Recent reviews by Corestrike

this game really makes you feel like a backwater slav moron who has never picked up a sword in his life. this is both good and bad. good in the beginning when the combat is realistically difficult relative to your complete lack of (player and character) skill. bad when you've got maxed out skills and a full set of plate armor and peasants on the side of the road are parrying you like you just ran away from your hometown being burnt down.

there are many mechanics in this game and most of them are actually bad but create a certain sort of slav-jank experience that appeals to a certain type of (deranged) person who loves quests where you literally just press w for 20 minutes straight (there are at least three of these, perhaps more) before having to do it again because you made a small mistake and forgot to save. people love saying "get good" when it comes to this game's combat because they're too full of themselves to realize that feints, combos, and even perfect blocks/dodges are completely useless. the combat is rarely anything more than fun in retrospect where you're thinking about all your epic battles or whatever. people say the combat is super engaging and skill-based or whatever but somehow don't realize that after the early game every battle boils down to standing still waiting for enemies to strike so you can try and get a master strike or spamming F on them for a brief melee. i think most are too awestruck by the actually enjoyable difficult beginning of the game where it actually feels satisfying and not insanely frustrating to win battles.

the writing, and for the most part the exploration, is where the game really shines. a lot of the quests are genuinely funny and interesting, the dialogue is pretty good all around, there's a lot of lore/history that i instantly skip, and there are plenty of open-ended or otherwise intelligently designed quests. although there are some minor mechanical issues - some quests expect you to be actually paying attention (even taking notes???) and others just have your character "remember" pertinent information - or weird sequence breaks and obtuse, unwritten quest paths the general experience of doing quests is really fun. except the aforementioned press w or hold e quests which there are honestly too many of.

exploration is generally the same although a lack of unique or interesting rewards (yes i understand that this is technically not conducive to the setting) means that, after a certain point, exploration becomes basically worthless. unless you really like "interesting location" markers popping up and it's just like a slightly strange thing to look at.

graphics, sounds, and everything else are pretty good as well. the game has fidelity and pop-in issues but given the general level of crust/jank it's more funny when it happens instead of being something worth even getting upset about. there are still weird UI and general bugs but i haven't found anything gamebreaking. there are also a few slavic bangers in the soundtrack

i would recommend this with the caveat that you have to have a certain type of "gamer brain damage" to tolerate what is probably, even when speeding through the main story, a 100+ hours and hundreds upon hundreds for a single "full game" of really digging into it. there are plenty of genuinely boring moments and the combat isn't nearly as good as its reputation but the overall package is worth playing if you're into the genre. it's sort of like if paradox made an RPG - it's far above the complexity of something like skyrim (enough to be rightfully off-putting to genuine casual RPG players) but it's definitely not some baldur's gate level insanely complex behemoth where every single one of your choices matter, there's 1000 hours of content, and there's an insane rube goldberg-esque tabletop rpg system under the hood.

easily an 8 or 9 on average and raising to the level of a 10 at times but if you aren't completely sold by the time you get out of skalitz and have completed your first real task (either main quests 'the prey'/'the hunt begins', your first major side quest with combat, or even potentially the rattay tourney) you might be better off dropping it. but, fair warning, i didn't actually get into "the game" for about 16-24 hours but i did a lot of early screwing around.

this is probably the best cod multiplayer ever made and it still isn't very good in the grand scheme of games; especially when compared to other multiplayer WWII shooters (red orchestra 2/rising storm is far superior).

but call of duty multiplayer often demonstrates that a game doesn't have to be good to be fun and this is no exception. when everything is going right it can be really, really fun but sometimes it can be absolutely downright frustrating because of brain dead call of duty tropes/game design/flaws.

it's also almost as dead on PC as super monday night combat and that game isn't even on steam anymore and the learning curve is probably a lot higher since most people playing are no life tryhard morons (like me)

definitely a half-hearted thumbs up. on one hand there are lots of problems but on the other i want to play a match that isn't 24/7 shipment deathmatch with the same dozen people every single day

i was in a love/hate relationship with this game and never realized how much better than civ 4 it was until i lost the game to an AI doomstack of 20 axemen. never again.

10/10 better than watch_dogs 2

you know the tetris effect? there's a necrodancer effect too.

i only bought this because i got tired of getting dmca emails from take-two

great campaign but online is pure late stage capitalism

HL2:U is a great excuse to play HL2 again when you already have 1500 hours in the base game.

Someone make another one so I can get Lambda Locator for a third time.

You have 105 Friends who play PAYDAY: The Heist
You have 183 Friends who play Payday 2
You have 2 Friends who play RAID: World War II

It's definitely a game and I think you shoot guns. There may be objectives? I really don't know.

It's ok.

This game is like playing a concentrated version of the entire mic-using CS:GO community placed onto a framework of the best of 2007 technology.

It's like everything WarZ should've been and more.

Truly the Russian Kids Bop of videogames.

Sid Meier's Pirates is not only an interesting exploration into the world of necromancy but also an engaging PSA about recycling.

The game is continuously stuck in some sort of tutorial mode from the first to third difficulty where it punishes you for trying to make the game harder by stealing all of your gold. As soon as you hit Swashbuckler however the game becomes a torment where everything from wind, your crew and even your family hates your guts and wishes to destroy you.

The final difficulty however isn't even mentioned by most players who can give you hundreds of strategies for Swashbuckler but not a single for Rogue. It really is just better to forget that this difficulty even exists. It will test your limits as it rips every shred of humanity from you until you're either begging for mercy or some kind of robotic killing machine of the colonial seas. No matter how good you are on Rogue the swordfight with the final boss in his fortress has been designed as a testing protocol for T-800 units instead of being a game for actual human beings to complete.

Oh and good luck with the dancing minigame.