Recent reviews by Mr. Cakes

I was so excited to play this game, but now I'm very disappointed with how it turned out. The overall look and feel of the game is pretty good. A lot of people were talking about the bad performance, yet I looked past it and wanted to try it out for myself. The reviews are right. My specs do not reach recommended, but are far past the minimum. Running the game on medium/low settings gives me really bad frame spikes down to the 20s and 30s, and randomly will go back to 50-60. The game freezes frequently for more than a couple seconds at a time. Rubberbanding is another really bad issue that happens, as it feels like I'm being flung around while I'm walking. Not only this, but the lighting will have a "flickering" effect when running at a certain angle, hurting my eyes. Best part is that I tried playing PVE five times and my game crashed every single time. I launched PvEvP, was able to experience about 10 minutes of what I described above. Until I was disconnected from the server and couldn't reconnect. The last time I attempted to join PvEvP my game crashed. The last straw for me though, was that whenever I launched the game after that final crash, I just get a black screen until the game closes itself after 10 seconds.

I understand this game is early access. But charging the amount that they do is pretty cruel for the experience you will most likely find. Not only this, but people are losing their entire inventories of gear (THAT THEY PAID FOR) when their game crashes. Gray Zone Warfare needs A LOT more time to bake in the oven. Honestly, it shouldn't have launched yet, maybe a couple months down the road, or lower the price of the game. $35 is a lot for an early access experience like this.

Either wait for a sale, or wait a couple months for a few major updates to change things. I want this game to succeed, as Tarkov needs competition. Right now though, GZW is far from a good competitor.

This game started out with the rockiest launch ever, making it one of the worst Battlefield games to date. However with numerous updates fixing many issues and adding a lot of content, this easily went from the worst to one of the best.

The attachment system in this game is, in my opinion, the best of any Battlefield game. Switching out attachments on the go is such a useful ability when you get into different situations. Vehicle customization has so much variety with stuff to switch out and change. 128 player battles is usually very hectic and feels like an all out war. At times however, it can be overwhelming depending on the map it chooses. Another cool feature is this tablet that can spawn in vehicles to use and it will drop them near you. Optimization has been better than ever before, where it runs at a steady framerate; obviously as long as the PC playing it fits the requirements. This game also suffered from a large, and I mean it without exaggerating, LARGE amount of bugs. From my experience lately, I've ran into next to no bugs. One of the more annoying ones I ran into when the game came out, was requirements for unlocks not tracking when you fulfill them. I'm very happy this was fixed and works as intended.

My current grips with the game are minimal things that do not ruin the experience for me. First is the ping system. I wish they stayed with the traditional system where you look at somebody and it pings them to teammates. Currently you mark an area where enemies are at. If you are Recon, you can mark enemies however; which does make sense. The second thing is how the servers work. From what I can tell, there isn't really a server browser for games when you search, mainly matchmaking. There is a browser for servers, however I do not know if it tracks your stats or not, as there are just a bunch of farm servers people make; which in my opinion bloats the browser. When you're on the official "servers", it doesn't just load up the next map when the game ends. It takes you back to the main menu and puts you in a search for another game.

There is also portal mode, which is a bit weird to me. I have not really given it a lot of playtime yet, so I can't speak much on it. Essentially though, it allows you to play older eras of Battlefield. It contains Bad Company 2 (my #1 BF game), BF3, and 1942. Each of these Era experiences has their own weapon selection from that game. I should mention as well, a lot of the weapons from previous Battlefield games can be used in 2042, giving you a large arsenal of weapons to choose from.

I have never played Hazard mode, so I cannot speak on that.

To be fair there is no excuse as to the game launching in the state it was in and demanding $70 for it. It was nearly unplayable with the plague of issues the game had. The reviews at the time speak for itself. It's sad this game was missing CORE features of previous Battlefield games. We have to give credit where it is due though. This state the game is in now, is how it should have been when it launched. It could have been ranked one of the best by a lot more people.

This game definitely came a long way from launch. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of Battlefield, along with people who are new to this franchise.

I've only been able to create three characters, all have made it to between 40-50. Two normal clears, one very agonizing Veteran clear. What I have to say below makes it very difficult to want to continue on in the game.

Sad to give this game a negative review, since I enjoyed most of my time with it. However, I am fed up with enemies scaling with you. I felt like I was doing okay from 1-10, but from 10 all the way to when I got to 40-50, it is quite a slog. You never have a feeling of increased power. You level up, get some sweet new gear, allocate your new skill points to something nice, then fighting an enemy feels EXACTLY the same, maybe even harder than before depending on the enemy and your level. I do not like level scaling in RPGs. It completely erases the feeling of getting stronger each level, with each better piece of armor/weapon, etc. And I know that each zone has a level bracket for how high enemies will scale with you, but I think it's too aggressive as to how high it can go. If you don't enjoy scaling, avoid the alternative Normal difficulty called Veteran. It's more for a hardcore player that wants more challenge. However, even though it is significantly harder to Normal, the rewards are not much better at all; making the risk//reward meaningless. Then once you're ready to move onto the next difficulty, get ready to deal with level scaling all over again in the next tier of level brackets. Only this time, enemies are EVEN harder and you feel EVEN weaker throughout leveling.

Skill point respeccing is frustrating too. Why do games require you to PAY to undo skills? You could be, say level 20. Up until that point you just had a random build you threw together. But at this point you want to try something completely different, begin to create a better build. Better fork over lots of iron (in-game currency) to undo each point. This almost discourages experimenting with different builds/playstyles.

It's a shame these are my biggest issues with the game. Of the ARPG's I've played, this is still one of the best. I love the atmosphere, I love the classes and the design that they have. The visuals from attacks and everything else is bright and vibrant, very nice to look at. The story is actually pretty good, albeit a little bit edgy. The developers did a great job with a lot in this game, there's just things that I personally have an issue with; but others may enjoy.

I've been looking forward to this game for a long time and I'm sad to refund it. The gameplay itself was... okay. I like the whole procedural generation of levels, along with the realism. The AI needs A LOT of work though. They have some of the strangest spawns, sometimes spawning in front of you when a mission starts. The game is mainly to be played co-op with friends. Good luck finding a good group in public matchmaking. And playing singleplayer, I come to find out that there are no bots with you. You are literally, all alone.

My biggest issue is the graphics and performance. I get major frame drops throughout the game, even on the lowest settings. Getting into a firefight and having your FPS drop to the 20s/30s is unplayable. The graphics themselves are another big issue to talk about. No matter the settings, the environment is just so blurry and fuzzy, like I'm looking through smeared goggles. This makes it nearly impossible to find any enemies that are further than like 10 feet away. You will end up dying immediately when moving somewhere since you can't see very well. I do not have the best PC rig out there, but it's beyond the recommendations for running the game. I have ran plenty of demanding games (more than this one), and do not have the same issues.

On sale, sure I'd say pick it up. For full price though, not at this time. It needs lots of work before it can be accepted at that price.

This has to be one of my favorite shooters of all time. Very immersive gameplay, with just enough realism where you keep coming back for more. You have the option to play either against bots or players.

PVE gameplay is very fun when played on hardcore. When playing the more casual PVE gamemodes, the bots are kind of dumb and don't work all that great. They'll group up in doorways, watch awkward angles, and sometimes not even shoot at you after looking your way. In hardcore, from my experience, AI seems a lot smarter and more threatening to play against. At times, the bots can feel "aimbotty", but it doesn't really ruin the game in my opinion. This gamemode alone is my most played and why I keep coming back. It is even better with friends. Now, to talk about PVP... oh boy.

PVP is a mixed bag and feels like it has been getting worse since I first bought this game a few years ago. Over the past few months up until the day of this review, it is nothing more than an annoying hide and seek game. What I mean, is that unless you can track exact footsteps (mind you footsteps aren't working the greatest in this game), you will die almost immediately when you go anywhere outside of your spawn. Most likely from someone camping in a building that is leaning in a window, headglitching behind a barrier almost a mile away, hiding on the edge of the map almost a mile away. If it's not that, the spamming of air support will kill you instead almost every time you spawn. There were a couple games that it was just back to back air support from the enemy team. I think I was stuck inside a building for over 5-10 minutes and couldn't move. All for a helicopter to somehow kill me by shooting at the roof. I understand camping can be a good playstyle when playing the objective; holding a point or watching it defensively. But it gets very annoying and just makes you quit the game when someone is just hiding in an awkward location that is nowhere near an objective. It's even better running out of a spawn and then dying by a random grenade that can't be heard landing on the ground near you, which could've been thrown from over a hundred different directions; over and over. I could mention how sweaty the PVP is when it's not being ruined by camping and constant dying when leaving spawn, where the players will play the game like esports call of duty.

PVP was never this bad a couple months, even a year or two ago. Occasionally you'd have a camper or two every game. You'd have that guy that hides on the edge of the map for some reason once in a while. But you could play the game and actually enjoy the fun PVP. Proximity chat is the only real redeeming factor here and remains to be one of the good things I can say about PVP. If you really do want to play it though, I'd recommend Frontline (attack/defend objectives) or Domination (cod-like gamemode). Avoid Push like the plague.

To summarize my review, I highly recommend this game for PVE (primarily hardcore) You'll have an immersive experience playing that and it even gets better on nighttime maps. I do not recommend this game if you are only looking for a fun PVP experience, as you may or may not find that here.

This and the underdome are probably the worst expansions of any game I have ever played.

The story and atmosphere of the map is.... meh. This isn't why it's the worst, nor is it because of the short story or that really unfair brain collecting missions. Currently level 46 on TVHM and I have somewhat decent gear that I can hold my own in when I do the regular content. Trying to kill enemies in this DLC and they are the biggest bullet sponges, even the common zombies. Not only this, but then you have defiler zombies that have some aim-bot accuracy at shooting acid balls at you to blind and stun you; meaning no moving or jumping. The tanking zombies are even worse, prepare to use ALL of your ammo on trying to kill one. Also doesn't help that in pretty much every area of this DLC besides safe zones, zombies can spawn. And when I mean spawn, it will literally spawn in like 10-15 of them out of nowhere to swarm you. Even better is when you start to kill them, they respawn more. For every one zombie, two more will spawn. From my experience, they spawn over and over so you get swarmed endlessly by spongy zombies.

The DLC's version of Rakks (I think they are called corpse hunters?) are one of the only enemies that aren't super annoying to fight. It does feel aggravating sometimes when a group aggros you from far away, you kill them, then another group aggros you from even further way, kill them too, then another... And it just goes on.

No vehicles, no waypoints, LOTS and LOTS of walking from area to area.


Highly recommend completely skipping this entire DLC. Claptrap and Knoxx are miles better than this and they are much more rewarding.

Here we go, time to talk about Serious Sam 4. Gotta say, even with all the hate this game received since it launched, I still grabbed it a few weeks ago to at least give it a try to see what I thought about it. Luckily, it was on sale. Even though I picked it up during a really good sale, I still feel scammed and like I wasted my money.

This game is definitely something else and no where near as good as TFE/TSE. Even SS3 is way better than this game. This game misses the mark in several areas that just make this difficult to play. For one, the biggest thing, optimization/performance. Not only, does the game stutter frequently, regardless of game settings (other reviews confirm this as well), textures pop in and out of objects when you look away from an object and look at another. I do not like how they tried so hard to make the game look realistic. Because of that, now everything just kind of looks, bland. I miss in the encounter games that it was more cartoony, like the game is supposed to be. SS3 is what started the realism graphics. But at least in SS3 the game actually looks like it’s done well.

This game has an awful, forced storyline. With bad, very bad, dialogue from the characters. It is, in fact so bad, I had to mute the voices of all characters, turn off subtitles, and skip every cinematic due to how unbearable the humor is. It's just about as bad as Borderlands 3 when it comes to the story and the humor of the characters. Its horrible.

From a gameplay standpoint, it's just... barely good. It doesn't feel like a SS game, but more like it's trying to be like just another uninspired and unoriginal FPS games on the market; typically the most popular ones with the least innovation. Skip this game entirely and just play TFE/TSE/SS3. Those games are miles better than this one in almost every way. The only thing SS4 seems to do right is the visuals, and even that I don’t care much for, but that’s more of a subjective opinion; so I’ll give them that. I own Serious Sam Fusion 2017, which includes those three games, workshop support for custom content, and even VR compatibility. Even if you get the classic SS games, they feel way more in line as a SS title than SS4 does.

TL:DR
Do not buy unless its on a sale for 50% off or more. Better yet, skip it and purchase TFE/TSE/SS3.

A classic that I've put hundreds of hours into since the game came out. I personally think SC2 is the best SC game, skirmish and story-wise. It's the the polished, smooth flowing game of the three. The downside of it unfortunately, after playing SC:FA, it does not have as much content as FA. But that's alright though. Still a solid game nonetheless with tons of tools to play around with. The only other downside I can think of is that the multiplayer is almost nonexistent. You can "sometimes" find games, but mostly you'll be playing with bots in skirmish. Which I personally always do.

By far the best RTS Base/Army building game I've ever played. Super complex at first, but it gets much easier and becomes muscle memory the more you practice. Often, you'll be commanding literally hundreds of troops, sometimes traversing between other planets and moons. You can even create your own solar system to play on, who wouldn't love that?

I am a giant fan of RTS games and this one in particular scratches that itch the best. Worth every penny. The only downside is that the multiplayer isn't super popular, but I have lots of fun with bots.

Very addictive RTS game. Has a complex learning curve compared to other games like Supcom, C&C, and PA:T. It poses quite a challenge to new players of the game including myself, whether you are familiar with these types of games or not. Has a lot of resource management, but it is not overwhelming and quite balanced. The amount of upgrades you can obtain for each game are vast. I would not recommend this for people that only like very fast games. Games can take up a good full hour, or even more than that depending on how you play.