aaaaaaaaaaalright. Where to begin?

Well, I have now officially finished the game. I must say, it was probably one of my top 5 most underwhelming game endings I've ever encountered unfortunately. So yeah that was a pretty big buzzkill.

The game itself was pretty decent. Slightly above average is what I would say after completing it. When you first start, and everything is just getting going and you're picking up new powers the game gives you the feel of something that is much more complex and unique than what it ultimately ends up being. It never quite lives up to the fairly novel idea they had for the game where you are essentially investigating the world trying to put the pieces together to find just the right way to take out all of the visionaries in a single loop.

In the end, there really is no choice in the matter whatsoever, and really not much true investigation either. You can simply follow quest markers from point to point to eventually solve the SINGLE way that killing all visionaries in a single loop can be done.

You heard that right, there is only a single way to do it. The way that they have laid out for you. There is no experimentation or randomness that comes into play whatsoever in the order or ways you knock 'em all off.

I know I've been fairly negative thus far, and I am going to point out one more negative part as well and that is the game AI. It is extremely bad and stupid. It feels like they did this purposefully, but man is it bad. When you start the game, you try to be very stealthy moving around the map taking out the eternalists in stealthy fashion, but as you start to really get familiar with the game systems you start to understand just how little danger you are in at any given moment.

I used a silenced SMG for the first half of the game with a quiet footsteps perk and it literally turned the game into "shooting fish in a barrel" It was that bad. Barely any reaction from enemies even when their friends were dying all around them. I started just going completely loud to try to get as many enemies after me as possible so I could get any semblance of a challenge.

Even with all these average or downright negative parts of the game, there is still a flair to the game that I really enjoyed. Colt and Julianna's back and forth is really fun, the powers you can use are actually extremely fun as well. The one thing I wish was the ability to bring 3 powers into the game instead of the standard 2 as I found sometimes having to pick between 2 definitely limits some of the potential sandbox crazy hijinks you could otherwise cause.

The story leading up to the end was actually pretty interesting and I was definitely invested in the characters (Colt and Julianna) right up until the end, but the end, as I mentioned prior just completely fell flat.

After taking some time, I really am still baffled at how so many games media felt this game warranted a 10/10 rating. I tried extremely hard to see what they were seeing, and still came away extremely confused.

The cynic in me went to the "this game is literally so easy a child could feel like a pro" factor of this game, and then I thought about just how incredibly incompetent we have seen many games journos to be at gaming....... and thought maybe, just maybe they finally were able to beat a game that was made for their skill level.... but, thats just me being a ♥♥♥♥ lol.. but I honestly do not understand how in any world this could be a 10.


my final verdict? 6.5/10

Completely agree 100%. Beat it and uninstalled feeling lukewarm towards the whole experience.

it's worth nothing that a 6.5 isn't slightly above average on many people's ideas of a 10 point rating scale, since they associate it with a 65% as a grade or similar scores (which is generally not above average nowadays).

Just preparing you for people being upset when they don't read the rest of your post - I agree it's a bit easy and the fun is more about being powerful and screwing around with enemies, so if you're more after a challenge and sense of achievement this doesn't offer as much.

You could try self-made challenges like stealth/no items/only visionary kills or something, but it's a bit different than the game forcing the challenge on you - wish it had difficulty settings.

I feel like the metacritic 88 is in a pretty fair range considering how most places score games, since it feels like 70ish or 75ish is more of an average game how they rate (maybe even 80, there's score inflation from keeping publishers happy for review copies and all that, I don't really read a ton of game review scores so I'm not sure what the average is). I mean, Anthem got a 59 on metacritic and some reviews in the 65-70 range and it was basically a dumpster fire from my time in the beta.

Spoiler = This game is a waste of money and time

Just completed it. Loved the game but yeah I agree the ending was underwhelming to say the least. All about the journey and not the destination I guess :)

Originally posted by StraightEdgeJoe:

Spoiler = This game is a waste of money and time

What are you even doing here then? Bizarre.

Originally posted by neO_o_:

Originally posted by StraightEdgeJoe:

Spoiler = This game is a waste of money and time

What are you even doing here then? Bizarre.

Hey, he does seem like an expert on wasting time. I don't understand either.

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by neO_o_:

What are you even doing here then? Bizarre.

Hey, he does seem like an expert on wasting time. I don't understand either.

Says the person who wants to troll people about rating meanings. Welcome to my block list :)

Originally posted by StraightEdgeJoe:

Says the person who wants to troll people about rating meanings. Welcome to my block list :)

I mean, I wasn't trying to communicate with a troll anyway, so cool.

Anyway it's hopefully clear to OP and everyone else that my rating comment wasn't meant as a troll - it's just that the actual trolls are pretty thick on this forum (see above), so I meant to warn that some people on this forum are on edge about it and that someone might just read the end of the review and assume 6.5/10 means absolute trash game and start slinging insults instead of reading your relevant points. I think I personally liked it a bit more than you OP, but still less than other games by Arkane and i agree with your complaints.

I don't really care if someone wants to rate the game 4 potatoes out of 17, their rating scale is their business (though I might ask what that means if they didn't explain).

SPOILERS - read at your own risk but I'm assuming if you clicked on this thread you've finished.

I suppose what annoyed me the most about the ending was that I didn't exactly know what would happen when I selected one of the choices available; I opted NOT to kill Juilanna primarily because I was distracted by my baby and I forgot what the trigger button was for a split second, but then I sat there and thought 'hey let's see how this goes'.

Did I anticipate that Colt would then totally forget all of his grievances and suddenly go traipsing around Blackreef's countryside with his daughter? Not exactly. In other games I like knowing exactly what outcome each decision really points towards. Like "hey, if I say x, y will happen". I had no idea that going drinking with Julianna and putting Alexsis through a meat-grinder was what 'y' would be, but I could see something like "I'm going to kill all of the visionaries and keep you on your bloody toes every day, you will NEVER know when I decide to strike" being a more realistic option.

I dunno. I really loved this game and overall I liked the ending, it just felt weird and out of place given the entire story arc and Colt's absolute hatred of AEON and the time loop.

I would still give it a solid 9 or 10 overall, I really liked it and it ticked all of my boxes for what a game should be, including controls; this is the first game I've played on the PC rather than a console, so it took me a second to get used to the keyboard, but overall it was intuitive which I liked.

Originally posted by mitcHELLspawn:

The cynic in me went to the "this game is literally so easy a child could feel like a pro" factor of this game, and then I thought about just how incredibly incompetent we have seen many games journos to be at gaming....... and thought maybe, just maybe they finally were able to beat a game that was made for their skill level.... but, thats just me being a ♥♥♥♥ lol.. but I honestly do not understand how in any world this could be a 10.

This is some entitled self righteous little kid stuff right here. Sorry but it's bad thinking.

Ratings aren't given because of some test of skill. The composition of the game as a whole is what the rating reflects. The music and sound effects have more to do with the rating than skill required to complete it. Overall it is supposed to reflect whether or not players will enjoy the title.

This game, especially compared to a whole lot of others that slid in at 9+, has all the elements of a great game and it has them in excess compared to games that pulled 9+ and 10s throughout the last few years. The immersive sim/story rich FPS, etc, style games always get high scores. Everybody loves a good System Shock, Deus Ex, Dishonored, Bioshock, etc, etc, etc. Amnesia pulled in 8 and 9 and still holds 85% on Metacritic. Maybe you should try that and reevaluate what the ratings mean?

Absolutely none of these ratings have anything to do with the difficulty.

what a clown shoe you are my dude. You're sitting here telling me you know for a fact what ratings are given for from every reviewer, and I'm the one that needs to re-evaluate?

I literally said "thats just me being a ♥♥♥♥" meaning I didn't actually take that thought seriously... but instead, your whiney lil ♥♥♥♥♥ of a brain decided to go off on a literal meaningless diatribe about things you THINK you know, but don't actually know any better than I.

You don't know what other people are thinking when they are reviewing games.

Also, the game literally has almost no story. Lots of world building, but the amount of plot holes that just go completely unresolved are staggering.

" The music and sound effects have more to do with the rating than skill required to complete it. Overall it is supposed to reflect whether or not players will enjoy the title."

That is total nonsense considering MANY people, including myself take into account how difficult and how much skill a game requires to perfect when deciding if a game is for us. Dark souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Nioh, and many many more are examples of these types of games.

Maybe next time you think you have some intellectual take that you're going to wield like a club, maybe take a second to re-think, because you sound ridiculous.

To be clear, this is some entitled self righteous little kid stuff right here. Sorry but it's bad thinking.

Originally posted by mitcHELLspawn:

That is total nonsense considering MANY people, including myself take into account how difficult and how much skill a game requires to perfect when deciding if a game is for us. Dark souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Nioh, and many many more are examples of these types of games.

You're a game journalist? Like the ones you called incompetent? Yeah...

Once again: This is some entitled self righteous little kid stuff right here. Sorry but it's bad thinking.

Don't mind Asura OP, he is just a little insecure because he had to use a guide to complete the game. He and Quillithe usually try to derail any thread that has anything less than positive to say about the game.

Anyway I think your review is pretty spot on OP, not a bad game by any stretch just not that good either, 6.5 is a pretty fair score.

Originally posted by Greywolf:

Don't mind Asura OP, he is just a little insecure because he had to use a guide to complete the game. He and Quillithe usually try to derail any thread that has anything less than positive to say about the game.

Yeah, that's why my post said I agreed with some of his criticisms. I guess I pointed out that by the standard review curve of many websites 6.5 is closer to Anthem than a slightly above average game, but once you clarify the scale it's an understandable opinion.

Originally posted by mitcHELLspawn:

Also, the game literally has almost no story. Lots of world building, but the amount of plot holes that just go completely unresolved are staggering.

" The music and sound effects have more to do with the rating than skill required to complete it. Overall it is supposed to reflect whether or not players will enjoy the title."

That is total nonsense considering MANY people, including myself take into account how difficult and how much skill a game requires to perfect when deciding if a game is for us. Dark souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Nioh, and many many more are examples of these types of games.

Yeah, Arkane games are mostly pretty weak on story and stronger on atmosphere and setting. This one is probably even less story than most, but it's kinda tough since the whole middle of the game is super non-linear. Still wish the end had a little bit more concrete story.

Also, for the sake of your average game reviewer being hard is probably neutral point-wise. Just as many people don't like Dark Souls for being too hard as like it for being hard, and this is a more sandboxy genre from a developer where every game they make is pretty easy anyway, so I don't think too many people were expecting that much difficulty.
For personal enjoyment yeah, if you're looking for a sense of overcoming challenge, this is really not gonna be the best game for you.

Originally posted by Greywolf:

Don't mind Asura OP, he is just a little insecure because he had to use a guide to complete the game.

Mention stupid and the idiot that can't tell promotional material from a walk through shows up as fast as they can.

Anyway this thread is only made more childish and terrible with the inclusion of GreyPuppo's failures.