Recent reviews by Gerry

>announce Season Pass with 3 DLCs
>quitely change it to 2 DLCs
>Lex Imperialis announced for December 2024
>quitely change it to "well... maybe Spring?"
Really didn't care about Void Shadows delay from August 8 to September 24 since "polished roduct > rushed mess". But the way Owlcat Games handled the whole situation... feels borderline scammy.

I just really wanted to play the "whole" of Rogue Trader in December, even stopped my initial first play to wait out* (for the DLC and patches). Owlcat really fumbled this release.

*I basically never return to story/RPG games several month later, just to play a small DLC. Just hate it. First time buying a Season Pass outside of a GOTY Edition. And this shows why I normally don't do it.

So first of all, back in 2021 I bought The Citadel. Had a "major" bug, went to Doekuramoris Discord, reported it, and he fixed the bug by pushing a new build - Minor update 2.17.3. Pretty cool, nice guy.
Beyond Citadel crashed like 3 times in my ~17h, but never cost me any real time.

Beyond Citadel. More of the same, but better, I guess. Still as gory as The Citadel - even after the leddit/“public” outcry in regard to that. A bit lewder too with the illustration you can find. The story is as "crazy Japanese" as ever, good. For some story, don't forget to approach the body parts at the Hub after defeating a boss.

Lots of weapons and alternative fire modes. Durability on weapons was imo a bit unnecessary, but I guess it made me try/buy the other guns sooner. Don't forget to use the MGs flamethrower... them sweet sweet anime girl cries.

The gameplay... You either like the more tactical approach or not. But it's pretty much up to you, since you can just deactivate the new magazine system. I finished the game with mags and manual reload on, but I would deactivate it, if you want a more classic boomer shooter experience.

Normal difficulty is waaaay too easy though. I finished the game will all upgrades and 29.000 Gold + like 25 lives left (died like 3 times — you want to at least see some of the different death animations), while having (close to) max. ammo 90% of the time and full resources (don't forget to sell them).

Bosses are sadly super boring again. Something the first game already suffered from too. Every boss is basically just you strafing and shooting — you even get angelic "super weapons" for most of the bosses. No tactics or weak points needed.

Even with its shortcomings, I would still highly recommend it. It's fluid, fast, gory and just fun to play. Also, them Martyr thighs and face animations.

Edit 2, 19.12.24: Lmao, I came back after the new patch to check out on Zalissya and... Oh god, these absolute clown devs.
-> Loading a save inside Zalissya -> All Monolith inside the main building are simply dead, you go inside and get a "Ah thanks for helping blabla".
That's pretty boring though, I want to experience the actual fight... so

-> Reload a save before getting too close to Zalissya, try stuff for 3 hours, get new gear etc., go to Zalissya -> Monolith are dead, I get a "we fought them off blabla" from some NPC before the main building and the main building itself? LOCKED OFF. THE QUEST JUST GOT STUCK AGAIN. AHAHAHA. GSC Game World? More like GSC Clown World.

(If you need a fix: Do No-Clip, get the Quest from Warlock, go to Hamster and his bodyguard, pay the money, the should walk to the door and open it - no need for No-Clip anymore.
OR
Go to the Sphere, attack a Monolith, kite him all the way to the area of Zalissya, kill him -> doors should be open.)



OG Post:
I only downloaded 150GB to give a positive review. I won't even play before at least 2 or 3 major patches and me upgrading from my RTX2070S to something new. Not to mention that it's not DEI slop like Concord, DA Failguard, Dustborn etc. My 500h+ in the base games and mods are enough satisfaction.

And in regard to its current "state": This is STALKER, we have been gaslighting each other for 17 years, that we love the jank and that it is part of STALKER - while being mad and angry. Such is the Zone. Get out of here, tourist.


Edit 1, 23.11.24: I failed myself and couldn't resist the call of STALKER 2... and yeah, after nearly 40h I changed my initial meme review from Positive to Negative. Right now (Patch 1.0.3) the game is absolutely f'ed. Not "Haha, enemies fly up in the air when shot"-funny f'ed, but game broken f'ed. So much stuff is just broken... Main Quest or Subquests (even important ones, like defending a certain base - the enemies simply spawn inside a safe building, together with the Quest NPCs and don't do anything. Known broken for over 7 days now. The Solution? Don't do the Main Quest at SIRCAA... Lol, lmao even. Should you side there with the Ward, the game even hard locks right now, lmao. -> It's actually triple broken, Topkek.). As I said, in general, there is stuff broken just everywhere: Go to the Treatment Plant and help there? Main Quest gets broken (-> Install Dev Console and use XSpawnItemNearPlayerBySID Inductor -> supposedly fixed as of 1.0.3). Or when I went to Icarus: 2 Bloodsuckers spawned like 50m before the entrance... Guards came out to help, after the fight I went inside, NPCs look at me and... ALL turn hostile, shooting me. Why? Because there is a trigger with the guards at the entrance, but since they weren't at their guard position, they never triggered the dialog. etc. etc. etc. it just goes on and on and on.
Exploration is punished, since stuff that shouldn't trigger gets triggered or triggers break. And even just following the Main Questline has broken triggers. Let's not even mention how f'ed up the economy and loot is. There is just SO MUCH common loot, it's insane. 40 Medkits? 50 Bandages? 15 Vodka? Takes like 10min doing a Quest.
World balancing is totally f'ed too.
>play on Veteran (since there is no Master anymore!?)
>armor completly broken
>still tank 20 bullets because no one does damage
Lmao.
But Mutants (Bloodsucker, Poltergeist, Pseudogiant and Chimera) will absolutely f' you up, especially if you don't have an Auto-Shotgun (they are bullet sponges for 9mm, 5.56 and 5.45) and can easily 2 hit you (initial hit doing 70% damage). Here GSC actually did pretty good, I like it. GSC added special stuff (knockdown/roar/teleport/leap attacks etc.) for all of them, and even a Psydog was turned into a respectable enemy. Even regular dogs now take cover/go inside buildings, if you hide somewhere where they can't reach you.

Performance? It's UE5, so it's obviously F'ed, especially on a RTX2070 Super. But works okay most of the time, even on 1440p, everything Mid and DLSS turned to Performance/Balanced. But only if you're alone in- or outside. A town with many NPCs? Game regularly went down to 2-4 fps, lmao. Sometimes it recovered, sometimes only ALT+F4 can save you. But expect something like 30-40fps and memory leaks.

A-Life 2.0? Completely broken. 98% of the time you just run through an empty world. Stashes are a joke and don't offer anything 99% of the time.

In general a lot of stuff feels unbalanced, stamina (way too low), repair costs, loot (way to much) and the worst of it: Basically no Hobophase. It's straight to good guns (Skifs silenced pistol, Valik Lummox's AKM-74S Scoped, normal MP5... ah sorry "Viper 5" or Shahs Mate (MP5 with extended mag). No broken and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pistols or broken 2 barrel shotguns, doing those good ol' shotgun shootouts with Bandits/mutants anymore.

Anyway, I already wrote too much... yes, I AM mad, seething and very much butthurt. But only because I'm sad. I easily spend over 500h on the OG games and mods, read some of the novels and just love the series. It's great how a lot of the old characters are mentioned or still play a role (Ex-Player Characters like Strelok mentioned! Scar plotting stuff and Degtyarev having his own Corps. NPCs like Strider too etc.). Lots of story stuff gets revealed (and further confirmed). Sadly most of the time the staging isn't that good, and rarely it feels like there is pressure on you mission wise. Some scenes are really great though, tunnel, explosion, burning Snorks, DAAAAMN BOIIIII STALKER was back for a moment. But only for a moment.

I will come back after further patches, but right now, it was just not fun and 90% of the time just a walking simulator inside a dead game world. In some aspects, I'm probably too harsh on the game, but the disappointment just continues to accumulate all the time... fix the broken AI, fix A-Life 2.0, fix the abundance of healing items/ammo/high tier weapons/bugs, make the game harder etc.

Oh and hey, please add NVGs like in the old games, seriously?! No NVGs? No binoculars?! ARRRG. (I'm not even going into mod mechanics like GAMMAs crafting, weapon salvaging, repairing etc. or the gunplay and weapon modding of games like Tarkov)

Go play AMK, Gold Sphere, Anomaly, Lost Soul, Call of the Zone, Dead Air, True Stalker, OGSE, OGSR, NLC7, NS2016, GAMMA... f' it even Misery or CoC. Look them up, see if you prefer story mods, free play or base game enhancements and don't get TOO memed by some suggestions.

Free weekend my a**, after 3h I reached lvl20... meaning you reached max lvl for free and get disconnected. Lmao.

I will go back playing Grim Dawn with the Reign of Terror Mod (full reimplementation of Diablo 2 and even 1 in GD!), its incredibly good.

Is Act 4 some kinda stupid joke?

Yes, the visual style is superb. Yes, the soundtrack is wonderful... Is it worth 20€? Hm... hard to say, considering that there are too many small problems with the game — especially the level design. And at a later point, the game feels like a slog and just continues to drag on. There is no way I'm gonna replay this as the Journalist. I guess there is a good reason why Civvi doesn't want to review this.

In the end I had some fun with FMF, but after playing Cultic (even though there is only one Episode out) and currently playing Ion Fury, these games just feel much better.

Get the game on sale if you crave some good-looking boomer shooter and after already having played Doom/Cultic/Ion Fury/HROT etc.

I actually like Doom Eternal. Pirated it, loved it so much that I bought it + DLC.
But after reading about the recent reveal by Mick Gordon (you know, the legend that made the Soundtrack), about how he was treated by id Software / Marty Stratton... go read up on it.

Mick Gordons Soundtrack gave this game its extra kick and you will hate id Software for how they treated him. F 'em.

Didn't realize this doesn't have a story mode, welp... No friends own this game, nor a VR HMD, so playing with randoms would be my only choice... Played on mission solo (because no one else joined) and realized it's just one of the many zombie wave shooters. That 1 hour I played felt like a slog, and looking at the other Steam Reviews doesn't give me any motivation to play again...

I'm sure this could be fun with friends, but I honestly, I would rather just go back to Left 4 Dead.

One of the best/better new Boomer Shooters. Gives the good "Blood" vibes. Worth its money, more so when the next chapter(s) get released. Currently, there is one chapter out, it took me 6h to finish on Hard.
The game is a bit too easy though, as there are too many pickups (health & ammo). There is no need for resource management. Maybe I should have played on Extreme... well, I will try when chapter 2 comes out.

10/10 alone for the graphic style and another 10/10 for the gameplay.

In my Remake 2 review I said that Remake 2 can pretty much be considered the "Gold Standard" for remakes, does Remake 3 live up to it? Absolutely not. Graphically, yes, but everything else: No.

Remake 3 is basically a DLC to Remake 2, that costs as much as Remake 2 itself. A lot of content from the original was cut
- Graveyard
+ Graveyard Boss Battle against the Grave Digger
- Clock Tower
- City Hall
- Raccoon City Park
- Press Office
- Dead Factory

The "Branching Story" Part was also removed, it wasn't really meaningful in the original, but could have been really nice if remade AND would have added some replayability to the REALLY short Remake 3 (admittedly the original RE3 was really short too).

Nemesis was dumbed down a lot and cut from quit a few locations. Why would Capcom do this? I guess they removed the "Nemesis" Part from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for a reason. Awful.
Some story parts were also changed (like Carlos going into the RPD instead of Jill and the connected consequence).

It also doesn't feature any extra stories / game modes like Remakes 2 "4th Survivor", "Ghost Survivor" etc. or a Mercenaries Mode, instead they made RE: Resistance, lol, lmao even.

It's still an absolutely enjoyable game, but very short and a let-down compared to Remake 2.