Recent reviews by BitterSprout

I will never be able to look at a sunflower the same way again.

Experience an epic quest in the Forgotten Realms, solo or with friends, in this wonderful CRPG.

Dash across the rooftops of a lovingly-recreated Paris during a revolutionary period in its history as you embark on a bloody quest for retribution.

If the sheer breadth and variety of content offered out-of-the-box doesn't suit you, this game's workshop most certainly will have something that meets your expectations. The most feature-complete military action sandbox one could ever hope for.

One of the greatest horror games released to date, that respects & expands upon the source material in a meaningful way. If you've ever enjoyed an Alien franchise movie, this game will suit you well.

It's a good CoD game, but it is a CoD game.

Campaign: The campaign is too short and takes the narrative in some weird directions, while it's fun to play through once, it will leave you confused and without a conclusion. The voice-acting, cutscenes, and action are all very enjoyable, however, and it's a decent continuation of the events from MW2, and I for one thought it was very cool they brought us back to the story events that took place during Verdansk Warzone, it was a very clever way to tie things together.

Multiplayer: Several revamped core maps from classic MW2, along with a few newcomers, host multiplayer shenanigans across 6v6, squad-vs-squad, and Ground War gametypes. All weapons, attachments, and many customization items from MW2022 carry over to this new title, along with some fresh weapons and a new build system that gives incentive for custom classes to have different roles in the gameplay. Movement abilities have been significantly boosted, weapon recoil has been made more predictable and easy to control, player health has been increased to 150. This creates an environment where players have more opportunities to outmaneuver one-another and score reversals, but also enables very experienced players to completely take over lobbies if they're not dealt with. Ground War keeps the satisfying horizontal and vertical scale of MW2022's GW, which is good because I do not want all the maps to be like Promenade from MW2019. The multiplayer experience is easily this game's best selling point. There is SBMM, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. For my part, I seem to have been having a sufficiently entertaining experience that is not overwhelming in challenge, but still gives me opponents skilled enough for me to have to really want to win in order to do well. I don't believe I've encountered nearly as high a frequency of cheaters, although they are still out there.

Zombies: It's Zombies but DMZ. It's DMZ but Zombies. It's frankly really weird and feels a little shoehorned in, but I don't believe it's canon to the story. Spawn somewhere in the Exclusion Zone, do contracts, and slaughter quite literally hundreds of Zoms as they gradually swarm the map. If you have a squad with good comms, you may even survive the inner rings of the map. It's a fun addition, although I am hoping we'll be getting a real DMZ mode soon.

The presentation in graphics and sound is about on-par with the previous title. Weapon sounds have been 'downgraded,' so to speak, however some players may have found the weapon sounds from previous titles a bit unpleasant in their loudness and realism, so for those people the weapons in this game should be much more pleasant to shoot. For me, I like both styles and can take it either way. There are some textures, meshes, and effects that don't quite have the same level of fidelity as MW2022, but overall the visuals hold up and serve the gameplay well. I'll have to go back and listen to the music in this game to tell if it's new or compelling, which probably means it's not much of either.

Technical stability: MW2022, one of my favorite games in the franchise and among my most played FPSes, crashed on me with some regularity during the months after launch, and for a while gave me issues with a weird bug that produced blinding lights on the screen until a relaunch of the game. Eventually those were fixed in MW2, and I have not had any issues with bugs or crashes in MW3.

TL;DR -- If you thought MW2 was too slow, or you really liked MW2019, you'll like this game. If you liked MW2, you'll probably still like this game. If you downright hated all of the above, you already know you won't like this game. As with all CoD releases, when you buy this one you're signing up for a year of added content, some of which will be a lot of fun, some of which will be mid. Some of the additional content, such as Warzone, will be totally free, so maybe wait for that to come out before shelling out for the MP.

Simply a remarkable modern shooter that raises the bar in an industry landscape where it seems like AAA studios and publishers are constantly at work to lower the bar, lower player expectations of content and support, and disappoint them upon every release, patch, and event. This game is at such a high standard of quality and mechanics that Infinity Ward, developers of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, used it as a direct inspiration for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 (arguably the finest Call of Duty experience released in the past ten years), and even that game was actively sabotaged by its own publisher in favor of its inferior counterparts, CoD Black Ops: Cold War and CoD: Vanguard.

Activision and Infinity Ward tried to erase the memory of their astonishingly high quality product released in 2019 by LITERALLY TAKING AWAY ITS VERY NAME, instead just calling it Warzone, then ruining Warzone by replacing it with an inferior and bland version of itself, proceeding to destroy the game's aesthetic and theme with ridiculous cosmetics, before moving onto a sequel bait for MW:2022. Where those actions were taken in regards to MW(2019), the developers and producers of Insurgency: Sandstorm cancelled their plan for ridiculous cosmetics and events upon seeing backlash from fans, and instead offered paid cosmetics that fit the aesthetics, theme, and tone of their game.

Battlefield 2042 released in 2021 to great anticipation and disappointment thanks to unfinished mechanics, amateur UI, poorly implemented gameplay elements, a pitiful reservoir of content, and egregious bugs and performance issues. It has been no less than six months since the release of BF:2042 and in that time, the multi-billion dollar producer EA, and its world-class development studios DICE, Ripple Effect, Certain Affinity, etc have added... A scoreboard and a few bug fixes that should have been implemented before the game even went into beta. Where Battlefield 2042 fails on content and performance, Insurgency: Sandstorm thrives, consistently adding new maps, weapons, grounded and believable customization options, and the freedom for the community to produce their own mods and content.

In addition to that, Insurgency: Sandstorm has the most believable AI behaviors and most consistent mechanics within its PvE modes that other games struggle with or oftentimes refuse to implement at all. PvE is important for games like this, since it guarantees that even if there isn't anybody on the servers, even if the servers or the players themselves are offline, they can still have entertaining, engaging, meaningful gameplay experiences. Major points for that feature.

Insurgency: Sandstorm not only avoids disappointing its audience, it actively excels at satisfying player expectations and responding to feedback in a meaningful way that positively affects the experience of playing the game. If you have *ever* been interested in modern FPS games, you owe it to yourself to try Sandstorm.

An easy recommendation.

The king of VR shooters.

Every once in a while, a game comes out that really pushes the boundaries of its genre and brings the whole medium of video games forward in doing so. Elden Ring is one such game. An enormous world with plenty to discover around every bend, and the discoveries actually mean something because they all challenge the player in different ways and none of it involves the player being yanked by the nose to the content with an objective marker or linear path. In this sense, every advancement your character makes in Elden Ring is earned, and every victory is all the sweeter because of it.

Naturally, no experience is perfect though, so here are some things that could use improvement.

1. Multiplayer. Across the board, multiplayer connectivity is subpar. The lag is intense in both co-op and PvP, and that's when you're not running into 'Unable to summon cooperator" or "A connection error occurred, returning to your world" no less than 15 times in a ten minute period. It's extraordinarily annoying to take five minutes to summon some friends in to help with a boss fight, only to have them get "connection error'd" out before the boss has been struck more than a few times.

2. Rune farming exploits. This mostly effects only the players who choose to use exploits to gain millions of runes very easily, but it has the potential to destroy PvP balancing if players start to figure out ways to min/max their character's equipment while remaining at level 20 or whatever to go and troll actual new players' games.

The game is great, like many others say, like ArmA but with a little more casual feel, though you must be just as coordinated and careful in order to win.

Everything from the production side is great, excellent visuals, sound, and general flow.

The only problem is, the game can be horrible because of the players. I have several hundred hours in ArmA 3, Insurgency, and other tactical shooters. I know about compass bearings, and grid layouts, and all the other common mechanics of milsim/tactical shooters, so within a few hours of playing, I knew what was going on and what I was supposed to be doing. And I'm not sure if it's because of this game's popularity or the slightly more straightforward approach to its presentation, but I've encountered more $h!t+y people playing this game than either of the aforementioned.

Let me say that again in its own paragraph, because it's important: This game draws a lot of toxic players. Every game gets players that have no empathy and just want to ruin the experience for as many people as possible, but this game being as socially demanding as it is (you must communicate and cooperate with friendly teammates and leadership elements to succeed) opens a whole new territory for people to be rude and unpleasant.

People will follow you around the map and teamkill you if they decide they don't like you (which could be for reasons as simple as shooting one of their targets, or as I once experienced, the entire squad started chanting for a certain American "political" figure, and when I didn't join them for that but called enemies out, they kicked me from the squad then followed me around the map in a logi truck running me over and drawing enemy attention), they'll kick you out of squads for their buddies from the other team who just switched over and is waiting 80 seconds to tell the entire team the location of enemy FOBs, and they'll generally just make you feel bad about yourself, and nobody wants to feel like that when they're playing a game.

For every experience like I described above though, there's a great match full of lovely and kind people who will all participate in the grander goal and make you feel welcome and valuable as part of the team. I once landed in a squad full of Norwegian fellas who showed me better friendship and hospitality than I've come to expect from most of my acquaintances in real life. But then the next time I log in it's nothing but $#!+ talking redneck griefers.

For a lot of gamers, that's easy to get past, and if you find a good server with friendly players, you're bound to have a good time with some learning. For others, not so much.

I personally can take a toxic game here and there, but it happens frequently enough with this game that I just don't want to play it as much as maybe I otherwise should. I've been playing games long enough that this kind of stuff just makes me tired and depressed, and despite the fun I've had so far, I find that my overall experience has been more negative than positive, specifically because of the players.

My review will show "Not Recommended for this reason, with an asterisk: If you have four to ten other people who enjoy games like this and can all play together, do not hesitate, buy this game, with a squad of your own friends you are almost guaranteed a good experience.