Recent reviews by Varrict

Obvious performance issues aside, this is by far the most fun I've ever had playing Monster Hunter. Having played this series all the way back since the first entry, you could class me in the veteran category. However you'd be wrong, I've always struggled to keep up with the monsters attacks and usually found myself dying more than killing the monsters (I always stuck with the bowguns as I wanted to stay as far away from the monsters as possible).

This game however has given me the full confidence to walk up to any monster knowing I can take it down (I main Lance). The combat is more fluid and dynamic than its ever been, the controls are easier and not as complex, and the UI is clear and concise giving me all the info I need. Yes you could say its been dumbed down and made easier but on the contrary I'd say if anything its more beginner friendly.

I will admit however the storyline is a bit lackluster, being over 20 hours long on average its akin to a glorified tutorial. Do not mistake this however as it still gave plenty of challenge and definitely was fun to play through, it just felt like it could have done with a bit more fleshing out.

Overall this game I'd say is well worth the price tag and definitely worth playing, especially if you are new to monster hunter or a veteran of the series. There is plenty to do and many unique monsters to hunt, each of which have a diverse attack style and always offers a challenge worth doing over and over.

Out of 1-10 I'd rate this game at a solid 7. Once they fix the issues and tweak some characteristics here and there I'd definitely bump this up to a 9/10.

Democracy has prevailed!. This game never deserved to fail purely because of some executives desire to get a higher bonus pay by padding out some stats, and the devs definitely didn't deserve to see their creation die as these are the most consumer friendly developers I have seen since taleworlds back during warbands inception.

All I will say is if you can get this game just buy it, even at full price it is well worth the money spent. It has an awesome community, active dev team which is constantly in touch with the community, a live service model done right with earnable premium currency so you don't have to spend a penny/cent, and on top of that the best co-op shooter I have seen in well over a decade.

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What can I say, after release I honestly liked the game but shared the same opinion with the rest of the community that this game was half baked. Now after a year this game is one of the most fun I've played and they've definitely stepped up the quality of the game.

The new skill tree makes making builds incredibly intuitive and honestly fun to experiment with and definitely helps with the longevity of the game. The weapons are all fun to use and I never get bored blasting heretics with every weapon sounding exactly as it should.

My only gripes with this game is once you reach level 30 and find your favourite weapons the game does stagnate a bit. Some mods do help with this (like the true level mod) but after a while it does start to get stale. Of course the community does help with that, especially if you get with a fun and competent team but they can only do so much to improve the experience.

Overall would I recommend this?. Yes I would. It is still being developed so I'm positive that this game will only get better and its the best 40k fps experience we have with its visual and sound design. Also playing as an ogryn is the best experience you can ask for, its so fun bashing heretics with a club or shovel whilst blazing away with a twin heavy stubber whilst protecting the lil 'uns.

So go ahead and get this, I promise you'll enjoy it!.

Oh boy where do I start?. The game is pretty much a reskin of last years game with a slight tweak to the handling, ai and of course new car models. The new F1 life feature is completely unnecessary and doesn't add anything to the game beyond a pretty home screen that I can guarantee nobody spends longer than a few seconds being in.

The supercars feel shoehorned in and quite frankly redundant, if I wanted to drive supercars I'd go play the crew 2 or any other racing title. I'd much rather have the classic cars back, can you imagine driving around monza in a Ferrari f2004 or a Mclaren MP4/4 with a VR headset on?, speaking of which.

This years title finally has VR which is a well received feature after literally years of the community asking for it, however. The implementation is horrendous and the performance is abysmal, the only time it is stable is when facing directly forward, any movement and the game tanks which is not what you need when aiming for corners or checking your mirrors to see where the car behind you is. Is it a welcome feature?, yes. Does it need a lot of work to become a fully usable and fun feature?, hell yes.

On the plus side the cars do feel a lot nicer compared to last year, you can actually feel the car struggle through the corners and then once you pick up speed the car hooks into the ground and becomes very stable which I imagine is the simulation of the venturi tunnels working. In terms of following cars the dirty air is significantly reduced making following through corners a breeze which is exactly what this years regulations aim to achieve so well done to codemasters for getting that right.

However, the AI is downright broken. Yes they are more aggressive and make for better racing but by god do they need toning down a bit. I've had far too many times where I've been shunted into or spun when the corner was clearly mine or when overtaking down the straights. For some reason they seem to have inherited Ricciardo's mindset back during this Red Bull days and will dive bomb you even when there is no room for them to do so. So whilst it is a step in the right direction I feel like they need readjusting a tad, just enough to recognise when to back off and when to strike.

Oh and please codemasters, do something about the AI straight line speed. I shouldn't have to turn down my AI settings to below 40 just to have a chance of not becoming dead last in a midfield car when in last years game I could comfortably sit at 70 to 80 and challenge for wins. And that's not even the whole of it. For some reason the AI changes each track, one minute I'm struggling to even complete my practice times at AI 40 and the next I'm breezing through with seconds to spare the next regardless of what actual level my car is at. Its almost like the game doesn't factor in your car level and just adjusts your targets to whatever the fastest car is doing and not what the car is actually capable of.

On that note is it worth getting?. Right now no, I would suggest waiting until some significant patches come out and even then i'd wait for a sale to come on.

20 hours in and what can I say. First I never thought I'd see the day this game getting released albeit in a rough state so the fact it's here is a plus from me. Second this game is pretty much warband 2.0, sure some features are a bit buggy or non existent and there have been a lot of crashes but that's the price to pay for EA.

Can I reccommend it to a new player whose never played any of the previous titles, no definitely not. As a returning player however there is enough here to have an enjoyable experience !IF! you can forgive the technical errors, glitches, bugs and missing features. If that's ok with you then go ahead and buy it, if not I'd wait until Taleworlds irons out the game to a stable state as right now its more of an Open Beta and less of a complete game.

Tally ho gents!. What we have here is an absolutely smashing little early access with the potential to win us the war before Christmas!. The tanks feel as they should be, blisteringly fast armoured juggernauts running at a blinding walking pace that will send those Jerry Huns running all the way to Berlin with their pickelhaubes covering their arses as they retreat.

Each "tank" is state of the art equipment, armed with brutal machine guns and top notch naval guns repurposed for all out landship warfare and with plenty of options to make your boat truly a pride of the British landship navy, you'd be a fool not to sign up today and commandeer one of these fine vessels!.

And that's not all!, each crewman is selected from only the finest of volunteers (and are in no way conscripted) all with their own unique set of skills that Improve as you push further into the heartland of the beast.

So what are you waiting for man, pick up your rifle, hop in your tank and fly the British flag proudly as you overcome the evil hun and win us the war!.

Where to begin with this. On one hand it is visually stunning and it clearly shows that Paradox is stepping up in the graphics department, the transition from close up to fully zoomed out is seamless and actually follows the curvature of the earth which really gives you a sense of scale and shows just how truly massive the world is. It may not be 1:1 but you could spend the entire game just conquering the Mediterranean and never seeing India or vice versa.

On the other hand whilst the game does follow the same principles that CK2 and EUIV have in terms of managing your country, it itself feels quite shallow once you break through the initially clunky and overwhelming interface. You never really feel invested in your leader or family as you don't have much control beyond appointing marriages or assigning them as generals and occasionally befriending other characters. The combat is essentially a numbers game mixed with some rock, paper scissors tactics. Pick a formation that matches your army composition, have a general with high stats and it doesn't matter about numbers, this I suppose is the general consensus of most paradox games but it doesn't feel very engaging.

The same can be said for the overall feel of each country, beyond the sprites every nation feels the same. You never really feel like your commanding the legendary legions of Rome or the valiant hardy Hoplites of ancient Greece, just sprites with big numbers attached to them with your only in game flavour coming from military traditions which give bonus's and descriptions applicable to your nations starting culture. What would have been nice was to have a system where a roman legionary would be a tactical jack of all trades unit but be easily outmatched by dedicated units whilst a hoplite would have high defences but low initial attack that affected the overall strength of your army or a Velite would do high ranged damage but at the cost of low defence and hitpoints.

As for the running of your country it is all done through the "Mana" system, want to convert a pop to your culture or religion?, instead of spending money like you would in EUIV you spend oratory power or religious power which can take forever to build up unless you start as a big nation to begin with, making smaller tribes or city states and absolute chore as you spend half the game waiting instead of carving out your empire.

All in all it feels like a poor mans CK2/EUIV, granted both games have been patched to hell and back and flooded with DLC's but even just the base game of both games feels more in depth and intuitive compared to this. For now I wouldn't recommend this, give it a miss until they start fleshing it out more or if it comes on sale. It pains me to say that as I want to say yes but as it stands I'd much rather play any other paradox game over this.

I for one thank our Disney overlords for releasing upon us, the endearing public.....I mean walking talking wallets this absolute masterpiece!. I remember wasting hours as a child playing this and never getting bored of it, it offers the perfect balance of gameplay, sound and visuals that still stands up to this day, albeit slightly more blocky and low res but still looks very appealing and just as fun.

If you were one of the unfortunates who never got to play this legendary classic I implore you to invest in this, especially if you love the sequel Battlefront II (the 2005 one, not the horrible EA one) as this is pretty much where it all began from.

As a returning player from MHF2 and the original MH from the ps2 glory days I have to say this is the most accesible and player friendly edition to date. The combat is leagues above any MH to date with correct hitboxes and fluid controls, never at any point did I feel cheated out of a hit or rage at a monster that somehow managed to hit me despite being nowhere near it as that no longer exists. Every hitbox on each monster seems to fit exactly what you see on the monster so no more dodging a charge and still getting hit because you were 100 pixels in range of its leg.

Graphics wise this game is beautiful, I can just about run this at high settings and quite frankly it is still stunning to look at compared to previous editions. There were a few hitches here and there where the frame rate tanked in the middle of a fight though this lasted for a few seconds before it picked back up to between 40-60fps.

Everything is player friendly right from the get go with constant tips and hints as well as button guides for each weapon displayed on screen. There's a tracking system in place to help you find the monsters as well as any materials in the field in the shape of scoutflies which will fly to whatever you're hunting at that point. The whole menu system is fluid and easy to read as well as understand, for example the armory has a tech tree for every weapon and will tell you exactly what you need so you can plan out your weapon progression.

Only downside so far is the appalling lack of multiplayer, not once have I been able to connect to a game so I've been forced to battle monsters by myself. This I have no problem with as it increases the challenge and thus makes it more fun but it would be nice to be able to connect to other players and go out hunting together. Though this I'm sure capcom will fix ASAP as it is letting down the game by quite a bit.

All in all I would get this, maybe not at full price but it is still worth getting and blows any older MH game out of the water.

10/10 Will fly UH-1B "Huey" to fortunate son whilst blowing up AA guns again

No seriously get this game, granted I've only played 2 hours or so but the gameplay alone is enough to keep me going. The controls are a little difficult to understand to begin with but thankfully the devs have put in a training map with enough to room to swing your helo around and even gives you targets to shoot at as well as providing tutorials through the career page. Once you get the hang of it though it is a blast to play and immensely satisfying doing sweeping runs on enemy infantry/boats/AA with rockets and machine guns.

And that's just the singleplayer/co-op side, the PVP is quite intense as you not only have to worry about the AI shooting you down you even have enemy players to contend with which further increases the tension and satisfaction once you blow an unsuspecting player out of the sky or engaging in an intense dogfight and coming out on top.

The progression system is alright so far but the game has only just been released officially so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. It's way to easy to just sit in singleplayer and farm points, I managed to unlock 3 helo's and fully upgrade (as far as you can go anyway, not everything is unlocked) them within just 2 hours of play just doing medium difficulty missions so whilst it isn't as grindy as most games of its genre it doesn't feel as rewarding working your way up if the aircraft you want is handed to you inside 2 missions. Granted the higher tier helo's are harder to get but right now it is too easy to work your way past tiers 1-3.

The class sytem feels right and makes you tactically think, you can't just jump into a gunship and fly around expecting to win with just that one aircraft. The game makes you choose between scouts, gunships and dedicated troop transports and it is imperative that you become familiar with each of their styles as the game throws you into different objectives. One minute you're tasked with destroying AA installations which the gunship is built for to suddenly having to capture a landing zone which is where the troop transport comes in, something the gunship isn't built for forcing you to either die or flying back to your spawn to change helo's (I'd recommend doing that instead of dying, it's better to learn how to land as there will be times when you're going to have to as the higher tiers take longer to repair if shot down whereas simply landing only takes under 30 seconds to a minute)

All of that aside I'd definitely recommend getting this game, it was made by a very small dev team and they're in constant contact with their fan base as well as providing updates frequently. It's £11 (or $15 for you Yankees) which quite frankly is underdoing it considering the potential it has, I'd happily pay up to £18-£20 for a product like this as it is well worth the price.

To sum it up, if flying helo's is your thing, you like doing a bit of grinding like you find in WOT and Warthunder and you like tactical arcady style flying games then this is the one for you. Though don't be discouraged if you prefer something a bit less arcady, they do include an option for more "realistic" flight via joystick. Now hurry up and get in here, there's a war on son and that Huey ain't gonna fly itself!