Pumpkin Jack is missing those definitive roots and indentations that could make it memorable or worthwhile and its day-one price is practically begging you to go pick up the titles that inspired it instead…
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VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "Regardless of where I land on it overall, Pumpkin Jack is another great example of the prodigious work one developer can accomplish with modern tools. I think that's a wonderful testament. When looking at the game proper, I think Nicolas Meyssonnier's work falls just short of its action-platformer goals. But when you consider its great Halloween-themed visual design, engaging soundtrack, strong personality, creative potential, and its place in today's market, genre fans can still have a gourd time with it."
If asking me (the writer) personally: it depends on which titles we're talking about. Rainbow Six Siege ranks among the best shooters of the past decade, but Extraction looks incredibly boring. I only started Immortals Fenyx Rising, but that felt more up my alley than recent AC titles.
Other site writers have been kinder to Ubisoft games than I likely would be, but that's how it tends to go anyways.
I would think open world AC Ubisoft games would be around a 6-7. The level gating through MTs stops gameplay flow, which fails to hit the open and free experience that open world titles need to have. This alone renders a would be top tier experience to something that is average at best. This probably goes for most of their titles I would assume.
Whoever wrote reviewed Valhalla enjoyed it more. As I said, it's been a while since I played the AC games but we're in agreement about MTs as artificial gameplay weights (to a large extent). But there's always some threshold of whether they're obnoxious or inconsequential in my eyes. R6 Siege pushes a shop with costly cosmetic options, but they have a free battle pass system and a card system that's pretty generous. I don't remember Immortals incorporating any of that level gating; I just remember it going base game & paid DLC route.
Base game with multiple editions means that Ubisoft games are actually $100 if you want to complete experience. I think the base games are the ones that should be reviewed. I suppose what I am getting at is that big companies get massive breaks in the review process. I don't think Ubisoft has made a game worth more than a 7 in almost a decade. At any rate, I enjoyed your review.
That's not universal though. Going back to Siege, sure they have editions that fast-tracked acquiring new characters in each season, but they had supplementary options that weren't much of a hurdle. I'd also call attention to their brief period of publishing indie games during 8th gen too.
-"I suppose what I am getting at is that big companies get massive breaks in the review process."
Although review sites have done better during 8th gen than 7th gen, I still agree with that sentiment. For me? I tend to find myself in rare scoring company - indie or AAA. That's gone on since my user reviews here.
-"At any rate, I enjoyed your review."
Greatly appreciated. I enjoyed having this chance to explain my thought process a bit more.
TGG says: "Pumpkin Jack is back! No, not with a new game, but around Halloween the game finally received some next-gen updates to make it run smoother on the Xbox Series X|S and PS5. At the same time, the developer also fixed some longstanding issues with the achievements that wouldn’t track correctly so now seemed like the perfect time to finally light the candle in our hollowed-out pumpkin head and dig in."
