical cover shooter.

For my disappointment, mini-games of old are gone too.
...it's true those from the preview titles in the series were hardly a masterpiece, but instead of improving on the concept and coming up fresh new ideas, they outright chose to take the easy way out.
Hacking turrets or any kind of machinery has been reduced it to a Vigor (Possession), and if in need to open a locked door/safe, all one's got to do is simply press "key binding" for Elizabeth and wait until she's done with it.

...and since we're talking about choosing the easy way out.

It's known making a proper escort mission's a complicated thing and most developers have struggled with it for years.
Now, since it was clearly too complicated for a studio with a massive budget to program proper AI and/or design a game around this concept; Their answer to the problem is to simply remove Elizabeth from the gameplay entirely, by making her invisible to everyone but you!
She cannot be detected, hurt nor taken away by anyone at all...

Notice the pattern here?
...if something doesn't work properly, it's easier to remove or simplify the "problem" it instead of taking the time to find a way to fix it.

Ofcourse, one could play the card that our enemies were trying to do her no harm, therefore focusing on the player, but this doesn't excuse bad development decisions.

This time around only two enemies use Vigors throughout the entire game, the Fireman and Zealot Crows (they're good), the rest of them consists of boring hit-scan bullet sponges, occasionally the somewhat fun to deal with Motorized Patriot and to my disappointment the under/misuse of Handy Men/Boys of Silence...

Unlike the iconic Big Daddies from previews games, Handy Men (sounded promising) are nothing but scripted, not very interesting, stronger bullet sponges that jump all around and require little to no thought to take down.

...as for the boys of silence, they were reduced to glorified surveillance cameras, taking place in a single section near the end; There are only four of each in the entire game.


The Ugly
The new gear upgrade system, while interesting (and not particularly bad), it's a clear downgrade, not nearly as in-depth as the tonics available in its predecessors, limiting the player to a single piece of clothing per type and their play styles.

Every time the player's shot at or the shield gets to regenerate, an yellow broken glass animation plays out, while not particularly game breaking, it's annoying to look at.

(Spoilers:ON)
Songbird was probably built up to be a boss fight, or maybe a constant, dynamic threat throughout the game, at the very least on paper; Unfortunately the oversized contraption is reserved for scripted events, ending up turning to our side end.
(Spoilers:OFF)


Final veredict:
Bioshock Infinite's not the thinking man's game every one want's you to believe it is; It's in fact and to my surprise, very much a modern shooter at its core; Linear, scripted, limits the player at all costs and besides the media's brainwashing, maybe that's one of the reasons it's been praised to no end.

Therefore earning an average rEvo's rating of 4 out of 10.

Just like the route taken by many other franchises in the past decade, Ace Combat Assault Horizon is, sadly, what happens when a Publisher/Developer decides to rise the finger towards their loyal fanbase, and tries their hardest to appeal to a different, more modern mainstream crowd.

In the end and as a consequence, not only failing hard to get a piece of that pie, but losing the respect and support of those who were with them right from the beginning.


The Good
On the brightest side of things, there are twenty five different airplanes, three helicopters, and two bombers to chose from, each intricately modeled and textured, complete with beautiful, detailed cockpit views.

While the graphics menus are an absolute joke (more on that later), I haven't ran into any problems what so ever, everything works as it should, the framerate is stable, the controls are responsive and there are no visible glitches or problematic bugs typical of bad ports...


The Bad
In an effort to not only simplify the game but make it more "edgy n'cool", the developers introduced a new mechanic that goes by the name of Dog Fighting Mode (DFM for short), a mode that gets you close to the action, glues you to your enemy and takes literally up to about 90% of the control off of your hands, just so you may shoot him down with your suddenly increased aimbot like super accuracy.

As a result, DFM is nothing but an on-rails, scripted, nauseating (boy, that zoom in/out camera/field of view) joke that takes you on a quest you cannot possibly fail; It requires absolutely no skill whatsoever, providing no fun a result.

Such ain't "optional" either, since certain enemies can ONLY be taken down using said mode, and others can also glue themselves to you, forcing such mode on yourself.

...as if that wasn't bad enough, certain enemies will take you on a rather long scripted adventure (you'll notice those right away, they're bullet sponges) and can only be disposed of, once their fancy "scripted" event has come to an end.


For the first time ever in the franchise, we're given the opportunity to take control of an Helicopter (in fact, tree of them); This is indeed a breath of fresh air in the game, but unfortunately its implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

To start off, the shaky, in your face, zoomed in Third-Person camera, has got to be one of the worst I've experienced in a game, the levitating brick occupies almost three quarters of the screen and flies all over the place, making its best efforts to obstruct your view all the time;

Thankfully, there is a cockpit view, and even that has the bad habit of shaking in an exaggerated manner and zooming in every time you lock your weapons on a target.

...now, as far as Helicopter gameplay goes, it could be described almost as a modern generic Third/First-Person Shooter (only clunkyer) and in the air, which consist off gunning down waves upon waves of ground forces who oppose no threat whatsoever (as in challenge), occasionally dodging a missile or two (it's laughable), and maybe, face off another chopper one on one; Oh, and you cannot crash it.

Nothing too complicated... in fact, if you're expecting anything that requires even the slightest amount of thought, strategy and/or skill, you might want to look somewhere else...


Be aware though!

The game has the bad habit of taking the control off of your hands, constantly zooming into whatever goes boom;
Trying a little bit to hard to make people go nuts over rad explosions, I guess...


New to the series are too the Turret Sections, which consist of nothing but press right click for "awesome".

Unfortunately, there are no unique and/or interesting mechanics to the big guns themselves, they don't overheat nor do they run out of ammo, rate of fire doesn't vary from turret to turret neither does the ammunition they consume...

...and as an effect, these sections come off as simplistic, stale, repetitive, and nothing more.

It could be said they exist for the sole reason of instant gratification, and it wouldn't be too far of the truth, as challenge is kept to a bare minimum and all it resorts to, is: Everything you look at explodes and anything that hadn't exploded yet is inoffensive to your mighty immortality.


Which brings me to...

...the Health Bar of old, which is nowhere to be seen, and there is a reason for such;
Our friends at Namco, decided it'd be a good idea to borrow, amongst other things, one of the worst fads in gaming; The absolute ATROCITY that is regenerative health.

Yes, that's right, Planes/Helicopters fix them selves (you'll notice a red screen displaying Critical, Heavy and Light Damage at times);


But wait, this ain't over yet!

If that wasn't ridiculous enough, our beautiful flying machines now bounce of the ground as if they're made of rubber.

Together with "Invincibility Mode", such can be abused to no end...



...but boy, oh boy, there's more;

Amongst other fads brought to the table, is the poor implementation of either intrusive Quick Time Events (QTEs for short), that serve no purpose other than breaking the flow of the game, or QTEs that don't even have an impact on anything (yes some can be ignored completely)!

Some cutscenes are unskippable (thankfully those are very, very few and far in between), forcing you to "take control" of the camera, as in, moving the main character's head to look around, because apparently someone somewhere thought that'd be fun.


To add insult to the injury, not only is our main villain the typical evil Russian guy (because 'Murica, I guess) he's also called Markov; Doesn't this ring a bell?

Even the name is similar to an evil guy from a certain overly successful, yearly franchise that's been copied to the point of exhaustion for the past decade!

...it might seem like I'm nitpicking by now, but it's blatantly obvious who or what this game has drawn inspiration (or should I say lack thereof) from, there's even a boring, uninspired AC130 mission thrown into the mix, and a long boring one at that (actually, most missions overstay their welcome)! Who finds this fun and why?


The Ugly
While this game is properly optimized from my experience, the Graphic Settings menu is a joke, there are only four available options to "tweak", Antialiasing (can only be turned On or Off), Fullscreen, Vsync and Resolution.


On a side note, while the PC version contains all the DLC included, don't even get me started on how ridiculous and overpriced they were on the console version, which used to charge from $4, up to $6 for individual Painting schemes and Aircraft (Not sure if it still does)!

Boy have standards fallen low, uh?


Final Verdict:
Ace Combat Assault Horizon is a game that tries to hard to be the next big thing; Not only does it feel desperate, like a little kid yelling and screaming for attention, it also feels like a compilation of everything that is wrong with games, the industry nowadays and the mentality of those who Publish/Develop the games we used to know and love.

Therefore, earning an abysmal rEvo's rating of 2.5/10


I can't remember a single moment where I was enjoying myself; I felt suffocated in the middle of all of its "edgy" in your face exaggeration, mixed with boring, generic simplified gameplay mechanics...

It felt cheap, it felt empty and it felt outdated...

Outdated in the sense that the kind of game Assault Horizon is trying to be, has been copied and beaten to death multiple times in the past decade.

It's just not its unique thing anymore, and as a result you'll find "Assault Horizon's" core, in any other brown, cinematic (edgy), military (or not), linear, scripted, simplified, over budgeted, mediocre AAA (triple A) game out there...


At the very least, the game's well programmed and functional, doesn't crash nor does it stutter around...

Serious Sam 3 is everything you've come to expect from the franchise; An arcade, lightning fast, Arena Shooter that doesn't take it self to serious, but, with a twist or two for the better or worse.


The Good
Just like its predecessors, each level is quite impressive in scale, designed from the ground up with the insane arena battles the franchise is known for in mind and the third game does not disappoint in that regard;

On top of that, good old Sam still runs as fast as he did before and the ability to carry and entire arsenal of weapons at once (a total of fifteen) has NOT been taken away.

Now, while linear, there are still many secret areas to be uncovered, as well as classic pick ups, ranging from different types of Ammo, Health Packs, Armour to Keys and/or any other kind of random item necessary to progress through the game.

Pretty standard stuff, that in a way, feels kindda like a breath of fresh air in this day and age.

...now as far as progression and length goes, the game starts up quite slow for a Sam game, but not in an intrusive way like many modern titles do with their pointless scripted events, cutscenes or the like.

Instead, the very first handful of levels are quite open to exploration (though still linear to a certain extent) with some interesting enemy placement, with nothing but a few moments dedicated to the insane Arena Shooting we all know and love; It kinda feels like a "prologue" for what's yet to come, but fear not, as we progress through the campaign, the game quickly goes back to its roots, and boy is this a long game!

The Single-Player campaign alone toke me over 20 hours to complete, there are also a couple of extra game modes to increase its length like Survival, Single-Player Co-Op and *Multiplayer (Deahtmatch, Capture the Flag, etc), and let's not forget about the Mods!

Though... None of it stopped our friends at Croteam from modernizing their title a little, and trust me, I know that "modernizing" is a scary word in this day and age, not many franchises live to tell the story after receiving such treatment.

...but fear not, for the most part, the new addictions are nothing but "cosmetic" in a certain way, and I'm glad the game was not designed with the two abilities I'm about to mention in mind.

For one, we were givin' the ability to Sprint and Aim down the sights;

The first which is absolutely ridiculous in a decent way, if we take in consideration that Sam's default speed was NOT nerfed, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination; Now, such ability might come in handy when backtracking and looking for items, but can be exploited as well, since it gives you the ability to literally outrun any kind of enemy in the game.

The former however, will slow you down to a crawl and only hurt you in the long run, in other words, do NOT aim down the sights, it's useless, and boy does that make me happy.


The Bad
For one, Serious Sam 3 lacks a Map, which could come in handy at times, specially for some of those dark underground and/or indoor areas that might require the use of your flash light; Dark areas that while few and far in between, are not particularly fun nor the most appropriate place to face of a horde of enemies...

...and by speaking of enemies, this brings me to two very annoying design choices...

First one, has to do with the sheer amount of "Hit Scan" enemies the game throws at you, like the Clone Soldiers carrying Shotguns and Assault Rifles to the Hatchling Arachnoids (little Scorpions), they can be a pain, plain and simple, specially since we're talking about a game designed around projectile avoidance, though the worst offender has to be the Technopolip (Heli with tentacles) with its near perfect aim.

The second faulty design choice, has to do with the insane amounts of dust/smoke effects that have the bad habit of blocking your view all the time, it's not exactly game breaking and as far as graphics and details go, they do look nice, but it's annoying none the less...


The Ugly
To put it simple, Sam 3 is visually repetitive, consisting of Middle-Eastern desert towns, Pyramids and Ruins.

That's about it...

The game could have definitely benefited from different themes, variety is a nice thing.

...also, just like previews Sam titles, this is the kind of game that's fun to play for short amounts of time, lets say, an hour or two a day, otherwise it might become repetitive in the long run.

*Sadly, Multiplayer modes like Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, etc, are almost dead (Co-Op modes in the other hand are not).


Graphics and Optimization
To put it simple, this game has one of the most indepth graphics options menus there is, and as far as optimization goes, it's hard not to be impressed by how smooth the game runs at any given time having in consideration the scale of each map and the amount of enemies on screen....

...and graphically speaking, the game looks pretty beautiful overall; Nice shadowing, decent textures and character models (nothing that hadn't been done before and done better though), destructible environments, respectable geometry, reflective surfaces and I could go on!

I'd advise pushing Color Saturation all the way up though (or at the very least make sure to set up the Color Scheme to "Vivid"), otherwise everything will look quite dull.


Final Verdict:
Serious Sam 3 is a frenetic First-Person Shooter (you may enable a Third-Person view as well by pressing H) that could in a certain be compared to "Oldschool" games of old, but NOT exactly in the same vain as Doom or Duke Nukem 3D; Sam games are far, far more simplified in terms of level design and complexity but on steroids as far as the shooting goes.

It is a fine game with a few problems here and there, but the speed, insanity, enemy variety, constant switching between weapons (required to adapt or take down certain threats at any given time), the humor, secrets and a proper health system more than make up for it.

Therefore, earning a respectable rEvo's rating of an 8.0 out of 10!