Recent reviews by Seagull

Alright fine, the game is baller.

But PLEASE give me a firearm. I'll settle for an FBC Firebreak operative with a Lewis Gun and a jetpack strapped to him - Hell, I wouldn't even turn my nose up at one of those sweet blue M14s that the NPCs are carrying.

I beg you Remedy, let me fill 5th Avenue Hiss with lead and my life is yours

HLL 1 did a great job at capturing how lame warfare was before Fortunate Son. I was not impressed by the first Hell Let Loose. The concept was there but actually playing the game wasn’t worth the effort.

HLL Vietnam is several notches above HLL. The gunplay is crisp, the maps are fun and the balance between factions feels good. If you’re hating on this release it’s most likely because you’re forced to move instead of sitting 300m away from a wide open capture point (every HLL 1 map) picking off platoons for 3 hours.

This war is a different beast, and it sounds like your pansy ass wasn’t made for the jungle.

Diamond in the rough. Short but packed with things to do if you want. Takes the core of what makes extraction shooters fun, simplifies it, removes BS, and adds surprisingly deep weapon mechanics to the mix. Stylistically a banger, just a shame that the devs cut it short in favor of making a new game.

Needs a core formula revamp badly.

Horizon is stuck in iterative design hell with little to no meaningful changes from previous titles beyond the base map and a handful of new cars. The map is great, miles better than Horizon 5, but other than customizable garages and minor tweaks here and there, it's the same exact experience as Horizon 3, 4 and 5.

Cool concept, quarter-baked delivery. It plays like a shallow bullet hell with shoehorned puzzles and occasional platforming. Your experience will be kicking open random objects in a room, moving to the next room to do the same thing, surviving a lockdown because you kicked too many things, then moving on to another room to kick more things.

The gameplay loop is just frustrating. Weapon durability (Including the "upgraded" weapons) isn't balanced to the onslaught of enemies you'll face, so you'll be relying on Q to spam kicks which, ha ha funny, you cant rebind. No settings really for anything tbh. FOV, graphics, keybinds, you're SOL on everything but audio sliders basically.

The overall takeaway is that the game feels like it has good direction on art and environment, but the actual gameplay itself was a complete afterthought. Excruciatingly mid, even for a ten dollar game.

I was late to the series starting with RE8, but this game's release forced me to go back and play RE2-4 to get caught up with the story. Not only was that something I should have done a long time ago, but it made me realize that Resident Evil might be one of the last long-running franchises that hasn't lost it's way by giving in to predatory AAA practices, or offering endless excuses for lackluster products/lazy development.

RE:Requiem stands as the result of true talent and reverence for it's predecessors amongst a sea of mediocrity.

It's 2025. Seamless open world isn't something that we've cared about really.... ever? There's not a single game in history that is held in high regards because it had a breathtaking lack of loading screens. You know why Borderlands 2 and 3 (to a degree) held such high interest over the years? Visual variety and engaging locations to visit. A cozy hubworld in BL3 that you could spend hours in before deciding which of the varied locations you'd test your new build in next. BL3's story pace and writing SUCKED, but the updates to gunplay, modernized systems and stunning locations kept you engaged. BL2 has awful feeling gunplay, but has build diversity, great story, and fun locations/characters to carry the weight.

What do we have in BL4 then? A passible story, baseline acceptable characters, forced social politics just for the sake of it, terrible performance, a hollow and massively underwhelming open world that no doubt took precedence over thoughtfully designed playspaces, and DLC's that had to be made into FREE UPDATES due to how lackluster they were. If you want to sum up the effort put into BL4 compared to previous titles, go look up Borderlands 3's Halloween update vs Borderlands 4's and tell me Gearbox gives a ♥♥♥♥ anymore.

Time and time again AAA devs are proving not only that they'll never learn, but never wanted to learn. They truly only care about chasing trends and maximizing profits instead of innovating and creating projects that they're passionate about. I promise you that it REALLY isn't hard to deliver a successful product when you stop prioritizing profit over everything else.

Peak.

To anyone that still has sympathy for this franchise, remember that the last original title and story in CoD was Infinite Warfare. That was 10 years ago. Activision is creatively bankrupt.

It's not perfect but it's really good so far. It feels a lot like Hardline when it came out. Not the greatest BF title ever, but fun to play. It's a step in the right direction that all AAA games should start going in. Back to what made them the franchises they are today, not pandering to streamers and short form clip farms. We'll see if that sentiment lasts through updates or not.

PTFO