AusGamers's Reviews
Walking simulator as a term started as a dismissive joke, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is the punchline, a shaggy dog effort determined to mock the idea that games need players. It's not meta. It's not clever. It's banal and tedious and if your narrative focused do-nothing game wouldn't work as a halfway interesting short story, then it won't be better just because you force people to walk slowly around a wholly un-interactive game space while you drip-feed them unconnected plot points.
There are so many things half-baked, broken, glitchy, or simply baffling it's almost commendable.
Floaty imprecise controls, a lack of depth, random spikes in difficulty due to bad design, random frustration, a mini-game for the sake of a mini-game, and a protagonist with the all the charisma of a shiny blue block.
So many possibilities exist to make this into an exciting and enjoyable game. Sadly, in its current form, it just isn't.
At this point you could make it a true Daily Double and just guess your way to the game's eventual kick off point, and you'd probably pull ahead of all the other contestants.
Take your pick of the four aforementioned proteges listed above, team up with another player, and take-down syndicates and streetcorner thugs using combat inspired by the popular Batman Arkham series of games.
The launch has been something of a mess all around, from the removal of one of the Specialist’s abilities (an impossible-to-take-out shield) through to a gadget that caused server issues like rubber-banding. Both of these are back in the game, yet the shield can still fully absorb the imposing force of a tank shell. For a series that has always been about fostering a refined sandbox with clear objectives creating some truly spectacular moments, the tank shell sending the shielded player flying makes more sense (the physicality of Battlefield V would have allowed for such a trick). I could list a dozen more examples and ‘what if’ scenarios, but it ultimately circles back to one singular point. Battlefield 2042 is a heartbreaking disappointment.
Morbid curiosity perhaps, just to see an example of a rushed, broken, and featureless game passing itself off as a premium sports experience.
If you scare easily, the low asking price may entice you into a purchase but, for everyone else, Daylight represents a dull and missed opportunity for effective horror.
In many ways it's like an overblown action movie from the 1980s or early part of the 1990s, but even here it doles out the cheese without its own identity.
Like so many early releases in a console's life cycle it's a showcase title -- get it if you want to justify your console purchase to your significant other or if you want to punch-on with your mates without the legal repercussions, but fair warning -- dig at all and you'll realise just how shallow the game really is.
And so this once sleepy locale has been turned into a gothic hellscape, where citizens are hiding, and cultists are working with their vampire overlords to appease the more powerful vampire gods.
I think the best thing they've done this year is they've made the stickiness of players feel less oppressive.
Albeit wrapped up in a story about a black holes and mystical ancient nonsense stuff.
With Back 4 Blood available on Xbox Game Pass on PC and Console there’s reason to jump in if you’re looking for something new to play with friends. The look and feel is familiar and the action is engaging and chaotic when played with a group. For a while that is. Thanks to the sameness that permeates across most levels and backdrops and the predictability of the pace, it doesn’t take long for this Left 4 Dead spiritual successor to wear a little thin.
Playing in a squad is the experience in terms of actual playability, and on that front it’s fun to be in the midst of a distinct 1986 cinematic Aliens vibe for a time. Sharing in the look and feel, pointing out the similarities, the inconsistencies, and questioning some of the questionable logic. In the end the impressive, but static, visuals and sound design do a lot to put you into the universe. But, at best Aliens: Fireteam Elite is what you play in the arcade before jumping into the cinema proper.
It's not funny.
In a game where you use toilets to save, fight with a lightsaber-like weapon, assassinate strange and odd characters in a world chock-full of pop culture references and absurdism – that's strike three and four.
In the end Earthfall is unfortunately the exception to that age-old rule, originally spoken and then sung by Mary Poppins – ‘a spoonful of co-op makes even the most mediocre of shooters go down'.
Stick with the 1991 original.