Recent reviews by Elmo

Really want to like this game but I can't

They worked wonders to make the binary so small but the content is low, the AI is ridiculous, enemy spawn if f*cked and the grind for getting better gear is unsatisfactory at best

For example you want to get some Troll Hide so you go hunting.
Halfway through one troll, about 6 Greylings of different sorts swarm you
Rocks hit with unerring accuracy, poison spray goes through trees, rocks, walls and even hills

The clipping of terrain is bad, the tree falling physics are bordering on psychopathic

So many small changes would make this game great but haven't seen many or any really

TL;DR if you're a fan, sorry to burst your bubble but wait for the sales in 6 months. Like 90% sale; it's a DLC without the C

How many years of development and the only difference between this and the other games is a slightly smoother swing/stab/slash mechanic.....and not much else

Horse control is is still behind Witcher 3 or even Skyrim. At least Skyrim horses can climb an incline without stopping dead for no reason

Economics is the ENRON ride of broken dreams. Caravans disappear and blacksmithing is pointless without a mod to remove the stupid stamina gauge. You can fight in a battle amid thousands of warriors non stop but can only refine 5 pieces of charcoal before needing to have a rest...

Story line is so open world it ends up with you doing the exact same 4 missions over and over again with the same buggy results. Every hideout raid has the exact same map with NPCs in the exact same places....just repetitive

Regardless of difficulty enemy archers have a range of the entire map while your stand idle and thrown enemy spears are unerringly accurate, even while galloping through any landscape at speed

Worst of all is the optimisation. Map view, battles....moderate load. Blacksmith or talking to an NPC your fans hit high RPM? What the hell.

This is not a new game, its a slight improvement in some ways and significantly worse in others

Marked as positive as the pro's outweight the cons but if there was a 'meh' option, i'd select that

Pro's
- Realistic combat, you can't slice through a dozen enemies at once
- Lots of choices that matter
- Storyline is pretty good
- Kinda like the lack of saves (although its vastly overstated that saving is difficult, its really not)

Con's
- FPS needs sorting out. A quick console dump shows a shed load of memory leaks. Performance can be improved massively
- Combat can feel clunky until you spend time training with one of the arms masters you meet early on
- Bugs in quests can be frustrating
- Cost. It's not fine tuned enough to warrant £40

Wasn't ready for alpha last year, isn't ready now
I support small dev teams 100% but when it's not ready to sell, don't sell it.

Really really enjoyed this game at the beginning. Pitched battles, epic base sieges and capturing prisoners to lock away while chanting 'it puts the lotion of its skin or it gets the hose again'

Even before it was optimised it was playable and the mechanics were sort of in place

However the devs made so so many critical mistakes. A DDoS attack crippled the game for a few days and the devs spent several weeks mitigating the attack. Then they announced the 2 week dev sprints would become 3 weeks sprints instead.
First new content in about 5/6 weeks? A new hammer and grass skirts.

Hackers bypass the systems with ease, who servers get damaged beyond repair, updates require full wipes.

Sorry guys, RoK is dead.

Probably the most atmospheric Zombie game I have ever played

Only 7 hours in so I've just scratched the surface but so far it's a LOT of fun.

Unlike some games where you instantly uncover a growing arsenal of automatic weapons that mow down zombies in their thousands; this is not the case in Dying Light.
Oh there's guns alright. But there's also a few zombies that like to find out whats making these noises.

Weapons break, you can repair them a few times but then they're gone. But dont worry; you'll find a LOT of them.
Plus you can customise them as well for added flavour and Zombie mincing.

The standard Zombie (the Biter) is easy to kill. Imagine the shambling Zombies you've seen in all the films. Thats them. Kick them, beat them, burn them etc. No problem.
If you make a lot of noise tho, the fast ones come after you and they don't give up. Faster, strongger, smarter.
Seen 28 days later? Those guys with parkour skills and some pretty good AI.
I'll let you discover the rest.

Long story short; you're not supposed to be Rambo saving the world. You can go toe to toe with pretty much anything in the game, but thats not the focus. You've got parkour skills to circumnavigate hot spots, tools to disuade attackers, traps to makes things easier. Fight or flight is your choice. See how long your resolve holds when the sun goes down...

Enjoy