Skill Up

“If you're anything like me, you're going to look at all the best parts of No Man's Sky and be waiting for the game that takes those things and builds a fun game on top of it all. That balances the endless expanse with curated places to explore and remember. That delivers a deeper, more engaging combat experience. That delivers a narrative that you can sink your teeth into. That lifts your head out of your inventory screen and into the stars. I'd play that game. I'd probably love that game. When it comes to No Man's Sky, I can certainly respect it a great deal, but I've no more affection for it than that.”

“For me, the thing that about this DLC that really struck me, and the reason I'm doing this video today is because for a DLC set in the future, this really feels like the Ubisoft of the past. I understand the commercial realities of Gold Passes and attach rates at launch, but a release like this does more harm than good in the big scheme of things, and I really hope that Ubi look at this DLC as a reminder of how far they've moved beyond a product of this quality, rather than thinking that this minimal viable offering is an acceptable way to prop up the ageing season pass business model.”

“I really believe that Prey Mooncrash is an evolution of the immersive sim genre. If you play Deus Ex and then play Dishonoured, and then play the Prey 2017, so not Mooncrash; you see the similarities that exist between them. In terms of their core gameplay loops, they're very similar games but for their settings. Mooncrash isn't like that. It's a fundamentally different experience, and it's a smarter experience by every metric. It doesn't have the world-building punch or story telling chops that the genre is known for, but it is in my view, the smartest, best designed and most intellectually stimulating immersive sim ever made, and would be stunned if Arkane don't take many elements of the formula they've created here and use it in future titles. If this was released a standalone game game, from Arkane, before Prey 2017 was released. If this title just dropped in our laps all of a sudden and we got to experience it with fresh eyes, this would no doubt be a game of the year contender and everyone would be losing their shit over it. It is absolutely on my game of the year list for 2018, and it's been a damn good year. Please, if you love immersive sims or just good videogame design, play this game.”

“I will say very clearly that I really, really enjoyed my 75 hours with this game. I really enjoyed them, but I'm a big aRPG fan and I'm always fascinated whenever a developer reaches for the stars and tries new, ambitious things. Neocore did that here, and while a lot of it didn't land, a lot of it did, and I found it a game that was absolutely worth my time and investment. For others, your milleage will certainly vary. I think its more than reasonable to wait for sale on a title like this if you're unsure about it. There's easily $45 worth of value here if you're interested in what it's doing, but if you're on a tight budget and you don't want to take the risk, the title is absolutely worth $20 and then some, or whatever the sale price ends up being. Neocore have made a flawed but very worthwhile game here, and I certainly congratulate them on their work.”

“Look - it's fine. It's 4 hours of very Far Cry-esque action, very little in the way of innovation or narrative and some interesting moments, but it's...fine. Not worth paying big money for unless you REALLY want more Far Cry.”

“I judge a game based on what it's trying to achieve, and there's no question that Tower of Time achieves what it sets out to do- provide a deep but accessible cRPG experience. It really just nails that.”

“At the end of this review now, it's clear that on balance, I don't have a lot of good things to say about this DLC, or where the game is now, but I recognise that we are still in that 5 miles when the ship is coming to a complete stop. This second DLC pack was the last vestiges of the launch inertia, and with that now behind us, Bungie can take the ship anywhere it pleases. Bungie have begun that process of making improvements to the game, and some of them, like masterworks and exotic reworks, and more quests and collectables at the endgame show a lot of promise, but they do feel like small panels and minor cogs in the context of one very big, very unwieldy ship.”