I recently started playing Assassin's Creed Unity after briefly watching Whitelight's video on this game. I had this
game in my library for a long time, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I finished Black Flag and Rogue earlier
this year, and those are the only two AC games I finished to date. After playing other games for a while, the time
felt right to get back into an Assassin's Creed
game.
When I first started this game, my impressions were not great. It felt less polished than Black Flag (which is
understandable given its launch). However, once I scaled up the Notre-Dame cathedral my view on this game changed
for the better. The game looks beautiful. Climbing up to the top of the cathedral and scanning the vista was done
very well. I get the feeling that there is something very special about this game. Whether or not it lives up to its
potential remains to be seen. As with all UbiSoft open world games, there is a lot of bloat in terms of
collectibles, missions, etc.
I wonder if this is the largest Assassins's Creed in terms of map size at this point. The crowd density was a talking
point, and I have mixed feelings about it. The crowd AI is nowhere near as sophisticated as the trailer suggested.
Some of the animations can be very clunky.
There are also technical issues with the game. I was able to get the game running running fine at 3440x1440
resolution. I had to run this in a borderless window mode to prevent the game from resizing all the other windows I
have open in my secondary display. In addition to this, recording videos at 60FPS in ShadowPlay causes jittering in
the video files. I had to reduce the video capture frame rate to 30FPS to get stable recordings.
I haven't formed a strong opinion on the rest of the game, but so far, I am enjoying it. Unlikely as it might be, my
hope is that this game will surpass Black Flag as the best Assassin's Creed game.
I played Age of Empires 3 for the first time in 2005. My machine at the time was not powerful enough to handle this
game, so I went back to AOE II. 17 years later, I picked up this game on Steam.
I paid $5.99 for the definitive edition, which includes Warchiefs and Asian Dynasties. I also purchased the United
States Civilization for $2.49. I am yet to play any skirmish matches with United States Civilization. I played all
the story missions including the expansions.
I am by no means a strategy games expert. I do not play PvP. I wanted to play all the campaign missions, and because
the game was on sale, I decided to take a chance.
I am glad I did because I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. The main campaign missions are quite well done.
The story begins during the early settlement of the new world, and goes all the way to the founding of America.
There are some very interesting missions here.
The expansions are also quite well done for the most part. The highlight of the expansions for me were the Japanese
missions.There is something aesthetically pleasing about the Japanese setting. I liked the Chinese missions the
least. There is nothing particularly wrong with them, I just did not find them very interesting. The Indian missions
are quite good too, but the story is rather comical. They made The East India Company the cartoon villain and
whether there is any truth to this, I am not sure. It did not stop me from having a decent time with the missions.
Graphics in the game are excellent. The snow covered landscape of New England, desert canyons of the south west,
tropical jungles of South America, the visuals are very striking. I do not know if this is because of HD textures
that were added in the modern edition or if they always looked this good. Explosions, water effects, and physics in
game are all very well done.
In addition to excellent graphics it also works great at ultra wide resolution. I played this game at 3440x1440
resolution, and it ran perfectly fine. I also occasionally played it at 1080p in windowed mode. I was very pleased
with the graphics and gameplay options. I wish all PC games implemented options like this.
Gameplay is much the same as the previous versions. There are certain choices that focus on efficiency, which may not
be well liked by veterans. I am ambivalent to this change. Logging camps and mining camps are no longer needed to
collect resources.
In fact resource gathering is far more rudimentary now than it was in AOE II. There are only 3 resources to gather -
food, wood and gold. Other than wood, there are infinite options for both food and gold. In Asian Dynasties, rice
paddy can be used to farm food and gold. It's rather bizarre, but it's not game breaking or anything. There are some
odd choices made with unit production. Indian villagers require wood instead of food. Seems rather arbitrary.
Naval combat in this game is very underwhelming. The scale of the map does not allow for large- scale naval battles.
AOE II did this a lot better. The map scale is smaller than AOE II. Certain AOE II maps are absolutely massive such
as Bukhara and Dos Pilas. No such maps exist in AOE III. It's not a deal breaker, but the advance in technology did
not bring us bigger, better maps.
It took well over 60 hours for me to get through the entire campaign (including the expansions). I totally got my
money’s worth. In hindsight, I should not have purchased the DLC for it. I don't see myself going back to playing
skirmish matches. I am currently playing AOE2 Definitive Edition. I think overall, I enjoy AOE2 more than AOE3, but
you can't go wrong for the price.
I look forward to playing AOE I and AOE IV some day. For the price I paid for it, I recommend this game.
DICE released their latest Battlefield 2042 briefing. It was underwhelming and disappointing. They repeatedly insist that they are listening to feedback from the community, yet they continue to persist with the awful specialist system. To add insult to injury, there is only one map in the season 1 update. The only new content we are going to get until then are weapon skins (which are not that great to begin with).
DICE, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the problem with the specialist system was that they were too clean looking, and proceeded to add some smudges to their face.
This is someone's idea of improving specialists in Battlefield 2042
I am at loss for words here. Its sad to see a beloved series, a truly one of a kind franchise suffer this way due to the incompetence of the studio. I decided that I am going to take a break from Battlefield 2042. So what are my options? I could play an older Battlefield game, but I spent approximately 4200 hours in Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 combined. I want something new.
I started scouring for a new shooter. I know that Call of Duty Warzone is very popular. I played the beta of Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019), and to me it felt like a bad budget clone of Battlefield 4.
I remember thinking there was a decent game underneath the obnoxious interface, the constant radio chatter, the kill streaks and every other bad decision the designers made to break immersion.
This was 3 years ago. Call of Duty has come a long way since then with the release of Warzone, which is a free to play title. So I decided to give it a try. I was prepared to have to play Battle Royale, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are other modes as well. I am playing the large scale TDM to get a feel for the game, and I will jump in Battle Royale at some point. Maybe.
Technical Details
After an 80GB+ download, I started the game, and it did not like my ultra wide monitor. It launched at a 16:9 resolution and after attempting to install shaders (which it does when you start the game for the first time), it crashed. After a few times of doing this, I started the game, and left it for a while, and it successfully finished installing shaders.
At this point, I was able to customize the graphics settings. When I set the resolution to the native value of 3440x1440, the game would around move all the windows that I have open on my secondary displays. This happens every time I started the game. It was quite annoying. Do developers not realize that most PC gamers have more than one monitor? Its the current year, and its disappointing to see modern games still struggle to work right with a multi monitor setup. In addition to this, any change to the graphics settings would make the game window flicker, and all the other windows I have open would go on a little adventure. Some would disappear entirely, and I would have to use the Move option in Windows to bring them back into view.
The fix was easy enough. Running the game in borderless window mode solved all the problems. I was hesitant to run the game in this mode because Battlefield 2042 had performance issues when running in anything but fullscreen mode. I was impressed with number of graphics options in this game. There are so many ways to tweak the game, and if I had to guess, it will run fine on mid to lower end machines. At the highest settings, the framerates are quite good. I was getting anywhere between 115 - 120 FPS. I did not notice any drops in performance even when there was a lot going on.
The Interface
This game has by far the most obnoxious UI ever. There are almost no options to customize it. I cannot disable any pop ups. There is so much information on the screen at one point, I have no idea how anyone can make any sense out of it. What actionable information is the UI presenting to me, when the screen so cluttered? I have trouble identifying enemies when there is so much on-screen litter.
I was complaining endlessly about how the UI in BF2042 was not good (and I standby that), but in comparison, even at its worst, its not as bad as Warzone.
The awful banner...I could not find a way to disable it.
Everything about the UI is garish. The ads when the game is started, the in game UI and prompts, the music cues, the player characters...it never ends. Its an all out assault on the senses. The developers seemed to have never heard of the concept of subtlety. All this would be alleviated if they simply gave players the options to customize their experience. Something as basic as disabling in game messages is not available.
Even the audio is annoying. The menu music, the screams of Godzill and King Kong in the background, the irritating in game voice over...it just never stops. Of course, its not as bad as Battlefield 2 can be at times.
If I paid full price for this game, I would be livid. I cannot play for more than a couple of rounds because of the overload. I have new found respect for those that I can play this game for hours on end. Maybe I am getting old? Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am in the minority when it comes to wanting a clean, minimalist UI. Often times, I see Battlefield videos where every single UI option is enabled with 100% opacity. I am so thankful that Battlefield allows UI customization.
What is the point of creating a beautiful game, if the UI is constantly distracting and breaking the immersion?
Closing Thoughts
Its not all terrible. Notwithstanding my objections with the game, there are certain things that Call of Duty is doing right. Weapon customization is fantastic. Battlefield can learn a thing or two from this.
There is definitely some fun to be had, but this is not a game that I can take seriously. While it is possible that I missing something here, and I am not getting how this game is supposed to be played. I will play this game until the Season 1 update for Battlefield 2042 is released. I will try to discover as much as I can, and see if there is something I am missing. That said, in an ideal world, I will never resort to installing a Call of Duty game, but the sheer incompetence of DICE made me have to look for another multiplayer shooter.
As much as I am disappointed with Battlefield 2042, I am glad it exists. I shudder to think of a world where Call of Duty is the only viable alternative for me.
I started playing Assassin's Creed Rogue right after I finished Black Flag. I went from not playing an Assassin's Creed in over two years to playing them back to back. I learned about the existence of this game while I was reading a review of Black Flag. The idea of a Black Flag like game set in North America felt very interesting to me. I really liked Black Flag, and I did not mind more of it. When I saw a picture of a ship with the northern lights in the background, I was sold.
I went scouring for a deal, and I found it on Fanatical. I paid $8.99 for the Deluxe Edition. In general I am not a fan of how companies carve out content and sell it as different editions, which is solely designed to nickel and dime gamers. However, the price of the Deluxe edition seemed acceptable to me.
This game was released very close to the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, which might explain why the game wasn't as popular. It was not as well received as Black Flag, which is a fantastic game, so it is a tall order for any game to top it, and considering that the main UbiSoft studio was working on Unity at the time, this was relegated to one of the smaller teams in UbiSoft Sofia.
Please be warned that this review will contain spoilers because I will discuss the story. SPOILER warning has been issued.
The premise is very interesting, but I felt that it was not executed very well. In Assassin's Creed Rogue, you get to play as Shay Patrick Cormac. He is a part of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins, working in North America during the Seven Years' War. He is tasked with retrieving a piece of Eden, which sends him to Lisbon. He locates the piece of Eden underneath a Church. As he tries to retrieve the piece of Eden, it triggers an earthquake in Lisbon. There apparently was a massive earthquake in Lisbon in 1755, so I guess I learned something new. Shay realizes that the Assassin's see this as a means to an end, and plan on retrieving all the pieces, at whatever cost. This causes him to question his loyalty to his side, and he eventually ends up joining the Templars.
When the Lisbon mission started, the opening shows a beautiful level, and it gave me the impression that we get to explore it. However, the exploration is confined to the church, and once the earthquake is triggered, the level becomes very linear, and you go through a set piece where everything around you is collapsing. Parts of this is done quite well, but I felt this was a huge missed opportunity. I was surprised that the Lisbon mission was over and we are back to North America.
Everything about how the story is told seemed very rushed. The transition from an Assassin to a Templar is jarring. One mission, you are an Assassin, and in the next mission, you are a Templar sworn to rid the world of Assassins. The transition felt like it was done in a very haphazard manner to move the plot along. If this game had gotten the attention it deserved, and if it was fleshed out a little bit more, it could have easily eclipsed Black Flag. As such, it has the feel of a budget title.
Those that played Assassin's Creed III and Unity will appreciate how the game attempts to tie up some loose ends. Not having played either of those games as of this writing, I am yet to appreciate the gravity of the plot lines.
When I watch the footage or look at the screenshot of Assassin's Creed Rogue those with Black Flag, I can't help but get the feeling that the visuals are very washed out in Rogue. One might argue that the saturation levels in Black Flag are a bit much, but I really liked the vibrant world of the Caribbean. The developers choose to make North America looks very dreary. At times, the game looks stunning, but for the most part the colors tend to be dull.
Music is another aspect of the game that does not live up to Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Black Flag is right up there with Witcher 3 as one of the best video game soundtracks. Assassin's Creed Rogue has some nice themes but I did not enjoy the soundtrack anywhere near as Black Flag. The music in Black Flag is just perfect, in my subjective opinion. In contrast, there was not anything memorable about the soundtrack of Rogue.
Its quite a shame really because this game takes place during the formation of America, and there are so many interesting characters to work with. They did try and shoehorn Benjamin Franklin who makes an appearance in the game, but in my opinion, his character could have been substituted by any generic mad scientist character and it wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference. He is portrayed more as a bumbling scientist than a legendary founder of a nation. Wasted potential in my opinion.
So what did Assassin's Creed Rogue do better than Black Flag? Naval combat is more streamlined. It is now possible to skip the cutscene that is played at the end of each encounter. The legendary ship encounters are a lot of fun. Ship upgrades are more easily attainable, there are no underwater missions here (I really disliked those in Black Flag). Some of the outfits are quite nice. I did not get a chance to unlock the templar and the native outfits, but the ones I had were quite nice.
That sums up the game for me. Its an adequate game, and the potential of an interesting premise is not fully realized. To me, its a budget version of Black Flag.
And yes, this game also has Abstergo missions. They are awful.
On the technical side of things, the game is locked at 60FPS, just like Black Flag. I upgraded to an ultrawide monitor, and It is possible to get the game to work on an ultrawide, but the FOV is not good, so I played the game at 1920x1080 in a borderless window.
In conclusion, for the price, I don't mind recommending this game. Anything more than $10 would not be worth it in my opinion.
I purchased this monitor on Amazon for $699. Then the price of monitor went down by $10 while the package was enroute. I
decided to contact the seller and asked them if they could give me a discount, and they responded shortly, and gave
me a $10 refund. Very generous of them.
The monitor is a renewed model. I did not notice any issues with the monitor, cosmetic or otherwise. I got all the
accessories, like display port, HDMI, USB-C cables etc. The price of the new model is $799 as of this writing
(5/13/2022).
Setting up the monitor is very simple. Its just a matter of assembling the base, and mounting the display onto it.
Once the monitor was assembled, I connected to the PC via a display port cable. At startup, the monitor has a
refresh rate of 144Hz. I went into the monitor menu and overclocked it to 180Hz. The process is quite easy and it
takes effect immediately.
Needless to say to run games at 3440x1440 resolution, and at such a high refresh rate, a powerful GPU is needed. I am
currently running an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Gaming X Trio. I would not recommend upgrading to this monitor
unless there is a capable GPU powering the machine. I think a 1080Ti or an AMD equivalent is probably a minimum for
a 1440p ultrawide monitor.
Games look absolutely fantastic on this monitor. Prior to the upgrade, I was playing on ASUS ROG Swift, which
was a great monitor for its time. Its a WQHD monitor running at 144Hz, and it was a dream for most gamers. However,
we now have IPS panels with the same specifications as TN panels, and upgrading from a 16:9 TN panel to a 21:9 IPS
panel is significant.
The first game I tried with the ultrawide is Cyberpunk 2077. I put off playing this game till now because I was
waiting for it to be updated. I was fairly confident that CD Project would fix the game over time. With the release
of Update 1.52, it felt like it was the right time to play this game, but I didn't just want to play this game, I
wanted to play it with all the bells and whistles, at a high resolution, on ultra settings with RTX enabled at a
good framerate. With the purchase of this monitor, my machine was complete.
As shown in the benchmark video below, the results are fantastic. The game runs at an average framerate of ~60FPS.
Without RTX, I get around 100FPS. For me the sacrifice in framerate for graphics fidelity is worth it.
Getting older games to work right on ultrawide resolutions is always a challenge. Assassin's Creed Rogue had a lot of
issues out of the box. I found a patch that enabled higher resolutions, but the game just didn't look and feel
right. So I switched back to playing at 1920x1080 in borderless windowed mode.
I was very surprised to discover that Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, a game released in 2003 worked fine with
a widescreen patch. Of course, this is less to do with the monitor itself, and more to do with software support for
older games.
I was willing to put up with playing older games in either a windowed mode or on the second display, if I could play
the latest games at ultrawide resolution with all settings at ultra, and RTX enabled. I definitely feel gaming at
ultrawide resolution is very immersive, much more so than a regular widescreen resolution. This was the reason why I
decided against getting a 4k monitor, because 21:9 aspect ratio just feels right.
For someone looking to upgrade to an ultrawide, I would thoroughly recommend this monitor. It is a bit expensive, but
assuming its within the budget, there is a lot of fun to be had here.
EDIT - I added another monitor to my setup. They were giving away old monitors at work, so I took one home.
I take no pleasure in writing this post. As a fan of Battlefield for over a decade, it saddens me to see the state of
the game, and knowing that this could have all been avoided. This series has been my main multiplayer game for a
long time now and I want Battlefield to do well. I am not here to laugh at its current pitiful state.
As of May 4, 2022, it has been 166 days since the launch on November 19, 2021. To date, there has been
one minor update, and one major update (released on April 19, 2022), and zero new content. The updates themselves
are hardly praiseworthy. They fixed some egregious bugs, and added some so called legacy features, such as a
scoreboard, simple UI customization options. I still can't get over the fact that they decided to ship the game
without a scoreboard and a server browser. The latter is still missing for the main game as of this writing.
Some of the issues that got addressed in the latest update were present in the beta, and players brought this to the
attention of DICE. However, we were all assured by DICE that the beta was a build from an old branch and the release
branch was much better (or so they implied).
However, after the terrible reception of the beta, they decided to postpone the release by a month.
Hazard Zone is a total flop. Hardly anything next gen
about these game modes
It should be noted that this person does not work at DICE anymore, which is very unfortunate because he was involved
with building Battlelog.
In my review of Battlefield 2042, I said the game had potential, and I stand by it. I really dislike the operators,
and I wish we could go back to the player models from BF4 or BF3, but it is what is it. I was willing to put up with
that if the rest of the pieces were in place. While it is not a total let down, and I did put close to 300 hours
into the game, as of now, I am just disappointed with the state of Battlefield.
When I wrote my review 5 months ago, I did not expect the progress from the development team to be as slow as it is.
DICE is currently reworking the maps, and they made a blog post about it, and they went into excruciating detail
about how they are listening to the community and collecting feedback, and in true DICE fashion, instead of
shrinking the size of the map, and bringing objectives closer together, to reduce travel time, they decided to
remove buildings near E on Renewal. While this is not final yet, it goes to show that there is a serious lack of
understanding of Battlefield map design at DICE right now.
To add insult to injury, all said and done, they are only reworking two maps. Considering that the game launched with
just 7 maps, the rate of progress is extremely slow. Most of the issues can solved by simply adding some cover, and
shrinking the size of the map. Take Hourglass for example, the good parts are quite good, but the map can be so
boring because of the large open spaces, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed Bandar Desert in BF3. Bandar
Desert had transport vehicles, and it was easy enough to get from one point to the other. It really takes rare
talent to increase the player count, and still make a boring game.
Very poor map design, Large area, no cover and not enough
transport vehicles.
In my opinion the maps themselves are not bad. The main issue is traversal and lack of any cover between points. All
they have to do was emulate the design of the best maps (not the most popular maps, because that would include
Operation Metro, a truly atrocious map). Maps such as Grand Bazaar, Pearl Market, Propaganda, Dragon Valley 2015,
Flood Zone, Zavod 311, Noshar Canals, Siege of Shanghai are all excellent maps, that could have served as
inspiration. DICE appears to not know how to design a proper Battlefield map anymore. This is backed up by the fact
that they are asking for community feedback on map design. Anyone that played previous games would be able to point
the flaws in map design. The lack of transport vehicles, lack of cover, terrible spawn experience all contribute
towards a poor experience.
Looking back at the statements made by the DICE team, there can only be two conclusions - they were either lying the
whole time, or they genuinely thought they were shipping a quality product because what they said about the game,
and what the game was actually like are very different things.
This is very misleading. Other real time events are
hardly noticeable.
So how is this any different than Battlefield 4, because Battlefield 4 had an awful launch, which I wrote about HERE. Well, 2013
was a very different time. There wasn't as much competition in the multiplayer FPS games. Now you have Fortnite,
Warzone, Apex legends, CSGO, PUBG all pulling in hundreds of thousands of players, so its very difficult for a bad
game to recover. I don't necessarily think BF2042 is a bad game, I had more fun playing it than Battlefield V, but
the problem with Battlefield 2042 is that at its core, it wasn't meant to be a Battlefield game.
Battlefield 4 was able to recover and redeem itself because fundamentally, it was a Battlefield game. DICE was not
trying to reinvent the wheel. It took all the good things about Battlefield 3 and made them better over time, and
there was a lot of content, so I never got the feeling I've done it all.
With Battlefield 2042, I am 300 hours in, and I feel like I am out of things to do. The game feels dead. The player
base on Steam has dropped by over 90%, and it is very hard to get into a match without cross play enabled. Its
embarrassing. These numbers are worse than Hardline.
Steep decline of players over time
Can DICE do what they did with Battlefield 4? No. I don't think so. At that time, DICE LA was dedicated to fixing
Battlefield 4. The game was getting weekly updates, and CTE was an excellent idea. There was a lot of positive buzz
around the game. I have a hard time seeing that happen with Battlefield 2042.
Also think of all the content that was available in Battlefield 4. There were over 30 maps! They even had night
versions of some of the popular maps available in CTE, but sadly all of them were never released to the public.
2015-2018 was such a great time to be a Battlefield player. Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline and Battlefield 1
all launching within a 3 year period, and it was glorious.
I think DICE should have just released a Battle Royale game like they wanted to. Instead, they wanted to cash in on
the popularity of Battlefield, but also wanted all those monetization opportunities of a hero shooter. You pick the
worst things about gaming, and put it in one package, and you end up with this mess.
I refuse to believe that a significant number of resources are allocated to fixing the game. If this is the case, we
would be getting weekly or biweekly updates. It wouldn't take them 5 months to add a scoreboard.
One would think that as time passes, technology gets better, we would get better games, but this has hardly been the
case. We have a game on our hands that is in a worse shape than Battlefield 3, which was released 11 years ago, and
has more features and content. Its no surprise that Battlefield 2042 is probably the most poorly reviewed game in
the franchise history.
Overwhelmingly negative reviews.
30 Days To Earn My Trust
So here is my plan - I will not buy or pre-order another Battlefield game at launch. I will wait for 30 days. No pre-order bonus
will tempt me to buy the game, and if I am ever tempted, I will read this post, and hopefully it will bring me back
to my senses.
Corporations have no morals, decency and on the best of days, they have a fleeting relationship with
truth. The marketing departments have this sociopath like ability to blatantly lie, because they have absolutely no
respect for their customers. It is up to us to show some self respect, and hold on to our hard earned money until
the game has proven that it is worthy of it. Do not buy games at launch. Wait for independent reviewers to release
their reviews, and if the game is good, then and only then buy it.
It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but DICE really made a mess with Battlefield 2042, and given all the
turnover at the studio, there is a strong possibility that the best days of Battlefield are behind us.
If this post convinced at least 5 people to not pre order the next game, then my work here is done.
I played a few rounds of Battlefield 1 today. It was a great experience. It got me thinking, how did DICE go from
making a game as good as Battlefield 1, and follow that up with Battlefield V and Battlefield 2042?
A pristine looking Arisaka rifle
Weapon has cosmetic degradation as the round
progresses
Fantastic atmosphere
The atmosphere, maps, weapons in Battlefield 1 were so good. It really makes me wonder how things went so wrong with
the franchise. DICE had the perfect formula. There was no reason to make sweeping changes across the board, there
was no reason to reinvent the wheel, and most importantly, there was no reason to subject us to their political
agenda in the name of being on "right side of history".
If they focused on making a good game, and not have contempt for their player base, we wouldn't be in this situation.
Battlefield V is the worst Battlefield game I have ever played. Everything about the game was offensive to me, and I
am not talking about the liberties they took with history. The mechanics, the weapons, the vehicles were all poorly
implemented. Its baffling. They had the perfect game in Battlefield 1. All they had to do was fix minor bug, change
some of the UI elements, and make a WWII game with the existing technology. That's it. I simply do not understand
how they failed at it.
But coming back to Battlefield 1, going back to it now, it is a real treat. I thoroughly recommend this game to
anyone wanting to try Battlefield. It frequently goes on sale, and its available on Steam.
Here is a video I uploaded in 2018 before the release of Battlefield V. I had such high hopes for it, but it wasn't
meant to be.
As I look back, its rather sad. Will Battlefield 2042 survive another year? Will the next Battlefield ever recapture
the magic of the Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1? We shall see.
I finished this game on Thursday, September 3, 2009, 3:02:00 AM. This review was first published on GameSpot on
October 1, 2009.
When Wolfenstein was first announced back in 2005, I had very high hopes. I could not wait to play it. Return to
Castle Wolfenstein remains one of my favorite games. Having played Soldier of Fortune and enjoying it immensely, I
was happy to know Raven would be in charge of the development. After playing Quake 4, I was confident it would be
fantastic.
Four years later, I am not sure if am entirely happy with the game.
B.J Blazkowicz returns as the protagonist to fight against the Nazis. The game begins with Blazkowicz on a Nazi
warship getting ready to launch missiles on London. He battles the Nazi soldiers on the ship and makes a last minute
getaway with the help of a medallion with mystical powers. He discovers that the medallion contains crystals which
are found in in Isenstadt, and that the leader of the excavation is a Nazi general named General Zetta. Blazkowicz
goes to Isenstadt to uncover the secret, and meets with the agents of rebel forces from the Kreisau Cricle and the
an occult group called the Golden Dawn in order to end the control of Nazi's over Isenstadt. There is plenty of
action throughout, with lots of weapons. Flamethrower and Leichenfaust44 deserve a mention here. Leichenfaust44 is
Wolfenstein's version of BFG - its fantastic.
Almost the entire game is set in the city of Isenstadt. The game is somewhat linear, you need to travel through the
city to various locations to access missions. The city is well created but there are some nagging flaws in the
execution. The game tries to be an open world game, but it doesn't quite live up to that and it feels contrived. For
example, when you backtrack to a location within the city, everything is respawned including enemies and fuel
barrels! That just feels really wrong especially when you shot the very fuel barrel less than 10 minutes ago. It
immediately has an effect on immersion, and feels like a cheap trick to create an illusion of an open world. The
changes are not persistent. After a battle in an area, should you leave it and return, there will be absolutely no
sign of anything, and enemies will be back in their place, going about their patrol. No lessons learned from
STALKER, because its Diablo 2 style monster respawn - seeing this in a first person shooter and Wolfenstein at that,
just didn't feel right.
Highlight of the game are the veil powers that the medallion lets you have; a slightly different version of Nano suit
from Crysis. Once accessed, the veil takes over and everything turns green - basically lets the player into an
alternate universe. This allows the player to spot enemies easily, move faster, access hidden location, increase
damage, and acquire shield which can deflect enemy bullets. I thought the visual effects in the veil were very well
done. Taking down enemies with these powers is a lot of fun.
There is a certain RPG element in the game as well - you get to upgrade veil power and existing weapons. This can be
done by completing missions and earning cash rewards and then going to the nearest Black Market and spending them on
veil power and/or weapons.
Soundtrack is really good, and audio, as in weapon sounds and sound effects, is quite impressive. The voice acting -
not so much. The fake German accent is cringe-worthy.
The game is built on Doom 3 engine. Its not spectacular, but I had no issues with the visuals at all. My biggest
complaint with the game is the gameplay - it just does not feel like an id game. Let me give you an example.
You are in a big room, with all doors locked and enemies are attacking you, you manage to defeat the enemies and the
door automatically opens for no particular reason. I understand the reason this has to be so, but here is where it
failed badly. One of the enemies was half dead - the enemy wouldn't move and I naturally assumed it to be dead, yet
the door wouldn't open because all the enemies are not completely dead. I spent about 20 minutes trying all possible
ways to get out of the room, when i suddenly realized, all corpses vanished except for the one in the corner, so I
shot at it, and pop! The door opens.
You kill the final two bosses multiple times - four and three respectively. I thought those boss battles were boring,
and given the fact that there is no quick save in the PC version (!), it was frustrating as well. Half-Life 2
managed to deliver fantastic endings just fine without any lame design to prolong gameplay, in fact prolonging the
gameplay was never an issue. That clearly is the concern here, for I see no reason for some very stupid design
decisions - the door opening for example. Scripted gameplay is fine if its done right, but in this case, the
developers employed some very archaic methods at linear gameplay. If in a Mario game, you had a room full of
enemies, and you have to defeat all of them for the door to open, it probably makes sense, but in a 'serious' first
person shooter, an innocuous door staying locked for no reason while enemies are alive...just doesn't cut it. This
could have been done a lot better if some thought went into it.
To me, Wolfenstein is a disappointment. I feel sorry for fans of the series who paid full price for this, expecting a
game in the same league as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which this clearly isn't. I don't hate consoles, but its a
shame when a PC game is built with console gamers in mind, and given that fact that this series is a PC classic just
makes it worse.
Is this a bad game? Technically, its not. Is this something worthy of id software/Raven? No. Not from the people who
made Doom 3 and Quake 4.
+ Veil powers
+ Excellent soundtrack
+ Lots of action
+ Weapons
+ Sound effects
+ idTech 4 engine still looks good
+ Lengthy single player campaign, about 12 hours on hard
- Bad gameplay design
- Does not have the atmosphere of Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- Very bad voice acting
- Everybody calls him BJ...
- Fake German accent
- Feels like a console game
- Traveling through Isenstadt completely breaks the momentum
- Lack of quick save
I finished Assassins's Creed IV: Black Flag on Saturday, April 16, 2022, 1:15:00 PM. I got this game via Uplay for free a few years ago, and
I finally decided to play it in March 2022 and I enjoyed this
game despite Ubisoft’s best efforts.
The only other Assassin's Creed game I played was the first game, and I never finished it because it frustrated me to
no end. There were aspects I really liked, but the controls, and the mission design were really frustrating for me.
My biggest issue, the one that made me quit the first game, was the lack of checkpoints within missions. This has
been largely addressed. There are still a few missions here and there which require multiple tries, but for the most
part this is not an issue. This does not mean the main missions are good. Far from it, but more on that later.
This game is beautiful. It's almost (but not quite) on par with Witcher 3,. There are so many islands to explore, and
they are very well crafted by the designers. The Caribbean setting didn’t seem ideal for an Assassin’s Creed game,
because pirates in the West Indies is not what comes to mind when I think about a conflict between Assassins and
Templars.
Yet, the vibrant world of the 1700s Caribbean proved to be a great setting for an Assassin’s Creed game. The map is
massive, and there is so much to explore. I spent many hours exploring the islands. Some of the islands are very
large expansive areas and they are dotted with many collectibles, missions, etc. I particularly enjoyed activating
the viewpoints, because of the beautiful vistas of the island that are shown.
Sailing the open seas is also a great experience. There are storms, water sprouts, massive waves, combined with the
day night cycle, its a sight to behold.
When I first started the game, my expectations were low, and I did not have an idea of what the visuals were going to
be like. I was told by a friend (a fellow PC gamer) that the game is very good, so at least I knew that it wasn’t a
below average console port. As I made my way from the shore of Cape Bonavista towards a cliff, I was taken aback by
the vibrant visuals. I was expecting something similar to the first game, where the visuals are very drab and muddy,
so I was very pleasantly surprised. Little did I know at this point that the best is yet to come.
The most beautiful islands for me are The Great Inagua and Mysteriosa. When I stumbled across the waterfall on The
Great Inagua, I had to stop and stare. This island is quite complex with many different routes, and this will
eventually become the pirate hideout. Mysteriosa is an island with Myan pyramids, and the views can be quite
spectacular.
There are three main cities - Havana, Kingston and Nassau. Havana is controlled by the Spanish, and this is the first
main city available to explore. Nassau is a pirate city, which the English monarchy wants to control, and finally
Kingston is a city controlled by the British. Of these three, I enjoyed Havana the most.
In terms of visuals alone, this game is in a different league compared to the first game. Getting lost in the world of
Black Flag was a fantastic experience.
In Assassin's Creed Black Flag you, the player assumes two roles - Edward Kenway, our pirate of the Caribbean in the
colonial era, and as a research analyst employed by Abstergo Entertainment, set in the modern day.
Edward Kenway, born in Swansea, Wales, has lofty ambitions of becoming rich. To that end, he leaves England in
pursuit of making it big. This takes him to the Caribbean where he becomes a pirate. In his quest to get rich, he
stumbles across an Assassin, and our pirate adventure begins. The story has a lot of interesting characters, and the
voice acting is top notch.
I didn't quite understand the modern day angle of the story, and thankfully, it's not a big part of the game, and
what little of it there is, is thoroughly forgettable.
The main story missions are quite weak. They borrowed some of the worst aspects of the first game. A lot of it
involves tailing someone, and eavesdropping on their conversations. I found this very tedious. Considering how many
such missions there are, and how easy it is to make a mistake and have to retry, this is easily the lowest point of
the game for me. It appeared as if there was very little thought put into this aspect of the game. I got the feeling
that there were two teams with very different design philosophies working on the game. One team was responsible for
the linear main missions, and the other team worked on the open world mission design.
How else can I explain the massive difference? While the main missions are linear and boring for the most part, the
side missions are generally open ended and there is a lot more fun to be had. There are so many side missions in the
game, it's ridiculous. I can see someone sinking in around 60 hours into the game to get to 100% completion.
Hunting, fishing, conquering forts, assassnation contracts, naval assassination contracts, collecting items, deep
sea diving for treasure, exploring the world, managing a trading fleet, and conquering the sea by capturing or
conquering ships.
How did an Assassin’s Creed game become popular for naval combat? I am not sure why they decided to go this route,
but I am glad they did. This may be the best pirate adventure game I have played. I think this is a better Pirates
of the Caribbean game than an official Pirates of the Caribbean (if it exists).
The player gets to control Jackdaw, a ship that you get to upgrade as you progress through the game. Some elite
upgrades require completing story missions, a rather arbitrary requirement in my opinion. As the ship is upgraded,
it gets easier to sink or capture enemy ships, and this is where the game really shines. There is a great sense of
progression here. Capturing a level 36 man-of-war for the first time is an exhilarating feeling. Once the player
reaches a certain level of upgrades, elite enemy ships are unlocked, and they put up a lot of fight. Its not
possible to capture an elite ship, only sink it.
Capturing a ship is a very interesting concept. Once a ship is damaged past a point, it is possible to board the
ship, and capture it. There are certain objectives that need to be met such as destroying reserves, killing
captains, taking down flags etc. Parts of this get very repetitive and highlights the severe shortcomings of the
regular combat system.
Combat is nothing like what we see in Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor or Batman Arkham Asylum. It's a very basic
system, where you get to press E at the right time to counter an enemy and an execution move ensues, without the
need for any player input. However, sheathing swords is assigned to E as well, and you will find yourself putting
weapons away in the heat of combat. Quite annoying.
The platforming is smooth but inconsistent, and as a PC gamer who plays first person shooter, I found it somewhat
unintuitive. Pressing Space doesn't make the character jump, instead, it should be used in combination with Shift,
and it is context sensitive, and this can often lead to inconsistent results based on the kind of terrain you are
in. Why not just go the Tomb Raider route? I am not sure. I believe this kind of control system is the staple for
this series.
The game ran fine on my setup, and I wouldn't expect any less. I played the game at 2560x1440 resolution, and scaling
was not an issue. I would have liked to test this on ultrawide resolution, but I do not have access to an ultrawide
monitor at this time. However, the game is locked at 60FPS, and there has been no fix for this to date. All the
YouTube videos with steps to unlock the framerate are just clickbait. There are occasions where the game would
jitter, especially when the character lands on hard ground after leaping from tall structure. This was very similar
to the problem with the first Assassin’s Creed game. Looks like engine related issues from the first game are still
lingering.
There are a surprising number of occasions where the game just froze. When I alt-tabbed to look at the task manager,
I would see the game executable is no longer responding. I did not find a fix for this. Repairing the game would
solve this problem for a while, but it would start to occur again. Initially I thought it might be related to
starting the game using GOG Galaxy 2.0 Launcher, but it happens even if the game is started using UbiSoft Connect
(they decided to rebrand Uplay. It's still awful).
Speaking of launching the game, UbiSoft Connect prompts for the password when the game is first launched after a
computer restart. Considering that login information is already provided to launch UbiSoft Connect, not sure why it
prompts for a password. Brilliant user friendly move by UbiSoft’s developers.
Also UbiSoft Connect does not show the play time of the game. Apparently the client does not support showing playtime
for older games. Makes no sense. It's unfortunate that UbiSoft insists on subjecting PC gamers to this awful client
and while it may not be as terrible as Games For Windows Live, they are really pushing.
In conclusion, this is an amazing game, and totally worth playing. I spent 43 hours and I might go back and explore a
little bit more. I am not uninstalling it yet.
+ Naval Combat
+ Open World
+ Pirate story
+ Voice acting
+ Music
This is the review of the original PC version of the game, first published on March 8, 2008 on GameSpot.
Vice City is the next episode to GTA III. It is not exactly a sequel, more like a prelude to GTA III.
You play as Tommy Vercetti, a thug working for a mafia boss. When a drug deal turns into a bloodbath, you go to Vice City to settle some scores and earn back the money. Your stay in Vice City becomes longer than planned and it will eventually become your new home.
First, let us talk about the good parts of the game.
I loved the way the story progressed. You come to the city with no money, and start running errands for the local gangs; soon you climb up the ladder, start acquiring properties, and become rich enough to run the city.
Vice City is a sprawling metropolis. It contains two islands connected by bridges and some islets as well. What this means is that, you will spend a lot of time exploring the city which makes the game quite long, and very enjoyable for most part.
The missions are non-linear, you do not have to follow the main mission; you could just pick one of the many side quests, and get to the main mission at your own pace. Completing certain main missions is necessary to unlock parts of the city, more side missions or to buy properties etc, and also to earn the much needed money – you can't hope to earn all the money needed driving a taxi or delivering pizza.
Some of the vehicles seen in GTA III are seen again, like Cheetah and Patriot, but the most significant introduction is the bikes. I spent a lot of time driving through the city on the bike, squeezing between cars at break neck speed!
Most of the vehicles handle very well, some better than others of course, and soon you will have your own favorites. You also get to fly a helicopter and a plane during the game, so there is no shortage of variety in Vice City!
The graphics in the game have received a lot of makeover. Even though the game runs the same engine as GTA III, it looks a lot better. The draw distance has improved, and this is particularly noticeable when flying.
Sound is very good, with excellent voice acting from Hollywood celebrities. I also loved listening to the radio while I was driving. I can recollect driving through the city just to listen to the radio station, some of them are hilarious, especially KCHAT and VCPR.
Given the excellent features of the game, I have some mixed feelings. The game is brilliant. There is no doubt about that, I would not spend 46 hours playing it, if it was not good, but the game has certain inexplicable flaws.
To being with, getting to a mission involves driving to a certain place, picking up a certain person etc. Sadly, it is not possible to save the game during a mission, or even at the start of a mission. One slight mistake is enough to fail in the mission, which most of the times means you will have to restart from a previous save point, and go through the whole process of driving to the place, going through the cut scene and what not. To add to the frustrating, you die for stupid reasons such as falling into a puddle.
Controlling the flying vehicles, especially the RC (Remote Control) Helicopter is extremely tough. You are a given a mission where you need to pick up and drop bombs in certain places using the RC Helicopter within a time limit, and there are people shooting at it.
Similarly, you need to control an RC Plane while it is being shot at, and its fuel is running low. I just could not get this to work on my keyboard, and I had to resort to my controller, which defeats the whole purpose of playing on the PC.
I cannot imagine why these defects even exist. What is the point of not having autosave during missions like on consoles? Why were the controls for flying vehicles not tweaked for the PC
I tried hard to love this game, and give it a 9.5, but bearing these faults in mind, the PC version is just not that good. Mind you, the game is still worth playing, but I am severely disappointed with some of the gameplay elements.
If only the developers were not so dim-witted, this would have been a classic, it probably is for many people; just not for me.
+ Open ended gameplay + Great level design + Bikes! + Good story & voice acting
- Terrible save system - Mediocre graphics - Some vehicles handle very badly - Frustrating gameplay design
Verdict - Very good, but it could have been a lot better.
I purchased this case on Amazon for $107.89 on February 9, 2022.
I
was planning on buying NZXT H510 Flow, but I decided against it because I have
an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB GAMING X TRIO. The length of the GPU is 324
mm (12.76"L x 5.51"H). I was unsure if the case would accommodate this GPU,
therefore, I began searching for another case that wasn't too expensive.
This case was listed as being 450mm in length, and it was highly
rated on Amazon, so I went for it.
For the most part, I agree that the case is excellent. The build quality
is solid, the airflow is very good. It also accommodates a 280mm radiator quite
easily. I did not have any issue mounting it on the front with fans pushing
outside air onto the radiator (push config).
To get RGB lighting to work, there is a SATA connector that needs to be
plugged in to a SATA power cable from the PSU. Provided the front panel is in
place, this should make the base RGB effects to work without the need of any
software. This is excellent because I do not want to install RGB software to
control the case lighting. The out of the box effects are very nice.
However, I did have an issue getting all this to work. After I
finished the assembly, RGB lighting wouldn't work. I checked the SATA power
cable, and everything seemed fine. I thought something was wrong with the
front panel (more on that in a bit). I contacted the support fully expecting
them to give me some generic answer.
I was pleasantly surprised
when they responded and were actually helpful. The issue was with the
connector on the back of the front I/O; this was not fully plugged in. I had
to push it into place and that did the trick.
As far as the performance goes, absolutely no complaints here. The fans are
very quiet and even under heavy load, I wouldn't say the fans are loud. The
case allows for excellent airflow, and the dust filters are much appreciated.
Temperatures in idle can vary anywhere from 29C to 35C depending on the
ambient temperature, and how long I have been gaming etc. I am quite happy
with this.
I certainly do not regret buying this case, but I have two big issues, and I
might have reconsidered this case had I known about these.
Removing the front panel is a pain. There are no screws holding it
in place, instead its held in place by a notches on either side, and the panel
needs to be yanked hard by pulling at the bottom. This is just not good design
in my opinion. For a case that costs over $100, I would have expected a better
way to hold the front panel.
The second issue is the length
of the case. While the case is barely spacious enough to accommodate as MSI
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB GAMING X TRIO. There is not enough clearance between
the GPU and the radiator to mount a fan on the radiator. For this reason, I
had to switch the position of the fans and mount them on the front frame of
the case. Its not a big deal, but a full push pull configuration is not
possible. There is only enough room for one fan in the pull config.
The height of the case prevents me from mounting two exhaust fans on the top
of the case; the tubing from the radiator uses all the room needed for one
fan, therefore I only mount one top exhaust fan. So now, I am left with a
spare 140mm fan, and I decided to mount it on the radiator to pull air out. So
I now have a full push, and half pull config. Not ideal, but it works just
fine.
In addition to this, there is not enough room to mount a mechanical hard drive
in the case. This is because while there is a mounting tray in the bottom of
the case that is specifically designed for mechanical hard drives, I had to
disconnect that to route PSU cables. I tried my best with PSU cable
management, but I failed. Therefore, if you intend to use a mechanical hard
drive, this is something you will want to consider.
I am kicking
myself for not having come across the be quiet! Pure Base 600, which seems
perfect for my build. Its even more painful considering its $10 cheaper at the
time of this writing.
