Recent reviews by HeroGerik

Simply put, this game is awesome and worth a playthrough! If you love action sci-fi and cyberpunk then this is right up your alley! My review is coming from the perspective of playing solo on standard difficulty. I completed every side quest, optional activity, and the main story in ~25 hours and hit level 30. The fact that you can do local or online Co-Op is a huge plus in my eyes and I really want to do a playthrough with a friend!

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• Great visuals and aesthetic style. Special effects really pop. Ambiance really sells to you that you're in a cyberpunk environment.
  
• Killer soundtrack and audio. The music ramps up during combat and gives you that "Doom" feeling as you're duking it out with druggies, cyborgs, and corpos.
  
• Combat is fast paced and satisfying. Lots of fun "toys" at your disposal for your flatlining needs from crazy guns to augmentations and tactical equipment.
  
• Simple to understand game mechanics. No overly long tutorial. You're shooting and looting within a minute of beginning the game. While some might see this as a con, this game is perfect for hopping in and just playing without needing a spreadsheet and min-maxing to have fun.
  
• Exploration rewards you with lots of goodies.
  
• New game+ is an option. Enemies actually gain new behaviors which is neat to see since the boring way to increase difficulty is usually just a bump in HP and Damage output. I'll likely see how the game plays with maxed out gear against tougher enemies.
  
• Cosmetics for your character and your guns are a nice little touch. You can respec your stat points and redo your looks (and even your gender) at any time for a small fee.

• LOTS of backtracking. If this bothers you then you might not enjoy this game as that's what you end up doing for half the quests. However, in the backtracking process you will often open up new areas you couldn't access before at the same time.
  
• The damage type system is hardly explained at all when it's actually quite important to your survival! There are 4 types of damage in the game: Kinetic, Fire, Energy, and Digital. Depending on the enemies you're fighting, certain types of damage do significantly more damage to them than others. Red is ineffective, white is normal, yellow is both Crit and effective. (weird right? I wish they had split those two into their own colors)
  
• The only weapon that deals digital damage (super effective against robots and turrets) was locked behind a pre-order incentive and is still locked and not available to anyone else at this point in the game's life span. Why is this important? No other weapon in the game deals digital damage! Only some tactical equipment and one augmentation helps you in that regard. It's not a game breaking issue, just an annoyance since in the end game you're fighting literal legions of robots and turrets.
  
• Story is very simple and there's a lot of things just left up to your imagination. Look elsewhere if you want a deep and engaging story.

My personal rig at the time of this review is as such:

• 9900k @5Ghz
  
• 32GB RAM @3600Mhz
  
• 2TB NVMe SSD
  
• RTX 3080
  
• 1440p screen

The game is absolutely gorgeous with maxed out settings, but unless you have a fairly decent rig, you might have to turn some settings down. While exploring the combat areas, you'll have decent FPS. The second you run around the non-combat areas of the game which have the highest concentration of NPCs and stuff on screen, you'll see significant FPS drops.

For me, with all settings set to High or Ultra, I ran around 120-140 FPS during combat. In non-combat zones and during load screens I would immediately drop into the 50-70 FPS range. While the sharp changes in FPS might be jarring for some, it didn't really bother me or affect my gameplay at all.

All in all I would definitely recommend this game! It has a lot of great elements to it that made me come back always looking forward to my next play session. It shows a lot of promise and I will definitely be looking forward to an Expansion or story DLC. A bigger and better sequel would also be great to see. If you've actually bothered to read my whole review to the end here's a fun nugget of info for you: Watch the credits. There is an additional scene at the end that opens up a lot of possibilities ;)

Greedfall is a surprisingly well-crafted game that will definitely satisfy the Action/RPG crowd out there. It has an engaging and winding story that definitely is worth exploring. While only a AA-quality game made by a minor dev team/publisher, you can really tell they had a love and passion for Greedfall they made! I'll quickly list some of the things I enjoyed or did not enjoy about the game:

PROS:

• Story telling.
  
• World building.
  
• Environments and set pieces.
  
• RPG elements, while simple compared to others, were satisfying enough to make me want to experiment between the 3 main archetypes and the 3 additional sub-types.
  
• Pseudo-open world exploration. Not completely linear, but not completely open either. You are, however, rewarded for exploring the various sections of the island for treasure and gear.
  
• Companions were all engaging, had depth, and I ended up becoming invested in all their stories.
  
• The islander's language is completely unique and was made for this game.
  
• Reputation system with factions and companions.
  
• With the exception of boss/mini-bosses, fights are quick violent affairs that can be ended in a matter of seconds with the right combo of moves/skills. This lends itself to a feeling more grounded and "realistic-ish".

NEUTRAL:

• Came for the combat, stayed for the story and worldbuilding.

CONS:

• Combat is a little too easy. If you want any sort of challenge at all, I highly recommend you start at Hard and work your way up from there. Once you hit around level 20 you start to feel like an unstoppable killing machine. I ended my completionist playthrough at level 40 and ended up with tons of excess skill points I had no use for.
  
• Questing involves a LOT of backtracking. Thankfully there are lots of fast travel points, but these only make it tolerable instead of downright annoying.
  
• Final act in the game feels rushed. The build up through the whole game is slow and methodical, in a good way, then BOOM it's all over just like that?
  
• There needed to be more consequences to the choices you make during main and side quests. Yes there is a rep system, but they could have leaned into it more.
  
• The cities and villages felt barren. Yes there were NPCs living there and there's a day/night cycle that changes things slightly but I felt they really could have done more to make these locations feel alive.

MY PERSONAL RATING: 7.5/10
Anything above a 6/10 in my personal rating is worth buying, however I did wait for Greedall (and its DLC) to go on sale before making the plunge. I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this game. I do recommend picking up its 2 DLC as they add some great early-game QoL items, a whole new area of the island to explore, and 6 new unique weapons.

Mass Effect is one of those franchises that you just have to play at some point in your life! If you enjoy Sci-Fi, Space, Futuristic type games that have great world building and story telling then I can't recommend the Mass Effect Legendary Edition enough! This epic space opera sits comfortably in my Top Ten Games/Franchises of all Time. I do a yearly playthrough of the trilogy because I'm just so enthralled by it still after all these years. The Legendary Edition hits all the right boxes for a RE-MASTER:

• Updated visuals/textures/models/FX (keep your expectations realistic though, this is NOT a RE-MAKE)
  
• Performance enhancements
  
• Quality of life improvements
  
• Improved audio
  
• All extra content/DLC together in one place (with one very minor exception, but it's honestly not a big deal)

One of the best parts of Mass Effect is the way your choices matter and how they can affect the people and world around you. Your choices even carry through each of the 3 games if you import your save file from one to the next. It's really awesome to see all the things, both little and big, that change when you do that. You can really see how Mass Effect pioneered a lot of various things we have come to expect in our games even today.

Now, obviously I've been rather unabashed in my admiration for these games, but they are not perfect by any means. These games are linear experiences with lots of points of "no return". Many locations are single-use without the ability to go back (which is a shame because the locales in the game are gorgeous) so if you miss something like an upgrade then you're outta luck. If you don't enjoy 3rd-person cover-shooters then you might not enjoy these games as all the combat revolves around this mechanic.

Mass Effect 1 is quite dated in many of its core gameplay mechanics. The shooting is noticeably mediocre, inventory management is anemic, and lets not get started on the handling of the Mako dropship....even the ME:LE version improvements still couldn't get that beast under control! Yes you can "explore" planets, but they almost all look the same just with a different color and are mostly lifeless empty wastelands.

Mass Effect 2 is a big shift in game design and significantly waters down the RPG and "build" aspects of the game that ME1 had. As a trade off, the shooting and movement is much better and feels like a proper action game. The ship fuel and mining probe mechanics are annoying and really only exist as a credits dump.

Mass Effect 3 is a fair compromise between ME1 and ME2 and brings back a little bit of ME1's RPG elements, but is still more of an action game than true RPG. ME3 takes what made ME2 awesome and refines it into something even better! However, the war board mechanic is annoying as you need to get it to 100% in order to get the best ending(s). Some new enemy types in this game can insta-kill or chain stun-lock you over and over if you're not careful about your positioning. I know that is a part of the game, but when you're playing on harder difficulties it can make some fights overly frustrating. Finally, my last gripe:

THERE IS NO MULTIPLAYER HORDE MODE IN ME3, I REPEAT, NO MULTIPLAYER!

This to me is a huge oversight as ME3's multiplayer mode was such a sleeper hit! No one expected it to be good, which is exactly why it was so good! Supporting up to 4 players, you could customize game modes, difficulty, enemy types, objectives, game length, etc etc. It had a fairly robust race-base character class system with over three dozen playable classes and sub-classes to choose from. Many of these were really cool because they aren't even available to Shepherd in the main game! All the weapons from the franchise were available to be used and even came with a (albeit rudimentary) mod system. It would honestly hold up even by today's standards as there was lots of progression and unlocks to work through while slaying hordes of enemies. There were rumors of a tweet by Bioware saying that if there was enough interest raised about it and if the ME:LE sold well, they'd look into adding it back in to ME3. Take it with a grain of salt, but I'd love to see that happen.

TL;DR
With all that said, again, I cannot recommend this trilogy enough. It's a complete package and will keep you entertained for many many hours. The epic story is easily one of the best sci-fi settings in gaming history with its vast lore, engaging characters, and thriving environments. The remasters of these games bring it up to today's standards while still retaining their original feel. Having all the extra content/DLC in one place makes this a no-brainer purchase.

To keep things simple, this game is FUN! If you were to describe Destiny 2 as an FPS with abilities, Outriders is an ability game with guns to fill the spaces between cooldowns. Despite this, there are also tons of really sick guns, armor, and mods to collect and mix and match! If you like creating builds then this game has you covered with a pretty decent mod system that isn't overly complicated.

The story is linear, fights take place in "arenas", and most of the areas to explore have only 2-3 branching paths at any given time that ultimately always come back together however, this never bothered me as that's not this game's focus. Honestly it was refreshing to not play yet ANOTHER open-world game again. Once you beat the campaign there's actually a lot to do afterwards still in the form of expeditions that scale harder and harder for better and better loot. I like they they're all unique locations too, nothing is reused from the campaign.

I played 3/4 classes solo with the 4th doing co-op with a buddy. Full cross-play between all platforms is awesome! The game dynamically scales its difficulty based on your party size. Loot is instanced so no worries about people stealing anything from you. If you enjoyed Remnant: From the Ashes at all, (which is another fantastic game similar to this one) then you're gonna enjoy Outriders.

As much as I do enjoy this game it's not perfect and there are several QoL improvements I wish would happen, things like:

• the compass and map being confusing
  
• voice acting is either fantastic or pretty bad, no consistency
  
• various minor bugs like progression soft locks, certain bosses/quest targets not loading in, etc

PCF (People Can Fly, the dev team) made a pretty solid first entry into a brand new IP and I really hope we'll see more Outriders in the future, be it expansion content to this game or an Outriders 2! My person rating would be a solid 7.5/10 and definitely worth picking up on sale!

If you enjoy hero-shooters in the vein of TF2 and Overwatch, you'll immediately enjoy Paladins! If you haven't or are on the fence about this style of team-oriented hero-based FPS, you should still give it a try because its FREE! What's not to like about that??

While this is a bold statement, I make it on purpose and with full confidence: Paladins is a better game than Overwatch! Here are a few reasons why:

Hero Diversity:
With 50 heroes (or champions) to choose from there's a very good chance you'll end up really enjoying at least a dozen of them. While some are your typical archetypes like "Old man with an AR" or "Little person inside a mech suit", there is a large amount that are unique to Paladins and make the game really fun!

Actual Character Builds:
Unlike Overwatch, there is a 2-part system in Paladins that allows you to tweak how you play your champion. Talents and Loadouts can majorly change how a support plays, possibly turning them into a DPS hybrid, or making a Tank champion into an off-support, etc. In the beginning of a match you get to pick a Talent and a Loadout for your champion. Talents work as a large playstyle change while Loadouts act more as small changes further honing in on that exact way you want to play. You can create your own custom Loadouts for a champion via a neat card deck system.

In-Match Items:
To offset the fact that you're locked into a champion the whole match once you choose (choices have weight, a plus in my book!), you can buy items while in spawn that can further affect your playstyle. These temporary items can be bought with credits that are awarded for doing things in a match. Getting kills/eliminations, playing the objective, performing role-based tasks like healing, absorbing damage, etc, are all methods to earn them. The items vary in scope from things like life steal, resistance to crowd control, faster movement speed, ability to see cloaked/invisible enemies and everything in between.

Here are a few more pluses that I enjoy about Paladins:

CROSSPLAY
Dedicated servers
Anti-cheat
Ways to earn skins/cosmetics for free
Fair and rewarding seasonal battle pass
Regular updates and balance changes
Bot/Practice matches, Casuals, Ranked modes
Firing/Practice Range

Hopefully something I said above has piqued your interest because you'll quickly discover there's a surprisingly deep game to be had in Paladins. It's criminally underrated! I know I've been nothing but positive so far, so let me share just a few cons from my personal experience. I've had random crashes and bugs that can be as harmless as a visual glitch or serious like an ability just plain not working at all.

Playing solo is totally fine, but this game, as with many, is MUCH MUCH more fun with friends, so grab a buddy (or 4) and head on into Paladins and see if you end up enjoying this game as much as I have come to in my 100+ hours so far. I look forward to my next 100 and hopefully beyond!

If you enjoy FPS or Rougelike games, then this is a match made in heaven as it's the best of both worlds! The art style is immediately Borderlands-esque with the cell shading and thick outlines, but that actually makes it look pretty while being simple. The game runs great as it has minimal spec requirements. Movement and gunplay is fast and smooth with tons of cool guns to use and unlock. The developers are very active and make frequent bug fix and content updates.

There's a ton of replay value here as every run plays out differently and is completely affected by what drops for you as you progress. There are 7 currently available characters, all of which have a unique playstyle that is fun and synergizes well in CO-OP. Wait, did I just say CO-OP???? Yes, I did! Best of all, Gunfire supports up to 4 players and the game's difficulty scales with the size of your party which is a slick mechanic. Honestly the only thing that would make the CO-OP even better is the ability to be cross-platform but I'm not aware of any plans to put this on Xbox or Playstation just yet.

Overall, for the cheap price, what you're getting is a surprisingly deep and pretty addicting rougelike fps game that pulls elements from some of the best games in either genre. You won't be disappointed giving this a try!

While not quite as large in scale or fine in polish as its sequel, the first in the Total War: Warhammer trilogy of games is a smashing success none the less! If you want "Old World" Warhammer matchups, lore/canon conflicts, or just enjoy the fantasy setting, you're in for a treat! CA has done a great job in translating a lot of what makes the tabletop game so fun and epic into their own tried and true formula for a hybrid strategy war game.

One of the very best RPG games I've ever played! Easily on my Top 10 of all time! Great story, music, atmosphere, character progression, gameplay mechanics; you name it and it has it in spades! D:OS2 improves on its predecessor in meaningful and delightful ways. I can personally guarantee you that you will not be sorry picking this game up. Anyone who loves fantasy rpg anything will come to appreciate how much of a treasure this game is. My only caution is that if you're looking for a quick-paced jaunt, this is not for you. The turn-based nature of combat and length of the main story make this a nice enjoyable slow burn.

Do you love:

Turn-based strategy?
Real-time strategy?
Epic battles?
Lore-rich fantasy setting?
4X style management games?

If you said yes to even one of these then this game is worth your time! Infinitely repeatable with lots of varied faction variety and a unique campaign map layout, TW:WH2 is easily one of the best Total War games CA has ever made.

JUST ONE MORE TURN!!! MUST GET THIS THING BUILT!

That is what this game will do to you. You grow to love your little civilization as it gets larger and more powerful, only to end up hating that douche named Ghandi because he dropped nukes on half your cities!