Recent reviews by Sage

Firstly DO NOT GET THIS GAME YET IF YOU DISLIKE SERVER ISSUES!

The gameplay on this is great, weapons are satisfying to use, the stratagems are all fun and impactful, and while the environments are repetitive in parts, there's never two missions that feel the same. But until the servers are improved (Which the devs are working on), unless you have the patience to deal with the rampant server issues, I suggest against buying it until server stability is achieved. But if you are willing to put up with it, you'll find a fun as hell game in it.

Wholeheartedly reccomend this. This is a happy medium between the pace of AC4 and ACV: it ranges between crazy fast and quicker paced. The difficulty curve is very steep until you figure out how to build a good AC. Once you start specialising your builds towards missions specifically the curve flattens much more and the difficulty level becomes much more constant with spikes here and there in various areas. Each leg set defines how you play in a way that feels good, and there's very clear scenarios in which every leg can be used. The story is sort of meh, but that's hardly what I personally play this for.

Combat is, as above, fast and fluid, and majorly improved over previous games. The ability to switch between soft and hard lock is huge, and contributes to a player being more focused on manoeuvring rather than aiming, making fights feel faster but even more controlled. Weapons have great sound design and you can feel every impact from every heavy weapon you use. The impact and ACS stagger system can be learned quickly and it gives combat even deeper strategy to make sure that you are hitting when it matters, not just when you can. Sparing your heavy weapons for when the enemy is staggered can make a huge difference. In addition, melee is now even more viable with lock on, with most melees packing some kind of small combo.

This game in on par with the Batman games and in some respects far above them. The characters and atmosphere Eidos created for this game is second to none, and you can tell that the developers took their time to get this right. Every character that you interact with, from the Guardians to the other side characters are well fleshed out, even the ones with short screen time, and none of them feel like cut and paste cookie cutter personalities. The combat, while sometimes a little too easy, strikes a perfect balance between fast pacing and slower planning, the combination of which results in something that can only be described as a third person shooter with wonderfully cinematic moments that you orchestrate. Outside of combat, the down time is far from boring, with constant, worthwhile character building, dialogue, and interactions filling the gaps. Even travelling from place to place is made fun by character banter and dialogue. Player responses also feel worthwhile as clear indicators of your impact on other characters hint at future twists, though none of those twists I've found predictable enough to be boring. The story is also fun and heartfelt, with humour and drama interspersed well. Intercharacter conflicts and friendship results in a very relatable, engrossing story that feels like it was ripped straight from the comic books. The only thing that feels lacking, though not to me, is that some collectors and item hunters may feel a bit shorted by the lack of collectable items.

Death Stranding is one of those games that don't fit comfortably into a set genre. Yes it's a walking simulator, but it also feels like it turns the walking into something more akin to a puzzle. It's a challenge finding a path from point A to B, and that challenge is half of what makes this game worth playing. The other half is the story. Strange, unexpected and something completely new, it's hard to describe without playing.

Wholy unplayable in VR so far. It looks like the eyes are swapped in cutscenes and visuals appear far too close for your brain to resolve the images. The base game is playable but feels severely limited without VR working

While the graphics look good and I get a decent frame rate, I've had some bizzare behavior on this game with regards to my video card. My Vega 56 runs the game at around 60-90 frames per second at 1440p, but my card regularly heats to 88-91 degrees while running this game. Compare this to an average of 80-83 on other games like Destiny 2, Jedi Fallen Order and various VR games and it's a little odd. I've talked to some devs on the Discord and they were quite helpful but couldn't explain the sharp temperature increase.

Beyond the technical issues, the game is phenomenally meh. While balance is an issue right now, I would give it time for the game to mature. Movement however feels incredibly slow, and even the mobility abilities feel lacking in speed. Combat feels like you're plinking each others with pebbles until one randomly keels over. The firefights you get into are fun and fast paced but again lack punch when things get going between heavier characters. The maps are well detailed and lush, and they feel for the most part balanced, but there's very little in terms of verticallity in them, though that's forgivable since few characters have vertical ascending movement that's core to their playstyle. The lack of in-game communication absolutely hinders team play and games often feel like they're just 4 people going off to do their own thing. Shipping without this feature makes absolutely no sense to me and I think should be something that the devs should focus on remedying.

A fun take on the procedurally generated shooter genre. The best way to describe it is Left 4 Dead mixed with a touch of Minecraft

As a player who started at update 4 or 5 (I think) in closed beta, Warframe is the only game that I can reliably say has only gotten better with time. The core gameplay is well polished, extremely fast and scales with skill incredibly well. However this game also does get horifically grindy when you reach the end game, so keep that in mind. But if you don't mind that you'll find a game that has a gameplay style niche for everyone.