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Joally (1 KP) rated the PlayStation 3 version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in Video Games

Jan 30, 2019  
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
2011 | Role-Playing
Visuals (5 more)
Mechanics
Characters
Quests
Quality
Free to roam
Glitches (1 more)
Voice actors
Too good to miss!
The game starts at the main quest where the MC (main character) is about to be executed when a dragon appears within the village. It is very instructive as to your controls and how you play the game. I found it relatively easy and I was a beginner to gaming at this point. The story progressed as does the side quests. Characters are almost fledged as if they could be real and there are things in the game which you can have your MC marry an NPC and build your own house etc. It is truly a work of art. There are glitches which make the game frustrating, the combat is simple and easily boring, and they reuse the same voice actors for many of the characters which makes it unbelievable in some cases. Other than that.. Skyrim is beautifully made. (It says PS3 cause there was no PS4 option)
  
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Vegas (725 KP) rated the Xbox One version of The Outer Worlds in Video Games

Oct 28, 2019  
The Outer Worlds
The Outer Worlds
2019 | Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Shooter
The writing (3 more)
The game play
Characters
The graphics
Lack of 3rd person view (3 more)
Drawing weapons by mistack when trying other tasks
Some conversations are a little long
The combat system could be tweaked
Like Fallout in space.
If you have played Fallout you will feel at home with this game from part of the team who made New Vegas and even though it isn't part of the Fallout series it does have the feel of a distant cousin.

Although I'm still only part way through, it is one of the best games I have played recently, it is colourful, fun, tough choices need to be made and feels like things you do actually matter to the world around you...

It would be nice to have a third person view choice as in Fallout and it is a bit annoying when attempt to do a task and you end up drawing your gun by mistake but these are not enough of a problem to ruin the game...
  
Assassin's Creed Liberation HD
Assassin's Creed Liberation HD
2014 | Action/Adventure, Fighting
Story (3 more)
Combat
Fast paced
Ending
Map Size (2 more)
Game Length
Little to no relation to previous games
Short and small, but still pretty sweet.
Despite being just an incredibly short spin-off of the Assassin's Creed series, and having only 3 very small maps, this game is a highly enjoyable one!

The story is enjoyable, if somewhat unoriginal, with some definite similarities to ACIII, revolving around saving slaves and killing the slavers. The story also shows very little relation to previous games, except from a cameo from an ACIII character, and the obligatory weird glowy item that adds little to nothing to the story apart from adding a few missions.

Despite all this, the story is extremely enjoyable!

The gameplay is incredibly fun and pretty fast paced, visiting swamps, towns and Mexican colonies, leaving the played wanting more, and to learn more about what happened to the main character after the game.

Overall a great game that definitely deserves to be more than a spin-off.
  
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Brendan Benson recommended track Death Or Glory by The Clash in London Calling by The Clash in Music (curated)

 
London Calling by The Clash
London Calling by The Clash
1979 | Rock
8.8 (10 Ratings)
Album Favorite

Death Or Glory by The Clash

(0 Ratings)

Track

"Again, it was my Dad who turned me onto The Clash. I fell in love with Combat Rock first and then I ate my way through that band. It was like a goldmine or a candy store. So many of their songs have changed my mind about music lot, but I picked “Death Or Glory” because it was one of their better sounding songs that seems a bit overlooked. I was impressed by the sound of it, there’s acoustic guitars in there and the fidelity sounds good, that was really smooth and appealing. With the acoustic guitars and electric guitars, it was almost pre-dating some of that Americana stuff. It’s so powerful and it’s not super punk. “Death Or Glory” is like a call-to-arms, it sounds triumphant and I love that. The lyrics are great as well – ‘Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world’ it’s great stuff man, Strummer was insane in that way."

Source
  
Marvel's Spider-Man
Marvel's Spider-Man
2018 | Action/Adventure
Well, that was thoroughly enjoyable.

Seemingly taking it's cue - especially in combat - from Rocksteady's Arkham series of Batman games, this tells a completely new, completely stand-alone story, with a Peter Parker who has been Spider-Man, now, for 8 years and so is free of any restrictions placed upon it by tying it to a particular movie or graphic novel.

While it can get a bit repetitive in places, the central mechanic of web-swinging around a populated New York - one that even has a scale able The Avengers Tower in it (question: what will happen now that the Sony/Marvel deal has broken down?) - is great fun, while the story and plot itself is actually pretty good. Yes, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Spider-Man lore may see where parts of it are going, but the fun (in this case) is in the journey, not the destination ...

Looking forward to the inevitable sequel.
  
Greedfall
Greedfall
2018 | Role-Playing
I actually liked Greedfall. It definitely has a mix of Dragon Age and Fable vibes with the open exploration and the various main quest and side quests. Set in the 18th century it definitely showcases colonialism and all the problems and horrors that come with it. I felt frustrated with some of the story pacing in some areas because while the main character got to make a lot of choices, a lot of them felt like I didn't really get to do much for the sake of diplomacy. I enjoyed the combat and felt it had a great system that had a good mix of melee and magic. I liked exploring the island and fighting the giant creatures while learning about the native people of the island. Overall, I had fun playing the game in spite of some of the story issues. You can read the full Mothergamer review here:http://lorrie28-mothergamer.blogspot.com/2020/06/mothergamer-plays-greedfall.html
  
Days Gone
Days Gone
2018 | Action/Adventure
The story starts off interesting and I do like Sam Witwer as Deacon. He does a great job with the voice acting for him. The combat is fun and brings some intense fights. Traveling in the open world of Oregon is cool and there's some very pretty vistas while riding on the motorcycle. Sometimes the inventory controls feel very clunky, but I made it work. The accessibility isn't bad and I appreciated that they included that. Some of the side missions felt a bit tedious and I wish I could have learned more about certain characters in the different camps. There are two chapters that I feel could have been cut from the game because they didn't really offer a lot to the main story. I did have fun playing the game and it's not bad, but it definitely could have been better in places. you can read the full Mothergamer review here: http://mg28-mothergamer.blogspot.com/2021/08/mothergamer-plays-days-gone.html
  
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Mortal Kombat (2021)
2021 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
CGI (1 more)
Fight scenes
Very gory (0 more)
I won a DVD in a give-away and here is my honest review, on the movie.
I really enjoyed the movie and went into it knowing full well it was a fight movie. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a bit of a storyline. I think it did a good job balancing out what was expected from those who played the game, except one scene that I was slightly sad they didn't end the fight in a certain way but that is completely personal preference.

I liked the CGI, it wasn't over done.
There is a lot of gore and I think it definitely holds up the R rating. I haven't watched or played Mortal Combat since the early 2000s but was able to follow along really well. It may help if you have some familiarity with the game especially for the Easter Eggs like catchphrases and backgrounds but not completely necessary.
  
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
2022 | Action, Drama
Amazing Fighter jet scenes (1 more)
Very nostalgic
You can be my wing man anytime
So after being put back a while we finally get to see the Top Gun sequel. I saw it in 4dx which really adds to the fighter jet scenes.
Plot wise it treads a very similar path to the original film, opening is almost identical. Maverick is back to train some past Top Gun graduates for a very dangerous mission. One of the team is Rooster, the son of Goose from the original.
There is plenty of nostalgic moments that are reminiscent of scenes and things from the original film. Good to see Iceman have a role as well. The biggest draw though is the fighter jet scenes. The original stood out and wasn't bettered for the air combat action. This probably improves on fighter jet scenes with a better variety of shots and view points. Top Gun is the perfect film for the big screen.
  
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Charlie Cobra Reviews (1840 KP) rated the Xbox One version of Xuan Yuan Sword 7 in Video Games

Oct 4, 2021  
Xuan Yuan Sword 7
Xuan Yuan Sword 7
2020 | Action/Adventure, Role-Playing
Beautiful looking world and nice graphics (2 more)
Pretty enjoyable story and gameplay
Interesting mix of fantasy and history
Lacks the polish that could have made it great (2 more)
Too linear and doesn’t open up enough
Combat could have been further refined
Interesting and Ambitious but Ultimately Average
So to start this review I got to say that I'm pretty mixed on how I feel about this game. For one it definitely has a lot of potential and enough going for it that it could have been a really good. But on the other hand it had a lot of things that I feel could have been done better and falls far from being a great game to just around average for me. The story itself isn't terrible but it suffers from bad writing and performance of the voice actors. The world itself seems like it could have been a lot more interesting but it just wasn't engaging enough half the time.

 It seemed like it was going to be an open world game but wound up being very linear in nature although it had aspects of an open world game like side quests, fast travel, and even treasure chests scattered throughout the game world as well. There's a climbing mechanic that seemed kind of pointless because it was pretty much just a cut scene of in game graphics of you climbing a little cliff or sometimes it would turn into an interactive part where you had to move the analog stick to move the character. Still it was better than these weird times that the game gave you control of the character for a scene in which your only movement was preset like a ride on a rail that couldn't veer off a road.

 I liked that it was an action-RPG meaning instead of turn based combat like most RPG's it had an active combat system where you could move at your own leisure and consisted of hack and slash combat with some martial art skills, blocking, dodging, and some riposte (parrying). There are four basic martial art skills which can be learned as you progress through the game, Bull, Wolf, Bear, and Tiger. They become stronger and increase the length or hits of their combo the more you use them. A big draw back is that you could only equip or use two at one time although they can be changed at anytime through the talent menu. Then there are three special martial art skills which are Taowu, Tundou and ?

 The combat was one of the things that had me really conflicted. A cool thing I liked about the combat was that there was a meter that would go up when you would attack an enemy and if it filled all the way you could perform an execution on them. Otherwise it was very unresponsive most of the time making dodging and parrying really hard and kind of useless. I found the blocking especially useless because of how much damage you still incurred. There is a skill tree for new martial arts and you can create and upgrade structures in Elysium that can enhance various things, such as weapon, armor, accessories and more. You can also use the fusion to capture the souls of enemies in combat and fuse them together in Elysium to equip them for bonus stats and effects.

Your able to carry items in your inventory which are mainly objects like items that don't do anything except advance the story or quest and some like healing weapons. There is an equipment screen for weapons and accessories but you only stay with one weapon the whole game. It does change and become stronger and its appearance changes too. You can even change outfits. I'm not sure if you get any in the game as the version I played came with a couple of additional weapons/costumes. You do wind up getting some party members which is customary of some RPG's and they help out by attacking enemies on their own. You can control them by activating some abilities or special attacks that have cooldown times for when you can use them again. There's a minigame called Zhuolu chess and it can be pretty fun and a nice change of pace but not what you were looking for when you bought the game.

 You can save your game and recover health at random campfires throughout the game world as well as listen to some party dialogue when you choose to rest. The dialogue tends to repeat often and doesn't really advance the story much or fit where you are at in the story that often. These game mechanics are similar to Dark Souls as resting respawns enemies when you save at a bonfire and get healed too. As I mentioned earlier the game employs a fast travel system consisting of waypoints called guard stones that you can activate when found. There is an element of puzzle solving in the game but they don't seem to be that hard to figure out and some can even be skipped if you don't want to bother with it.

 The graphics were pretty solid and the game surely looks good for the most part. The textures are sometimes rough in the environment and sometimes there's very noticeable instances of "pop-ins" but overall aesthetic and style is beautiful. You really never get to play games where you get to see ancient Chinese castles, cities, or kingdoms so that was nice. The leaves in the trees are even ruffled by the wind, which is a nice touch. The main characters like Zhao and his sister Xiang look great and so do most of the secondary characters like Chu-Hong and Mo Huang. It just makes it that more disappointing when you see sub-par detail in the NPC's and stiff cutscenes because you know they could have done better on those too. Maybe they didn't have enough time, man power or budget.

 The music was probably one of the best additions to the game as a whole. Containing traditional Chinese sounds and instruments befitting the setting the music was great. There are some instances where there is no music and the void is filled with nothing but awkward silence or the sound of footsteps. Only the subpar voice acting fills the dead air and background music would have added more depth to certain parts and scenes of the game. There's no English dubbing for the voice acting in the game it's only in Mandarin/Chinese which isn't bad in itself except the performances are kind of hit and miss and not very balanced.

Verdict: [5/10]

 The game seemed very rough around the edges, it lacked that "polished" feel that it would have gotten if it had been a "AAA" game instead of a "AA" game. It's linear aspects left little to no deviation for exploring the world other than the main quest making it feel like going through a tunnel from location to the next. The distances between the towns and villages also made the world feel really small which it probably was. The story and gameplay were enjoyable enough but writing and especially acting/voice acting in key cutscenes needed work. The combat was was so uninspired I felt like I was doing the same sword attacks the whole game and they never really changed. And last thing, even if it doesn't help or is in any way useful, I like to be able to make my character jump and this game didn't let you do that either. So in conclusion I have to give Xuan Yuan Sword 7 a 5/10. It's an average or ok game, which has it's moments but nothing to write home about. However if they make a Xuan Yuan Sword 8, I'd be looking forward to see what kind of improvements they would make in the next installment.