Recent reviews by Classic Malcontent

CD Projekt Red is still making improvements and the first DLC is about to drop. Definitely worth a playthrough or several.

Overall it's decent. Not great. Not terrible. I'm glad Bethesda tried something new. Now, they need to return to their classic IPs and focus on what they are better at ala Elder Scrolls universe or Fallout or similar.

For Starfield, the reasons it's merely good but not great are as follows. It's decent but bland overall. Some of the frustrating systems that hinder enjoyment.

1.) Inventory management. Bethesda needs to work in this for all their games; past, present and future. All. If they can improve this is will be an immense overall quality of life improvement for all players. Otherwise, this is essentially a 'Fallout' or "Elder Scrolls' like RPG with a space setting. Some inspiration from other series such as Mass Effect. However, I personally find the Mass Effect experience to be superior to Starfield.

2.) Game engine. The good: They improved somewhat graphically over their older games. Yet their engine is still janky compared to others. The bad: Performance can drop like a rock regardless of your system. Even with a high end CPU and an RTX4080 switching from Scan Mode to Normal / Combat Mode pauses all rendering. it's a blocking "feature" (*ahem* bug) that they need to fix. They really need to improve the responsiveness and blocking in their game engine. Or just license another game engine. I heard this was finally fixed honestly not sure when I'll play again to find out.

3.) Combat. It's okay. I do wish they had more of a Division-like cover-based options beyond crouching behind something. It's basic but it works. As with everything else, they are decent at it in general but not great.

Overall it's a good game. I am enjoying it. If you can run the game at a decent framerate, and work around the inventory system, it's worth a play through. Games really need to stop with the inventory micromanagement and 'weight' restrictions and remember in 2023 these archaic systems should be ignored for 'access anywhere' bank/stash storage. I know it's likely a limit to 'number of things' but they need to vastly improve their inventory system in ALL their games.

Worth it when it goes on sale.

Massive is no longer the lead development studio. Current dev-team is working to try and fix long standing bugs and introduce new seasonal content. The Division 2 and Year 5 has been good so far with the new seasonal content. I am enjoying it. Worth it when it's on sale.

As a tip I manually clear the game cache after playing. You can script it or just delete the files under the folders listed below.
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\My Games\Tom Clancy's The Division 2\ShaderByteCode
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\My Games\Tom Clancy's The Division 2\ShaderCache

Overall I enjoyed AC Valhalla. Was it perfect? Of course not. Regardless, when its on sale it's definitely worth a purchase and play through IMHO. See a sale? I say give it a go.

FF7 Remake Intergrade is a lovely re-imagining of the original. Depending on the game mode you can make it feel a bit more akin to the 'old school' original FFVII. Regardless, it is not exactly the same game. It a new play through of nostalgic content from 25 years ago; from 1997 to 2022. I am at Chapter 10 and I have enjoyed it. I recommend giving it a try for FF7 veterans or for new players. I will recommend you wait for a sale. And, understand this is not, yet, the complete FF7 game. Regardless, highly recommended.

It is what it is. Free to play with caveats. Relax and enjoy and you will not find the rush to Tier 3 as tedious as the sweaty whales flailing their credit cards to Tier 3 gear level 1370 and beyond. If you decide to make only a single purchase consider the "Lv.50 completion pack". If you spend 20 USD and get the 2200 Royal Crystals then exchange 1100 for that pack. Essentially using half, roughly 10 USD worth, nets you 2600 Blue Crystals in-game which is the equivalent of 61.10 USD of crystals to decide to spend on skins or other options. And you'll have 1100 Royal Crystals left over as well. Otherwise, simply play the game and relax. Do not force yourself to spending with the whales. You'll get there in time. It will just take longer. Regardless, overall it's a fun game. Give it a try and see if you like it or not.

Fantastic game. So many stories to discover just from walking in any given direction. Take your time and enjoy it. If the difficulty is too hard at first for newcomers play on the lowest difficulty and enjoy the story. Soon CDPR is adding official RedMOD support for The Witcher 3. I cannot wait to complete another playthrough once official MOD support is released.

It works. Before you purchase go to https://account.swtor.com/user/steam and make sure you see your Steam account listed on the Bioware page for SWTOR. If the option to "Unlink" Steam you should be connected and able to purchase a Subscription for SWTOR via Steam. Remember: Do not click to unlink account. Only use it as a visual confirmation that your SWTOR account is indeed linked.

Still fun. I played in the Beta back in 2009 or 2010? Was it really ten years ago? Played in 2011 from launch. Stopped and came back once or twice in 2013-2015. Finally returned after the game launched on Steam to try out other classes and class story arcs. Towards end game a Subscription would be recommended eventually. Regardless, plenty to see and try before that to tell if you would enjoy the game or not. SWTOR is more of a classic MMORPG. The graphics engine could use an update but it runs well as you would expect on hardware now generations ahead of the game. Try it and see. I am enjoying reliving the SWTOR experience on some new alts even if though the game has more of an older MMORPG vibe to it. It is still worth checking out. Try it and see.

EVGA utility to set LED options and tweak settings.