Recent reviews by Dick Trampolini

Scott PIlgrim EX is a game that is as mixed bag as mixed bags can get.

I picked the game up as a massive fan of the first game, with it being a core part of my childhood. I can't say I replay it all the time, but I sank hours into the original, playing it through multiple times on the Xbox 360.

When I heard that a new game was coming out, I'd say that I was quite excited, especially considering the importance of the original to me, however truthfully I'd say that after playing it through that it's not worth the price tag it's sold at, not in the slightest.

THE GOOD:
- The art is amazing, as is the soundtrack. This shouldn't surprise anyone who's familiar with Paul Robertson or Anamanaguchi's work, but both OST and visuals are phenominal, with characters showing amazing amounts of depth and characterisation in their animations, this extends to the environments which are similarly beautiful and varied across areas.

- Tribute nailed the Netcode, this game runs smooth with other players online and I didn't experience any slowdowns or lag when I played, this is definitely a massive improvement over the re-release of the first game which suffered through Ubisoft's awful servers and Ubisoft Connect

- Combat feels fluid and enjoyable with regular enemies. The combat feels very similar if not inspired by the original, with hits and attacks feeling satisfying to land.

THE BAD:

Unfortunately, this section is a bit bigger than the good. While Scott PIlgrim EX is a fantastic looking and sounding game, the real meat and potatoes of the game is where real issues start to show.

- Map traversal feels clunky due to the perspective of the game, with running being far faster than moving up or down. I am unsure if this is common in titles of this genre but it felt like a stark change from the original. Movement goes between too fast on a linear plane to aggrevatingly slow when moving up or down.

- Balance of items, health and assists is completely busted. I played the game on normal on my own and Hard with friends, but in both difficulties there is a clear metagame and a method to unfortunately cheesing the game outside of grinding stats (Young Neil Assist getting particular mention here for making jokes of all of the bosses and rendering even airborne bosses moot, this paired with Gideon's strong moveset made the game fall completely flat). The grind for money for healing items and purchases to get the achievements tied to getting all badges and eating all available food is also a complete bore. You're essentially required to either save the money earned through quests or grind enemies for pennies around the map, constantly walking in and out of areas to reset encounters. Towards the end of the game this became all too present, not to mention the few times I did die before finding the strategy to get through most of the game. I understand that grinding in any game will render a lot of the difficulty rather pointless, though I feel that the progression of difficulty was not substantial in response to even the most nominal of character strength. Fighting level 1 enemies and fighting endgame bosses feels entirely the same.

- This game is short, like INCREDIBLY SHORT. I ended up losing my first save to a gamebreaking bug (we'll get to that) and reset with a new character. Getting to where I was after 2 hours of my initial playthrough took less than 1 and a half, and finishing the game without going for bonus content would not take someone more than 4 hours with no prior knowledge. I don't remember the original being this short, but if it was then it was at least replayable - the nature of the game's progression and style makes it far less replayable as well, which is saddening considering the achievement to beat the game with each character.

- This game is unpolished, and it's not uncommon to find gamebreaking bugs. One particular bug of note was softlocking encounters by dying at the same time that an encounter finishes. This caused the event to finish however would prevent any progression, requiring completely resetting the profile. This in combination with a bug found in multiplayer that forced everyone to leave the game left me feeling as if the entire experience was more focused on visuals than anything else.

IN CONCLUSION:

Scott Pilgrim EX is a fun game for fans, but not at all worth the £25 cost of admission. It's an inferior beat-em-up compared to it's predecessor and feels a bit like Tribute slapped it together to cash in on the hype of the Netflix series rather than focus on the game itself. It's got amazing visuals and music, so much so that I'd say the OST rivals the original, however the gameplay is incredibly shallow.

I'll be updating this review once I 100% and beat the game on NG+, however I don't feel my outlook will change too much.

“We’ve made it clear that PayDay 2 will have no microtransactions whatsoever (shame on you if you thought otherwise!)”
- overkill.

they did add microtransactions. rip...



This was a review left back in 2015, or around the time when pay to win mechanics were added to this game, luckily enough that was long ago now and they have since been removed.

Now, Payday 2 is not a realistic game, it's more fun with friends than anything else, requires a good bit of research into builds before really getting into higher difficulties and still requires a good bit of DLC to get the ball rolling, but it's a game I'd put on par with Left 4 Dead in terms of pure co-op fun, heavily recommended.