Category: Video Game Reviews

80’s Overdrive – Its Fine, But Feels Incomplete

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On 18th July 2023

In Video Game Reviews

Many a weekend of my youth was spent in an arcade playing racing games, they were for a very long time my favourite genre of games.

Believe you me, if I had the space and money, I would have a racing sim rig in the house, at the moment, I don’t even have a basic wheel!

But that aside, my favourite games that I played at home, were Outrun and Road Rash, beautiful games which just were so much fun.

And that’s where 80’s Overdrive comes in, its a 2D pixelart racing game, that evokes memories of Outrun.

Now lets start with this, I didn’t go out of my way to buy this game, I got it in a mystery bundle with Fanatical a few weeks ago, and I thought it looked ok and I might try it eventually.

But when I got my Steam Deck and fired it up, the first game in my Great on Deck section of the Library, was this game and I thought, why not just install it to give it a try.

And I am glad I did, its a very enjoyable game, mostly.

Its very 80s, like super 80s and its unashamedly so, in all its artwork, and its excellent soundtrack, which I am actually annoyed isn’t available.

So I spent a total of 5 hours and 36 minutes playing this game, mostly in career mode, which was fun, I liked the management aspect, upgrading your car, keeping it fueled and repaired.

But after a while, it started to get a bit dull, and to be honest at that point, I was mostly working towards the various achievements, I think if these were lacking, I would have stopped playing after a couple of hours.

The most annoying aspect was that no matter what you did, you could never get ahead of the other cars enough so that if you crashed, or were forced off the road by another driver or police car, you had zero chance of winning and you were better off restarting the race.

There were also missions, which were ok, and I enjoyed them, the finish ahead of such and such a racer seemed moot because you were already going to be trying your best to win.

I am glad it only cost me 95p, because I don’t think I would pay £8.99, its not that its not a good game, it just feels like an incomplete experience and it could do with more work to make it a better experience.

I would absolutely look at a sequel, because I think the bones of this are good, it just needs, a bit more, like the ability to retry failed missions, or reducing the rubber banding.

£4 would be a fair price I think, but I would pay £8.99 for the soundtrack, which is amazing!

I think in fairness, I can only give this game 6.5 out of 10.

Far Cry 2 – A Review of A Classic

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On 6th March 2022

In Video Game Reviews

Far Cry 2 is a game I first played back in 2009, very briefly on the Xbox 360.

I didn’t my last long, it was frustrating and really hard and just felt too much like hard work.

Anyway I realised that though bundles and deals I owned all of the Far Cry games and decided that I had best actually play them!

So I recently finished the original Far Cry, the review of which you can see here.

And thus I cracked on with its sequel, Far Cry 2.

To start with, it’s absolutely and completely different from it predecessor. Whilst Far Cry was a run of the mill Sci-Fi shooter, albeit with a very high difficulty level, Far Cry 2 is an open world game very much based in reality.

So how about we start with the positives.

Even 14 years on from its release, it looks good, the open world of the game is beautiful and very realistic in how it’s structured.

The open needed nature of the game, along with the choices you can make along the way give it a lot of character.

The setting is great, very much one that’s not been explored a lot in video games.

But I have a lot of issues with the game.

It feels very schizophrenic, it can’t decide if it wants to be an action-shooter, an RPG or social commentary about the influence of western mercenaries and blood diamonds in Africa.

And it doesn’t do a great job at being any of those.

If really feels like it wants to be an RPG, it really feels like it wants to encourage you to develop you character. But you never really do.

You get a choice of characters, I chose Frank, but it doesn’t feel as if that choice makes any difference in the game, it feels like it plays the same regardless.

And as a shooter, well this might sound weird but there is too much shooting!

See there are two different factions in the game, not that you would know as they are all, without exception going to attack you as soon as they see you, no matter who you are working with.

When you clear out checkpoints, within minutes they are repopulated, and the limited carrying capacity for syringes, the games health packs, mean that sometimes, you get stuck, unable to go back to a checkpoint for fear of the shootout, but unable to go forward for lack of syringes when you face the inevitable shooting.

So for me, I think this is a game that has a lot of potential, but never quite meets it.

So that leads me onto my conclusion.

This is a game that could really do with a remake, and I mean a full in remake, with the RPG elements enhanced, so that for example, when you clear out a checkpoint, you can reman it with the faction you are working with.

I would love to see the militias of the two factions treating you differently depending on how you have played the game.

Anyway let’s get away from what I wish the game could be and onto what the game is.

The game was fun, but difficult, perhaps too difficult. The story was interesting, but the big bad guy was a little generic.

This game sets the foundations for what the series becomes, and in a way it’s groundbreaking.

So I am gonna award it 3 out of 5.

I had the settings at the maximum possible and was getting 60fps constantly, it never dipped or got higher than that.

Hardware

  • CPU:- Ryzen 5 5600X
  • RAM:- 32GB
  • GPU:- RTX 3070
  • Resolution:- 1080p

Assassin’s Creed – Review After Replay

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On 4th March 2022

In Video Game Reviews

So I have decided after my recent play though of Assassins Creed, which you can see on YouTube, to give you a review.

First off let me give you a bit of background to my relationship with Assassins Creed. I first bought the game when I got a PlayStation 3 on release, and I actually ended up trading it in very quickly because it felt dull and repetitive.

But about a year later I was given it on Xbox 360 and it was a very different beast, it was a lot more enjoyable and the reason for that was achievements.

Those dull repetitive things now became things I wanted to do because I wanted the achievements, I spent a lot of time in that game trying to score as much G as possible.

And the story got me hooked as well, and it still is a very good story.

Anyway so how does it hold up from a modern perspective, well it’s a bit middling.

The game still looks good, I think games of that generation still hold up today and frankly are comparable to those on mobile phones and even the Switch, yeah the textures are a bit meh, but it still looks amazing.

The score is wonderful and very atmospheric, but the speech of the NPCs is very repetitive, which is think is a result if the limited size of the DVD media that it was released on for Xbox 360, and it didn’t really take advantage of the Blu-Ray disk for PS3.

Gameplay is still good, but the initial complaints still stand, it’s dull and repetitive and I can see why Ubisoft have not remastered this game, it would need more than some HD textures to improve it, it needs a whole remake.

The crack is that doing the game without achievements, although I did have some to collect still, makes it a much less enjoyable game, because it feels like you are doing the exact same thing over and over again.

Yeah it set up the franchise, but it is, absolutely not a classic, if anything it’s a bit of a disappointment in retrospect.

It just doesn’t stand up to modern standards, but the green shoots of what would come in the sequel are there and waiting to be improved upon.

Assassins Creed as a franchise has come a long way, and this was that first step.

Flawed, but with its own charm.

Scoring this game is difficult, I love the story, Altair is an engaging character, it looks good and the score is evocative.

But the gameplay gets boring very quickly.

So I have to give the game 2 out of 5.

Hardware

  • Xbox Series S
  • Xbox Controller
  • 1080p

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