Recent reviews by Invunarble

While kinda short to play through (it only took me 7 hours to play through the game, front and back), and being a bit repetitive at times in terms of the puzzle elements in the game, Valiant Hearts has an captivating plot, graphical art style, and musical score that makes this game a brief but excellent short narrative to play.

The ending is really sad, too - got me right in the feels ):

I'm gonna label myself a public enemy here and say something contrary to most of the reviews the PC version of the game's gotten so far - I was satisfied with Watch_Dogs and thought of it as an overall solid game. Two things I would like to point out first before explaining my opinion: This game probably isn't for you if you're on a budget, or if your computer doesn't have hardware around the recommended specs (or if it has AMD hardware - I haven't been keeping up to date on whether or not there's a patch out to allow the game to run on AMD drivers).

But regardless, I'll move on to the actual gameplay. Watch_Dogs isn't Grand Theft Auto. You may jump to that conclusion right away, thinking it's a clone because there's cars and an open world environment and third-person gun combat and everything, but once you've gotten an idea of what the main missions, side missions, random events, and collectible-type missions are like, you shouldn't still have the impression you're playing GTA IV all over again. To ensure you're not playing GTA IV again, take note of how Watch_Dogs doesn't blow the usage of shades, contrast in colors, and saturation completely out of proportion.

Going back to the story itself, it's possible you won't find the characters introduced (minus Jordi Chin), or the story's intro/first few opening missions to be exceptionally vibrant. I didn't walk into Watch_Dogs expecting a storyline on par with The Last of Us or another strong narrative, but I can almost guarantee that if you stick with the story a bit, you'll see it's unique in its own respect, and by far, isn't cliché or ridiculously overused by similar genres of games.

Relatedly, driving in Watch_Dogs isn't extraordinarily horrible as it's seemingly been made out to be - once you spend enough time driving, you'll adapt and get used to it. The same can be said for practically any open-world game with cars to drive: I doubt that the majority of people who drove Roman back to his apartment in the first level of GTA IV were able to navigate the waypoint precisely without hitting anything.

With this said, I do admit that Watch_Dogs isn't a completely flawless game - the above issues, mixed with the frustration that ensues from running uPlay to play the game can undoubtedly leave you irritated with your purchase (or similarily the large amount of side missions and collectibles leaving you bored and disinterested, something I personally feel too biased giving extensive advice on as doing menial tasks in games like this doesn't bother me). The best I can recommend is to have some perserverance with the game, as ultimately it is an enjoyable game so long as you attempt to be unprejudiced when trying it out. I personally give this game a 17/20 rating - feel free to disagree with me as you wish.

If a game that's unique, replayable, and equally as entertaining can be considered as worth purchasing, then I think XCOM: Enemy Unknown falls well within those boundaries. I feel so much of this game's value lies in the fact that every scenario and battle you get put into has such varying yet thrilling challenges as you progress through the game's campaign - whether those challenges are how you'll kill an army of chryssalids with only 3 soldiers, what continent will be most deserving of your first decent firestorm aircraft, or what 3 of your 4 panicking council countries will deserve your invaluable satellites. The game almost functions as a proverbial jigsaw puzzle, in which each puzzle you solve adds another piece to the bigger proverbial jigsaw puzzle of your campaign - and of course, all of this is done in an exciting manner that can all change the course of your campaign in a moment's notice.

A strategy game of this nature seems almost unprecedented, in which every single one of your actions and moves are so heavily weighed as opposed to many other strategy games that simply provide victory to whoever built the largest swarm of units, or largest base. No, you won't expect to find a game of that nature in XCOM: Enemy Unknown - instead, you'll find something far different that I'd think would be much more enjoyable. As such, I'd give this game about a 10/10, and would recommend it to just about anyone into a game that requires such a considerable amount of careful planning and deliberation.

This game... so difficult... brain melting....