Recent reviews by Heron

I really like this, I consider it a little gem of a game.

I grabbed it in a sale so it wasn't expensive, and I'll be honest it feels a tad unpolished so not sure it's an A-List price game, but honestly it's fun.

My only criticism of it is the playback - I think it's a wasted opportunity. The angle is very poor on a lot of the playback so you only see Wick shooting at people off-camera and it could have been done better to actually make it smoother and more like a mini-Wick movie.

Other than that, I love it - good music, easy to play, great replay value. Recommended.

This review assumes you're familiar with and play and enjoy the Sniper Elite series as a whole, or it won't make a huge amount of sense.

First off, what are you getting for your bucks? TLDR: You're getting a full-priced expansion for Sniper Elite 5.

Is that a bad thing? Yes and no. If I'm paying full price for a game, then I don't expect it to be littered with bugs and be a step backward from the previous release, which this does feel like. You're getting a handful of missions which range in size and scope from a quick hour through to a huge, daunting scale. Not much different from SE5. Some of the maps are a lot darker - taking place often at night - but nowhere near the complexity and incredible design of Sniper Elite 4 (which I take to be the pinnacle of the series). I found more than a few times my feet got stuck on doors and floors, especially at the top of stairs.

There's new ammo types in explosive and other assorted slightly less interesting variants, some new trooper types and turrets. Hawker though is a great addition to the franchise; he looks like Danny Dyer, talks like Jason Statham and shoots like Karl Fairburn. Great combo and a good addition.

If you liked SE5 then you'll like this, although it really does need polish. There's the odd acknowledged bug - the poison in one mission where you just can't get the horrid nazi to drink - and the aforementioned glitching on stairs. The roughest level by far, however, is in the return of the "kill Hitler" mission. Not only did I have to save and reload several times to be able to interact with the various methods by which you can kill him (no spoilers here but they've really gone to town and put loads in) but I couldn't get Hitler to move at all so had to settle for a bullet in the plums. At one point I fell through the map. Several times I got stuck on stairs. I honestly and frankly expect better.

Having put all of this out there, having said all that, would I recommend it? If you're a fan of the series then yes, absolutely, it's a no-brainer. It builds on the other games and adds extra missions as though it were DLC to SE5. But honestly I really miss the map design and story of SE4 - the architecture of those maps was just sublime.

If this were speed dating then I'd be happy to date SE5 and SER but honestly I'd be thinking about SE4 while doing it.

So I'm writing this brief review in the assumption you're a tabletop gamer or a fan of the BG series. If you tick either of these boxes you'll love this game. I have very few issues with it, and to summarise, really briefly:

Frankly it's insane that there's no option to have "readied actions" as you do in other RPGs (Solasta for one). That it's missing is a glaring error in my book.
It suffers from the same as many other CRPGs in that the mid-game is very slow and methodical and almost requires game-guides to progress - without giving too much away I'm talking about dungeons revolving around puzzles, really.

On the whole I love it, it's really deep, there's clearly lots of love in this and it will please fans of the above genres. It's a positive review, put it that way :)

This game sits firmly in my top ten. I keep coming back to it, time after time, to restart and explore and start over, to try new things and to see what I can discover that I missed previously. And that's not even including all the random events you stumble upon and never find again. It's just a work of art.

Forget all the hype about the bugs at launch. This game has been lovingly updated and crafted to form a must-have for any game collector, let alone for any avid FPS gamer. I love it.

Bear with me, but this will be a weird one, because of just how insanely popular this game is. And full disclosure, I never ever touched the PvP competitive side, because I'm just not into it.

For me, primarily a single-player/co-op gamer, this game is a real let down compared to the others in the franchise.

Starting with the menus, I found them confusing and cluttered and initially finding what I wanted, the single-player campaign, was a right pain. Same for co-op, and why on earth would you not bring across the same modes as its predecessor and make those menus as easy to navigate?

An example is, in the previous CODMW, once the game is loaded, you pick CO-OP and there you go, you're in co-op mode. Same for campaign/single-player.

In this game, you have to scroll down until you find single-player, and then when you click on it the game asks you if you're really sure you want to reload it in order to play single-player, almost as if it's a dirty secret. "Are you really sure you want to not kill other players and get ganked by kids with ninja reflexes? You sure want to play on your own like Billy No Mates?".

Again, similar for co-op, it takes some time to navigate the plethora of multiplayer PvP options and find the co-op stuff.

I know I'll be shouted down and disagreed with and I'm okay with that. But if you're honest and compare the two games, this and it's predecessor, and we're talking about the menu navigation and easiness of use, you must admit this one loses hands down.

Turning my attention to the single-player campaign, it really doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor. The story is good, don't get me wrong, but the toughness is just bonkers. There's a segment where you're driving a vehicle along a road and dodging enemy vehicles, mines and shooting while you're doing it and initially this was pretty cool, until - and I accept it's just me - it became near enough impossible without restarting the level due to my automatic save leaving me with a smouldering time-bomb of a car.

Honestly, if you're like me and agree with how good CODMW was and you're thinking about getting this and it's primarily for the single-player and co-op, wait and see what CODMW3 brings and skip this one.

This game has become the new "fishing" game. I can quite happily sit and chip away at rocks for hours, just idling the time. Buy it. Don't buy it. It doesn't matter to me, I'm enjoying it though.

For a TLDR summary, this is easily the best single game I have played this year. It's immense fun, great replayability, and fills both the "just one more go, I'm hooked" and "I'll just play five minutes" slots.

It's fun, cheap, complex, easy, got a shed load of unlocks and a good little campaign. This has me hooked like no big budget game I can remember for a long time.

And no, these guys aren't paying me to say this. Just get it, play it for as long as you want, and then either knuckle down and grind the campaign or walk away but come back another day.

Did I mention it was fun?

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Not going to lie, still playing this, still loving it...

Yeah... This is an okay game, pretty mindless fun, lots of carnage. Not 100% sure the "Killstreak!" and "Carnage!" fit in with the 40K universe, and the controls can be a little clunky, but it's not bad. Pick it up in a sale and give it a go.

Not gonna lie, this is a real stress-relief game for me, and about as fun as it gets. Just stop once it becomes a repetitive grind, which it will at some point. But yeah it's pretty good. Go buy it.

This has to be one of the best overall RPGs I've ever had the good fortune to play. It's a time sink, I'll warn you, but it's just so deep. It's got great combat that never gets tiresome, actually a very good script and character acting, good branching paths and options for all of your characters, enjoyable plots, humour and story. I can't think of any real faults at the moment, so if you're into your RPGs and like to spend hours and hours exploring and ticking off the whole lot for completion, this is your baby.