Recent reviews by doombro

It's Call of Halo: Noble Ops.

Probably one of the most overrated games of all time. You can just feel Microsoft breathing down their necks going "we want the COD audience" so they shifted Halo's lighter but still mature tone into "YEAH WE'RE A MILITARY SHOOTER FOR REAL MEN!!!!" so they could revitalize their dying franchise.
The first three Halo's vibrant and gorgeous color scheme has been sanded down into a generation-appropriate brown and bloom. Marines are less inspired by Alien and now resemble Afghanistan War era soldiers. People blame Halo 4 for the franchise's descent into modern FPS tropes, but this is where it started. The oh-so controversial sprint, even though it could be replaced, was always your default in every mission.
Emile's incompetence aside, the ending is quite good. Forcing you to fight an unwinnable battle is a novel idea, and a nice way to integrate narrative and gameplay. The issue is that there's a reason it's the only part of the story people actually talk about. Noble Team is dry and forgettable, made up of archetypes rather than people. Making Six a newbie and a mostly-silent player self-insert was a misstep, severely limiting any attachment you could gain from them through banter. You don't feel much when they die other than momentary "aww man", and it often feels the rest of the team doesn't care much either. The focus of the story is instead brought onto everyone's favorite AI, Cabana, and tying her back into the main plot of the Halo series. They could have done something interesting with this, but you only obtain her at the climax of the game and she's just a macguffin that you LE MUST deliver to Keyes so we can have our sad ending.
Anyone could summarize the plot of the original Halo trilogy, but despite beating this game two days ago, Reach is ironically hard to remember. The levels are merely serviceable. There's only one tank section in the whole game, which is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sacrilege. The spartan laser was nerfed for no discernible reason, the fuel rod is annoying on NPCs, and for whatever godforsaken reason, the grenade launcher's projectiles bounce. There's an overlong and boring space dogfight level, and if that wasn't enough, an even longer and more annoying helicopter level. Powerups were weak, and there's a good chance you were just using sprint or the jetpack. Just... generally unnotable.
Nearly fifteen years out, it's time to admit it was a mediocre entry that signaled the death of Halo. Sowwy.

Honestly, pretty ♥♥♥♥ campaign. Half of the levels are repeats.

Just as bad as I remember

i cried

great if you like south park, too easy though. still better than the other three games

overrated but bretty gud

"the survival gameplay of metro with a nonlinear open world format? sounds great!"
"imagine actually trekking through the metro yourself with less guardrails, making tough decisions whether or not to go through the surface and bum-rushing through mutants to the next-"
"oh, you leave the metro within the first hour. well, it is called exodus after all. still sucks, but maybe we'll be taken to even cooler places-"
"oh, the places you go look pretty generic compared to moscow. and there's god-awful TAA you can't turn off... well maybe they'll be fun to explo-"
"oh, they're ubisoft-tier, very small, underdeveloped, and somehow feel even more linear than the first two games... well maybe the gamepla-"
"oh, they butchered the feel of the originals, added mediocre crafting mechanics, trivialized gas masks, ported over fallout 4 ghouls, continued with the bad moral choice ♥♥♥♥, removed shops, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the shambler. well maybe the story-"
"oh, there's life outside the metro now, road trip plot, your wife gets AIDS, and you go through wacky adventures in unconnected lands."
"..."
"it's also buggy."
Uninstalled after the bear showed up. Sorry!

mediocre cod clone, again
- incredibly linear design that fails at keeping the illusion of openness unlike half-life (which this game is often compared to, for some reason) and invisible walls are everywhere!
- weapons feel pretty meh, upgrading them is only available through merchants and towards the end every weapon in stores is available on the ground. shambler is fun
- boss battles in an fps game. three consecutive ones in fact, and they're all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
- the checkpoint save system is terrible, it's time we all admit it. not to sound like a skill issue (i beat the game on hardcore, CHUD) but this game would've benefited from a traditional save/load system
- additionally, the resource scarcity system causes unreasonably punishing softlocks. yes i know you can chapter select, but it's still a softlock. and chapter selecting is awful because of the game's linearity, you'll have to go through the same godforsaken walk and talk sections because you forgot to get a filter.
- ammo scarcity doesn't even matter because this game showers you with ammo
- abhorrent moral choice system. "killing people is... le bad!" how? ♥♥♥♥ off
- that alien kid was really ugly and annoying
- no lore reason for a silent protagonist. he's not gordon freeman, we know his voice, why do other characters have to talk for him? maybe for the best though
- very annoying low health screen effects, i often wasted a medkit just to make them ♥♥♥♥ off
- there is no logical reason why artyom can only carry 5 medkits. those things are tiny, and he's got like 5 of those big filters stuffed in his backpack
- speaking of filters, visits to the surface aren't treated like the mad dashes towards safety that they should be and are often sightseeing tours where you're slowly dying. characters don't give a ♥♥♥♥ if you're out, by the way
- most of all, it's undeservingly beautiful. there's a jaw-dropping shot around every corner, the artists doing their absolute best and showing off the superiority of baked lighting over modern raysloppa. im a sucker for post-apocalyptic overgrowth tbh
overall would not recommend. meh/10 still better than the first game

what if a stealth game... but actually good?

a slavix making a cod clone ❤️ heartwarming