Recent reviews by devtaylor

A real blast. Perfect? No - the animation is occasionally goofy and the gunplay sections a bit clunky. But great fun, really well written single player game with some cracking art direction. You often find that games like this run out of steam towards the end, but this does no such thing.
Treat it as a long movie with little bits of exploration and gunplay in, the journey is where the enjoyment is.

Proper Sonic.

We need more of this type of game. Or at least a sequel.

Others have commeted on the graphics performance aspects - I reckon that in a year or so and graphics cards have moved on again then everyone wil be able to enjoy the stunning engine they've put in here. I suppose building a game that needs a graphics card from 2 years into the future is thematically consistent for the game, in a way.... WIth a 1070 i managed to run at a decent frame rate with no vsync and most options up to high or max at true 1080p. Some folks want more, that's fine.

Story wise, this is is deep, thoughtful, and for a nice change tries to treat a sciencey topic with a bit clarity. The characters are well rounded and if you take the time to pick up the extra pieces of info scattered around, then you get a good sense of everyone's (occasionally tragic) motive.

Gameplay wise, the gunplay is a little clunky but offers up a few good scenes. It's no max payne, but servicable enough. For me though, it was almost a distraction from the star of the show, which is the story.

If you come across it in a sale, snap it up and enjoy it.

If you're still scrolling down looking for a positive review here, you're going to be disappointed.

Like I was when I played this, having loved the previous games and preordering this one. (and waited through the 40gb d/l...)

There's a cracking game under here somewhere, combat seems like it would be fluid, summoning the batmobile would be awesome if the framerate didn't tank to the point you'd think that the game was taking a few choice screenshots as a special feature, the game seems massive and the vistas from high up look great.

I could cope with the poor textures (only options being low and normal is a bit of a giveaway for looking crap) if the framerate was stable. I could even forgive the 30 fps lock, but playing the game at single figure framerates during scenes is just unacceptable.

How this got out of the same publisher as Shadow of Mordor is beyond me, they obviously don't care enough to QA properly. I'm a little disappointed Rocksteady chose to outsource and not take an interest in the final product too.

I'll be playing Witcher 3 for a while - not a bad thing, but not what I was expecting to be doing this evening having spent money on this.

If you're still unclear (or you're a developer who hasn't yet got the mood), DON'T BUY THIS. Wait until you see a sea change in reviews or pick up patched improvements through the media.

You really should play this game.

In short, it takes and refines the combat mechanisms from the Batman Arkham series, puts you in a (quite pretty) open world with all the hallmarks of a Ubisoft game (i.e. collectibles / side-quests) and places a reasonable storyline through it. It gives you a skill upgrade tree, a few mounts to hunt, and plenty of graphics options to tweak.

On those credentials you should pass / wait for a deep discount, but the way in which you take on the Orcish hordes of Sauron in this game is what sets it miles apart. The Nemesis system is essentially a Orcish army heirarchy within which you target, assassinate, bully, support and ultimately dominate. Each orc in said heirarchy has its own name, personality, strengths and weaknesses that you will get to know and love/hate. You will be killed, they will get stronger. You will hunt them down for hours until you find the right opportunity, something will catch you off guard and they will get stronger again. You will change tactics, hunt down informants to help you out, upgrade equipment and skills all to get revenge on the one Orc that pissed you off early on in the game. You'll find that a few hours have passed and you haven't done any missions at all. And you won't care.

Whilst the first part of the game is undoubtedly tough, the penalties for death are really only the humiliation of seeing the orc that killed you benefitting from it. This is SoM's strength, and the one part of the game you will truly love.

For a game that takes so much from others, I hope I get to see this type of thing across other games for years to come.

I really wanted to like this game. I really did.

Disclaimer: I bought this as a full game, not as part of its early access program.

The art style is nicely done, intentionally evoking similarities between itself and Legend of Zelda.
The music is pleasant.
The writing in parts is great and amusing, as is the story and setting.
The core concept of hacking / changing variables and code to progress or solve puzzles is unique as far as my experience goes, and you could see the idea helping teach some coding alongside game progression.

Disclaimer 2 - I don't have programming experience, although I do have a master's degree in chemical engineering. Neither of these two things should be prerequisites to enjoying a game.

The execution however leaves something to be desired. A number of the concepts in the game are really poorly explained and so you will quite often find yourself fumbling around having accidentally changed something you didn't need to or breaking a puzzle in such a way that it is very difficult to get back on track (assuming you're learning the coding logic as the game presents it to you, as I was). You will occasionally find yourself understanding the problem and having the solution, and yet being beaten back from it by often loose controls constantly sending you off the edge of tiny moving platforms. You'll see speech and conversation that reads as though it hasn't been proof-read and is missing punctuation and grammar (not important until you're relying on it to help you solve puzzles).

And then Act 4 happens, whereby you're set loose into a complex set of puzzles that are all but impossible to work around using the game's explanations. Note that they aren't impossible, and often the solution is relatively simple, but the point of this is that the solution is obfuscated by so much poorly presented information that unless you already understand the puzzle (i.e. can read the code logic) and have written it out (to figure out what variables and subloops are doing) you quickly find yourself giving up.

I gave in part way through this. Some games I enjoyed the experience so much that I persisted, or looked for solutions online to help me pass a sticky bit and enjoy the rest of it. This was very much like trudging through treacle.

Ultimately a missed opportunity, and a lesson in game development of why play testing and QA are important.

Give it a miss.

Bought this game originally to play with the wife, who really doesn't like getting shot at and is quite fond of puzzle adventure games.

Ended up with a fantastic looking game with an interesting storyline, once you wrap your head around what it is you're meant to be doing. No hand-holding really does mean it here (and so had to give some helpful hints to my wife...).

It would be fair to say that the game is more Myst than Broken Sword as far as adventuring goes, but if you liked the narrative driven aspects of Gone Home or Dear Ester and wanted a bit more game to go with it, this is probably for you.

Well worth a rainy day's gaming.