His main issues seem to be that it was frustrating and the story sucks. Obviously overly harsh. 2/5 is like Aliens: Colonial Marines level, so Patrick must have REALLLLLLLLLLY sucked at the game.
Took me an hour and a half to get through ch2 on Akumu.
Jesus Christ this shit is stressful. Especially since I'm trying to get all the collectibles on the way. Feels great when you persist and get through a section though.
Did a PS4 broadcast of this game tonight. Got more viewers than I'm usually used to. Died five times on the bit before the Keeper battle (Ch. 7) where you have to run towards the camera avoiding barb mines. Feels bad, man.
I've also played a few games I would consider a 1/5. (X-Blades, Damnation, among others)
Aliens is a 2/5. It was perfectly functional, it just wasn't any fun to play. It actually could have still been worse. It's still better than most of the trash that gets dumped on Steam, these days. All that mobile garbage and whatnot.
Yep, I feel like you have to be willing to overlook a lot of flaws to rate TEW highly. Objectively it's a 3/5 game consisting of many 4/5, 5/5 sections/gameplay systems/things done right and more than there should be 1/5 or 2/5 sections that should've been cut from the game or at least re-designed after playtests.
I think I'm right there with ya' on how you feel about this game. Been reading some of your impressions and a lot of it more or less mirrors my experience with the game.
Yep, I feel like you have to be willing to overlook a lot of flaws to rate TEW highly. Objectively it's a 3/5 game consisting of many 4/5, 5/5 sections/gameplay systems/things done right and more than there should be 1/5 or 2/5 sections that should've been cut from the game or at least re-designed after playtests.
Yep. It depends on what's your tolerance for exceedingly frustrating moments. Anything about 3/5 is a bit generous for this game. A "Director's Cut" edition with a few changes here and there could be great.
Regarding the matches: I wonder if it is not simply that the AI is too stupid to walk around a burning corpse, so they would automatically be set ablaze one after another if you set a single corpse on fire. I do not particularly mind the fact that you have to time your matches, but it is counterintuitive.
I think it's fine as a gameplay mechanic, but the presentation is just illogical, which is why I take issue with people claiming that it's obvious or something that everyone should be able to intuit no their own. There have been a few occasions where I mis-timed my matches and enemies nearby did not get hurt. If I hadn't read about the match mechanic on a forum and that was what I saw first in game, I'd probably naturally assume that enemies don't get hurt by fire.
I feel like TEW is that one game where people could write long, extensive, intelligent posts/reviews about why they loved it and/or hated it, and I'd be like, "Yeah, that sounds about right". 9/10, 6/10, it varies from person to person, chapter to chapter.
Last boss was way OTT but I loved how ridiculous it was!
Rocket launcher RE fan service
was a nice touch.
Overall it was a pretty hit and miss game. Brilliant when it hit the heigh points and average to bad at it's lowest points. It had more highs than lows though and is definitely a game I'll return to for a NG+ run in the near future.
I feel like TEW is that one game where people could write long, extensive, intelligent posts/reviews about why they loved it and/or hated it, and I'd be like, "Yeah, that sounds about right". 9/10, 6/10, it varies from person to person, chapter to chapter.
Yep. It depends on what's your tolerance for exceedingly frustrating moments. Anything about 3/5 is a bit generous for this game. A "Director's Cut" edition with a few changes here and there could be great.
Even though I'm a pretty big supporter of this game, this excited me probably more than it should. If they fixed the performance, allowed full modification of the FOV (on consoles as well as PC), changed the story, and heavily reworked it's most flawed chapters, it could get the praise it deserves. Give reviewers a second chance with the game.
Haha, for me it was like a whatevs/10 when I got one-shot by some goober, a "this is some legit shit/10" during Chapter 9 and a "what is this RE6-garbage/ass during most of Chapter 11 and all of 12.
I keep reading about crashes on PC version. I didn't experience a single crash throughout my first playthrough. Maybe I'm lucky or the game doesn't play nice with certain type of hardware.
His main issues seem to be that it was frustrating and the story sucks. Obviously overly harsh. 2/5 is like Aliens: Colonial Marines level, so Patrick must have REALLLLLLLLLLY sucked at the game.
I'm not surprised, since I had to explain to him how Matches worked over Twitter. Guy ignores all the tutorials and then complains the game doesn't explain itself well enough. Maybe, as a professional game reviewer, he feels he's above tutorials?
I just don't understand how he can harp on the story for The Evil Within while praising the Alien Isolation story which was completely dull. I feel completely the opposite of him regarding both games, Alien Isolation is the frustratingly boring and repetitive experience while The Evil Within is the cinematic horror thriller I been yearning for since Dead Space.
And here's a direct quote from his Evil Within review: "It's not a good sign when a game requires hours of patience before it's worth playing, but The Evil Within turns around." How is this a complaint for The Evil Within but in Alien Isolation it's just fine. If anything I would consider A:I the game that takes forever to ramp up while TEW just throws you into the deep end and asks you to keep your head up. Alien: Isolation has so much needlessly boring filler while The Evil Within just sends you careening from one crazy-ass moment to the next.
I just don't understand get where he's coming from in this review. I usually really like the guy's reviews but here he just comes off as one of those horror movie snobs that's too good for the crazy, bloody B-level horror films and thinks only the slow methodical stuff like Alien, Psycho and Halloween are worthy of praise. I like those too but it's also ok to like stuff like Saw, Hostel and Event Horizon; movies that are fucked up but don't take themselves so seriously and are actually quite fun if you give them a chance. I guess Patrick and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
I keep reading about crashes on PC version. I didn't experience a single crash throughout my first playthrough. Maybe I'm lucky or the game doesn't play nice with certain type of hardware.
We don't have exact sales numbers, but Japan releases sales charts monthly, and the UK releases sales charts weekly. The Evil Within was the third top selling game across all platforms in the month of October in Japan, In the UK, the week of release for Evil Within went on sale the game was the 2nd Top selling game for all platforms, and the top selling game on PS4 (which accounted for 47% of sales apparently in the UK) which made it the first game to top number 1 on the platform that's not FIF15 since FIFA15 released. It also is notable in the UK example because that means launch sales for The Evil Within were higher than launch sales for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Alien: Isolation, and Shadows of Mordor in the UK.
I just don't understand how he can harp on the story for The Evil Within while praising the Alien Isolation story which was completely dull. I feel completely the opposite of him regarding both games, Alien Isolation is the frustratingly boring and repetitive experience while The Evil Within is the cinematic horror thriller I been yearning for since Dead Space.
And here's a direct quote from his Evil Within review: "It's not a good sign when a game requires hours of patience before it's worth playing, but The Evil Within turns around." How is this a complaint for The Evil Within but in Alien Isolation it's just fine. If anything I would consider A:I the game that takes forever to ramp up while TEW just throws you into the deep end and asks you to keep your head up. Alien: Isolation has so much needlessly boring filler while The Evil Within just sends you careening from one crazy-ass moment to the next.
I just don't understand get where he's coming from in this review. I usually really like the guy's reviews but here he just comes off as one of those horror movie snobs that's too good for the crazy, bloody B-level horror films and thinks only the slow methodical stuff like Alien, Psycho and Halloween are worthy of praise. I like those too but it's also ok to like stuff like Saw, Hostel and Event Horizon; movies that are fucked up but don't take themselves so seriously and are actually quite fun if you give them a chance. I guess Patrick and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
I think part of it comes from his own taste in films and etc too. He was even discussing about watching a ton of films this year and I think Alien is up there. He didn't even talk about TEW until after Alien and Mordor were both out. To be honest Mordor had the least amount to it and they all liked it more.
Mordor was something new, but I wouldn't call it GOTY worthy. I didn't follow the plot at all. Alien I'm taking my time with. It feels alright, but it sure is taking its time. Thing is, none of them had the impression that they were excited for TEW.
I think part of it comes from his own taste in films and etc too. He was even discussing about watching a ton of films this year and I think Alien is up there. He didn't even talk about TEW until after Alien and Mordor were both out. To be honest Mordor had the least amount to it and they all liked it more.
Mordor was something new, but I wouldn't call it GOTY worthy. I didn't follow the plot at all. Alien I'm taking my time with. It feels alright, but it sure is taking its time. Thing is, none of them had the impression that they were excited for TEW.
Mordor was a big disappointment for me after hearing all of the hype from people. The combat is just boring as hell and being a complete badass with zero challenge gets a bit boring after a while. It's almost like playing with god mode on or something.
The game had a lot of promise at the start, but everything in the game is just so inconsequential that I find it hard to care even about the Nemesis system, which is definitely a cool idea design-wise.
Other than that the platforming is garbage. It's like the Assassin's Creed stuff only more finicky to the point that it frequently frustrates.
I'm near the end of that game, but having a hard time finding the motivation to go back. They didn't seem to care about the story there, either. I'm really getting sick of games that put in throwaway stories. I'd rather they just have none at all instead of doing a piss-poor job.
He's getting paid to be a personality on the Giant Bomb website. Reviews really aren't their focus, but they do them from time to time.
And here I thought you were attacking him because you didn't like his opinion, but it's actually that you thought his writing was poor? What about it? You know some pretty impressive 10-year old kids, by the way.
Mordor was a big disappointment for me after hearing all of the hype from people. The combat is just boring as hell and being a complete badass with zero challenge gets a bit boring after a while. It's almost like playing with god mode on or something.
The game had a lot of promise at the start, but everything in the game is just so inconsequential that I find it hard to care even about the Nemesis system, which is definitely a cool idea design-wise.
Other than that the platforming is garbage. It's like the Assassin's Creed stuff only more finicky to the point that it frequently frustrates.
I'm near the end of that game, but having a hard time finding the motivation to go back. They didn't seem to care about the story there, either. I'm really getting sick of games that put in throwaway stories. I'd rather they just have none at all instead of doing a piss-poor job.
A Batman game is a Batman game. You can dress it up and make it run like Arkham City, but if it's not pulling you in every chance it gets then I think it misses a lot of that charm. I was getting further and further and it felt like the game wasn't going beyond what the first 10 minutes were like. I know some people probably dislike the Batman titles, but I think they are one of the best super hero games out there period. I think what set these games apart was that there was nothing on the market. All of us had high hopes each title was going to be better than the other and it turns out it was very diverse. The month of November is looking good, but I wouldn't count TEW off someone's list if they were looking for a good 3rd person survival horror game. The genre doesn't have a lot coming out until REremake and Revelations 2, which aren't until next year.
He's getting paid to be a personality on the Giant Bomb website. Reviews really aren't their focus, but they do them from time to time.
And here I thought you were attacking him because you didn't like his opinion, but it's actually that you thought his writing was poor? What about it? You know some pretty impressive 10-year old kids, by the way.
It's shitty, but those personality-driven reviews still go on metacritic, and still carry weight. He clearly had trouble with very simple mechanics and that's not the games' fault. I remember he had similar issues with American Nightmare.
Whatever. I've been drinking now and don't feel like attacking the dudes writing. My opinion of him has been soured for awhile though, so probably just that.
Having only played the first half of Chapter 11 at this point, I'll really struggle to see what's suppose to be so frustrating about certain parts. Not to say this game doesn't have the means to screw you over time to time, but nothing is even close to broken or all that inconsistent and you are generally playing a game based around the idea you are not a agile, precise character. Even the worse stuff seems have an answer too. Like Jett was having a meltdown about some Chapter 10 stuff and keeping that in mind I was expecting something a lot worse than what I got. I mean, I did die a few times, but I only spent a lot of time with it because I figured that I was wasting too much ammo trying to kill the boss before the final room (and also when I activated the exit before killing the boss), so I restarted. (Ammo hasn't been a big issue for the most part, playing efficiently. Only bosses really drain you and I like to do a few experimental runs on them to see how I can play it best.)
Also I do think Klepek is a hack and I think anyone doing published game criticism that is anyway related to him is also a hack (although they have non-criticism roles they do fine in). That said, don't wait until someone like that disagrees with you before you suddenly feel that way. Klepek would be a hack if he made The Evil Within his GOTY.
EDIT: To be fair, only talking about default highest difficulty (survivalist?)
I was frustrated with Chapter 11 & 12, but not because of their difficulty or anything like that. I was upset with their design. Aside from a few neat ideas that should have (in my opinion) been the focal point of the chapter, the game quickly diminishes into RE6-terrirtory of ass-design. A lot of sighing and head shaking on my end running through those chapters.
I'm on chapter 7. I see mention of chapter 14 above. How many are there?
I'm LOVING this game. Bought it due to Destiny boredom and fatigue, and this game is slowly earning my personal GOTY and I'm not a survival horror fan at all.
Just love the game mechanics, character design, and this game oozes atmosphere.
It reminds me of a mix of Dark Souls, Bioshock, and Dead Space. I know it doesn't for everyone, but it has some of the best elements of these games so far that I've seen in the first 6 chapters.
If the ending is worth it, then I don't see how this isn't my GOTY, unless Dragon Age topples it.
I was frustrated with Chapter 11 & 12, but not because of their difficulty or anything like that. I was upset with their design. Aside from a few neat ideas that should have (in my opinion) been the focal point of the chapter, the game quickly diminishes into RE6-terrirtory of ass-design. A lot of sighing and head shaking on my end running through those chapters.
If NeoGAF had signatures, that would probably be in there.
I don't think this game features the lows of RE6's campaigns (but then, not the highs either, although it's different enough for it not to be a one to one comparison). However, I don't know about the whole of chapter 11 or anything about chapter 12 yet. If that's the issue, then that's two chapters (and I think 11 has been pretty cool so far) out of over a dozen.
I gotta be honest, I'm completely baffled how so many people find anything in this game particularly obtuse or full of trial and error. The checkpoints are just about the most generous ever, and the game seems to encourage experimenting in just about every situation. If you really need to be told stuff though, I mean, the load screens have dozens of relevant tips. If you're dying every 3 minutes, you've got to end up reading at least a few of them, right?
I'm not trying to pick on anybody, I just don't see the problems.
I gotta be honest, I'm completely baffled how so many people find anything in this game particularly obtuse or full of trial and error. The checkpoints are just about the most generous ever, and the game seems to encourage experimenting in just about every situation. If you really need to be told stuff though, I mean, the load screens have dozens of relevant tips. If you're dying every 3 minutes, you've got to end up reading at least a few of them, right?
That tip that says to aim melees to avoid kicking a dead enemy would have been useful before that one time I went to melee an enemy and ended up kicking a nearby dead enemy instead and the other enemy got me because Akumu one hit kills ;_;
I gotta be honest, I'm completely baffled how so many people find anything in this game particularly obtuse or full of trial and error. The checkpoints are just about the most generous ever, and the game seems to encourage experimenting in just about every situation. If you really need to be told stuff though, I mean, the load screens have dozens of relevant tips. If you're dying every 3 minutes, you've got to end up reading at least a few of them, right?
I'm not trying to pick on anybody, I just don't see the problems.
Last gen had an incredible amount of hand holding in most games that I think really did a number on a lot of people. The checkpoints in this game were honestly too generous, they're like every 5 minutes and still people complained about them.
I gotta be honest, I'm completely baffled how so many people find anything in this game particularly obtuse or full of trial and error. The checkpoints are just about the most generous ever, and the game seems to encourage experimenting in just about every situation. If you really need to be told stuff though, I mean, the load screens have dozens of relevant tips. If you're dying every 3 minutes, you've got to end up reading at least a few of them, right?
The only one that has really pissed me off so far (in Chapter 9) is right before the Safehead (or whatever its name is) fight where you're running down a corridor and requires you to dodge some traps on the ground. Except the camera angle suddenly shifts and now the controls are reversed. I found this hard to do on the keyboard and ended up dying a couple of times and being forced to watch the damn cutscene over and over again. It was simple on the analog gamepad, but it was just an example of dumb unnecessary stuff.
Just started Chapter 15... I mostly agree with Klepek's criticisms, but I'd still rate game higher than 2/5. There have been so many great moments, but also consistently terrible dialogue/narrative, several tedious areas, only a few open and less linear levels (like 3 and 9), and a lot of performance hiccups.
I gotta be honest, I'm completely baffled how so many people find anything in this game particularly obtuse or full of trial and error. The checkpoints are just about the most generous ever, and the game seems to encourage experimenting in just about every situation. If you really need to be told stuff though, I mean, the load screens have dozens of relevant tips. If you're dying every 3 minutes, you've got to end up reading at least a few of them, right?
I'm not trying to pick on anybody, I just don't see the problems.
You and me both. I didn't see more trial and error, unfair checkpoints or whatever. I'm just stunned at different reviews and the comments of people. I finished the game in a week and thought it's a great game. And yeah I even thought bosses are easy and there are few and easy puzzles. Played on survival ... because well nothing else available.
And concerning Checkpoints: Well how the hell did those reviewers even finish Demon's Souls? Because there ... a Checkpoint is for the level + Bossfight on a hardcore difficulty. But yeah so far after 4 chapters I've beaten every boss on the first try. So ... I guess the 90s and Donkey Kong really did teach me to be hardcore in gaming And maybe that is why I don't see the complaints about difficulty.
Last gen had an incredible amount of hand holding in most games that I think really did a number on a lot of people. The checkpoints in this game were honestly too generous, they're like every 5 minutes and still people complained about them.
Yea no doubt about it, the game is very fair, even though I was frustrated with chapter 10's
Laura boss, because it was pretty shitty and badly designed imo you still had a checkpoint even in the middle of the boss fight, what more could you ask?
And you always get a checkpoint before a tricky sequence like
the trap sequence at the end of chapter 9 or before The Keeper at chapter 7, it took me a couple of tries but the checkpoint is right at the start of it so i couldnt whine too much
I think that every reviewer that complained about difficulty or the game being unfair cannot be taken seriously, Jim Sterling really disappointed me in that regard, i thought highly of him as a reviewer until i read his TEW review and him crying over any obstacle the game threw at him
What's the problem with the invisible enemies anyway? they are pretty easy to spot and they mostly appear alone and not with other enemies so you have plenty of time to aim and concentrate on them
Currently, the only planned changes for the black bars comes by way of PC. The FOV and ultra-wide presentation are how the game was intended to be played by the development team.
If we have any new information, we'll be sure to share it with everyone.
Yea no doubt about it, the game is very fair, even though I was frustrated with chapter 10's
Laura boss, because it was pretty shitty and badly designed imo you still had a checkpoint even in the middle of the boss fight, what more could you ask?
And you always get a checkpoint before a tricky sequence like
the trap sequence at the end of chapter 9 or before The Keeper at chapter 7, it took me a couple of tries but the checkpoint is right at the start of it so i couldnt whine too much
I think that every reviewer that complained about difficulty or the game being unfair cannot be taken seriously, Jim Sterling really disappointed me in that regard, i thought highly of him as a reviewer until i read his TEW review and him crying over any obstacle the game threw at him
What's the problem with the invisible enemies anyway? they are pretty easy to spot and they mostly appear alone and not with other enemies so you have plenty of time to aim and concentrate on them
