Goes to Far Cry 3.
Yes, Far Cry 3 was a good game. Fans of the game, please don't feel the need to leap to its defence and tell me why you thought it was better than everything else, and how revolutionary it was. I enjoyed Far Cry 3, which I why I completed it (finally) recently. However, as much as I enjoyed Far Cry 3, I couldn't help but feel much of the game's much touted strengths were actually weaknesses.
I'll begin with its map. It's massive, yes, and I happen to like the fact that its massive. But the problem is, it's a massive lot of mostly the same thing over and over. Much of what you traverse over looks very same same. There's not much variety in Far Cry 3. I actually felt like I was playing the first person mode of Just Cause 2's poorer cousin. It seemed like they set out to do something similar, but didn't nail it. For those familiar with Just Cause 2, it too has an expansive, massive map to explore- actually much bigger than that of Far Cry 3. The difference between the two of course, is that Just Cause 2's island of Panau is absolutely full of places to explore, things to find, variety to keep you interested, (not to mention all the easter eggs and shit to blow up). After about 4 hours on Far Cry 3's map I'd seen basically everything it had to offer. A jungle here, a temple there, a small town over there, a beach somewhere else. Thus it simply became tedious filler between missions. In the end, fast travel became my mode of travel of choice, because I just got sick of the lack of variety.
Another sore point is how the story is told. Yes, the story is actually quite good- but the constant monologues about sanity, blurred lines of morality and warrior hero crap eventually bored me to tears. By about half way through I was sick to death of the speeches. I was just hoping for variety, and more often than not I didn't find it. Each character lead me on a same same quest with a little explained objective, and I didn't feel really feel I was being compelled to do a lot of the missions, rather, they became slog I didn't care about.
But finally, the thing that annoyed me most? The 'hallucination' sequences. Obviously borrowed from Batman: Arkham Asylum, these sequences were some of the most annoying parts of the game. I get it, my character (as much of a little bitch as he was) was loosing his grip on 'reality', but these were some of the most annoying sequences I've played in gaming- and they were also overused like no tomorrow. It became the last straw for me, when perhaps one of the most pivotal parts of the game was told in one of these annoying sequences.
Far Cry 3 did a lot of things right. But to me, it became a grind. I stopped enjoying it as much as I should have about half way through. I still played it, and enjoyed it to the end. But a sign for me of the most memorable games are the ones I keep coming back to again and again and complete soon after getting them. Far Cry 3 was not such a game, and I was glad to finally finish it.
The review embargo for Hellblade 2 appears to lift on the same date as the launch of the game, just an hour before it's available.
Reviews dont usually spoil its usually the players that get it early spoils it
Like all other games being reviewed before launch day ?
This game will disappoint many players. Ninja Theory’s last game
A well written review normally won't spoil anything though.
Come on, we all know it's usually not a good sign when the review embargo lifts on launch day. Doesn't mean to say the game is going to be bad or anything, but it does often point to a lack of confidence.
That's not a good sign.
Review codes have been sent out as of 8 hours ago (according to Tom Henderson on X) so at least they aren't withholding those... But you'd think with confidence they'd want positive reviews to get buzz going online the weekend before release.
... But if they're expecting mid reviews, yeah sure lift that embargo when most people are asleep.
MS might be withholding review codes from more critical reviewers to inflate the launch window Metascore. Just like they did with Starfield.
Zero marketing and embargo lifts when the game launches?
No confidence from team Xbox.
Digital Foundry : Bethesda's Starfield was generally a well-regarded RPG, but the game's 30fps target on consoles was the subject of some controversy. The game's massive scope arguably justified that 30fps refresh rate, with only high-end PCs capable of hitting 60fps and higher, but now Bethesda has changed course and opened the floodgates on Xbox Series X consoles following significant optimisation work. Players can now independently select performance and visuals modes at arbitrary frame-rates. How exactly do these new combinations fare, and is 60fps really a possibility after it was explicitly ruled out before?
An inside look at Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft's ambitious open world Japan where your every move is affected by weather, season, and lighting systems.
Your criticism of a large, repetitive map will probably fall on deaf ears. "All games are repetitive!" "Fighting an occasional tiger TOTALLY broke up the tedium!" "It was NOT built up of the same terrains over and over again!" The average gamer just seems to get excited to hear that X will have a map 10x bigger than Y did! They don't seem to care about what goes in it or WHY it's so big.
Frankly, that's how a lot of open world games seem to be. They make their worlds big enough so that they can say that their world is so big and fanatics can say that there's "100" hours to get out of it (and if you get 50 hours out of it doing EVERYTHING in the game, it means you "didn't enjoy/savor it enough" and you're a 'fool' for not wanting to go back and play the exact same game again).
2012 was a weak year overall Far Cry 3 at least had pretty good reasons to put the player side-tracked from the main story unlike many other games.
If only a game like Crysis could have such variety...