Recent reviews by MoustacheMan

If you were not a fan of Shadow Warrior 1's unsatisfying weapons, lack of depth in enemies, abilities and arenas, the godawful story, cutscenes, dialogue and animations, this one is somehow worse.

A miserable slog after the first hour and until the end.
The gunplay lacks feedback which makes the guns feel weak and every weapon seem like it has the same damage output, with no real reason to use your entire arsenal.
Enemy roster is incredibly bland and every combat encounter will be repeated again and again with almost 0 variety. They really just copy and paste the same encounters, and add a few more enemies every once in a while. The same fodder wave, the same shield guy wave, the same 2 berserkers, 2 necromancers, more flying enemies in front of a stationary machine gun.
Bosses are somehow worse, repeating the same attack phases for a ridiculous amount of times. The 0 cooldown heal robs the tension from every fight.
And no, most of these issues are not adressed in the sequel.

Rage 2 is an amazing game, and by "amazing" i don't just mean "mindlessly mowing down enemies feels a little satisfying", i mean every aspect of the game received enough care and attention to make it a one of a kind blend of action game and first person shooter, even in contrast to DOOM 2016 and Eternal. From the weapons and abilities and the way they give you a huge amount of variety and potential combos during combat, to the various enemy factions and their unique enemy types, roles and countless animations that add character (some of these you might not even notice during combat). All of the unique activities and locations, and generally random events around the world that make it feel like a chaotic place that has been once again destabilized, like mutants and bandits fighting on the side of the road, or a convoy of Immortal Shrouded chasing a few civilian cars.

A small part of the good things i can say about the game only really stood out to me on my second playthrough on ultra nightmare because of the increased enemy health and damage, where chaining combos and dashing from cover to cover while using a weapon in one hand and constantly throwing wing sticks and grenades with the other wasn't just a fun thing you could do, it's something you have to do to survive, when every wrong move might kill you or poorly executed combo will take away a defib charge. Every super mutant, mech or authority sentry feel like a deadly DDR game, not to mention the two main story bosses. With the enhanced sense of danger, it feels like every upgrade counts, and it will make you want to pick locations clean for crafting materials, money, and feltrite.

Now, for the bad, or at least not so good in my point of view: the game has a tendency to crash as you might learn from 50% of the negative reviews, although i only crashed once in my entire playtime, just a fair warning.
The various laggy upgrade menus with their respective layers and tiers for each category are a bit convoluted, although you get used to it eventually. Vehicle combat could be a bit more engaging, as right now it feels like an optional part of the game, with most vehicle upgrades and all activities not having any relation to on-foot combat.
To round things up, i like the art direction of the first game more, although it still manages to be one of the prettiest games i played.

As i said in the beginning, Rage 2 is a one of a kind shooter, and just like the first game, it's in the position where it might never get a sequel, as it didn't sell enough copies. I hope this review encourages you to give it a try, maybe once it goes on sale.

Probably the best BR game around.
The mix of gunplay, movement and character abilities ensures the game stays tactical without dumbing down gunplay or making characters too easy to kill. There are 24 guns in the game and somehow all of them stand apart in terms of stats and behavior.

The art style is very solid, and very similar to TitanFall 2's, while being a bit more cartoony with the character designs.The map design is great, and it provides a lot of interesting locations, with a good mix of cover, movement options, and some advantageous positions.

Overall game design is amazing, which sadly doesn't apply to other BR games. This is the first battle royale that doesn't feel like they lazily put too many players on a map that is too big for its own good, and they actually carefully considered how the guns will handle, how mobile the players will be, and how players  will move from one place to the other without being screwed over by RNG or campers. There is a very big emphasis on teamwork, and choosing characters that fulfill different roles is important. Just pick up a pair of weapons that compliment each other, use your abilities properly, and you will be able to get out of a firefight with multiple squads alive. Escape is always an option, and positioning is very important.
But most importantly, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. No camping or sitting in a corner until somone passes by and you get shot in the back and die in a heartbeat, no instakills from people sitting in one of the 1000 bushes in your line of sight with a sniper rifle. Vehicles aren't deathtraps on wheels while also having the ability to 1 shot players by running them over. The people most likely to win a match are the ones that run around, loot, and get into fights with other squads, because dealing damage and killing other people directly translates to better shields, attachments, and equipment.

Regarding support from the devs, since launch, the game got plenty of server improvements, bug fixes, balance changes, and quality of life improvements that definitely made it better, and most of the times, more interesting. You might know Apex as "That game that died 2 weeks after launch" and that couldn't be more wrong. I consistently get a game on the first 5 seconds after i queue for a match.

One of the best campaigns of the last few years, and probably ever. Every mission stands out with a unique gameplay mechanic or idea. There are plenty of unique guns that you wouldn't see in other games, including a sniper that shoots two bullets at once, each of them having the ability to ricochet off surfaces, and a handheld machine gun that shoots rockets. Graphics, animations ,art design and soundtrack are amazing, and especially sound design, just call down a titan and listen as it falls.

Despite everything, the campaign is just an introduction to the actual gameplay. The multiplayer has more abilities, including one of the best grappling hooks around, and even the cloak (the one ability available in the campaign) gets recontextualized, since pilots can see you, but titans can't. There are more gameplay elements that aren't in the campaign, like pilot vs pilot combat, pilot vs titan combat, and manual, automatic, and nuclear ejections, that make losing or winning a titan fight much more interesting.

I have a little over 80 hours in TitanFall 1, and 90 hours in TitanFall 2, and it's easily worth any price it might be going for.

Yakuza 0: A game with an amazing story and great combat, and a fleshed out open world that doesn't waste your time. Even at full price, this game is worth every dollar. I'll try and expand about what i like in the game below.

The combat:
The combat in Yakuza 0 isn't about stringing insane combos like DMC or other action games, and more about dodging, blocking, parrying and trying to knock down enemies in order to perform high damage finishers when they are on the ground. There are two characters with 3 fighting styles for each one, and every style has it's own strenghts and weaknesses. They can be used at any time but some are better for certain situations. For example: Rush style is good for 1 on 1 combat, or for avoiding groups of enemies and dealing damage to one at a time, but the fast and weak punches might not be enough to stagger or knock down stronger enemies. It starts off simple but by the time you reach the first boss the game will force you to keep dodging and think about when you want to attack and for how long.

Open world:
The open world is fairly small, but filled with unique activities and minigames that add flavor to each of the 2 towns in the game. The minigames feel like they are there to flesh out the world and make it feel real, rather than to give you a reason to 100% the game, more on that below. The towns look great and are very easy to run at 60 fps, even on a pc that isn't much stronger than a ps4.

Completionism aspects:
The amount of things that you need to do to get 100% is pretty huge and can range from minigames that are fun and challenging, to repetitive tasks that can be very tedious and time sinking, like eating every meal at every restaurant, or winning a certain amount of money at the countless gambling and luck based activities in the world. Regardless, getting to 100% completion can be very satisfying, considering you have the time and patience to do it.

Story:
I'm adding this section 2 weeks after posting this review, since i just started a new game. The dailogue, acting, atmosphere and tension in some of the scenes is too good. Even in chapter 1, there is a lot going on around you and that's when you are barely even 10% through the story. Yakuza 0 is one of the only games that made me care about the story and the characters and it is definitely worth paying attention and getting invested in it, rather than using it just as a vehicle for combat scenarios and boss fights.

Not many people know this, but Borderlands 1 actually came out after Borderlands 2, and it takes place in an alternate universe where everything is ♥♥♥♥ and bad and awful and garbage. Its one of those games where the entire game was designed around the world it takes place in, and thats why the gunplay feels like ass, and the graphics are bad even for a 10 year old game. All of the environments are either garbage dumps or gray deserts and its very depressing, as was intended, of course. The soundtrack sounds like that awful basement music from Resident Evil 1, except its every track in the game. Overall, just great work from the masterminds at Gearbox.

A zombie survival game with a focus on melee combat seems like an interesting concept for a game, until you realize that the combat has 0 depth and you just spam attacks until you run out of stamina, walk backwards slightly to avoid getting hit, then continue to spam attacks until the zombies are dead.
You can also throw your weapons, which is pretty useful because all of the weapons in this game feel like you're swinging a piece of cardboard. It's easily the most deep mechanic in the game because you can throw your weapons on the ground in frustration, or into a nearby trash can if you want.
The jump in this game also serves as a dodge if you jump sideways or backwards. It kinda feels like the Dark Souls dodge except your feet are stuck in two huge cement blocks, making it the dark souls of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring oversaturated zombie survival games.
You know its a masterpiece when the act of walking makes you want to cut your legs off. But hey, at least co-op isn't peer-to-peer.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the game that lets you return to castle wolfenstein 7 missions into the game. This game could have been a decent fps, but bad game design and features that don’t make sense prevent it from being one.

Bad game design:
The maps in this game are huge, and there are plenty of open spaces and long range encounters. This should have been a good thing, but most of the guns in the game are not accurate enough to hit anything from such long ranges. This is only made worse by the fact that moving your crosshair around too fast makes your guns more inaccurate. If you don’t believe me, get in game and move your crosshair around for a bit and then try and hit anything. Then get a refund because an fps with such a stupid feature doesn’t deserve your time or money. Think huge maps and inaccurate weapons are bad enough? well even the weakest enemies can take something like 5-8 shots. You can shoot them in the head for more damage, but good luck hitting them when they are more than 10 meters away from you. The only weapon in the game that is 100% accurate is the sniper rifle, but it descopes you whenever you move too much, and strafing in and out of cover is very important in this game, especially on hard mode. Tanky enemies, inaccurate guns, huge maps, a game that punishes you for moving your mouse too fast, does it get any worse?

Bad enemy design:
There are plenty of special enemies in the game, each one more tanky than the other. There are undead knights that take almost an entire magazine of an smg to kill, stronger versions of the basic enemies with even more health, flamethrowers that take even more damage and cover your entire screen with their flames, but the worst are definitely the super soldiers. These are huge mutated soldiers with armor, machine guns and rocket launchers. They have poor accuracy, but so do your weaopns. Your only hope of killing them is using rocket launchers and miniguns. The rocket launchers are fine, they take something like 4 or 5 rockets to kill, and there aren’t enough rockets in the maps for the amount of super soldiers the game throws at you. Your best option is using inaccurate miniguns that take time to spin up, and this says a lot about how bad the weapons in this game are.

Boring soundtrack:
This game has the most boring soundtrack i have ever heard. It kills the atmosphere and it doesn’t fit the fast gameplay and the over the top setting. Listen to it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN0JtEk5CPs&index=4&list=PLmYc9gG3yj8TcGenNQ_j-4ICy58ixohLn

Bad boss design:
Two bosses out of the three in the game are laughably easy, including the first and last one. You just run around them in circles while holding m1. The second boss is incredibly hard because he can hit you from anywhere on the map as long as he can see you, and you start the fight with no cover. You have to bait him into grenades and constantly go in and out of cover, which is more tedious than hard.

Bugs:
Whenever you save your game, you have to load the file manually, then wait 20 seconds in game while everyone around you dies until your screen stutters for a second and the game loads your save.

Nitpicks: The pistols in the game are useless. They are more inaccurate than the smg’s, have lower fire rates, and they use the same type of ammo which prevents you from using them to save ammo. The grenades are almost as useless, as the time it takes them to explode is too high.

Good map design:
The maps are well designed, even if the guns are not accurate enough to fit their size. They are designed in a way that makes them feel real, and instead of being just a straight line, they are designed in a way that lets you backtrack quickly and pick up health and ammo that you left behind, by adding doors that can only be unlocked from the other side. This can make them a bit confusing, but it shouldn’t be a problem if you pay attention to where you go.

The story:
The story is pretty much just “the nazis are doing something bad, go murder them”, which is fine for a game like this. it doesn’t get in the way of gameplay, and it gives you a reason to kill some nazi’s. As if you need one…

In conclusion, a fast paced game about killing nazis manages to be frustrating because of features and mechanics that just don’t make sense together.

On first glance, Dirty Bomb might look like yet another p2w Overwatch/ Team fortress clone, but that is not the case at all. Just like Overwatch and Team fortress 2, Dirty Bomb is a class based first person shooter, where in some maps you need to escort a payload or complete a certain objective, but this is where the similarities come to an end. The game is also not pay to win, but i will talk about that later. I can't think of anything in Dirty Bomb that wasn't seen in another game, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad game. It's the opposite, actually. Dirty Bomb mixes a lot of game mechanics from other games, and they work very well together.

Pros:

Skill based: Easy to learn, hard to master. The game has a high skill ceiling, and it requires good aim, traget tracking, map knowledge, game sense, and learning how to use the weapons and abilities of each merc. If you are looking for a casual game that doesn't require a lot of skill, this is not the game for you.

Unique map design: Each map has 2-3 primary objectives that the attacking team must complete in order to win. Additionally, each map has secondary objectives that can help a team to secure the primary objective. For example: blowing up/ repairing a gate that can open/ close a shortcut that leads to the primary objective. As a result, each map plays very differently than the other maps.

Fair business model: The game is not pay to win. The only things that you can't buy with in-game currency are boosters and better cases (These cases have a higher chance of containing a rarer loadout card). Moreover, each merc is not underpowered or overpowered, and the weapons are well balanced. Also, the loadout cards that the players can get only give you different weapons and perks, and from bronze-tier cards and up, the only difference between the cards is that they provide better skins.

Server browser: Even with the game's relatively small playerbase, you can almost always get into a match since the game has a server browser.

No cheaters: A lot of players claim that the game is infested with cheaters, but i played it for almost 200 hours and i only encountered one cheater.

Cons:

Lack of content: The game has only 6 maps for objective mode and 3 maps for execution mode.
For a few months, the devs focused on fixing bugs and because of that no new content was added to the game. It may take a while until new maps or mercs are addded to the game. For me its not a problem since i can play the same map for hours on end without getting bored.

The mercs are not cheap, and it can take a long time to get enough money to buy one, but since you get 2 mercs for free, and 3 different mercs are available to try out for free every week, this is not a big problem. You can also get more money by completing challenges that reset once every 3 hours.

In conclusion, Dirty Bomb is a very fun, fast paced and challenging game with a fair business model and i think that you should try it out since it is free.