Ian Allen

I bought this game because everything I read about it made it sound like a successor or at least a love letter to Way of the Samurai. When I first started playing the game I hated it. It took me 4 hours to get through the tutorial. I had strong buyers remorse. But I stuck with it. I love everything about the game but I still hate the combat though I will say it got noticably easier the longer I played.You have to time your countersparks right, and by God don't you miss it by a half a millisecond, because you'll get stun locked and hit with an enemy combo that more often than not will kill you. If you find yourself stun locking the enemy rest assured that at one point they'll ignore your attacks, even if you're hitting them, and return the favor. The telegraphing from the enemies is sometimes hard to see in the heat of battle, and sometimes the controls are unresponsive. I've noticed that mostly with reflecting projectiles. It's easy to goof up and get wrecked. Maybe it's user error, maybe I'm innocent and it's the games fault. Everything else is great though. Story is fine, the style options for you character are great. You can mix and match tops, bottoms, footwear etc. I wholeheartedly appreciate that since most games I've played the outfits are a single piece. But staying on topic of style, you're not limited to just traditional Japanese styles, as the setting of the game (mid1800s) sees the inclusion of clothes of western origin and influence. That goes for weapons as well. Flintlock rifles and black powder revolvers are seen along side old world bows. Sabres clash with katanas and a rifle with fixed bayonet cross with spears. Each of the various weapons have multiple weapons stances, which give an advantage or disadvantage in combat depending on what stance your enemy is using. Touching back on the story, it features factions. Pro and Anti Shogunate. And you can side with one or the other. There are many characters to meet, befriend, and even romance. Some will follow you on missions to assist in combat. Which helps because on the missions, if you are downed you'll swap to another character instead of just failing the mission. Graphically its probably not the most top tier game out there but it's still good. The photo mode in the game is beautiful with a lot of stylized filters. The world is full of collectables but not by any means on the level of an Ubisoft game. Each zone has a handful of them ranging from stray cats to fugitives and photography shoots. I'd certainly recommend it. It might be a rough start for you but just stick with it. You'll get there.

I went into this game with high hopes. I regret spending $4 on it. The graphics are wonderful and I like the idea of the story but it's executed embarrassingly bad. Cheesy, over confident, tough-guy characters that would be right at home on a network television drama. The character you play as is a generic, voiceless guy who wears the same outfit as the leader of the resistance. The gameplay is a frustrating experience. Stealth is non-existent. Suppressors don't matter. Enemies spawn out of thin air. I shot a camera, with a suppressed pistol, and it alerted an enemy that was down the street. I look in a different direction, and when I looked back there was an enemy vehicle that had just appeared, and since you die in three hits in this game I did precisely that. Enemies often see you through walls, and then will partially clip through wall and shoot you. You cannot shoot an enemy through a chain link fence, but they can shoot you. You can recruit allies to help you fight, but the AI is braindead. They will scurry back and forth for no reason, and more often than not, will not engage with enemies that are firing at them. For and example: I recruited a gentleman with a rocket launcher, thinking I was going to ruin someones day with it. I got into a firefight and proceeded to watch him have a staring contest with the people shooting at us. He didn't win. The games difficulty can be rough. The idea is that you're a guerilla fighter, so of course you won't be running in guns blazing, but getting while in cover and it only taking a few shots to kill you makes the game fairly unenjoyable. The world design boggles my mind. So many multi story buildings and half the time the stairs are blocked forcing you to find some convoluted path to access interiors. It makes sense for safehouses, not so much for random houses. When you "liberate" a section of the map, the people there show their defiance against the NORKs by going into the street and beating broken down cars with baseball bats. How silly. I've tried to look for anything at all that I like in this game and all I can say is that it looks good. Everything else, all other aspects of it make for a miserable experience.

This game is as fun as it is frustrating. You can sit down and sink a couple of hours into it, but rest assured for every second of fun you have, you'll have two of frustration. NPC traffic AI can't figure out basic maneuvers so any time there is an accident there will be, without fail, a traffic jam. Police transports, tow trucks, and ambulances all find a way to get stuck, or stop on a way that causes traffic to back up. Recently, since the new patch(8.3.0) there has been an issue where police transports get stuck with the suspect at the back of the van, the suspect doesnt get put in the van, they and the officer just stand there. Even leaving the area and coming back, they will be standing there at the van for the whole shift. Certain shifts have the objective of running radar on cars, yet the streets are nearly empty so you'll find yourself having to wait on cars. There have been a few times I've witnessed people commit crimes, and either detained them, ticketed them or pulled them over and I get demerits for it. As a matter of fact, the reason I decided to write this review is because I watched someone run a red light, pulled them over and then got a demerit for it and before that, I had a man standing in the middle of the street on his phone. I told him to move to the sidewalk and he told me I didn't have the authority to do that. And I got a demerit. Now with all my frustrations, I don't want to knock the team that's working on it. I know it's a small team and they're working hard and doing their best but it seems that with every patch, something else breaks. Or the AI situation gets worse. In a game centered around traffic and street patrol, the traffic AI needs to improve. Ever so often you'll have a shift where it will run smoothly, and when that happens it's a brilliant and fun experience. I do recommend the game, and I recommend supporting the team. The game has a lot of potential and I have no doubt it will overcome the issues it's having.

The show is great. I was worried about it at first but after watching the first episode I got hooked. Henry Cavill does a spectacular job of playing Geralt of Rivia and I can say the same for Anya Chalotra' Yennefer. From what I can tell the events take place prior to the novel and video games. With that being said, if you played the video games you'll be happy to see that they portray the magic in the show faithfully to how it is in the games. I haven't read the critics reviews for the show but seeing I did check the rotten tomato score to see that there was a 40% difference between the critic and audience reviews. Hopefully Netflix will look at the audience score and keep more of The Witcher coming.

Excellent movie, stays true to the source material. The story is easy to follow along with for kids, but entertaining enough for adults, especially ones who grew up playing the old games. Plenty of Easter eggs throughout the film for long time fans to spot. Some have whined about Princess Peach. She is a great character. I didn't find anything too overbearing about her character. Without spoiling too much, she acts with the courage that youd expect a leader to. I'd seen that people called Seth Rogens performance "lazy". I have mixed feelings about the man and his ego, but his performance wasn't bad, it worked for the character he played. If you or your children are fans of the series I highly recommend. If you're not, I'd say you might not find any importance in the movie, but then again you might.