Recent reviews by VayneValerius

Its been a long time since I've played an AC title. Longer than a decade and wow, does AC:VI bring it all back. It gets everything right for me. This really makes you feel like the main character in "one of my Japanese anime's" to steal a quote from Otacon. The incredibly polished movement system has given me Neon Genesis Angel fight vibes more than once (Punching out of a dash, superb!!!) in a way the older titles could have only dreamed about. That isn't to say they are bad titles, but I remember AC:4 (my last), being insanely static in comparison.

I haven't played much but the part variation seems to be vast and I'm holding my breath for when I unlock a hover frame. Those things were ace back in 3, but just like my Tetrapod legs I think they will likely sit in storage after a couple nostalgic outings. The OS upgrades take the variation to a whole new level beyond older titles too.

The boss fights are fantastic too. They all have that Ace Combat awesome scale and silliness and the fights pump you with adrenaline - especially as the risk factors during bosses is increased by 11, sometimes twice or thrice a fight. They are hard and I think even older AC players, largely those with lives, may have trouble initially as they unlearn dormant habits from the older titles, as well as adapt some other From Software title strategies which they will wrongly try and apply.

The Arena is also back baby, so for you AC3 fans like myself, you have a collection of 1v1 AC fights to sink into. They are locked behind story progression though, and its quite bare. Only around 25 - 30 fights and there are no real lore dumps or trash talk. Would have liked to see a side Arena mode with a hundred jumped up AC's but happy by its inclusion none the less. The fact this is my only pain point is great. Purely subjective and based on nostalgia not substance.

10/10, would giant robot again.

Where is my ATB system? Why do the character models look like that? What was wrong with the original port? The PS1 was the same just with added cg so why couldn't we get that?

I am sorry for all the questions but this is not the game I love. Sqenix why are you so ashamed of these games and the genre that you are remebered and loved for?

I was really excited when I saw this and now I just feel betrayed and sad that my favorite game in the series has been butchered. Looks like Im going to have to brush the good old Playstation 1 off.

Well I bought this on release and I can honestly say its a good and holds up to earlier DOA's, however dlc thats a higher price than the game (Thats little more than skins), no online even after their "3 months" of what ever the hell they where doing, with no updates or new on that after 3 extra months of waiting, missing content and features of the console port and just general PC gamers getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the arse with all the power of a thousand suns. DOA is one of my top series when it comes to fighters, but the economic practices alone of Koei Tecmo has put me off ever buying another game by or even published by them.

Now, it took me a while to get into EUIV, as I had been a massive fan of the 3rd instalment of the series. After over 2000 hours of creating Byzantine Australia, Austrian Africa ect.ect. playing EUIV was difficult. So much had changed since the days of Divine Wind. No more policy sliders, more confusing (now much simpler after getting used to it) trade, more historical constraints and no "minting". However...EUIV is by far, a fantastic game. Many of the problems EUIII had have been fixed, such as a better way of forming personal unions. Yes, it isn't as easy to destroy the Ottamans with the remenants of the Roman Empire like in EUIII, but by the pentriach it is much more satisfying for being so. Every nation feels a little more unique due to ideas and the game flows beautifully. Even colonization doesn't feel as much as a hassle, though changing religions is a pain in my imperial breeches. To any EUIII fans that have not played IV yet, get it. Because while its so different, its a wonderful different and after a while, you don't want to go back.

To newcomers to the series I say several things.

1) You will never stop thinking about this game once you start playing. Strategies will come into your head even when your not playing it.
2) This is nothing like Civ. You won't get anywhere by comparing the two, except for realising you would have more spare time if you played Civ. A civ game is a few seconds long compared to this.
3) You will most likely live the rest of your life alone due to points 1 and 2 and only just remember to feed yourself.

So good luck and have fun!

10/10, can't wait for the new expansion.

Darkout is a 3rd person, 2d platform, Minecraft/Don't Starve hybrid (Try saying that after a few). The general story is that your character has been stranded on an uncharted planet that is constantly dark, and you have to find resources and research different items to survive. Now, it sounds all well and good on paper, but if the two former games are it's parents, then this is the resulting child after Minecraft took thalidomide during pregnancy. It's bad, not Ride To Hell Retribution Bad, or Duke Nukem Forever awful, but it's close. It has an awful interface, it crashes more than Oblivion packed with mods in the wrong order, making it playable for no more than 5 seconds and when its not wanting to crash, it bugs out and lags even on my high end computer. When your trying to dig or mine it won't let you half the time, and you have to line up your mouse perfectly so you can, except, as a rule, it has to be lined up a mile away from the object your trying to interact with. However the worst thing about this game, and I say the worst thing, is that there is no sense of direction. I seriously had no clue on how to play or what to do. Even after reading the manuals in the main menu, I still felt as lost as a Christian in a Marilyn Manson gig. It's as if one developer thought "Hey, you know how there is that time in Minecraft where you get really bored because you have no clue what to do, well how about we increase that feeling by making the players have no clue what to do at the beggining of the game," And the rest, instead of just killing him, by bludgeoning him to death with his own shoes, nodded and agreed. Now I know the game isn't 100% finished, before I start getting complaints, but neither was Minecraft and we all loved that for some strange reason. The difference is we only got bored of Minecraft recently, while Darkout is just plain bad to begin with!