Recent reviews by MisterMayoNL

Despite being heavily overshadowed by its more populair younger brother, Payday The Heist still holds up great!

Just like comparing L4D1 to L4D2, PD:TH has kept its original intended atmosphere and hasn't been muddied by constant updates. This game feels and plays exactly as intended in its original vision.

The game feels slightly less fluid than PD2, but the gameplay is still classic Payday. This game is also a lot tougher despite the thinner hordes of cops. Each individual swat officer is dangerous and can put you in the ground if you're not careful. All swat can wield shotguns, SMGs or ARs, making the normal 'horde' a lot more varied. Waves are shorter in general and there is more breathing room between waves, making the assaults feel more natural and impactful.

Each weapon hits hard, including your own arsenal. Shattering the glass visor of heavy swats will never not be satisfying, and the genuine threat each special is when facing them compared to their PD2 counterparts where a bulldozer is as common as the amount of early retirements.

You start out very weak, and even Normal difficulty will start as a challenge. You really feel each difficulty jump and with the lack of healing methods each bit of HP is precious to try and preserve.

Of course with only 9 heists repetition is bound to set in. The weapon roster is also on the meager side. The Wolfpack DLC is absolutely required to crank both of these up and is downright essential to playing PD:TH.

It may be forgotten by most, and all of its contents may have been ported over to the sequel, but PD:TH still stands the test of time and differentiates itself with the challenge, tone, style, and simplicity that you cannot find in the gaming scene these days. It is absolutely worth checking out if you enjoy the sequel.

Genuinely cannot recommend this game. I tried to like it, I really did.

The story has no pacing. Talk to a person, go kill this guy, go clear this outpost. No sense of where you are in the story at all. Just got tasked to kill a guy in power of a region. No prepwork or anything, just "oh yeah sneak on a truck and you're in". And the forced stealth missions have got to be the worst ones I've ever played in my life. Also the wildlife in this game can suck my ♥♥♥♥. I've never seen eagles this aggressive and I love getting stunlocked by a random boar, yak, rhino, etc.

The game tries so hard to get you to be nice to the people with Karma and have you make moral choices that effect the future of Kyrat. Or atleast that was the idea behind it, even though none of your choices matter at the end of it all. Didn't care about Kyrat or anyone involved. In fact, I found almost every single character to be infuriating with how they keep insulting you or just being the most annoying characters in existence. Ajay is a nothing character that lets literally everyone ♥♥♥♥ talk him and he just stand there like a moron and takes it without saying a word back. The main bad guy is actually one of the only characters I didn't hate. I wanted to burn Kyrat down myself and everyone in it.

Gameplay is also disconnected. There's almost no sense of power scaling. You just hop in and immediately find a grenade launcher that one-shots most things in the game. And then you get like 24 grenades for it to boot. Where is the sense of progression? I just ended up with a MG42 in the early game that shred through anything. The wingsuit can also be bought almost immediately and always ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ auto deploys because I hold shift to run. The whole thing doesn't flow or feel natural at all. You just become overpowered in the first few hours. This is what happens when you build on a good game and just think making the player more overpowered is the answer to keeping it entertaining.

In coop this game is buggy as all hell, but still very entertaining. Easily the best part of the game, even if only the free roaming stuff can be done with a buddy.

People like this game, but with the abundance of problems and annoyances mentioned I just didn't have a good experience.

3 years of dev time and all we get is Sniper Elite 5 with new maps? Full-price for the same damn game?!
And then you also have the gall to lock the M1911 & the Kar98k as DLC????
These weapons were already in the game, ripped directly from SE5. WHY IS THIS DLC

As soon as I saw the reveal trailer I knew that this would be the bare minimum. Same engine, same weapons, same mechanics, same EVERYTHING as SE5. What a shame to see a franchise I like being turned into nothing more than a cash grab. Milking fans for all they're worth.

So in terms of how the game is? It's SE5, which was already a mediocre game at best, so don't expect anything better here. Actually it's worse, as there are a ton of bugs on release. How can there be bugs that weren't in SE5?? For some reason this game insults the player's intelligence. With the same 'comment on weapon pickup' like SE5. Handholding for all those gun-ho CoD players that infest this game now. For specifics see my SE5 review. It all applies, because this is the SAME GAME sold to you AGAIN at FULL PRICE. How the fanboys eat this up is beyond me. Even CoD has more innovation. This game has NOTHING new. Seriously, there's NOT A SINGLE new mechanic added here.

Oh sorry, we have a whole 1 new thing. Propaganda challenges, which you'll play maybe twice or until you get gold and never again. Timed, bite-sized missions in small areas of the campaign where you need to take out all enemies before time runs out. Nothing new or interesting has been added with these. Definitely justifies that 3 year dev time.

Get Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe on sale for 9 bucks. You'll get far more out of that purchase. Stay FAR away from this turd. Hell, if you're new to this franchise you can get SE5 for SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. It's the same experience anyways.

FYI I have refunded this game.

Oh Zombie Army 4. Such a good game plagued with greed. ZA4 itself is a really good game. It takes the idea from Zombie Army Trilogy but actually adds things that make sense for a zombie game.

Where ZAT was just Sniper Elite with zombies, ZA4 is a completely different beast that honestly doesn't feel anything like ZAT. They've added so much, from unique and cool weapon attachments to (a lot of) new zombie types, new moves like stomping, a melee attack, new grenades, perks & so much more. It all fits really well and every part of it feels natural to have and use. Progression is engaging and will keep you busy with new unlocks and gameplay mechanics for quite a while. I am shocked at how much they added when coming from ZAT and even more shocked at how well it all fits together. The only thing I don't really like are some of the tedious weapon challenges. This game is really fun when playing with friends.

Where my excitement ends is when looking at the DLC. 3 season passes, no matter how good the game, is egregious. Rebellion realized it themselves after making the first season pass free, but that won't create any goodwill for me. The DLC is heavily overpriced (something Rebellion seems to enjoy doing more and more ever since ZA4 & SE5), and doesn't really bring all that much new to the game. New guns and missions are fine, but the vast majority of the season passes are cluttered with useless charms and cosmetic items to make it seem like they have more content.

My advise? Get the game on sale or from a third party, grab season pass 1 for free, and either skip out on the DLC or try to get them on key resellers for significantly cheaper. Even during Steam sales the DLC costs too much.

FYI the Blowtorch is the only good thing in season pass 3, as the other guns all feel the same/worse than existing weapons and the missions follow a different format where it's all 1 chapter.

You can feel the soul and charm that this game has (cough cough something that seems to be missing ever since SE5). It's clear that the devs put all their creativity into this. Just a shame the DLC suffers so much from corporate greed.

I have never played a Dragon Quest game before, but man what a ride this was. DO NOT underestimate the playtime required for this game. It took me a little over 80 hours to complete the story.

The world and story are excellent, and has quite a number of twists and turns I didn't expect in such an innocent looking game. It's compelling the whole way through and you'll want to keep playing just to find out what happens next. The party members are amazing and all have rich personalities and backgrounds. The first time I played it I quit after the first few hours, but after giving it another shot I got sucked in the world, playing nothing else but this for a month.

If you like turned-based games, this is a must play. You don't need to know anything about Dragon Quest.

A great remake of an old classic. Now with multiplayer for any mode!

It is a bit pricey for the type of game, but you have plenty to do.

Just get Sniper Elite 4

This is not a bad game... if you've never played SE4 (coming from a person who has 100% completed Sniper Elite 4). This game has a lot of minor irritations that make me question if the devs knew what the hell they were doing.

Here are a few things (rambling incoming):

• No crouch running
  
• Finite bottles instead of infinite rocks
  
• Want to switch a weapon in your loadout? If you're not at a workbench, then ♥♥♥♥ you. Oh sure you can grab a weapon from a body, but after that one mag you discard it. So say you have a welrod, but you've screwed up and now you're in a firefight. Too bad kid, you're stuck with the welrod unless you find one of max 3 workbenches around the map (trust me, you won't be anywhere near them when you need one)
  
• Speaking of weapons, I really don't like how suppressors work. Why would I want to use subsonic ammo with a weapon that has no suppressor? I don't. In SE5 you have to commit with what playstyle you want to go with. You can't do it like SE4 and use subsonic ammo when in a pinch and when you just need to take down 1 guy. Nope, now either you customize the weapon to have a low noise range, or you don't. Trying to balance it doesn't work and you just end up with an inferior weapon. And yes, while you CAN change this mid-mission at a workbench, have fun going to one of 3 fixed locations to change it.
  
• The worst autosaves I've ever experienced in a game. EVER (game doesn't autosave so if you ♥♥♥♥ up have fun redoing the last 10 minutes!). SE4 got this right, so why doesn't this game?!
  
• Explain to me how an armored car can survive 2 teller mines and a block of TNT
  
• My MP40 couldn't fire through some thin wood. Hey I guess they have to justify all the ammo types.
  
• Static alarms are just worse in every way compared to the radio operators in SE4.
  
• Why the absolute ♥♥♥♥ doesn't your character default to the same stance you had before? If I crouch and pick up a body, then why does my character stand up after dropping the body. This can be the very reason you would get spotted if you drop a body say in a patch of tall grass and Karl thinks it's a good idea to stand up.
  
• Let me disable the ugly white outline when I'm in foliage
  
• Why do I have to interact with every item manually to pick it up? Just make me auto pick it up when I'm near it. Why wouldn't I want more items/ammo?
  
• Why can enemies block a takedown? Karl is canonically an absolute unit that has destroyed entire operations single handedly. How can he not melee a random guy?
  
• Terrible feedback and control. A lot of the times when I miss my pistol or sniper shot and want to switch to my SMG, it just doesn't. Same with aiming after reloading or looting a body. This game feels very clunky and shooting enemies with your smg/pistol doesn't feel good (unless getting a well placed headshot).
  
• AI is arguably worse than in SE4
  
• Some enemies never moving and standing in one of only a handful of ways to progress (you're forced to either kill him ranged or find a different route for stealth)
  
• Don't bother with third person shooting. Since they now have first person shooting, trying to headshot a guy in third person is almost impossible. Weapons are peashooters and have terrible accuracy. Also the first and third person crosshairs don't line up sometimes.
  
• You can't shoot in third person with snipers anymore, but seeing as that doesn't work anyways why bother I guess.
  
• Bad maps. Maps in SE4 were big and were pretty complex. Here a lot of the maps are just basic flatlands with some buildings. The second mission is a joke with how small and empty it is (and don't get me started on the 'final' mission). There are a lot of 'zones', and rarely are the maps truly open. You usually get funneled to 2 or 3 chokepoints.
  
• Poor weapon roster. I can already see the 3 season passes this game will get, with a 'weapon pack' consisting of only a single weapon (seems that atm they are just re-releasing the exact same DLC weapons as in SE4. These should have been in the base game).
  
• Weapon attachments look awful
  
• Karl won't shut the ♥♥♥♥ up. I don't have to hear that 'I have to move' every time I'm in combat or that 'this foliage will keep me hidden' every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mission. Or when picking up a weapon I don't have to hear Karl loudly comment on him picking up said weapon.
  
• I often pick up enemy weapons on accident when trying to loot corpses. Ffs just make it either a hold or change the default bind so that they're different. Actually this is also the case with either using the key to open the door or placing a satchel charge. SE4 again got this right.
  
• Rip tripwires and S-mines. Now you only have a non-lethal option.
  
• No leveling past level 40
  
• Enemies often instantly begin firing at you when they spot you. In SE4 if you were close they would first do a shocked animation, giving you enough time to quickly kill them before they would alert anyone else. Enemies will also sometimes keep firing while in the takedown animation.
  
• Why is non-lethal an option? It's Sniper Elite. You kill nazis. You're not forced to do this so it isn't THAT big of a deal.
  
• Bugs. This game has some minor but frequent bugs. It's still hard to properly go for a corner takedown and I once couldn't melee a dude who was leaning out of a window fsr, and then EVERYONE was alerted :)

It really feels like the devs had to make you weaker in order to 'balance' the gameplay. In a lot of ways this game is a downgrade. It also kinda feels like the devs changed random things just because.

SE4 with all DLC is only around 9 bucks during sales, which is an infinitely better deal than buying this. If you (for some reason) do want to try SE5, then DO NOT BUY ANY DLC.

Things I do like:

• Enemies can't hear you through multiple floors anymore, so no worries about alerting an enemy that's a floor above/below you
  
• Option to set satchel charge fuse time
  
• Symbols aren't censored
  
• You can sabotage vehicles for soundmasking
  
• Fixed making noise when doing a stealth takedown while (crouch)walking
  
• Reload mechanic is alright
  
• Actual weapon stats
  
• Seeing character bios even when dead. I always enjoy reading random info about soldiers I encounter (before I brutally murder them without mercy)

It's sad what has become of Rebellion. I already can't recommend this game for it's greedy season passes which includes bare bones content, but when you couple that with all these issues, it's just sad.
But hey, I guess that's modern gaming at it's finest.

Good, as long as you have the Infamous Collection. The base game is only a fraction of the content.

Buy the Infamous Collection while it's on sale and you'll have a lot of bang for your buck.

Still don't like the Epic server reliance.

A kick-ass soundtrack, the stupidest plot in any game, and great gameplay.

If you don't like hack and slash games, you're not going to enjoy playing this. If you do, than this will be a great game for you. Made together with Platinum, let's just say they know how to make this kind of gameplay.

Everything in this game is great.
The soundtrack: One of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game. Also a nice touch that the lyrics actually have a deeper meaning during boss fights.
The characters: While most are over the top (just like the story itself), the characters are great in this game and fit with it perfectly. And the most over the top final boss I've seen in a while.
The plot: Absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-crazy.

The game's not that long, but even so, this is a must have.