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Kirk McKeand

Kirkules.Mck

Favorite Games:
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
  • Deus Ex
  • Final Fantasy VII

90 games reviewed
75.2 average score
80 median score
58.9% of games recommended

Kirk McKeand's Reviews

Kirk McKeand is an award-winning freelance writer with impeccable taste in video games and 100% correct opinions. Two of those things are true.
Unscored - Mafia 3
Oct 11, 2016

Mafia 3 is a game with some brilliant ideas, but the execution falls flat. It's a huge shame, because the opening hours are full of promise, but it loses its way as soon as it embraces its open-world design. [OpenCritic note: This review scores Mafia 3 at 2/5 stars. Because Kirk McKeand has already published other scored reviews for Mafia 3, the score has not been recorded]

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Unscored - I Am Setsuna
Jul 19, 2016

Those golden-era JRPGs are beloved because they were packed with memorable locations, characters, and combat. I Am Setsuna unfortunately falls short on all three counts, and instead delivers an average and forgettable adventure, albeit one with wonderful music.

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Unscored - Cobalt
Feb 1, 2016

It's a likeable game, and it feels fantastic to play when you nail an extended combat encounter with a chain of flawless shots, deflections, rolls, slides and aerial skull punches. It can be a touch imprecise, especially when trying to time a shot while rolling or throwing an explosive, but sometimes your failures can be just as entertaining as an unbroken display of acrobatic death.

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Jul 25, 2019

Most of its good points are inherited from the last game, and while the excellent level design improvements are welcome, there’s not enough variety to get the most out of them.

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Unscored - Blood & Truth
Jun 3, 2019

While there’s an inherent fumbliness to Blood & Truth – I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve dropped a grenade under my own ass, my friend – it’s a game that wants you to feel and look cool. When you’re in the zone, it’s the closest to playable John Wick as we’re likely going to get – that is if John Wick liked flipping people off and collecting vape bottles.

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Unscored - RICO
Mar 11, 2019

It’s not going to win any Game of the Year awards, but if you’re looking for a fun co-op game that scratches a similar itch to something like PayDay, Rico is well worth picking up.

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Unscored - Rage 2
May 13, 2019

If you sleep on it, you’re sleeping on one of the best – if not the best – single-player FPS games of this generation.

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Mar 18, 2019

For now, I have to at least commend The Division 2 for getting the basics right. There’s a compelling endgame, there’s loot that actually matters, and missions don’t feel like they’re copy and pasted to bulk out the runtime. If some of the frustrations can be ironed out, it could be the best of its genre.

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Jan 15, 2019

Where most publishers are trying to squeeze as much as possible out of people, juicing those nostalgia glands for every penny, here we have a sensible price point for a decent older game that’s been blown up to look passable on a modern screen.

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Unscored - Days Gone
Apr 25, 2019

While it’s still slightly better than most recent Xbox One exclusives, Days Gone just isn’t anywhere near the quality of the majority of PS4 first-party releases.

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Unscored - Battlefield V
Nov 19, 2018

Overall, Battlefield 5 is a brilliant shooter that’s hamstrung by its setting.

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Oct 8, 2018

For all the savvy tweaks to combat and exploration, Shadow of the Tomb Raider unfortunately feels like an extremely long expansion pack, now with killer fish and face mud.

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Unscored - The Crew 2
Jun 29, 2018

Unfortunately, The Crew 2 is just too inconsistent to fully recommend.

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Mar 11, 2018

The sense of speed is akin to watching Bruce Lee flail his nunchucks about while high on amphetamines.

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Unscored - God of War
Apr 12, 2018

There's a scene in God of War where Kratos decapitates someone to free them from a magical cage within the mangled roots of a tree.

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Unscored - Sea of Thieves
Mar 22, 2018

I am sitting cross-legged in a watchtower, praying the crew searching for me doesn't realise I'm here.

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Unscored - Far Cry 5
Mar 26, 2018

Ever since Far Cry 3, Ubisoft's open-world series has been about the bad guys.

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Aug 26, 2015

Devil's Third will probably gain a cult following because it's a game from Itagaki, but it's nowhere near the quality of some of his earlier work.

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Jul 16, 2015

And that's what it feels like to play Godzilla - you're a man in a giant suit, blindly bumbling around a fake cardboard city, swinging your arms and trying not to pass out - not because you're exhausted, but because you're bored out of your mind.

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Ubisoft has failed in two areas where it usually excels here – sequels and open worlds – but there’s still a small glimmer of hope in another area: reinvention. Perhaps this concept will get scrapped entirely for the next one and we’ll go back to the good old days where Ghost Recon was an excellent shooter with its own identity. Right now it’s out of focus, confused, and frustrating. A ghost of its former self.

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