Jeff Goldenberg > Games > Beaten

"This is a pretty easy game though it is quite vast if you include all the optional stuff. Completing the main story completes 15-20% of the game. The rest is in optional side missions and quests. The writing is aimed at children and the voice acting is uneven. A handful of characters are voiced by their MCU actors, but most aren't. There are about 100 Marvel universe characters that can be unlocked and played. The whole game can be played solo or couch co-op. The way co-op is handled on screen is pretty cool and befitting of a comics-based game."

"If you are fan of traditional COD games, you probably won't like this one. On the other hand, if you find most COD games boring and unmemorable, you may like this one. I like it a lot. The single player campaign is fairly short at about 10 hours but is well-written, well-acted and features a variety of mission types which include ground assaults, space dogfighting, ship assaults, station assaults and even gunfights in space. There isn't that much variance between similar types of missions, but the story, high attention to detail and different weapon types keep the game interesting. The game consists of main story missions and optional side missions. I recommend doing all of the side missions as they present themselves. The Zombie game can be played solo, local co-op or network co-op. There is of course also standard local and network multiplayer."

"The single player story is about 18-20 hours long. Pretty much follows the same formula as the last game. Run around the world finding clues and chasing down a mythical treasure all while avoiding a former partner and his hired mercenary army. This time the story revolves around pirates and along with buddy Sully popping up once in a while, your partners in crime are your long lost brother and your wife. Lots of exploring and platforming, some ridiculously simple puzzle solving and occasional gun battles. The story borders on soap opera territory. The soundtrack is orders of magnitude inferior to previous outings. This franchise isn't what it once was, especially since original writer and producer Amy Hennig left. Still, it is somewhat fun and definitely pretty."

"At about 12 hours long, there isn't as much game here as in the earlier Uncharted games, but not far from the later titles. Being the 5th title in the series, it seems that Naughty Dog threw together a simple story and decided to "remix" every interesting element of the previous games. Aside from main characters Nathan, Sully and Elena not being in the game, you'll definitely have a sense of deja vu if you've played the whole series. That being said, what they've put together works, and it works really well. Each of the re-used elements are definitely better implemented than their originals. I enjoyed the puzzles in this game more than the previous ones."

"First off, the artistic production value in this game is very high. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is for the most part really well done and the story is pretty decent. Unfortunately, you'll only get the whole story if you go around collecting the *hundreds* of optional artifacts and then read, listen or view each of them. This is not how games should tell a story. On the plus side, the game is extremely huge. If you're a completionist, you'll easily get 100 hours out of the base game not counting the expansions. Now for the bad. There isn't a whole lot of variety in what you need to do to complete the game. Even though I played the game in late 2020, there are still significant bugs in the game. Sometimes the bugs get in your way, sometimes they actually help you. My biggest complaint is that the variety of weapons are a joke. They are all pretty much the same, and the most powerful one is the very first one you get! The next thing that bugs me is that you cannot use the environment when battling the machines. These are the things that kept me from really loving the game and giving it five stars. Still, it was enjoyable enough and helped me kill 100 hours during the pandemic. Outside the pandemic I'm not sure I would have played this game."

"Unlike the previous two Trine games, this one is is in 2.5D and is somewhat open-world. It's an interesting departure from the first two in the series, but it has some problems. Controls are sometimes difficult. The game is incomplete. Devs ran out of funding and published what they had, which is somewhere between 50 and 75% complete. Still, it was pretty enjoyable."

"Compared to the previous Trine games, this one is more like the first one than the second and third installments. The art style has changed a bit, but still similar. This outing the main focus was on puzzles. Everything else took a backseat. And the puzzles are quite good. Platforming and monster fights offer very little challenge this time around. Like the third game, this one is pretty short. If you enjoy puzzle solving, you'll probably like this game."

"Ugh. This game is a mess. Similar to the first one, graphics and voice acting are great, but that's about it. The story is poor. Gameplay is boring and uneven. At least this time around trophies are more reasonably obtained."

"I didn't get to play this when it came out in 2001. I played the PS3 "HD remaster". I found the game to be decent in terms of design and gameplay, but the story is threadbare and the textures were pretty low quality for an "HD remaster". The camera and movement controls can be very annoying compared to newer games. The variety of game mechanics is very limited compared to more modern games. Still, it makes for an enjoyable 8-10 hours."

"Visually and technically impressive, but not a very deep story resulting in a rather short game, or rather, interactive story is more like it. Mind you, the game is designed to instill multiple playthroughs by being able to branch the story in about a dozen places. I found the story to be completely predictable, at least the version that I completed. Compared to previous Quantic Dreams titles, there isn't much new and the game plays pretty closely to Heavy Rain. Which isn't really a good thing since Beyond Two Souls was a far superior game. It's as if they didn't learn anything about the bad parts of Heavy Rain, which were not present in Beyond, but are back in Detroit. It was still a mostly enjoyable 10 hours spent."

"This is a "reboot" of the original first Ratchet & Clank. All-around, it's a good game. Nothing bad about it, but not amazing either. Not very difficult. Good casual fun. The story and gameplay have been significantly changed from the original game, all for the better."

"While not completely un-enjoyable, this game is a technical embarrassment. Released in 2019, this game looks and plays like a (PC) game from the early 2000s. Terrible UI, unbearably long and frequent load times, few character models, no variety in gameplay. Obsidian just rehashed Fallout New Vegas and their other older games while somehow managing to make this game less than half as good as any of their previous ones."

"Loved the first game but this one was really nothing special. Story makes no sense. A skilled player can probably finish the game in 5 hours."

"Really amazing puzzle-action game. A must-play!"

"I totally enjoyed this game. Well-made, decent story, graphics, sound, voice acting, controls, length, balanced difficulty. The only annoying thing is the game has no trophies."

"This game is supposed to be the 2nd in the Future series, but it's really more like 1.5. The game is not very long or big in terms of places to visit. It has most of the elements of a typical R&C game, but this time the emphasis is definitely on swarm and boss battles. There are a lot of them, and some of them are quite hard. Nothing particularly wrong with the game, but it definitely isn't the best in the series."

"This game is far by the longest in the series, and it features most of the elements of all previous iterations. The new feature involves controlling time to solve puzzles. The puzzle elements in the Clank chapters are pretty cool and fun. There are a lot of boss battles. Too many, really. To fully beat the game there are 3 successive boss battles at the end, though the story is complete after taking out two. The final battle is optional (winning it gives a special reward). The weapons are not as interesting or as powerful as in previous titles. The story was OK, but a little thin and I just wasn't as interested as I was in previous games."

"The final game in the Future series, like the 2nd one (Quest for Booty) is a short one. Not as short as Quest for Booty, there is maybe 10 hours of gameplay here if you go after collectibles, but not as enjoyable either. The gimmick in this one is gravity. Ratchet has a few segments where he operates in zero G and has to jump to certain surfaces while avoiding and shooting enemies. Clank has segments in a different dimension where he has to manipulate gravity to make his way around. Clank's segments are pretty fun. Other than that, there is nothing special about this low-effort title."

"Being only the 2nd R&C game ever made, it is obviously not as polished as later games in the series, but it is a much, much better game than the first one. Story is very weak, gameplay is a bit repetitive, but is mostly well executed. The game is surprisingly long. It took me over 40 hours to complete, with some grinding at the end to level up to more easily take on the final boss. They went overboard on the amount of collecting and grinding you have to do to get better weapons and armor. This has become more reasonable in later games. Overall pretty enjoyable and challenging."

"This is a 4 player co-op game that can be played locally or online. It contains most of the elements of a typical R&C game, with many corners cut and some adjustments for multiplayer. The UI is not quite as good and there are many repeated elements where it seems you are doing the same action sequences against different backgrounds. All players appear on one screen, not split screen. Qwark is much larger than the other characters and can sometimes block out the other characters. Despite all of this, the game is still quite fun and extremely challenging towards the end. Story and voice acting are still top notch. Worth playing with friends and something different than the usual single player R&C."

"Much more polished than the first two games, it served as the template for most of the games in the series that followed. As usual, the story is decent, voice acting is very good. The best thing about this chapter is the introduction of the series best villain: Dr. Nefarious! Gameplay is simpler in this outing than most others in the series as there are no grind events, no hoverboard events, no vehicle races, no space fights. To compensate, there are more arena battles than ever before. Upgrading weapons in this one is pretty easy, and there is a big difference in power between weapons, as there should be. Before the final battles (there are two) make sure to grind and level up your highest powered weapons, have maximum health and the PDA."

"Pretty cool re-imagining of the original game. Cool art and music that evoke the original. Same type of gameplay, only much more-so. The game is as hard if not harder than the original. One way the game differs from the OG is that you can take different paths through the game to arrive at the end. Another difference is the game can be played two-player co-op. One player plays as the knight and plays the game the way its always been played. The second player controls 3 different magic characters that help the knight with various special abilities."

"This entry in the series is quite different. It is basically a base defense game. It has a very short 5 mission campaign and a few different multiplayer modes. While I normally do not care for this type of game at all, I found this to be pretty well put together and fun. The campaign can be played solo, local co-op or online co-op. The first 4 missions are base defense but the final one is a fairly typical R&C boss battle. The game features most of the common R&C weapons, hover boots, bolt collecting, etc. In campaign you can play as Ratchet, Clank or Qwark. In multiplayer, through rewards obtained in the campaign or by purchasing, you can play as virtually any character that ever appeared in a R&C game. One oddity about the game is the while the art style matches all other R&C games, the color palette is very washed out. Nowhere near as bright as in other games."

"This is an adventure/shooter which draws from games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, but it's actually quite different. Meant to be played online co-op with upto 4 players, it can also be played solo. If you do play solo, it is extremely challenging. The campaign features 9 chapters, which all more or less follow the same pattern: Explore a bit, fight off undead enemies, look for collectibles, look for hidden vaults, solve puzzles to get in to the vaults to get more collectibles, fight 1 or 2 swarm battles, fight 1 or 2 big bosses, on to the next level. You can only carry one handgun, one rifle, one explosive, one magic weapon and one healing elixir at a time. However, throughout the levels there are chests that can be opened by paying some gold that contain very powerful rifles. These rifles come with limited ammo and cannot be reloaded. Once out of ammo, the gun disappears. In some levels, managing use of these super-guns is critical. All in all the game is mostly on rails and only the big boss fights are challenging. Still, the presentation is very well done and the challenge kept me interested until the end."

"Really beautiful action-puzzle game with a side of philosophy thrown in. When I first tried this game when it came out back in 2014/15, I wasn't that into it. Picked it up again in 2022 and this time I couldn't stop playing. I actually put in the effort to finish it with 100% completion. It was worth it. Aside from about 100 puzzles, there are tons, and I mean tons of hidden secrets and Easter eggs. There are also 3 different endings. I definitely recommend doing them all. One of them is way, way more difficult than the others but the payoff is worth it."

"Games like this are more interactive movie than game, where you spend a lot of time just watching instead of playing, but there is usually still a decent amount of gameplay. This game overdoes it on the passive watching. There is barely any interactive play. As is typical with games of this type, the creative aspects are generally very good: great graphics, mostly great voice acting, nice soundtrack, and decent story. What little technical gameplay there is however is annoying in the typical horror game manner: forced camera angles, sometimes sluggish reaction times and very little free roaming. All in all I was disappointed by this game, and really glad I only paid $20 instead of full price. The first playthrough took only 9 hours and I don't intend on playing again."