Évaluations récentes de Majestic 12

This feels like a FarCry game with zombies in many ways: it's open world, the world is largely uninteractive, you have a few guns you can carry, a loud out, weapon mods, very very limited stuff you can loot, quests guiding a story through the game, etc. etc.

Is it better than FarCry? Well it doesn't feel as generic for sure. Ubisoft is the master of average crap that all feels the same and soulless. This game feels like it DOES have a soul and that goes a long way towards forgiving all the other crap.

What kind of crap? Let's see:

- while open world, exploring is not rewarding - you won't magically find amazing gear or loot. Most stuff you'll want to get is heavily tied to quest lines, no exploration.

- you have very strict limits of what you can pick up. 5 of that, 3 of this. You quickly reach those limits which sucks the fun out of further looting since it's quite a tedious process to open every car trunk.

- there's very very limited crafting which is a shame because the setting lent itself for much more than this.

- the story is extremely linear and it's very much on-the-rails. Don't expect The Witcher 3 style storylines here either.

You just feel as if it could have been MORE - if you strip away the nice graphics & setting, you're left with a pretty bare bones shooter with half decent quests but nothing to wow you. These days it's still a good game compared to the trash most studios churn out but don't go in expecting a master piece judging by the "very positive" reviews. This is a solid 7/10 and if you're happy with that, that's good!

I loved this game at first. You progressed relatively well after a while the game starts to really punish you and HARD. This game is designed by a real sadist who hates gamers and their free time. Here's why:

- there's a LOT of walking, a LOT - you do get a teleport stone but the locations are limited and since a lot of the crafting happens below ground with no teleport point, have fun spending 90% of your time going from A to B

- you can't move stuff you build. If you want to rearrange things, have fun demolishing everything, lose half the resources & rebuild it all over.

- items in containers are only shared very locally and your inventory is very small so you constantly have to shuffle resources around

- the game has way too many resource creating points - it gets extremely confusing and to craft a single thing you often need to go to 6-7 stations for each step

- there's a LOT going on in this game but the game does almost nothing to help you track it. The ONLY thing it does is tell you when a corpse is dropped off. A quest log? Forgot it. Help on how or where to craft certain resources? Nope.

- quest characters are only available on certain days of the week which needlessly annoys you when you need specific things they sell or you got the item for their quest and have to wait a week

- you CONSTANTLY have to sleep! Sleep sleep sleep. I got so sick of it I used a cheat to disable it because it just became torture and served no purpose except to waste your time.

This game could have been amazing if the creators had streamlined it a bit more: allow a shared resource container in all locations so you don't have to constantly run around. I don't mind gathering resources but a game like this should not be stressful and it is. Even though there's no real time limit you stress out trying to keep track of what is needed where and there's many dozens of crafting stations. Some make sense but many really don't.

As is I can't recommend this game unless you're unemployed, sick or disabled & just have seas of free time. It's not really relaxing - it feels like work - and it's a huge time sink with a story that is so slow moving it might as well stand still.

Oh and I forgot to mention the worst part: a LOT of stuff in the game is extremely poorly explained. You need to either waste MORE time trying & testing or to look it up in guides.

I score this 4 out of 10.

I'm a huge retro gamer and as a retro gamer you need to be able to be more forgiving of old games, knowing why certain elements are less than optimal and how design elements were more rudimentary back in the day.

Marathon was the Mac's Doom. That's what any Apple fanboy would tell you: it's better than Doom! It has better graphics! It has 3D rendered weapons! It has a radar! It has ammo clips! In fact, the first I heard of Marathon was in 1999 when I went to university and there was an Apple "freak" in my class who told me to give the game a try since I was already a retro gamer even back then. I remember not being impressed.

25 years later and I find the game for free on Steam so why not give it another go? Maybe the port I played back in the day was just janky? Yeah ... no. The game is just terrible. How this gets a "very positive" on Steam is beyond me because it makes so many mistakes that I wonder if it's just Bungie fanboys upvoting this.

For starters, you can't save. The game auto saves. A 1994 game that auto saves ... . Want to go back to the menu to edit controls? Well, you'll have to quit the game and hope it saved recently!

Then there's the engine. I don't easily get dizzy in FPS games but this game makes me nauseous for so me reason. I think it's the way it fakes the 3D that does it.

The guns have ammo clips except you can't chose when to reload AFAIK. If you have one bullet left and 5 enemies approach you, have fun having to wait 3 seconds as your gun reloads after your first shot.

The radar works well ... well that's one positive I can say at least.

Map design is atrocious. They went dark as Doom except instead you get loads of narrow corridors that are a maze. It's like they took the worst of Wolfenstein 3D and made it even worse because now you got a maze at multiple height levels!

And what about interaction? Half the panels look like you can interact with them but you can't. After a while you figure this out but it's bad design really. Doom made it far more obvious what were triggers & switches.

The HUD is also hideous - your actual screen is like a third of the screen area and you have lots of padding. I'm sure back then it looked fancy but even id Software dropped a similar HUD for DOOM because they realized how it takes you out of the game. You can hide it but then the weird 3D engine makes me even more nauseous at full screen. Perhaps that's why they left it by default?

The weapons lack oomph and feel weedy. The sounds are also lacking & I won't even mention the music. Basically, in terms of atmosphere this game has none.

The graphics are fine - the cheap 3D rendered graphics feel plasticky & remind me of low budget FPS shareware games you had on PC for years and certainly didn't impress me. The textures on the walls also looked very weird and random at times so the graphics design team was certainly not the best.

In the end this is a tacky, cheap feeling maze-like FPS where nothing really stands out as fun. I can play the older Catacomb 3D (also by id Software) and have more fun than playing this game. It has plenty of gimmicks but just makes too many design mistakes. Even for an early FPS, many are unforgivable. It figures that it was an Apple game because Apple's motto always seemed to be "style over function" and this describes Marathon really well. It tries too much to stand out without wondering whether it works to make a better game.

Do I recommend it? Heck no, except to give you an idea how amazing Doom really was at the time, when even the better competitors were creating garbage like this!

I love this style of game but the game is still in very early access in many ways.

Most of all, the performance is terrible for how ancient this game looks. At most it's a 2010 game in terms of graphics but with 2024 system demands. I do like the retro look but I'm expecting retro performance then too. An average 50fps on an i7 13700k with a RTX 4070 is NOT impressive!

On top of this there's a lot of stuff still unfinished and the devs have clearly not paid too much attention to detail. The starting scene where you're in what I assume is an elevator with nothing else going on except text appearing at the bottom is just dreadful. It was only after a few moments that I realized that lady was talking to me and we were having a discussion. They didn't colour code the dialog and there are no voices. On top of this, the writing was amateurish to say the least and broke immersion.

I dunno, with some talented people who have an eye for detail this could be a great game but they need to focus more in the details, those make all the difference. Add some suitable music, add some simple animations, even as place holders, colour code the dialogue (some people are deaf you know, those are ALWAYS a good thing), add more polish, etc. etc. And of course: try to figure out what is draining fps and fix it.

This game deserves more sales, more recognition. It's incredibly faithful to the movies, very respectful of the source material, actually tries to be more than just a standard shooter by letting you solve crimes & investigations and is clearly a labour of love.

I realize this game series is very loved. I also realize that I don't like it and that I'm the minority. Despite this I want to explain why so that others who share my views will realize before spending money on this pack.

For starters, ignoring the games themselves, Xbox requires you to log in yet doesn't add the game to your Xbox library
Then there's the fact that a ton of settings are just way off - it doesn't pick your primary screen by default, mouse speed is WAY off from what it should be, rebinding keys was needlessly obtuse and you can't even pick weapon cycling by mouse wheel (at least not in the original game).

But then we get to the crux of the issue I have with this series. It spawned the "console FPS" which greatly affected my love for the genre in a negative way. For every one thing it did right, it corrupted at least one thing that made FPS less enjoyable.

- 2 weapon limit - atrocious & horrible
- weapons are not accurate & have huge aiming reticles forcing you to fight up close
- enemy AI was "ground breaking" at the time but is mainly unrealistic to the point where enemies jump out of the way of bullets. Ridiculous.
- the game is heavily scripted to the point where you feel you have no freedom
- the game consists of entering area, fighting waves of almost identical enemies with little tactics involved, then moving on

This is an arcade FPS and it shows. The lack of a range of weapons with each a function of their own means you're severely limited in combat tactics. The way the game pumps enemies at you also makes it feel like an arena shooter except way worse than games like Serious Sam where you have a multitude of weapons to chose from according to the enemy. In Halo you WILL end up with the wrong weapons in a lot of situations. Sure you can pick up alien guns but these are almost all terrible.

If I look at what makes me enjoy a FPS, it's exploration, using tactics to outsmart the opponent, getting to pick the right gun at the right time, uncovering secrets, fighting varied opponents, a solid story, finding pick ups & power ups, etc. and Halo has almost none of this. It's a pure action shooter, combat after combat, linear area after area. The story is decent but the combat is just .... boring. If I could find a mod that ramped up the accuracy of each gun it would massively improve the game in terms of gun satisfaction but it would still feel too simplistic and unsatisfying in other areas. Enemies are not satisfying either and don't get me started on the "Flood". Also the lack of pick ups & surprises makes the game feel incredibly generic.

I still believe the main claim to fame for Halo was the fact that it was a console FPS. As a PC gamer, Halo did nothing that appealed to me. Sure it had great co-op but remove that and you have a mediocre FPS with linear stages, wave after wave of uninspired enemies and tedious gun design.

As far as walking sims go, I enjoyed this one. Was it perfect? Of course not. It's riddled with minor flaws but if you can get this for say €5 it's worth a go.

What I enjoyed were the detailed graphics, the original setting, the slow unravelling of the story using notes, voice logs and other hints. The game has a surprising amount of detail & thought put in the locations and the story is for sure a very interesting one.

I didn't experience many bugs - just twice where I got stuck in scenery. No crashes or anything else. Nor did the walking speed bother me. I believe a walking sim is a walking sim, not a running sim. The whole point is to take in the surroundings & to absorb everything. This is not the kind of game for people who want to rush through. Since the game is very linear, it's not like you'll be doing a lot of backtracking - the game does rather value your time despite the walking.

There are some annoyances though. The game kind of loses itself in the last third in some ways. Whereas the first part is mostly logical with beautifully rendered Nazi-era settings, the last third is rife with pagan areas, huge trees, etc. which just feels weird. I could kind of believe the first areas could exist but the last third is a bit ... out there.

I could tell that the dev was Polish because that last third seems to be heavily steeped in Polish folklore. As such, while I felt the story had huge potential & the ending was still satisfying, they could have gone a much different & better way. Having a Nazi underground that got destroyed by a Polish AI going rogue would have made more sense than what they made out of this. I feel like they tried to overly complicate matters to the point where you kind of lose investment into the setting. Once you figure out the Nazis were killed in no time and the rest was basically a struggle between Polish survivors, it just doesn't feel as "cool" anymore.

Worst of all, the "big" reveal at the end was extremely predictable. In fact, the moment Ewa contacted you, I knew what the twist would be because several documents had already given hints.

So all in all, it's a 6.5/10. A great setting, fun story, but too steeped in Polish pride & folklore, not enough Nazi setting, not enough made use of the potential. It would have made a far better movie than a game to be honest.

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.