Recent reviews by COM1

Been playing Halo since the first one on the original Xbox. Throughout the years nostalgia has covered my eyes but I believe I'm able to fairly review it now. If you go into it expecting a sci-fi adventure with iconic characters then you will enjoy these games. The combat is very simple (referring to the main trilogy in the Halo series), almost like original Quake and Doom games. You move, jump and hip fire with most guns. Unlike the other titles mentioned however your movement speed in Halo games is just too slow. While this may help players new to shooters come to grips with the controls with potentially less frustration, seasoned players will find the difficulty settings for the campaign require much different play styles than they are used to enjoying. If you play on Easy or Normal (or arguably Heroic on occasion) you can charge into battle guns blazing and usually come out on top as long as you keep moving. I feel like this style of gameplay suits halo best as most automatic weapons are highly inaccurate and are only useful at close range. Being able to close that gap quickly is what made other auto guns in games like Doom or Quake fun because no matter the range of combat you still have an opportunity to survive an attack and counter it with precise movement. Halo, especially on harder difficulties and with its large open level design in some locations, leaves you a sitting duck without the proper weaponry as you can be easily picked off by long range enemies with your slow movement speed making it nearly impossible to escape. This leads to a lot of cheap feeling deaths and overall difficulty feeling cheap. An example of this is if you've heard anyone rant about the snipers in Halo 2. This could have been fixed with a weapon wheel so you can at least carry one precision weapon at all times, but this is a review and not a wish list. The point is if you don't have nostalgia for the series, I still recommend the series ESPECIALLY as a co-op experience. It's game design is quite dated at certain points with locked rooms and waves of enemies to pad out game time, but the atmosphere and simple to follow story make it a blast to play-through with a buddy.

The multiplayer I believe suffers from the same combat problems I mentioned before, however Halo Reach and Halo 4 have more movement options. Because every player has a beefy shield that has to be knocked down I believe this heavily encourages coordinated tactics in order to succeed, having your team mates focus fire on a single target will help reduce time to kill a lot. Because I believe the combat is lackluster on its own though, the objectives modes really shine due to the overall coordination needed in order to be efficient. Capture the Flag is my personal favorite and is worth playing with a group of friends on a discord call since most random players in matchmaking do not use a mic.

Overall, a definite recommendation. You get 6 games for less than 1 modern release, each with their own multiplayer modes which is great. Each games PVP has some different mechanics so if there is one you enjoy the most you will usually find a match for it quickly.

8/10 in terms of the whole package. Not too deep, but very fun with friends.

I wasnt a fan of the first game because of its visual style to be honest. The cover art looked so cool then you get in game and your character is probably made up of 5 pixels. In this one you are playing the cover art. This and its new 3d third person view makes it much more compelling. For some reason I get a similar feeling to games like Destiny that are designed for the grind, only here perma death requires you to play a little more strategically, and the fast pace in which you get rewards makes every run feel rewarding all throughout the session. Most fun I've had with friends in a LOOOOOOOONG time, and the only Early Access game that actually feels like a full release with all the care put into its development so far.

In Short: It's just a plain ol innocent collectathon that encourages creative thinking. Not for those seeking a EPIC story or action.

In Full: Your objective is to travel to different worlds and unlock tools to help you collect Gold Bricks, which allow you to unlock more tools and more varied worlds to explore. Rinse and repeat, seems like it would get boring right? Especially when some missions can be as simple as painting a house, which can be achieved by spraying random colors in no order or style. But heres the thing, this is a game about building block toys, so the FUN comes from using these opportunities to make something really special.

DO NOT go into this game expecting a epic story like in previous lego titles. The adventure mode is simply ment to be a source of inspiration for the player. This is evident in the way it allows players to put as little or as much effort into completing tasks, as mentioned with the painting missions. For example: I played a mission where the objective was to help finish building a house. Now you could just make a box, slap a door on it and call it a day. But I spent time with it, made a nice roof, and decorated a bit. Why?

The Building in this game is fantastic. It is in my opinion more comfortable to build with a controller than with a mouse. The simple controls and large variety of brick shapes allow for very detailed designs to be made rather quickly. Speaking of overall controls, they are decent for controller, but not so intuitive for keyboard and mouse. To move the camera you have to hold the right mouse button... so when you arent holding it all you see is a cursor. This is not very useful while exploring, as even while trying to interact with the world with the cursor it would sometimes select something in the foreground, rather than what I was pointing at. I honestly didn't spend much time at all with K/M so maybe one could get use to them.

ONE HUGE PROBLEM WITH THIS GAME is the User Interface. When building, objects are not organized, so if you dont already know where a item is it might take you a while looking through foilage bricks and furniture before finding the window you want. It desparately needs either a folder system to organize everything or a search bar that can check both item name or some associated tag. I was trying to find medival looking items to make a world themed around it but it took a lot longer than I would have liked. Would be nice to search "Medieval" and have all associated items appear. But this is only really an issue in sandbox mode or end game of adventure mode when you have all or most items unlocked.

Also not a fan of the First Person mode, as you still have to attack with the default attack button (X button on xbox controllers) so unless you can play claw, don't expect to trick shot a skeleton. Vehicles have trouble traversing the lego terrain and I have gotten bigger vehicles like trucks stuck on terrain many times. I Mean STUCK, I had to delete the car and spawn another. Combat seems slightly worse than main series lego games. Hand to hand combat is a coin flip, and some weapons and enemies can spam rediculously overpowered attacks that stun and kill you in a few seconds (example, dragon mage dude that rapid fires flame balls). Combat boils down to simply outclassing your foe with a better weapon.

There also needs to be more intelligent AI for the lego people, and more customization options. I placed alot of knights for my kingdom but they had no weapons and were getting shredded by enemies, or they would walk right past an enemy, stand next to them and do nothing for a minute or two before fighting. Id like to spawn them with weapon or other held items to make them more useful. Also, auto spawners would be nice... but im getting off track.

POINT IS I love this game, but I see potential for it to be something truely never seen before. crappy combat and UI just doesnt ruin the pure joy of building a secret base in a large cave, or a futuristic palace high above the world. If you want a building game (and think Blockland was very dissapointing...) This is the game for you.

The vanilla game is boring. I was expecting more game mode options when i saw the trailer, but it turns out if you want to play a decent death match game you have to mod it. I didnt go into this knowing it was basically a Lego Gmod so maybe thats why im so dissapointed. If you like how I described it, Lego with a low poly Gmod, then go for it. But if you were expecting a cool singleplayer experience and excellent vanilla content, then i do not recommend it