Fear and Hunger has some interesting and engaging gameplay. You regularly have to manage your party's hunger and sanity, there are multiple unique status effects, such as infected wounds, broken bones, parasitic infection, and even severe anal bleeding, but most notably, there is a fascinating dismemberment system.

Not only can you lose your limbs permanently, which will change the way the game is played, you can remove enemy's limbs, and most of combat is centered around the mechanic. You could easily hit the torso over and over again until the health of an enemy is whittled down, but it's often much more safe and practical to cut off an enemy's arms so they can't hit you, or their legs or genitals so they lose their balance. The boss fights incorporate this, having different parts of the enemy's body respond to attacks or perform different functions.

After hearing about such a seemingly in depth and interesting gameplay system, it may surprise you to learn that most people do not play Fear and Hunger for its gameplay. People play it for the lore. The story. The art direction. The atmosphere. The music. The characters.

Fear and Hunger really is unlike anything I've ever experienced. Obviously, this game is right up my alley since it's Lovecraftian dark fantasy horror, but man... I REALLY haven't been able to stop thinking about this game. The art, enemy design, world building, and lore are just perfect. It's all so memorable, so unique, so compelling, so idiosyncratic, and it's all exacerbated by the fact that the game is already perfect for me conceptually.

Maybe later down the line, when I'm not completely steeped in wonder and awe at the dark, horrific, violent, fascinating world of this game, I can write more about its themes and its writing, etc. etc., but for now, I'm content to let it live within me.

It's a difficult game, brutal to the point of near impossibility, but the difficulty is NOTHING compared to what this game is offering you in every single department and aspect.

Despite some technical limitations, Stasis is a compelling experience that delivers an engaging narrative of corporate greed and scientific hubris, some fantastically devised horror, surprisingly stunning environments, and wonderful world building (godDAMN some of those PDAs are good.)

Being a huge horror fan, ESPECIALLY body horror (which is this game's specialty), this probably clicked with me more than it did for some, but I am not ashamed to admit I could not put this game down. Some of the animations and models are jarring in their amateur appearance which can lead to some of the immersion wavering, but even acknowledging that, it's a truly impressive achievement from a staggeringly small team, and I'm VERY excited to check out the sequel!

nasty, slimey, cruel satire on capitalism, consumerism, and the military industrial complex, and meditation on the effects of violence on the human psyche, all wrapped up in a truly ugly and hilarious biopunk, slimecore package. putting this game into words and offering real, earnest analysis feels to be doing it a disservice: it's an extremely insane game where the total decimation of the protagonist's soul through ultraviolence is an absurd, very funny joke. it feels as though to take the game seriously in any capacity is against the games' wishes, but perfectly in line with what it is as well. a future so destroyed by corporations and capitalism all you can do is laugh at it. and laugh you will. what a perfect, extremely bizarre game. this is a bad review since it is very hard to verbalize what the game is. you really have to play it for yourself to find out!

C E O M I N D S E T

Almost entirely perfect in every conceivable way. Not only is this astonishingly good in regards to writing and direction, the technical aspect is truly unlike anything you've ever seen. The amount of work and dedication this must have taken is mind-boggling, and it shows in the game. You basically have three full movies that tell their own story and are accurate recreations of the style of film from their respective era, you have the behind-the-scenes story of Marissa Marcel and co., as WELL AS the secret-secret story that the game is about. It's incredible.

The only issue is that this game is HARD to beat. There's no real direction about how to complete it and see the conclusion to the themes and ideas the game is exploring, so I was pretty checked out of the experience by way of furiously searching walkthroughs.

Other than that, a masterpiece. Like I said: NEAR perfect.

Truth be told, half of why I bought Street Fighter 6 is because I have a huge crush on Juri Han (one that has since strengthened itself even further). I learned you could interact with her and receive texts from her, so I was sold pretty much immediately. The game looked fun, obviously, but I have a love-hate relationship with fighting games in that I love playing them but hate how much time it takes to learn a single character, much less a whole roster. I figured I'd finish the story, play a little online, and shelve it for the time being.

So tell me why I've logged over 40 hours into this game in less than a week? Tell me why I find myself addicted to it? Tell me why I am actually EXCITED to learn more characters in the roster instead of revolted by the idea? It makes no sense. But I love this game. Its style, its gameplay, its art direction, its character designs, hell, even its story mode: it all clicks. It is one HELL of a great fighting game. It is so goddamn fun. I honestly predicted I'd shelve the game after maxing out Juri Han's bond, but here I am, still learning her combos and making my way through the ranks online. One thing is for sure: I'll be spending a lot more with Juri, my wife, in the future, just by how much this game has hooked me.

Ugly. Unpleasant. Cruel. Nasty. Mean. Loud. There are many words to describe Kane & Lynch 2, and none of them are positive in the traditional sense. It is an exercise in ugliness and cruel violence. The camera shakes and wobbles, and sprinting in the game basically means sacrificing any form visual information about where you are and what's around you. Combat is difficult, as the two main characters are constantly screaming at each other and the sound of barrages of gunfire ricocheting off your cover is distracting and overwhelming. The game's most explosive section, in which you're in a helicopter armed with an LMG, is near incomprehensible; the only way to survive is with a constant stream of gunfire directed in front of you, loud and bright, all while the camera is repeatedly distorted and pixelated by the damage you're taking, and the only thing that matters is seeing hit markers on your screen. You can barely make out your enemy, and by the glimpses of office workers sprinting to safety, away from your reign of terror, it's more than likely you've ripped a few innocent people to shreds in your efforts to escape the law alive. Kane & Lynch 2 is more of an interactive Liveleak video than a traditional shooter video game.

If you are a dumb person, you might hear me describe this game and think it is bad. You would think this because you are dumb. I, dear readers, am not dumb. Kane & Lynch 2 is a masterful postmodern deconstruction of the shooter genre. It examines the consequences of what would ACTUALLY happen should two white guys go into a foreign country and start mowing down anyone who gets in their way, the basis for so many shooters of the time?

The aesthetic and atmosphere is unmatched. Like I said, it's more like a liveleak video than a shooter. Gore is pixellated, the audio regularly peaks and the camera distorts with damage, Kane and Lynch regularly yell out to each other with no subtitles present; Lynch will even rant to himself, barely audible, about how he needs his meds, or he can't see shit, or how fucked everything is. What little music there is is heard through speakers of DVD stores and restaurants. It's oppressive, it's dark, it's overwhelming, and it is an incredible deconstruction of and meditation on the voyeuristic appeal of violence and crime in games and media. For a game that is so ugly, unpleasant, and scummy, it does its job beautifully.

It’s insane how perfectly this hits the mark on a narrative level. Every single scene is insanely effective. Every character is given so much care. You would think in a game as long as this, it would drag in places, but no, this is a freight train of incredible writing and emotional payoff. Direction, writing, performances, music: it all comes together in a way so beautiful, so precise, it almost seems impossible. Looking back on the narrative, it seems more like a mythical concept of a “perfect game story” than a real, actual game I played.

Combat is insanely fun and rewarding. By the finale, I was physically reacting to the hits I was giving and taking. Exploration can get confusing and repetitive if you’re trying to 100%, but it works well enough. Shit, man, with all this game offers, it’s not like confusing navigation is going to knock it down a point.

Just a masterpiece. A perfect action game. Story and gameplay excelling and working in tandem.

Incredibly fun