Recent reviews by Level 3 Corn

I started when 64 bit servers were added so I cannot speak regarding lag, server-related issues, etc.

The game is F2P up to the level cap, but content will be barred beyond level 95, meaning all the content up to 2013 is free, including the epic quest lines, making your own legendary weapon, all books/episodes/locations all the way up to Gondor/Helm's Deep. That means you have nearly 30 locations to explore, the base classes to play, a lot of places to see, and a ton of things to do. All of this on a FREE account. Expansions and content ARE STILL BEING MADE!

Combat is traditional and seems to lean more towards if "the original WoW team kept the same system since BC, for 20 years", if that makes sense. It's almost a 20 year old game and follows a very familiar formula that if you played the original WoW/classic WoW.

Classes are -

-Beornings are Bear Druids that can tank/heal/DPS
-Guardians are Prot. Warriors with Gladiator Stance
-Brawlers are tanking WW Monks with no mobility
-Loremasters are a mix of BM Hunter, Ele Shaman, and Arcane Mage
-Runekeepers are a traditional Mage with a hint of Ele Shaman and Holy Priest
-Burglars are Rogues with loads of debuffs
-Champions are Fury Warriors with support options
-Captains are Paladins with a pet
-Hunters are MM Hunters without a pet
-Minstrels leans heavily towards Priest, with Boomkin burst damage
-Mariner is a Combat Rogue with support options and a pirate theme
-Warden is Survival Hunter with a spear/shield, but no pet. You have gambits, similar to Roll the Bones from Combat Rogue

Every other level you get a talent point and you can invest it into one of three categories - Red, Blue, or Yellow. Red is typically the DPS line, Yellow is more support/debuff, and Blue is more healing (or tanking) line. From there, it's a matter of preference.

In terms of graphics, it's 2007 but newer content has a slightly better coat of paint while it still keeps the old style feel. It really fits the style of the game in my opinion, seeing the vast fields of the Shire or seeing the beacon fires where Gondor called for aid, which made me go rewatch the movies for the fourth time this year.

You are NOT the hero, which is made crystal clear at the start. You are on the sidelines delivering mail, and baking pies while Frodo is off taking the ring to Mount Doom.

Speaking of Mordor, many locations in the series of books are in the game. These places look pretty damn good and you could tell, by 2007 standards, that a lot of passion and love was put into those locations. You will also see a fair number of familiar faces too. No spoilers. ;)

One of the appealing things in the game is deeds. By fulfilling deeds, you earn LOTRO points that are used in the store. LOTRO points are a premium currency. You can earn it in game freely by completing deeds, or spending real money. These are similar to achievements in WoW. Kill 60 orcs in a region to unlock the next tier, get some points, and continue on to the next tier. Complete another tier to get more points, and more rewards. Complete ALL the deeds in a zone to get the meta deed which can reward lots of points, extra items including mounts, discounts for the zone, etc. There's also deeds to unlock more racial perks/bonuses and some that offer you extra currency. While these increments are small, typically 5-20 points, those points add up and you can buy anything in the store with said points.

When you reach the Moria expansion, you will get access to legendary weapons and allow you to customize them to your playstyle a fair bit. You can also carry multiple for different specs. It's pretty involved but if you played WoW: Legion and the artifact weapon system, you'll feel at home. Still, legendary weapons are an important core part of your class identity. It pays to invest into them.

PvP is completely isolated, meaning world PvP does not exist outside the PvP zone. MPvP, or monster PvP, allows you to play as a level capped monster under Sauron's faction. Playing as a monster gives a unique twist. Monster Play gives rewards and world wide faction buffs for all players.

Crafting is very straight-forward. Crafting HQ versions of items for extra stats is nice. All professions provide value, no matter the level. The endgame especially! Potions, cooked meals, and various buffs are always in demand. Processed components to craft or upgrade gear is always in demand as well. Raw materials are always in demand so if you're a new player, that's a nice way to earn some money.

I'll get into some of the issues I have with the game -

-Game population is small but improving. 64bit servers were added recently and devs have nudged players towards them from the now defunct 32bit servers. I highly encourage you to bring some friends, form a kinship (AKA a guild) and just have at it.

-This game is NOT alt friendly. WoW has spoiled us all with its account-wide perks, but very little of that exists here. Rerolling starts you back at zero. You will have to level up again, level up crafting, etc. While I have no issue with some of the aspects of starting from zero, some of the more painful parts just discourage any point in leveling multiple characters at once. One of the perks of rerolling characters is you can redo deeds again, earning you some easy points. Premium things bought in the store are typically account wide such as bag space, bank space, cosmetics, and so on.

-Bag space is a premium. Literally. Free players get very little bagspace and it costs points to purchase upgrades. Premium players get extra bagspace, while VIP gets even MORE unlocked as long as you maintain your VIP status. You can purchase bag expansions in the store, including bank space, shared bank account space, even cosmetic space. You can offset some of the penalties by purchasing, again with points, carry-alls, which can hold several hundreds of a specific type of item. Want to carry all of your crafting mats everywhere? Get the crafting carry-all. You can also transfer the carry-all to your alts, if you have a crafting alt or two. If you want to get serious in this game, or at least not visit a bank every time you sneeze, you are almost outright required to purchase a carry-all and/or be a VIP.

-The UI. It's kinda ass and clunky, and takes some getting used to. Good news! It was updated to handle up to 4k monitors.

-Speaking of addons, they're...lacking. While WoW allows full customization of your UI, LOTRO doesn't have that. Everyone has different needs and I can only encourage you to research the various addons that are available.

-Traveling sucks. One of the biggest issues is not all the stable masters are not globally connected. One example is if you wanted to travel, by flight point, from Booty Bay to Ironforge, you could do that with a click of a button and just go AFK for a few. In LOTRO, you have to manually travel between certain stable masters, and not all of them are equal. Some will only have access to certain areas, meaning you have to travel, sometimes between 2-4 different stable masters just to get to certain areas. There are ways to fast travel, but are usually class restricted.

Overall, I believe this is a good MMORPG worthy of the LOTR name. While it is bogged down with some age and dated issues, the devs do actually care.

Warcraft has spoiled us all and it really shows.

tl;dr - Save your money and get it on sale. The price tag is not worth it. While the game is pretty fun, I simply cannot condone the pricetag. Remember to vote with your wallet!

I got all achievements, beat the game in 23 hours, managed to get all collectibles and finished all side stuff. The game was completed from start to finish on Ultra-Violence with no modified sliders, on Ultra graphics preset + everything turned onto max. My PC build is attached below, is installed with a custom/modified Win11 ISO install and was played on a gen4 NVME.

I found the game to be enjoyable with a fun gameplay loop. Feedback from the weapons felt off without some upgrades but after getting a few, and learning how to use them well, things fall into place. Movement was slow but that was to be expected since the Slayer is supposed to be a walking tank, as was described in devblogs. The movement didn't come off as stiff, but if you play Dark Ages, then go back to Eternal, then back to this, you will see what I mean.

Blocking, one of the major parts of the gameplay and combat, felt VERY good. The sound design, the feedback, the...everything felt really good, especially when you can get the timing down to just negate so much damage. Clang! Charging into an enemy from afar and just blowing everything up around you? Feels good man.

The mechsuit was very cool too. The sound design where you punch a demon in the jaw, and the slowdown? Gorgeous. The mech itself is slow, bulky, but it feels like an extension of yourself. While I am not a fan of the dodge/counter mechanic, it was still fun to turn a giant demon into a fine red mist with my fist through their skull.

The lack of Mick Gordan's music really, really hurts this game as a whole. I ended up muting the music completely after the third level because without his music, what's the point?

My only two major gripes were -

1) Flying sections felt pointless and added nothing to the gameplay whatsoever. The gameplay regarding flying is boiled down to basic dodge/counter mechanics. If I wanted dodge/counter gameplay, I'd just go play Punch-Out.

2) The complete reinventing of the wheel, so to speak. I'm unsure of the direction Bethesda wanted to take Doom because it just seems unnecessary. If it was more like Doom 2016 or Eternal, it would've been more of the same but it would've also been what folks expected (and probably wanted more of). Folks would also, probably, complain that devs were "playing it too safe". The numbers those games brought speak for themselves however, so I won't comment any further.

All in all, it's a pretty fun game with a decent gameplay loop, a customizable difficulty slider, and a lot of bullets. Is it better than 2016 or Eternal? I will let you decide that.

This game was received for free with a GPU promotion.

hat simulator

I can sum up this review in two words - wasted potential. If you can, snipe this game for cheap. $20 at the most. Grab a friend too.

Game has its moments and its appeal. I really wish they had more time to cook but unfortunately, the game was bogged down with a poor launch that kept folks away. They tried to address the issues in a timely manner but bug fixes and upgrades were not coming fast enough.

Gunplay feels arcade-y but not goofy. It doesn't come off like Call of Duty or Battlefield either. With only three weapon slots means you are forced to go into your inventory a lot and swap out weapons. I found myself keeping the UV weapon in slot three equipped at all times because it was just too valuable to unequip, meaning I was constantly swapping out the first two weapon slots to whatever was needed for the situation. My one gripe early on was you hold so little ammunition and feel forced to invest in the ammo perks early on if you don't want to swap guns all the time.

Movement is basic, not including abilities or perks. With more perks and abilities, movement allows you to get into some interesting places rather quickly, bypassing (sometimes locked) doors or repositioning yourself into a higher area for an advantage.

Voices are good but your character just WILL NOT SHUT UP. After every fight they comment and it will most likely force people to disable voices. I found myself forced to disable voices to continue playing and retaining my sanity.

Exploring and scavenging felt natural and not forced. I did not feel compelled to go out of my way to farm or focus on something in particular, outside of collectibles. My one gripe is lockpicks and hacking tools were limited you being able to carry three at a time. There are certain perks that reduce the chance to use one but still, only three being the cap? Jacob has a perk that increases his lockpick count to 8 and there are, usually, ways around locked doors such as windows in certain places, etc. Lockpicks only work on doors, safes and certain chests. If you're a loot goblin like me, you are compelled to open all the things.

Menus were straight to the point. The information you need is categorized in a way that's easy to find and navigate with minimal fluff, with text that's easy to read. You will also be spending a lot of time in the inventory screen swapping out weapons so get comfortable with that. I also enjoyed the red text format.

Quests are pretty standard but a few twists here and there kept me wary of approaching certain quests the way you normally would. "Go here, find X" but X turns out to be a trap. Don't trust things you hear over the radio or TVs.

Characters have their own identity and skillset, meaning playing with friends as different characters comes off as necessary, sorta. Each compliment one another but you can still solo without anyone. Skill trees are expanded through skill points, acquired from leveling up, killing mini-bosses, doing certain quests, etc. My first several bunch of points went straight into increasing my ammo count because I was tired of having to swap weapons so often.

Enemies ranging from standard melee vampires to humans with guns. The AI for the standard vampire comes off as jank because they seem to have no real sense of self-preservation while saying they'll eviscerate you. They also run at you in some strange angles and weird ways that the animation looks goofy while looking at you with a >:( face. There's a few other types of special vampires as well as unique variants of humans such as humans that summon help or build turrets to attack you. I won't spoil the vampire variants but I do recommend you aim for the head.

Also as a side note - If you are using an RTX card, do not enable DLSS. Your game will crash a lot. A shame the game will most likely never get patched to improve it.

Overall, the game is just okay. It's very unfortunate the game will not receive anymore updates. If this game had more time to cook and had a better launch, I daresay this game could've been pretty damn good. Maybe not GOTY material, but still enjoyable all the same.

Just not fun at all right now. I regret buying it.

Bought it day one in early access, didn't think too much of it, however over time it grew and grew until it was clear a lot of love and care was invested into it.

Played for close to 200 hours in the main campaign, save scummed a lot, suffered defeat with terrible rolls, and enjoyed succeeding with those sweet NAT20's. Overall, I had a ton of fun with the game and I look forward to more content as well as playing coop with friends.

It's a decent game, but a mediocre Fallout game and terrible story. Just go play New Vegas with the 'Tale of Two Wastlands' mod.

I miss when this game had a larger population.

Was banned for no reason back in December 2021 for reasons unknown. Contacted EA and their response was, "We cannot tell you." Bonkers.

Kinda had a bit of fun with the game to an extent but it's not the BF I fell in love with all those years ago.

Almost a thousand hours and still learning a lot about the game. Hype for A20.