Recent reviews by DuoX

Short lived albeit amusing gimmick, then the game expects far more effort than it's worth. Focuses on combat far too much for a game ultimately lacking a combat system.

Days Gone is a Zombie Survival game where you ride around on a motorcycle throughout fictional Oregon (not quite based on the actual state), fighting various marauders, cultists, and of course, "Zombies".

This game was a disappointment. It promises a lot, but fails to grow any of the seeds it plants, and bogs you down with a story that isn't good enough to be as long as it is. Let's break it down.

The weapons are fun, since it gives you a nice selection of guns, and if you complete a lot of the side stuff you get some really diverse toys. As with any game of this type, it will ultimately be enjoyable to travel around an open world, do missions for various camps, and build up the trust to buy new gear. This is standard fare, and is the only real enjoyable part of the game. The Zombie hordes you fight during missions are enjoyable, and the story is... well it's complicated. it's good enough to enjoy for a play through, despite the fact it deserves a lot of criticism.

Now let’s get to the bad. The first major flaw is the story. While the overall structure of the story allows for the game play to be mildly enjoyable, many found it to be a slog for several good reasons. For starters, the dialogue is abysmal. It feels like Bend just had an intern write the dialogue, and everyone but the main character phones it in. It also has terrible pacing. It's one thing to have several fetch quests for side missions, but not as the main story. There’s no real direction, the story doesn’t seem to focus on a character’s progression or conclusion of major conflicts, and only gets interesting after heading south to Crater Lake. However, even that is spoiled by an anti-climactic ending that doesn’t let you enjoy the boss fights as much as it just shows you the bosses being defeated. It’s not very rewarding considering how they set up these foils for the main character and give little payoff. The conclusion of the story is that your loved ones become taxidermy people sitting on your porch while you finish collecting and killing for your 100% completion (which you don't even get an achievement for).

The progression of character skills and abilities is lacking. The game wants to make you weak in the beginning and earn your right to fight a horde. It's an interesting concept, albeit not a new one, but it's executed poorly. More part and parcel gameplay, taking from you basic abilities to make you re-obtain them. While they make you climb and grind to be able to fight hordes, they introduce endless bullet sponge special zombies who will more annoy than challenge you, and multiple enemies that make no sense to vex you through game play. When you looked at this game, did you think "Man, I can't wait to get jumped by wolves, mountain lions, and laser target snipers”? Probably not, but they will haunt you worse than any zombie horde. The enemies and skill progression are just lazy copies of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry.

The hordes are really the biggest disappointment for me. This is what attracted me to the game, and they just don’t live up. The lumber yards and truck-filled mass graves are only really used in the few story missions that need them, otherwise you fight hordes in the wilderness. Their AI makes them fan out, and without the proper terrain, all those bombs and traps are pretty lackluster. Why they chose to make you fight most of the hordes out in the wilderness where you can’t take advantage of anything but “run and gun” is beyond me. It makes the hordes easy but repetitious. They are always right on your ass and fan out like a football time trying to tackle you, which leaves no room for the advanced tactics and funneling them into choice kill zones. The main attraction of this game is fundamentally broken.

This game was ok. It's not necessarily as bad as I make it sound, I just felt the game lied big time in its advertising about what it was. It is Assassin's Creed: Zombies, not a true Zombie survival or destruction game. What I would have given for a flamethrower, katana, RPG, SOMETHING other than runnin' and gunnin'. The potential squandered here is remarkable. If you get the itch, don't pay full price. It's not worth more than $20 on sale.

Go big or go home, and this game is definitely going home. Enjoy (Or don't) Days Gone.

0 Tom Cruise scenes.

Cool story amazing visuals, but add me to the small pile of people who simply couldn't get past the combat. Twice I've played this game and quit about a quarter of the way in because I get ruthlessly manhandled by the game.

Indy games have no chill.

A glitchy econ manager pretending to be an RTS game.

The Banner Saga 3 is a choice based survival narrative game using a grid system for combat and the sequel to The Banner Saga 2. This is the third and final game in a trilogy that tells a complete story across all three games, with this installment containing chapters sixteen through twenty two.

Well, here we are at the final act. Bolverk has returned from the dead on behalf of the Serpent, the King has locked the gates, and the darkness is falling. The setting is bleak, with the great Serpent lurking in the shadows, waiting to end all of the world. A siege begins at the gates of Arberrang, and tenuous allies embark on a desperate mission to try and save this broken land. As with the last game, you can import save files from the previous game, so you may continue on the epic story as you had been all along, with your choices intact.

This game really knew how to change things up for the third act. In this game, the survival mechanics and decision making aspects are applied to surviving inside a siege, instead of a traveling caravan as with the last two games. You are now facing an entirely new enemy force, and old enemies and allies alike will have to join together under your Banner to defeat them and outlive the darkness enveloping the land. While the actual act of decision making in the game is fundamentally the same, the decisions you make will be altered by the inner circle politics of the capital city and how they will affect your capability to hold out later in the game. Midway through the game, you will receive a breakdown of how long the city will last with the moral, resources, and choices you’ve made all be added into a score which determines your hold out time.

Combat is the same for the most part, but it begins to show some of its flaws in execution in the third installment. The clunky maneuverability and inability to change perspective does get a bit old, and while this is a problem in the previous games, it wasn’t until this game that I noticed it so consistently. The combat adds a new layer in this third act, with the ability to flee or fight at the end of some combat scenarios, giving you the choice to swap out healthy heroes for injured ones so you can pursue extra rewards. I like that this game's ranking system added titles where the other games didn’t, to add that little hint of finality to this game’s story.

At times, the game felt a little more tedious than the previous two, with a bit too much focus on shifting between the two groups you control too often. It’s hard to want to spend time getting to know a side character or support hero late into chapter 20 when you know the game’s end is right around the corner. It’s the only time in all three games I skipped dialogue, simply because the old man’s story about how he learned to draw owls wasn’t compelling enough to distract me from the world ending scenario.

Despite the few flaws, this is a solid game experience and a very compelling exit to the trilogy. I was content with the ending I received, but who knows, maybe your experience won’t be the same. And that’s the beauty. It’s an epic story that lets you tell it as you like it. Visually stunning and narratively compelling, enjoy The Banner Saga 3!

BROKEN

This is another game you buy for a low price on steam, think it will be all cheeky and fun, then end up disappointed that the game doesn't work right. This thing lags badly, and despite my best efforts and time spent on various fixes found online, it still refuses to work.

Real bummer, my kid wanted to play it and got rooked.

Parkitect is a building sim akin to Planet Coaster or it’s spiritual predecessor, Roller Coaster Tycoon. In this game, you build and manage a theme park to either ruin or success by managing a combination of rides, concessions and personnel in an effort to maintain the park's value and appeal.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward, with a short tutorial that is more than adequate for filling you in to all the interface’s ins and outs. Parkitect uses a grid layout which is practically identical to Roller Coaster Tycoon, laying down paths and buildings in easy to manage spacing and alignment. Management of the park is functionally the same as well, with personnel who maintain various aspects of the parks, various ride types that balance off of each other according to excitement and thrills, and concessions that keep your patrons happy and sated. Janitors and Security wander around to keep the park clean, while Haulers and Mechanics maintain your various attractions. You must find the balance between all these aspects to maintain optimal park efficiency.

Customization of rides and attractions are fairly in depth despite the minimalist approach. Sometimes while building various structures to house food or souvenir stands, I find myself looking for a few more 3D assets in an attempt to polish off some of the finish touches. However, the pieces given to you for custom construction along with a full color spectrum pallet allow for some pretty imaginative and appealing attraction building. Walls and roofs have plenty of pieces for all kinds of building types, clipping and overlap are pretty forgiving on most pieces, and the track rides have extremely flexible placement options and are far more forgiving about finding the station's elevation upon completing the track. The experience has been very forgiving and rewarding, and I find myself looking to scrap a ride or building very rarely compared to older games of the same type. While the building system has some shortcomings, such as paths becoming hard to see when building more paths above or below them, the ability to drag and drop so easily normally helps to bypass these shortcomings. Just go onto the community page and look at some of the stuff people build. The system may be simple but it allows for so much, which is the sweet spot in game design.

There are only two game modes to access: Campaign and Sandbox. Campaign offers interesting challenges in park building, taxing your ability to manage the parks profitability and build rides with limited time, funds, rides, or even parks with strange layouts and designs. Each mission has its own uniqueness to it, with some of them paying homage to the game's spiritual predecessor. If you purchase the deluxe edition or the Taste of Adventure DLC, you will gain access to an entire other campaign, making for a total of 36 challenges. While there is extra appeal for completionists to get all the gold medals, you can also simply complete the maps to make them available in Sandbox mode. There, you can choose to turn on or off research, funds, or objectives, and play in a completely free and creative setting. If you have not unlocked any maps from the campaign, no worries, as you are given a decent amount of parks to play in sandbox regardless.

Overall, I’d say parkitect has been a near perfect gaming experience, with only a few minor flaws not worth nitpicking. Whether you are a weathered veteran of the RTC series, sim builders in general, or are completely new to the experience, you will find plenty of content and enjoyment to sink your teeth into. Enjoy Parkitect!

Every single other NFS is better.

Star Wars is another Star Wars created by Star Wars for the sake of making money off Star Wars. You have lasers and lightsabers and all the stuff this franchise cannot exist without.

Basically it’s a platformer with very basic fighting mechanics and a focus on obstacles and puzzles. The story centers around yet another white boy Jedi who didn’t know they were a white boy Jedi finding out they are, in fact, a white boy Jedi. The story is convenient and tidy so you can always play in the Star Wars universe and never affect it.

I didn’t play this game for very long before I got a refund. The game is heavily focused on puzzles, climbing, and fetch quests. God, the climbing. Like, the first 20 minutes of the game is 3 minutes story, 2 minutes fighting, 15 minutes climbing. Why? Is that really what they think people wanted? Worse still, are they really correct in their guess? I mean, there is so much to offer from Star Wars, so many types of shooters and RPGs and interesting games they could make, and we got another Tomb Raider chassis with a different frame slapped on?

The combat was bad. And not in an opinion subjective kinda bad, but in a they got the timing all screwed up kinda way. It’s painfully obvious they didn’t get it right, with nothing connecting fluidly even though the animations and sounds heavily imply they should. I died many times trying to master the block and counter system in the first encounter against a couple Stormtroopers, and finally advanced when I realized bypassing the system and exploiting position / melee range to my advantage instead was a better choice. Then you fight the stupid boss, and it’s basically a quicktime event. Just, BLECH!

But the real kicker was the puzzle. Nuh uh. No way. I got off the first world (Say, Memba’ Star Destroyas?), walk into that weird basement, and there’s a stupid orb you have to figure out how to use force powers to push into a sort of sling and catch puzzle. The complete and total rip off that it was of Tomb Raider was so complete, I figured, why not just go play Tomb Raider? I promptly uninstalled and got my money back. Somewhere in the depths of space, Cal is still climbing, climbing, climbing, and climbing.

So in closing, I will just say the Star Wars community should learn to not be so loyal to a franchise that will not deliver the same love in return.