Recent reviews by dezeu

Grand Theft Auto 5 is not only a preposterously enjoyable video game, but also an intelligent and sharp-tongued satire of contemporary America. It represents a refinement of everything that GTA 4 brought to the table five years ago. It’s technically more accomplished in every conceivable way, but it’s also tremendously ambitious in its own right. No other world in video games comes close to this in size or scope, and there is sharp intelligence behind its sense of humour and gift for mayhem. It tells a compelling, unpredictable, and provocative story without ever letting it get in the way of your own self-directed adventures through San Andreas.

It is one of the very best video games ever made.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is a masterpiece of a game, and the PC version is the best way to experience it. Its sprawling yet meticulously detailed map is the high bar to which all other open-world games aspire, and it’s incredibly dense with excellent content. With so much to do, explore, and play with, both in single-player and multiplayer, plus great creative tools, it’s truly amazing on multiple levels.

What The Crew gets right is its stylised and scaled-down version of the entire continental USA. Cities are shrunken caricatures, but the truly vast sweeping tracts of land between them means traversing it really does capture the spirit of a cross-country, city-to-city road trip better than any driving game before it. Plenty of racing games curate a bunch of different backdrops into their track selections, from urban street races in major American metropolitan centres to icy blasts across snow-swept mountains, flat-out sprints across the baking desert, or muddy expeditions through giant Sequoia forests. The Crew admirably does all this in a single game world you can drive across in one lengthy session.
This girth has come at a cost, though. It’s a world that looks fine whipping by you at speed, but it favours sheer size over the kind of granular detail we now expect in modern open world racers. Cities are smattered with recognisable landmarks but don’t really seem built to stand up to stationary scrutiny. Combined with low-detailed NPC cars (complete with entirely black, opaque glass), some forgettable effects (splashing water is especially dire), no weather, and the fact that the models of the 40-or-so cars are in a league below those of contemporaries like Forza Horizon 2 or Driveclub, The Crew struggles to shake the look of a game several years older than it actually is.

The coolest feature of the game is the posting of the highest-scoring PSN player on a billboard, avatar and all, taunting you to do better. This was done in Need for Speed: Most Wanted as well, and it's a neat little way to increase the social element of the game without going overboard.

Batman games are like pizza: even when they’re not very good, they’re still pretty good. Next to Arkham City, Arkham Origins is a bit of a disappointment in its lack of new ideas and use of win buttons, making it the least interesting of the trilogy. But as excuses to dive back into the excellent free-flowing combat and predator takedowns go, this story isn’t bad.

Far Cry 3 is a delightful and harsh tropical wonderland, crawling with wildlife and threatened by the pirates and drug runners that disrupt its peace. The troubled paradise you explore is colorful and wild, enticing you to investigate its ravines and discover new ways to enjoy the open-world playground sprawling in front of you. This is a game that ignites the desire to complete every last challenge and check out every last icon on your map. You gradually journey across the entirety of two sunny and sinful islands, hunting for rare game, speeding medicine to needy communities, and skinning sharks so that you might craft new wallets with their hides. Far Cry 3 is an excellent game, marred mainly by some irritating design elements and an inconsistent story that often defaults to generic "tribal" cliches to make an impact.

Tough but gratifying, F1 2013 is not a startling improvement from the already robust F1 2012, but it’s certainly Codemasters’ best and most confident crack at F1 to date. It looks good, sounds good, feels good, and is crammed with plenty to do. More than ever, F1 2013 requires the right combination of patience, finesse, and aggression to fight your way towards your goals (which won’t always be outright victory, and races are all the more believable for it). The new classic content ultimately doesn’t soar quite high enough to justify purchase alone for F1 2012 owners but, combined with the well-honed existing content, F1 2013 is a very complete and satisfying package overall. Yearly devotees will be less blown away than new fans, or ones returning from a year or two away from the series, but F1 2013 is the most definitive distillation of the motorsport to date.

Burnout Paradise delivers as a fantastic racing game any racing fan should own, and that even non-racing fans will likely get some enjoyment out of it.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is that rare thing, a strong sim tethered to a strong game. Where other vehicle-obsessed devs seem to take player motivation for granted, Czech studio SCS understand that a pleasingly modelled steed needs a pleasingly modelled environment to shine.

On this occasion that environment is a swathe of Europe stretching from Plymouth in the west to Wroclaw in the east, from Aberdeen in the north to Milan in the South. The tangle of motorways and major roads is stylised and condensed, but feels massive. After a splendid week of non-stop trucking the stats screen tells me I’ve still only seen 50% of it.

There’s satisfaction in exploring new routes, seeing new golden been-there-done-that squiggles appearing on the in-game map, but it tends to be the promise of cold, hard cash that gets you out of bed in the morning. Like Farming Simulator, ETS2 has a simple yet resonant economic sandbox at its centre.

Despite those nitpicks and a couple frustrating late-game sections, Metro 2033's greatest success is the consistency of its pacing. You're constantly encountering new factions, discovering interesting new locations, or being tasked to do something you haven't done before.

Medal of Honor is a great title, a realistic and epic take on the war in Aghanistan, but is too short, just 5 hours for an incredible experience, that will push you in a breathtaking journey in most dangerous valleys of A-Stan. It also has an interesting hardcore single player mode, and a well made multiplayer, but it's not as good as the ones in Bad Company and Modern Warfare.