Sleeping Dogs
NOTE: I did not play 400+ hours of this game, it’s a Steam bug that multiplied my playtime. I inquired about it but got not response from support.
INTRODUCTION:
Wei Shen a police officer trained in the USA, now working with the Hong Kong Police Department has been sent on a dangerous mission. To infiltrate and gather information on one of the largest and most dangerous Triad Organization in Hong Kong. Will he break under pressure or will he do his duty as one of Hong Kong’s finest?
PROS:
- Nice Graphics: -I like the visuals but you can clearly tell it was developed with consoles in mind. The only redeeming factor on this area is that a free high-texture DLC pack is available for download. The world is adequately populated by NPCs though at times some parts of the City does look empty. It has a day and night system as well as a weather system which adds to the game’s atmosphere.
– Real player with 443.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Third Person Open World Games.
Overview
Sleeping Dogs is a third-person, open world action game following the base concepts of GTA, meaning a large city divided into sectors (all unlocked from the start), filled with main and side activities to take on and complete, each for different types of rewards. Unlike its bigger cousin, Sleeping Dogs focuses more on melee combat rather than firearms, featuring a decently complex, satisfying, and really spectacular system that delivers the “martial arts action movie” feel almost flawlessly in each fight. Players will impersonate undercover agent Wei Shun, and perform missions for both the Hong Kong police and Triads, while trying to maintain their cover story.
– Real player with 49.9 hrs in game
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos
You are Pseudo, a powerful warrior living as a recluse in the strange land of Zenozoik. When you become embroiled in a quest for the Artifacts of Chaos, everything changes. Explore the world and defeat your enemies, but never forget the sacred rules of the Ritual.
The Mysteries of Zenozoik
You are about to enter a strange and inhospitable world. During your quest you will meet unusual characters, travel across breath-taking landscapes, and discover ancient secrets.
The Protector and the Protected
Pseudo is a formidable warrior. Despite his outer stoicism, he is haunted by his memories and chooses to live apart from civilization. This quiet existence is upheaved when he meets a small orphaned creature whose incredible healing powers have attracted the attention of Gemini, the terrible mistress of the Artifacts. Unable to leave the boy to face this threat alone, Pseudo decides to protect him – not realizing that larger forces are at play.
The Only Law
In Zenozoik, there is only one law. According to an ancient custom, the rules of combat are determined by a game of dice using artifacts with special properties. To succeed, you will have to search for the most powerful of these artifacts, fighting your battles according to the ever-changing rules of the Ritual.
Martial Arts
To succeed in hand-to-hand combat, you must master all the ancient techniques. Every warrior, no matter how strong, has weaknesses that can be exploited. Grab your enemies, block their hits, stun them, dodge attacks… every opportunity seized takes you closer to victory, but mistakes can be fatal. To bring down the toughest opponents, you will have to perfect your skills.
One Night, Infinite Stars
Every night, Pseudo’s dreams are so vivid that they literally come to life. Enter his mysterious dreamscape and embark on a multiplayer adventure. Play co-op with up to three players or challenge other players in arena combat.
Read More: Best Third Person Combat Games.
Jade Empire™: Special Edition
Jade Empire could easily been seen as the first step for Bioware towards more simplistic and action based gameplay however it manages to avoid the scorn many felt towards the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series by providing a beautiful and inspired world, the writing is excellent and the characters are interesting.
You start the game off as a student at a martial arts academy. Things quickly change however as you are charged with saving the world and restoring balance in the world, pretty standard hero stuff really. You won’t be on your great all important quest for long before some random peasant will ask you go save a cat from a tree however. Jade Empire is a game that loves procrastinating. Despite what should be a fairly urgent overall plot you will find yourself spending most of your time solving the problems of various little people around the world. Sometimes I’d even forget why I was doing all this in first place.
– Real player with 78.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Third Person RPG Games.
I would definitively recommend this game, it starts slowly but as I progressed in the story I appreciated it more and more, despice some flaws in the gameplay and the annoying bioware “black & white” morality system.
Technics:
win 7 + xbox controller, no problems , nothing to complain about.
Gameplay:
The controlls are a bit rusty and at times ungainly, it doesn’t respond as well as it should, making it at time very difficult to resolve a fight. The advanced combat style system, while a good idea could do with some streamlining, there are almost too many styles (something between 15 and 20) but you end up using only a couple of them exclusively.
– Real player with 56.0 hrs in game
No Fair Play
An anti-game :
No Fair Play is a trash Futsal where you can beat your opponents using nonstandard way.
A member of the opposing team has a good dribbling skills ? Aim for the legs !
No Fair Play is probably the only competitive game where you can still have fun while loosing.
Based on physics :
Ragdolls, ball control, player interactions … physics gives players more opportunities to have fun with unexpected situations.
Intuitive gameplay :
Simple controls, simple rules, just focus on having fun with your friends.
About me :
I’m just a self-taught developer, maybe more a gamer, who uses all help he could find on internet for this game. I would like to thank all these people for giving me this opportunity.
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
This game has 1) an engaging story 2) interesting characters and most of all 3) a beautiful world. I’m not someone who plays this game for the gameplay (while being remarkably good for it’s time, especially the combat system), I play this for the gorgeous version of Hong Kong displayed here. It’s not photorealistic, and it’s nothing like a 1:1 remake of the city. Instead it captures some of the aspects that make a city feel like HK and lay them out over multiple districts. All that being said, this game most definitely shows it’s age in [CURRENT YEAR] and can be a pain to work with on occasion. There will be bugs, and it’ll probably make you restart certain missions. Despite that though, I think everyone should try this game at least once. It won’t be for everyone, but there isn’t another game like it. At the time of writing this, the game is on sale for $3, which I think i a totally fair price. It’s not worth its full $20 price tag, but if it’s on sale it’s definitely worth a shot.
– Real player with 162.0 hrs in game
“Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.”
~Mario Puzo, The Godfather
Ah, the good ol' True Crime series… Back in 2003, when Californian studio called Luxoflux (the guys behind Star Wars: Demolition) released their Streets of LA (the first game in the series), I was a pretty big fan. See, I always loved what Rockstar did in GTA III. They took Reflections Interactive’s Driver (the game, in which nobody made it past the tutorial) and put it into an open world environment. Awesome stuff. The problem is – I never liked the actual gameplay. The clunky controls, the missions that very often didn’t give you a fair chance to win in your first try, the fact that very often the game wanted you to re-play the entire sequence since very beginning after you failed… I know there’s heck of a lot of GTA fans out there, but personally, I never liked how those games felt. Still don’t, and even though the series evolved quite a lot since then, it still feels like a torture to me. Now, Streets of LA? It was a different story. It was a pure fun. It was extremely user-friendly (heck, the game even allowed you to skip the missions you didn’t like), the controls were tricky but comfortable, the open world was there, but the most importantly? The game had its own unique face. It was non-linear, it had the advanced melee combat, it had stealth elements (the worst part of the game, but still) and it did the “police simulator” thing surprisingly well. Up to this day, I love Streets of LA very much, especially that juicy Japanese version by CAPCOM that came with a cool Japanese dub. And yes, it was like Streets of LA was a Ryū ga Gotoku before the actual Ryū ga Gotoku. Especially thanks to its cocky storytelling.
– Real player with 71.7 hrs in game
The Guardians of Peace
This is an interesting game. Had fun playing so far! Lots of story and mix of meditation. Its definitely unique!
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
9 Monkeys of Shaolin
A great, modern beat em up that dared to be different instead of relying purely on nostalgia and making a carbon copy of already existing games. This game is basically everything I wanted Streets of Rage 4 to be.
Positives:
-
Decent story. (Not that stories in a beat em up ever mattered)
-
Very fluid and satisfying gameplay. When you get the hang of the mechanics and skills, you can do some awesome combos, linking the different attacks and abilities together. The fact that you can attack in 360° instead of being forced to a 2D pane doing only left/right attacks is a welcome change. There is a bit of ‘automatic lock on’ for the moves to help with this, but you still feel in control of the character. Sending enemies flying and watching their rag-doll bodies fall/smash against the environment is never not satisfying.
– Real player with 38.4 hrs in game
Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided by the developer.
9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a beat em up about a chinese fisherman/monk fighting the japanese pirates with a staff.
The main appeal is the satisfying, fluid and responsive combat. It has good skill expression with three different attacks that later get upgraded each with two different stances, a 360 degrees parry skill that requires good timing and can reflect enemy projectiles back at them and a dodge. Once you upgrade the attacks, you can fly across the screen with a kick and feel like a real Shaolin monk jumping and weaving attacks between multiple enemies. The use of magical seals disrupts enemies in an area that in my opinion make the game too easy even on the hardest difficulty. The enemies have a visual indicator, a brief shining light and take some time to execute their attack which usually makes them easy to defeat one on one. The only unfair element is sometimes ranged enemies shoot you from outside the screen. You will fight them in small groups in a locked zone until you defeat them and new enemies that need to be approached in a different way are introduced progressively. Finishing off the last enemy in a locked zone comes with a satisfying blow and slow motion.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
NARAKA: BLADEPOINT
Holy sht this game is fun. During a clash, You breath, you lose. Each weapon and each hero have counters either trough positioning/witty timings/picking or utilizing other weapons.
Do not believe to what people say that X is broken/OP. Everything have a workaround specially if your’e skilled on wits and proper positioning. You panic, you lose. Do not panic. I cant count how many times i managed to turn the tables on a fight and it felt so satisfying.
Pros:
1. Unlimited combo possibilities to the point you get your own combo personality
– Real player with 439.4 hrs in game
great game.
i would prefer if everyone would deal a bit less damage to make the fights last longer…
Espacially a few weapons. But the new duo mode feels way better than trios. You can fight 2 people but 3 was just to hard in my opinion.
I played the game for over 200h now and i don’t understand why people say the queue times are long. A few seconds up to a few minutes if it’s early in the morning or late at night.
And why are people complaining about asian players in the reviews? It’s literary almost the same as playing agains people from EU or NA.
– Real player with 201.5 hrs in game
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
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
Xuan-Yuan Sword VII
I don’t recommend this game.
I actually pre-ordered this, as I’m a huge fan of the old Xuan Yuan Jian Series; I enjoyed Gates of Firmament even though the combat was very bad, the story made up for it. I played this game in Chinese (audio/subtitles, which don’t have a text skip option so you have to wait for audio tracks to finish playing or skip the entire cutscene).
In-Depth Explanation:
XYS series has always been well-respected for it’s plot development, the gameplay has been on and off (with the migration to 3D gameplay basically killing all elements of FUN because this studio seems to not really have the skill to manage 3D development). So let’s start with the plot, your character starts off as a caretaker of his sister, the advancement of the story is closely linked to this situation, thus the entire game can be summed up as “hero tries to save the sister”. This is the entire plot of the game. There is no over-arching goal to defeat evil, save the world, learn about other cultures, visit other countries (which was common in other XYS games), this game is just “save the sister”. This plot is delivered through a strict on-rails story advancement.
– Real player with 48.9 hrs in game
The franchise of Xuan Yuan Sword has a long history, its ever-lasting life could go back to 90s, if Final Fantasy is well known from Japan, then Xuan Yuan Sword is that well known from China. It’s its 30 years anniversary now, with Chinese Paladin: Sword and Fairy franchise also from Domo studio, the shiny two famous titles were widely recognized within the RPG genre in Chinese gaming community. As folks say, “the Two Great blades are the guardians of Domo.”
XYS VII is the 13th instrument of Xuan Yuan Sword games. It also brings some big changes along its release, e.g the first time in the entire franchise being an ARPG game with open world(previous titles are turn-based on). Although there are 12 titles before this one, you don’t need to play its ancestors to understand the story. Though all Xuan Yuan Sword games are based on Chinese dynasties history and mythology, but each one’s story happens in a different time, there aren’t any close connections between each other, only sharing the same universe as a whole.
– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game