Titanfall 2

7.5/10

So, Apex Legends came out this year and was suddenly very popular. I'm not really into battle royale games, but I decided to give it a try. I find myself confused and out of practice. The training map is very minimal, there's no solo mode and I'm forced to play with strangers. I don't understand why developers try to force people to play in small team games where teamwork is super important. In my experience (DOTA, DOTA2, Overwatch, ...) teamates end-up blaming each other and it gets ugly fast. I find myself wanting for a traditional deathmatch / team-deathmatch. Even if like the battle royale gameplay in Apex, I can appreciate the mechanics, the guns, the characters. I find out that Titanfall 2 which was also developed by Respawn and released in 2016 is on sale for 8$(CAD) I decide to give it a try.

I used to stick to steam mostly and I'm not too familiar with the origin store. I see there's the base game for 8$ and 4-5 DLCs for 30$. It turns out that those DLCs are cosmetic only, there's no extra campaigns or maps. I buy the game, I download it and then I try the campaing.

The campaign of this game is short but amazing. After the first few missions each mission brings its own gimmicks and it really keeps the game fresh. There's a lot gameplay mechanics to tinker with. The main character is very mobile, a bit like Lucio in Overwatch. There are lots of guns and of course there are the mechs. I would say its the best single player FPS campaign I've played since DOOM 2016.

After finishing the campaign I take a look at some multiplayer on twitch and it looks amazing but the skill ceiling seems pretty high. This is not the simple deathmatch game I was looking for.

Mass Effect 2

8/10

After playing the first Mass Effect in 2010  I did as I usually do: I played a completely different game next.

I never guessed that so much time would pass before I played the sequel. Eventually the stars aligned: I was bored after Christmas, I did not feel like playing any of the games in by Steam backlog and the game was on sale. So 9 years after it's release, and 9 years after I played the first Mass Effect here's my review of Mass Effect 2.

Overall the game is very good. It mostly improves upon the first game. This time there's not much old-school ambiance exploration gameplay: there's no time! You've got to save the galaxy! Gogogo! There are still many secondary missions and this time their quality is on par with the rest of the game, however, the game will force you into the main objective once in while.

At some point I realized that I had been doing secondary missions for one hour and that none of them involved running around shooting aliens. It was a coincidence, most of the game is action oriented, I just happened to do a few role play missions in a row. I would say that the game has a good balance of action and RPG elements.

I was a bit disappointed by the few choices of weapons. I've heard the argument that its meaningless to put lots and lots of choices of weapons in a game if it they do not make a difference or if there is only one obvious good choice. But then again just make them meaningful! Some weapons could be better against different types of enemies or situation. There are ammo abilities in the game which play a similar role but I thought they were somewhat uninteresting. Watch-out! I'm using my ability to use armor, shield or barrier piercing ammo!

 My first character was of the Adept class (more based on abilities and less on guns). There is a global cooldown in this game and I would say that for me this is probably the most boring class. I restarted as an Infiltrator, and it was  much better, sniping enemies and setting them on fire between shots and running around invisible and gunning them down with my sub-machine gun when they are alone in a corner.

I did not bother importing my saves from the first game. There might be perks associated with this like more paragon points and seeing the impact of your action in the first game. I did not remember my choices in the first game so this did not prevent me from enjoying the game.

So, yeah, I do recommend this game. Its still very good on PC in 2019.

Slay The Spire (Early Access)

8/10

Slay The Spire is a turned based rogue like RPG where your characters actions are cards. After every encounter you may choose one of three random cards to add to your deck.

Every choice seems important, which card to add to your deck, which path of the randomly generated levels you take, which cards you play on each turn and in which order.

I found that the game is very accessible and enjoyable even if you start over when you die. It lets you make different choice and try different strategies which keeps the experience fresh.

Also when you die or complete your current run, the games give you a score which goes to unlocking more cards to pick from in the next run.

The music is similar to that of Heroes of Might And Magic. However there are few tracks and it can get repetitive.

In 20 hours I finished two runs with each character available in early access, the Ironclad and the Silent, (and died a few times also).

I will definitively come back to try the third character when the game is released.

Destiny 2

6/10

So I tried Destiny 2. The trial. I looks like a decent game.

But I'm not hooked.

• The jetpack is disappointing.
• The intro is annoying I think, (just get me in the meat of game already).
• I felt like I was just wearing what ever has the bigger numbers number.

If I compare it to other similar games:

• Warframe has better movement.
• Mass Effect has better RPG elements.
• Borderlands has better guns
• And all of these have meaningful choices.

Maybe I'll come back to it at a later date if it bundles all its expansions together with a giant price drop. Its not like don't have hundreds of unfinished games on steam already.

Update:

I got to try the first campaign of the game for free (no DLC). I would have tried more strikes but the rewards were insignificant, my level was capped at 20 and power at 265. The game teases mechanics which don't really make sense at the beginning of the game. Like upgrading your guns, why is it so expensive to upgrade low level guns / armor? Would have been fun to be able to carry some gear from early in the campaign to later in the game. No wonder people say the game starts at the end-game.

The campaign is ok, the voice acting is good. It seems a decent game but it's not ground breaking. I don't feel like buying DLC right now, not sure if I would enjoy the end game anyways.

Usually games introduce mechanics as you progress, not sure it's a good strategy to keep everything for the end.

I updated the review with a score since I played the whole base game.

Limbo

7.8/10

Nice little platformer / Physics puzzle game. Not only must you solve the little physics puzzles in the game  to advance but you must be able to execute the solution.

The game can be dark and scary sometimes but its not too frustrating as the character respawns before the puzzle or event that killed him.

Realms of Ancient War

5.5/10

Realms of Ancient War is a pure hack & slash action RPG. It is functional but does not offer the same level of engagement as other popular titles (Diablo, Torchlight, Path of Exile, Titan Quest ...).

Skill upgrades are pretty straightforward. For example for the wizzard there is only one spamable  spell, you start with 1 point in it and can upgrade it 3 times, so 10 minutes in at level 4 you are set: 90 % of the damage you will do for the rest of the game will come from that spell. The other skills all have cooldowns.

On PC, There is only 4 keys for skills: 1,2, left-click and right-click. You can swap to a second hotbar with tab. The limitation in the number of hotkeys was probably imposed to facilitate publishing this game to consoles.

Gear upgrades straightforward but irrelevant until the last chapters of the game. For the most parts, they would provide a few percents (1 % to 5 %) difference from the character's base stats. The best gear upgrades were available at a merchants seen one time in the campaign and then remained unchallenged by drops until the end of the game.

The main character has the ability to take control of some enemies, this is advertised as one of the main feature of the game in trailers, but for some reason for me it only worked once after many tries. It required my character to be pretty close to the monster in question which was unlikely to happen often with my wizard anyways.

Overall I would not recommend this game unless you feel like hacking/slashing through thousands of monsters without having to think about gear / skills or other character customization that other games in the genre provide.

As a side note I would add the game immediately made me think of Silverfall. I think Silverfall offers a bit more complexity and a more involved story, but I felt that the games were similar when started playing ... Maybe my opinion was set from the beginning since I knew both games were published by Focus Home Interactive. I looked on mobby games and could not find any more links between the two games: Both games were made in France by now dead developers but otherwise I could not find anything linking the two games together.

Medal of Honor (2010)

4.5/10

The first thing I noticed was that my character was slow, I double checked the controls, but that was it. The fastest way to move around is to slide, by sprinting and pressing the crouch button. With some semi-automatic guns and shotguns I noticed the game would not allow me to shoot as fast as I want. Its the same toggle button to crouch, prone or get up, so sometimes I would go from crouching to standing up by accident. The controls are not horrific, but the object of the game is running around and shooting people so the controls for that should be spot on.

At some point in the game (on PC), you have to press and hold the key "4" to launch a missile to complete an objective. I had to look online.

The game bugged on one of the checkpoints at the end of the game, my character would die in an infinite loop.

Now a few war FPS games do that: infinite spawns of bad guys until you advance to the objective. This encourages the player to ignore enemy fire, advance (in a suicidal manner) and then kill the enemy. And I think that's stupid. There only a few of those in the game but then a again, the whole campaign is super short ...

The story is not amazing. The whole campaign is linear, the only freedom you have is shoot even if your team told you to wait (at least its not game over if you do manage to kill all the enemies anyways. The whole thing lasts between 4 and 5 hours. It could have been faster if the protagonists knew how to run and without the infinite spawns.