Andrew

tl;dr: Great game, dinged it a star because I beat it in 8.5 hours. As a big 40k fan I had been looking forward to this game forever and it does not disappoint in fan service. They nailed the feeling of stomping around destroying everything in your path. The counter and execution animations never get old and offer a welcome half-second respite from the relentless combat. I finished the story before the game even officially launched, in about 8.5 hours. This feels a bit short, although there are six side operations as well, each of which takes an hour or so to complete. The operations are where you will be grinding for class XP and precious upgrade coins, so new ones can't come soon enough. If this game had a multiplayer mode like Helldivers 2 with the wealth of planets and missions it would be a huge upgrade. The PVP mode was pretty underwhelming for me, it lacks the visceral combat feel of the other modes and you just sort of clomp around until you run into an enemy then it feels like a dice roll on who comes out on top. You can use the different classes tactically as a team but I don't see myself playing this mode much at all. I had zero performance issues with this title, which is something I haven't said in years. It ran smooth, zero crashes, and looked great doing it on PS5. Sometimes matchmaking in co-op took a few moments but nothing crazy. Overall if you're a 40k fan this is maybe the best game in the IP I've played to date. If you aren't a fan of 40k your mileage may vary since the campaign is very short and the side content is a little thin.

I've been playing The Show since 2015 and this is my last time. First and foremost, the connection for online PvP games is unbearably bad. On a recent evening I lost connection with 9 out of 10 opponents. I lose connection with the majority of games. I'm hard-wired into a fiber connection on PS5 and have zero issue with any other online games. It's unplayable, period. Two players and a baseball and they can't make it sync up? This would be lame on a free-to-play game but on a $70 AAA title it's a dealbreaker. Outside of that, there's a huge glut of cards, way too many high stat cards just because a guy had one good game, and then tons of lower-tier players you'd never use. The stars of the game don't really pop like stars because they have worse stats than some rookie who just happened to have a 4-hit game or something. The game also swamps you with rewards you can't use for past seasons, and of course you can't sell these pointless rewards for stubs– they want you to pay real money for those! There are game programs were you can exchange some of these cards so if you've ever yearned to play PS5 "Data Entry" you can sit there and mindlessly turn in tons of duplicates and useless season 1 cards. All of this glut is driven by their desire for microtransactions, which you do NOT need. I've spent zero on microtransactions and have a great team and a lot of my favorite players. The game's AI is as bad as ever, and like many sports games when it decides it's time for it to win, it will just win. You can throw a pitch a foot outside and high from the zone and the computer can crush it for a home run. It makes it feel pointless to dial in your skills when the game just decides who will win. The only small bright spot is the Negro League storylines, again hosted by Bob Kendrick whose knowledge and enthusiasm makes these mini-docs a highlight. This mode was much more creative in 23, here the missions are incredibly vanilla and you just kind of slog through them. I still enjoyed learning this history, however. I've seen many iterations of this game and the connectivity issues make it unplayable and in my opinion a defective product.

Wow this game is bad! Thankfully it was free on PSN so I'm not out any money. I won't go through every little thing but the big ones: -No PvP crossplay with NHL teams. WHAT?! You can only play crossplay with friends in the build-a-team or build-a-character modes. -Terrible, laggy menus. Sitting and waiting for a menu to become active is nuts for a AAA game especially one that's been out for almost a year. -Seemingly zero moderation for terrible team and player names. If you think a CoD lobby is toxic wait until you see some of the garbage people are getting away with on here. I hadn't played a hockey game in years and figured I would try this one since it was free but I'm in no rush to return.