Recent reviews by Majestic 12

As you can see I have over 500 hours of game time for Fallout 4. I probably went through Fallout 4 at least 4 times by now in the span of over 8 years and I know most locations by heart now and have a very good understanding of how the game works.

The more you play a game however, the more you start to see the cracks and Bethesda sure make games with a lot of cracks. It would be easy for me to tear Fallout 4 apart & only list all the negatives but instead let me give you a balanced in-depth overview of the good, the bad, the ugly to help all the new fans who discovered the game thanks to the TV show.

THE GOOD:
- the game has a brilliant setting combined with a great atmosphere
- there's a HUGE map to explore & many Easter eggs to uncover
- some locations have very solid back stories with good writing & some are even heart breaking
- there's so much detail in the world & Fallout 4 makes the Fallout universe come more alive than ever
- there are tons of weapons, outfits, weapon & armor modifications, etc.
- the game has TONS of mods

THE BAD:
- combat is rather clunky for a game that features so much of it. Your shots are often blocked by invisible scenery, many guns aren't very satisfying to use, there's no ammo types (a MUST in games such as this),
- you really must not take the game too seriously - there's a LOT of stuff that will make you go "surely this wouldn't have survived 200 years" or "this could never happen!".
- DLC is very hit & miss - Far Harbour is decent, Mechanist is OK, Nuka World feels rushed & a waste of a great setting.
- The game has gone for quantity over quality - too many locations serve no purpose & should have been removed or improved. Even more insultingly, some of the boring pointless locations have map markers. Even MORE insultingly, some require you to go through a loading screen only to end up in a single-room with nothing of interest. Removing all this dull content could easily have shaved 10+ hours off your play time & made the game less of a chore
- without mods the vanilla experience is quite a lot worse

THE UGLY:
- the game has a TON of bugs still which never got fixed
- the game uses hardwired keys which you can NOT rebind - even with mods it becomes a very frustrating mess
- the engine is quite dated by now & poorly optimised for modern systems - even a high end system will have poor FPS with mods
- the interface is clunky & not optimised well

I've always had a love hate relationship with Baldur's Gate II. I loved the first game: it was pure, clear, well balanced and had a clear path to move on. Baldur's Gate II is in many ways better ... yet also in many ways worse yet somehow few people seem to share this opinion. I believe it's because I tend to find certain game elements very off-putting and BG2 has a few of these.

Let's start by saying this is a huge game with tons of detail & content, well written dialogue, many interesting quests, etc. etc. etc. You've heard it all before I'm sure. I mean, the game is a classic.

HOWEVER, even though I recommend the game I want to warn people that the game is very punishing and unfair to the player on many occasions. Far more than the first game, this game is rather sadistic. I'll give you examples:

- you get BOMBARDED with quests, characters, etc. when you walk around the starter city. It's almost impossible not to get forced into having a full party within an hour of exploring because the game actively THROWS them at you, each being tied to a quest which is often urgent. I really don't like this - it becomes frustrating & hard to keep up with things when each time you enter a new area, several people walk up to you and pretty much force you into a quest. The game should have paced things more - maybe add a time delay so you had a chance to explore just a little bit.

- The time limits ... oh boy. I really don't like RPGs that impose time limits. Baldur's Gate I had this as well where characters would leave if you dallied too long but come on - you're thrown in a huge city with tons of stuff to do, loads of characters who impose themselves on you and then you get a time limited quest forced on you and your party member runs off with all the stuff on them if they suddenly decide you've taken too long? That's just not fun!

- Then there's the balance issues which the game has always had. You're thrown in the deep end from the start - the characters you pick up in your party along the way often have wildly incompatible builds so you're forced to adapt to this. There's no options to respec and random encounters can be nail hard. Often you'll get completely wrecked until you realize you're not supposed to fight until you're a few levels higher. I don't mind such mechanics but it's too random and you spent too much time reloading.

- There's a LOT of trial & error - the game will punish you for things you simply wouldn't know. You enter a hidden door and BOOM a liche which you have no hope of defeating. Many people who have replayed the game many times over forget what it was like the first time you play because the game can be utterly brutal & unforgiving. The spells often also don't do what you'd expect them to - the hidden mechanics behind each spell can make a spell that sounds great on paper, utterly useless in combat. I always had to rely on extensive guides to explain how each spells works in detail and watch out: the Throne of Bhaal expansions massively CHANGED these spell mechanics even though the actual spell descriptions remained unaltered so any guide written for the original game will not be accurate.

In the end, it's a classic but with plenty of flaws. It's a lot like Fallout 2 in this regard - fans who have played & replayed the game many times over will know all the pitfalls, will know what to avoid, will know which builds are over powered, etc. but an average new player will find frustration at every corner unless they use guides which do kind of spoil the game.

Yes, I do recommend this game BUT be aware this is not a mass shooter game. The first mission is actually kind of deceptive since you're thrown into action only for the next 15 hours to be largely devoid of any.

Basically, DE:MD is ... futuristic Thief. You quickly realise that the game WANTS you to explore, steal, sneak, etc. because it's a lot easier than combat. Most often, alerting enemies means a mob of them come at you meaning you'll usually want to go for the quiet route.

The bad thing about this, is that this "kills" the old school three-way combo: combat, persuasion, stealth. Persuasion is still an option at times, but usually it's between combat & stealth. Ironically, combat is pretty darn good but since you'll mostly be sneaking up behind people or taking distant pot shots, I never felt as if I actually got to properly use it.

So how does this game compare to the previous one? Well ... it feels cheaper. Like the original Deus Ex, you had lots of different locations to visit in Human Revolution but Mankind Divided sticks you in Prague for almost the entire game. Yes Prague is big, yes there's lots to explore, but ... it's still all Prague. Why do I get the feeling one of the top guys on the dev team went to Prague on vacation before making this game? On top of this, there's less quests, less interaction with people & it all feels a little toned down.

Combine all the above and you get a good stealth game but set in a rather repetitive location with lots of exploring, looting, stealing. It feels more sandbox than a story driven game - tons of areas seem unconnected from each-other and it's like they glued it all together in the end. It's still a great game if you love exploring & stealth but if you prefer combat, this is a step down. The original Deus Ex was pretty poor for combat & stealth was heavily favoured but this game goes above & beyond to make stealth THE most preferred option by far.

I tried to play this using a N64 emulator but really didn't like it. The controls were annoying, the FOV felt wrong, aiming was fiddly, etc. It just didn't feel right to me.

However, this PC conversion removes all the icky console nonsense and gives you a solid FPS:
- save anywhere
- increased FOV
- custom key binds
- very fast movement with quick strafing
- mouse control

While it's not Doom, it still IS Doom. The atmosphere feels different because of all the colour & redone graphics but other than that I still feel as if I'm playing a classic. If anything, this feels like a map pack with a graphics mod on top of the original Doom II and that's a good thing. While the maps are not as good as those of Doom 1 & 2 (seriously, it's underrated how well those maps were made) they're still a lot of fun.

As is, this is well worth playing if you're a fan of the original.

Rage is a funny game. For everything it does right, it does something wrong

- It's open world ... kind of ... but exploring is not rewarding and any "dungeon" is extremely linear
- the world has tons of detail ... but it's all superficial and there's practically zero interaction with anything
- the graphics looks great for a game of this age ... except it all looks terrible up close
- driving is fun ... except you mostly drive from A to B and back again on errands - the world itself feels quite dead
- guns aim really well & are pretty accurate ... but you need several head-shots to even take down the lowest of enemies

You have a few small positives:
- there's crafting which adds a little something
- voice acting is done really well with some famous actors being used

And then there's all the negatives which have no positives:
- there's tons of invisible boundaries stopping you from going anywhere except where the devs wanted you to go
- this is very similar to Borderlands in style (released 2 years before Rage) except it's not a true open world like Borderlands, doesn't have random weapon drops, doesn't feel as rewarding, etc.
- this was one of those FPS that pushed the "console disease" of FPS on us: regenerating health, scripted spawning of enemies (sometimes even endless spawning), a very low FOV (which I managed to fix using a mod), extremely linear areas, etc.
- they made enemies very agile to the point where it's ridiculous. Instead of satisfyingly gunning down enemies, you're shooting wild trying to hit enemies that even run on walls. It's not very fun, especially when head-shots don't kill.
- the game is very cheap on ammo forcing you to buy ammo between missions. While I understand this, it often forces you to swap to less ideal weapons just to conserve ammo. A tip: buy as much ammo as you can!

The main problem with this game, is that it feels very formulaic instead of organic. It's mostly done by the numbers without anything feeling fresh or new. Yes, this is a 12 year old game but even back then I just couldn't get into it. The engine which was supposed to be its biggest selling point is also a big weakness because even maxed out the textures look very poor up close.

Is it a terrible game? No, it's not. It's worth a few hours but it's not a classic. To me it was always a 6/10 game and 12 years haven't changed my mind. On the plus side, modern machines make it run extremely smooth which wasn't the case back in the day!

If you were to order all C&C games, except for C&C 4 (which was terrible), C&C Tiberian Sun would rank the lowest.

That's not to say that the game is bad but ... it's actually not that great either for multiple reasons.

For starters the game takes too long to unfold itself. You get only a handful of different units the first half a dozen missions and they're not even that fun to use. The maps & missions are also not that interesting and it all feels rather brown & boring.

Red Alert 2 pretty much took the basics of Tiberian Sun and made it properly fun. The units were far more engaging, the game more colourful, the missions more interesting, the maps more varied. Because of this, Tiberian Sun feels rather pointless. It's like a beta for RA2.

Luckily C&C 3 was a lot more like Red Alert 2 than Tiberian Sun and while Tiberian Sun may be worth a look, be aware that it's really not that great compared to C&C 1 or 3.

==== THE GOOD ====
- This is the closest thing you'll find to a Zelda game on PC
- There's a huge world to explore
- The game already feels quite polished (except for performance) for an early access game
- The game encourages you to explore just the right way with not too much hand holding
- Beautiful graphics & great atmosphere
- The Shroud is a good gameplay element that feels original & fresh
- The game is a lot of fun solo as well
- Combat is frantic & engaging with a mix of melee & ranged combat
- There's quite some books & scrolls to read to build up the back story which is quite interesting
- Building is actually not that great a grind compared to games such as Valheim which require a LOT more gathering to build a sizeable base

==== THE BAD (mediocre) ====
- The world does feel a bit dead - while this IS a dead world, some surviving traders would have been great
- The level of monsters artificially limit how far you can explore at a time which limits the actual freedom & forces you to do the quests in a rather linear fashion.
- I'm not fond of the way magic works - it's a bit of a hassle to be honest
- Towns are kind of ... empty & soulless with not enough interesting stuff to find or loot. I hope they will receive more work
- While the game is not that hard, it can be rather unforgiving at moments with instant deaths being quite possible catching you off-guard
- The shroud, while a great mechanic, can not be removed. There's a mechanic to remove some of it temporarily but I wish you could remove the individual shrouds by killing all the monsters & fungi. However you can't because ... (see "the ugly")

==== THE UGLY ====
- The game resets EVERYTHING each time you log in except for your base. Every chest you looted, every monster you killed, every mine you mined, it all gets reset and to me this is by far the worst negative because it makes you feel as if you're not having a real impact on the world. The only real progress is your base, your character & your map. The problem is that the mechanics rely on respawning of things which is a shame. Being able to "heal" the world & kill the monsters (with some respawning at random to keep things fresh) would have made the game a LOT better. Instead it feels like an MMO where nothing you do really affects the world.
- Some really poor performance even on high end hardware. I got killed more than once because the game would start to stutter at the worst moments

This is a game with many hours of fun to be had and so far it doesn't feel tired at all, with new stuff continuously keeping things fresh. I hope the devs do not mess with the formula too much - too many of these early access games start out great and then get bogged down with needless features that water down the pure core of the game. There are improvements possible however ...

I'm one of the very few people who actually played the original Divine Divinity way WAY back and utterly loved it. DOS2 is such a huge evolved version of the original yet so many qualities are still there - the wonderful music, the tons & tons of content, the attention for detail, the style of comedy, the ability to move & pick up pretty much anything, etc. etc.

Larian never strayed too far from their roots and with the D:OS series and now Baldur's Gate 3 they have finally been rewarded for it and deservedly so.

Diablo IV ... has no soul ironically. It feels like an empty husk that mimics the previous Diablo games. It's Diablo-by-numbers and the developers who made the game were unable to put even an iota of soul, originality or character into it as a result. It feels flat, dead, uninteresting and unengaging.

I can still boot up Diablo 1 and get swept out by the amazing Tristan theme and get 100 times more soul out of it than this husk of a game.


UPDATE: since its release on Xbox Game Pass I decided to give it a second chance as a sorceress and without a time limit this time.

My opinion above has only been confirmed. This game feels like an indie version made by amateurs. The graphics look dated even with everything maxed out and yet performance is mediocre. Everything feels like it's done with little to no thought. They clearly tried to copy Diablo II in many ways but without understanding that (a) the genre has moved on and (b) Diablo II had a very good loot system.

Diablo IV feels functional but for a €70 game you expect more than 2012 graphics, poor voice acting, forgettable music, the typical clichéd plot (which previous Diablo games had as well, granted) and dated gameplay. Other games have done it better by now and for a LOT less money!

I'll give this a thumbs up. I'm not a big fan of Larry's new look but the style is mostly still there. The puzzles are pretty good and the jokes are decent but it doesn't quite feel like a Larry game. I think the new graphics style is just too different and you can tell they toned down the content out of fear of making getting a media backlash.

Still, this could have been a lot worse - the game at least plays well.