Shenmue III
Ah, Shenmue 3, how I have longed for the light of your presence to shine upon thee…
Heads up to those who peruse this review: I’m a HUGE shenmue fan. I backed this game on kickstarter and have played the game twice on Sony PlayStation 4.
Let’s forget all of the nonsense associated with Deep Silver and the Epic Game Store exclusivity. How is THE GAME?
A mixed bag.
Let’s start with the graphical presentation. Shenmue 1&2 were AAA games back in the day; the most expensive games every produced up until that time. Shenmue 3 is a AA game; as such you cannot go into this expecting the latest cutting edge graphics.
– Real player with 110.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Epic Story Rich Games.
Before starting my review, I’d like to point out that we really need a mixed review option on Steam. I hope Gaben will hear our prayers one day. Anyway, as most of you know, Shenmue III is the highest funded Kickstarter game and it is definitely one of the longest awaited one. How long was it… 20 years? I’m not a loyal Shenmue fan, I didn’t wait 20 years for it, in fact, first time I’ve played Shenmue was a few months ago but I was aware of its significance and contributions to the video game culture of course. I also didn’t contributed anything to its Kickstarter campaign but putting myself in one of the loyal fans' place, I’d be extremely disappointed by this game. Especially after waiting nearly 20 years for it. Although I have no doubt that Yu Suzuki and YS Net did their best to bring a solid title to the fans, they’ve made a grave mistake by striking a deal with Deep Silver. 1 year Epic Store exclusivity was straight up disrespectful towards the people who contributed to Kickstarter campaign. Hopefully, they will learn from their mistakes with Shenmue IV. Anyway, let’s take a look at the redeeming qualities first…
– Real player with 108.7 hrs in game
Watch_Dogs™
The storyline and complexity for a world first game foreshadowing our current future with technology.
This is a classic that you need to buy/play before going to Watch Dogs 2 so you understand it even more and characters in 2.
7/10 would play again.
– Real player with 65.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Epic Multiplayer Games.
This is the first Watch Dogs game that I have played. i bought this game on sale. And it was completely worth every penny. First of all, the story line is engaging and attractive. As it is with Ubisoft, you could do side missions as well (if you want to). I am writing this before playing the last act; and even after finishing this game, I would love to play this one again sometime in future. It was an overwhelming experience for me with Watch Dogs.
– Real player with 45.7 hrs in game
Just Cause 2: Multiplayer Mod
Excuse me, I might not have enough experience in this game.. but I believe this is one of the best multiplayer out there, it doesn’t feel like there is something you really try to achieve, but something you rather enjoy with other people and friends.
I personally recommend to not join freeroam servers as the interest dies out pretty quick in such scenarios, I didn’t even play singeplayer.. I started first with the multiplayer by joining a server called “Real Life Server”, it was very complex and hard to understand as a newbie with a lot of custom game mechanics/server mechanics and server rules to get used to, but eventually when you really know everything by heart and you have experienced most of what it has to offer. You will probably have the same opinion.
– Real player with 4183.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Epic Multiplayer Games.
Multiplayer enables much more possibility than single player, with lua coding server developers can create all sorts of things. From faction and administration systems, freeroam servers, a survival server, or a whole server dedicated to airplane simulation. Heck I know someone even made a whole Minecraft script for this! Either way depending what type of server you may be interested in there are still quite a few to choose from. Pretty much everyone knows that this game in general is dying out compared to what it used to be years ago with hundreds and thousands of players that used to passionately play. It is quieter these days, but some servers are still holding on a rather decent player population daily. Some may disagree, but you can meet some really nice people depending what server you settle in. In some cases one server for example has a whole community with it, and I can say I have met many nice people there and made some friends along the way. I had enough interest and dedication for this I decided to help and be a staff member of said server.
– Real player with 1579.8 hrs in game
A song in the void
A good platform game and nice style with low poly. :D
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Well I kickstarted this game. I liked the artwork. The open worlod part itself is nice to roam around and collect things.
But beyond that it has insane flaws. Every now and then it puts you in these big cube rooms that are bland and makes you collect items. Water rises. Touch the water you have to restart. Open world or cube world you have an auto slide so your toon won’t even stay still. So you have to repearivly jump in spot as water rises and falls or die and start over. This is for anywhere in the game. And making me sit in rooms to collect things over and over vs enjoying the open world, where you still slide and die but at least it pretty to look at, makes the game not desrable to play.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Shenmue I & II
[SHENMUE I]
Shenmue is a strange, gently plodding beast of a game that we’ll never see the likes of again. Even when Shenmue 3 comes out, it will likely focus on different things, different aspects of gameplay. Shenmue is currently gaming’s one and only kung-fu small town life simulator, and that’s commendable.
This makes the fourth time in my life I’ve finished Shenmue 1 and every time I’ve played it I’ve seen different scenes, talked to people and discovered what to do next in different ways. I’ve gotten different toys out of the capsule machines and won different prizes in the lucky-dip draws in the stores. The plot of Shenmue is the same every time, the way you work through that plot is different and organic.
– Real player with 89.2 hrs in game
Shenmue. It was a great game that preceded many other open-world titles. It is still the game with that much immersion from the open-world as you can get in 2021, if we’re not talking about visual details. Every person there, every single NPC has a unique appearance, behavior pattern, and biography defining his/her actions. Additionally, every person involved in fights has his own set of moves. How’s that for starters? For a game released in 2001? Even more, Shenmue is still the great tale of adventures and martial arts.
– Real player with 73.3 hrs in game
Adventure Time: Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest
What time is it? It’s review time. I’ll get right down to it: this game sucks. At first you think it’s going to be fun playing an exploration game in the vein of Adventure Time, but it’s anything but fun. The “look for stuff and backtrack” design of gameplay is just tiresome by the 2nd world map, and by the 3rd, you just want it to be over and done with. The first Toe Jam & Earl game for the Sega Genesis had a similar feel and look, but was loads more fun.
Not very challenging since you can easily avoid most enemies. Also disappointing that you can only level up to level 15, and as a result, you don’t feel very powerful when defeating enemies.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
This is a long review so if you just want a brief summary of why I recommend this game skip to Results and read from there.
NGD Studios does a great job bringing Adventure Time to the video game world with this epic hack ‘n slash adventure. Adventure Time: Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest is a fantastic game that mixes the great elements from RPGs with the awesome level schemes of ToeJam & Earl.
Story:
Adventure Time: Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest takes you out of the Land of Ooo and throws you into a new world that splits Ooo into floating islands. You play as Finn and Jake as they find themselves in a video game, which they use to explain all the weird elements. BMO has gone missing and it’s up to you to bring him back, but where is he? As you progress through the game you receive clues that help you find your lost comrade. In order to solve the mystery you must find artifacts scattered throughout the worlds, and eventually you will find the key.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
Batman™: Arkham Knight
MAN HALF THE GAME, I SPENT INSIDE BATMOBILE!!
Arguably the best game in Arkham series. There were obvious improvements in almost every department, be it gameplay, graphics or stealth compared to the previous Arkham titles. The best way to describe this game is that it is a mixture of both City and Origins. Story is decent, Combat system was definitely improved. They added the fear takedowns but I personally liked the double takedowns which were removed in the Knight.
The most annoying part was blowing tanks literally half of the time. But they did introduce Batmobile for the first time in Arkham series so the experience wasn’t too bad. Its definitely overused though.
– Real player with 140.1 hrs in game
Plus:
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Decent storyline / plot, nothing too cliche
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Combat system - hit, dodge, counter, parry, chain combos, just like your DS / Sekiros
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Different kills ( takedowns ) / variety of gadgets that can be used. If you want to compare to other games, the tools / gadgets available is pretty decent, perfectly balanced, nothing too OP
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Playing on hard difficulty, AIs are not dumb, they are well coded, however AI is still suffering from minor cases of ‘lack of peripheral vision’
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Minimal to none grinding involved
– Real player with 96.3 hrs in game
Asguaard
I am writing this review due to receiving a free guide. I’ve played lots of RPGMaker games and several Aldorea games. Aldorea games are enjoyable but they usually stick to their game mechanics with each game which i personally don’t like. To explain: The biggest peeve i have with Aldorea games is that they hide way too much stuff; areas, rooms, gear, items, money. This leads to 2 problems. With such a large amount of hidden things they force you to buy the guide to be able to get a complete game experience with their games forcing more money out of customers. The other thing this leads to is searching every nook and cranny which quickly becomes boring and tedious. Not to mention a huge amount of unnecessary wear on a controller. Another thing they tend to do is have random encounters which becomes frustrating because it ruins your ability to explore. While exploring you are frequently thrown into battles and when its over your left with remembering what you were doing and what you have already done. They do this mostly with their earlier games. The last thing they tend to do is allow missing during combat. What makes the combat enjoyable is being able to implement strategies but it screws off your carefully planned strategy when your big killer blow that would drop them misses and since they are still alive they swiftly proceed to kick you in the nards and now you are taking damage and what not when you had a solid plan - this to me takes out most of the strategy for the player and is frustrating and annoying. Even after all that they are still enjoyable games for the money. I mean, how can you not have fun. I have been playing video games since pong, com64, asteroids, i was there. All that time, my first and last love has always been old school turn-based rpg games and I really love RPGMaker games. These kind of games have it all- Exploring and dungeon crawling, character and party development, cool equipment, skills, and spells to create a party to your style, quests, adventure, and you even get a story and often enjoyable music. I believe that the only reason that you wouldn’t have a good time is that for whatever reason you decide you don’t want to because even though during play there are some things I don’t like I always have a great time. Don’t poo-poo on old school RPG games and RPGMaker games, they are always fun and if you don’t like them, I think it’s more on you than the games. I really hope that Aldorea and all the other RPGMaker game developers continue to keep pumping out games forever. Even though they can improve they still put out very enjoyable games. I appreciate all the hard work that they put into what they do. I have talked to the developers and they put their hearts and souls into these games, earning a living doing what they love. My hats off to all involved. These games are inexpensive and a great value for the gaming hours to price ratio. Love it!!!
– Real player with 99.7 hrs in game
Asguaard is like paradise for everyone who loves to explore!
The story is very nice. Asguaard is a land of dwarves and fairies. A wonderful place, but now in danger because the Pandora Box has been opened and seven plagues are about to destroy the land. Only a human can save the world and the dwarves manage to summon even two of them, Glen and Rayanne. Accompanied by the faithful dwarf Grom and a little unicorn they set off to find what’s necessary to prevent the worst from happening.
If I should choose one word to describe Asguaard, it would be HUGE. Huge world maps and huge dungeons with many many secrets to discover. There are countless Hidden Locations (on the world maps) and Magical Rooms (in dungeons or villages …) to be found and if you explore thoroughly you’ll be well rewarded.
– Real player with 58.2 hrs in game
Humanity
Enjoyed the game, graphics are fantastic, but had problems thru-out. For no reason it would start to rotate the player non stop. Had to exit game and restart. When I got to the point to gather the Polonium Fuel It wouldn’t open the last gate to gather the fuel container. After further play time I found my error. Also it would be nice if you added a list of game save points so you can return to a previous point in the game.
– Real player with 106.3 hrs in game
I started playing this game when it was in early access, it’s a great game! Thoroughly enjoying it every time i play it. I love the beautiful surroundings and the vibrant colours in game, the humour has also had me smiling as that is something i quite like in games. The controls of the game are simple also. I think the game is great fun and addictive :) I am grateful that i was given the opportunity to play, thank you! The only negative i have is that sometimes it can be a little laggy but it’s not a deal breaker.
– Real player with 25.7 hrs in game
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 is The Family Circus by way of Spencer’s Gifts, a game with long, earnest quests about how darn good coffee is punctuated by gore and gun violence. Borderlands 3 walks by dog poop, points at it, and laughs, and then sets it on fire. Borderlands 3 stays up until 11:30 pm drinking soda and googling crass Flash animations, taking detailed notes.
It’s stuck in the late ’00s, when surface level vulgarity was enough to qualify as edgy—Borderlands 3 is seriously obsessed with turds—and when the series was first conceived. It’s stuck in a time when memes lasted months rather than days, when referential humor was still a novelty and not exhausting, when you could point at something the slightest bit abnormal or gross and call it a joke. Simpler times, not necessarily better times.
– Real player with 2983.2 hrs in game
Let’s talk about the positives first, the graphics as everyone would expect are a lot better, the devs managed to keep the comic/cartoony look of the past games which gave the franchise more character. The combat is faster and more chaotic, the shooting is far better and the mobility of your character is a lot smoother. The guns are better, there is more variety with cooler designs and mechanics.
Now about the negatives, oh man where do I even begin… First big oopsie, I felt that the game doesn’t care about almost any of the loved characters of the previous games. Half of the past characters appear for 1 or 2 hours (or not at all) and the other half that plays a major role are treated with no respect. Like where the fuck is claptrap?! You cant have a borderlands game without Claptrap playing a major role. The second big oopsie is the villains, they are so cringe… literally. I mean ok, everyone knew that it’s hard to compete with Hansome Jack, but these villains are so fking bad, probably the worst villains I have ever witnessed. Their character feels so forced, they tryed to make them cool with all the memes but the execution is so bad. The DLCs are a lot better than the main game and part of the reason is SPOILER the main game villains don’t appear in any of them.
– Real player with 91.1 hrs in game