Recenzii recente de Snoob

The Escapists 2 is pretty good, all things considered. It definitely improves upon a lot of the core concepts introduced in the first game: There are a lot of prisons to try and break out of in a wider variety of ways, and the addition of both time-limited, mobile “transport prisons” and a unique but optional way or two to get out of every prison (such as posing as a TV crew member) makes it feel better than the original, where I just tried to cut my way through fences or dig through walls time after time. The ability to play with up to 3 other people also can’t be discounted, even if it cheapens the experience a little with some rather easy-to-accomplish co-op escape routes.

In case you’re not familiar, in The Escapists, you’re a prisoner seeking to get out of their sentence a little earlier than anticipated. By managing stats, items, crafting, and following “the routine” until you see an opening to do otherwise, you slowly (at least, at first) plan your escape by doing things such as figuring out where to get the key-cards you need or how to turn off the power. Your goal is to get out as fast and clean as possible, with the ideal performance usually being within a few days without drawing any attention.

This game is not without its flaws, however. It feels like a lot of minor bugs overlap to diminish the experience bit by bit, the netcode for online play is less than stellar, and after you’ve slipped out of each prison a few times, there’s not much reason to go back to them. It’s been patched several times since release to fix a few of the more glaring issues, but trying to revisit it with some other people still felt like it was more of a chore than it should have been. I recommend it, but with the catch that your enjoyment may vary wildly based on your tastes, and somewhat on your hardware.

A game about economics and posturing where you and your "friends" are engaged in corporate warfare. Using a mixture of honest business acumen to build supply chains and underhanded tactics to prevent your rivals from doing the same, you fight for the right to create a resource monopoly on foreign worlds. Matches rarely last longer than about 20 minutes with relatively-even competitors, and a large part of gameplay is keeping your secrets to yourself. This typically results in tense stand-offs punctuated by thirty or so seconds of the closest thing the business world has to "action", seeing aggressive buyouts and crucial usage of the black market to suddenly swing things around.

If you like strategy but hate managing armies, definitely give this a shot, because it's focused more on "the big picture" and less on how fast you can click (for the most part).

Tricky Towers is a puzzle game about dealing with loss. At its core, things are simple enough: Stack the blocks to fulfill a specific objective. Making this more complicated is that unlike in Tetris, the blocks don't remain rigidly in place and instead have physics applied to them. This is where the "loss" part comes in, as entire swathes of your tower can suddenly fall over into the harsh, unforgiving abyss, causing laughs and fury alike when a sure victory doesn't look quite so sure any more. There is a modest single-player offering, but I don't think you'll be getting your money's worth out of this unless you have some friends to play it with; If you do, it can be a good time-waster as everybody tries to screw one another with power-ups or misleading "advice".

Leaping around corners, blasting goons in the face with guns in either hand while Max's trademark dry sarcasm narrates events, and downing more painkillers than an entire hospital wing... Max Payne 3 is excellent fun.

What is Max Payne 3?
The (currently) final installment of an iconic Rockstar series, the titular Max Payne is a cop-turned-bodyguard with very little to lose, stumbling through life in Sao Paulo on a mix of alcohol and prescription painkillers. But trouble has a way of finding Max, and before too long, he has to do what he does best: Kill everyone in his way.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=280692159
How does it look/play?
Situated between GTA IV and GTA V, Max Payne 3's implementation of RAGE is starting to show some age. Despite this, it still holds up graphically (ignoring a lack of things like ambient occlusion or DX12 tesselation), with glass shattering realistically, explosions that feel as powerful as they are frightening, and environments that will often leave you looking at their set pieces after the fight's concluded.

The mechanics are very tight, a good compromise between more modern offerings and classic Payne. Max has a health bar and needs to take painkillers to empty the damage he's taken. New to this installment is Last Man Standing; If Max takes fatal damage but has pills left, he will begin falling to the ground but offer the player one final chance to strike back at their killer, and successfully eliminating them will cause him to merely fall on his back instead of dying as he pops a bottle on the way down. Likewise, the player can carry two one-handed weapon in Max's holsters alongside one "long rifle" or shotgun, but keeping it on his person removes the ability to use both sidearms simultaneously until it's dropped.

All of this combined makes for a very entertaining experience wherein you will spend a little time behind cover sizing up the situation, then hurl yourself into the action with a mix of Bullet Time and Shootdodge (both classic mechanics) to take on impossible odds and win. It's a feeling unlike many other third person shooters, and helps highlight a campaign that lets Max's characteristic, charmingly abrasive personality shine through without overstaying its welcome.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=280692376
How is the multiplayer/co-op?
They're both practically dead on the PC. None of the DLC applies to singleplayer, so if you're looking to save a buck or two in a sale, they're easily missable. The multiplayer had some cool concepts (like how it implemented Bullet Time, or looting corpses for semi-random upgrades), but good luck finding a match of it nowadays; It was almost dead when I tried to play it over 2 years ago.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=736951406
Final Thoughts
This is a game you may want to replay once or twice to collect everything, or if you absolutely love the style of storytelling (something of how Noir films would be in the modern day). I've personally revisited it for at least 3 unique playthroughs, and there's always something about the gameplay that keeps me coming back for more sooner or later.

Let's get this out of the way. I think Dawn of War 3 is a servicable enough game. At the same time, it's not a good Dawn of War game.

What is Dawn of War 3?
Venturing back into the grim dark future of Warhammer 40k, players command one of three iconic armies vying for supremacy over one another. Featuring an 18-mission-long campaign and a handful of multiplayer maps (more on this later), Relic Entertainment attempts to please everybody...
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914207191
How does it look/play?
Servicable is the word I would use in both regards. Veterans of the Dawn of War series knee-jerked about the shift from "gritty, realistic" models featured in 2 to these closer-to-tabletop depictions, and while you can't argue that the new designs aren't more readable, it does suck a bit of the "soul" out of things.

From the RTS player's point of view, most of the common features are there, with the notable exception of remappable hotkeys. It's when we get into the thick of things that DoW3 departs from previous installments: Your units are more expendable, little more than meat for the grinder in your relentless onslaught towards victory with your chosen Elite Units. This is an especially jarring change as somebody who primarily plays Space Marines in the series.

The campaign has you jumping between the three races to tell a single story, but oftentimes I found myself dreading the Eldar missions because of my lack of interest in them; It is also by far the shortest campaign of any base DoW game, clocking in at about 8 hours for me with one or two mission failures. Instead of the first parts of the game being on rails and opening up later, I felt that many missions were spent trying to introduce you to new mechanics, and only the last two or three truly let you experience something interesting.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=915559742
Why didn't you mention the multiplayer?
At first, I defended Relic's strange decision to only have a small assortment of maps to play it with. "There will be plenty of workshop maps," I claimed. A few months down the road, I have yet to see a single good one. The game also did not ship with Relic's now-classic Victory Point mode, nor did it come with Annihilation (though it was added in a recent patch); Instead, we get Power Core, a mode you would be forgiven for mistaking for something out of a MOBA.

Ignoring that criticism, Power Core has a few obvious flaws. Namely, since taking objectives grants Elite Points and other resources, the team which is already winning tends to be winning even harder due to superior map control on top of these additional rewards. The multiplayer was also plagued with bad balancing decisions (namely, Tactical Marines were so awful for at least a month that many marine players didn't build them, and the community still complained that Space Marines were OP because of another unit).

Relic were, by their own declaration, trying to make an E-Sport, and yet made only a smattering of maps, developed weak AI presence that fluctuates between cheating-level reflexes (the AI will always use super-weapons with flawless accuracy) and downright awful (it still doesn't know not to clump its units up to avoid the reverse happening to it) that failed to make the "skirmish babies" like myself happy, and threw the campaign under the bus in search of a crowd that abandoned the game after it didn't launch with leaderboards or more than a few arenas. "But at least we teased the Necrons at the end of the campaign," they said to themselves.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=915834850
Final Thoughts
I wanted to like this game. I love Warhammer in all its forms. When it came out, I was insistent that people were wrong, but time and reflection suggest that I was the one who ended up being incorrect. It isn't the worst RTS you will ever play, but I am not convinced that it was worth launch price with launch content.

Let's get this out of the way right now: EDF 4.1 is good fun, both by yourself and with a group of people, friends or otherwise. Definitely one of the best values all year. Now that that's been said, let's move on to the actual review.

What is EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair?
A title that's way too long, that's what. We're going to refer to it as "EDF" or "EDF 4.1" here, if that's okay. Anyway, EDF pits you (and up to 3 associates) against a seemingly endless tide of giant insects, alien robots, and giant insects made by alien robots. Choosing between 4 roles that each have a massive amount of gear to select from, the goal is simple: Eliminate everything that isn't human. That's often easier said than done, however...
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=742736697
How does it look/play?
Graphically speaking, EDF 4.1 makes no attempt to hide the limitations of the console it originated on, and it also didn't look all that impressive even for a PS3 title. The biggest draw of getting this game on a PC (aside from the playerbase being slightly less dead) is that it runs at 60 FPS with some drops based on hardware rather than 30 FPS approaching 10 during action. Don't get me wrong: Everything looks adequate, but EDF won't blow you away with stunning graphics or impressive post-processing effects.

Where it should blow you away is in the gameplay. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, from the danger-close Air Raider to the Starship-Troopers-esque Ranger, but all four are insanely entertaining to play, forcing you to adapt to how missions are approached based on your weapons and allies. It's not without some control issues (good luck figuring out how the Air Raider handles, or doesn't, for some vehicles, especially Depth Crawlers and helicopters), but for the most part things feel tight and polished, complete with easily-inferred mechanics like "shout HUP and jump right before you throw a grenade or lob a mortar so it goes farther".

Whether it's online or splitscreen, EDF 4.1 is a ton of fun with others, a perfect mix of "things are going okay" and "we're all going to die" that forges bonds tighter than steel after several missions, especially when you're tackling them on higher difficulties and need to work out the optimal compositions for your group. I will warn you right now, though: Don't try to "main" a single archetype if you play with friends, or whoever draws the Air Raider is going to complain almost every time an underground level has to be played. He can certainly still fight alongside you through them, but it's (in my opinion) not very fun and mostly relegates him to managing insanely long cooldowns rather than blowing up massive hordes.

The game has a massive grinding curve, however, and this is something I can't sugar-coat. Level and difficulty play the biggest part in dictating which random weapon drops you'll see from enemies, and while the majority of online play will be locked to "appropriately leveled" weapons and armor levels (based on what the game dictates is appropriate), all offline play is "anything goes" in terms of what you can bring to the table. If you'd like to challenge yourself, you can limit your armor manually, or bring lower-leveled weapons, but for the most part there's no reason to when you could just raise the difficulty to compensate. No matter what you do, however, be prepared to suffer somewhat until you get useful weapons for some categories; The Fencer's guided missiles come to mind, with most of the early ones either doing mediocre damage or not locking on fast enough.

EDF 4.1 also lets you pilot giant mecha, a point which I would be remiss to not make clear at almost every opportunity.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=733162839
How is the DLC?
First thing about the DLC: Ignore anything that isn't a mission pack right off the bat, because they're weapons that are granted to you instantly, usually losing their effectiveness by about mission 20. If you want to deploy the inflatable anime girls for a laugh, be my guest, but steer clear otherwise.

Mission Pack 1 includes 26 new missions, and while it touts them as "some of the most intense the EDF has ever faced", I'm not sure about that myself. Some of them include approximately 4 million insects for you to blow up or be blown up by (exaggerated somewhat for the sake of hyperbole, obviously) and include a few new "species" of giant insect. If you like the difficulty curve of the base game and want more to play with friends, this one's for you.

Mission Pack 2 includes 23 additional missions, many of which are legitimately some of the hardest and most herculean efforts I have ever attempted to beat. Want to fight literally every boss monster in the game at once? Battle in an underground arena where new nests pop up on scripted timers until you're overwhelmed or kill them all? Take on 5 mega-nests at once? This one's for you, you absolute sadist. It could ruin friendships, kill your dog, or burn your house down. You have been warned.

A little warning ahead of time: If you want to play the Mission Packs with people, you ALL need to own them. That's a little unusal for a co-op game, so keep it in mind before planning around playing them.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729422074
Final Thoughts
The first time I remember seeing EDF 4.1 was on YouTube, way back when it was a console exclusive. My exact thoughts were something like "that looks neat, but it doesn't run very well". Years later, it's finally here. I've played through the base game 3 different times and am still somewhat interested in more. It's pure video game in every sense of the word, with a dorky story tacked on that will always give you something new to laugh about.

So what're you waiting for? Barbeque those beetles!

As usual with my longer reviews, here's a tl;dr in case you don't want to read everything: DOOM is great, the multiplayer is awful, the DLC is worse, but it's one of my favorite games of the year.

What is DOOM?
Surely you know the "broad strokes" outline of the Doom series by now: You're somewhere on Mars, demons attack, and you're the only thing standing between them and nebulous goals that are never 100% explained. This iteration tries to shake things up slightly by making you out to be an ancient, demon-killing force of nature that makes lesser foes cower in terror. You shoot, punch, and chainsaw your way through a set of facilities on Mars (and, to a lesser extent, the planes of Hell) in an attempt to stop a demonic invasion. None of this is probably news to you.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=711328398
How does it look/play?
Amazing. From a technical standpoint, DOOM pushes the boundaries of OpenGL in ways I didn't even know were possible, delivering intense visuals that still manages to run at a solid 60 FPS with everything turned all the way up. Enemies get blown apart, volumetric smoke clouds your vision in some areas, and each environment has an amount of minor details that make the levels feel lived-in (or in the case of Hell, suffered-in) rather than just a means to get to more gameplay. I can't speak for the Vulkan support personally, but from what I've heard, it's just as solid.

Moving on to the important part of the question, however, the answer remains the same. "Doomguy" handles quickly and responsively, which is great because on higher difficulties you can't slow down to try and line up your shots or you'll probably end up dying in short order. Every one of his 8 or so weapons are useful and can be upgraded to serve one of two secondary functions (such as an assault rifle that can also shoot small explosive missiles, a minigun that can unfold to have three times as many barrels at the cost of movement, and a rocket launcher that locks on to foes), either of which can be swapped between in the middle of combat to gain the maximum amount of effectiveness out of your arsenal. Enemy variety is slightly lacking, but is diverse enough that once the game really starts to ramp up, there is more than enough challenge being thrown your way on the higher difficulties.

Just like in the classic Doom titles, every map is also filled with secrets, from your mundane "it's a campaign made after 2005" collectibles to useful items like early access to weapons, ammo caches, and upgrades of all flavors. Some of these are rather esoteric, involving things you might never think to do; Others are as easy as "take a left right here, we didn't expect you to notice this obvious door". In most maps, the best-kept secret is the "hidden level", a bit of a Doom 1 or 2 map that you can find to unlock the full version of it to play from the main menu. It would also not be a Doom game without easter eggs, and references to Commander Keen, the Chicken Puncher game from Doom 3, and even Bejeweled of all things can be found if one knows where to look.

On a final note, because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else but I feel it needs to be said, the soundtrack is great. Mick Gordon's mix of moody bass, powerful six-string guitar, and the occasional demonic chorus will help get the blood flowing when things really kick off.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=710669232
How is the multiplayer/DLC?
If there is a flaw in DOOM's metaphorical armor, it would be these two topics. Even back in the beta, many people slammed the game for having a rather imbalanced multiplayer setup, a strange cross between an arena shooter with the trappings of modern ones (perks and loadouts come to mind). Things did not get that much better when the game actually came out, and the only reason I kept playing it after three rounds was to finish up my achievements for the base game.

So what does iD Software decide to do after the public's reaction? Did you say "make more multiplayer content that splits up the already dwindling population"? It's like you read their minds! Rather than creating quality single-player maps, the developers decided to say "SnapMap is all the content you need", throwing those followers to the wind in favor of trying to sell a season pass that only contains content you either won't get to use because nobody else owns it, or doesn't actually contain anything you want. (As of July 20th, 2017, the Season Pass content has apparently been made free for everybody, but my other complaints about the multiplayer remain.) It's a rather big stain on what would otherwise be a nearly-flawless experience.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=710862700
Final thoughts
When I grabbed DOOM in this year's summer sale, I wasn't expecting much. I had run through the first few episodes of the first game, and played Doom 3 until I realized it was mostly a jump-scare delivery mechanism with some minor shooting, so when a product with a Bethesda label actually managed to be a good reboot, it blew me away. You can tell that these guys really loved the series and knew what made it great. It's just a shame they tried to push multiplayer to the expense of other content post-launch.

Now let's just hope the Prey reboot is going to be worth Prey 2 getting cancelled.

If you want a tl;dr before I start ranting on, here's a quick summary: This is the best Warhammer game I've ever played. With that out of the way, let's break things down a bit more thoroughly.

What is Total War: WARHAMMER?
Well, the trivial answer would be that it's a Total War game focused on the Warhammer franchise. If we answer a little more seriously, it is a mix of turn-based strategy taking place on a campaign map and battles that unfold using real-time tactics as you lead your armies to victory (or defeat). Obviously, you can auto-resolve battles or jump right into them without being attached to a campaign, but for many people, the overall experience is somewhat iconic. Making this title different from previous Total War entries is the fact that it's based in a fantasy universe involving magic, flying units, larger-than-life heroes ("MY NAME IS KARL FRANZ!"), and monstrous creatures.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=696865164
How does it compare to previous Total War games?
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a slight bias towards this game, as it's the first one I've sunk any real time into. Overall, what you get is a rather ambitious package: Unlike Shogun 2 or, to a lesser extent, Rome 2, every race in Warhammer has its own unique style both on the campaign map and in battles. For instance, the Dwarfs are slow and armored, relying on their powerful crossbows and siege engines to make enemies suffer for every slight against them; Their main enemies, Orcs and Goblins (collectively known as Greenskins), must balance somewhat wavering morale with overwhelming numbers, to the point of being able to summon additional armies if they keep fighting long enough. However, the Dwarfs' lack of cavalry makes for some rather important match-up choices. These are but 2 of the (soon to be) 8 races included in the game, each of which has a radically different army and campaign style.

This ambition is not without its flaws. Siege battles have been simplified more than ever, which is either good or bad (personally, I wish there was still a middle ground between unwalled settlements, which are now just field battles, and walled sieges). Mechanics like settlement growth and trade have been simplified somewhat. By default, battles tend to be resolved quickly due to willingness to rout and some factions having easier access to Terror, with my longest and most decisive engagement taking approximately 30 minutes. Again, this could be viewed as a positive based on your opinions.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=788923102
"That's a lot of expensive DLC. Why?"
Let me be the first to say that I'm not entirely happy with how the DLC is handled. People will tell you that it's cheaper than actually playing Warhammer Fantasy tabletop. That's true, but WHFB is also technically a dead IP at this point, which doesn't help matters. Some of the DLC is kind of mediocre, and while charging for blood is a Total War staple, still doesn't feel very right, and on top of that it looks a bit silly with just how voluminious it ends up being. Two things prevent me from writing this game off because of the DLC content (three if you count that I'm a sucker for pretty much anything Warhammer, but that's not really part of an impartial review).

The first is that they release free content with every paid DLC. Even the obligatory "blood pack" came with the Vampires getting Blood Knights, which was thematically appropriate. It's not always lots of free content, admittedly, but Creative Assembly have shown that they know it would be absurd to charge for every little thing, and are (as of the time of this writing) upholding their usual "No DLC for DLC" policy, preventing things from getting even more costly than they are currently.

The second is that you don't have to pay for the content if you don't want to use it. On the surface, this sounds like an obvious thing for all DLC. "Why would you pay for something you don't use?" That's exactly the point. Don't care for the Beastmen? They will still show up in your campaigns, you just can't play as them. Multiplayer opponents can still use them against you. The free aspects of that particular DLC will still apply. My biggest gripe about this is that without buying the DLCs that add Regiments of Renown (on top of other things), you can't use them, but the AI can, which leads to some "I created an army out of nowhere" situations sometimes. Thankfully, it's rather rare to see that.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have bought everything for this game (except the Chaos Warriors, which were free for pre-ordering, and I got a rather decent discount on that). I've played several campaigns through to the end, the mini-campaign for the Beastmen one and a half times, and at least 3 solid hours of custom battles. I'm still only about halfway through finishing the campaign as the current races, and two more are coming already, one of which is entirely free because it half-exists in the game right now. With that being said, you should probably wait for discounts on most of it. Even something as small as 20% is going to save you a TON of money in the long run, because they're planning two more "expansion" games and a mix of other DLC that will raise the number of races to at least 15. Additionally, if you wait, you can get a vague idea of whether or not you want certain content, either by seeing the AI use it in your games, or by watching videos and other media.
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=801903288
Final Thoughts
Total War: WARHAMMER is an overall amazing experience. I have caught myself muttering things like "Archaon dies this day!", "That's a grudgin'!", and "I am the rightful Emperor!", and that's not even getting into my horrible Orc impersonations. I'm probably going to get right back into it after I finish writing this rather lenghty review. It has a few shortcomings, but I have been a fan of all things Warhammer since back in 6th edition Fantasy, and this is right up there with Retribution and Dark Crusade as a strong contender for "Best Warhammer Game Ever" while it's not even complete yet.

It's certainly more Fantasy than you're going to get out of Games Workshop after Age of Sigmar, at least.

WIIIIPEOUT! Lethal League is a somewhat simplistic fighting game of the same nature as DiveKick, where you have to own the ball to own the court. Don't let this fool you, however: Each of the 6 characters has their own unique jumping style, angle of attack, and powerful special move to unleash at just the right moment. For instance, Latch can grab the ball in his mouth and fire it back out at another angle; Raptor slams it twice in quick succession; Candyman (who just wants to watch the world burn) lets loose a menacing jawbreaker that goes through walls, the ceiling, and even the floor to wrap around the other side of the pitch. Rounds are fast and frenetic, with the ball bouncing faster and faster with every hit, which means there's very little time to stay mad at whatever killed you last. GGPO support means you can play with people from across the globe without worrying about severe lag.

What is this game worth? Probably about $10.

A deliciously repeatable experience that's probably worth about $4-5, depending on how much you enjoy it. The DLC adds even more of your favorite characteristics (difficulty, items, and variety) if you really like it.