Recent reviews by ol' rdtg

I will edit this review after I finish the game, but so far I am extremely impressed. The dated character models from 2001 needed updating, and they modernized them and did a very good job at matching their appearance to the characters themselves. The visuals are great, the game runs... okish, but I expect that to improve with patches. I absolutely love the changes they've made to the games locations and story beats, it's a welcome change as replaying the original 1:1 would have been a bit boring. I have been playing the Silent Hill games since the beginning, I remember playing Silent Hill 1 on my Playstation as a kid, and I was so hyped when Silent Hill 2 came out. Always have been a massive fan of the series, and it's one of my all time favorites after Fallout. I sincerely hope they also remake the 'Born From a Wish' story followed by Silent Hill 3.

Will edit this review later when I finish the game. About 1/3 of the way in now, so far so good!

Imagine if Half-Life met the SCP world with a little Lethal Company sprinkled in -- that is this game. I can't seem to put this game down since I started. I played through the demo probably 7 or 8 times and I gotta say the full game does not disappoint.

The only things I have issue with right now is performance; As a game developer myself I understand the complexities of utilizing Lumen in UE5 and the difficulties that come with trying to optimize for the feature, but currently even with my 32 CPU cores and RTX 4090, I am seeing significant frame drops, sometimes even below 30fps when global illumination and reflections are on anything above 'Low'. The same goes for the shadows setting. If you can live without the fancy bounce lighting and (kinda subpar) Lumen real time reflections, I recommend just putting those settings on low and leaving shadows on medium. I sorta recommend turning reflections & GI to low anyway as it gives the game that more old school look.

Skip this scam.

Don't give Take-Two your money. They are suing the developers of re3 who legally reverse engineered the classic GTA games.

Take-Two is anti-consumer.

App is completely broken an useless. Looks like Google stopped supporting yet another one of their services. Not much of a surprise there.

I'd normally never leave a negative review for a GTA game. GTA IV is an amazing game, one of the best in the entire series IMO, but the PC version is up there in the top 10 worst PC ports of all time. I am running on an i9-10980XE, 128 GB of RAM and dual Titan RTX GPUs (it's a work computer) and I can barely maintain 60 fps at 4K in GTA IV. With the age of this game, I should be pulling down at least 120 fps at 4K. Frame drops and stuttering is also a major issue here, it doesn't matter which resolution and what frame rate you lock too, there is ALWAYS frame drops and stuttering. For instance, if I play locked at 60fps, I get drops into the 30s, but if I lock it to 30 fps, I get drops down into the teens. Don't even get me started on the Games for Windows Live abortion, that never should've even existed. I really hope Rockstar fixes this title. I LOVE Grand Theft Auto IV, but it's almost unplayable on PC. I would give pretty much anything for a remaster of this title.

TL:dr: Great game, great story, kinda short, levels were lacking a bit but make up for in atmosphere, RTX is awesome but you best have a beefy PC if you run 1440p or 4k! Absolutely worth playing, and it doesn't matter which storefront you get it from, just get it.

Pros:

- Awesome as always story from a Metro game
- Some characters you will become very attached to
- Interesting and beautiful level design
- Awesome weapon customization
- Still causes the same level of anxiety in certain areas like when your in the dark with those spider things (Good horror elements)
- Gorgeous lighting and graphics with and without RTX
- Great sound design, nice Atmos support
- Ending that caused onion cutting ninjas to break into my house again and secretly attack

Cons:
- Levels are lacking in places to explore and discover and although they are beautiful they feel empty
- Textures are sorta muddy and ugly in a lot of places
- While some characters you get attached to, there are a lot you don't -- some feel shallow and boring
- Atmos is nice, but the game would benefit from some other 5.1/7.1 support like DTS as it's a cinematic experience
- RTX (DXR) is very hard on performance (NOTE: Not an issue with the game itself, just the hardware for DXR isn't quite there yet)
- No Linux release (WTF guys? The last two games were released on Linux!)
- No SLI support -- DXR is so damn intensive it would be awesome to have SLI support like SOTTR, mGPU is already a feature set with DX12 and isn't overly difficult to implement (Source: experience); SLI support would give those with two RTX GPUs outstanding performance with raytracing turned on to really showcase the games beauty at a playable framerate @ 4K
- HDR support is really iffy in this game, though it has support it has no dedicated HDR adjustment, only a regular gamma slider.

Scale:
Gameplay - 9/10
Story - 10/10
Level Design - 6/10
Graphics - 8/10
Controls - 9/10
Sound - 9/10

The long version:
OK, so I just finished the game, and I must say this is one of my new favorites. The story, while pretty short if you play skillfully, is executed perfectly. I loved being able to craft items I needed rather than trading precious ammo. The open levels are filled with enemies to dispatch and some places to explore, lighting is beautiful with RTX mode on and there are some very moving scenes in the game. There is some decision making in the game but it's rather light-weight, there are no real in-your-face moral choices, more broad moral choice (kill or knock out enemies in a level etc) but either ending you get, it packs an emotional punch. BUUUUUUT...... note how I said 'SOME places to explore' above; The open levels can feel kind of empty, which I mean, makes sense sorta? It's post apocalyptic after 20 years of things being looted etc, but I felt like they could've packed a lot more into the levels than they did. The lack of real moral dilemmas kinda bummed me out, I know this isn't an RPG or anything, but having some real choice that affects the world around you more would make the game more engaging.
Another thing that bothered me, with the game being this open there is a distinct lack of weapon choices. While there is PLENTY, and I mean PLENTY of weapon customization you can perform, I felt like the game would benefit from a few more weapons, and perhaps even some very unique weapons (perhaps even uniques you can't modify). And while the lighting is pretty with RTX, you better have a pretty damn beefy PC to keep those frame rates up, especially if you game at 1440p or 4k. I'm equipped with dual Titan RTXs, 80 GB of RAM and an i9-9900X but at 4k with RTX on ultra I was lucky to maintain 40 fps with dips down below 30 in some areas, but if you turn RTX off you can easily maintain 4k60 or 1440p120 on a modest PC.

Alright, this review will be temporary (I hope). I will come back and revise this in a few months after several patches to the game are released, after all, it IS a Bethesda game, which are always buggy at launch.

I am a *HUGE* Fallout fan, I've been playing Fallout games since I was a kid. And when I saw Fallout 4 was coming to VR, I was so hyped and excited... Then, my hopes were dashed to pieces when I saw it would be an HTC Vive Exclusive. After the long grieving process, I realized that it would most likely work on the Rift.

I was sorta right, it worked so/so at first, but now with all the little fixes, it plays on the Rift just as it does on a Vive. (With the exception of one bug, the minor popin on the right eye -doesn't bother me too much, fix expected here eventually)
So, when it was released, I dove right in, as a hardcore Fallout fan even the control issues didn't stop me. I had an Xbox One controller within arms reach at all times for menus/pipboy navigation.
Then the control fix came out, so I put away the xbox controller. Now, I am about 44 hours in and I must say, I do love it. I feel so immersed walking around downtown Boston. Feral ghouls actually scare the crap out of me. Several times, I have had a ghoul sneak up on me almost causing me to soil myself.
I try not to take on deathclaws up close if at all possible, and walking into the glowing sea can actually feel a little intimidating now. When I first got the power armor in the beginning of the game I didn't really notice the scale until I got out of it. Once I went to get back into the power armor, I realized just how huge the armor is! It's massive! :D
So far I've had a lot of fun, but also, a lot of disappointment.
Scopes do not work, and the aiming system is SO bad I actually had to get the cheat holotape mod, and turn off bullet spread and swaying, as it was literally the only way to hit targets reliably from a distance, even on a high-level character.
The game does experience it's occasional crash, but that's to be expected of a Bethesda game this soon after release, which is also very sad in itself that it's "to be expected of a Bethesda title"...
Performance is very iffy in this game, I remember trying to play Fallout 4 in VorpX a while back, and if you used geometry3d (true 3d) - you would get like 20 fps...
I can say they have done some to improve performance here, but not enough. And it seems like all they really did was remove certain taxing visual effects.
Some areas cause massive reprojection/lag on my i7-4770k/GTX 1080/32 GB DDR3/SSD setup.
My rig is more than powerful enough to handle most if not all VR games thrown at it, but Fallout 4 VR seems to always fall short in the performance department. This does not really suprise me as pancake Fallout 4 suffered the same performance issues.
Another thing is while playing in VR you will notice a TON of imperfections in the games cells (cells = levels).
For example in some interiors you might notice a small crack in the floor that lets you see into the void, where in pancake fo4 you would not notice it. You also notice a lot of things like decals and debris not being placed level and floating above the ground.
I really love looking at my arm to see the PipBoy, but I wish they would have kept it like regular Fallout 4 where it slows time/stops time, and let us control the pipboy with our right controller as well.
It also really disappoints me that they removed the animations from the PipBoy. As a modder of Fallout games and Fallout 4, I know that these animations did not really cost anything in terms of performance. It just feels like it was a really lazy move on the devs part.
Now lastly, no official mod support. This is fine seeing as how mods work in the game, however if Bethesda were to patch out this feature I would drop this game like a bad habbit. Most of this games issues are fixed from mods, and I REALLY hope they release a Creation Kit update for this version as I guarantee it would cause a whole ton of VR mods to pop up.
Getting the DLC to work is a pain in the butt, have to copy it over from pancake Fallout 4, and install it like a mod. Then in a few of the DLCs you have to move your save over to pancake Fallout 4, to progress through certain parts that muck up on VR. This isn't a con, as the DLC's are not offically supported yet, but I bring it up as for $60, they should have been included, especially if you look at the data files, there is pretty much zero new content. What this game adds? A few new meshes: vive wands, new pipboy mesh, fists, a few minor tweaks, and the ability to play in VR. That's it.
Should this have been a DLC/update? Absolutely. I would've gladly paid up to $30 for a VR DLC.

Pros:

Fallout 4 in VR, yay!
Very immersive way to experience the Commonwealth
Being able to punch Preston and Marcy... Totes worth it
Everything looks so beautiful in VR, I constantly just stop and admire everything

Cons:

No Rift support, yet released on Steam*!
I wouldn't mind paying $60, if it included the DLC, but it doesn't. It's a shoddy port, and they really didn't add much of anything content wise. Literally $60 just to make it work on VR.
This game feels extremely rushed, like a very bad port
So many things do not work correctly
The character scale is screwed up, you can kinda fix with an ini tweak, but then the world scale messes up
Most of the controls are ok, but shooting and aiming is terrible, you can't hit the broad side of a barn!
Scopes are completely broken

All in all, I think in the end, once all the kinks are worked out, this will be a beautiful game, and I will update my review once some patches fix some of these issues. But I do recommend this game, it is an amazing experience in VR. But I DO recommend waiting until it's on sale. $60 is a bit steep for this with no DLC included. $30 is a better price.

I would've gladly paid like $30 or so if this was released as a DLC VR-update for the pancake version. They could have pretty easily pulled that off by adding the new exe, and the few new data files, then letting the launcher handle which version the game starts -- VR or non-VR. It would have been very doable.

Tl;dr - Good game with some issues, wait for it to be patched then go on sale. Once on sale GET IT ASAP! :D


* Steam was supposed to have an open VR library, not exclusive to any HMD. Bethesda should have released this on Viveport if it were to always be a true exclusive. And yes I know about Oculus, I do NOT use the Oculus store or support it, and will not until they get rid of exclusivity. I just prefer the HMD and controllers. I am for open VR and open gaming. Exclusives hurt everyone.

I was so excited when I first saw Tiny Town VR on the Steam Store, I put money in my steam wallet as fast as I could and purchased it without thought. I've been waiting for a game like this. It may not be like a city simulator, where you get to manage everything... But it's the next best thing! You put together your little town or city by hand which is both tedious and fun (strange combo but it works!) -- then you get to place people and speech bubble to make a sort of 3D comic book. The game has a few bugs here and there, like gas station overhangs wont snap over pumps, and the shopping center wont snap to anything.

It has a few drawbacks, as if you are someone who doesn't really enjoy building things by hand, it can get boring very fast. The game does offer plenty of objects to build with though, and I'm sure more will come in the future.This could also benefit very much by having workshop content, allowing people to import their own objects/buildings.
If you like building things and you like comics, this game is definately for you! However, if you are looking for a city simulator, keep going.

I give this game a 8/10 - Unique, plays well, good controls, loads of fun!

Edit the second: Screw Take-Two. Don't give them your money. They are at it again, this time suing developers who reverse engineered the classic GTA games (reverse engineering is legal for those who don't know) -- so it's abhorrent that they are taking such action.

Should've re-updated my review a long time ago. I had changed it back when the whole R* anti modding thing was going on and completely forgot about it.

If you are a long time Grand Theft Auto fan, or even if your not and just like third person shooters and driving games, you will probably enjoy GTA V. Personally speaking, I still prefer GTA IV in terms of story and atmosphere, but I still have a blast playing GTA V. I'm not much of an online gamer and don't have too many hours logged in GTA: Online on PC. Most of my GTAO time was spent on PS4, and I think I'll continue steering clear of it. GTA:O is a grind, especially now. I logged in recently to see if much has changed, and it has, they have added a ton of new content, but it feels like everything, and I mean everything, is just a set-up to get the player to purchase "Shark Cards" (Microtransactions). And I cannot abide by that. These past few Rockstar games have been excellent in terms of story. GTA IV, RDR, RDR 2 and GTA V, but more and more it feels like Rockstar is treating single player like an afterthought and going after those sweet sweet microtransaction dollars. I really hope that changes soon, because it sickens me to think single player content in any game is being shrugged off in favor of an online mode chocked full of purchases to entice younger players and people with gambling troubles to spend gobs of money. Thankfully R* only pushes in game currency, so they sort of avoided the whole "loot box gambling" fiasco, although I haven't played around with the casino DLC yet, so I may be wrong. Anywho, I'm sure your sick of reading this by now, or probably stopped reading it a while ago so let me wrap this up.

Story: 7.0
Graphics: 8.5
Audio: 9.0
Gameplay: 9.0
Single player re-playability: 5.0

Overall: 8.0/10

This game is absolutely worth purchasing and playing.