Recent reviews by Jake

Strange vibes lol, and fairly short for a single playthrough but it looks like there are a bunch of different pathways you can take through the story and different endings so you'll definitely get more playtime out of this if you want to see everything.

As a fan of PAYDAY since the first game, I decided not to pick up PAYDAY 3 at launch after hearing how disastrous it was. Now that some time has passed and the developers have had the opportunity to make changes, I finally decided to take a chance on the Year 1 edition of the game. Having now finished every heist currently available, I'm quite happy to say that PAYDAY 3 is actually good!

I don't think there's a bad heist in this game, I enjoyed every one of them. The stealth is a huge improvement over PAYDAY 2, the gunplay feels really good, and playing it almost feels a bit like a return to PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2 at launch, where the pace feels a bit more measured and you feel more like you're under pressure and fighting for your life in combat, as opposed to PAYDAY 2 towards the end of its lifecycle where you'd be flying round the level at mach 3 hosing down 100 cops per minute with ease (which, to be fair, I also very much enjoyed in its own way!)

There is some stuff that's not so good. The UX sorta sucks. I genuinely don't know when the game is going to give me skill points because it doesn't seem to be every time I level up. The time it takes to get into a heist is longer than it should be because it makes you sit through a matchmaking screen even though I'm hosting my own game and playing with one other friend. It's unclear which weapons can be used as primaries or secondaries until you buy them because the purchase screen just has all the weapons together without any sort of separation. One heist would kick my friend out every time we restarted (we were attempting to stealth, so we were retrying quite a lot) so I had to invite him back every single time. A few heists have this signal boosting objective which just requires you to sit in a number of circles for like 15 seconds, which is pretty lame, but thankfully none of the newer DLC heists do this so hopefully it never returns!

Overall though, the negatives feel more like nitpicks than anything that seriously spoil the experience, and the good definitely outweighs the bad. I had a really great time playing through PAYDAY 3 and I still want to play more! I hope the devs stick with it and keep improving things, but as a PAYDAY 2 fan who was quite sour on PAYDAY 3 when it launched, the devs have already done enough to win me over. I'm actually quite excited for the future of this game, and I'm almost certainly going to buy future DLC.

Unfortunately this game just isn't clicking for me. I really like beat 'em ups and this is exactly the sort of game I SHOULD like, but after two hours I don't really feel compelled to continue playing. Even on the easy setting, the difficulty falls on the side of too tricky, and thus frustrating, for me. The parry timing window feels so tight to the point where I'm not even bothering with it because I'm more likely to miss the window and take damage, so I'm just using avoids instead. It's possible the difficulty was tuned this way because of the 'roguelike' structure, so dying and replaying levels again is the intended experience, but this feels a bit tedious to me, especially losing the upgrades I bought along the way. The combat feels a bit lacking in impact too. The audio doesn't sound all that impactful or satisfying, and it doesn't feel that great when you try to hit enemies and they just ignore your attacks because they're in their own attack pattern. It's a shame because I wanted to like this one but I guess it's aimed more towards people looking for challenge and a sense of mastery, whereas I think I personally would have preferred to have a difficulty setting that increased the parry timing window and was a bit more easy-going so I can just kick back and kick some ass, but alas, it is my ass that has been kicked.

Super cool, stylish, and fun game. Levels are far more intricate than expected, creeping into immersive sim territory. A very promising Early Access release and I'm excited for the final, finished product.

Selaco slaps, bangs, and f***s.

Man I dunno what these devs were thinking making this game so friggin hard but tbh it got me hook like a crack pipe and it's got funny monkeys in it so it's good

Definitely one of the better throwback/"boomer" shooters to come out!

The combat has a good rhythm to it and once you settle into the groove it feels great. Enemies pop and blow apart when you kill them which is really satisfying. The weapon lineup features usual suspects like a pistol, shotgun, automatic weapon, and some heavy hitting launchers, but they all look and feel good.

The level design, in terms of architecture and spectacle, is a treat. However, some levels feel a bit too long for their own good. Each level on average took me around 40 minutes to complete. The quickest I completed a level was around 20 minutes, and the longest about an hour. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I felt that sometimes the levels didn't vary themselves up enough to feel like the length was justified. That said, I never felt navigation was too much of an issue. The levels can feel a bit overwhelming and sprawling, but I found that generally they guided me through without me getting lost or not knowing where to go. The one exception was a level very late into the game where I was locked into a small loop and I didn't know how to get a key to unlock a door, but I think it was a bug where I should have unlocked access to the key with a lever, but it failed to trigger, so I had to use noclip to access the cage with the key in it.

Encounter design can feel a little uninspired too, with enemies just waiting in rooms or around corners to ambush you or having a mob spawn in when you pick up an item. It's fine and serviceable, but there's a lack of surprise and no fights that really use enemies in interesting or novel ways to make you think about your approach or require you to tackle them differently. But that said, I still found the combat remained enjoyable throughout the game thanks to the aforementioned rhythm and game feel.

If you enjoy the dark fantasy aesthetic and combat loop and rhythm of Quake, then you'll probably find enjoyment in WRATH: Aeon of Ruin too. I certainly did.

Wow, this game is WAY better than it has any right to be! The combat feels really good, and I enjoyed the side quests, branching story, and dialogue/decision choices that allow you to be more empathetic, though you can play it more like a bastard pig if you like. I feel it captures the spirit and themes of the film quite well, and the humour feels on-point too.

The biggest weakness for me is the uneven performance, which can vary quite drastically based on what's happening on screen. In some areas I'm comfortably over 120 fps, but in other areas, particularly during heavy combat, the frame rate can drop as low as 30-40. It doesn't usually last for too long however, so it didn't affect my enjoyment too badly. I was playing on basically the highest settings though, and the game does look great, so the lower performance is somewhat justified. The Steel Mill level had a nasty bug where the framerate drops down to like 15-20 fps and stays there until you enter another area, but this was the only occasion this happened. The facial animation and voice acting could be better too, but this can be forgiven as the budget is obviously nowhere near what a AAA game would have and I feel the developers here allocated their budget, time, and effort where it counts.

Overall, Robocop: Rogue City is a great game that I recommend particularly to fans of the original movie.

An expertly-designed stealth-tactics game. The gameplay is thoughtful and creative, the cast of playable characters have really fun powers and likeable/memorable personalities, and the story has its fair share of surprising twists. All of this is wrapped up in highly polished presentation with lots of little neat details and extra touches that certainly didn't have to be there, but are, and the game punches well above its weight for it. Between Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Desperados III, and now Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, Mimimi Games have cemented themselves firmly as the masters of the genre, delivering undoubtedly the three finest 'Commandos-like' real-time stealth tactics games ever made. This is sadly their swan song, but what a hell of a way to go out.

Very cool game! Stylish action and charming humour. The combat is very fun and impressively tightly-designed. I loved the use of items and the environment not simply just to add flair to the fights, but as tactical opportunities that players must make use of for crowd-control as you can quickly get overwhelmed if you're not managing the enemies around you. The combat can get quite tricky (I was playing on Normal difficulty), particularly in later fights where you're simultaneously going up against multiple enemies who can all deflect your attacks. I would love to see more from this developer, either in the form of more levels, a sequel, or another action game entirely. Excellent stuff, Fireplace Games!