Recent reviews by john_matrix

31 Hours I took to end up the game, more than twice than the first "new" Tomb raider and also Rise, but I did doing also all the DLCs (as usual I buy the GOTY when it reaches a good discount), at "one with the jungle" difficulty.

The story is long, convoluted and satisfactory, at least to me. Gameplay is quite close to Rise but with more weapons, upgrades, skills, there's quite a lot of stuff more, but in the end it's again a "more of the same" of the previous games.

Let's say once within 2-3 years it's a nice return to play a game like this, nothing wrong with it. I reccomend the game if you liked the first two; only downsides are that some platforming sections are somewhat tedious and that Lara.. well this Lara Croft rendition is.. a bit annoying imho. If you can get over the fact that she's absolutely "woman" and at the same time can be the "old" Lara Croft of the old games (aka a freaking relentless unstoppable unit), the game can be for you.

So.. if anyone still has Dirt ("1.0") in the eyes, the driving model of this isn't terribly far in simulation mode. It's strictly related.

What differs here is that in DR the stages were absolutely realistic and extremely tight, making it a lot less forgiving than in this game.

This said, "cross & delight" of this game is the dynamically generated stages. At first you feel randomness, but after 100 hours like me, man.. I've completed all the major championships (Historic, Landrush, Rallycross, Modern Rally) and after all these the game proposes you the "triple crown", aka 3 further championships, one for each rallycross, rally and landrush again. I've dropped it.
I mean, I don't want to see a further 50km of the same randomly generated stage, with the same corners, that just vary in altimetric height or scenery surrounding them, after I already that twice (both for Historical and Modern).

Rallycross AI is still lagging in certain circuits, meaning you have an easy job besting them once you get the grip of it, exactly as in Dirt 1.0. I felt that the newer circuits that were introduced, made the AI a little bit better, but on those that are the same of the first game, they still suck exactly in the same ways they sucked there.

Finally Landrush. Triple crown? Doing another 6 races with that killer IA, that somehow finds grip in ways I can't absolutely find, no matter how much I put into the setup of those things? Yeah no, thanks, I've come through once, I won't do it another time, the same as the thing I said for the randomly generated stages in rally. This is the most useless game mode, imho.

In short if you approach this game, this is less punitive than Dirt 1.0; the team thing is nice, the staff management, the garage of the cars you can buy (classifields for used or historical cars to buy) is satisfactory, the sponsors management it's ok and so on, car upgrades (that are however only reliability related rather than performance enhancing).

There's also all the stuff regarding joyride and the "gymkhana" thingies, that were obligatory to do in Dirt 3 and few liked, that can be done easily or avoided completely, they are optional and won't be necessary if you don't care about that stuff.

The above has always been played with IA on Brutal on a G920 with gearstick (when it was necessary for H pattern cars).

Adviceable? Yes if it's probably a racing game you won't play continuously. I mean you also do some others in between, AC, Rfactor, Project cars and such. If you just want to "complete" it, it will get tedious real fast.

It's also usually on sale for nothing during sales or given away for free in the humble bundle or maybe Epic in the future. So go for it, but it's not suited for hardcore simracers imho.
There's Dirt 1.0 for that or probably 2.0 (this is the next in the list). I've waited to get a GOTY of the latter for cheap, as I found the outrageous DLC policy of that game a joke. Codies must have been preparing themselves for EA buyout with that game!

So, Metro Exodus is in overall a good game, although to a certain extent, I had slightly higher expectations for it. But in the end the story is solid, the experience, gun feeling, survival are all there.

My high hopes were "Metro goes open world".. yes and no. The game is still heavily scripted and soon you realize you have to linger around some more, delaying main objectives, if you want to explore the whole level. In short if you "happen" to do certain advancements on the main quest, you often miss areas, upgrades or loot, because a "section" of the game you previously were "free to roam" in, becomes inaccessible after that checkpoint.

The really, truly open world area you find, is the Caspian desert.
There you can roam around more freely, but the game always still hints you where to explore. But that's it.

The rest of the levels can't really be defined "open world", maybe the level before Caspian can still be considered like that.. afterwards it's still "large" corridors, you reach a certain area, you won't be able to come back. This is a "moderately sad" appointment. Also the save system can't to cope with this, you are stuck with chapter saves or quicksaves that then go overwritten, so you can't always go back to reload a save and do stuff, before you get sucked into the next scripted event.

For the rest the setting, the lore, the insights, the whole package, is perfectly fine with the previous metro 2033 and Last Light. It's more than satisfactory under this point of view, it's a nice effort and the levels are good.

Under the PC gaming experience tho, I'm rather UPSET with the graphic settings. Low, Medium, High Ultra, RTX DLSS crap (often limited per card and by resolution, ok this is a stupid Nvidia limitation, but still), Tessellation off or on, AA. That's it.
The rest is either to be tweaked in a cfg file (especially to eradicate the DARN motion blur or the USELESS film grain!!! WHY ISN'T THERE A SETTING FOR THAT?!), but say you want low shadows or less volumetric particles, you can't.
It's either high or medium or whatever. This is a console port!! In the end to play at 144hz (1080p), I had to go medium tessellation off, on a R7 3700x, 32Gb 3200mhz DDR4 + GTX 1080.

I've been playing this briefly to test a R5 3600xt + RTX 2080S I built for a friend, couldn't turn on DLSS (again, why?), turned on RTX stuff and played mostly at high setting (with tessellation off) relatively decently.. but I still can't tell where RTX made a difference.. the only thing I know is that with a flashlight FPS could tank below 80, sometimes below 60 at times (from 144..). Ended up playing at High, Tessellation on without RTX crap. However sometimes I had some stutters.. with that beast of a card.. whatever.

I also dislike that this game went on Epic first, I purposely waited this to be on Steam and then got it on a sale (somehow as a revenge), with all DLC included for slightly above 20€.

DLCs:
the two colonels isn't worthy unless you pay it in a package 1-2 eur. I mean it's a nice insight on the vanilla game's finale, but it is mostly cutscenes and lasts 2 hours I think.

Sam's Story is much nicer, a really well executed DLC; a big area but yet again, in such an area, in reality the levels are still fairly constrained. Advance a little bit in the story, and you close sections behind you won't be able to go back to, if you forgot something. It almost felt as a level from the vanilla game the devs did, but that didn't fit into the story, but I liked it so far.

In the end it took me 33hrs to complete (including DLCs), playing mostly stealthy, exploring everything, some backpedaling to check if I missed anything before "advancing" and engaging stuff only when you absolutely sure to have an advantage first.. Ammo is relatively scarce and fights have to be evaluated.

Nice game after all, but due to above, I don't know if I'll have the will to replay it again more than this completion. Maybe in future.

In short if it wasn't yet in your list and you already played Metro 2033 and Last Light get it.

Better than the first one, more stuff to do (albeit challenges are.. artificial and not very fun, they feel stretched); pretty much a lot of stuff is still scripted. But it's a story, so you really can't complain about that.
I took 28hrs to do it (89% overall), but because I tried to get many upgrades and kept exploring tombs and crypts.

I guess I'll look forward for SotTR, as usual when it will get pretty much more discounted below 15€ it's still fun to go through such a game, but I still can't see myself to pay full price @ release for this kind of game. Replayability is relatively limited, there are some challenges to improve scores or do some mindless combat but overall it's still not as good as Batman Arkham games with their post game challenges/score/battles/predator stuff.

In a few words grab it if you find it heavily discounted, combat isn't bad, but even at the hardest level it's not going to be extremely challenging; get it if you want to play a nice adventure.

So.. after 22hrs I've beaten the campaign at hurt me plenty. Relatively tough but it brought me back lots of memories from the obvious: the latest Wolfesteins (that I played before Doom.. I still lack Wolfestein II TNC, but I own TOB and TNO).

But on the contrary to those, where IA was just slightly more than cannon fodder and the relatively forced stealth moments (to avoid reinforcements), this game literally throws any concept of "go to cover, fire from cover, get closer, fire from cover" playstyle. You have to MOVE. Failing that means death. This is something I liked quite a bit, but on the contrary from Wolfesteins, where weapons were mostly outrageously satisfying to use (because they were very effective), I'm baffled from the classic selection of Doom.

I always ended up using mostly the chaingun in turret mode, plasma cannon in siege mode and the two shotguns (the basic one only when upgraded to become a grenade launcher) and the double barreled one. Using chainguns on tougher ones to harvest some ammunition and the BFG whenever I made a mistake or ended up cornered somewhere.

Normal plasma rifle? nah. Normal assault rifle? Sometimes when fully upgraded with bottomless tracking missiles.. but rarely used because.. oh well: ammunition. Even with fully upgraded suit, the constant lack of ammo is obnoxious. Take this alongside that you have basically 3 sets of couples of weapons sharing the same ammo (2 shotguns, 2 plasma guns 2 bullet rifle guns) and you're forced to use only either one of the couple or use the damn rocket launcher, which isn't that effective (and runs out of ammo in no time).

So the game "forces" you to use upgrade and combine the runes needed to harvest armor and ammunitions from performing glory kills basically.. always. Or better this is what I felt I was forced onto by the game. From a point of view, it was fine because you needed to adapt to what you had rather than using your fav weapon.. but somehow it bothered me fairly.

Boss fights where fun, maybe the final one is the least tough.. but overall I advice the game if you want some old style FPS game with some in-depth personalization of weapons upgrades and how the suit works with the runes. Maybe playing at lowers levels may led to less tighter obligations if terms of upgrades and playstyle, who knows.

For now thumbs up especially if you find it in a sale and you haven't yet picked it up!

Long story short? If You've played FC3, then you know what's up with this one and, 99% sure of it, FC primal. The most "unrefined" of the series stands to be FC2, that you can avoid, but if you either find the third or this one for cheap, then they'll give you some solid FPS fun, although it's always the same thing over and over.

Go, liberate that outpost -you can do it stealth or frontal attack-, unlock that gun or that other by completing transports, bomb defusals, hunting missions over and over. Liberate fortresses and go on with the story until it ends.

Let's be honest, these games are repetitive. They aren't bad but the things you do are the same, and FC4 to me lacks that Vaas madness element of the 3, so the story was somewhat more interesting than this one.

All in all if you are more into "open space FPSs" sort of thing, you aren't going wrong with this one. Even if you beat the game you can reset the outposts so they get populated again by enemies and you can go on killing or showing your stealthy prowess but that's it.

Positive? Yes. Negative? Hell, Ubisoft try to do something new other than sequels and sequels over sequels on games that have the same structure over and over again.

Where to start..
..if you like rally this is a fantastic racing experience.

However it's not 100% simulative so if you are and hardcore simracer you have to mind that there are some licences, but I'm rather inclined to forget these; for example tyres don't get overheated (and you can't chose compounds or anything) and somewhat the handling isn't completely realistic; but it's tremendously realistic from the point of view of how HARD it is to fly throught turns where the road is as wide as the car.. and sometimes even tighter and you ain't properly driving slow through it, so usually the results are rather destructive (and you're really going to become a very BAD person if anyone listens how loud you're going to swear for a fatal error).
Also the AI is very difficult to beat especially at the highest level of difficulty, where you're already struggling to reach in one piece the end of a 10km stage out of 12, while you have to push every corner to the limit often to simply contain, yes CONTAIN/HOLD BACK/RESTRAIN, the gap from the leader.
The satisfaction you get when you manage to pull together a clean stage on hugely difficult cars (just to name a few, Lancia Statos or the 037 Gr.B) and maybe even winning it is unmatched, believe me.
I'm playing this since 0.3 I think and hell, I still haven't got the guts to challenge the game on group B cars. They are INSANE MONSTERS!! I've done 60s (Fulvia HF), 70s (131 Abarth btw, probably the easiest car of the game), Gr.A (Delta HF of course), then tried Gr.B, got annihilated by it and fell back to 70s (Stratos) and the Lancia 037 Gr.B hoping that mastering the latter would have allowed me to tangle with the mighty Lancia Delta S4. Well it didn't xD, so for now I'm racing more modern stuff.

I'm rather used to sim racing but trust me if I say that you really need to have a soft approach to this. Sometimes is better just to finish those stages in one piece without looking at the gap that the AI is inflicting to you.. soon you'll learn how to fight back and once this will happen.. oh the satisfaction!!


Kudos to Codemasters; they have released a gem, we just need some more events (Sardinia's rally, New Zealand and so on) because they certainly need to be more, as well as more cars (keep them flowing!! but the ones coming with the release are more than satisfactory imho although I miss older Toyotas like the Celica that is still missing) and they absolutely need to do something to enhance RallyCross AI which is very easy to beat even at the highest level, so for now RX is basically good to have some PVE fun and farm credits used to mantain your team/crew, or to add cars to your garage, which is another nice touch to the mix.

For now I've not yet tried to get a grip of HillClimb (though we only have a single setting, the famous US Pikes Peak and no other tracks), these cars are even crazier and without the navigator I feel it to be even harder than rally, but it's another layer of depth into the racing title that Dirt Rally is, so the amount of content will be enough for most.

Also the graphics are amazing and it runs fine most of the time; there are some issues with too high polling rates from FFB wheels that may cause stuttering (that can be solved) but the graphic engine is rather scalable.
I'm using a GTX 660 over an i5 2500k with 4 gigs of ram (a dedicated rig just to race) and the game runs fine 90% of the time but I have to keep the shaders to low and the crowd to ultra low (it's still amazing even with this, although the public reminds Doom's sprites, but you won't notice them when you're struggling to stay on the track) otherwise the frame rate may sometimes get some hiccups especially during hairpins under rainy or snowy weather, that are rather taxing under a performance point of view. Most of the other settings are on high, few things are on medium and it looks pretty much real for me even like this.
Using a more recent machine (gtx 960, 8 gigs of ram, i5 3570k) basically you can max out nearly everything.


To sum up.. no more Dirt rap/talking/amigo/silly gymkhanas or the likes.

This is a return to the origins of rally titles, clear away any remembrance of Dirt 3/Showdown; ready up your steering wheel and start swearing, sweating and to experience loads of sheer, pure driving joy!!

Very old combat system, sluggish controls and mostly thought for consoles. Stay away from this, the sequel looks a little bit better.. but I wonder what they were thinking when they could get inspired by Jedi Knight Outcast/Jedi Academy.

F*** yes I do recommend this game.

I've enjoyed it pretty much, although calling it "open world" isn't exactly proper, since there are two relatively limited and different areas and not a big continuous map such as GTA or Far Cry or other titles.

Besides this, this game can be pretty much sinthetized as Batman Arkham.. killing spree edition. The combat is smooth, gorish, good animations, entertaining story and oh, the Nemesis sys... I hope the games in future will feature similar engines to deal with the randomly generated enemies, it's brilliant. Rarely I came across to similar orc captains, the variations in aspect and armors are extremely wide.. and I've played the game twice and wasted nearly 70 hours on it.

However, if you had enough of Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham series.. I guess this may be a worth buy if you find it on sale, although both series completely miss the evoking LOTR environment and the nemesis system.

Oh and final note about LOTR Lore.. well, as a Ranger this ranger is.. absolutely badass (too much) and technically Talion is some sort of "grey entity" that doesn't fit in the "all dark vs all good" of Tolkien's masterpieces. I'm cutting this short, but let's say that if you are some sort of "tolkien nazi" this may not be suited for you imho. For all the others.. simply go for it. It's a very good ride.

I took over 15 hours to finish this, playing it mostly stealthly and even unharming most of the folks. It has been a pleasant surprise, although critics could hype this game too much for me.. I must admit it has been an even bigger surprise when I discovered I bought this during the last summer sale.. and I didn't remembered anything about xD.

Definitely recommended, it's a very solid stealth game but can also be played in the exactly opposite manner. There are a lot of secrets, several ways/paths to go where you have to, even if it's not an open-world like title but the usual tunnel/obliged level design; at least at the first playthrough this haven't made me feel any constrain about lack of choices to achieve what I had to do in the missions.

The AI sometimes doesn't see you/detect you, some other times they do exactly the opposite. I've even ended the game saving a lot of runes, because several powers when playing stealthy weren't necessary at all.. I guess the full potential of these powers will be uncovered when I'll replay it the "goreish" way!