Recent reviews by Griph

Remnant 2 reminds me very much of the meme: 'Be careful of who you bully in school' - meaning that it has vastly outgrown it's lesser past.
And this is coming from someone who thoroughly loved the first game.

Style, story and all that are a matter of personal taste - but then again, everything is.
But the boss music in this is just on another level - as 'serviceable' as the music was in the first game, the second game has no shortage of tracks that give me goosebumps.

Really - if you enjoyed the first game, you'll love the second.

A charming tale about murder and revenge. Really, it is that - it's charming, shows off some nifty early features of the engine and is short enough not to overstay it's welcome. You can beat it in an hour.

Many people have pointed out it's flaws, so I'll try to limit it. If you enjoyed the old school Baldur's Gate from a purely gameplay aesthetic, and did so in recent years - then you may find something you enjoy here too.

However, that's not yet mentioning the flaws. The UI is terrible and unintuitive, you will fiddle finding certain magic options, you will be wasting turns or abilities for no reason no matter how careful you are and the UI will sometimes glitch out at random like a mouse-over popup refusing to close.

Worse yet is how much this game feels like a scam, to me, personally. It baits you with a few cool ideas, characters and dialogues. Make no mistake. This is a trap.

Voices:
The game is voice acted in the beginning. After that, it is a coin toss of EA proportions whether or not you get a voiced line of dialogue that isn't combat-babble. And I do mean it - whether a conversation is important or story-centric has no bearing on the decision of whether or not it is voiced.
The voice acting is good, but it is so rare it may as well not be there at all, and I am tired of making excuses for it.

Army Management and Army Battles:
They made a separate system, completely unrelated to your actual roleplaying gameplay-loop. While one could say it is nice that they made a dedicated army builder and grid-based strategy game... it is on a level that has been outpaced by titles that are 20 years older. Again, done with good intentions.. but the only reason people suffer it (and not turn it off) is because it yields rewards.

Battles / Encounters / Combat:
You will encounter tough fights, especially if you are not Pathfinder savvy. That is fine. However, towards the end of Act 1 this becomes so much worse. It is understandable that boss monsters would be very tanky and layered with buffs - especially when they are truly supernatural like demons. But only moments later, you start encountering random NPCs of no significance which outpace the Boss by a mile and a half. There are several random mooks who are so ridiculously buffed for no reason that you will need specific strategies and classes to even win said fights. There are people online who will defend this. Do not humor them. It is terrible design.
These fights do not yield a worthy reward. They are not optional secrets. Some of them are even unskippable and mandatory. These enemies have no narrative reason to be this powerful. Worse yet, they aren't even mechanically feasible to be this powerful. It is, quite literally, the developers putting a cheated enemy in front of you.
Don't hold your breath that this will get fixed - the past few changes to these fights have only made them more unfair (note I did not say harder. They aren't hard. They're easy if you employ broken tactics. They're just unfair)

Time Pressure:
The previous issue is made worse by this. Sometimes the game will warn you when a quest is time sensitive. However the game will NOT warn you when a TASK within a quest is time sensitive. This means that you may get a worse outcome in a mission by stopping to loot, or taking a rest. The quest is not time sensitive to fail - but it is time sensitive to change... and there is no warning for it.
This also makes fights that much tougher, especially the ones mentioned above.

Overall, this could have been a decent game - but to me, it has been a trap. I heard about cool stuff you can do and thought it was novel. Now I am stuck playing the game out of spite.

I wish I could say that you may enjoy this... but I actually just genuinely want to warn people away from this.

It's had a rough start. Sure. It still isn't pitch perfect. Also true.
However, the game constantly surprised me in a positive way - I didn't know much going in other than the little that I saw over a friend's shoulder, but it turned out to be much better than expected.

Give it a go. Honestly, it keeps getting better and better.

Here's a free tip though: If you'd like to play with friends, use the game code feature. Generate one, paste it over to your pals on discord and you should be good to go.

Have fun!

Let's make no mistake: The games themselves deserve their place in gaming history. The content is not the issue.

The issue is this port. Sadly, all of the negative reviews that talk about bugs are true, especially when it comes to connection issues.
Unless you live in NA, do not even bother. You have to be very lucky to play this online with anyone, and the luck required to run this only increases when you add the following things to your list of criteria:
- cross region play
- cross platform play
- not wanting to test out 100 fixes.

I have tested this with a number of friends thanks to the free play weekend - no matter what region, no matter what fix, it would not let us start a game. Connecting together in the lobby works just fine, but whenever we start the game, we get kicked back right to the main menu.
There's a youtube video by PCWorld 'How to fix Halo MCC multiplayer', that shows some of the fixes that I have tried. I put this here mainly in the even that anyone is lucky enough to get it to work.

But really - make sure to try it immediately if you buy it, so you can refund it in time. Or try it on a free weekend. And bring friends and a few hours to waste.

Love the games, but this 'MCC' gets no recommendation from me. Unsurprising, given that I have never really been fond of the franchise on all levels since 343 Industries was the name on the box.

Just don't.
Not because the game itself is bad and without potential, but because it is the opposite - even with it's little flaws. So why the bad review?

It is full of bugs that a still persist to this day and make the game barely playable. Check out other detailed negative reviews for a better overview of the good and the bad.

The brief: Frequent crashes, inability to interact with objects, missing voice lines, complete unpredictability of the bugs.
This game literally crashed my steam as I was writing a more detailed, and kinder, write-up.


Just really, don't. Not even at half price. Remember Human Revolution fondly or replay that. And leave it at that. Save yourself the frustration of playing something that should and would be fun, but simply has you spending as much time fixing it and replaying lost sections, as much as you are actually playing it.


It is a shame. The game is downright beautiful at times and improves on many things that DXHR did (while complicating others, admittedly).

Maybe pick it up for 10 bucks or less. Maybe then it is worth the hassle.

But let us be honest, Mankind Divided is practically Abandonware.
We never asked for this.

I thought I knew what I got, going into this.
However, even on sale, I cannot recommend this.
The brief why it's a no: combat is a stun-lock-fest, the gacha and moneysink and the limited character customization.

For details, read below.
Firstly, the character customization is not only very limited in it's variety, but also it's basic setup. You get an accessory, a shirt and pants. They aren't all compatible either.

However, my main two gripes are as follows:
The Dodge/Block mechanic. There is absolutely no animation interrupt. You cannot block mid-fight. Likewise, the dodge occupies the same button and will trigger as soon as you so much as tickle a movement key - which interrupts your block, and locks you out of blocking until the dodge animation is complete. The dodge animation also has a significant cooldown at the end of it.
Dodge and block are both useful tools and core elements of the game, but with how they are set up they more often hurt one another than actually help the player. Funny how this has been a complaint on many recent fighting games, yet this game gets away with it. As it stands, stunlocking is the name of the game - you do it to enemies, they do it to you. A lot.
In fact, that's why they give you an ability that gets you out of the stun-lock. Said ability has a cooldown.
Some may enjoy this stop-and-go, but I find it incredibly annoying.

Secondly, and this may be the bigger issue: The Gacha.
Of course I knew a bit what I was in for, but this game has it all.
Loot boxes, letting you only sell duplicate items, items exclusive to male/female characters (and no means to change your gender without deleting your previous save), every item in multiple color variation as separate items, ... and the baiting.
The baiting is strong here - they will explain very little when it comes to how mission rewards work. As a feature, you can train under 'masters'. There will fight by your side and unlock goodies for you as you gather brownie points with your current master. Or they WOULD, if there weren't a huge amount of them that you can select, but not truly rank up with.
See, SOME DLC content is half-available to you without buying it. As such, you can select the masters to train with them, but all you can do is unlock them as playable characters. If you want their outfits, their abilities, and anything else? Straight to the money store.

Between the clunky combat, limited customization, constant pop-ups, empty match-making for low level missions, the unfriendly UI and handling... yeah, I have to pass on this.
Sadly, I cannot refund it since I played it for over 2 hours, wanting desperately to enjoy it. But at least I only spent 5 € on it.

Many big budged AAA Studio titles, even my favorites, have at least one moment that will frustrate me to the point of bitterness. You know those moments. They make you want to continue the game more out of spite, than out of enjoyment. They are brief, they pass, but they are there.

Biomutant does not have that for me. I enjoyed my time with it - and still do.
Playing it gives me a pleasant sense of nostalgia, as it reminds me of a more carefree time I spent playing on my PS1 and N64.

Now, to be fair, it does have it's flaws, and it's occasional jank. It is not superbly polished in all it's details, and it isn't another brand-pushing masterpiece that sets a new milestone for it's genre.
But it is one thing. It's fun.
Actually, it's charming. If you adore world building, I cannot -not- recommend this game. It's pretty, it's atmospheric, it's idyllic, it's dramatic, quirky, funny (or rather punny). You can find explanations of the world in it's details, and you can get lost in the story you can perceive.
It's not brutally difficult, and it isn't meant to be. It is a game meant to be enjoyed, not challenged.


For more detail, read on.


Now, it has a few downfalls I want to mention. But bear in mind that, like I stated above, I simply forgot most of them for 90% of the time.
- Prop variety. Example: There's usually only one model for every type of tree, for example. However, after a while, you stop seeing it. The world is so vibrant, you will stop noticing it. They used what limited assets they have incredibly well.
- Limited set pieces. Similar to the trees, there's usually only one type of outpost for every kind of faction there is. However, you will rarely spend time here. If anything, it helps because you already know where the loot is, you tick it off and return to the actual world you want to explore.
- Crafting. Frankly, while it is fun to make your own guns, the upgrade system could have been a lot better. You're better served looking up any questions you have online, but Upgrading equipment isn't very well done. Luckily, it isn't required. You will mostly be too busy cobbling together weapons anyway, rather then upgrading them.
- The Psi powers. This is subjective, I expect. However for me, they were lackluster compared to all the other options you get in the game - yet they are paid for/unlocked with their own type of points/level-up-currency.


I feel that much of it's mixed reception comes from people expecting it to be something that it's not - or wanting it to.
I can partially see why - because it borrows elements from a lot of different, more strongly polarized, ideas. It shares tropes with Breath of the Wild, a variety of Action Adventures and Combo-Slashers like Devil May Cry, yet it simply isn't either of those.
While it may be unfair or cruel to claim this: it partially feels as if the game is getting some unfair press, simply because it has gotten popular to make a sensation out of everything, be it good or bad. A mentality like that can be infecting, and opinions can spread like a wildfire, especially today. Some people genuinely strike me as if they have forgotten how to just enjoy a game unless they are amazed both by the product itself and the popular opinion on the media.

Still - to each their own. Some people will genuinely not enjoy this game, as it isn't for everyone - and I have stated above that some expect it to be something it isn't. So, naturally they will find themselves disappointed.


At the end of the day, a game's purpose is to entertain. And at bordering 80 hours at the time I am writing this review, Biomutant has been well worth it's price tag for me.

A simple but charming rougelike, or perhaps rougelite, FPS dungeon crawler. Delver pretty much keeps what it promises: you take the role of a dungeon delver and enter a multi-leveled dungeon wiht random generated areas. It is pretty strong on the RNG, making some runs rather easy - or soul-crushingly hard from the get-go. Playing it slow pays off at the beginning... but going too slow will nip you in the rear later.

Awesome game if you enjoy powerarmor and battlefield!
Improved a lot since the first game, also they tightened up the difficulty.
Me? I love it.