Recent reviews by KiriPSX

ODST just oozes atmosphere and vibes, carrying over the Halo 3 gameplay and letting you explore the effects that the War with the Covenant had on just one city on Planet Earth.

While the gameplay is mostly just copy-paste Halo 3 with some new weapons, this game tells a smaller-scale story that puts you into the shoes of a Shock Trooper that is just stuck in a City full of enemies and trying to make sense of where the hell your Squad has gone.

All of this is backed with a wonderful musical score made up of tons of Jazz.

The only nitpick I have with ODST is that even though it takes place at a time ||before the Covenant Civil War||, there sadly still are no Elites in this game and you are fighting Brutes instead of them ;_;

Halo 3 finishes the fight.

A bombastic finale to the original trilogy of Halo games, while not as grand in scope as Halo 2 or as fun as Halo CE (Due to Elites mostly being replaced with Brutes as enemies, which are nowhere near as fun to fight imo) it makes up for it in terms of generally...everything?

One of my friends hotly anticipated what I thought of Halo 3 and would hype me up for it as I made my way through each game, sending me marketing material for it here and there and I just have to say: I wish I was a Halo fan back in the day when this game came out.

The vibes that this game produced before and after its release were immaculate. You had live action trailers where the war against the Covenant was told as a documentary and "Veterans" of the war interviewed, and weapons of said war being shown off (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40jdpzrpIps). Or you had videos of people going to stores, buying a bunch of Doritos and Mountain Dew only to then line up at a GameStop to buy the game, then get home and set up a living room to play the game together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVkGtVJVYps).

I really lament not being there back in the day cause I was neither from the US, nor an Xbox fan. Halo simply never had the biggest appeal here in Europe (Which is still true today seeing as when I queue for Multiplayer on MCC, the majority of my matches put me into US servers)

Oh yeah. Halo 3 Multiplayer.
It is perfect, perfect, down to the last minute detail. It is Halo in every way and I can see why so many people have spent AGES on this game back in the day.
You can just boot this game up, play a few rounds of Slayer (BR in my case) and turn the game off again, no harm done, no FOMO Battlepass, no shiny lootboxes and everything is unlocked ingame! What a novel concept in 2025 that playing a game that rewards you for your playtime rather than the amount of times you swiped your credit card is just...Nice.

Halo 4 is notable in the Master Chief Collection for not only being the start of the ruination of the Halo series, but also for being the ONLY game in this otherwise phenomenal set of games that has softlocked me not once, but TWICE on the same Mission (Reclaimer), forcing me to restart the Mission multiple times to replay it for several times...

Between the monotonous gameplay, the annoying Knight enemies and the boring dog-like enemies, these things compouned ontop of eachother almots mad me stop playing the game until I found out I was close to the end.

Couple that with the unnecessary introduction of Forerunners/Prometheans into the story and it just kinda feels like 343 tried to just try to do something new, but in the wrong way...

The Forerunners didn't need to come back to the now. It was perfectly fine for them to be a mystery, something long gone and forgotten whose constructions and actions echo into the present. But instead they now serve as a lackluster replacement for the Covenant as the main antagonist who shows up a total of TWO TIMES in the entire campaign. This antagonist isn't built up, hell, we never even learn his NAME for crying out loud.

On top of that the artstyle of the Halo series just got completely ruined with the addition of the new enemies and weapon types. It is just a mishmash of clashing aesthetics all throughout.

What ended up carrying this story is the relationship between Chief and Cortana and if it wasn't for that, I would've dropped the game.

The finale, even though it was a bunch of quick time events and not even a fight, was still worth experiencing, though it left a lot of questions open which I believe were answered in Halo 5? I dunno I sadly cannot play that game since its stuck on a last gen console that I don't plan on buying...

If you're wondering whether to play this or the Unbeatable Demo that just released, go with the Demo.

Unbeatable [white label] is an older Demo, looks a bit less refined than the current Demo, but still has the same banger music.

This is mostly just a small Tutorial and then turns into an Arcade Mode where you play multiple songs which have an intro and a outro that explain a bit about your protagonist, but other than that, you aren't missing out on anything here and this is not a must-play.

It is very interesting though how some of the UI and artstyle has changed going from this Demo to the new one.

Another certified vanripper Classic.

This time, instead of a straight Harem of Demon Girls in Suits, you build a yuri Harem out of Undead Ghost Girls that glow green and want to kill you.

Let me just say. This game is HARD. It took me about an hour or so to beat on hard mode and it made me want to rip my hair out... In fact, I am now bald.

But it was all worth it to unlock the Art Gallery for free (You could also buy it as DLC and support vanripper financially).

Just play the damn game. Its free. It has cute girls and a super fun gameplay loop!

Almost the perfect Sniper Elite Game... Almost.

Sniper Elite 5 is a game I had been looking forward to while playing through the series, mainly because it takes place in France and it is by far my favorite Theatre of War in WWII.
And while I was pleasantly surprised and had a TON of fun with the game, putting pretty much the most hours into this title than the rest of the franchise, I was left amazed but at the same time baffled at the changes made in this game.

So let us start with the positives.

- Invasion Mode. This is THE gamechanger for me, an absolute stroke of genius by Rebellion!
In Invasion Mode you have the chance to be invaded by an enemy player whose job it is to hunt you down, or you can do so yourself to other Karls out there.
This mode has single-handedly made the game 200 times more fun for me, because it fundamentally changed the way that I played the game and approached every objective; I'd survey the terrain, start putting traps in important bottlenecks or booby traps on soldiers with the knowledge that at ANY time, somebody could come for me, and it has made for some great moments where I would start an alert and as if clockwork, get invaded at the same time, leading to a lot of panicked running and hiding while trying to dispatch my pursuers before the Invader catches up and has me dead to rights.
Or the times where I was able to take out an invader because he stuck his head out of his little cover for just a second too long, allowing me to get that perfect headshot on him.
The reverse is also true, where I outmaneuver a Karl in such a way that I am no longer where he thinks I am, only to pop up behind him with a knife in his back, or flank him and give him a shot to the side of the head.

These moments MADE Sniper Elite 5 for me, and I could no longer imagine playing without the mode (Unless im just going for challenges and achievments since I finished the game now.)

- Spy Academy & Secret Weapon. Both these levels are PHENOMENAL and Spy Academy in particular to me is considered the peak in Level Design within the Sniper Elite series so far, no level comes close to the amount of fun I had traversing it. Secret Weapon is also notable for just the sheer amount of length I spent on it, clocking in at around 3 hours of playtime on my first run through the map, including several invaders coming for me throughout which was a blast!

- The weapons as usual feel incredible, and the art of -learning- your rifle, how it performs, how your shots are affected and mastering it, are a great deal of fun!

- Vehicles are more threatening. In SE4 it was very easy to just snipe into the slits of vehicles to take out driver and/or gunner, which made the vehicles quite easy to deal with and formulaic. You make sure to take out around it first and then you have free reign to bully it. While vehicles are still somewhat easy to deal with, they require a lot more work to take down. Slits are gone and the most reliable way is to use a satchel charge on the back and then fire away at the engine of each vehicle.

So then, let me get into some of the nitpicks I have with the game:

- In SE4, missions sometimes had enemies fighting with Resistance members, that is gone. Why? This was a great deal of fun, using the firefight to flank around and get a bead on the Nazis was so much fun in 4, why did it not return here?

- In SE4, the levels were either wonderful and blow me away, or awful (Monastery, Inception). While the Levels in SE5 are more average, the design is more consistently good across the board. The only mission I outright disliked ended up being the War Factory because of the way it literally railroads (pun not intended) you into paths, and most of the level taking place inside buildings.
Also where are all the Sniper Nests? The rooftops? In SE4 missions like the Dockyard and Inception you were able to enter buildings and go up to rooftops, cranes and all sorts of places. Where are my overlooking areas like the start of San Celini? Most of this is missing in SE5 and there is just a huge lack of any real sniper nests in a game called SNIPER Elite
And even when you find a Snipers Nest, the only enemies you are able to snipe from your limited view (be it a window or a ton of trees around) are only 50-100m away... Where the hell are my 300-500m snipes at? I have to go out of my way to position myself to get those sometimes.

- Where did Radio Men and Spotters go? The only infantry we face in this game are normal Infantry, Spotters, Snipers and slightly more resilient Ausland Infantry. Thats it? You introduce a new enemy type to spice up the game in 4 and then just...Don't bring them back for 5? You didn't even replace them with anything new this is just backspace coding, honestly.

- The Shadow/Light system is SIGNIFICANTLY downgraded. In SE4 the light affected your visibility, shooting out street lights or lamps in buildings became an integral part of the stealth gameplay, and while it is still possible in 5, it seems to have little to no effect on enemy's detection radius, or none that is perceivable, despite there being a detection ring on the radar that expands and shrinks based on -SOME- lightsources you walk into...

- Movement. Sniper Elite 4 had phenomenal movement, and while I do feel more control in SE5, I absolutely miss the crouch running that SE4 had, why was it removed? It just aims to make the game slower for no real reason, let us crouch run in the future please!
Climbing in general also still feels like an afterthought, it is slow and tedious and by the time I am done climbing a wall up to something, I could've spent that same amount of time running around it while taking down the enemies in my path, but the movement is truly just a small nitpick.

- Too many surpressed weapons & Availability of subsonic ammo. It was too easy to snipe people or take them out close range thanks to how easy it is to have quite literally 3 surpressed weapons on you, or even just run subsonic ammo. The level design seems to reflect this as well, because there is just significantly less opportunities to use soundmasking to your advantage. Generators are often in spots that don't even work for sniping, vehicles can now be sabotaged to serve as soundmasks too, but are also usually in spots that don't serve much of a sniping purpose either. This is a huge shame and it made the game a cakewalk to just be able to load into the map with 20 subsonic rifle rounds and KNOW that somewhere in the level, you will find more of it.

- The DLC Policy. This is what irks me the most about the Sniper Elite games. There are just too many DLC. Sniper Elite 3 was the worst offender, offering maybe 4 base game rifles and 7 DLC rifles, but this is just getting ridiculous now.
I bought the Deluxe Edition of the game and expected to receive a complete game. What I got was the Base Game and Season Pass ONE, not TWO, not BOTH. ONE.
This isn't even the worst game, Zombie Army 4 had THREE Season Passes.
This is penny-pinching at its finest, even Sniper Elite Resistance, which according to many reviews I have read so far, is a standalone DLC which was developed at the fraction of the cost of a truly new Sniper Elite title, also launched with a Season Pass, how many more will that game get?

Most of these grievances were also reinforced by watching this video,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIZbSY9OZeI

All in All. Sniper Elite 5 is nearly perfect, but it is a game that takes steps back in certain areas and it feels like the game is starting to cater less to...you know... Sniping, and more towards Close Quarters Action.
It may sound like I am absolutely tearing apart, and don't get me wrong, there are valid things to criticize. But even with all of the issues above, I still had an absolute blast playing the game thanks to Invasion Mode and the level design that mostly still holds up despite my grievances. But when I get to Sniper Elite Resistance, or SE6, less run n gun please.

What a hair-splitting Killer. An absolute joy to play but absolute misery to play AGAINST.

You can outplay this Killer and gain a bunch of distance on him, but whoops, it doesn't matter because he can still hit you from 30m away after you vaulted the Shack Window, and now you're in deep wound and lost a health state.

Call that the "Kaneki Tax".

Don't worry though, once BHVR has collected all of your money for buying the Killer for 5€ and then the Rize skin for 15€ on top of that to stop Kaneki from screaming while queuing for a game, and while playing, they'll nerf the Killer into the ground like they do with every new Killer that they release.

- Music stops playing everytime after the first track finishes, leaving you with utter silence. Apparently according to my google searches this happens everytime without fail after you finish your FIRST match and then try to start a second one (Campaign, Skirmish, etc.) Which forces you to restart the game to fix it... This has been a known issue on the AOE Forums for a while and seemingly is never getting fixed: https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/in-game-music-is-broken-menu-music-is-also-broken/39389/30

- Pathfinding has not been touched or improved at all, making micromanagement of even small unit groups of 5-6 impossible, even when just wanting villagers to get wood or berries, this is annoying and frustrating. How am I going to continue playing this game if I am already having trouble manging my units in the TUTORIAL CAMPAIGN???

- Why does the AI fluctuate between outright cheating and avoiding my armies perfectly only to show up in my base and destroy it, to spamming out Granaries for no reason while none of their villagers are actually working?

It is clear this is just a glorified texture pack for the original game, which has aged poorly, even back then when AoE2 came out and improved it in every single way, and the AI also didn't act as braindead back then...
This is the equivalent of just putting a bunch of makeup on a pig, it's still a pig underneath, but it looks prettier.

No wonder. This game was set up to fail considering that it launched as a Microsoft Store Exclusive and therefore sold terribly. But I am sure you can justify that as "Hah! The game wasn't worth remaking anyway so lets cut funding!!", meanwhile Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition was a breakout success and revived the entire series...And launched on Steam and even Xbox at launch!

What a novel concept... Allowing more people to buy the game...gets you more sales?!?!

I haven't played a Sniper Elite 3 game since trying Sniper Elite V2 on and off for years and finally finishing it in 2016.
Since then I've only took glances at the Sniper Elite games.

Sniper Elite 3 has long been seen as the black sheep of the series, even during its launch. Having a multitude of bugs, glitches, general jank, stopping me from buying it at the time.

I've wanted to catch up with the series and try them all out in order now so I went with 3. Man do I have mixed feelings about this game.

For one, the levels are no longer as linear, which is great, although it is replaced with a semi-open map in every level that gives you the ILLUSION of freedom by just offering you 2 paths to your objective instead of just the 1 in V2 Levels.

Sniping feels nice but every shot, or every 2nd, is embellished with an X-Ray cam, and while I like the X-Ray system, it has seen a clear downgrade since V2. Yes, muscles are now shown instead of just the skeleton of a character, but bullets no longer deform while passing through a soldier and into the next, sometimes what is seen in the X-Ray cam is just flat out wrong, and in general I felt like the cam with how often it is triggered, just destroyed the flow of the gameplay for me, especially in one action setpiece in the later missions where there is about a dozen soldiers and each one triggers the damn cam.

The AI is also terribly stupid. They'll see a body and instead of raising the alert or call over a buddy to help investigate, just walk up to it on their lonesome. Dead bodies in this game don't need to be hidden as they essentially function as a way to distract and isolate targets, similarly to a thrown rock.
The relocation system is also incredibly lax, it takes the enemy 2-3 shots to actually locate me even though I am 50m away from them and actively shooting into a crowd of them? Come on...
Also. Most times you are spotted close-range by an enemy, they fumble so long with their weapon that its incredibly easy to just line up a headshot and take them out before they manage to alert anyone...Despite the soldier CLEARLY yelling out that I am spotted.

As for weapons? Which ones... You get 4 Rifles, 4 Submachine Guns and 3 Pistols...unless you chalk up money for the DLC which unlocks staples such as the Mosin Nagant, Springfield, or the Karabiner 98k.

You are hiding some of the most iconic Sniper Rifles of the WWII Era behind PAID DLC while giving us...An M1 Garand, a G43, a Carcano Rifle and a Lee Enfield only? Seriously?

Also not to forget that one of the DLC weapons, the High Standard HDM, is a semi-automatic pistol with a surpressor and will outright replace your Welrod, which needs to be recocked after every shot. Great. So there is pay2win DLC in a Singleplayer Campaign...

I ended up finishing the game on Sniper Elite difficulty, and I certainly did not feel like a Sniper most of the time, nor did I feel Elite or that I accomplished a particular challenge...

As for the DLC Missions. As of writing this Review I haven't played them, but plan to purchase them later down the line. But I do think that the gameplay is so mechanically flawed that it won't impact this review in any significant way.

What a disappointing title, although worth a playthrough if you can get it for 3€ on a sale (Check SteamDB for that).

That is what I would sum up this entire game as...

When I read the subtitle "Coming Home", I had assumed that this game would cover the end of the war and the post-war period after World War 1 where we'd see soldiers and citizens alike cope with the aftermath of the Great War, seeing humanitarian work, the clean up of battlefields or the economic and emotional toll it took on people.

Instead what we got was more of the same in all 3 Chapters, and the effects of the post-war are only covered in the last 10 minutes of the game. Which is incredibly disappointing.

Also, this game introduces some new protagonists alongside the old cast, which, while nice, was entirely unnecessary and I found myself entirely disinterested in the stories of two of them (Ernst and George).

This game, while it aims to wrap up the story of each characters entirely neatly, gives two of the characters an unnecessarily and cruel ending that seems to be purely done for shock factor.

The gameplay also saw little to no changes. There are no new mechanics, no new puzzles or anything to write home about other than you no longer being able to control the character using the D-Pad on a controller anymore and the menu being significantly worse, clearly having been made for mobile phones first and for PC and Consoles second.

All in all. While this was still a neat extension of the story told in the first game, a sequel was unnecessary, nobody asked for it, and it only ruined what was a perfect and neatly-tied together ending in the first one.

If you still want to play it, do so. But just pretend that they all get a good ending instead of the contrived nonsense they pull out at the end...

Spoilers for the Ending:
Freddie and Anna deserved so much better than the writers gave them. Seriously...
I get that they wanted to show the senseless cycle of hatred and cruelty when they added the whole sub-plot of black soldiers facing racism and segregation in the US, but to then have Freddie just get stabbed Post-War by a bunch of racists and have Anna fail to revive him is unnecessarily cruel. This is a terrible ending and yes this review is mostly negative because of the way it was ended.