Scott Ellison II Avatar Image

Scott Ellison II

Falcon, CO
Hawk SE
HawkSNE
Hawk SE
Hawk1983SE

Favorite Games:
  • Myst / RIVEN
  • Red Dead Redemption
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

404 games reviewed
77.3 average score
80 median score
82.4% of games recommended

Scott Ellison II's Reviews

Scott is Editor-in-Chief of Saving Content. He is also a Veteran of the United States Marine Corps and is married with three kids.

Call of Duty HQ needlessly complexes the game loading process, as switching between games and modes requires relaunching a different executable. The campaign is hurried along in an unenjoyable way with open mission design that takes away from what makes the series great. Zombies mode is completely forgettable and a rehash of DMZ, which is not included or playable in Modern Warfare III . Multiplayer does the heavy lifting, and really only stays strong through nostalgia of the original Modern Warfare 2. While the maps hold a timeless appeal, it doesn’t feel fresh or new as an experience. This is a game that barely stands on its own. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is unlike other games, it’s not broken, just bad and lacking any redeeming values.

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Jun 19, 2023

Trepang2 is not as good as it wants to be, or as anyone would be led to believe. Trepang Studios certainly tried emulating Monolith's epic first-person shooter, and the gunplay certainly comes close to that, but they failed miserably at nearly everything else. This is a terrifically gory game, and it's great coating rooms in strawberry jam each and every time, but there's a lot of bad to get through before seeing the good. Trepang2 has only a few redeeming qualities, but even then those have been done better in other games. It's sad that Trepang2 is a pale imitation of F.E.A.R. in every way, and is a completely forgettable experience I can't recommend even a little.

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May 5, 2023

Redfall is a far cry from Arkane’s usual work, and it’s sad to see this is the final product from this team. The writing is the best part, but nothing about it can save this from being a mediocre game that can’t manage to do more than one thing at a time, whether it be an immersive sim, an open-world game, or even an RPG. Try as I might, I can’t find enjoyment in this, or even continue to play a game that looks and feels this incomplete for its $70 price tag. Redfall is playable, but in the most threadbare way, as it’s a shell of a game that will exhaust you long before the credits roll. And like vampires are wont to do, Redfall sucks.

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Feb 27, 2023

Mundfish threw everything but the kitchen sink at this one, and I wish most of it worked for it. Atomic Heart is good when you’re using the various guns which have been upgraded to your liking, and you get the time to explore these gorgeous and detailed environments with strong artistic direction. What’s not so good is that the protagonist is completely unlikable, the writing is cringey, and the combat encounters are either completely exhausting or totally worthless to engage in. A first-person shooter where it’s better to not fight seems to be missing the point. Atomic Heart is certainly an ambitious, gorgeous, but ultimately disappointing and flat first-person shooter that I cannot recommend.

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Oct 4, 2022

GOOD BOYS possess the technology and talent to make a well made game, but clearly lack the experience in making it wholly enjoyable. TRAIL OUT asks the player to endure a lot of problems for the pockets of fun you could potentially have. Now, if you can overlook its many rough edges and tedium, it’s essentially the next FlatOut when had in small doses – but Wreckfest this is not. In the end, TRAIL OUT is unfortunately more trouble than it’s worth, and doesn’t come recommended.

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Jun 30, 2022

I adored this series on PlayStation 2 and even in the Xbox 360 era, but it seems it regresses more than progresses. I didn’t think this game would be as bad as its predecessor, but it is so bland and uninspired. There are a few redeeming aspects like the controls, the new Trails mode, and the better time of driving ATVs and UTVs. I just can’t recommend this at full price, or even half-price; it’s a game that still needs a lot of work. There’s certainly nothing legendary about MX vs ATV Legends.

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Sep 7, 2021

Comanche fails to live up to the pedigree of its predecessors in just about every way. Not a barn burner of a release by any stretch. Though it manages to try new and exciting things with a modicum of success, it’s not enough. Half the game is inaccessible due to the multiplayer being dead on arrival, and you’re likely never to see it unless you coordinate. It has a short and unsatisfying campaign, but it does have a solid challenge mode that’ll really test you. This is a budget priced game, and there’s fun to be had, but you’d be better off spending your time elsewhere than with Comanche.

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Jun 10, 2021

I hesitate to call Open Country a bad game, but it has many limitations baked into its core, and it shows. From the lack of graphics options, abundance of typos, terrible voice acting, and questionable mission objectives; it falls short of so many other games that simply do it better. Even for a $15 game, it’s not competitive in the survival genre. Open Country has some great ideas that end up being overly ambitious and woefully underdeveloped.

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This one’s is on the cusp of being something cool, but its origins on mobile doesn’t make for a good port to PC. It’s not a bad game, just one that’s lacking in just about every regard. However, when the friction is at its least, then there’s mindless fun to be had. Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition is fun in ways Warhammer 40K games usually aren’t thanks to the aerial combat, but it needed to be so much better than this.

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Mar 1, 2021

Taxi Chaos has aspirations to be something far grander than it ever achieves. It lacks a personality of its own, a reason to keep coming back to its flat city, and really anything memorable. This is simply a pale imitation of Crazy Taxi, and just doesn’t do anything new or inventive for the genre in the 20 years since that game debuted. Taxi Chaos isn’t a spiritual successor, it’s a mundane offspring.

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Jan 29, 2021

There’s fun to be had, but you have to dig really deep to find it. When the game is working, blasting through these levels in just a couple of minutes is the perfect time to be in a level, without it feeling like a waste of time. It’s a shame then that it’s good moments are overshadowed by so many of its flaws. Redout: Space Assault had the potential to be as exciting as refreshing as 34BigThings did with the original Redout, but instead has shallow gameplay, lackluster visuals, and is riddled with bugs from small to big that showcase that it wasn’t ready for the transition to more powerful systems.

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- XIII
Nov 11, 2020

In all honesty, XIII from 2003 wasn’t that great of a game to begin with. PlayMagic clearly wanted to modernize and improve what that game did, while keeping the integrity of the game in-tact. But for some reason or another, just couldn’t come through on that. The game’s best feature is its cel-shaded graphical fidelity, being a remake that looks better than it plays. If you manage to pick this up, though I’d recommend you wait for patches and updates, you’ll either appreciate what’s been done or be convinced to pick up XIII – Classic instead.

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Aug 7, 2020

Hellbound isn’t a bad game. It can still be enjoyed, so long as you get it on a steep sale and you’ve got a spare afternoon for some mindless killing. This is a first-person shooter that emulates the past, but fails to recapture the magic of it. When you just turn your brain off, the game is at its best, but it just doesn’t last long. With a woefully short campaign mode, and a repetitive wave-based survival mode, Hellbound is surprisingly… deficient.

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As a fan of the Cold War era, there’s little to love here. Men of War: Assault Squad 2 – Cold War just doesn’t do enough to warrant its own existence. It’s a game that’s rewarding in its own right, but frustrating for too many reasons to recommend. Men of War: Assault Squad 2 – Cold War is a disappointing effort that’s elevated by its core real-time strategy features that you don’t see in other RTS’. Among the crashes, lackluster presentation, and disappointing execution, there’s almost no reason to play this.

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Thief of Thieves: Season One is interesting, but on the Switch is hampered by a myriad of issues on every level. The story comes to a satisfying close, but the inevitable tease to season two is an exciting setup. I look forward to being around these characters more, and performing more heists with them. Thief of Thieves: Season One is fun, intriguing, and tells a great interactive story. You should just do so on any other platform but the Switch.

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Sep 23, 2019

I like what Invader Studios is trying to do here, but if the actual Resident Evil 2 remaster didn’t exist, this could’ve filled that gap more substantially. But Resident Evil 2 this is not, no matter how hard it tries. There’s a fundamental and unacceptable lack of polish here. Daymare: 1998 is mostly just unimaginative and unfun, and for a game that is primarily a shooter, it doesn’t even do that well enough. I’m trying to think of a place for Daymare: 1998, and while it certainly has one in survival-horror, it’s going to be mostly at the bottom.

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Nov 14, 2018

When I wasn’t about to throw up by its canned animations and jerky movement, I found there’s a decent game in here that could have been handled much better. KURSK did well at showing that these Russians were humans, not monsters – and some of them were basically kids. This is an amazingly looking game that’s an unfortunate, buggy mess. That said, KURSK does respect the lives lost, as well as convey the emotions and thoughts of those aboard. And to that end, KURSK succeeds. It’s a shame then, that this sinks under the weight of its own ambitions.

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Oct 4, 2018

This is a bizarre game. There’s very little redeeming qualities with V-Rally 4, but there’s still something about it that kept me coming back as quickly as I kept putting it down. V-Rally 4 does well to emulate what came before it, but does nothing to make the resurrection worth it, or the wait. The only thing consistent is the inconsistency. There’s far better rally games out there, but if you’ve played them all, I can see some enjoyment with V-Rally 4 after you take the time to learn its quirks and nuances that are honestly not worth the trouble.

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Aug 23, 2018

HYPERGUN is oddly most enjoyable when you’re not doing a complete run. The further you get in the game, the more exhausting it gets, and it’s absolutely frustrating to make it so far and lose to cheap bosses. HYPERGUN is impressively deep yet unrewarding. NVYVE Studios defies convention and bucks trends for all the wrong reasons. I believe these issues can be fixed via patch or update. This is a case where you want to believe the game is better than it is. As it stands, the current state of the game is unbalanced in the game’s favor and simply not enjoyable over a long duration. HYPERGUN is worth playing, but not in its current state or price, even if it feels somewhat modest.

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Apr 2, 2018

MX vs ATV All Out fails to do anything new or interesting that we haven’t seen before. It’s visually unimpressive and auditorily disappointing, seeming like like a lost game from the last generation of systems. The game-hampering bugs are problematic, though admittedly being fixed. Each of the different event types are well-made and offer a lot of variety and satisfaction with the core gameplay is fun to play once you get a handle on the mechanics of the dual-joystick controls. There’s a lot of basic things MX vs ATV All Out should already have figured out – but it doesn’t.

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