Praesidium (PC) Review

 

If you ever wondered how it feels like to play a speedrunning Captain America in the future, than look no further than Praesidium. Praesidium is a platformer game in third person perspective, that heavily relies on speedrunning as the aim of the game.

The most exciting element of the game is its portable Shield, which functions a lot like the shield from Captain America. You can throw it to eliminate enemy robots, which can temporarily stun you with their attacks (which costs valuable time), or to destroy obstacles in the way. The really cool ability of the shield however is that you can also throw it at a certain point and make it to a jump pad, which gives you an extra bounce towards the next platform. The shield can also get called back to a player from any point of the level within a second. I am honestly impressed how well they implemented this cool shield feature. Even a lot of bigger studios haven't provided us with something like this.

Unfortunately the game has only 3 shorter levels and a tutorial. That is disappointingly little content, since the gameplay is actually rather entertaining. You can beat all these levels within 10-15 mins at your first try, but they heavily rely on repeated playthroughs to improve your times and unlock medals. There are multiple alternative routes and hidden areas, which provide opportunities to potentially save precious seconds. So there is at least some good replay value in Praesidium.

The Scifi scenario is pretty cool and the levels certainly fit the scenario and create a nice vibe. If you however look around closely, you will discover, that there aren't too many visuals details. It is enough to support the atmosphere and won't distract you while rushing through the levels, but you can clearly see that this was not done by a big studio. 

What did annoy me is, that your character will sometimes not grab on to ledges, even though he should be able to do so. Other times you will see wrong animations and so on. Nothing groundbreaking, but you can definitely notice these flaws.

Controls work okay, but it is disappointing that you can't customize them or the visual settings. Only the sound volume can be changed slightly in the options. Main menu and ingame soundtracks are pretty decent and fit the mood of the game well.

 

Pro:

+ Movement and platforming are decent

+ Shield ability works great

+ Alternative routes and secret areas provide replay value

+ Scifi atmosphere and fitting soundtrack

 

Contra:

- Only 3 shorter levels

- Character sometimes doesn't grab ledges

- Not enough visual details (plus no visual/controls customization)

 

Result:

Praesidium succeeds in delivering a short Scifi Speedrunning game. The futuristic atmosphere in the game is pretty nice (supported by the good soundtrack) and the shield ability works great. The game is just too short and still has some rough edges.

 

6.5/10

Call of Duty Vanguard Beta (PS4) Review

 

The Beta for Call of Duty Vanguard ran from the 16th till the 22nd of September. Since I have been busy with writing papers, it took me a little longer to gather my thoughts on the Beta.

The entertaining Champion Hill mode (mix of Gunfight and Mini Battle Royale) from the Alpha was also a part of the Beta, but with an additional Solo mode next to Duos and Trios. The real meat and potatoes of the Beta however were the classic Multiplayer modes. Team Deathmatch, Domination, Kill Confirmed, Patrol (capture moving control points) and Search and Destroy were playable in classic 6v6 (Tactical) matches, but also in the new 10v10 (Assault) and 14v14 (Blitz) variations. It is certainly a nice idea, that this new combat pacing system is supposed to allow players to experience their MP in different intensities regarding the player count. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that well so far. All the maps worked great on 6v6 and some of them even had some entertaining moments on 10v10 matches, even though those were certainly more chaotic than I liked. 14v14 however is just a mess. Maybe some people will enjoy having the 'Shipment' feeling on all regular Multiplayer maps, but I did not.

Overall the Beta definitely did provide a good variety of modes and maps to experience. Talking about the maps, I actually liked them all in the Beta. There is the tropical island map Gavutu (collection of beaches, palms and submarines), the rooftop map Hotel Royal (mix of a hotel/ fancy restaurant and surrounding rooftops), the winter map Red Star (atmospheric winter map in Stalingrad) and the beautiful Eagles Nest map (Axis mansion in the alps). As already mentioned, they all worked great for the 6v6 game modes and I really appreciated that they were all new and unique maps (different to BO4, Black Ops Cold War and MW2019, who remaster/recycle around 50% of their maps...). All of the shown maps were visually pleasing. The maps however still did suffer from some bad spawn locations, like it is the case in nearly every COD game (instant death spawns etc).

Movement and gunplay are nearly unchanged in comparison to the Alpha, which isn't a problem, since they simply remain very enjoyable. What definitely did improve is the visibility on the maps. This was a very noticeable issue during the Alpha (and apparently also during the Closed Beta), but has mostly been resolved in the Open Beta. Enemies are now clearly detectable and there aren't any blur effects while shooting. Footsteps have also become more audible (after being practically not recognizable in the Alpha), but the Audio still suffers from problems. Gunshots in the Alpha were a bit too loud in comparison to other sound effects, which were too quiet. Now in the Beta foot steps are louder (but certainly not too loud), but most other sound effects are a bit too quiet. I however believe this sound issues should definitely be fixable till the release. What also improved are the destructible environments, which did annoy me a little in the Alpha, but they seem to fit the MP maps much more naturally and aren't too many. Their placement does seem pretty balanced.

What however isn't 100 % balanced yet is the Weapon and Field upgrade balance. Some weapons, like most SMGs, so far seem a bit too strong in comparison to a lot of other weapons. The armour plates have been nerfed a bit, but I am still not a fan of them. They just seem a bit unfair and unnecessary in the MP modes. The balance however could definitely still get improved till release. Some COD games have factions in their multiplayer and some don't. In a futuristic setting or something more modern I wouldn't really mind, but in a WW2 setting it is a bit of a letdown to not have Axis and Allies teams consisting of their representative soldiers. There also appeared minor visual glitches during the Beta, but they were rather rare and not too annoying.

 

Result:

My impression is that Sledgehammer seems to listen to the feedback they are receiving and they are really trying to improve the game. Some of the issues certainly seem unnecessary, but I believe Vanguard is moving in the right direction. Black Ops 4 and Cold War for example had many more issues at the start than Vanguard currently has. Players, who liked WW2 or the newest Modern Warfare will certainly have a good time in Vanguard as well.

Masked Forces 1 (PC) Review

 

This is really just going to be short review on Masked Forces 1, since the gameplay and content of the game is nearly identical to the previously reviewed Masked Forces 3 and Rebel Forces. There are many more of these Freeze Nova games from the Masked franchise (Masked Forces 2: Mystic Demons, Masked Shooters 1/2, Crazy Shooters 1/2, Masked Shooters Assault and so on) , but I am not going to review them, since they mostly just switch maps and occasionally add a game mode or two, but otherwise feel way too same and most importantly share the same under average gameplay. If you only want to experience the best of them, than I recommend not reading any further and just play Rebel Forces. Masked Forces 1 was probably the original, that started to have some minor success. So I will at least summarize the most important aspects of it.

Gunplay and movement feel identical to Rebel Forces, which means a movement that feels like sliding and imprecise and under average gunplay. Masked Forces also shares the offline missions from Rebel Forces, which are equally boring and tedious here (You just play repetitive nonsense quests against bad, slow moving AI). Bots are also not available in the MP modes in MF1, just like they weren't in Rebel Forces (We can see a tendency here). Maps on the other hand are worse than in Rebel Forces or Masked Forces 3. All maps look very grey and shallow (around 90 % off all maps consist of grey cement floors or walls...) and have in common, that they lack details and look pretty hideous. Factory is probably the best map in the game and it mostly consists of boring storehouses and some containers. Bastion (large empty middle part of the map with a few containers at the side) is awful, Barricade (just tunnels and a place full of pillars), Blockade (the largest map, but too empty and random) and Freedom (just a couple of boxes lying around) are just boring and disappointing.

Game modes are identical to Rebels Forces (which means DM, TDM and Doom), but Doom is worse in Masked Forces 1, since it lacks the double speed and double jump options of the Rebel version. The Doom mode is nonetheless the best part of the game.

Weapons are in MF1 mostly being earned by leveling up instead of purchasing them with ingame currency (Since you only got currency through leveling it doesn't really make much of a difference).

There is also a Wii U version of Masked Forces 1, which removed the entire Multiplayer part of the game and only left the terrible offline missions in it. I feel a great pity for everybody, who had to play that version... (It also costs 3 Euro on the Nintendo E-Shop instead of the 1 Euro on Steam or free browser version...) The game apparently was also released on Xbox One, but I couldn't find material or user reviews anywhere (they were probably all too ashamed to admit, that they bought the game). At least it can be stated, that the browser version of Masked Forces 1 always has a stable framerate, that doesn't seem to be much different to the Steam version.

 

Result:

Masked Forces 1 feels in a lot of ways like a worse version of Rebel Forces with inferior map quality and the noticeably worse Doom mode (the only really good aspect of Rebel Forces). Masked Forces 1 also has far less content than Masked Forces 3 (lack of BR, lack of Zombies etc). At least the performance of the Browser version is always stable and therefore much better than in MF3, but Masked Forces 1 is still a disappointment. It may have released first, but there is no real reason to  play Masked Forces 1 nowadays.

 

3/10

Masked Forces 3 (PC) Review

 

Masked Forces 3 is the latest of the Masked games. After having recently played the F2P game Rebel Forces (very similar and also from Freeze Nova) I found out that Masked Forces 3 can also be played for free in a Browser version, so I gave it a shot for this review. It is however important to state, that the browser version of MF3 is inferior to its steam counterpart by having an awful framerate. Online matches with other players are limited to around 20 FPS and playing the Doom mode (which features a lot of explosions) drives it down to around 10 FPS and makes it a real slideshow. These framerate problems of the Browser version appear regardless of your PCs capabilities. The 4 Euro Steam version of MF3 (most expensive of all Freeze Nova games) on the other hand has a stable and good performance. Steam players (which are a very small minority of MF3s already small population) therefore have a clear advantage over all other players. Some might even call it Pay to Win and I honestly believe that Freeze Nova is aware of the bad performance of the Browser version and uses it to tempt players towards buying the game on steam.

EDIT: I tried some other browser versions of the game and some ran more stable than before, but they don't always do.

The gameplay of Masked Forces 3 is very much like Masked Forces 1 and Rebel Forces. The gunplay is nearly identical in all 3 games and movement and jumps (which are higher than most FPS) are also the same here. The Sprint function (which is actually more of a teleport function) is one of the few actually new gameplay feature of MF3. It isn't that great however.

New weapons in MF3 are a Flamethrower and a Crossbow, which are okay, but not among the best weapons of the game. The rest of the weaponry is also identical to the other games.

There are only 3 Multiplayer Maps in Masked Forces 3, which is disappointingly little content (Steam version is supposed to have more MP maps, but I can't verify that). The maps however are really large in comparison to the MF1 and Rebel Forces maps. They all have an apocalyptic city vibe (dark red sky lightning and look like they could be from a Terminator movie). Waste Town is probably the smallest of the three and is entirely set in a street block, some multi-storey buildings and the backstreets between them. Wasteland on the other side is, as the name suggests, mostly a wasteland of ruins of a former desert city and some small town area nearby. It is probably the largest map, but also feature the least cover opportunities. Red Waste (the maps names are so creative...) looks like a combination of both maps with wasteland, city and ruin elements mixed together and is nearly as big as the wasteland map. All 3 maps are also available in even darker night versions. I really like the setting of these maps, their design however is just okay and nothing too exciting. For a lot of the game modes however they just feel too big.

The game features multiple game modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch or the Doom mode, which were also part of the other games. There is additionally also an Arcade mode, which allows players to start with all weapons already equipped. There are also Classic DM and Classic TDM modes, but I couldn't spot any difference to regular DM and TDM outside of not having the sprint/teleport function... Doom Mode in MF3 feels significantly worse than in Rebel Forces, since it on the one hand doesn't allow for higher speed and larger jump settings and on the other hand the large maps don't really fit the arcade style of the doom mode so well.

And than there are also 2 Battle Royale modes in Masked Forces 3. Both modes support up to 20 Players/Bots and the only difference is the weaponry. In Doom Battle Royale players start with rocket launchers (but only have limited rockets, different to regular Doom mode) and in Regular Battle Royale the weapons from TDM and DM will be used. I do like Battle Royale modes, but in MF3 they seem a bit forced. Waste Town is simply too small for a BR and while the other maps have the right size, they just feel like Deathmatch modes without respawns. The gunplay and general gameplay of MF3 is just too weak to save this mode. Doom Battle Royale also sounds more exciting than it is, since you will quickly run out of ammo and the arcady Doom gameplay features a respawn based Deathmatch mode much better than a Battle Royale mode. Both modes are rarely being played by more than 2-3 players, so you will mostly have to deal with Bots in these modes, which doesn't make them any more fun.

The other 'bigger' addition to MF3 is the Zombies mode. There is Regular Zombies (normal weapons), Arcade Zombies (All weapons) and Doom Zombies (Rocket Launchers). The problem of them all is, that there are only 5 Zombies at any time, they are really stupid and their walking animation is awful (it looks like they would be ice skating across the map). There is 0 challenge and fun here, even the Zombie mode of War Identity doesn't look so bad in comparison to this one. You can change the difficulty, but that doesn't make the Zombies stronger or the player weaker, but instead just increases the number of Zombies that needs to be killed overall. The Zombie modes are just being played on regular maps of Masked Forces 1 and Rebel Forces, which don't suit the mode in any way. Sometimes it is better not to add something, than to add something really bad.

There are no Offline Missions in MF3 like in the other games, which admittedly were extremely generic and bad, but instead all online game modes (including BR) can be filled up with Bots instead of players. This is probably better than the Rebel Forces version with Offline missions, but no bot game modes. On the other hand the Bots in MF3 are worse than in Rebel Forces. They often just stand around or move very slowly around and generally feel confused by the larger maps, but open fire on everything in their proximity. These Bots can't really simulate real players. At least the framerate is better in matches against Bot players, it is however still below the steady Steam performance.

The Visuals are comparable to the other games, which means lack of details and general under averageness (Zero visual improvements from MF1 to MF3 doesn't really speak for the game either). Since the maps in MF3 are bigger now, there are even pop up effects, if you walk across the map. Customizability is otherwise the same as in Rebel Forces (which means very basic customizability of everything).

 

Result:

Despite adding new modes and weapons Masked Forces 3 falls flat in comparison to Rebel Forces. Removing the awful offline missions and allowing the addition of Bots was the right move. The Zombies mode on the other hand is truly horrific and thats is not thanks to the Zombies... The gunplay and general gameplay of MF3 is as under average and disappointing as in Rebel Forces and the only asset of Rebel Forces, the Doom mode, was implemented significantly worse in MF3. The maps don't support the gameplay style and the fun speed and jump modifications were simply removed. I do like the scenario and atmosphere of the maps, but what does it matter, if the gameplay is no real fun. The same issues apply for the Battle Royale modes. Some of the maps could fit BR well, but the gameplay is just too generic and bad, plus the bad Bots don't help either. The worst offender however is the sometimes abysmal framerate of some of the Masked Forces 3 Browser versions (which are the most common versions), which is just not excusable, if you look at the much better performance of the Browser versions of Masked Forces 1 or Galactic Force. Masked Forces 3 tries a lot, but mostly fails.

 

3.5/10   

Rebel Forces (PC) Review

 

Rebel Forces is probably the best game by Freeze Nova (developers of games like Pixel Battle Royale, PixelForces.io, Dragon World, Galactic Force and the Masked Forces games). If these games don't mean anything to you, than congratulations, you seem to have good taste and are capable of avoiding trashy games. If you on the other hand know these games, than you also know what to expect. Freeze Nova games are usually low effort games with subpar graphics and basic gameplay. Rebel Forces is no exception of this, but at least manages to have one really decent game mode.

To say Rebel Forces took inspiration of Freeze Novas Masked Forces games would be the understatement of the year. Freeze Nova has published since Masked Forces 1 in 2016 around a dozen very similiar games, that only have very slight differences in terms of weapons and maps (Freeze Nova also published more unique games like Dragon World or their Pixel games, but they also are rather low quality). Rebel Forces is one of their free games on Steam, but otherwise doesn't differentiate itself very much of Masked Forces 3 in terms of gameplay. Weapons and visuals are practically the same and all of the Rebel Forces maps have also been part of either Masked Shooter Assault or Masked Shooters 2 (All of the Freeze Nova games also share the same background menu style and level system).

Talking about the maps, there are 6 in total. The best one by far is Towers, which has two large towers on opposite sides of the map, a bridge in the middle and a couple of smaller buildings around as cover opportunities. It is the only map that has some decent verticality and works especially well with the Doom mode. The Arena map is also not bad, but didn't really live up to its name. Arena looks more like an industry plant than any form of Arena. Gas Plant and Factory X were also bit boring and kept the industrial grey look of the first 4 maps (These 4 maps are also in Masked Shooters Assault btw). Garrison and Outpost are very similar to each other. Both are military camps and look a lot more green than the other maps (Both are maps from Masked Shooters 2). Nonetheless the later two are a bit too small for matches with more than 8 players.

At least you can give the 6 maps of Rebel Forces credit for being the best versions of them, but the difference isn't too large in comparison with the other games. All the maps are a bit too empty and boring in comparison to higher value games, but they at least get the job done. More details and map elements however would have been appreciated. 

All Multiplayer game modes can't be played with Bots instead of human players (like you could in Masked Forces 3), but there are instead specific Solo missions, with which players can own extra ingame cash and XP. These missions are the same as in the Masked Forces games and they can only be described as boring and tedious. You get challenges like 'kill 3 enemies' or 'win a Deathmatch against Bots'. Players can use the gained cash to purchase weapons for a loadout (Loadout only for DM and TDM). This 'progression system' is pretty annoying and useless. Owning money is pretty fast, but that doesn't make it anymore interesting. They should have just unlocked all weapons from the get go and scratched these offline missions entirely. Nobody is going to enjoy a grind against mindless Bots.

The weapons in the game consist of Pistols, Revolvers, SMGs, ARs, Snipers, Grenade Launchers, Mini Guns and Rocket Launchers. The variety isn't bad, but sadly the gunplay mostly is (Hit detection can feel like rolling the dice, sometimes it works, other times not).

The Multiplayer modes consist of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and the Doom mode (The developers stripped the Battle Royale mode from Masked Forces 3 for some reason in this iteration...). After playing Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch I was left with an underaverage impression of Rebel Forces. The gunplay isn't really that great and except for the ability to jump a bit higher than in most other Shooters, there wasn't anything special about the game. If you mix this with severly outdated visuals and some movement issues (there is a short annoying delay if you change the direction of your movement, like the players would be ice-skating. It may be realistic, but it is also unusual and very uncomfortable in an FPS. Masked Forces 1 had the same issue and they also removed the new sprint funtion from Masked Forces 3 for Rebel Forces), than this impression seems quite logical.

The redeeming factor of this game however was the Doom mode. In this mode all players start with Rocket Launchers into the match and the server hosts can optionally also active double movement speed and double jump heigth. This mode is actually chaotic fun and the only redeeming aspect of Rebel Forces. Admittedly the Doom mode was already part of Masked Forces 1 and Masked Forces 3, but I believe that Rebel Forces in combination with the Towers map puls it off best (Rebel Forces is also the only free game of those on Steam and the browser versions of the Masked Forces games don't always have a stable performance).

 

Result:

The regular gunplay in the Deathmatch modes left a rather poor impression on me and I was ready to quickly quit the game before I tried out the Doom mode. The chaotic explosive fun is in my opinion worth a try and manages to exonerate Rebel Forces. It may not be a bad game thanks to the Doom mode, but it is overall still not more than mediocre, if you consider the rest of the gameplay, the movement or the visuals.  

 

5/10