Recent reviews by Nipukka

The first few levels of this game are great. The puppets move unnervingly and you get to see the carnage that's ensued all over the place. Regular and bigger enemies are placed at reasonable intervals and they're fun to fight. The first few bosses were an enjoyable challenge with reasonable movesets.

Then everything after the cathedral turns into horrendous slop. The cathedral itself was a bit boring but at least the boss was alright. The stiff animations of this game do not suit the zombie-like enemies that the game introduces past a certain point. Long windups with instant releases get real boring when most enemies do it. I thought Elden Ring was bad in that department but apparently I had seen nothing.

The preceding level to a certain gankfest humanoid boss fight had already annoyed me well enough, and this encounter was my last straw. This is when the game easily crossed the threshold from challenging but enjoyable into pure frustration with not a shred of fun to be had any longer.

Steam has no option for a 'mixed' review so I will lean more towards negative. There's some great stuff in this DLC such as awesome new weapon types, enemies and bosses (not all of them though). But it's overshadowed by the map design and lacking open-world experience compared to the base game.

In this DLC you traverse gargantuan, sparsely populated fields that have very little of substance to do. The most noteworthy loot to find most of the time is just some stupid cookbook and low level weapon upgrade materials. Very occasionally a weapon but all too rarely. And while the vistas are gorgeous to look at initially, the luster wears off quick as the game is mostly transformed into Torrent Simulator as soon as you enter the DLC.

All this is compounded by the very questionable decision of tethering character baseline power in the DLC to a random collectible item that's found in the most random of places at times. Very bad for replayability. I love exploration in open world games but this ain't it. The base game of Elden Ring has a lot more density compared to this DLC. The developer has seemingly become fixated on large, enormous scale areas with no regard to the gameplay experience. For example, there's certain ruins in this DLC that encompass a vast chunk of the map and they contain almost nothing. Just utterly pointless.

The thing I'm most excited about is being able to add these new enemies and items to a randomized playthrough. But I'd rather comb through The Lands Between ten times over before ever considering another jog through the empty fields of this DLC.

A genuinely good hero shooter with great mechanics and very fluid gameplay. If you enjoy playing games for their moment-to-moment gameplay instead of whining about shop prices then it's great fun to play.

Very late to the party but might as well leave a review after completing the entire game.

This is a wonderful game. It's a lot of fun to explore Egypt with how well the world has been crafted. There are a lot of breathtaking sights and interesting locations to find. The main character, Bayek, is a good character with stellar voice acting who remains good throughout the game.

Once you've played dozens of hours you can start to recognize the reused assets used to create areas but it hardly detracts from the overall experience. There's still a lot of different assets that give towns a good amount of clutter to look at.

The map is vast and takes a long time to go through. The open world activities are pretty limited though and repeat themselves over and over. The combat is perfectly serviceable, albeit a bit clunky at times. Overall it's just enjoyable to roam around Egypt, clearing forts and completing quests along the way.

Enemy archers are pretty annoying though. They have 100% accuracy and backpedal away from you at full speed. Healing in this game is also difficult to come by so I don't recommend playing on hard like I did. That difficulty is just not very fun until you know every enemy's moveset well enough to parry or dodge them all.

If you didn't like open world or ubisoft games before then this game isn't going to convince you otherwise. Purely mechanics wise this game is merely alright but as an overall experience it's one I will never forget.

There are just too many tedious gameplay mechanics in this game. Ammo switching is perhaps the worst of them. Several different ammo types to be used on specific enemies is just an awful idea. Having to use AP rounds on everything and exclusively hit only headshots to do effective damage makes combat repetitive very quickly.

Perks and abilities like faster crouch speed, grenade takedowns etc. being tied to random gear loot is another baffling decision. Even explosives are categorized into "effective against humans" and "effective against vehicles". Having specific equipment to take down vehicles is normal but going as far as to differentiate frag grenades and dynamites from one another is asinine.

There are various materials that you need to find in order to craft attachments to your weapons. I'd have preferred it if they instead locked attachments behind levels, clearing a certain number of outposts, finding blueprints or specific challenges while using that weapon. Something like that. But instead you are constantly starved for materials if you want to try out many different weapons.

It's just not really the same fun experience of far cry sandbox that I enjoyed in 3, 4 and to a lesser extent in 5.

Here is my "Quality of Life" review

Very rewarding and fun rhythm game with a bit of a learning curve. I'm not even a great player, I can only deal with one step above normal difficulty in this game but it's still very satisfying to play.

This game stuttered on release but not anymore, at least for me. And don't trust the values for lag config that the game gives you. I'm playing on a monitor and still had to put my lag config to something ridiculous like -70 to hit notes properly.

The game also loads up very quickly which is a plus. I can load into a song before the steam overlay notification at the start fades away.

A player leaving a positive review. Never a bad thing

Everything that needs to be said about this game has already been said countless times before, just adding another thumbs up here.

Thanks to the brilliant Item and Enemy Randomizer mod, this game is essentially infinitely replayable for me. The base game becomes boring quickly without randomizing items IMO, but that is just a personal preference.

The most significant flaw of this game is that it doesn't have a built-in deflect mechanic like Sekiro. My enjoyment of this game's combat has significantly improved after installing a deflect mod. The DLC introduced a deflect mechanic but it's temporary, locked behind significant progression and not at all a replacement for a proper deflect mechanic.

Abhorrent story, writing full of contradictions and plot holes, only a few interesting characters and many other annoyances.

But all that can be cast aside with a fat stack of mods. The game shines in its exploration, combat and crafting. There's a lot of verticality in the exploration and many unmarked and marked locations to discover. The shooting is leaps and bounds above previous Fallout entries. I can no longer play New Vegas because I've been spoiled by the combat in this game even if NV has vastly superior writing and characters.

Explore > Loot > Build and craft when you can no longer carry more junk. Repeat. That's the game in a nutshell and it is a very satisfying loop.

There are a lot of things wrong with this game. Voiced player character and a forced family backstory are the biggest mistakes by far. In my 400+ hours of gameplay I have not once gone to the institute because I couldn't care less about my son. The """""plot twist""""" that awaits there is also blatantly clear to see in advance. The institute's motivations are confusing and almost nothing in this game stands up to even surface level scrutiny in terms of making sense.

But I can live with that since the open world is crafted in such an excellent way and exploring it is an absolute joy.

In short, Your Mileage May Vary.