Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Stevey]

POE 2: Deadfire.
Got to the last boss and got my ass handed to me so gave up.
Didn't really like the setting, ship mechanics or companions compared to the first game.

6/10

 

[gabbo]

Finished Gears of War 5.
More interesting than 4 (James was just not an interesting character), with Kate being the lead. Even if the gameplay is just polished 3rd person cover shooter with few new tricks, it's still fun. Steam says it took me around 20 hours to beat, but id chop a few hours off for leaving the game open and leaving my pc. At the very least, the steam version didn't lock up and crash Windows during the rocket retrieval section like the GamePass version did when I attempted that.

It made me want more Gears on PC, 2-Judgement on PC MS! Or gimme six please.
7.5/10

 

[bobnowhere]

Game #12 - Vanquish (steam) - Good silly fun, rocket powered genuflection. Lots of fun weapon variation, good level design, fun and very Japanese cinematics. Gets pretty easy once you upgrade your weapons, the laser rifle just melts everything. Doesn't overstay it's welcome either. I barely even used the suit trickery until the final boss. ★★★★

 

[FunnyJay]

Retired

Got this as a part of the [UWSL]Humble Australia Fire Relief Bundle[/UWSL] last year and tried it out first now.
A roguelike bullet-hell FPS.

All I can say is.... Meh. Not for me.

I remember trying out

a year or so ago (got it for free from GOG), which is a bit of the same kind of experience. And while that game also isn't 100% my cup of tea, I remember coming away from that much more satisfied. It was simply more fun to play.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Elex


Elex has an incredible beautiful open world, filled with interesting characters, great quests and lots of secrets and loot to discover. On the other hand, the combat is truly awful and frustrating, especially when fighting multiple enemies at once: hit detection is terrible, enemies suddenly spot you when you aim at them from behind (not even shoot, just aim!), switching from melee to magic spells is way to slow, unlocking spells is limited by the (useless) cunning stat instead of intelligence, when you try to "pull" a single enemy suddenly all enemies in the area know exactly where you are etc etc etc. I've finished the game because of the great story and game world, but the combat makes sure I won't play this game ever again.

Score: 6.9/10

 

[ganmo]

Finished Ara Fell


I first saw this game in the giveaway thread, but did unfortunate not get it at that time. But it was still in my mind that I would like to play it. Since the graphic and everything else in this game reminded me of the golden-era of jRPG for the Super Nintendo. Style and such is kind of like Seiken Densetsu 3, but characters are something like the ones from Final Fantasy VI. Anyhow. So a nice fellow gifted it me that game

The game started out pretty good I think, and I got some magical feeling of it. Something which is nice in this game is that you have a story mode if you like to enjoy the story only. And lets stop here, story itself was good at start yes, but the more I played into it, it got more, and more "meh" if I put it nicely. It did not have the same strong feeling to it as the older jRPG I played before. Then at some parts of it kind of WTF when one of the playable character more or less said lets have sex

All in all, not a very long game, if you just there for the story, and if you are for the story only, then I would not recommend this game. Sad to say, it is a very good looking game though. But the story was really mediocre.....

Gameplay 5/10
Graphic 10/10
Story 3/10
Music 3/10

 

[bobnowhere]

Game #13 - Murdered: Soul Suspect (Steam) - I liked this more than I thought I would, I did start it years ago but benched it so I started again. Barely 10 hours at most but tells a good story with decent twists and red herrings. Some good side content and a bit of exploration and cat possession. ★★★★

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Yakuza 3 Remastered (XSX, Game Pass)


Not too much to say about this honestly, it's more Yakuza but less modern and lesser QoL features than Y0 and Kiwami 1+2 obviously.
If I'm being blunt I really didn't like the stuff with the orphanage, really dragged things down, but otherwise it's more Yakuza.

Retired Grabbed By The Ghoulies (XSX, Game Pass)

Dropped this one like a hot rock.
I remember playing the demo for this as a kid and enjoying it but not picking it up because of the fairly poor reviews.
I could now see why those reviews were the case quite quickly.

It's got a really nice cartoony horror aesthetic but not much else going for it.
It's all very straight forward, braindead easy, and with crap combat. Dropped it after the end of the first chapter.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Finished the story and the story DLCs (Blade of Galdriel and Desolation of Mordor). As someone who has played and finished all Assassins Creed games, Shadow of Mordor and other open world third person games, this game felt just above mediocre. The gameplay was decent and got better with upgrades, but the running felt slow and "weird" and the combat was really uninteresting and often boring, felt no impact from the combat with the exception of stealth killing enemies and felt orcs took too many hits to kill so I turned on a one-hit kill from WeMod.

The world building and design was okay, felt too muddy and grey/black for my liking, but I guess that's just how Mordor looks like. The story was mostly uninteresting with the exception of certain plot points regarding the main character. Didn't care for any side activties and stuff. Also with the exception of certain mentions, I did not feel much "lotr" in this game, maybe I have watched the movies too much.

Overall, okay game that got better with one-hil kill, but mostly uninteresting.

Score: 6.5/10 without one-hill kill cheat, 7/10 with one-hit kill.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Premium Edition (Ninja Theory / Bandai-Namco, 2013)

A third person brawler / cover-shooter (main game), third person stealth game / cover shooter (Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC). Due to the engine, hulky-bulky character design of one of the main characters and the ubiquitous waist-high barriers you're using for cover, it's quite reminiscent of Gears of War, but it adds a lot of color, combat-free segments, a much more diverse and eclectic cast and more of a great-adventure story (don't expect to actually recognize much of classic Journey to the West in there though).

Pro:

• Graphically impressive (relative to the technology used - Unreal Engine 3 of ca. 2009). The art direction in general is very good, although the first impression of the game is pretty bad - the tutorial level is by far the ugliest and most boring level of the whole game, but from there the game improves with every level. Nice music, too, from British Film & TV composer Nitin Sawhney.
• The upgrading system, where you pay for additional moves, ammo capacity, shield energy and health points/regen with collectibles, makes the game more interesting than the typical competition in the genre. It also serves as a difficulty setting beyond the general difficulty setting - game too easy? - just don't buy upgrades.
• Interesting mix of character-centered, moveable camera and scenes with fixed camera angles.
• Memorable characters.

Con:

• In 2010 on the Xbox 360 / PS3 it might have been a real looker, today on PC for the most part it isn't. Even in 2013, when this PC port was released, Uncharted 3, Tomb Raider 2013 and The Last of Us were way ahead in terms of graphical fidelity. Moreover, the PC version has very, very conservative graphics options and you need to resort to .ini-file tweaking to get bread-and-butter settings like 16x anisotropic filtering and more than 1x MSAA. You are rewarded however with locked 60 FPS (I imagine 144 should also be possible on modern machines), unlike the console versions of the game which could never quite pull off even a locked 30.
• While the characters are certainly memorable, none of them are really likeable, and I'm not sure that's wholly intentional. The story is serviceable for an action adventure, the ending however falls flat on its face and is unintentionally funny (main game). The 4-hour story DLC "Pigsy's Perfect 10" on the other hand goes for comedy and then has a surprisingly bleak ending.

This game has a bit of a cult following and there's also a bit of a legend out there about how it tragically underperformed commercially. I actually did some research and found official numbers from Bandai Namco in an old earnings report that said that almost a million copies were sold on Xbox 360 and PS3 combined, which for the game that it is, is pretty good. Not sure how anybody could have expected it to do much better than that. Not sure how anybody could have ever had serious hopes for a sequel either, given how much the game writes itself into a corner by the end.

All that said however, I had really good fun playing this game, it's one of the rare games that really gets better the longer you play. The Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC is also very good and should not be missed (you can't buy the game without it on PC anyway, that's the premium in "Premium Edition"). It's on sale often, so I'd recommend waiting for one to sweeten the deal, I bought it for EUR 4.99.

4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


First and foremost, this game was clearly built and focused around coop, so that has probably a lot to do with my negative experience with it. Gameplay is good though, shooting is fun, the weapons are fun, nothing really bad about the gameplay. Story was also really good same with the characters. What's negative are the missions. There are 4 main missions and most of them felt and looked the same with the same bullet sponge heavy enemies that annoyed the shit out of me. Quite frankly the main missions and the design around them was boring, annoying and frustrating for me and I guess it mostly was like that for me because I was playing solo. To progress the story missions you also pretty much had to grind a lot of side missions that were really the same thing so you could upgrade your character, skills are in tiers and are only unlockable at certain ranks. This made the game really drag on and got quickly repetive.

I just hope that Wolfy 3 becomes more like The New Order as that game was fantastic.

Score: 6.5/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Wargroove


Excellent turn-based strategy game where you have to fight extensive battles, without having to worry about upgrading, character classes or grinding. The game reminds me of Nintendo's excellent Advanced Wars series, but there are more different types of units and the maps are a lot bigger. Wargroove has lots of content: a lengthy campaign, 25 puzzle levels which you need to complete in a single turn, an additional co-op campaign and of course a level editor and tons of community content. Very recommended!

Score: 8.9/10



Finished Moonlighter


Charming rogue-like game where you grind dungeons for loot, which you can sell in your shop afterwards in order to earn money to upgrade your gear. When I started playing, it felt like another of these games where you need to grind for better gear in order to beat the next dungeon. While this is definitely true for Moonlighter, the game is so much fun that it didn't bother me at all. Great game!

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Paul]

Finished The Technomancer

28 hours, doing all sidequests.

It was...eh. On one hand, the setting, writing and even combat were really solid. I grew to quite like the characters, quests were ok, fighting with the staff was like Neo in Matrix Reloaded, fun.

But...Spiders really, really should have trimmed it down. Wanting to make big AAA 30 hour Mass Effect-like RPG when you have a budget to make 5 small locations does not gel together well. So yeah the amount of backtracking and respawned combat was pretty insufferable the last 10 hours, I ended up switching to easy just to get through it faster.

Decent game overall, but these flaws really drag it down heavily. But the game as a whole... shows promise.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Symphonia (Team Spear / ISART Digital, 2020)

A very short ( < 1 hour) 2D platformer, made as a graduation project of students of the ISART Digital school for video games & 3D-FX animation.

Pro:

• Top tier art direction, animation, character design, music - rivals any commercially released platformer that's out there right now.
• An unusual platforming mechanic that allows the player character to attach to and fling itself off of special surfaces.
• Free!

Con:

• The aforementioned mechanic also uses a pretty unusual control scheme - select the direction with the left stick first, then press right trigger to attach, then select direction with left stick again, then release right trigger to fling - I am so used to using the triggers or bumpers as a meta-button (e.g. the first button for a combo) that it took me half the game to wrap my mind around these controls.
• Might be controller-only? I didn't check, but the game only gives instructions / tutorials for controller input.

I learned about this game the other week when it won the 2021 award of the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Jeu Vidéo for best student video game and downloaded it on a whim. The quality of this production is simply incredible, watch out for these devs (assuming they aren't all hired by Ubisoft and become one line in the next 30 minute credits scroller of Assassin's Creed Whateverthefuck).

If you like modern, stylish 2D platformers like GRIS at all, you have to download and play this little gem.

4/5

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Lifeless Planet Premier Edition (Stage 2 / Serenity Forge, 2014)

Technically not a walking simulator but an incredibly bad 3D puzzle platformer, but embodies every bad stereotype associated with walking simulators.

Pro:

• The music by veteran composer Rich Douglas isn't bad and here and there succeeds in injecting some atmosphere into this game, but ultimately can't save it. There also is a lot of voice-acting, but most of it is people reading out the flavor-text items you find - in Russian (for story-related reasons). I can't judge whether the Russian voice-overs are bad or not. The few English lines aren't great.
• The story is stereotypical cold-war era pulp sci-fi, nothing great, but not bad for what it is, either.

Con:

• No art direction to speak of, mostly the game lets you run and jump around endless boring terrain sprinkled with occasional terrible looking assets.
• Completely uninspired and basic level design.
• Bugs galore, prepare to get soft-locked. Horrible controls, too.

This could have been a passable short story or possibly (with the right artist) a pretty good graphic novel, but as a video game it's out and out terrible. Don't be fooled by the mostly positive reviews on Steam either (can't really tell if this game has a cult following or these are the remains of some kind of joke review brigading), this game is a dog. Actually, it's worse, it's a pile of dog poo. I got this game for free on EGS and can't even recommend it for that price. In fact, I feel like I should get paid for the four hours I wasted on it before bailing out.

0.5/5

 

[bobnowhere]

I quite liked lifeless planet.

“Landing alone on a lifeless planet it's up to you to find a way home. Great OST and atmosphere add to the combined sense of dread and curiosity. But wait, how come the Russians are already here?”

 

[C-Dub]

Gnosia (Switch)

As with most adventure games and VNs, it's hard to talk about it without spoiling what makes the game so good, but I'll be vague.

This is a storified version of Werewolf/Among Us. You are trapped in a time loop where you continually find yourself in a social deduction game with a mixture of 15 other people to find the Gnosia.

You need to discuss with the crew of the ship at the end of everyday to identify the Gnosia and you have a variety of discussion tools at your disposal to help you deflect from yourself, ascertain facts and pin the crime on other crewmates. As you are progressing through the loops you can earn EXP that allows you to bolster your main stats and be more effective in different aspects of discussions.

The story is interesting, but sometimes feels like it's taking a backseat to the social deduction gameplay. There are a few instances where hand crafted dialogue springs up and takes you down a fun narrative path, but these are sadly rare. Most of the story takes place outside of the discussions, which feels like a missed opportunity in some ways.

That said, I enjoyed this game. A lot. It kept me hooked like few VNs do and I saw it through to its true ending. I wish there was a bit more narrative happening, but I can't argue that what's there works with the gameplay setup.

9/10

 

[bobnowhere]

Game #14 Puzzletronics Analog Logic - (Steam)

Puzzletronics is a short minimalist games about circuit design, sort of...

Aesthetically it is quite nice, a decent OST but as a tool to teach even the most basic electronics it's very basic and not particularly inspired. All the parts are there, diodes, resistors, capacitors etc... but none of them do anything really related to their actual function in a DC circuit. Resistors are just a piece of wire, diodes and LEDs have to arranged one way with the flow, capacitors have to be in parallel, the pieces are just that, placeholders for basic puzzle rules.

There are 70 levels, some that break the games own rules and many make no sense electronically or would even function as described. Voltage and current leaks everywhere.

There is some potential for an interesting puzzle game in the electronics space, where voltages, currents and circuit design play a part but this game is not it. ★1/2

I believe there was a previous version of the game on steam until the dev got banned, probably get banned again under his new name once steam cotton on.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Tangledeep


To be honest I died a few times right before the final boss, but that's good enough for now

Tangledeep is a great rogue-like with real-time turn-based combat: the enemies move and attack when you do. There are 13 different jobs (=classes) with lots of unique skills and perks, and it's possible to change to another job with a certain item so you can combine your favorite skills from multiple classes. All levels except for the last one are randomly generated, and there are lots of optional quests and NPC's to trade with. You can also capture almost every enemy you meet, and train it as a "pet" that you can use as companion. You can can even breed unique pets that inherents skills from it's parents. It's amazing how many possibilities this game has, while never feeling too complicated or overwhelming!

It is a rogue-like tho, so if you die you'll have to start all over again (although you keep your pets and stored equipment). You'll have to beat 20 floors and several bosses before reaching the final boss, which is perhaps a bit too much for a game with permadeath. In my last 5 runs, my character died very sudden and sometimes even completely unexpected. I'm not sure what I did wrong or how I could have prevented this. This is the only negative thing I can think of tho, it's truly a wonderful game!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[MegaApple]

FINISHED : Darksiders (remastered ver.)

Technical rant : LOTS of missing sounds at random and low audio cutscene. Make sure to grab the corrected cutscene files from Steam Guides.

Review :
Yup, its a videogame-ass videogame, alright. Fighting monsters, solving puzzles, finding secrets and powerups, in between some story cutscenes. For what its worth, there is some real love and care put into it. Levels feel like a piece on concept art come to life. Voice acting is great and combat is fun (wont say ""good"") for a western developed action game.

But this game is more than a decade old, and in terms of how today's games have come far in QoL features, this game kinda feels dated. LOTS of backtracking, MANY tedious moments that might test your patience. Map is not really useful, and so is the fast travel system. It was also hard to follow the story (granted I played the game in massive gaps).

Even in its time, it wasn't as impressive, and even now I feel its still not. But it feels unique in that its very comicbook-y.

6.5/10

 

[Paul]

Finished: Gears 5: Hivebusters

Very nice looking 3 hour long prequel expansion to Gears 5. Somewhat likeable characters, nice graphics, standard gears shooting. 3 hour length is perfect, these games overstay their welcome if any longer than this, the gameplay is too one note.

7/10

Finished: Doom 64 (steam)

Pretty good doom game. The ambient soundtrack stands out, Altair of Pain level in particular, with infants crying in the background. Overhauled sprites look decent for the most part. Last mission was pain in the ass, I would not be able to finish it without youtube.

7/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Yakuza Kiwami 2.

This is my third Yakuza game, after 0 and Kiwami 1. Where the first Kiwami felt like a small expansion of 0, this one actually has more of an identity of its own. The plot is actually really interesting and gives us more insight into the world of Yakuza, there's two very meaty mini campaigns in the form of another Cabaret Club minigame and the new "Clan Creator", which is really just a tower defence game. The Clan Creator is pretty fun, even if I didn't enjoy it as much as the Cabaret Club or the real estate minigame from Yakuza 0. Those felt literally like actual, complete games within another one.

Another thing that makes the Yakuza games so great is the huge collection of sub stories, which are basically sidequests with their own small stories. While Kiwami 2 has some really nice ones, I felt they were overall far less crazy and often much shorter compared to Yakuza 0. There's also overall less of them. This is probably one of the only real disappointments I have with this game. I am not sure if that is a deliberate design choice, or if they simply didn't have the time to flesh this part out more.

The combat in this one is really great, probably even better than Yakuza 0 since the use of weapons has been greatly expanded. You can even repair them, making weapons a more integral part of the experience. On top of that, this game has more heat actions than ever before. While this has the effect that most normal story battles are pretty easy, there's still ways the game can challenge you. On one hand, there's the Coliseum which often limits weapons, thus forcing you to actually explore things like evading, blocking and even counters. On the other extreme are the bouncer missions, which are very similar to the combat sections you often have in main story bits where you need to fight dozens of enemies in a row, Street of Rage style. The bouncer missions don't restrict you in terms of what you can use in combat, but you aren't able to heal yourself.

One thing that really impressed me about Kiwami 2 is the insane level of detail in the world. There's no loading screens, and you can enter basically any store, and many actual building complexes seamlessly. It really helps to make the locations of Kamurocho or Sotenbori feel like real places. It's really nice to see how these areas have changed since Yakuza 0, especially the return to Sotenbori was quite incredible.

Overall this is a great game, with an insane amount of content and care put into it. Is it better than Yakuza 0? No, but still a very enjoyable game, with a great main story and tons of enjoyable optional content.

I rate this game 3 out of 4 exploding Millennium towers.

 

[Paul]

I wish I could get into Yakuza. I tried 0 twice and gave up after few hours each time. The story setup was not really engaging (some real estate nonsense..), the presentation is completely unimmersive and inconsistent (only few cutscenes voiced, some completely unvoiced, some voiced with nonsense sounds), the whole thing is super arcadey, and there was so much filler busywork combat.

But then I read stuff like the post above and want to give it another chance...

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Mirror's Edge Catalyst ( DICE / EA, 2016 )

Can't be bothered with the bullet points for this one. It's not a sequel to Mirror's Edge, it's a reboot, or really, a de-boot. Art-style and basic movement is retained, that's it.

Story of the original game didn't happen, Faith now is mysteriously unable to pick up and use guns the enemy NPCs drop, there's an unneeded and annoying skill tree, open-world trappings everywhere, incredibly annoying "boss fights" where enemies will just keep respawning around you while you run around and awkwardly first-person-kung-fu them.

Sure, it still looks good and Solar Fields' soundtrack still kicks and supposedly (if the majority of "Very Positive" Steam reviews is to be believed) there is a good free-running game hidden underneath all this crud, if you have the patience to slog through it all so you'll end up with every skill enabled, the world unlocked and time-trials to compete in. I sure don't, and why would I if I could just pop in the superior original.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


It's a good game, but with some quite notable flaws. The story and the characters were interesting, but I was dissapointed in how much story was being told behind the scenes, there was so much they could have explained more and better like the war between the 2 families, more background info, the relationship between Tom (main character) and his wife (Sarah) and simply the relationship between the different characters.

Like for a few seconds as an introductionm to a chaper it was "the war happened for weeks and lots of stuff happened" and that's it. They should have expanded and told the story more and better. I wanted to know more about the characters, the relationship between them and different things. Felt like the devs rused through the story basically.

The grapics were quite nice although a bit blurry in distance. The sound and music were decent and the gameplay was okay, felt the combat was too clunky. I played with kb/m and tried controller, but controller felt awful. The city in the game is very empty, nothing to do there so I don't quite understand the point with the "free ride" mode as the city doesn't have anything to do in other than running around trying to collect collectibles which I couldn't bother to do.

Overall, a fun and good game where the combat was clunky, they should have explanded the game by telling more what happened between chapters and with the characters and the city is empty of activties.

Score: 7/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Broken Sword: Director's Cut


I was in the mood for some classic adventure games, so i decided to (re)play the Broken Sword games since they are all for free in the Humble Choice Trove. I don't remember playing the first game in the series, but I enjoyed it a lot. The story and characters are great, and most of the puzzles aren't too hard. Only a few times I had to use the built-in hint system to continue. Great game!

Score: 8.4/10

 

[ganmo]

Finished Brütal Legend


At first I thought it would be kind of game like Donkey Kong Country series, but it turned out to be a open world adventure like Ocarina of Time and similar games. So is it good though? Well playing this game felt like watching one of Jack Black's movies. Or I could even perhaps put the story on par with Tenacious D movie perhaps...

Anyhow is good? Well, gameplay wise it was okay. I did not enjoy the mini strategy game which I had to go through on each major boss battle. But the team think it is good since they also made it into a game mode which I can play online with against other players.

And about the story, well I already mention it is like watching Jack Black's movies, so if you are into that then you are off for a good start. The choice of music is really nice too, lots of classical heavy metal tunes. So thumbs up for that

Gameplay 5/10
Graphic 5/10
Story 6/10
Music 9/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Nice graphics, decent gameplay and somewhat interesting characters and that's it. I found the game itself, the missions and story to be very uninteresting and the game was boring too. It's really just the same Ubi open-world stuff all over again and Im quite tired of it. Played through it with a bunch of cheats just because I wanted to go through the game for the hell of it. Every since Far Cry 3 the series has gotten more boring and uninteresting for every game.

Score: 6.5/10

 

[Ge0force]

Retired One Step from Eden


I can see why so many people like this game, but to be honest it's way too exhausting for me. To play this game you have to remember how hundreds of different cards work and recognize them by their icon, while you keep an eye on both your enemies playfield and your own. Combat is in real time, so you have barely time to think about your next move because enemy attacks are being sent at an insane speed towards you.

Don't get me wrong: the concept is great, the depth is amazing and I probably would have adored this game 25 years ago. But at my age it makes my head explode. I'm going to play another point&click adventure I guess

No score.

 

[Mivey]

I finished Hollow Knight quite a while ago, and kinda forgot to write about it here, so here goes:

Hollow Knight is easily the best Metroidvania game of all time. While there are probably individual aspects in which other great Metroidvania games can complete and outclass this game, I do not believe there exists any other game that is so amazing at so many things at the same time. It combines great presentation and graphics with an immense world, which has a deep backstory, that doesn't overwhelm you but instead allows you to discover it on your own terms. There's a huge focus on exploration and very little gatekeeping. With a few exceptions, you can discover huge parts of the game world on your own, hours after the game has started. As far as the plot is concerned, it doesn't spell everything it out for you, but it's all there for you to discover and understand. It features a huge array of enemies, in I think 10 different levels each with its own design and music and unique atmosphere.

Mechanically, something that also sets Hollow Knight apart is the Charm system. The game allows you to find, buy or create various "charms", which are items you can equip to get various abilities. These allow you to move faster, or be stronger, have more health and so forth. The game allows you to only equip a limited number of these (which you can increase by exploring more and finding certain upgrades). As you find a larger and larger amount of Charms, it basically opens up various "builds". The great thing about this is also that you can discover how various Charms can interact with each other. I recommend everyone to experiment on their own, but if someone just wants to know what's possible, then the wiki has a great overview where for each charm the list of interactions is listed.

As if all that isn't enough, there's even DLC content in the form of the Godmaster and Grimm Troupe content packs. Each of them adds even more quests to the game, and the Godmaster content even unlocks new endings. It's insane how long this game is. Where a normal Metroidvania might take 12 hours to complete (exploring every element in the map and finding most secrets), it took me about 30 hours to do the same with Hollow Knight. And I didn't even really bother with the Godmaster content (basically a bush rush mode), I'm saving that for when the sequel hits.

If anyone cares even a little about Metroidvanias, then you need to play this game.

I rate Hollow Knight with 9 out of 9 Masks:

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Not really a "game" per se, more like a protype of things to come from the dev. Used about 35 min on it. Was fun, but felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of gameplay mechanics in the short span of the time everything lasted. The full final game could be really good though.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[Stevey]

Finished


Wasnt really as scary as I was expecting, you just hide from the monsters until they disappear.
Nice atmosphere though

8/10

 

[sanhora]

Oof, where to even start... People sure weren't kidding when they said going from Kiwami 2 to 3 is going to be rough. FWIW over the past year I probably spent around 200 hours on 0, Kiwami 1 and 2 and loved them. Earlier this week I finally sank my teeth into the remastered trilogy, and even with lowered expectations this is the first Yakuza game that I straight up dislike.

The story is a mess and not in a way that's particularly entertaining, the cast isn't nearly as likeable as it was in the previous games, the orphanage kids are annoying and way too much time is spent on their storyline, the combat is janky, even just moving Kiryu is janky, crafting weapons/armors is terrible and it's harder to avoid random encounters, opponents turtle too much, etc. I can't even think of a single substory that was all that great.

Okinawa seems like such a cool location for a Yakuza game but holy shit did they not do it justice. It'd be nice if they can revisit it in the future with better tech and a bigger budget. The golf minigame with proper courses was the highlight of the game for me and hope it shows up in future games.

Thankfully CS IV is almost here and I can spend the rest of the month detoxing on that before I continue Yakuza. I just hope 4 and 5 are a lot better than this.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Thronebreaker (XSX, Game Pass)


Ok, I slightly cheated here. I don't care one iota about card games, but I do very much like The Witcher. So I stuck this on easy mode and essentially treated this as a visual novel, as I wanted to see the story.
Obviously it isn't a visual novel so the plot had a fair bit of "dead time" but on the whole it was an enjoyable enough side story romp that I didn't regret the time I spent with it for what it is.

Retired Star Wars Squadrons (XSX, EA Play)


I admit, this is not a genre I have much experience with, and what little I played of the campaign didn't do much for me. Plus it did give off the vibe of "tacked on campaign" which didn't help either.

Retired Mass Effect Andromeda (XSX, EA Play)


Ok, dropping this is not exactly a big shocker considering the reception this one got (although conversely maybe that set my expectations too) but I've finally seen this now for myself.
The test I ultimately set myself with dropping any game is "could I be playing something better right now?" and after ~3-4 hours I called it quits, owing to its poor first impression.

Best I can describe it is as a mass effect game template and with none of the charm.
First off, from a story point of view it is just dull as dishwater (least where I got to anyway); zero of the characters excite or interest, the villain appears exceptionally generic, and the driving force of the plot so far doesn't do much to entice either, it is simply "find us a new home".
I admit it could get better, given this is early game but first impressions were poor enough and the game's critical reception speaks for itself so I'm not willing to give it much slack tbh. I've not heard much call that it gets that much better as it goes on.

The other really big thing that turned me off was what appeared to be the shift towards more modern open world design and so alarm bells started ringing for me. Indeed there was the sense of "map marker chasing" as is common with the framework imo.
The old games may have overused linear corridor shooter design but they at least felt handcrafted and gave a sense of place. Whereas here so far I've seen two planets that were just big open barren empty maps, one was rocky and the other was desert rocky. Big whoop.

By the point I got to I thought I could either speedrun through it for the sake of experiencing the main plot (in case it's of any relevance for the new upcoming game) or give up, and chose the latter.

PS: not really a complaint more a note, but the camera is also weird, it's positioned fairly high up above the main character, where their full height only goes up to the bottom half of the screen. So it leaves a lot of wasted upper screen space, it's just odd.

 

[fantomena]

Finished

It Takes Two (Origin - EA Play Pro, a friend was subbed so I downloaded the friend pass and played it for free)

What an absolutely delightful experience. I loved every minute of it. The game is super fun, super creative, original and just overall so full of joy. I was smiling and laughing so much playing this. The gameplay is extremely tight and so variated with fun things to do and you can find smaller fun minigames all over the game. It took us about 12 hours to finish and I loved it so much. There are no collectibles, there are simply just "big" areas with fun minigames to try out where you and a friend can compete in or work together in.

The sound and music was great and the graphic was amazing, the image quality itself was so good I took plenty of screenshots of the game. The environments was really variated and it was always exciting to enter new areas because everything in the gameplay is really unpredictiable and original which I loved.

The only negatives I have is that some of the puzzles were a bit on the easy side (might have to do with that Ive played a lot of quite hard puzzle games before) and the story is okay (couple who is about to get a divorce goes to therapy in the game).

Josef Fares and his team at Hazelight has made an absolute masterpiece. Everyone needs to play this game. The overwhelmengly positive review score of Steam is fully deserved.

It Takes Two is not only an extremely strong game of the year candidate, it's not only the best coop game Ive played since Portal 2.

It Takes Two is one of the best games I have ever played.

Score: 9.4/10

There are only 3 other games I have scored above 9/10, those are Alan Wake, Crysis and Bloodborne.

 

[Wok]

it's not only the best coop game Ive played since Portal 2.

Every time I reach this sentence, I want to play this game.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Kingdom Two Crowns


Kingdom Two Crowns is a good game, at least if you're ready for a lot of trial & error in order to discover how to play because the game barely tells you anything. I needed a guide to figure out what the light house actually does for example, and several of my "experiments" ended in a sudden death. More than one save slot would have been welcome to prevent frustration. Winter time is also pretty boring, but for the rest I enjoyed this game.

Score: 7.2/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Dark Water: Slime Invader


In Dark Water: Slime Invader, a young girl has to save a beautiful fantasy world that has been invaded by slimy monsters. She is armed with only a simple bow to defeat enemies, but on your journey you'll discover plenty of useful upgrades. Besides the usual metroidvania stuff like double jump and explosive arrows, several of the upgrades help you to move faster and more efficient through the game world. You can instantly teleport to the position of your arrows for example, and with another upgrade you can pull yourself towards walls and ceilings. Once you're used to the excellent controls, you will be able to move in a fast and very cool way throughout the levels. To prevent the combat from becoming too difficult, there's an optional upgrade to enable bullet-time when aiming while in the air.

You're not always alone on your quest, because in many levels you'll get the help from your grandma in order to push buttons or move heavy objects. She is old and can't jump very high, but you can open shortcuts to let her avoid obstacles or even throw her through the air to get her where she needs to be. In other levels you play as granny herself, which shifts the gameplay focus from action to (simple) puzzle solving.

The game is rather lengthy, with 46 different levels to complete. New enemies, upgrades and gameplay mechanics are introduced almost every level to keep things fresh, although some mechanics and enemies are being repeated a bit TOO much. This makes the game a bit repetitive from time to time, but you'll be happy to look over this as soon as you reach the next cool part of the game.

Visually, the game looks stunning. Creepy looking dungeons and castles are brightened with colorful flowers, and the beautiful art looks like it has been hand-drawn with a pencil. Much of the art is being re-used across different levels tho, which may lower the feeling of progression. But everything in this game is done by a single developer, which is nothing but amazing!

Conclusion: despite a few flaws, Dark Water: Slime Invader is a beautiful and well designed game that's definitely worth playing. My sincere respect to the developer for creating such a great and polished game all by himself!

Score: 8.0/10

 

[bobnowhere]

Ge0force Nice review. Do you want to write a 200 character summary for the curator and I'll link that back to your review? I haven't had a chance to get through it yet.

 

[Ge0force]

Ge0force Nice review. Do you want to write a 200 character summary for the curator and I'll link that back to your review? I haven't had a chance to get through it yet.

Sure, no problem!

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finshed the solo campaign for Battlefield 1


Meh, it was alright. Visually very good. Lots of shooty bang. The campaign is split up into small little episodes featuring different nationals. They are all ok but nothing really special for me. The last few were the best playing the Laurence of Arabia stuff .Got it in a sale and it took 6 hrs to complete.

6/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Raiden V - Director's Cut


Awesome shoot'em up with great level design and an amazing gothic rock soundtrack. In some sections, enemy bullets are very hard to see though; yellow bullets in a desert area is just crazy. Also, the game is very easy to complete since you get unlimited continues without losing your upgrades. I had lots of fun with this game, but I'm baffled with some of the design choices.

Score: 7.6/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Spring time is gaming time, and this is your quarterly reminder that there is a Google Docs Spreadsheet with links to every review for every game posted in this thread:



At the time of this post, there are 463 reviews for 360 games listed. That's 176 new reviews and 130 new games since the last reminder in December!

The most reviewed game is still Death Stranding with 6 reviews, still followed by Carrion with 5, still followed by Horizon Zero Dawn / Doom Eternal / Tell Me Why and - new this quarter: Fe - with 4 reviews each.

Keep on playing & posting!

 

[lashman]

Spring time is gaming time, and this is your quarterly reminder that there is a Google Docs Spreadsheet with links to every review for every game posted in this thread:

At the time of this post, there are 463 reviews for 360 games listed. That's 176 new reviews and 130 new games since the last reminder in December!

The most reviewed game is still Death Stranding with 6 reviews, still followed by Carrion with 5, still followed by Horizon Zero Dawn / Doom Eternal / Tell Me Why and - new this quarter: Fe - with 4 reviews each.

Keep on playing & posting!

thanks for doing all of this ... it's extremely useful!

Mor would be proud of that spreadsheet

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Whoah, turns out that I can't read and doing stats on this sheet by glance isn't really feasible anymore, so, UPDATE, there's now a new column that counts the reviews on each row.

So, actually, while the most reviewed game is still Death Stranding, shared second place with 5 reviews each now goes to Carrion and Gears 5 (incl. Hivebusters). Shared third place with four reviews each is even more titles: The Messenger (new), Fe (new), Horizon Zero Dawn, Doom Eternal (incl. The Ancient Gods Pt. 1), Tell Me Why and Cyberpunk 2077!

Additional stat: There are now 73 titles on the sheet with at least two reviews posted.

 

[Mor]

thanks for doing all of this ... it's extremely useful!

Mor would be proud of that spreadsheet

Virtual Ruminant I'm proud of you, son

 

[Ge0force]

Retired Youropa


Youropa looks like a great game, but is sadly unplayable for me because the constant rotation of the game world gives me motion sickness.

No score

 

[spiel]

Finished Autonauts!

I can't decide on a rating right now because oh my god, I had plenty of frustrations throughout the entire game but the rush of satisfaction now that I have completed every tedious, soul-sucking upgrade the game has requested is just [UWSL][/UWSL] [UWSL][/UWSL] [UWSL][/UWSL]

It's basically Factorio with Scratch programming. You can build bots and teach them commands like picking up things and putting items in storage. At first it's really fun setting up scripts to automate the supply chain but the bot count keeps climbing and eventually gets unmanageable. It is incredibly tedious to update the scripts. For example, to tell a bot to put a berry in Pot B instead or Pot A, you have to perform the action again. This is alleviated somewhat when you unlock advanced bots that allow you to change command targets, but you still have to stop the bot and amend the script.

Another example that highlights how much pointless micromanagement is in the game: at one stage of the game a colonist lives in a Mansion. A bot was tasked to "Find Hungry Colonist in Mansion" and carry food to the colonist. At the next stage, that colonist now lives in a Castle. The game doesn't update that target. You have to record "Find Hungry Colonist in Castle", walking verrrry slowly to your destination, because you're carrying really heavy food. The game just hates you like that.

Eventually you figure out that complicated scripts are buggy/inefficient and the solution to everything is MORE UNITASKING BOTS. At some point dread started to creep in when I realised the next progression would unlock yet another production line, a billion more things to create and more bots to program.

My final count of bots was 752.

Can't say I had fun 100% of the time, but the beginning was great. I also adore the cutesy graphics. The best moments were finding workarounds for the limited commands and refactoring my existing bots, and reaping the results of my hard work. This game is an excellent gateway drug to production games, because now I'm actually interested in trying out Factorio.

 

[FunnyJay]

because now I'm actually interested in trying out Factorio.

 

[Aaron D.]

Yeah, Factorio is for sure the King of the Castle regarding production-line automation titles.

Oddly, I've found Dyson Sphere Program to be the most inviting & user-friendly though.