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Battlefield 2042 Rundown (PC)

Ty Harvey 0 Comments

A Rundown is like a full review, but smaller. We use this format to inform you, our audience, and the internet at large, about our thoughts on whether or not a game is worth buying. A Rundown score doesn’t actually appear on Metacritic, and shouldn’t be considered our official review or coverage for a given game.

❤ Audience: ❤
☐ Beginner / ☑ Casual Gamer / ☑ Normal Gamer  / ☑ Expert /☐ Everyone

Battlefield’s nothing overly special, as far as audience goes. If you’re a fan of Call of Duty, but want bigger maps, then Battlefield is perfect for you.

 

☼ Graphics: ☼
☐Bad/☐Alright/☐ Good/☑Beautiful/☑ Fantastic

Graphically, Battlefield 2042 looks fantastic, especially on a high end PC. Running at 4K, with ultra settings, and ray tracing enabled, is true and absolute eye candy!

 

♬ Sound: ♬
☐ Bad /☑Alright/☑Good/☐ Beautiful/☐ Fantastic

Sound is, as of today, not super great. The guns sound generic, and don’t offer the usual punch of other shooters, including past Battlefield games. The music is also muffled, and the 3D audio is very bad, with footsteps sounding like they’re from entirely different directions. Measuring distance from sound is also all but impossible, so even if your audio doesn’t get reversed, using audio to determine how far or close the enemy player is, is pretty much impossible.

 

☠ Difficulty: ☠
☐ Easy / ☑ Average / ☐Hard /☐ Unfair

The difficulty is pretty much dependent on who the enemy players are. The main Conquest mode has no AI or bots to speak of, so fighting against highly-skilled enemies will, for obvious reasons, make things a bit more difficult for you. Though, as for the single-player modes? The AI is pretty much nonexistent. Sure, they exist, but there’s no intelligence. They just walk in a straight line for you to shoot rail them down. Makes these new modes pretty pointless, and not fun to play.

 

§ Bugs §
 ☐ None found / ☐  Few Bugs / ☐ You can use them to speedrun / ☑  Lots of bugs / ☑ Bugs destroy the game

I keep wanting to compare Battlefield 2042 with Cyberpunk 2077. There are, as of this writing, dozens if not hundreds of bugs, including several game breaking bugs. On more than one occasion, I was unable to actually play the game, due to the respawn system simply choosing to not function anymore. I just sat on the death screen, forever, unable to respawn. The only solution was to quit the server, which isn’t that ideal of a solution. There are also a TON of issues with server lag, hit registration, missing animations, missing features, and just, well, everything else. There’s no voice chat. There are no or little actual weapon animations. The servers will lag everyone for a solid minute, before stabilizing… except, they don’t stabilize. Not really. Hit registration decided to take a holiday. You can shoot an enemy point-blank, do zero damage, only for them to turn around and shoot you once, and instant-kill you. Hitboxes are also very inaccurate, and you can shoot a few feet away from the character and still damage them. There are also significant performance drops on PC, seemingly due to a CPU bottleneck. Except, I’m uncertain as to how a PC with a Ryzen 5800 could ever possibly be a bottleneck, but oh well. I’m unable to run the game at above 50 fps, no matter the settings I use.

 

☯ Story ☯
☑ There is none / ☐ Bad / ☐ Alright / ☐  Good / ☐ Fantastic

There is no story. Dice opted to remove the story entirely, in favour of solo missions.

 

⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating / ☐  Sleepy / ☐ Relaxing / ☐ Boring / ☑ Fun / ☑ Challenging

The gameplay is fun, if you ignore all of the many faults, bugs, etcetera. The movement mechanics are downgraded from Battlefield 5, with everything feeling a lot more static. I thought this was a big deal at first, but honestly? It’s not. You get used to it. Ultimately, it still feels like a Battlefield game, when it works. Just wish it worked more often.

 

۞ Game Length ۞
☐ No length / infinite

This is a multiplayer game, so there is no game length.

 

$ Price / Quality $
☐ Full Price/ ☑ Wait for Sale / ☑ Don’t buy / ☑ Refund it if you can

This game, as it stands right now, is not worth the price. It feels like a beta in all the wrong ways. Just don’t buy it, and if you already bought it, refund it. It may be worth playing in a year or two, but as of right now? Today? In 2021? Avoid.

 

::The Rundown::

Battlefield 2042 is a disappointment on many levels. It’s a fun game, when it works, but the fact that there are so many problems at launch, is simply inexcusable. There’s no reason for the game to run as poorly as it does, or have as many features missing as it does. I mean, there isn’t even the option to talk with your squad. Zero voice chat whatsoever. That’s “coming soon”, but why isn’t that here at launch? Just, avoid this entry. Do yourself a favour and spend your money on literally anything else.

 

Final Rating:
3.7


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Cyberpunk 2077 Rundown

Ty Harvey 1 Comment

A Rundown is like a full review, but smaller. We use this format to inform you, our audience, and the internet at large, our thoughts on whether or not a game is worth buying. We haven’t done one of these for a while, but considering the state of Cyberpunk 2077, we figured we’d bring it back for a hot second. Do note that this isn’t our official review. We fully intend to review Cyberpunk officially once the game is a little bit more stable. Until then, here’s our Rundown!

❤ Audience: ❤
☐ Beginner /☐ Casual Gamer / ☑ Normal Gamer  / ☑ Expert /☐ Everyone

Cyberpunk is an RPG with a ton of reading, character upgrades, choices, dialogue, and general role playing goodness. Not everyone will like it, considering its very mature subject matter and overall themes. It’s definitely not meant for children, or people unfamiliar with RPGs.

 

☼ Graphics: ☼
☑Bad/☐Alright/☐ Good/☑Beautiful/☑ Fantastic

Graphically, Cyberpunk 2077 can look absolutely amazing… if you buy it on Stadia, or PC, and have a $700 video card. On the PS4, however? Graphics are a bit of a nightmare. I’m sure you’ve all seen the memes by now, but if not, imagine a game with player models from 2002. Sure, this is definitely an unintended bug, but it’s still something you will have to deal with on the console versions of Cyberpunk 2077.

 

♬ Sound: ♬
☐ Bad /☐ Alright/☐ Good/☐ Beautiful/☑Fantastic

Voice acting and general sound direction is honestly really fantastic. Everything sounds clean and crisp, with voice acting in particular being absolutely top notch! Zero complaints here.

 

☠ Difficulty: ☠
☐ Easy / ☑ Average / ☑ Hard /☐ Unfair

It’s pretty average in regards to the games overall difficulty. Enemies are a bullet sponge, similar to The Division. Which can at times make them appear far stronger than they really are. But all in all, and aside from a minor learning curve with the hacking mini-games, Cyberpunk 2077 is about average in terms of hardness. Not hard, not easy, while still being challenging at times.

 

§ Bugs §
 ☐ None found / ☐  Few Bugs / ☐ You can use them to speedrun / ☐  Lots of bugs / ☑ Bugs destroy the game

And here’s where the problem arises. Cyberpunk 2077 is a broken, buggy, mess of a game. It’s at the point where I’m struggling to even play it. I’ve had to reload my saves countless times due to various game breaking bugs stopping me from progressing any further in the main story. There are also severe performance issues on the base consoles, with the frame rate going down to 15 at times. The game is, as it stands today (December 14th, version 1.04), completely and absolutely unplayable. From having to restart main story missions, to spontaneously combusting. Severe graphics problems, to outright crashes. Cyberpunk 2077 is broken.

In fact, the only platform that runs it well on a technical level, isn’t the PlayStation, or even a PC with an RTX 3080. Nope, it’s Google Stadia, which is the only platform capable of maintaining a solid and consistent 60 frames per second. And even then, the game itself remains to be plagued by constant bugs and glitches that constantly force you to reload your saves to progress forward in the story.

 

☯ Story ☯
☐  There is none / ☐ Bad / ☐ Alright / ☑ Good / ☐ Fantastic

I absolutely love the story. The theme. The setting. It ticks every futuristic dystopian box. Things do get a little bit slower during the later part of the game, but it is overall quite enjoyable.

 

⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating / ☐  Sleepy / ☐ Relaxing / ☐ Boring / ☑ Fun / ☑ Challenging

The gunplay, when it works, feels good. The driving is solid as well, with each car having a very distinct weight to it. Some of you may not like how the cars control, but I personally really do. It’s realistic, but does take some getting used to. The hacking mini-games are likely my most unenjoyable part of Cyberpunk, though they’re not bad by any stretch. The Braindance feature is also remarkably fun, while acting as a puzzle in and of itself.

 

۞ Game Length ۞
☑ 25-30 Hours (main story)

After you beat the game, and finish the various side quests, the world doesn’t really feel lively enough to warrant continued play. While the three player paths should in theory give you additional story incentives to play from a new perspective, they’re really not as different as the advertisements made them out to be. Most (like 95%) of the missions are shared between all player paths, with the main difference being the intro missions, as well as some minor stuff later on in the game that isn’t really all that meaningful. Overall, it should take you between 30 and 40 hours to beat the game while also finishing some side missions along the way.

 

$ Price / Quality $
☑ Full price / ☐ Wait for Sale / ☑ Don’t buy / ☑ Refund it if you can

I know the above ratings could be a bit confusing. I mean, I’m both saying the game is worth buying at full price, while simultaneously saying the game isn’t worth buying, and even going so far as to recommend you get a refund for it. So, what gives? Why the contradictions?

 

::The Rundown::

Simply put, as it stands today, Cyberpunk 2077 is not worth buying. While the game might be fun, and has the potential to become an absolute masterpiece later on, the various bugs, glitches, and technical issues makes it so Cyberpunk 2077 is very hard to recommend buying, especially on PS4.  It also has the unusual side effect of making it extremely hard to accurately score in our official review. We want to be able to give Cyberpunk 2077 an 8 or a 9, as I feel as though it’s very much worth it based on its gameplay, story, and overall “fun factor”. However, given the rather massive technical issues, I can’t in good faith recommend Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone, at least not as it stands right now.

 

Final Rating:
5.5


Remember, the above score is not our official review score. It’s simply the game as it is today, and we most definitely cannot recommend it. Our final score in our official review will likely be far higher, since the only thing holding Cyberpunk 2077 back right now are the bugs. Stay tuned for our official review, which we hope to have out by the end of the month. Until then, hopefully this rundown will suffice.

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Strange Brigade Rundown

Christopher D. Anderson 3 Comments
Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade is a third person shooter with a leaning towards cooperative play. It is set during the 1930’s and has a vibe that is reminiscent of the movies of that era. Bombastic personality and all. The game pits you against several different kinds of mythological enemies as you try to discover all the secrets. While the game is fun to play on your own, it really shines when you play co-op with your friends. Strange Brigade is a fun time and is a breath of fresh air from all the other third person shooters that are out now.

 

 

❤ Audience: ❤
☑ Beginner / ☐ Casual Gamer / ☑ Normal Gamer  / ☐ Expert / ☐ Everyone

Strange Brigade is pretty easy to get into but takes a bit to master. Hitting your mark takes a little practice to get down since there is little aim assist for you to use. Otherwise this game is fairly typical of the genre.

 

☼ Graphics: ☼
☐ Bad /☐ Alright / ☑ Good / ☐ Beautiful / ☐ Fantastic

The graphics are good enough. Strange Brigade is not going to blow you away by any means but it looks good enough that you won’t really notice either way. Characters are interesting enough to show off their personalities, of which they come with a lot of. Enemies are distinct and interesting as well, adding to the charm of the game and giving you a clue as to what you might be dealing with.

 

♬ Sound: ♬
☐ Bad /☐ Alright / ☐  Good / ☑ Beautiful / ☐ Fantastic

Sound design is very well done. Gunshots sound great and have a lot of impact. The voiceovers are wonderfully done and have a ton of personality. Enemies all have unique sound design as well, giving you another cue on what you’re dealing with.

 

☠ Difficulty: ☠
☐ Easy / ☑ Average / ☑ Hard / ☐ Unfair

As far as games go, this is your typical third-person shooting affair. Although, as I mentioned before, aiming takes some getting used to. Unlike other games of this genre, there isn’t a lot of aiming assist in this game so you have to learn how to be precise. It does make it all the more satisfying to pull off head shots though. The amount of enemies can get a little overwhelming as there can be a lot on the screen at once. Crowd control and using your environment will help out there.

 

§ Bugs §
☑ Nothing encountered / ☐ Few Bugs / ☐ You can use them for speedrun / ☐  Lots of bugs / ☐ Bugs destroy the game

I didn’t have any issues in my play through. It’s a pretty solid game.

 

☯ Story ☯
☐ There is none / ☐ Bad / ☑ Alright / ☐ Good / ☐ Fantastic

As a 1930’s pulp story, Strange Brigade has you exploring a lot of old ruins and trying to save the world from impending doom. The story is light but the game makes up for it with a lot of personality.

 

⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating / ☐  Sleepy / Relaxing / ☐ Boring / ☑ Fun / ☑ Challenging

There is a small learning curve to the game and it does get pretty challenging, you can easily get surrounded by enemies. Several different kinds of enemies can come at you at once and it’s up to you to figure how to deal with them. You can also use an ability that is unique to each character and is charged up as you defeat enemies. These abilities typically cause damage in the area around your character and are great for crowd control.

Using the environment is key to survival though. There are traps that can be set off on the enemy and you can use different areas on the map to give you the advantage (think high ground, etc). Having your friends play with you is also very beneficial. Expect a lot of puzzles and secrets in the environment as well.

There are three game modes, Campaign Mode, Horde Mode (has you fighting waves of increasingly stronger enemies), and Scored Attack (has you dealing with enemies quickly to stack up a score multiplier). All of which can be played either single-player or multi-player

 

۞ Game Length ۞
☑ 6 to 12 hours

Strange Brigade has a fairly typical length for this kind of genre. You can play the entire game by yourself but playing with friends could convince you to replay for quite some time. The amount of secrets within in the game also gives you a good reason to go back and find what you missed. Rebellion has been adding new content on a regular basis too and that’s a good incentive to come back.

 

$ Price / Quality $
☑ Full price / ☐ Wait for Sale / ☐ Don’t buy / ☐ Refund it if you can

Definitely worth the full price. Have a friend get a copy too.

 

::The Rundown::

Strange Brigade is a fun addition to the third person shooter genre. It has a style that really makes it stand out with lots of content and secrets to explore. While it can be played on your own, it really shines with the co-op feature. The shooting mechanics take a bit to get used to but that is mostly because it doesn’t assist your aim as much as other games do. Otherwise expect lots of charm and personality, something that is a very nice change from other similar games.

 

Publisher:
Rebellion Development
Developer:
Rebellion Development
Genre:
Third Person Shooter
Release Date:
August 28, 2018
Final Rating:
8.5


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Wreckfest Rundown [PC]

Ty Harvey 3 Comments
Wreckfest

Welcome to The Rundown; a new review format that we are going to be hosting here at PSX Extreme. The Rundown is intended to be our way of quickly expressing our opinions of a game in as few words as possible, effectively giving you the rundown of a game. Not all of our reviews will be provided in this format, and this format isn’t replacing our in-depth reviews that you’ve all grown to trust and love. We’re simply using this format to cover stuff we didn’t have time to cover previously, or stuff we just feel deserves a little bit of extra attention.

❤ Audience: ❤
☑ Beginner / ☑ Casual Gamer / ☑ Normal Gamer  / ☑ Expert / ☑ Everyone

It’s pretty much intended for everybody of all skill levels. If you like racing cars on off-road tracks, or if you enjoy the classic FlatOut games, Wreckfest is for you.

 

☼ Graphics: ☼
☐ Bad / Alright / Good / ☑ Beautiful / ☐ Fantastic

Graphically, the game is pretty, but not outstanding. It’s not Gran Turismo as far as graphics go, and that’s fine. The car models in particular are pretty top-notch, and the damage you can inflict upon your car is pretty much unparalleled.

 

♬ Sound: ♬
☐ Bad /☐ Alright / ☑ Good / ☐ Beautiful / ☐ Fantastic

It’s a racing game, so the vast majority of what you’re going to hear is that of the cars, and you colliding with other cars and/or the racetrack itself, which it does well enough. The soundtrack is also decent enough, and definitely gets your adrenaline pumping. Some of the engines sound a bit washed out, and colliding with certain track props (tires) don’t give off as much of an impact as I’d like. But overall, sound is good.

 

☠ Difficulty: ☠
☐ Easy / ☑ Average / ☑ Hard /☐ Unfair

This isn’t your typical track racer like Gran Turismo, nor is it your typical off-road like Dirt. It’s an arcade experience with pretty decent handling, as well as an AI that doesn’t give a damn if they crash into you or not. In fact, crashing is encouraged. The AI doesn’t cheat, and if you’re in the lead, you’ll typically stay in the lead so long as you don’t make any major mistakes, or wipe out. The handling might take some getting used to at first, especially if you’re coming from a more traditional sim-type racer. But after you familiarize yourself with it, you’ll be good to go, and ready to race the world.

 

§ Bugs §
 ☐ Nothing encountered / ☑ Few Bugs / ☐ You can use them for speedrun / ☐  Lots of bugs / ☐ Bugs destroy the game /

I’ve encountered only a handful of very minor bugs, though absolutely none of them prevented me from playing, or even finishing a single race.

 

☯ Story ☯
☑ There is none / ☐ Bad / ☐ Alright / ☐ Good / ☐ Fantastic

It’s a racing game. There’s no story. You just drive (and wreck) cars. I mean, sure. There’s a career mode, but we’re not counting that as a story.

 

⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating / ☐  Sleepy / Relaxing / ☐ Boring / ☑ Fun / ☑ Challenging

Wreckfest can best be described as a spiritual successor to the classic FlatOut series of arcade racing games. In fact, it plays so much like classic FlatOut 1 and 2, it may as well be considered the true FlatOut 3. While most games will punish or penalize you for ramming into other cars, Wreckfest encourages it. You can even bring your favourite ride into a destruction derby for further carnage.

 

۞ Game Length ۞
☑ Endless / No Length

There’s basically infinite replayability here.

 

$ Price / Quality $
☑ Full price / ☐ Wait for Sale / ☐ Don’t buy / ☐ Refund it if you can

This game is absolutely worth the full price.

 

::The Rundown::

Wreckfest is a fun festival of racing and wrecking, and boy does it do it well. You’ve got solid racing, decent track design, and an aggressive AI system that tries to wreck you. It’s basically the spiritual successor to the FlatOut games of old, and yes; it’ every bit as awesome.

 

Final Rating:
8.7


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