So recently Lego release the amazing UCS BB-8 set (review coming soon) and much to my surprise, I come to find out that they also did an R2-D2 a few years ago.

How I missed that is still a mystery as I usually keep a finger on the pulse of Lego, but alas, it did not even appear as a blip on my radar.

So when I went to see if I could get my hands on one, sadly I come to find the typical Million % mark up on discontinued Lego sets.

After hearing about this company called Lepin, I did some research and found that they make all kinds of “Star Plan” sets, primarily all the old discontinued and a few MOC sets for a fraction of the cost of Lego.

So as my first toe in the pool of fake Lego bricks, I decided to snag a R2-D2 and see if it was worth it.

I was extremely skeptical to begin with, as I am not a huge fan of products from China, especially blatant knock-off like Lepin. So I found a cheap online seller through AliExpress (H & H was the company) and figured nothing ventured, nothing gained.

After a rather short wait (about 14 days) my brand new block-off R2-D2 arrived.

All Lepin sets come in original boxes, but 99% of the sellers out there just send the bags from the set and the instruction, to lower the shipping cost, if you search around you can find seller who have the original box too, but I hardly think the added expense is worth it.

Now one of the downsides in a sense is that the Lepin bags are not marked like the Lego counterparts, they are all just plain clear bags, so you are going to have to do a lot more searching for bricks, very much like the old days of Lego.

Some will love this (like myself) and other will hate this, especially on the bigger sets like the republic Cruiser (review coming soon)

All in all the set was very well constructed, the blocks fit almost exactly as Lego does, you may find the occasional brick that is looser than normal Lego, but this is usually an anomaly.

The colors are near identical as well from what I can tell.

The build itself is 100% identical to the Lego counterpart, pretty sure the instructions are ripped directly from their manual to be honest, and that is fine, let Lego perfect the design.

The R2 unit is very well build, the internal framework is solid, and he even has a cool mechanism to completely hid his middle leg.

Only complaint I have is around his “neck”, the blue flip out components do not sit right in the slots. Now I am not sure if this is a Lepin thing, or just simply an oversight on Lego’s part. But I had to slide a small piece of paper in the slits to make them even.

That was the only flaw I can recall, and ultimately, he is fine without a tweak, but if you are a little anal retentive like I am, then you may want to add the shim.

The last thing that is different is the sticker you get for the display plate.

As this is a Lepin set, they title they stuff accordingly and instead of the Star Wars label, you are given a sticker with Star Plan on it.

This did not sit well with me as I want these sets to look as if they are real Lego.

So I was able to track down a great company located here:

https://www.ultimatecollectorstickers.co.uk/

They are fantastic and able to provide “real” UCS stickers for pretty much any set out there.

Price is reasonable too and I snagged a whole pile from sets I intend to buy later on.

So now with R2-D2 complete I can safely assure you, Lepin is the real deal, they are not some cheap crap you will regret buying, they are the the closest thing you can get to Lego for 1/10th the cost of discontinued sets.

If you are looking to back fill your collection, give them a shot, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

A solid 9/10.

 

 

Being one of the few remaining MMO’s that are pay to play, FF14 has faced an uphill battle. From fans and critics, they catch a lot of flak for making their adoring fans pay $10+ a month for the pleasure of logging in to the fantasy world of Eorzea.

But never is it so readily apparent where those dollars go, then when you return to a game after a 2 year hiatus.

The last time I logged into FF14 in any serious capacity was back in Summer 2015, after 2 long months of playing the last expansion, Heavensward, and doing all the content it provided, I had my fill of my favorite online world.

I would dip a toe in the pool every couple months for their seasons events, for Christmas, Halloween and other timed events that provide vanity gear for an hour or so of play.

But I had forgone any of the additional story content they added in that time.

So, when I stepped back into Eorzea, I came to find I had a massive amount of content I needed to explore before I could even attempt Stormblood.

Thankfully I had planned for this by starting 1 month prior just in case, and man am I glad I did.

What I had waiting for me was easily 100 hours of content, with major patch 3.1 through 3.5 tons of things were added to the world.

2 whole new raids, one a typical 8 person ran and the other a massive 24 person dungeon raid.

So, I ground like crazy for 4 week and finished just in time for the release of Stormblood.

Day one of Stormblood was rough, really the whole first weekend. We had early access if you pre-order, and really, who is playing this game and not pre-ordering.

So after the first few hours sadly you got roadblocked by an instanced story mission, servers were overloaded and with 50k people all hammering on the same door, we had some major issues.

But by Sunday the congestion had passed for the most part, and we were all well on our way.

In addition to the 100+ hours of story missions and side mission, they added in 2 new jobs to the mix.

The ever popular Samurai and the FF staple Red Mage.

Now my main has been Bard since the begging of FF, and also as Ranger back in the FF11 days, so I had no intention at all of taking either job to level 70. I do have all the other main jobs up to 50 or 60, but really found little to no reason to pursue a new main or alt this late in the game.

Now something that needs to be said here before I go on, is that with the addition of Stormblood, they completely revamped all the existing jobs in the game. Taking away abilities, adding new ones, and adding in a sort of gauge to all jobs as well.

Unfortunately, this took my well loved Bard, and in my eyes really gimped my dps as well as my party helping abilities.

I no longer felt like a DPS / support class and just a arrow slinging monkey that barely scratch the things we were fighting.

So once I hit level 70 with Bard, I decided to fall back and see just what Red Mage was about.

I trotted into the Palace of the Dead to test drive the job, and was instantly in love.

RDM is fun and fast to play, you have to constantly keep an eye on things and keep a magic scale of white and dark in check to deal some devastating damage.

It is the most fun I have had with a job in years now.

So, I continued the main story with my Red Mage and have not looked back.

All in all, Stormblood’s story was a decent fantasy fare, heading a budding group of rebels you take back the lands in which many beloved NPC heroes you have fought alongside with lived before fleeing for their lives many years before.

We saw a completely new city state, very Samurai themed with Asian flavor abound. This is really the only thing I had an issue with, I personally did not find that Kugane fit into the FF world of fantasy. It was far too much like ancient China and not at all like a fantasy realm.

It was vastly different than any other area in FF, but it truly felt out of place in the world Square-Enix have created.

There was a large number of new areas to explore here as well, Kugane was one of the eastern cities, but they also added the entire realm of Ala Migho as well. Time was not exactly evenly split, with the vast majority of the adventure taking place overseas in the far east, you being charged with the job of getting the locals there to rebel against the empire and thus creating a distraction for your goings on in the west.

This set the stage for the whole adventure, meeting new friends and allies and nefarious enemies along the way.

All in all it was a great expansion, if you are in any way a Final Fantasy 14 fan, you likely already own the pack.

It did not add any significant advancements in terms of tech like the last DX10 addition with Heavensward, but it is more of the same great stuff we all come to love in the franchise.

A solid 9/10.

So as of late I have been on a real Star Wars Lego kick. When SW: Episode 1 came out way back in 1999 Lego launched their Star Wars line I was all in, I had every set Lego made from 1999 to 2004.

But with space constraints and the overload Lego was going through with new sets, I just had to call it quits with the playsets and stick with just UCS sets as it was getting way to financially demanding.

I then stopped collecting in 2013 completely and actually sold almost my whole UCS collection.

But recently my old obsession came bag like gangbusters.

It all began anew when Lego announced they would be re-releasing, or I should say rebooting the amazing UCS Millennium Falcon. A ship I had sold many moons ago (and regret still to this day) as I was moving and no longer had the space to put it. I fully intend to snag the new one (when Lego finally has stock again)

When the new Falcon was released, and I could not get one from Lego due to supply shortages, I stumbled upon a forum post about something I had never seen before. Chinese Lego knock-offs from a company called Lepin.

Now I was skeptical as hell, China has not been know for making stellar products, especially those knicked from other companies.

So I headed over to AliExpress and checked out what was available and I was blown away. All the ships I had sold, that were now in the thousands to purchase again used, were here in block-off form for 1/10th the cost.

How could this be? How could I get a Lepin replica of my old 10179 USC Falcon for only $175 instead of over $3000.

The more I looked the most I was floored, all my beloved ships were here, for $50 to $200.

Yet still I was skeptical, “This cannot be good quality bricks” I thought. So, in the name of science, I decided to take a small gamble and pick up a couple smaller sets (UCS R2-D2 and a MOC of the Medical Frigate, a set Lego never released) first and if it worked out well, start to snag a pile of old faves.

After about a week wait (which is insanely fast for China to Canada mail) I received my sets.

I was stunned to find the quality was 98% indistinguishable from Lego. Short of a couple brick that were a little loose, these sets were damn near perfect.

Sitting side by side on a shelf you would never know these sets are not the real deal.

I will be posting reviews of all these recent acquisitions (Lepin and true Lego) in the next few week as I have just finished assembling them all.

But I can tell you all this, do not hesitate to buy Lepin to back fill your collection, this stuff is well worth the price they charge, and a very welcome to a life long Lego collectors collection.

So stay tuned!

So I was a little cautious going into Farpoint.

While shooters are typically one of my favorite genres, and I do love me some VR, the marrying of the two has not really been successful thus far.

With a lot of experiences falling flat, or offering gimmicky stand still and shoot experiences, Farpoint is a really big breath of fresh alien air.

The set up is right out of most sci-fi novels, stranded on a alien world, you have to find a way home.

Now I will not spoil anything here, but the game has a fantastic and unpredictable narrative. Again, something I have not really come to expect in VR. Thus far the experiences have all been pretty holo. Thus is often the case with indie developer. While they have a great idea for gameplay, most of the really suck at any form of cohesive narrative.

And that is where Farpoint really shines here.

As you traverse this distant world, you are finding holographic breadcrumbs of the people you are searching for.

I really can’t say much more without spoiling things. So I will leave the plot up to you to discover.

But I can tell you, it is worth the price of admission. (Still better than the last 3 “Alien” movies)

I picked up the much sought after Aim controller bundle, which really is the second biggest highlight of the game.

They put some serious R&D into this controller. It works perfectly and feels amazing. The on screen characters hands are directly where you are holding the controller. And this really helps immerse you in the world.

You will have 5 different guns throughout the game, and they all feel really well designed and a lot of though was put into their use with the aim controller.

You will shoulder your sniper rifle and match up targets in the scope. Shoot a shotgun from the hip, and aim down the holographic site on your assault rifle. All feeling very different but all feel incredibly natural.

I found myself closing one eye to aim with the sniper rifle. This just happened subconsciously and I didn’t really notice for about half the game.

The graphics are pretty top notch for VR as well. Most games still have some anti-aisling issues, and there are here too, but in much diminished capacity. VR games still have a tendency to look a little last gen, or early PS4, but Farpoint does add a lot of polish that many others have not.

If I had anything negative to say it would sadly be about the length of the core game itself.

I finished up in just under 5 hours and that time just flew by.

That being said there is a challenge mode that is hard as nails to master, and a option to play the game in co-op with another PSVR player.

A nice inclusion in this sea of single player experiences.

My big hope at this point is that we see much more of the Aim controller. It is so well thought out I have to have faith this will not be the only real game to support it.

I know there is a couple other games rumored to include it, like Arizona Sunshine (a zombie killing game) and one other title that eludes me right now.

Also there is a small rumor starting to circulate that we may see No Mans Sky with VR and Aim support, that could be a real treat.

With E3 in just 2 weeks time I imagine we will see a lot more of VR and hopefully announcements for the Aim.

A solid 8/10 and a must have for shooter fans, this is the VR shooter you have been waiting for.

So I am in the midst of a VR play-a-thon, you will be getting some new reviews soon for RE7, The Assembly and Farpoint, but first, we have a cool little VR game called Statik by Tarsier Studios.

The premise is simple. Solve the puzzle on your hands, both of which are trapping in a box and can be manipulated as such by twisting and turning the DS4 controller.

Sounds simple?

Well here’s the catch, there are zero instructions on how to solve the puzzle, it is a completely out of the box thinking game (pun intended)

There is a small group of puzzles, only 8, and each is successively more difficult, and each one is completely unique, so do not think just because you aced puzzle 3 you will rock puzzle 4 as all you have learned is tossed out the window with each room.

The plot unfortunately is pretty thin, and all in all makes very little sense when all told.

The game pulls from other projects like Portal, but ultimately falls short on the charm of a game like portal.

The puzzles are the strong point at least and can honestly carry the game even if you play for story (like I do)

But also, I am a puzzle fanatic, not just games, but everything from physical puzzles, to word puzzles and even jigsaws, so something like this fits right up my alley in terms of challenge.

That being said, short of 1 puzzle I breezed through all of them with not to much difficulty at all. But your mileage will vary completely based on your cognitive processing for 3d puzzles. If this is your strong suit, don’t expect to get much more than a couple hours out of the game like I did.

Other than trophy farming you will have zero reason to play Statik a second time. There is a trophy for speed and once you know the solutions, you could easily blow this away in 30 mins or less.

All in all a fun game to blow an afternoon with, but sadly a lot of potential for a great narrative was squandered.

A solid 7/10, but only for those of you who love puzzles.

So after 90hrs of Mass Effect, and another 60+ hours in Destiny, I have decided to go into a VR mode for a while and blow through a few shorter games.

First on that List was Eagle Flight by UbiSoft.

Now UbiSoft has always marched to the beat of their own drum, be that good or bad, they are one of the few publishers out there who really feel comfortable with new IPs and have no problem taking chances on oddball titles from time to time.

On of those games is Eagle Flight.

It came out last year in the release window of the PSVR and Ubi took a real chance releasing a game like this for a completely untested and budding hardware platform.

But that bet paid off, with a decent sell through of about 130k, that is more than 10% of PSVR owners who have picked up the game. A heck of a lot better than most new IPs attach at.

The game itself is set in a fictional future Paris. There is no real timeline as to when things are set, or what caused the earth to be without humans, but there are some subtle hints for those digging.

I will get back to a theory I have about the world at then end of this review, it will be a minor spoil, so be warned.

The game itself is in my opinion one of the best uses of the PSVR to date. The tracking and movement system are phenomenal.You use you head as your only means of control, looking left and right you slowly turn in that direction, while tilting your head slightly left or right gives you a tight turn.

This system works unbelievably well and is incredibly intuitive. Within minutes of putting on the PSVR headset you will be soaring through broken buildings, across the water, through sewers and cave with pin point accuracy.

It feels very natural to use your head in this way, and your mind very easily accepts the control scheme.

The controller itself is used for small bursts of speed, to “eagle cry” which is used to shoot down other birds, a shield button and once the game is finished, the O button become a direction lock, so you can look around why flying over the city, making it much easier to find the collectibles in the game.

One downside I did find though, is that for the first time ever in VR I had a major VR hangover.

For about an hour after playing my head was swooning. If I tilted my head at all my brain kinda went a little sideways.

I think this has a lot to do with the turn scheme in the game. You mind is tricked into thinking when you tilt your head your vision is going to pan left and right, but when you come back to reality the mind does not know the difference, so it still presumes you are going to shift vision left and right.

So if you are sensitive to VR in any way, this game may not be for you. I have very very strong VR legs and literally nothing in VR bothers me, and really, it was not the playing that was the problem.

Fingers crossed this is but a hiccup and not something that is going to happen more often.

The world itself is very well crafted and has a bit of a cartoony look to it. There are no super high res textures, but everything looks just detailed enough to make you believe it.

The city is covered in years of growth, with bears, wolves, elephant and giraffes now roaming the streets.

** Spoilers coming (for Eagle Flight and Assassin’s Creed) **

It is my belief that this word and the Assassin’s Creed universe are one and the same.

We know at the end of AC3 that Desmond freed Juno onto the world, and that she is hell bent on destroying humanity.

Well I am pretty sure this is the fallout for future AC events.

In one area of the city you actually find a crashed Satellite. I scoured it the best I could for some sign of it being from Abstergo, but flying past I could not find any markings.

But with the constant talk about the Abstergo satellites that were to be launched, it is kind of a cheeky tie in.

No clue f this will play out in future AC games, but I would not be surprised if we find there are ties to the franchise in a sequel maybe.

** Spoilers Finished **

All in all Eagle Flight is one of the most enjoyable VR experiences I have had (outside of porn, hahaha) But in all seriousness, Ubi has really done an amazing job with this game, it is fun, very accessible to new comers, and offers a TON of replay-ability.

There are timed challenges for all missions, and you get a up to a 3 star rating for each mission, with over 125 stars to collect, each unlocking more difficult challenge modes.

There is 25 story missions that ultimately unlock all districts of the city.

On top of all that there is a ton of collectibles, each one has 15-35 feathers to find hidden all over the place, and fish to catch down by the water.

And as if that was not enough, there is a full on 3v3 multiplayer component, that plays out like a capture the flag type mode.

All in all one fantastic game package and a very welcome addition to VR.

A solid 8.5 / 10 and highly recommended to all PSVR owners (unless you are very VR sensitive)

So Feb 28th I picked up Horizon:Zero Dawn, and this review should in all fairness be about Horizon.

I had no intention of grabbing Zelda on release day, I was going to play through Horizon, then move on to Mass Effect in mid March.

Well with all the hype floating around for Zelda and the Switch, I got caught up. I have been a Zelda fan for over 30 years now. Played every game they made except for 2, Minish Cap and the original Gameboy version.

So it is no big surprise that the hype washed over me and I caved and bought Zelda, and put down the PS4 controller, blew the dust off my WiiU (fought the urge to get a Switch, more in a separate post) and ended up playing through close to 50 hours of Breath of the Wild.

Completed 60 shrines, the 4 dungeons, acquired 23 hearts, and never once upgraded stamina.

Now maybe I did myself a major disservice by playing Horizon first, because what it showed me is a very stark contrast of how poorly made Zelda is compared to Horizon.

Now I am not going to spend this review comparing the 2, that will be coming in a future post once I finish up Horizon, I am still about 15 hrs in and that is not close to finished.

But what  I expected out of Zelda, and what I got were two terribly different things, and frankly, I blame the media outlets that truly did not rate Zelda fairly.

We have all been starved for a large scale Zelda game for the better part of 20 years, since Ocarina of Time came out in 1998.

And I think that a lot of media outlets were blinded by the concept of Breath of the Wild, and overlooked many many flaws because of Zelda fanyboyism.

The vast majority of media gave it a 10/10. Which in my mind means perfect, would not change a single thing.

This means a good story, a great interface, amazing controls, a game that is fun, a game that is devoid of technical problems. All these things have to come together in perfect harmony to be a 10/10.

Zelda is just not that game.

It is a complete from the ground up new game. Gone are all the familiar things that has made Zelda great in the past. The next weapon or gadget waiting for you in the next dungeon, that is not here at all. Piles of dungeons with small keys and a boss key. Nope.

Hook shot? Nope, Functional boomerang? Nope. Gloves of strength? Nope. And no to everything else except for bombs and a bow. Both of which you acquire in the first 30 mins of starting the game.

You got to a few small tutorial shrines, gain your 4 abilities, and that is it, you now have every skill you need to go beat the game. And some folks have, the current speed run time is just under an hour.

What this has done though, is completely remove the sense of wonder that Zelda from days gone by had, that drive to find the next dungeon and see what cool tools you would get, all gone in the first hour.

All the shrines outside the initial few are optional, even the games paltry 4 “dungeons” are optional. Everything in this game is option, including enjoyment sadly.

Nintendo spent so much times finding out if they could make a Zelda to this scale, instead of asking if they should.

The world is vast, almost insurmountably so. You can literally climb almost every single surface in the game. See a peak in the distance, want to go see what is at the top, you can do it.

But here is the kicker, after climbing my 10th peak I came to find that there is nothing there. The world itself is terribly barren, for a game so large it would be impossible to fill. Sure you may find a pocket of enemies, but after your 20th moblin kill, it starts to get stale.

There is not a lot of variety here in terms of things you are going to kill, or see for that matter.

In order to get a game of this size to function mostly well on the WiiU and the Switch, major sacrifices had to be made. Primarily in the graphics department. I am just going to come out and say it, this game is UGLY, we are talking last gen ugly, marginally better than Skyward Sword.

That is tragic, because Nintendo sold us a pile of snake oil in 2011 when they showed us just how amazing the WiiU Zelda game could look:

Fast forward to E3 2014 and we get the first official unveiling of Breath of the Wild. It is cell shaded, but it looks amazing, crisp, alive, vast.

Then pictured right below, is what we got in the final product:

Bland, blurry, lifeless and boring. Sure it is big, but at what cost?

The pulled the wool over all our eyes, and all the fanboys tout it as being the best game ever created.

The textures in this game reek of 2010, they are muddy, they repeat on single objects, they just look awful up close.

I know graphics are not the measure of a game, but they help sell the realism and experience. If the view from the top of the mountain is breathtaking, I will climb it, instead it is just washed out haze and some peaks in the distance.

Pretty tragic to see what could have been and what is…

Next is the performance, I could have even cut Nintendo a bit of slack if the poor graphics were to bump up performance, but they are not, the game on WiiU has a pile of frame rate issue, Nintendo used a weird frame locking system to make for some fake stability.

If the frame rate drops below the 30fps mark at all, so even to 29 frame, it immediately sets it to 20 fps. So where a little hiccup may not have been to noticeable, suddenly the game is chugging horribly.

Again, could have maybe forgiven this if they Switch version was the tech target and ran smooth, but it suffers from the exact same issues when it is docked and performing at 900p (why no 1080p Ninty!!!! this is 2017 not 2010!!!!!)

So there is zero reason in my eyes to upgrade to the Switch if your motivation is Zelda. As they both perform just as badly, and look near identical.

Then we have the interface, in the beginning this game was WiiU only, and the entire game was build around the WiiU gamepad, the Shieka Slate in the game is pretty close to looking like a stone WiiU gamepad even.

The entire inventory system, the games map, and many other motion controlled systems were all going to tie into the gamepad.

Then we get the announcement for the Switch, and we come to find that all of this functionality was scrapped last year because the Switch has no touch pad to use, so they gutted the game we saw yet again, all in the name of trying to make sure that the last gen version of the game was not superior to the Switch version, because frankly, why would I be motivated to buy a Switch if the WiiU has the best Zelda version and not vice versa.

Lastly we have the combat system.

BoTW is a hard game, and I love hard games, I am an avid “Souls” fan and Nioh was my kinda of punishing fun.

So finding out Zelda was kind of a “Souls” lite got me pretty excited.

It is a hard game, but not completely by design, actually due to lack of design.

The combat is well thought out, holding the ZL button allows you to lock onto an enemy, a very important aspect of the game, as you can only block when locked, and there is also a very cool dodge mechanic, that when a perfectly timed dodge will allow you to use a flurry of attacks in slow motion to take a major chunk of hp off a boss or enemy.

The problem is though, that the lock is not well designed. Literally dozens of times I have died when the system in place failed.

I would be locked onto an enemy, and it would jump back too far, or out of line of site, this immediately breaks the lock, and the problem here is say you were pressing left at the time, to strafe around for a better place to attack.

Well now that the lock is off, you are running left, the camera auto swings behind you, and you have completely lost sight of the target.

You now have to re-position the camera, turn Link to face the enemy, then hit ZL again and hope they are close enough to re-establish a lock. Typically by now the enemy is already on top of you and has got in a hit or two.

Now if this was any other Zelda game, no biggie, i may lose 1-2 hearts, but again, BoTW is “Souls” lite, so a boss can kill in you in 1-2 hits sometimes if you do not have a pile of hearts accumulated.

This is a huge frustration, so many deaths happened beauce of this I lost count. So it is not a isolated incident.

And God forbid there is more than one enemy (like in a few of the final fights) where a mini boss will jump back, break lock, and when you hit ZL again, you get a low level minion, thus leaving you wide open for the boss attacks.

Now any of these things on their own would not be too terrible, but when added all up, it is a tragedy, to see what could have been such an amazing game reduced to simply average.

It is not a 10/10, not by a country mile.

Was it a fun game? Sure, for the most part. And all things considered, it was pretty much the best Zelda game ever made.

But when you look at it objectively, when you remove Link, Zelda and Ganon from the game, you have to ask, is this a game that anyone would play?

And the answer is no, or at the very least it would have been heavily panned by the media.

What you are left with is a game that looks like it should be on the PS3, with controls that feel like they belong in that era too. A vast world of nothingness. I guess bigger is not always better.

I think the defining moment for me was about 10 hours in, when I had scaled my last mountain to nothing, that I realized, I would much rather be playing Horizon right now.

That is pretty telling.

Likely a must have for Zelda fans, but a paltry sand box game at best. And if not for the nostalgia, this game would be a solid 5/10.

A meager 7/10 (what it seriously should have been rated by most)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So after coming down from the high that was Nioh, I decided to dive right back into some sword swinging action with For Honor.

I was looking for something short to play to kill some time before Horizon: Zero Dawn arrives next Tuesday.

What I ended up with sadly was a major disappointment and still 3 days left to kill.

I am a rather big fan of Ubisoft, there are very few titles of theirs that I don’t play, and I know a lot of gamers take issue with them and their annual AC releases, and other misses like Watchdogs 1 (which I think I am the only person who liked it)

So snagging For Honor was kind of a no brainer as I can typically find some merit in most of their stuff.

Sadly though there was little merit to find in For Honor.

Ubisoft has this weird ability to come up with an awesome concept, and then just drop the ball in the  execution. Then they come back in 5 years (ala Watchdogs 2) and knock it out of the park.

For Honor feels like one of those games.

While the concept is amazing, real sword dueling simulation, in a very new intuitive way. What you get though is buggy and laggy controls that make for a very frustrating experience.

The combat works in kind of a rock, paper, scissor fashion. Where you have 3 stances, weapon to the left, right and top, and based on where you hold your sword, you attack, or parry. Not too dissimilar to Nioh, just with much worse execution.

This is the real downfall of For Honor, the controls are meant to be fast, as opponents strike quickly with hits from all 3 angles, and block you accordingly, but what happens is that when an opponent gets on a roll, they are much faster than can be blocked. This does not mean their attacks are unblockable, but if you miss that first parry, you can be struck 4-5 times in a row, often ending in a pretty weak death if you have 75% hp or less.

One saving grace is at least the reloads are fast, but they can be frustrating in some levels. You have checkpoints and some of them can be a bit of a ways out from the boss fight you were just doing, so dying gets to be a bit tedious.

Now I tend to play all my games on the hardest setting available, which in this case is Realistic. Now while not insurmountably hard, the biggest pain with this setting is there are zero checkpoints, so if you die, you go all the way back to the start of the level.

This is pretty rough, I ended up taking the difficulty down to just hard after the 10th death on the 1st level boss, and having to redo the 15 min mission to get back to him again.

There also appears to be a huge disparity in difficulty levels.

I had some crashing issues on the last level, where I was 3/4 done and the game just crashes and sends you back to the PS4 menu, thus having to start the mission 100% over, checkpoints are not saved if you close the game.

So in getting tired of redoing things on hard, I dropped it to normal out of sheer frustration.

Well the difference here is normal proves little to no challenge at all. Where an enemy could hit you for 1/4 of your HP in hard, they now take of maybe 1/10 max. And the AI goes out the window, with most enemies just standing there waiting for you to hit them.

So if you want any semblance of challenge, definitely go Hard mode, the difficulty is a huge jump from Normal. I also recommend turning off the indicator on where an enemy is holding his sword and attacking from, this added a lot to the experience as well, forcing you to pay attention to their movements and hand position, just another way to make things a bit more fun and challenging.

The game itself looked absolutely stunning on the PS4 Pro, things are crisp and clear and there is a ton of detail in the environment.

Sound was decent, but the voice acting for some character seems phoned in, particularly the female Viking, it really sounded like her first time voice acting and really took away from the experience. It was almost comical how bad it was.

The story itself topped out at OK. Nothing to write home about, and it was pretty predictable all told. The main villain seemed a bit too cliche, acting as a female Ares, a goddess of War.

Story mode came in at 7h 32min to beat, which is pretty dang short.

I know the reasoning behind this was because they focused heavily on the multiplayer aspect, something of which I cannot comment as I avoided it 100%

I have read nothing but bad things about it, and decided to skip it entirely.

From server issues, to really lousy sportsmanship, to just plain crappy tactics, what could have been a truly outstanding multiplayer game, becomes a real lousy experience all around.

Speaking of server issues, something to note.

Do not put your console to sleep in the middle of a mission.

The single player game for some ungodly reason requires a connection to Ubisoft’s servers as well. So the moment it interrupted, you will be kicked out of your story chapter back to the main menu.

If you sleep the console, this happens automatically and you will have to start the chapter over from scratch. So try and quit once you finish a mission.

The chapters themselves are not terribly long, most are 10-15 mins each. There is a total of 18 chapters, 6 per faction, Knights, Vikings and Samurai. There are a couple though that push the 45 min to an hour mark, so just be wary you could be set back should you have to leave suddenly.

All in all a rather disappointing game, that we will hopefully see an amazing sequel to in the years to come.

But for now, I would suggest passing on For Honor, or the very least wait til it hits the bargain bin.

A thoroughly mediocre 6/10