Some Reviews Of A Few Games I've Never Played

One of the larger issues with being a games critic is having to devote time to sitting down and actually playing the games before you write about them. Finding the space in a busy work day of accepting bribes and secret meetings to decide industry biases is a nightmare, and anyway, you pretty much know what you think of a game from the box cover/Steam store page, right? Right. So let's stop pretending and get on with the sorts of straight-to-the-point honest reviews we're all really after.

Dark Souls 3

The Dark Souls games are famously about boss fights. These are large encounters with really angry monsters made of probably black ether and souls. To kill them you have to learn their patterns and then hit them with one or more swords, while dashing about quite a lot and explaining to other people on the internet that you found it disappointingly easy no matter how long it took. There are souls to collect, I'd imagine, and if you get enough of them you probably level up and get a better sword, or maybe a dash-based ability. The chances are there's no double-jump, however, and I find this to be a shame and has quite an impact on the score.

In between boss fights you most likely walk around grassy/gloomy paths while hitting other stuff with your sword, and I'm pretty sure I've seen that the menus are really dreary which isn't likely to add much to things. This is of course the fifth game in the series from from FromSoftware, following the previous two Dark Souls titles, plus the PlayStation's Beyond: Two Souls and the Amiga's Tower Of Souls, or possibly the Legacy Of Kain series?

Overall I have decided the games are probably a bit too hard, but not quite hard enough, and this third game is a disappointing but triumphant end to the trilogy that captures everything we've loved while failing to capture the best of the previous games.

7/10

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Having survived the plot of the previous Tomb Raider reboot (Lara, not me - I didn't survive that plot), our heroine must destroy another collection of roofs by falling through them, while struggling with her father issues. It's hard to say for sure, but I feel pretty convinced the camera will be endlessly taken away from you, and moments of freedom will be curtailed with cutscenes and obligatory tasks. Or not. Maybe they've improved things this time? Hang on, let me look at some more screenshots...

Oh, one of the screenshots has scores all over it, saying it's a 9.5/10. I was pretty certain on a 7/10, but hmmm. The graphics look like they're probably very good graphics, and I did like Tomb Raider Legend an awful lot. I don't want to cause a stir.

9.5/10

Call Of Duty: Black Ops III

Soldiers with guns?! Goodness me, and it's like really realistic but in the future with technology that they haven't had time to invent yet. Now, I've played a lot of the previous games in the series, and they've all been really remarkably terrible, but this one - I think this one is going to be the one. I've never played any of the multiplayer though, but the guy who cuts my hair is really into them and thinks they're brilliant for playing with your mates, so they've got to be pretty decent. Also, this series makes billions of dollars, and you can't be that successful unless there's something really good about it, obviously.

I imagine there are a whole load of new guns with gadgets on them, and probably a few bits where you control bombs from a suitcase thing, and then this man shouts at you and then you have to go through the door after they've opened it, and then shit, I dunno, a whole building collapses around you and there are helicopters. It sounds brilliant.

10/10

This post was originally published to the RPS Supporter Program.