Recent reviews by zyaxis555

Good thing I got this as part of a bundle and didn't actually buy it. Crashed within 5 minutes of gameplay for no discernable reason. The hate is well warranted.

Bullet sponges: the game.

Seriously, especially towards the end, all the game does to up the "difficulty" is just throw more and more bullet sponges at you. Plus, the "combos" are 100% impractical (especially in intense fights) since if you don't nail the timing EXACTLY, you'll just end up doing a normal attack and have to wait more crucial moments to try it again (moments that can mean the difference between re-doing a huge fight section or finishing it).

So while it was mostly fine in the beginning (if a little boring), later it just mounts up the frustration and no amount of ♥♥♥♥ jokes and violence can save that.

Enjoyment of this game is going to be REALLY dependent on either your threshold for bull**** or your nostalgia. This is one of those games that is traditionally considered "hardcore" like Demons Souls and Battletoads. It is 100% unforgiving of your mistakes, and even small errors can net you a huge loss in progress.

BUT.

If you are willing to let the game punish you for your errors, you will find that the lessons it teaches you will ultimately cause you to fall in love with its hardcore quirkiness. Since it was practically a launch title, it feels like a game designed for the PS2 that had extra horsepower to play with. The animations, and the janky "gaminess" of it all, is all set to the backdrop of a SUPER well realized fictional mall that, for all the years I have been playing this game, has never ceased to amaze me with how its aesthetic and audio tone feels 100% authentic. The crowd tech that powers this is obviously inferior to that of later Dead Rising games, but they designed the game to minimize the showing of those limitations. Obviously on PC at higher resolutions these limitations become a little more obvious, but when you're wading through a swarm of smoothly animated zombies all clustering and clawing at you and you can see them in the distance huddling over and chowing on a psychopath or survivor that just died... it just feels so authentic and cool.

The reason why I think I can forgive how hard this game is is the simple fact that you keep your character progress between games. So you can fail as much as you like, but you will always be making at least a little progress.

As you can see from my playtime and my achievements, I am REALLY into this game (having unlocked a lot of the hardest ones in a cluster), because once I gave myself in to its flaws, I have never since been able to replicate the feeling it has given me. The closest would probably be Red Dead Redemption, but I have strong doubts we'll ever see that come back. :(

Some things I must address, though, in the interest of full disclosure, is that it has some REALLY strong flaws that may make you smash something (maybe even something expensive). For one, AI is TERRIBLE all around, the only reason that bosses are as hard as they are is because they clearly have superpowers and the game pretty much clears all zombies from the area that you fight in so they are a non-issue for most bosses. Plus, they have incredibly powerful weapons that are always guaranteed to take off a significant amount of health. Some of them even have insanely high defense to even the most powerful of weapons and can block almost all attacks, leaving TINY windows of oppotunity that only the most hardcore players of this game will be able to take advantage of. For survivors, the AI makes them do INCREDIBLY STUPID S***. ON YOUR FIRST PLAYTHROUGH YOU WILL LOSE SURVIVORS TO THEIR OWN STUPIDITY LIKE THEM GETTING IN THE WAY OF YOUR ATTACKS, RUNNING DIRECTLY INTO A SWARM OF ZOMBIES, AND NOT BEING ABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES IF GRABBED. TAKE IT FROM THE GUY THAT LITERALLY SAVED EVERY POSSIBLE SURVIVOR. THEY ARE INFURIATINGLY DUMB. My advice? Carry queens (essentially grenades that only affect zombies) at all times, and carry food. Also, if you can equip them with shotguns, DO IT.

The second huge thing that may put people off is the time limit. The whole game runs on a universal time limit, and essentially the game is 6 in-game hours long (8-9 if you do the first 6 perfectly). Everything that can happen in the main story of the game happens in that 6 hours, and everything is always counting down but it never tells you SPECIFICALLY when a mission will expire. On your first playthrough, you may have to sacrifice survivors to get through more story missions.

The third huge issue you may have is death is unforgiving. If you have not been diligently saving your progress, you WILL lose all story/side mission/achievement progress since you last remembered to save. This is going to be a hard lesson to accept at first but THANKFULLY the character progress transfer is there. That last fact is why I could stand all the difficulty this game threw at me.

All my own personal reasons aside (I swear I could make a thesis out of this), I have two reasons why I hope you will buy this game right now, sale or no sale.

1) To support developers going through their backlogs and porting their games over to the one, truly sustainable platform that will guarantee their games can be enjoyed for generations to come.

2) I honestly feel this is a landmark game for the 360/PS3 generation onwards, it did zombies and it did zombies RIGHT before the market became saturated with them.

If you have a penchant for games that will not hold your hand and force you to earn their endings, this is a must-have. I feel this game gives me almost endless replayability, and whether that's nostalgia or whether this game may really be that good? I can't objectively say. What I can say is, there really isn't anything like this out there anymore.

PRO TIP: Get the "Zombie Genocider" achievement (it's easier than you think, it's mainly just time consuming) before making a real run at the game. You'll see why.

EDIT: I now have all the achievements. Am I a hardcore gamer now?

The setting is very well realized. The only real problem I have with it is performance issues. I run a GTX 980 and can't break 40 fps even with PHYSX turned off (yes, I uninstalled PHYSX and installed the PHYSX in the game's folders). If you can overlook the glaring performance issues, it's a very gripping tale. The open world feels more like a gimmick here and doesn't really add anything to the experience other than ambiance and making everything feel connected, but you really want to stick around for the story (especially the dialogue).

I *LOVED* the first season of this. I also love Tales From the Borderlands. You know what I don't love? Vindictive depictions of people who aren't neurotypical. Sarah's death was done HORRIBLY. What was the point of me teaching her how to defend herself if she never used that skill later? As someone who is part of a large network of those who have mental disabilities like anxiety, depression, and being on the spectrum, this was just insulting. At the very least, she could have died fighting, not like Captain Kirk.

The dialogue, visuals, and atmosphere were all SO PERFECT up until that point, which just destroyed everything it had going for it. If you want to argue "well, it's REALISTIC!" then please, don't even bother because if we can suspend our disbelief that there are literal WALKING DEAD and that a CHILD SURVIVED AMONGST THEM FOR AS LONG AS SHE HAS, I think we could buy a person with anxiety or on the spectrum would manage to find ways to cope with the strength of others and be able to live with their disability under those circumstances. It would have been much more satisfying than "all people like that are useless, lol."

UPDATE: Have to change it to a thumbs-down because it's all fun while playing the game, but in order to get any upgrades you HAVE to do challenges. So... thanks for ruining Just Cause 3 by turning it into Superman 64... Don't buy. Don't EVER buy unless there's a mod released that bypasses this really stupid system.

running on a Core i5 and GTX 980 (pre driver update on December 1). It's USUALLY running at 40+ fps but there are a lot of instances where the game stops and the audio skips. Also, I miss stunt jumping from within a vehicle to on top of it right from the get go. And you have to unlock precision aiming. And the wing suit is REALLY useless in the beginning.

But being able to tether 2 things together and retract the cable is fun.

Overall, I would recommend it on a sale unless you REALLY love Just Cause and open world games with lots of busywork.

Also, EVERYONE WITh NVIDIA CARDS NEEDS TO STOP BEING ♥♥♥♥♥ TO THOSE THAT HAVE AMD CARDS. I'm only using Nvidia because they're holding the PC gaming market hostage, not because I like them better.

SSD and 16 gigs of RAM MINIMUM.

7200 RPM isn't going to cut it if your HDD is literally doing ANYTHING other than running the game, I'm not exaggerating when I say even on a Core i5 and a gtx 980 with 8 gigs of RAM, your system will drop ALL the frames and bring your PC to a standstill (and you will die, because the game will assume nothing is wrong and keep going as normal). Needs some SERIOUS patching before it becomes more than just "runnable" to achieve "tolerably playable".

EDIT: FFS ZOMBIES AND ALL OTHER FORMS OF OFFLINE MULTIPLAYER (such as split screen) ARE DISABLED WHEN YOU HAVE NO INTERNET OR THE SEVERS ARE DOWN.

DON'T BUY!

There's something special about this game... Something you'll probably never experience in any other game you'll play. I can't put my finger on it, but you'll feel it when you play it. The port is AWESOME, the gameplay is well done (if a little clunky at times), and the story is... not bad. Not great, but not bad. I will say this, though, this is one of the only open world games where I cared about my actions outside of missions.

Personally, I could only play through this once. Once was enough for it to be as memorable as it was. Maybe it will resonate deeper with you. I can only hope. As for me? I really enjoyed it, and would recommend for anyone looking for a sandbox game that is just a little bit different.

Best Saints Row, still. Why? The customization in this game is absolutely unrivaled by ANY other Saints Row game (or, dare I say, open-world game that isn't an MMO) to date. Those of us who have been playing since Yahtzee's review of 2 back in the day understand that, indeed, layers of clothing and the ability to put gold spinners on a purple cop car are the pinnacle of enlightenment. It also had the best sound track of any open world game I've played as well.

Unfortunately... the PC version is absolute s**t. It doesn't matter HOW powerful your rig, you're probably going to get ~30 fps while driving, and you HAVE to be ok with that. Without the "gentlemen of the row" mod, this just will not work for you in a generally acceptable capacity.

All that being said.... enjoy the most well-designed and carefully-crafted Saints Row games of all time. One that has actual interiors instead of instanced areas, replayable missions (where you can try on new outifts or completely remake your character to see how they'd look in a cutscene), and wearing fishnets under your stonewashed jeans, because you deserve it you special, wonderful person, you.

Got it as part of a Deep Silver bundle. Surprisingly more enjoyable that I thought it would be. Like Diablo with a sense of humour.