Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Virtual Ruminant]

Gave up on Falcon Age.

This is a game made for VR, but also playable traditionally, which I did (don't own VR equipment). The bird is the star of this game and it really is a star. It's super cute, there's the fun costumes and items, it goes SQUERK in the most cute way and I loved it to bits.

But.

It also takes up alllllll the polygons and all the textures, too. The rest of the game looks like a PS2 remake. And it's set in a mountainous desert, so there's even less visual variety. And the game-play isn't really exciting either, when done on a controller.

I thought I could make it through this game given how short it is (4 hours on HLTB), but I couldn't. Every time I picked it up I played for like 20 minutes and then had to take a long nap because I felt so tired. I'm not making that up. Games that don't click with me literally put me to sleep.

So I'm retiring this one before I end up spending more gaming time in bed.

2/5

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Retired Manifold Garden (Apple Arcade)

This was a hard and fast drop.
It reminds me of Antichamber in the same vein of having no sense of direction or reference and getting very quickly lost and overwhelmed.
I’ll maybe give it another go when I make another month sub to Apple Arcade down the line

 

[Milena]

Finished Spiritfarer, absolutely loved it. So far, my favourite game this year.

My Steam review:
This is an incredibly beautiful game and I'm glad it exists.

The main focus is to help each character you encounter along the way to reflect on their lives and ultimately accept death. All while exploring a beautifully animated world, hugging people, meeting weird characters and amazing creatures, learning a lot of cooking recipes, fishing, collecting trinkets, upgrading your boat and shearing sheep.
The sheep are amazing.

I came to care about all the main characters on this journey, even the ones who started in a very antagonist way or seemed detached. They shared their experiences, hopes, fears and, most importantly, their love.
My favourite is without a doubt Alice, she reminds me a lot of my granda, who recently passed away.

The art is easy to love, every animation is a delight to watch and, to my great surprise, I didn't grow tired of watching them. The sound and music are especially good, they fit each moment perfectly. And the credit song is great!

There are some bugs here and there. I didn't encounter any major ones fortunately, but I had some characters stuck while moving on the stairs or some erratic chicken (both problems solved by moving buildings around).

All in all it's an amazing game, longer than I expected with all the addictive activies involved, and certainly one that I'd recommend wholeheartedly to anyone.

Overall, I'd say 10/10 (a game I think everyone should try)

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Chronicon


I would describe this game as the Serious Sam of aRPG's. There's no nonsense, no fetch quests, no backtracking; just killing thousands of monsters and dozens of excellent bosses. The game has an incredible amount of loot, and a deep upgrade system with many possible builds. You can enhance your equipment with gems as well, and there are plenty of NPC's to interact with.

My only problem with this game is that the difficulty in story mode is completely unbalanced at the moment. There are 5 difficulty levels, but even on the highest difficulty you'll breeze through the game while rarely dying. Even most of the bosses can be killed within seconds. The developer is aware of this and says he only balanced the game for the end game, and he's planning to fix this. It also seems many people don't actually want this game to be challenging because they are playing it for the loot. But for me, games without challenge get rather boring soon.

Conclusion: Chronicon is really awesome, but if you require a challenge in your games, you'd better wait until the dev has balanced the story mode.

Score: 7.6/10 (add another point when the balance is right)

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished The Last Campfire (Apple Arcade)

What a wonderfully charming little game. Definitely in my top5 for the year.

It’s greatest strength is certainly in its style, storytelling and atmosphere. The gameplay itself too is while simple still engaging, focusing on small scale exploration and light puzzle solving.
There’s not much here that’s particularly taxing puzzle wise but it’s not utterly brain dead either, it’s balanced well for something that’s a lighter experience.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Stranger of Sword City

Despite knowing that the improved version is coming next year I decided to play the game (since it was in my library).

The game is First person dungeon crawler with each dungeon having its little gimmick. In order to progress the story you need to defeat some bosses (linage) that will give you blood crystals that let you unlock certian abilities that you can use in combat (like regen, protection for certain status efects, etc) once you get enoughs skills the story will progress.

One thing I liked about the game is the emphasis in class changing.
The game lets you change clases up to 5 times (i think the revisited verison has unlimited changes) and that lets you use skills from other clases (up to 8 skills if you do it the right way).

What I didn't like about the game is that despite gear playing an important role there's only one way of getting better gear is going into an ambush battle and pray to the RNG gods to get a better gear. The game will let you know what type of gear (sword,bow,armor,etc) you will get if you win but that's it. There is no way to upgrade your equipment.
And that turned out to be a problem for me (in the final dungeon) since my party was either badly design or severely underleveled, since the game has not really a way to grind I ended up using Cheat engine to give me and EXP boost to compensate that (and even then I had some problem with one of the final bosses).

7/10

 

[MJunioR]

The best PS5 games - new, pre-order & upcoming | PlayStation

Discover the best games to play on PS5 and VR2, including our newest exclusives and exciting indies, out now or available for pre-order.

www.playstation.com

For me and my pals, when it comes to offline multiplayer you couldn't go wrong with a PlayStation 2, and one of the biggest reasons for that was Def Jam: Fight for NY - I loved this game and when I found it inside my PS2 I just plugged it in and decided to take on the story mode. To be honest, I just didn't found it - after reading a piece on Def Jam's competitive scene I wanted to play it again and started looking for it when I had some time to spare.

So, the story mode. It's basic. I'd say unbalanced, even, but what surprised me the most is how badly the gameplay itself aged. Everything felt so sluggish and the way the campaign plays out is so boring. Like, fight four guys in this arena, then three there, now watch this cutscene and fight this guy. Done? Repeat. I had this image in my mind of some really cool locations in which you could throw people on fire, or from a window - and these locations are there, they just aren't used that much, and instead you keep fighting on boring places.

It's not all bad though. Once you get the grip of the controls, timing, start doing some serious upgrades in your character, etc., things start working and you start having some fun even with all issues I listed above. I think I started to get used to those problems. But then the campaign is over.

I have no doubt that I could have a fun afternoon playing with a friend, and Def Jam will always have a special place in my book but that's it. A game for a weekend, just to remember how things were many years ago.

[UWSL][UWSL][UWSL]What's good about it?[/UWSL][/UWSL][/UWSL]

• The over-the-top moves and special stages are fun to explore
• The roster is surprisingly varied and each character has its own flow
• Character creator has plenty of customization options, many to be unlocked
• Soundtrack

[UWSL][UWSL][UWSL]What's not?[/UWSL][/UWSL][/UWSL]

• Gameplay-wise, the game didn't age well
• Menus and overall controls feel very sluggish at times
• If story modes in sports / fighting games nowadays are mostly meh, imagine the story mode from a PS2 gen game
• Camera can be really annoying at times
• It's a PlayStation 2 game: performance issues are there

Score: [UWSL][UWSL][UWSL]6.5 / 10[/UWSL][/UWSL][/UWSL]

 

[Mivey]

I finished The Outer Worlds.


I already wrote my first impressions here, so I'll just write my final conclusion.
I see The Outer Worlds as an experiment in scale. Specifically it's about scaling down. Obsidian took a lot of the design ideas of their past RPGs, most clearly and evidently from Fallout: New Vegas, as both are first person games with a focus on shooting. Then it wanted to see if you produce a game much smaller in scope (and budget) whether you can still get a great game out of that, somehow.

The ultimate outcome of that experiment ... is negative. The game feels extremely flat. Everything is rushed, nothing is given time to breathe and feel. I spent perhaps 20 hours (Gamepass has no way to count time, because apparently Steam is "just a client" and yet none if its competition can go above being barebones clients, but that's a rant for another time) in the world of Halcyon, and yet I do not feel I know it even half as well as Mojave desert from New Vegas, despite having played that game like 5 years ago. This hits the companions the worst. I love the story of Parvati, and Ellie is great too, but the game does both dirty by not allowing me to spend actual time with them.

The combat is fun, but there is literally zero challenge to anything. You can break the game in so many ways, and the shorter playtime means that you go from using the worst weapons, which are already overpowered, to slinging mythical weapons in like 10 minutes, it feel like. I remember how in New Vegas the first time you met those geckos, and how they kicked my ass. You get a sense of the world being this dangerous place, and there is none of that in The Outer Worlds.

I really hope that Obsidian never makes another game like this. Not because it's terrible, but because it fees like such a waste of the work that they definitely poured into making it. Everything looks so amazing. I just wished it wasn't wasted on such a boring game.

 

[C-Dub]

Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition

Fun science fiction story that manages to capture the sense of dread of impending human extinction on the one hand, while living through the aftermath of extinction in the other. I quite enjoy the worldbuilding and the characters, and all the twists and turns of what happened and why humanity is in the shape its in was a good fun.

I also liked much of the gameplay. The shooting with arrow and other weapons was satisfying, the controls were super tight and responsive and both the stealth and action sections were largely satisfying. I also found the game not too hard, but not too easy, either. It challenged me in places, but rarely got a cheap kill on me.

What I didn't like was the average overfilled open world and boring side quests. About 15-20 hours in I started getting bogged down with them, as the game's many on-map icons made me want to see and collect everything. It was... well... putting me off. I didn't play the game for a day and I forgot why I even wanted to play it. It's a common problem I have with open world games, especially Ubisoft ones, and Guerrilla have fallen into the trap. Thankfully, the game is balanced around you mostly doing the main campaign and I didn't find myself underleveled at all in the game, so I didn't struggle with any level gates where I had to grind out side quests or items to get enough EXP to progress. But... they're there, and depending on how susceptible you are to getting bogged down in side content, this game may negatively impact you.

Visually, it's gorgeous. The environments are stunning, and the animations of both Aloy and the machines are so slick and satisfying. But there's the odd visual glitch (things popping in and out), the odd performance glitch (though I did mostly hold 60fps), and the game is technically going to struggle to stick to 60fps on the average PC. A shame since a game using the same engine, Death Stranding, performs so well and looks visually incredible too.

Thankfully Sony and Guerrilla seem to be committed to fixing things, so hopefully the game finds itself in a better state in the future. I'd recommend holding off on the game until such a time, but I can't deny that I didn't enjoy myself with this nonetheless. It's a solidly made game with some open world garbage-creep, but if you shake it off and stick the course of the main campaign you will have something that's very rewarding.

8/10

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Retired World's End Club (Apple Arcade)

Soon as I heard it wasn't the complete experience and that Apple Arcade isn't guaranteed to get the full experience even when the Switch version launches, I just dropped it. Not wasting my time.
Shame cos what I had played so far was good.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Retired Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4)

I never bothered looking into this for the longest time, but the hype of the PC release got me curious and I found a copy for PS4 for a cheap price. Glad I didn't drop all the money of the PC version,
I may be a tad unfair here for a game like this after only ~3 hours or so, but it's just another open world game from what I can see.

I'm wandering around tediously gathering ingredients for crafting towards anything and everything imaginable (even the basic ammo and health), fighting what seem to be bullet spongey enemies, following waypoints, quests that are level gated off, the works.
I am just so done with this type of game.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Persona 4 Golden (PC)

Fantastic game and it has aged well despite it's age. I bought it many years ago for my Vita, but found it too difficulty (was practically my first ever JRPG), so I just stopped playing and with the PC version I used a HP cheat which helped me through the game.

It's a really good game and I love the characters and story. The gameplay is also really good despite that Im missing certain quality of life features from Persona 5 (finished that one too in janaury this year).

According to the P4 wikia I got the good ending, so Im happy with it.

Score: 8.5/10. The score would have been 9/10 if I hadn't played P5 already as I missed some QoL features in P4 from P5.

 

[fantomena]

Retired The Toyryst (PC)

Don't have much to say other than that I found it uninteresting, a bit boring and bland. The gameplay was just so uninteresting which is sad because I liked the world design, the music and concept.

 

[sk2k]

7/10

An adventure game with nice graphics and easy puzzles with a bit too much backtracking. It took me 7-8 hours to finish it.



5/10

Overpriced short (3 hours) walking sim with boring platforming and "puzzles". I only liked the graphic style.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished The Occupation (PC, Steam)

I'm not going to go in depth as I laid out my impressions on this across a number of points in detail in the main pc thread.
tldr; a very rough gem is hiding in here but its mired in too much buggy jankiness with one of the worst save systems I've seen in quite some time.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished The Occupation (PC, Steam)

I'm not going to go in depth as I laid out my impressions on this across a number of points in detail in the main pc thread.
tldr; a very rough gem is hiding in here but its mired in too much buggy jankiness with one of the worst save systems I've seen in quite some time.

I've started to play that recently, too (did we buy it in the same Humble sale?) and so far this has been my impression as well.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

I've started to play that recently, too (did we buy it in the same Humble sale?) and so far this has been my impression as well.

Yeah likely, cos it is in this month's humble choice

 

[sk2k]

7/10

Short (1.4 hours). The "puzzles" were too easy. It felt like a demo or concept of a game.

 

[Stevey]

Got through Act 2 of Gears Tactics and got bored of it, just felt the same every mission.
Glad I got it due to that price fuck up a while ago on STEAM

 

[fantomena]

Finished The Last Campire (Nintendo Switch)

Took me 5 hours to get through it. It's a really cute game with a cute and a bit sad story with some happiness at the end. The environments and level design is cute, but basic, yet colorful. It's a good game, but the puzzle felt too simple and basic at times and the gameplay was nice, but also a bit basic.

Still, had a good time with it. Picking up the Steam version whenever it releases.

Score: 8/10

Retired Sludge Life (PC)

Got it for free from Epic Store. I like the gameplay, the world design and the weirdness of the game. The goal seems to be to find every place you can tag and tag the places with some collectibles you can find. I was playing for 30 min which felt like forever when I checked and I only had tagged 38/100 places, so I gave up. Again, really liked the concept, the graphic style and the weirdness of the game, but can't bother tagging all 100 places.

 

[Mivey]

I retired Doom Eternal

Got near the end of the second mission, and just decided I had no fun with this at all. From talking with other people on Era, it seems the entire game is basically like this, so I see no point in continuing this. I bought it for 30€ during the last sale, so at least it wasn't full price.
It's just so baffling to me how id could fuck up a concept such as Doom so much. It's not even just the core mechanics they have ruined with their pointless focus on "high level" play, everything about Doom Eternal looks so thoughtless. The pick-ups looking so out of touch. "SECRETS" that are literally giant question marks, it's all so ugly and poorly designed. I have no idea how this same team managed to produce the 2016 game.
Just baffling, and sad.

 

[fantomena]

Finished No Straight Roads (Nintendo Switch)

Enjoyed the game more than I thought. Great world design, nice level design and great design of characters, nice music. Gameplay is pretty good, but the plattforming and combat was annoying and frustrating at times. Upgrading skills and stuff made things easier and added things like double jump etc. The design of Vinyl City is really nice and collecting "batterys" to light up the city was fun. The story was better than I expected too.

Despite it's flaws with platforming and combat, I overall enjoyed it. Was a bit short, Switch says around 5 hours. Will pick it up on Steam when it releases.

Score: 7.5/10.

 

[MJunioR]

Horizon was a solid game that had a lot of moments, but unfortunately, the final game experience doesn't end being as great as it should be due to one of the worst open-worlds in AAA games I've played recently and side-quests that felt absolutely awful at times.

In a related note, I noticed a number of Witcher 3 inspirations while playing, mostly related to how the story and quests are delivered to the player. The difference between Horizon and Geraldo, if I had to point one, is that TW3 has some interesting side stories and characters. Horizon is Aloy and Sylens' show.

[UWSL][UWSL]What's good about it?[/UWSL][/UWSL]

• Aloy is a hell of a protagonist
• Battles were mostly fun, exploiting weakness and seeing giant machines getting frozen never got old
• Some really good visuals overall
• The crafting loop was actually manageable and not annoying as it could be
• The Frozen Wilds DLC brings and interesting series of quests and locations
• While the story itself has a number of issues, the world-building is excellent. Exploring ruins, listening and reading logs - very well done.
• The skill tree has issues, but there's a sense of progress in the game. Aloy goes from throwing rocks to distract watchers to consistently doing 300+ damage to the big boys with the triple shot perk and a top tier bow.

[UWSL][UWSL]What's not?[/UWSL][/UWSL]

• So many crashes
• Horizon's cities and NPCs are so bland
• Not really a con, but I really wish GG would have worked more on Aloy's bows - customization, creating your own bows, such things
• Side characters were there for the sake of being there, can't remember a single individual from side quests
• Main story pacing
• Skill tree has a number of skills that really don't do much
• Limited climbing mechanics and those cauldrons were meh, but that's because I really dislike anything remotely close to platforming

Score: [UWSL][UWSL]8[/UWSL][/UWSL][UWSL][UWSL] / 10[/UWSL][/UWSL]

 

[Linkark07]

Etrian Odyssey V (3DS, Citra)

I bought this game when it was released, but for some reason stopped playing it when I reached the second stratum.. Decided to dump the game into a CIA file and move it to Citra (along with all my EO collection).

Overall, liked this game. I mean, it is Etrian Odyssey so you can expect good dungeon design and a lot of battles. And F.O.E.s. Anyways, I thought the game lacked some of the gameplay additions that they introduced in the UO series like the restaurant or improve the buildings, or a world map like 4, so this game only has dungeon crawling. I mean, dungeon crawling is the meat of Etrian Odyssey, but would have wanted something else to do meanwhile. Even 3 introduced sea quests.

Classes were good too. My main team consisted of Masauro, Pugilist, Warlock and Botanist. Had a Dragoon but replaced her with a Necromancer, and then had to bring her back for the final boss.

Some stratums were annoying, though. Third one basically forced me to play it at night. Fourth one was the worst with its gimmick.

Score is the same: 8/10. An excellent game for fans of dungeon crawlers. Liked that they finally let you voice your party members. Also enjoyed the Master Class addition instead of subclassing. And the soundtrack, like always, is superb. Koshiro-san never disappoints.

Note 1: Don't buy the exp DLC. By the time I started the 5th stratum, my party hit max level. Couldn't believe it. All that experience from random enemies and FOES wasted.

Note 2: The game runs flawlessly on Citra. The team has done a superb job developing that emulator.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Wasteland 2: Directors Cut


Great turn-based RPG with an excellent story and deep combat. You visit plenty of locations, which all have their own story after nukes destroyed most of the earth. Exploring is very rewarding, and most of the quests can be solved in several ways.

The game does have some flaws: suddenly taking one of your team members away for example, which may leave you without certain skills you need to do certain quests the way you like. The combat also depends on RNG too much, especially friendly fire and the powerful critical hits. But in the end, the game is excellent and very recommended!

Score: 8.8/10

 

[C-Dub]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Nintendo Switch)

It's 2D Zelda with the top-down perspective, and a remake of the original Game Boy game. It's surreal, fun, and an immediate classic. If you've played the original, it's a pretty good facsimile of that.

Combat is satisfying, the world is interesting to explore with a few little secrets here and there, and it feels less linear than it actually is. The story is practically nonexistent, but what's there is pretty by the numbers Zelda.

Visually it is beautiful, from the hand animated FMVs to the plastic-like visual aesthetic, permeated with blurring effects, makes the whole game feel like a dream world.

Where the game really disappoints is performance. I'm amazed Nintendo allowed the it to release with the sorts of frame drops it has. There's a lot of framerate hitches in the overworld, especially when moving between areas, when you're saving or loading, and in some combat situations too. It's nothing gamebreaking, but it makes the whole package feel a little cheap.

But technical hitches aside, I won't lie, I loved it. I missed a lot of the classic Zelda games as a kid, starting off with Ocarina of Time, so to be able to play it for the first time in HD, on my big screen, with such a beautiful art style, is a joy. The game is about 15 hours and, while that's short compared to modern Zelda games, is still worth every penny.

8/10

 

[Ge0force]

Transport Fever


This was my first transport sim and I've enjoyed it quite a lot. The campagne takes you through the history of American and European transport development, and it's a blast to play. You need to find resources, bring them to the factories by train, trucks, boat or plane, and finally bring the produced goods to the cities. There's also plenty of attention on people transportation, requiring you to set up lines for buses, trams and planes. All of this without getting bankrupt of course.

What I enjoyed the most is the ability to enter every vehicle and following it from a 1st person perspective. Creating tracks for the TGV between Lyon and Paris and then going on board to see the result is really cool. Placing tracks in non-flat area's can be a bit of a pain, and setting up routes for goods could be more streamlined. But all in all this game is lots of fun and very recommended. I'll be buying Transport Fever 2 soon and I'm looking forward to play it!

Score: 8.2/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished Code Vein (PC)

Good game, one of the better Soulsborn games not from FromSoft that I've played. Beautiful designed environments, good gameplay and decent enemy and boss design. My biggest con with the game is that I didn't find the story and lore any interesting which dragged my enjoyment of the game a lot, might be that it felt "too much" anime for me or something and anime doesn't fit in Soulslike games for me. I liked the blood code system and lots of things feels quite ripped out of Soulsborne for better or worse.

Score:; 7.5/10

 

[MJunioR]

I love some Call of Duty every now and then, and this year I decided to take on the games I hadn't played yet. Infinite Warfare was one of those, and from the ones I played, it's definitely the weakest of the bunch.

IW is the final game in the series set in a futuristic world, and it tries to be more than the usual Call of Duty game by giving you optional missions. The initial idea is cool, but in the end, those side-missions doesn't do nothing to help the awful story.

Mind you, this is valid only for the single-player portion of the game - I couldn't find any multiplayer match in my region.

[UWSL]What's good about it?[/UWSL]

• It's a Call of Duty game: great gunplay as expected
• The amount of tools available alongside grenades makes the boring combat moments much more interesting
• Ethan is actually a cool character
• Graphics and sound design are top-notch

[UWSL]What's not?[/UWSL]

• The story is a mess
• One of the worst villains in COD, period
• One of the worst protagonists in COD, period
• The PC port isn't great; stutters, glitches, crashes

Score: [UWSL]6 / 10[/UWSL]

 

[Bonfires Down]

The Painscreek Killings

I thought this would be a horror game based on the cover image, but nope, it's a murder mystery game. The bulk of the gameplay is about finding document and diaries to puzzle together what happened in this town.

The writing is very good and I was impressed by it. However some of the characters are described relatively briefly and could stand to be a bit more fleshed out. The actual story is not quite as engaging as I hoped and I was a bit confused about how it all wrapped up but it's still good. I know there are some documents I didn't find yet that might clear things up.

I had to turn to a guide a number of times because I know I will just get tired and drop a game if there isn't steady progress. I would definitely recommend taking detailed notes right from the beginning of the game, though you also have a camera to help you out. A few times I had a key in my inventory but no idea where it led.

To me this is a game that's more than the sum of its parts and is ultimately quite memorable. The eerie ghost town atmosphere is really unique and impactful. Being able to visit each characters home and see both the mundane and not so mundane parts of them is a subtle but powerful thing.

7.5/10




The Beginner's Guide

I think it's best to say as little as possible about The Beginner's Guide. It's only about 1.5 hours long so if you like narrative based walking sims just jump in. It does what it wants to do very well.

8/10




Call of Cthulhu

While the story isn't bad, it just didn't quite work for me and some things were not well explained. However, there are some absolutely beautiful early 20th century locations to explore and the story is ultimately interesting enough to make the game worth playing... if you get it on sale.

6/10




Nier: Automata

So I completed route A. That was... decent. The story feels completely barebones tough. But that's ok, there are more routes so the real game begins now, right?

Nope, you have to do almost the exact same missions again in route B. The new story bits are extremely minor. This is bad, very bad game design. I dropped it halfway through B. The game would get a 4/10 at this point.

But, I also know that if the full story is as good as many have claimed, 4/10 is not a fair score and I might one day be ashamed of my words and deeds. So I'll take a rain check for now, and I hope to at some point see the whole thing through.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Tell Me Why (PC Game Pass)

Pretty solid, not in the top tier of Dontnod material with LiS S1 and BTS (yes I know that's not by Dontnod but I'm including it), but equal with LiS S2.

This felt smaller scale than LiS and a little slow in places too, but it's nevertheless a very strong and personal story of family.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Tell Me Why (PC)

Overall really good, better than LiS 2 which I found dissapointing in many ways, but not as good as the first LiS or Before the Storm for that matter. I liked the characters and the story a lot and the gameplay was what I expected, so not bad in any ways really. I did however find the game lacking or missing in certain ways that made the first LiS fantastic for me, might be the lack of intrigues, mysteries and the "scale" of the game is not as big considering it's just 3 episodes. LiS did after all have 5 episodes about a whole town an tons of people and stories.

I got the ending where

Spoiler

Tyler, Michael and Alyson lives together in Jueno or whatever it's called, I believed Toms story and Tessa left that shitstain and the twins did not lose the voice they had, so pretty great ending imo.

Score: 8.5/10

 

[MJunioR]

After a disappointment with Infinite Warfare, I was ready for another one with WWII, but it didn't disappoint me at all! In fact, it's probably one campaign I will replay a lot in coming years.

CoD WWII shakes the traditional COD story format a bit. Instead of a villain that appears every now and then, there's no "main villain" - you're fighting nazis, that's enough. And this is a great move, since it's clear that CoD devs had no idea on how to make a villain since Advanced Warfare. Replacing the villain is a bigger focus on the main character relationship with his squad. A very welcome change.

Another major difference here is that there's no automatic health recovery - health kits are back, but Sledgehammer made them very easy to get. Keeping your health up is completely manageable.

Back talking about the campaign - I enjoyed it a lot. Not having a forced villain face and focusing in the character relationships worked well. Some of WWII's missions were the most fun I had with CoD since MW3, too. Liberation certainly is one of the best CoD levels in years. My only issues in the end are the length of the campaign, the pacing, and the missed opportunities here. I'd love more infiltration missions like Liberation, for example. Or a bigger version of it, with multiple outcomes and ways to complete objectives. Well, at this point I might as well wish for a Hitman game set during WWII.

Anyway, valid only for the single-player story mode portion of the game:

[UWSL]What's good about it?[/UWSL]

• Good, replayable story mode
• The lovable CoD gameplay that everyone knows with some changes here and there to spice things up
• Teamwork is well implemented in the campaign
• S.O.E. and Liberation are very good chapters

[UWSL]What's not?[/UWSL]

• The campaign is too short
• Stealth doesn't always work
• Tank battles are really annoying, there's only a few though
• PC performance, again, isn't great. I hadn't any crashes, but many stutters playing at 1080p

Score: [UWSL]7.5 / 10[/UWSL]

 

[Ge0force]

Retired: Silver


Silver was released in 1999 en was one on my favorite games back then. I still enjoyed what I played, but the game didn't age very well. The game uses pre-rendered backgrounds in combination with 3D models. The Steam version upscales everything nicely, but too often you can't see what's happening in combat because the characters are too far from the camera or pushed to the side of the screen. The combat is quite enjoyable tho: you can do different moves with your melee weapons by moving the move in different directions, and there's a great variety of magic, potions, buffs and summons.

Sadly, the interface is one of the worst I've ever seen in a game. To select a weapon, spell or potion, you need to right click on the screen, and select them from a submenu in a clumsy radial selection screen. Healing and switching weapons/magic in the middle of combat is a huge pain because of this. It also seems you can select the strength of your spells by using the F1-F8 keys, but this is never explained in the game.

Another huge issue is that the game doesn't tell you what to do next. During your exploration, you'll encounter plenty of path branches and closed doors. After finding a new key or object, you need to backtrack the entire game world (which is rather big!) to see where to go next. Sometimes you need to talk to a certain NPC to continue, or you need an item that van easily be missed during an earlier quest. I don't like using guides for my games, but without guide, I would have spent more time searching every corner of every area than actually progressing in the game. The lack of in-game maps makes this even worse; there's no way to see where in the game world you may have missed something.

The reason why I stopped playing is because the game crashed every few minutes after finding the 7th orb. There is no quicksave, so it was impossible for me to continue playing because the game always crashed to desktop before reaching the next save point. Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed the hours I've played this game, but this was rather because of nostalgia. Today, the game isn't enjoyable for newcomers at all.

Score: 4.5/10


____

Retired: Diaries of a Space Port Janitor


I don't like games with too much handholding, but this game doesn't tell you anything. You're a robot and you need to collect garbage lying on the floor of a space port terminal. You can keep the garbage as well, and sell it to one of the dozens of vendors who may be willing to buy certain objects. Your inventory is very small, so you can barely keep anything. The low-res game world also makes it very hard to remember where certain vendors are, or even finding the way back to your home. The are also statues of gods you can pray to. No idea why. There are hundreds of aliens you can talk to. 99% of them have nothing interesting to say.

I guess the goal of the game is to experience how boring it is being a janitor. Well that worked for me alright. I guess there's also the challenge to find something exciting to happen. That's where the game lost me. It felt like a waste of time to me. Uninstalled after little over 2 hours.

Score: 3.0/10


____

Finished: Highway Blossoms


I don't play/wacht many visual novels, but this one got so many positive reviews that I had to try it. The story is about a girl who just lots her grandfather who raised her. In an effort to deal with her loss, she's on her way to a concert where she always went with him. On her way to the concert, she finds a young cute girl with car troubles in the middle of the desert. Seems that girl is on a treasure hunt, and when her car gets stolen, both girls decide to look for the treasure together.

This doesn't sound very original, and from the very start it's clear that we can expect some (optional) adult content sooner or later. Still, the characters, dialogs and relationship between the girls and other people is very well done. You'll learn to know them very well, and I really felt for them when things were going wrong. Some of the events really grabbed me because I recognized it in situations I experienced myself.

While the novel could have been a bit shorter than 10 hours, I really, really enjoyed it. Very recommened, even if you don't like anime!

Score: 8.9/10

 

[Stevey]

Red Redemption 2 (STEAM)
Originally played through at release on XBX.

Finished the main story, got a few of the collectibles but ran out of motivation to 100% it, will go back to it and do that in the future.

I really enjoyed it, the story and characters are really good.
The story missions are very linear and the combat feels the same all the way through, but its still a great experience IMO.
Playtime was about 82 hours but like I said, still loads of content that I didn't do.

 

[C-Dub]

Completed Paradise Killer (GOG)

Paradise Killer

An island outside of reality. A rogue human civilization hoping to resurrect dead ali

www.gog.com

Also on Steam

Imagine a game with Danganronpa vibes, but less of the minigame garbage, and with one extra-long case and an open world where you can uncover its mysteries non-linearly.

Paradise Killer is about not only uncovering the truth, but creating it too. Everyone on the island has created their own truth that they are trying to push - and as the main character, the detective Lady Love Dies, you can too. A murder has been committed in a paradise island wedged in an alternate reality, where despicable people worship despicable gods, enslaving and ritually sacrificing ordinary people to maintain their paradise. However, such a paradise gets tainted by demons every 1000 years or so, and the whole thing needs to be rebuilt, learning from the mistakes of the last. On the eve of moving to the 25th such "paradise", the leaders of The Syndicate, the privileged humans who run the island, are murdered. The highest authority in the land, the Judge, brings Lady Love Dies out from an 8000 year exile to investigate the murders and regain her place in the now diminished Syndicate.

Most of the game is spent wandering around the island for better or worse (more on that later), finding out the truth. After you are done investigating, you bring all the islanders to the court and present your evidence. However, unlike in something like Danganronpa, where the investigation is linear and the court outcome is either failure or finding the correct guilty party, Paradise Killer lets you decide what to do with the truth. Do you spill it all out in the court, pinning responsibility for a variety of smaller crimes culminating in a grand conspiracy, or do you think the lesser-involved parties - while technically guilty - are as much victims as they are perpetrators, and should be spared the death penalty by not divulging their culpability?

The way the game presents its evidence, there's a clear timeline and version of events that is factual, but is that the truth that you wish for? That's the kind of question this game asks, even if not explicitly so. The game doesn't judge you for getting it wrong - it just accepts as fact your "conclusions" and moves on to the next issue. And since there are many characters who have their hands in many pie, there aren't actually many people who are innocent in this game. Does it matter that they get found guilty for a crime they didn't commit when they were connected anyway, especially if that means people you consider friends get off?

But what are friends in this hell hole? Paradise is awful, as are most of its residents. The elites in The Syndicate are responsible for the enslavement and ritual slaughter of thousands, while the one citizen we do meet in the game is vulgar and possessed by a demon. A highlight of the game, Shinji, is a rude demon who kind of accompanies you around the island. Ultimately harmless, it gives you things to think about on one hand. yet veers into Monokuma-style non-sequiturs in the other.

I enjoyed trawling around the island for evidence, but about 10-12 hours in the fatigue began to set. The leads were thinning and the hunt for the remaining strands felt more like a wild goose chase. Add in that you need to walk back and forth around the island (or pay blood shards, the island's currency, to fast travel) and it felt like the game was being stretched out longer than it should have. I think it could've been saved by removing the blood shard requirement to fast travel, as I am psychologically loathe to spend it as a hoarder, and ended the game with nearly 70 blood shards (each fast travel is worth 1, and I could've easily spared the expense with hindsight).

But the game has a whole lot of reprehensible characters, a fascinating setting and engrossing lore that I pushed through anyway. At full price, this game presents excellent value for those after an extra hit of Danganronpa, but want a slight change of pace. It's just a shame that the game is vague about how much money you'll actually need, as I could've done a bit more spending. I feel like I could've saved a lot of time.

9/10

 

[Cacher]

Finished Tacoma


In Tacoma, you play as Amy Ferrier, a AI specialist, investigating why the crew of space station Tacoma evacuated the station. On Tacoma, you will use AR to recreate different scenes between the crews for you to understand what exactly happened on the station. Throughout the story, you also find out the personality of these people as well as the problems they are facing. Curiosity grows into sympathy, and we start to understand humans never change, no matter they are living in present time or in distant future, humans stay human and all of us face similar adversities but also share sentiment towards love and happiness.

I wouldn't spoil what exactly happened on Tacoma. The journey is short (4-6 hours depending on how much you are a explorer) and I hope all of you can enjoy the ride. It is totally worth your time.

9/10

P.S. If you are feeling down, do exercise!

 

[Avern]

Finished Pipe Push Paradise.


It's a push-em-up puzzler inspired heavily by Stephen's Sausage Roll. Each level has a pair of pipes coming out of the ground, and you have to push a bunch of disconnected pipes around to join them, usually in a space that is awkward and confining. The puzzles are well-designed, but unremarkable. Too often, instead of having an "Aha! I get it!" moment, I just sort of stumbled into a configuration that worked and didn't really understand what I had done to get there. The later puzzles were better about this though, since the increased difficulty made it harder to bumble my way through, and a couple of the last ones were really interesting and fun to solve.

It was a decent time, but on the lower end of what I'm looking for out of a puzzle game.

7/10

 

[Mivey]

I just finished Rage 2 on Gamepass.

It's the sequel to the id game Rage 1, but developed by Avalanche Studios. It's kind of a no-brainer, since they mad the open-world Mad Max game, and Rage is pretty heavily inspired by Mad Max.

It's a first person shooter, with decent shooting mechanics, set in an open world. It's actually fairly small as far as open world games, go. It's about 12 hours to finish the story, perhaps a bit longer if you are willing to do all the optional stuff. Rage 2 feels like a very logical follow-up to Rage 1, keeps a lot of the same elements, but opens it up with a more vibrant world. I do miss the id Tech engine a bit, it gave the first game a very unique look. The animation engine was also quite special, all that is more "generic", for the lack of a better word, in Rage 2.

I can recommend this one to anyone who want to play a nice FPS game. It doesn't overstay it's welcome, but you shouldn't expect a lot of interesting narrative either. It's a very straightforward game, and knows it too.

 

[DesolationStone]

Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3)​

Vote: 7

[UWSL][UWSL][UWSL]Good[/UWSL][/UWSL][/UWSL]

• Incredibile Gameplay, a lot of new things for the series and cool stuff
• The Ending of a legendary story
• Graphically incredible
• The cutscenes are really good

[UWSL][UWSL][UWSL]Bad[/UWSL][/UWSL][/UWSL]

• More hours of cutscenes than gameplay
• 30fps on PS3 (and they're not so much stable)
• The final sequence it's so damn long and repetitive
• Very bad A.I.
• To much simple
• Probably, the worst Boss Fights in the all serie

 

[MegaApple]

Completed DOOM (2016)

I enjoyed it, but I'm not fan.
It's not for me.

• In short, it's arena shooting + platforming. It gets same-y real fast for me. Weapon juggling is cool and all, but I ended using a handful weapons; I know this might change on higher difficults.
• Liked secret hunting.
• The challenges restricted playstyle, IMO.
• Doing weird challenges to power up weapons and rune felt a but like a chore.
• Music was great of course, but it lost its impact in the final level.
• The story (motivation to move forward) was vague for me, and the ending was weak.

On the other hand, I really liked stuff made in SnapMap.

• There was one which felt like a MegaWAD. And it used verticality really well.
• There was a really cool recreation of Halo 1 intro level, with 2 weapon pick up system.
• And one with time travel, reminded me of Titanfall 2's Cause and Effect. It had cutscenes!

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Completed XING - The Land Beyond (White Lotus Interactive, 2017).

It's a kickstarted first person puzzler with optional walking simulator content (unlocked through collectibles). The puzzle-mechanics are all state-based (i.e. manipulate the environment - move blocks, press switch to rotate bridge, switch from day to night, raise/lower water level, freeze/thaw water, etc.), nothing real-time or physics-based.

Really enjoyed this one.

Pro:

• The difficulty curve is one of the smoothest I ever encountered in an indie FPP and the game just hit that perfect zone where I never really got stuck at any point, but also never felt bored or like I was doing a chore.
• Liked the level design and overall look, the devs really made the most of Unreal Engine here to make something clearly made with very little resources (and quite a few generic third party assets) look pretty.
• Nice atmospheric soundtrack that never distracted me from the puzzling.
• Solid amount of content, took me 16h to 100%

Con:

• The story is some barely passable Buddhist-"inspired" mystical nonsense. You could print a week's supply of fortune cookies using nothing but flavor text from this game. It never got obnoxious enough to really irritate me, but a lot of wasted potential here.

Score: 4/5

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Warstone TD


I've spent more than 30 hours playing Warstone TD and I've enjoyed it a lot. The game is actually basic tower defense, combined with base building and RPG elements.

The base building is rather straight forward: you unlock new buildings by completing missions, and each building unlocks new units or generates resources. Sadly there isn't much choice in build order, and if there is, it barely impacts the gameplay. This is a missed opportunity in my opinion, XCOM showed how base building can actually affect the way you're playing a game.

This said, the tower defense with RPG elements is really well executed. You use dozens of different offensive and defensive spells, bring scrolls and potions on your missions and there are three tech trees to unlock. Each tech tree is focusing on different gameplay elements (melee attacks, magic and money) and it actually impacts the way you play. You can reset the skill trees as many times you want, so you're free to experiment.

I disagree with certain user reviews claiming that you need to grind in this game. I've finished the campaign on hard difficulty without any grinding. Playing the missions the game suggests does the job, and the difficulty seems balanced most of the time. There's co-op and PvP as well, and it's pretty active since I never had to wait more than 2 minutes to find someone to play with.

Score: 8.0/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Fantastic game, fantastis world design, good story, nice music and I love the mysterious parts of the world and how it somewhat connects to Alan Wake. I did play the base game last year through the high seas, but didn't care much for it then as I pretty much rushed through everything. This time I used my time with the game, discovering, exploring, doing side missions and listening to everything. Liked it much more this time. The DLCs were decent, but nothing special, I did like the AWE DLC, but I feel like I left with more questions.

Score: 9/10.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Vampire the Masquerade: Shadows of New York (PC, Steam)


I loved the previous game Coteries of New York, and while I still prefer that title over this one, this is still a highly enjoyable experience.
Solid writing, artstyle, and atmosphere, with a good sense of world building behind it make it a very compelling experience.

I give CoNY the nod over this though, as that title handles the intro to WoD much better I felt (as someone who knows nothing of WoD outside a couple of VtM games) than this does. This title seemed to rush through and gloss over a number of points in some areas. Still a solid experience nonethless.

Finished Vampire the Masquerade: Night Road (PC, Steam)


On the other hand, I did not like this. I was expecting a CYOA novel type experience, and at the end of the day I suppose that is true, but I think it's more accurate to describe this is a digital novel DnD-like experience, and I think the focus between those two are quite different. I'm sure for many people this will be a great thing but it did little for me.

I never really grasped how the RPG mechanics of this worked, and I don't think it did a good job for me of world building (particularly important as a WoD/VtM noobie) and so found myself frequently lost on story points to the point that by the end I barely cared. Furthermore, I just straight up found the story to be much duller than that of SoNY.
I won't be playing the other upcoming Choice of Games VtM titles now off the back of this one.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Embracelet


Excellent adventure-lite game, where you travel to a mysterious island to discover the truth behind a magical bracelet. On this island you meet charming characters, solve not-too-hard puzzles using your bracelet, make friends and even fall in love. The story and dialogs are decent and there are plenty of funny situations; the developer is clearly a huge fan of the old Lucasarts adventures.

Embracelet has colorful 3D graphics and a wonderful soundtrack, and everything was made by a single developer (who also made the excellent Milkmaid of the Milkyway). Very recommended!

Score: 8.7/10


Finished Resident Evil 7


Resident Evil finally went back to it's roots: horror and survival. There are still too many bullets to be found and the last part of the game isn't as good. But the rest of the game is so extremely well done that I forgive Capcom these minor flaws. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[Milena]

Finally finished the last challenge of

Overall I liked the game. Apart from the latest arena challenges it isn't really difficult, the art style is nice, the story is ok, the characters are interesting and weird and it has a nice variety given that you can choose your party, the cards in each deck of course and there are also some items to equip.

Overall, I'd say 7/10

 

[C-Dub]

Halo 3 ODST


Not the best Halo, but I enjoyed the change of pace this game offered. It feels more stealth-based, combat has higher stakes when you're not the Master Chief, and it comes with an unusual soundtrack that gives the game a different mood from the usual Halo fare.

I like the mission structure, where you're exploring a semi-open world littered with missions as you find different objects left behind from the carnage earlier. The missions in-between these open world segments are a bit more of the standard Halo fare, minus The Flood, which is a good thing.

Considering this game deviates from Halo in some key ways, the fact that it's considerably shorter than other games in the series is also a good thing. ODST never felt like it was overstaying its welcome. Actually, in all honesty, I think it could've gotten away with one more mission before it started feeling stale, but for what it's worth I'll take the game we got.

Great soundtrack, a fun Halo side-story, and an interesting twist on Bungie's formula. For £3.99 as part of The Master Chief Collection, ODST is amazing value.

7/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Creature in the Well (Flight School, 2019)

It's a dungeon crawler, but you're not hitting people directly with your sword, instead the sword picks up little sphere-shaped energy accumulations and projects them at enemies and objects. Or shorter: You're playing pinball.

Really loved this game, enough to finish it even though the final boss stage took me some 15 or so attempts spread over months. I really have no patience for difficult multi-stage boss fights that make you start over if you fail, but for this one I had to keep coming back.

Pro:

• It's a dungeon-crawler / pinball hybrid and that concept works.
• Really simple core mechanic that comes to life through additional gear picked up through the course of the game
• Nice atmospheric soundtrack that carries the game and also has a lot of unique character to it
• Super stylish limited palette art style inspired by Mike Mignola's work in the Hellboy comics

Con:

• Flawed signposting and tutoralizing. I initially ran into a difficulty wall by completely missing a central upgrade mechanic, because the game is very married to the whole environmental storytelling and letting the player learn the game by exploring thing - which I like when it's done well, but if a game goes that route, the design should be airtight and eventually lead even the most obtuse players on the right track by itself. Me, I had to look up a gameplay video and then had that "oh that's a thing?!?" moment instead.
• There's really only one gear combo that realistically lets you beat the final boss challenge and again, the game could do more to point it out to you (instead it does no pointing out at all)

4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Quite fun game with pretty graphics. Not very long though, 23 missions which takes 4-6 hours to go through and some of the mission objectives felt like the kind of side missions you find in open world games. However I liked the humor and gameplay quite a lot. Also the game is actually kind of difficulty when there are waves of enemies coming to shoot you or the object you are trying to protect.

Score: 7.5/10