Recent reviews by matty

Sherman Dating DLC when?

when i first got into a game, i thought that i was invincible. my dream was to be able to stomp randos with a gusto of a thousand pine needles being stabbed into their feet. when the game did start loading, i was taken aback by the sheer amount of VOICES of the, soon-to-be, victims of my insatiable war crime hunger, coming together in an amalgamated shriek piercing my sensitive ears. i smirked to myself, and looked up to the ceiling thanking the higher power(s) for allowing me the opportunity of silencing them one by one. but, my elated smile soon soured when, in the pre-game lobby, it was apparent they could FIGHT BACK? no... this can't be right. there's no way, right? wrong.

my smile was gone as quickly as my optimistic point-of-view, as i loaded into a game that looked slightly better than Pokemon(TM) Scarlet(R) and Pokemon(TM) Violet(R), but instead of fighting imaginary monsters, i was fighting a veritable middle school. the screams of kids, you could smell the lack of soap in that lobby as concentrated as a group of pre-pubescent school boys that were all packed tightly into a closet being let free after 3 years of tightly fitting in every square inch of that tiny tiny closet. this being of destitution has no legible description, it's like these entities were too evil for Satan to come up with, no known words can describe the abhorrent beings these... THINGS represent. i almost vomited.

you can read all about it in my new book "another game, another lame: the story of something i don't much care for" now available where all books are sold.

A classic and great game featuring Pat.

Pros: This game has Pat, and 99.999999999999% other games do NOT have Pat.

Also, The Knife.

Cons: This game does not have enough Pat.

I don't really write reviews for games, because who ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cares about what I have to say, but Red Dead Redemption was one of my favorite games when I still played on consoles. I pre-ordered and played it as soon as it was listed on Steam, and then released. No shame in that, it's hard to say no to a single player Rockstar game, but...

This game is essentially, in my eyes, Rockstar's swan song. They're not as interested in single player content anymore, with this game and Grand Theft Auto 5 having ample opportunity for more content through DLC. However, their eyes are now dead set on multiplayer, which is a shame because their games are absolute powerhouses for single player. This is further cemented by the fact the last strong arm talent, Dan Houser, left the company last year.

Beforehand, the "Rockstar Launcher" is absolute hot garbage. Pirate the game if you bought it already, it's a better experience.

The story is a prequel, and it's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. It has so much damn content, I've been on a single chapter for almost a week because I'm trying to collect everything before moving on for a 100% playthrough that I'm doing more recently, which really says how much there is to do, before you even realize there are 6 chapters PLUS an epilogue. If you're not trying to 100% and collect everything that could be missed, you could probably finish the story in a day or two, but you really shouldn't try speed running it because you may slow down later in the chapters kinda confused after you skipped all the story dialogue. This isn't a Pokemon game, so, don't treat it like one.

When you get over the story and want something else to do, it's basically a "wild" west sandbox. Shoot someone? you can do that. Shoot near someone? Definitely. Shoot the ground? The ground doesn't care. Shoot someone while they're shooting you shooting them? Yeah. You get the idea. Hunt animals to shoot someone with? Why not. This is a Rockstar game, so you can have some mods to improve the enjoyment of the sandbox. Look at Rampage trainer with a decent spawner system, or Lenny's Simple Trainer for a simple trainer. The hint is in the name.

The graphics are pretty good for how I play, a mix of Medium-Low, with Ultra textures on. It doesn't look amazing, but I really favor higher framerates instead of looks. I've had issues with grainy shadows but they've mostly gone away, save for some specific instances. You can turn that off by turning Soft Shadows to Low, or Shadows on High with MSAA off.

Multiplayer. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate it. Coming from someone who played Hour 1 Grand Theft Auto Online. I hate both of them. Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online are not games, they're literally why Rockstar doesn't care about single player anymore. Why make investing stories when you can just create an online mode with microtransactions to make simple money? I don't want to believe it's Rockstar who decided on this, and my rose-tinted glasses wants to blame Take-Two, but I don't want to deal with either of them. I'm going to add my Grand Theft Auto Online experience here, too, since it'll help to add understanding to my reasoning.

I'll be honest, I cheated online in both of them. It's so commonplace, and it's the only way to make both of them a fun experience, otherwise you have to grind and grind. Grand Theft Auto 4's online was fun because you can just hop on in, and boom you can have fun. There was no grinding or anything, it was (for pc players, can't say the same for console) a fun online sandbox. When Grand Theft Auto 5 online came out, I was doing the first race the same minute it was released on Xbox 360. I played it a bunch, grinding that Martin mission to get a high-end apartment. It was alright, until they nerfed the ever-living ♥♥♥♥ out of the rewards from that mission and Gerald's mission. When it came out for PC, it was an alright experience, their promised heist experience that was met with questionable response not really rewarding much was finally out at that point, and playing around with some friends was humorous at first. It finally hit the "fun" status when I cheated in hundreds of millions of dollars to afford any kind of enjoyment that their games usually came with, and subsequently banned for it.

But when Red Dead Online came out, same problem. Grinding stupid ♥♥♥♥. A friend and I just cheated a few hundred gold bars just to do any kind of fun activity when the major stuff like Collector, Trader, Bounty Hunter, and Moonshiner were available. There's a fifth one, but I just can't be arsed go back on to play it. After we got to do stuff like that together, the actual game became more fun, nudging to the fact that you can bypass the "treasure hunting gold nugget" grind by buying their... gold bars for real money. How fun. I'd rather be permanently banned from online. Rockstar's games aren't really meant to be grindy online experiences, that's already reserved for Runescape and other RPGs like Destiny 2.

They've also added a battle pass system, for some godforsaken reason. Battle passes are annoying, and just add to the disdain I have for online. I got the husky for my camp, and Arthur's hat a few passes ago, and I basically dipped. Huskies are my favorite dog breed.

The last nail in the coffin for both of these online modes is... the exclusives. Both of them suffer from exclusive online items. Grand Theft Auto Online has cars, weapons, and Benny's. Red Dead has some weapons, horses, and saddles. You can get them in single player, but they have some issues when it comes to saving. An example would be Lowry's Revolver. Edmund Lowry Jr. is a serial killer you meet and deal with in single player, and he has a revolver that you can only get in online for some reason. Why? Why is that the case? You deal with him in single player, Arthur has every right to be able to take his revolver. You can take a bunch of other peoples' guns, but HIS is exclusive to online where he has absolutely no presence outside of his little cabin-basement. There's so much content that they already have in the game that they could just make available in single player, but they are absolutely content on preventing any of it being available for the single player sandbox. That is absolutely infuriating, and to see it happen twice is already a break of integrity to their next games. Why play them if you can't enjoy everything there without needing to use mods to just be able to access it? Why do you need mods in the first place?

Let's not hide the fact that Take-Two (and maybe Rockstar) tried killing OpenIV a few years ago, and more recently DCMAing mods that add maps from previous games. How long until the Nuevo Paraiso mods for Red Dead Redemption 2 get DCMA'd by them because it added content from the first Red Dead Redemption? I can't be the judge of if it's fair use or not, I'm just some guy.

Mods. Rockstar games are more known for their mods. Red Dead Redemption 2 has some mods, like ones that improve the gun metal, and there's an upscale mod for engravings and woods on guns to make them look better. There's the two trainers I pointed to earlier as well, and the like. This game, however, just doesn't really have a major modding scene yet. It's still a bit early to tell, and it doesn't help that OpenIV still hasn't been able to fully decode the game files yet. A bunch of them are still named in hash when trying to view the files. It can't be fully decked out, yet, but hopefully soon. There are some stuff there, though. I also have the No Invisible Snipers mod to run through New Austin, only very dangerously. There are still lawmen that spawn pretty frequently during the game, which is dangerous enough, in my opinion.

Basically, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a great prequel. I recommend you play it for the single player, only. Do not play multiplayer, it's not worth the grind nor the time. I guess I can finally stop hoping for Bully 2 now, as well.

This game is known, in the state of California, to cause cancer. Proposition 65 is administered by Cal/EPA's California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). Proposition 65 regulates substances officially listed by California as having a 1 in 100,000 chance of causing cancer over a 70-year period or birth defects or other reproductive harm in two ways. The first statutory requirement of Proposition 65 prohibits businesses from knowingly discharging listed substances into video game sources, or onto land where the substances can pass into video game sources. The second prohibits businesses from knowingly exposing individuals to listed substances without providing a clear and reasonable warning.