Recent reviews by sinbad269

Pros: Meaty gunplay, amazing gameplay loop, deep and well-thought out fire support and weapons. Great to look at, awesome sound, great animations, with fairly simple, but easy to understand lore.

Cons: Matchmaking, server capacity, spending the first few hours diagnosing graphics issues [when I have similar hardware to a PS5], weird issues with tracking and getting rewards

7/10 - Will be nearly perfect if/when the server and stability issues get figured out. If they don't, people will abandon this game pretty quickly

Kill things, don't die. In typical Halo fashion.

Never got around to playing Half-Life 1 to completion, but played Half-Life 2 the day it released and it was my favourite game for the longest time. Playing through Black Mesa gave me a lot of the same vibes and I was genuinely surprised it's as long as it is [the story is about as long as HL2 + Ep1 & 2]. The puzzles are also more mind-bending than it's sequel. The art-style and sound/music are absolutely spot-on. Seriously, if you're into shooters in any way shape or form, you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing this!

The only gripe I have is that in some places there is no clear way forward, but I think this is down to the original game's age and design philosophies back then [remembering this is essentially a remaster of a 20+ year-old game!]

All-in-all, I cannot recommend it enough.

Kill crewmates, lose friends

Shoot the things, pick up the things, dunk the things, shoot more things. Grind ALL the things.

Also, SPAAAAAAAACE [Magic]

If you're into slow-burning strategy gameplay, that originally started life as a phone game, that you played in your free time, which involves growing your empire/system [Yellow Star] through trade, mining hydrogen asteroids and participating in PvE co-op gameplay [Red Star; to get artifacts that allow you to research better mods, XP, credits and hydro], with 2 PvP modes; 1 with corp-mates to co-ordinate relic farming [White Star] or a Battle Royale-style gamemode [Blue Star] that allows you to farm "shards" for an alternative trading method, then this is the game for you.

Many gud. Much pew. Such explosions.

etc, etc, etc

Devs are responsive and open to changing it up, but they've found a good niche between realism and good gameplay.

In short: Battlefield meets Tarkov.

Pros:

• Great depth of gun, character and vehicle customisation [not on the level of Tarkov, but it's all available out of the gate - at least for now], even if most serve no difference compared to the others [foregrips for example: they all have the same recoil reduction, while 2 are heavier than the others]
  
• Battlepoint Rewards system akin to Medal of Honor 2010's Score-streaks with IFV's, AFV's and MBT's, UFV's, along with off-map supports [bombing runs, artillery, UAV's, etc]
  
• Useful and fun gadgets, in the form of med packs, ammo packs, equipment packs and mini drones
  
• Gunplay is solid, with decent damage mitigation, depending on armour level
  
• Nice kill-screen that gives you info on the hits you took and where you took them, along with an XP breakdown
  
• Map layout and boundary changes between matches, adding to the variety
  
• Settings menu is solid, if a little barren in terms of tooltips

Cons:

• Spawning system need a lot of work. I've spawned into the crossfire of a firefight and I've killed people in that scenario
  
• Strange lag/jitter occuring, but there's no ping/latency feedback, so I can't be sure
  
• The controls can sometimes feel a little... "floaty" [kind-of relates to the the lag/jitter, as far as I can tell]
  
• Customisation menu needs improvement [weapon configs don't seem to carry over between game sessions, and I feel like BP Rewards should be separated from the infantry loadout]
  
• The main menu is a bitter tease [At least for now. Gives you a glimpse of what's to come though]
  
• Weapon list is a little light [5 Assault Rifles, 3 Bolt-Action Snipers, 2 Shotguns, 3 SMG's, 3 LMG's, no DMR's or Battle Rifles]
  
• No server brower
  
• Loading screens are pretty obscure, so I'm not sure which map is which
  
• Vehicle movement is reasonably solid, but weapon selection within said vehicle is not very intuitive; tooltips to remind players which button does which, indicators for which weapon/ammo is selected and maybe a sound to indicate when you switch between them
  
• Tooltips need some work [callouts for gadget use for example follow the default, rather than the actual binding]
  
• soldiers blending completely into their surroundings and/or not appearing at all. I've been clearing hallways and checking corners. Then when I can see it's clear, I keep moving only to die seconds later by someone who's apparently been there the whole time

All-in-all, for an Early-Access title, it's a solid base. I've also noticed some strange... oddities, but I think they're Unreal Engine quirks more than anything. If you like Battlefield [particularly Battlefield 3 and 4] and enjoy Tarkov's deeper customisation [this is nothing compared to it, but it's got a lot of the main bits], then you'll enjoy this

If you take Just Cause, Borderlands, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Rage and Batman, throw them all in a blender, then dry out the resulting mush using a flame-thrower, and push the colour temperature further into the red, you'd end up with something like this. A post-apocalyptic car-combat open-world of guys who love cars and chrome. And killing. All of them want to shove a shiv down your neck or pummel your face with their front bumper. But alas, I digress.

The gameplay is solid, making beating said guys to death with your bare hands very satisfying. Not to mention everything feels like they have real weight to them [the cars accelerate like crap, and over-steer like a b***h, but I'm pretty sure that's what they were aiming for], and the art style makes everything just look burnt, and barren.

Once you get into the meat of the game though, you'll notice it's like any other open-world RPG. Plenty of fetch-style quests, and lots of vast nothingness between everything, but then again, it IS based in a dried-up version of the San Fransisco Bay area. To put it into perspective, I would still rate The Witcher 3's world vastly superior, not just because the story and lore is better [imo], or because it's a significantly larger area, but because there's far more packed into the same area. But like I said, that's because Mad Max's world is essentially dead.

Possibly the best part of this game though, is the graphics. I'm running Windows 10 Home with an i5-2500 @ 3.7GHz, 8GB RAM, GTX 970, on a 1920*1200 resolution installed on my HDD. Now, for most recent titles [The Witcher 3, Far Cry 4, GTA 5, etc] I've had to turn at least something [if not quite a bit] down to get it running smooth.
With this, I've cranked absolutely everything right up, and I can't get the game to dip below 60 fps. Yet it still look gorgeous. The lens flares off the car/overhead lights, the dust and smoke plumes, reflecting light off metal, the detailed and unique characters and their clothes, it all looks amazing.
On top of that, the options for... everything, is actually very deep, and reasonably well-explained. From keymapping to audio and video options, it's far more extensive than Metal Gear Solid 5 , but it doesn't have deeper options like draw distance like GTA 5 [although the draw distance is pretty insane as it stands]. I'm also yet to encounter anything like pop-in, etc. I should also add that I've forced certain things "on" in Nvidia's Control Panel [like MFAA], and I still can't get the frames to dip.

All of this leads me to wonder why Rocksteady didn't go for this engine [unless they did and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it big-time?] with Arkham Knight, or at least collaborate with Avalanche, which wouldn't be hard considering it's still WB Interactive.

In any case, the TL;DR of this is, if you want a great, casual, open-world game to f**k s**t up in, then this is the one to have right now.

First things first, the opening paragraph isn't true. You're not trained by Assassin's, you just happen to have all the skills already! You're not part of the Creed for the most part [won't spoil it too much, but the opening sequences a real heart-breaker - for me at least].

The only AC game I haven't played is AC1. I started on AC2, and everyone I spoke to said to not waste my time with AC1 as it was quite boring, and the controls and game-play were pretty much the same for AC2. I have read the synopsis and played every other major AC since, and aside from Black Flag, Revelations is by far my favourite. The location, the catacomb searches, the controls, the armour, the graphics, sound, and of course Ezio's enigmatic charisma; everything was spot on for me [At first, I didn't like the AC3/4 controls, but I've grown to like them]. Also ACR filled in a lot of the holes that even AC1 didn't fill in, so there's that too. I also have Turkish heritage, so learning about it's history was very interesting to me [on that note, I've actually learnt more about world history from the AC games than I ever did in school]. On top of these, like AC3, they've completely removed the bomb crafting mechanics, which added a extra aspect of gameplay to Revelations, along with making the enemy models a bit more mainstream, and having only 5 major enemy classes . Which also detracts from gameplay, as before there were certain enemies you HAD to dodge, ones you HAD to stun, and the rest you could either wittle them down or easily counter. I prefered this, even though you really had to take note of their individual costumes/weapons, it helped keep the gameplay variety up.

With this iteration though, I have noticed more small bugs too, which is par for the course with AC, but the parkour seems a bit... stickier than before - I think that's because they've removed the 3-tier free-running [where W+Shift+Right-Click would get you free-running before, now it's just Shift+W - making it easier to overshoot your mark]. There's also a weird draw issue where the world maybe loaded, but certain objects and NPC's won't be. I've turned corners to be greeted by an empty street, and a second later people and certain objects will materialise out of thin air. Setting the world detail to very high fixes this, but I'm getting frame drops as a result

In saying all these things, this is still a mind-blowingly good game. Only other game I played since picking it up was Dota2 and that was a single match for a tournament. They really knew what they were going for when they brought the naval portion into the forefront and you will end up spending majority of your time on the open sea.

I'm yet to play the multiplayer, but if it's anything like ACR's [which I absolutely adored - purely for it's Simple Deathmatch mode], then I'm going to love it.
*UPDATE* I've since played the Multiplayer, and they've removed the Simple Deathmatch mode. It's much the same as ACR's aside from this though.

The "real-world" of this, like all other previous AC's is nothing special, but now they've made you a faceless drone, bringing it into first-person view, and even more dull than before. There are some familiar faces though, so that's comforting at least. You're essentially a game-tester in this. In this sense, Ubisoft is putting it out there that they're like Abstergo Entertainment, which just doesn't sit right with me, as much as I love their 3 major franchises [AC, Far Cry and Tom Clancy's].
If you have a poke around on the "outside" you'll notice some small cross-game Easter eggs, with "ctOS" from Watch Dogs, but since playing Watch Dogs, there's nothing tying the 2 together. Maybe they'll bring the two together in later games? I mean, they *are* bring the 2 timelines closer together. Slowly but surely.

All in all, I highly recommend this game. If you enjoyed the naval portions of AC3, you'll love them here, although they do mean less "Assassin" type gameplay. The locations, scenery, hunting and of course all the regular AC gameplay, tied in with the naval aspects make this one hell of game. To me, second only to Revelations.