Recent reviews by ALTech

It's a great re-imagining of what Theme Hospital was (with obvious updates to graphics etc). I quite like the game although at times the NPC behaviour can be somewhat confounding. I do appreciate the difficulty increasing as you progress tho a bit of warning as to level difficulty would have been nice to have.

My only real complaint is how much content is paywalled behind DLCs and how little each DLC cumulatively adds to the game (usually 2 or 3 levels each) for a sticker price of about $8-10 per main DLC. I understand that post launch content isn't always free but I feel like the DLC content at their normal prices represent poor value for money and I would only buy them on sale.

Same goes for the base game. At retail price, I'd pass on it. If it's on sale and you like SIM or management games then go for it.

As a side note,I do appreciate that it has a Linux version and it runs quite well on Linux. Caveat: Haven't tried it on my Steam Deck.

For a supposedly Japanese Railway themed expansion, this pack is sorely lacking in the Japanese Railway department.

I bought this knowing there's only 1 ROJ Metro Model and 2 ROJ Train Models. However, it feels more and more disappointing as time goes on.

I'm personally not too bothered as the Vehicles of the World Pack includes a Japanese High Capacity Metro (which frankly should have been also included in this pack), and the Shinkansen Train (which also should have been included in this pack).

That being said, there could (and indeed should) be much more to this. Is the limitation a matter of licensing designs from rolling stock manufacturers or Train operators?

Cos honestly it would be cool to see things like Tokyo Metro and Toei inspired Rolling Stock for Metros and some JR inspired stock for Trains.

Some awesome examples could include:

Metros:
Ginza Line Tokyo Metro 01 series
Hanzomon Line Tokyo Metro 8000 Series
Tokyu 5050 Series

Trains:
A Train model inspired by the E233 series or the E235 series if possible
An Airport Express focussed Train model inspired by the E259 series Narita Express Trains
A Train midel inspired by the 285 Series sleeper trains.

The elevated Metro station with the platform gates is a nice station but there should have also been a version with 2 island platforms and/or a version with 2 side platforms and 2 bypass tracks in the middle.

I'd only recommend this DLC if it's discounted or free (or if this ever gets updated and more content added to it) AND if you also buy the Vehicles of the World content pack. That kind of makes up for some of its shortcomings.

I don't want to harp on the creator who made this pack but this could have done with more time in the Oven to flesh out the content more and/or bundle the existing Japanese metro and train in the Vehicles of the World Pack. I lived in Japan for a number of years and was very familiar with the trains and metros in Tokyo, and implementing my suggestions would make this expansion an awesome expansion, possibly worth a bit more money than the current asking price but I don't imagine this expansion will get more content.

I don't want to bury the lede here: don't buy this game at full price (don't reward EA for their bad behaviour of launching the game too early) and don't buy this game if you have a GPU worse than a RTX 2060 or a CPU worse than a R5 3600. This game is demanding to run and yet on the settings I play at (1440p Medium) , it looks bad. The only reason I play on Medium Settings is because I can't keep a stable good framerate at High Settings on my hardware.

So first of all, as someone who started playing BF2042 in Season 3, it was a lot better than at launch though the game has still gotten better with every update since. Season 4 almost felt like a totally different game than Season 3.

BF2042 is a mostly fun game now but there are some maps you should avoid to have a good time.

Maps that are great:
Exposure (I used to hate this)
Discarded (After rework)
Spearhead

Maps that are Acceptable:
Kaleidoscope - Objectives are spaced far apart and there are so many snipers
Renewal (It's a meat grinder with snipers and not a lot of cover.) - If you like meat grinders, you'll like this.
Manifest (After Rework) - It's not a super terrible map anymore but the objectives are too far apart.
Orbital - Objectives are spaced too far apart and snipers have the upper hand in this map.

Maps that are Terrible:
Flashpoint - A meat grinder on steroids, there's almost no cover and the map takes place mostly outdoors. The only way to try to enjoy this map is to ditch the guns you like and embrace the Rifle life, particularly the RM-68. This map is all about running and gunning, tactics go out the window.
Hourglass (Wait for Rework to see if you like it)
Stranded - This is somewhat of a meat grinder like Renewal but the objectives aside from C1 and C2 are too far apart and affect too much the outcome of the game for my liking. Playing C1 and C2 is not worthwhile besides as a means to travel to the other objectives.

DICE have said a new map is coming for Season 5. I have to stress, do not buy this game based on what it will be like in the future. Buy it for what it's like today.

A good Battlefield game but not my favorite. The theme of WW2 starts to get old after a while.

If you want a real Battlefield game then look for BF3 or BF4. If you want a WW2 shooter then buy BFV, otherwise don't.

Highly Addictive. Very Fun. Wish that more public transit options and content were both in the base game and in the Mass Transit DLC.

Base Game is overpriced when not on sale. DLCs to avoid are Snowfall and Sunset Harbor, the rest should be fine. Mass Transit is a must buy DLC imho.

Incredibly fun simulation game. Highly Addictive.

Insanely awesome!

This game is no longer available for sale because Telltale, the developers of this game, have gone bankrupt but I thought it was worthwhile leaving this review anyways.

Initially I wanted to write a positive review. I thought it was an okay game. But now I don't.

For better or worse it is a fairly typical Telltale game and if you aren't a fan of Telltale games then you won't want to buy this. Personally I quite liked several Telltale games I've purchased and so I expected to quite like this.

One of the key aspects of Telltale games is that the choices the player makes are supposed to impact the story and outcome of the game. In theory these choices are meant to matter and be meaningful. In reality these choices are not at all meaningful and are actually quite meaningless in my opinion. The story doesn't appear to be strongly impacted by the choices the player makes as is the case in other Telltale games.

The crafting mechanics in certain parts of the game were a nice touch.

The game is episodic by nature as it is more a vehicle to deliver story-telling than necessarily a traditional game may be. The length of time it takes to complete each episode works out to roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours per Episode. Initially they only planned to release 5 episodes but later produced 2 more episodes and so people who purchased the 5 episodes needed to purchase the additional 2 episodes to get the full story experience. I think that was a bad decision and frankly I think that they should have just given the people who bought the 5 episodes as the season pass, the last two episodes as a thank you for supporting the game.

I think this is a okay game but there were a number of shortcomings along the way and I'm not terribly surprised by the bankruptcy of Telltale. If by some miracle you can buy this game today I would say save your money and don't.

A good resource management game with some bugs and minor performance issues.

Hearing the same in game sounds over and over again can get annoying and the soundtrack in game is subpar but it's not a huge deal.

I'd recommend it to fans of resource management games.

Firstly, it would be difficult to talk about Watch_Dogs 2 without mentioning it’s status as a game. It is a Nvidia GameWorks Title. This is a very anti-consumer move and I am thoroughly unimpressed. In fact, I hope that this is the last GameWorks title I ever purchase. Nvidia has had a history of using the GameWorks marketing program as a means to convince most consumers that they should buy the latest Nvidia GPUs by sabotaging the performance of both AMD and previous generation Nvidia GPUs. This is not at all acceptable.

The recommended requirements for this game details just how bad this atrocity actually is.

What a joke! Did you actually expect me to think that giving recommended requirements for 30fps was a good idea?

What the hell is this? If you have to list your recommended requirements for 30fps then your game is too demanding or has performance issues which you need to sort out.

30fps is not a cinematic experience. I struggled to play this game when it dipped to around 40–50 fps. 60fps was only achievable in some specific circumstances with the use of “Low” or “Medium” presets. Both the “Low” and “Medium” graphics presets look bad (well, the “Low” option looks horrendous to be perfectly honest) and yet they require ludicrous amounts of processing power to run the game. I don’t know what engine you used for this game but damn, get your ♥♥♥♥ in order. I wouldn’t surprised if it was a modified version of Watch_Dogs 1 Engine (Disrupt Engine).

Shipping a broken mess of a release for even $30 USD is not acceptable nor is it acceptable at really any price point. I had to run this game on Low or Medium at 1080p on a GTX 770. I know this is older hardware but I imagine a lot of people still have older hardware for a variety of reasons such as new RX and GTX video cards being bought out by coin miners and also GPU owners wanting more mileage out of their purchase. This alone can make a lot of scenes and situations a lot more unpleasant than they should be. Scenes involving driving at high speeds whether in playing the story or just driving around in the open world. Which leads me onto my next issue, the cops in this game.

The cops in Watch_Dogs2 can only be described as Police Brutality cranked up to 11. Seriously, the cops in Watch_Dogs2 make GTA V’s cops look almost like pacifists. Escaping the cops is a huge challenge and this game is certainly not something you should play on anything above normal. I played on “Easy” and this was quite difficult for something claiming to be actually easy. I might have found it to be easier if the framerate was a lot higher but I can’t 100% say for sure. The mechanics involving being able to have police arrest the AI is really cool and offers a strategic element to completing later missions rather than running and gunning. It’s a shame that this comes so late in the pacing of the game but oh well, at least we got this feature I guess :| .

The bench/3D printing device used to develop the quad copter and other gadgets is pretty counter intuitive to use and I generally didn’t use it a whole lot. Launching the quad copter or jump thing (yeah, I forgot the name of this when actually writing this review. That’s how important it is in this game -_- ). During the first few times of deploying them for a mission, but being forced to use was annoying at many times due to how tedious it felt.

I’d like to say that this game delivers around 30 hours of single player missions but you can easily spend more time screwing around and getting lost in the world of Watch_Dogs2. Which is such a shame cos the framerate issues do ruin the immersion for what should otherwise be a really good game. The amount of pre-order and Edition BS is really silly. Selling a ton of cosmetic micro transactions in a AAA full priced release is quite unacceptable and so is having pre-order nonsense. In this case, the season pass contains all the DLC that was released and doesn’t appear to offer a great value for money. I cannot with 100% certainty say this but it certainly looks like a really bad deal considering how little content they contain and how much each DLC costs.

Performance was definitely an issue in Watch_Dogs2. Below I’ve attached some graphs for performance I got at different graphics presets when just playing around in the world. I say was because I don’t intend to continue to play the game after I have finished completing all the side missions in it. I’ve finished the entire main story along with most of the side missions.

In conclusion, Watch_Dogs2 is a game that provides many hours of fun and engaging gameplay ruined by lackluster and mediocre performance, a desire by corporate greedy scum to remove as much cash as possible from your wallet through excessive ways of grabbing your money and a fairly tired animation system along with basic combat mechanics.

Watch_Dogs 2 is not necessarily a bad game. The developer of this game made some unfortunate decisions such as: partnering with Nvidia for the GameWorks marketing program, using a proprietary in house engine instead of something like Unreal Engine 4 which has a reputation of good looking visuals and good performance.

Ubisoft Montreal, the developer of this game, have had a seriously craptastic track record. From “Assasin’s Creed Unity” and the original “Watch_Dogs” to “For Honor” and “Far Cry Primal”. This developer has a worrying track record which makes me fear for the upcoming “Far Cry 5” and “Assasin’s Creed Origins”. Which brings me to my final point. Ubisoft, I beg of you, please stop screwing up the performance of games.

Instead of a traditional review score providing score out of 10, I’ll be using a new review scoring system.

Scores:

Who Should Buy it: Watch_Dogs fans. Ubisoft fans.

Who Should Not Buy it: Everybody else.

What I think the game is worth (to those who should buy it) : $30.00 USD . I would strongly advise you to not buy the game above this price point.

Don’t buy the DLC. It’s not worth the price they ask.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a pretty damn good prequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order.

It's got familiar gameplay mechanics with some new enemies and a change of environment.

Frankly, the only dissapointing aspects were: length of the campaign (it's rather short compared to the original), the Boss fight ending was anti-climactic, and frankly there was an over dependence on the mechanic of climbing up walls using the pipes.

It's a game I'd recommend to people who enjoyed Wolfenstein: The New Order. If you didn;'t enjoy the original then you're not gonna like this either.

Overall, I'd recommend it if you can find it at discount or lower price than what the launch price was.