Recent reviews by hyundaipeek leoS

Preparing for real life. :)))

Retarded game. xD

Better than P.U.B.G.

After 50 hours, The Crew 2 has left me with a lot of wonderful memories. They aren't filled with the kind of emergent stories you get from exploring an open world and its systems, nor are they moments that involve goofing around with strangers--The Crew 2 is lacking in both those aspects. Instead, my memories are filled with the game's variety of vehicular activities and the wonderfully curated tracks: the unrealistic, the impossible, and the delightful.

It's surprising to see just how much The Crew 2 differs from the original game. There's been a noticeable shift in Ubisoft’s last few open-world titles, one that's moving toward a focus on player-driven progression--large selections of optional activities, non-linear structures, rewards for doing just about anything--and The Crew 2 benefits significantly from this direction. The gritty crime angle from the original game is gone, and instead, The Crew 2 takes reams of pages from the book of Forza Horizon. The game centers on a nationwide festival of motorsports where you, a rookie, are poised to become the next big star. While the setup is conventional, and the focus on social media fame is obnoxious, what it brings to the game is a colorful and upbeat vibe, an impressive variety of different disciplines, and positively ridiculous arcade driving on land, water, and through the air.

Despite the game's focus on real-world branding and mimicry of televised motorsports, The Crew 2's greatest asset is its willingness to be ridiculous. Races in The Crew 2 might involve jumping your street-racing car off skyscrapers, or your powerboat off the Hoover Dam. They might include making high-speed touring cars go head to head through the tight, windy Hollywood Hills, and motocross bikes take jumps across shipping freighters and freeways right before you transform into a prop plane like some kind of extreme-sports mecha. This is a game that will cover Los Angeles in three feet of snow for no logical reason other than icy roads make for more thrilling street races. Abundant nitro boosts, uncomplicated drifting, and generous rubber-banding also help keep the act of driving exciting when things are relatively tame.

As a game with an open world, races and challenges can naturally be found and initiated when you stumble across them at particular points on the map. However, playing The Crew 2 with open-world exploration as your primary means of moving from activity to activity reveals the game's major downfall: it's too big, and all the activities and interesting locations are too spread out. The game hides a number of boxes with vehicle components across the map, which you can hunt for using a proximity tracker, but even these feel too few and far between.

But with that in mind, The Crew 2 thankfully makes it easy to cut your commute down via player-friendly shortcuts. The game has an option to view all 120+ primary activities and countless more skill challenges (featuring things like escapes, slaloms, and a rewarding photo mode) in a categorized, list-style view, with the option to not just set a waypoint to them, but instantly start them no matter where you are in the world, at no cost. The loading times in The Crew 2 are impressively brief all around, so if you want to, you can churn through races and challenges back-to-back to very quickly and efficiently rack up progression points, earn cash, and set leaderboard positions from the moment you start.

It's an option that's both convenient and gives the impression that the game is conscious of your time. Likewise, any activity can be restarted or aborted in seconds if you're having a bad run, and there's a quick back-on-track feature that can be used any time. When you're not in an event you can switch to any vehicle you own immediately, without penalty, and without having to go anywhere. That's on top of being able to assign a favorite ground vehicle, boat, and plane to your right analog stick to allow for instantaneous switching during free-roam exploration, which provides its own kind of fun, for example, flying into the stratosphere with your plane before switching to a boat and careening back to Earth. Any vehicle that's available for sale is also graciously available for you to test drive on a moment's notice.

The variety of different vehicular disciplines in The Crew 2 is downright impressive--each of the 14 styles is tangibly unique from one another. Every time I started to get fatigued with one method of competition, I could quickly jump to another that had a completely different feel. Each is housed within one of four "Families" which you're free to move between to perpetuate your overall progress: Street (street racing, drifting, drag racing, long-distance hypercar racing), Offroad (cross-country rally raid, motocross, loose-surface rallycross), Freestyle (plane aerobatics, jet sprint boating, monster trucking), and Pro (power boating, air racing, touring cars, and grand prix).

While the execution of The Crew 2's disciplines might not wholly satisfy purists of any one given style, it does a great job of making each feel accessible, fun, and unique. I'm usually too intimidated by grand prix racing to give it a shot in other games, and I would never have even considered the idea of playing a power boating game. But, the Crew 2 encourages you to try a little bit of everything, and it's easy thanks to the game's approachable arcade-style mechanics, as well as the prospects of seeing more beautiful and ludicrous tracks.

And whether you're driving, boating, or flying across The Crew 2's America, it's a mostly beautiful journey. The game's natural environments, particularly bodies of water and the sky, look fantastic, as do weather effects like snow and rain. All are enhanced to breathtaking heights by the superb lighting, though the continuous day/night and weather cycle can be an occasional inconvenience during some events--whether it be afternoon sun in your eyes, snow obscuring track obstacles, or having to fly through a tight canyon in complete darkness. Where the visuals visibly falter are in dense urban areas. You likely won't notice buildings when you're zooming past them at 200km/h, but any slower and you can't help but notice how plain they are, especially in broad daylight with clear skies. Character models, on the other hand, always look incredibly basic, no matter the situation.

The game's RPG-style vehicle upgrade system returns from the original game, though it still doesn't feel particularly meaningful. You'll receive loot after every race in various stages of rarity (common, uncommon, rare, epic), and each corresponds to a particular vehicle part and has its own power number, which contributes to your vehicle's overall power number. There is some small benefit to this system--all vehicles of a particular class, despite having different power levels in their stock configuration, will max out at the same number, meaning you can stick with your favorite car all the way up to and through the endgame.

I'm annoyed by the game's lack of public interaction and meaningless gear system, but I'll fondly recall both the tension of flinging sprint boats back and forth through the narrow, artificial canals of The Venetian in Las Vegas, and the easygoing satisfaction of an hour-long hypercar race from New York to San Francisco, where I listened to a podcast and enjoyed the rolling scenery. Despite its shortcomings, The Crew 2 still displays admirable strengths, which lie in its player-friendly features, freedom of movement, and its willingness to bend the rules in order to make things exciting and varied for an accessible, American-themed thrillride.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is that rare thing, a strong sim tethered to a strong game. Where other vehicle-obsessed devs seem to take player motivation for granted, Czech studio SCS understand that a pleasingly modelled steed needs a pleasingly modelled environment to shine.

On this occasion that environment is a swathe of Europe stretching from Plymouth in the west to Wroclaw in the east, from Aberdeen in the north to Milan in the South. The tangle of motorways and major roads is stylised and condensed, but feels massive. After a splendid week of non-stop trucking the stats screen tells me I've still only seen 50% of it.

There's satisfaction in exploring new routes, seeing new golden been-there-done-that squiggles appearing on the in-game map, but it tends to be the promise of cold, hard cash that gets you out of bed in the morning. Like Farming Simulator, ETS2 has a simple yet resonant economic sandbox at its centre.

You start as a low-skilled, truckless lorry jockey, forced to take work from established haulage companies. Slowly (or rapidly if you go to a bank) you amass the funds to buy your first rig and rent your first yard. Then the fun really begins. Contract perusing, truck pimping, skill upgrading, driver hiring... this is Eddie Stobart: The Game in all but name.

Spending 90 minutes ferrying a tank of propane from Sheffield to Prague could (should?) be tedious. The fact that it isn't is largely down to good-if-not-quite-OMSI-standard physics, and varied road layouts and scenery. Periods of smooth, almost soporific motorway motoring nestle between passages of edgier wheelwork. One minute you're cruising along contemplating the sunset over the central reservation, the next you're on a rain-lashed country road at night, waiting for the right moment to pass a painfully slow pantechnicon. Tiredness can't kill in ETS2, but it can leave you jack-knifed in a ditch, feeling awful with a substantial repair bill to pay.

Death is a great teacher. Failure in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is, as it always has been for this series, the greatest way to learn where you should have gone, what you shouldn't have done, and how you could have done better. Counter-Strike players spend a lot of time learning -- consequently, they are always getting better.

Growth is an important factor in Global Offensive, especially if you're coming into Counter-Strike fresh or after a sabbatical. This is an extremely hardcore, skill-based first-person shooter, and it forces you to think differently than other modern shooters. If you’re a Call of Duty player, you’re going to need to change your play style to succeed here. Counter-Strike also tries developing into something new here as well, despite doing little to push itself beyond what it’s always done best. Global Offensive modifies old maps to keep veterans on their toes, and introduces official new modes that encourage different play styles for the first time in almost 15 years.

For the uninitiated, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a small-scale, team-based first-person shooter with permanent death. When a counter-terrorist kills a terrorist planting explosives in a classic Defusal match, or a CT escort swallows a sniper round in Hostage Rescue, the victim is dead for good and doesn't respawn until the next round. As such, players on both sides must exercise skill and care. The bomb objective, meanwhile, gives everyone a purpose. Of course matches end when everyone on a team is dead, but a clever and coordinated terrorist team will give the CTs the slip, plant their bomb, and protect the bomb site. Between rounds, everyone spends earned cash on better gear and guns, and the cycle continues.

Pieces of the Counter-Strike formula are dated at this point, but the superb heart and soul of Global Offensive is timeless. Teams are small, guns are lethal, and rounds are short. There's an addictive just-one-more-round quality to it, because there's a constant desire to do better than last time, to earn a satisfying kill, or to win in a new way. Call of Duty and Battlefield vets will wonder why they can't sprint to escape enemy fire or look down the iron sights to improve aim; Counter-Strike players will feel like they walked into their redecorated home. Certain map redesigns will catch hardcore fans off guard, but the changes are for the best -- the underpass choke point in de_dust, for instance, has a new escape route.

Even in the face of genre evolution, Global Offensive doesn’t care to adapt. CSGO is so dedicated to Counter-Strike's aging ideals despite market and trend changes that it brute-forces its way to success. Part of what makes it such an engaging competitive game is that killing in Global Offensive requires a wholly different skill set than other shooters. Everyone is limited to what they have and can see, with little room for character modification or on-the-fly advantages. Running and gunning is a useless play style, even if you've bought a helmet and kevlar that round, to the point that someone standing still is more likely to score the kill. Walking, crouching, or standing are your best bets to reduce the inaccurate spray of machine-gun fire.

Consequently, killing in Global Offensive feels good. There's a sickening sensation to dropping someone dead because you know they're not coming back. It's also satisfying knowing you used limited resources to play smarter than your victim. If players aren't watching corners, providing covering fire, or using smoke grenades and flashbangs, they're more likely to take a headshot from a more delicate and patient triggerman. The desire to experience that distinct feeling is a strong motivator to keep playing, even when you're getting steamrolled by an obviously better team.

If you've played Counter-Strike before, Global Offensive probably sounds a whole lot like Counter-Strike. Like Counter-Strike: Source before it, Global Offensive exists simply to modernize the look of the classic competitive shooter, while doing little to disrupt the core form and function. At the same time, it does enough to color outside the lines of tradition to justify your time and effort.

Fire is one of the most interesting new combat variables. Molotov cocktails and incendiary grenades either roast groups of guys or force them in another direction. Flames are a useful distraction or scare tactic, too. They're particularly useful during Demolition matches, which focus the fight at a single bomb site rather than giving terrorists two to pick between. The new and modified maps in this mode aren't as big as classic Counter-Strike arenas – entire sections have been cut off to direct teams toward a central location – but their thoughtful design is as intricate as ever. The Lake map is a standout -- there's a wide open yet densely populated yard around the bomb site, which is inside a sizable lakeside home with plenty of vantage points and hiding spots. To separate Demolition from Defusal, players can't buy between rounds. Instead, it takes a cue from the other new mode, Arms Race, in which each kill unlocks another weapon instantly. The better you do, the more you have to switch up the way you play, and because Demolition is so fast you'll need to be quick on your feet.

Unlike other game types, Arms Race allows for respawns. It's the most chaotic and care-free mode in Global Offensive, with players throwing caution to the wind for the sake of climbing the kill ladder as quickly as possible. It's a shame there are only two maps in Arms Race -- a problem that will more likely persist on consoles than PC.

If you have the option, playing the PC version is unquestionably the best way to experience Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Mods, mouse and keyboard, and the usual PC-only options are better than the ports. Plus, Valve is much better about long-term PC support -- it abandoned Team Fortress 2 on consoles, and Portal 2's level editor was PC exclusive. If you prefer to play on consoles, Global Offensive is the same great game