Recent reviews by Joeker Wilde

Fallout New Vegas' only big issue is it's instability on more modern computers, requiring a Script Extender to allow several patches made by the modding community to fix the traditional Bethesda oversights (just look at Skyrim for any examples) because "they just work" as Todd Howard would say. Those worrying about mods disabling Steam Achievements that was one of the first things the Fallout Modding community addressed, so patch & mod to your heart's content. But in all honesty, you only really need bug or crash fixes (especially a problem in the Lonesome Road & Dead Money DLC) & performance issues to just increase stability. With that negative out of the way...
The best Fallout game or on par with Fallout 3 for the overall RPG experience, value for money (DLC included) & replay value. New Vegas has one of the greatest main quest-lines or story lines (in this case the uncertainty on who will control Vegas or the Hoover Dam) in any RPG I've played, the choices you make matter & will effect more then just 1 faction in the Mojave's highly populated wasteland & there's always that one "fail safe" option should you wish to complete the game but all other plans have gone wrong. All the main quests & companion quests are fun & intriguing to follow on my first playthrough of the original release I made it mandatory to seek out every possible NPC to work with because I was just enjoying the exploration of the post apocalyptic desert but even more so the characters you meet along the way, it's amazing to think that Obsidian managed so much on Fallout 3's engine & less then 2 years to get New Vegas published, it's a shame to see that much more could have been added to The Legion & The Brotherhood of Steel's Vegas Chapter but Obsidian just wasn't given the time to do so.

The added Hardcore Mode adds a fun challenge to the game, despite over 500 hours of playtime I've only recently decided to finish racking up the Steam Achievements & they are also very fun & at times challenging to unlock adding more to the overall satisfaction this game gives you. Fallout's Karma system has less of an impact on your progression (give or take a few NPCs & potential Companions) but the game's Faction Reputation system was a great introduction, again also adding to replay value & strategising how or when you approach certain quests or matters.

There's a nice variety of weapons for all types of builds, the return of Traits from Fallout 2 again helps make most playthroughs a more unique experience. The only thing I (at first) disliked about the perk system is 1 perk is available every 2 levels but seeing as the max level you can reach is 50, 25 perks (ignoring the 1 or 2 traits you can choose to have as well as quest & companion perks) is a decent amount to offer.

The DLC: For me I got the most enjoyment out of Dead Money & Old World Blues, all the DLC campaigns are very well laid out & have brilliantly written characters, quests & unique experiences to offer & like Fallout 3, all the unique items in that DLC are limited to that world space so grab what you can & hope you can bring it back to Mojave once you leave, thankfully you can leave & return to all new areas apart from Dead Money's Sierra Madre (giving reason as to why will spoil a lot). Some of DLC will even affect areas or characters in the base game or are effected by the player's reputation to certain factions which is an extremely nice touch, giving you that incentive to visit as soon as you feel ready rather then leave it "till the end".

Fans of the Fallout series from 3 onwards are without a doubt familiar with mods etc & New Vegas has one of best & most dedicated modding communities so there's always something new.

There's so much to say about New Vegas positives & negatives but if a game is enjoyable to play I don't care how old or how "dated" it is, I'm a huge fan of Fallout 3 & New Vegas even more than everything that's followed, Fallout 4 (for me) sadly was a huge let down & because of that I've not bothered wasting money on Fallout 76 so to finish with as little bias as possible. Yes I'd recommend New Vegas, once installed enjoy one of the greatest games ever made.

Incredibly fun, absolutely stunning to look at, brilliantly written characters & story. I'll add more to this if I can but honestly, this game is just such a masterpiece you'll do yourselves a favour to just buy & relish it's insane fun factor for yourselves. 3 days after buying, over 15 hours in already up to Chapter 10 because this has been so engrossing & very hard to put down. I can't put into words just how original Guardians of The Galaxy is & how satisfying it has been playing this game so far!

**Update**
After just beating the main story for the first time I'm now going through on New Game Plus but seen, played & enjoyed enough to add onto the review.

This game has been the most fun I've had with any "AAA" (PS4/PS5, XBox Series etc) game I've played since Cyberpunk 2077. It has a brilliantly written story & some of the change in events that come throughout the story as it progresses really threw me off course or depending how invested & engaged into the story you get, really do hit you hard when they're dramatic, make you laugh when they're comedic or get that itchy trigger finger ready when something "big" is about to go down, a testament to how brilliantly this has been written, if you've seen the 1st & 2nd Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the similarities in how well written this game is & those movies were really shines through, keeping that same feel of the Hollywood blockbusters whilst remaining a completely independent & original entry to the Marvel universe.

Game-play & combat doesn't feel repetitive, the way you command your team to pick your spots to deal with large fights gets really enjoyable especially as you start unlocking more abilities for your team, that extra flexibility & quick thinking on the fly just gels together so brilliantly, it made the boss fights really enjoyable.

My only gripe with any of the controls or combat is whenever you take control of the Guardians' spaceship, it's really difficult to move around & aiming to attack is at times very frustrating (keyboard & mouse or with a wireless XBox One Controller).

The levels are beautifully designed, despite having a seemingly linear aspect to them there is a lot of exploration to undertake rewarding you with extra crafting materials to upgrade Star Lord's weapons, base attacks & health as well as extra bonus outfits for characters* or special items that have an impact on your relationship with your team if you chose to talk to them about what you've found in parts of the game where you return to your star-ship, usually before the beginning of the next chapter. (*WOW not a game without Pay to get extra cosmetics? In 2021? THANK YOU!)

I wish I'd bought this a lot sooner, but it came into my Steam library at the perfect time, was looking for something original, unfamiliar (game-play wise) & just extremely well crafted & this game's ticked all the boxes. The best Superhero themed game I've played since Batman: Arkham Asylum or Marvel's Spiderman Remastered.

Beaten the story once already in a total of 23 hours (over 4-5 days) simply because this was so enjoyable, once I got into it, I didn't want to stop or break away for such a long time that I'd just end up forgetting about it. A lot of replay value for reliving the story, the characters, humour & sheer enjoyable experience this game brings.

10/10

After buying this game in 2022 alongside Old Blood & New Colossus, I was finally introduced to Wolfenstein outside of an Easter Egg in Doom 2.

I played about with The New Order & Old Blood for a total of roughly 4 hours each but attention was drawn to other games that sparked interest, these games were something I was happy to leave in the Steam Library, so about a month or two ago (May/June 2024) whilst dumping Doom 2016 & Eternal (majorly disappointed, just give me a proper remaster of Doom 3, not the half-baked BFG Edition we were given) I saw this gathering dust, brushed it off & decided to finally give this game my full attention.

Currently up to Chapter 9 already, first thoughts are "WOW has this game lived up to the praise it got". To me, it stands out as one of the best story driven games I've played!

The combat is very fluent, mixing stealth, full guns blazing & strategic planning perfectly. The aesthetics are amazing and really captures the horrors of "what could have been" with a slight sci-fi twist. The weapons featured aren't "over the top" power fantasy style, a lot of what you get is relevant to the current area you are playing from be it a WW2 bunker assaulting or Nazi headquarters where the more advanced cybernetics & robotics are being developed once again the story-line helps greatly.

The controls & in game mechanics are easy to pick up, I like how perks you can gain are based on "how you play" with simple requirements needed to further expand on character build. The levels have a lot of exploration even if they feel pretty linear at times, the characters are well presented & I'm looking forward to finishing this game to then revisit The Old Blood before finally moving onto The New Colossus.

A must have for those looking for a war themed shooter that has real depth in it's story and isn't just some glorifying romp to be "the hero".

1st introduced to Streets of Rage back in '95 when it was on one of the (Sega) Megadrive's 6 in 1 carts. Played the hell out of that game alongside games like Golden Axe, which due to limitations that was pretty much what SoR was, another Arcade side-scrolling Beat Em Up. Vivid memories of SoR 2 or 3, wouldn't be until the Sega Classic Collections got released for XBox or PS2 until I played either & got to see how great & different the sequels were & how everything had changed combat wise compared to the original game. This clearly took what made SoR 2 (arguably the best in the series up until this point) so brilliant & has added that modern twist without sucking the life out of it's predecessors.

Fast forward to 2024, saw this on sale, grabbed it along with the the DLC & my oh my it's an absolute blast! Fast, chaotic non-stop action, satisfying ways to chain insane combos together. With some nifty secrets & nice amount of unlockable content rewarded as you play, it's a fantastic throwback to the 90's games & a pretty great continuation of the franchise.

It looks brilliant, the music is great & the controls are very easy to pick up, they even throw in a practice mode for anyone to learn some of the main character's more advanced techniques but most of that is chaining together special attacks & something you will quickly learn as you play.

The difficulty curve (on Normal) really picks up around level 4 or 5 (as it did in Streets of Rage 1 & 2). The boss fights are great fun & will take a bit of skill, luck & patience to get through without the use of extra assistance (the option to increase the number of extra lives you start or restart the level your playing on but reducing your overall score gained in combat). The added Survival mode from the DLC is a great way to practice your skills, building up those combos quicker & keeping you on your toes whilst you try to get to grips with all the characters you can play as through the main story.

Over 15 years later from the original version's release & BioShock remains one of the greatest First Person Shooters to date, it's ground breaking visual detail & game-play remastered & just increasing it's charm.

Samurai Edge weapons based off RE1 character's "skill" level. Jill's model off fastest aiming/accuracy but damage overall is about the same as the default, unmodded Pistol Claire or Leon have, Chris' Model is slightly stronger then the default model whilst Weaker's model takes a lot longer to steady tour aim but deals a lot more damage.

Really, these extra pistols just benefit Claire over Leon, the 15 round magazine on each is a slight bonus for Leon but you'll quickly upgrade his Matilda model's ammo capacity & it deals slightly less damage then Chris' Samurai Edge.

As for Wesker's model, bought it first knowing the different attributes (reading reviews on each gun that aren't people complaining as well as a few forums & guides online), it's delay to get a more accurate shot is about twice as long as the standard starting pistol Claire or Leon have but the extra power will stagger a lot of Zombies if the shot is close range & still not locked on so, it has it's uses. Again all really better for Claire mid-term but you'll need to decide if it's worth swapping 15 bullets which could go into your default pistol for a bit of extra variety & a slightly quicker run through the early stages of the game.

Realistically, you're better off holding out & just upgrading your own pistols you start with or using the unlimited ammo variant if you bought the Deluxe Edition weapon pack but, they're going so cheap now it's just nice to have if the collector in you has to have them. Buy them on sale & they'll cost next to nothing. For me, it's been over 2 years since replaying & restarting a save on RE2 & I bought Chris & Wesker's guns over Christmas alongside the deluxe weapon packs but I'll be leaving the unlimited ammo toys until I eventually beat the game as Leon & Claire first & am now finally playing around with them just for the sake of it.

Skyrim in the Fallout Universe with a less balanced economy, unbalanced item weight, stupidly repetitive grinding & crafting, a dialogue system that has no real consequences on how the game progresses & severely limits what weapons you use.

Put simply incredibly Boring. Mods & some community content helped remove some of this game's lacklustre experience but needing 3 mods to reduce default file sizes & still improve the quality as well as the infuriating loading times of the majority of the base game is a complete joke, especially when you enter the more urban areas, it'd take up to 20 minutes to load after leaving a building, at times I thought my game had just crashed & given that this is a Bethesda/Fallout game, no surprises if it had!

The "Next Gen" update has done nothing to improve the game. I played about for about 30 hours on a fresh save, all mods disabled, hardly any mods I've used needed the script extender (which many threw a fit over when the update released), most of what I was using was weight re-balancing, performance enhancements, clutter removing & enhanced textures mods, the game ran faster compared to when I first installed it (didn't take an eternity to just load leaving Vault 111) but the painfully slow loading times started kicking in as soon as you'd begin heading to Lexington, Diamond City or any of the major urban areas.

10 years later, South Park: The Stick of Truth not only remains the best South Park themed game but it's amongst one of if not the most funniest games ever made. You feel like you're literally playing or watching an episode of South Park (Or any episode before season 20). I've played through this 3 times in total, sadly the main thing lacking is replay value & have not laughed so much during my time arriving in South Park as "The new kid" to it's hysterical & brilliantly written end.

Gameplay is a simple turn based RPG with a few mini-games in between on a pretty linear path over a total of 3 days (in game time), easy to learn, easy to master but The Stick of Truth in general (compared to Fractured But Whole) is more focused on finally bringing Trey Parker & Matt Stone's comedic genius & brilliant storytelling into a video game in it's purest form & this game does just that. Even some of the requirements for some of the Steam Achievements are so brilliantly planned out when unlocking some of them I just burst out laughing finding out "THAT is an achievement".

Only disappointments are the DLC content offers nothing & it's a shame (NOT a criticism of) Ubisoft, Trey Parker & Matt Stone never went ahead with any additional DLC Missions or expansions to make continuing post main story-line completion worthwhile, you'll enjoy the game more starting from a fresh save.

Very boring, very repetitive, VERY very quickly. A huge step down from 2016 & anything the Doom modding community for Doom 2 which mostly inspired 2016's more brutal play-style has ever made. Would say the modding community or making my own Doom 2 projects "has spoilt my judgement" but even the mods based off of Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal's mechanics, outshine what this game offers.

I've enjoyed RAGE 2 more than either of the newer versions of Doom & that was rushed through to "perfect" this game... It looks & sounds absolutely fantastic, runs brilliantly on my PC but I don't care for multi-player which just seems to be the main focus, the single player campaigns limit your play style so much with it's "new" mechanics that instead of adding to it's appeal, Doom Eternal's lost the real Run n Gun feel that Doom 2016 barely had left & Rage 2 improved on in between. I'm just glad I waited a very long time to finally test this out. Doesn't matter how much praise this game's got, if it's not fun to play, it's not fun to play...

Just about 3 hours into the game so I will (probably) update this a bit more once I've spent more time on it.

But as soon as this booted up, I was absolutely blown away by the detail, how stable the game runs on my PC, how smooth, fast paced & entertaining movement & combat is & not to mention the huge amount of exploration you are free to undertake after completing the opening mission & all the tutorials. I waited a very long time, reading the reviews just deciding whether or not this was worth my time but after recently buying Horizon: Zero Dawn, Sony Studios proved that anything you'll get from them will be nothing but a fantastic & engrossing game play that is very hard to find faults with as there usually is none, porting a game originally exclusive to the PS3/PS4/PS5 (never owned either console) to PC & other consoles is a huge undertaking & once again, Sony Studios have given us an unbelievable masterpiece.

If you want a great super-hero game* buy this when you can. (*only other I've played is Batman Arkham Asylum with the 2 sequels gathering dust in my Steam Library).