For the record: I have finishd this game in the past and I like its flawed, but unique approach to Adventure games. What this review is, is the acknowledgement that the 2015 Remaster, wich is the only official version available, is a broken mess right now. Do not buy this Remaster.

I ran into countless game breaking bugs, sound issues and other glitches. For many of wich I could find posts online of people having the exact same issues, with no solutions or fixes for them. Im pretty such it didnt used to be this way back in 2015 and I cannot speak for the console versions, but some Windows or Driver Update must have introduced these issues on PC.

I hope we will someday get a Patch, be it official or fan made, that fixes the game. Grim Fandango is absolutly deserving of beeing preserved as an important title in gaming history and I would hate if technical issues make it slip through the cracks of time once again, beeing dismissed by future generations because of a broken version sold on digital stores.

Another year, Another Update, Another excuse to replay Dusk. Dusk is David Szymanskis bloody FPS remix of games like Quake, Blood and Thief. Its the game that really launched the Boomer Shooter explosion that we are still experiencing today and for good reason.

You play as Dusk Dude, a mute badass with an arsenal of weapons, ready to fight an eldrich cult and its hoard of horrific creatures. The hows and why arent exactly clear or important but the game trickels down enough hints through out its level design for the game to feel like a greater whole and not a collage of unrelated maps. Fun is the main focus of Dusk. You bunny hop, summer sault and slide your way through horror themed levels while picking up power ups and dual wielding shotguns, firing rocketlaunchers or sniping with wallpiercing crossbows.
It all results in a beautiful ballet of bullets and mayhem, that still is my platonic ideal of what a Boomer Shooter is suppose to be. Although as much as I love the game in its entirety, its not a perfect masterpiece.

The best part of Dusk are its open ended levels, with jump pads and all kinds of cover you can slide behind when combat gets too heated. Sadly some it seems to forget that philosophie for about a 1/3 of the game, specifically in Chapter 2. Its basicly swaps the open maps for tight corridors that need to be navigated with a tiny flash light, sometimes even in pitch darkness and that doesnt work at all. Dusks Combat simply isnt build for those kind of sections. Enemies frequently soak up to many bullets, allowing them to push you into a corner until you run out of health. Higher difficultys become especially egrious and for someone like me who doesnt want to play with midlevels saves, its the point where I become so annoyd at its bullshit that I just turn the game off. Shout out to the Cowgirls, who like to come out of nowhere, blasting explosives at you that can kill you in only a couple hits.

Fortunatly Chapter 3 mostly remedys that design flaw, dropping you in shorter but more bizzare campaing that leads you to the endfight with the Ultimate evil. Chapter 3 might be my favorite, having the best level in my opinion when you get to the mindbending map that is Homecoming. And that is ultimatly the reason why I love Dusk so much beyond its flaws. The willingness to be bizzare and experimental in the limited framwork of an 90s FPS. Its what made me fall in love with this new genre in general, even making me go back to older games I didnt know I would love as much as I do now. And with its new HD coat of paint and full mod support finally here, there no better time than to fall in love with Dusk all over again.

God damm, my definitiv game of the year. If you like games like Stalker or just have fun looting the Wasteland in Fallout than this is the Game for you. An incredible, smartly designt immersive Sim FPS that actually gets better the further you get.

It starts off slow with you having to deal with rusty revolvers and relying on Stealth kills, eventually ramping up to having you become a Wild West God blasting heads with bullrifles. I can not stress enough how satisfiying the progression is. By the end youll be stacked with weapons, trinkets and perks that all change your build in really different ways. Ill go as far as to say it does progression better than most traditional rpgs.

In addition to that the enemie varity is incredible. From chapter to chapter Blood West changes it up just enough for you to feel powerful, but it never forgets to challenge you. Every enemie has different tactics for different builds, that youll have to learn and adapt to play well against them. And it all ties into my favorite thing about Blood West: It just lets you go. There is a world and a narrativ to experience for sure, but it never forces itself on you. Already know where objectives and late game weapons are ? Just go there, no strings attachet. I have so many secrets still to discover and Im so ready for another playthrough. Play Blood West, Blood West is fucking awseome.

I praised Half Life for having near flawless pacing. Aside from the opening train ride and ending cutscene, it never took away control. Half Life 2 for some reason felt the need to do the exact opposite and lock the player inside rooms with characters endlessly talking.

Luckly when the chakels come off, the game does let you just play, having seriously improved gunplay with an impressive Physiques engine. I admire the attempt to have vehicles segments, seriously clunky though, but the varity in weapons has been exhanged in favor of them. I do still think how technicaly impressive Half Life 2 is can be described as the best part. That inturn does come with with the downside of less varity in the enviroment again.

I like the idea of having the nondescript eastern european City 17 be the backdrop to the Combins alien reign over earth, but nobody can tell me that the grey block buildings and dirt roads dont get seriously repetitive. I do wish their was more Alien architecture and technology, expanding what was hinted at in Half Life 1.

In the end it does lead up to a exciting finale that gives a great cliffhanger, with the question of how the Combine managed to take over Earrth in 7 hours when they are this fucking incompetent.

Maybe the most missunderstood and wrongfully shamed game of 7th Gen. From the critics who claimed it was a repetitive techdemo with a shallow parcoure system, to the sequel dickriders who retroactivly shunned it: Get fucked. The First Assassins Creed is a game of focus, a clear vision of making a historical spy thriller with a sci fi twist.

It weaves historical fact with fiction excellently and creates a believable world for Gameplay to take place in. Altair is an excelent protagonist, beeing a reflection of the World he lives in. A Land that is beeing grinded down between the waring parties, where your fundamentalist believes and oaths justifie the end to any means. And unlike many of the Sequels: Altair actually changes and earns his arc as he learns the truth about the Holy War. Hes not Ezio who becomes the Holy Prophet of the Creed even after fucking up again, again and then a little bit more for good measure. Assassins Creed 1 considers consequenz and choice important to the narrativ, like it fucking should.

The gameplay consists of parcouring through the distinct cities of the Middle East. Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre all have unique districts, color pallets and Architecture. The devs had so much trust in the level design that they allow the minimap to be turned off and let the player explore based on landmarks and directions given in missions briefings alone. And it works. Having the buro always in the north of a city gives a clear starting point for exploration, making it entirely the players fault if they get lost.

The traversel through the citys is handle by a complex parcoure system allowing complete freedom of movement with side ejects, back jumps, slides and eventually ledge grabs. The later getting acquired to late in the game even though it unlocks a cruchial new layer to the traversal that should have been unlocked after the intro in my opinion. That and a piss poor tutorial, wich the series still suffers from, may have contributed to the lack of engagement players might have fellt toward this first Entrie. Although I would argue the game is open enough to allow experimentation without the need for endlessly forced tutorials. And perhaps that was the point.

The missions that are supposedly so repetitive all tie into the movement and use it well. And to be clear: there are no side missions in AC 1. Its all in service of the story and how much context the player wants to have before killing their assignt target. AC 1 simply prefers to not pull away any focus with random bullshit, just sometimes stoping the plot for present day segments that give further Context and even have their own secrets to discover. Random Flags and Templars to kill are placed in the world, wich I do admit feel very tacked on and unecessary. Their isnt even any reward for doing it.

Combat is not nearly as complex as parcour, but still provides solid fun. Its all about the numbers, giving even more the feeling that your a lonely Assassin send into the lions den. Parry can become a Get Out of Jail Free Card if its mastered sure, but in the late game enemies turn up in such high numbers that the most viable strategie really is the make a quick escape across the rooftopes. To give some credit to the critics: Combat does become repetitive simply due to the fact that by one of the last sections it becomes a litteral Kill Corridor of Enemies with no Stealth or any way to avoid it. It sucks and it reeks of a rushed deadline they had to met.

Still those are minor problems in my eyes for a game that is so unique among it own Series even. It is a shame that Ubisoft kickd the series creator Patrice Desilets to the curb when it came time to make follow ups, just so they could have complete control over milking their new cash cow dry until the heat death of the universe, or more fittingly: Soon the company itself, according to all the reports. I wonder what could have been, but Im also glad AC 1 still exists. Its a game I keep coming back to since I was Tennager and I appreciate it more every time I replay it.

Valve releasing the 25 anniversary update was the perfect time to do another replay of this classic. Sadly, the new update is broken as of the time I'm writing this. Scripted events didn't trigger, and object collision seems to be wonky at best. The game becomes a nightmare from Surface Tension onwards.

As for the game in general: Half-Life remains one of the best shooters of all time. Exceptional paced, including Xen in my opinion. Its combat loop is so good, almost never repeating the same encounters. All packed up in a sci-fi story that allows depth to be brought into it by the player, but never forces anyone to ever stop playing the game. It's my ideal way to tell Video Game Story's: Those who want to stop and soak in the details can do that just as well as people who just want the action. I never get tired of doing both depending on wich mood strikes me and Gordon Freemans journey through Black Mesa never gets old for me.

Sigil sure is a John Romero Level Pack for the original Doom. I wouldnt say its total shit, but Sigil does combine Romeros best and worst Level design traits into one.The levels are far from generic, always trying to have interesting challenges.

The key word here is trying: Someone should have slaped Romero across the face 20 years ago when he was working at Id and was spamming the Monster spawns. There are only so many cheap deaths I can take because of traps I couldnt possibly forsee or Hell Knights sniping me from across the map. The best thing about Sigil is the soundtrack by James Paddock, probably the best in classic Doom right next to Doom 64.

It's no wonder there was a decade long wait for the Sequel to this game. Duke 3D basically steps it up in every way. The Gun play is amazing and the different items you get on top of that make it almost a proto immersive sim. Running through levels that set the goal to feel like real spaces, Duke 3D really achieves an immersive quality of making you feel like an action hero fighting through a dangerous scenario. I'm more pleased with some levels than others.

The game sadly doesn't reach the peaks of LA Meltdown and Lunar Apocalypse in its final level pack of Shrapnel City. That is par for the course for Build Engine Games, but hiding almost one hit enemies behind doors where there's no good way to back out of the fight gets tedious really fast. Other than that, Duke Nukem 3D is a legendary title for a reason. Blow it out your ass!

Another in the list of games I wanted to give another shot. Given how much fun I just had replaying Dead Rising 2 recently, doing 3 complete runs and and getting the S Rank Ending.
I came away hating this game even more then when I got bitterly dissapointed by it back in 2013. From its mechanics to its tone, aesthetics and characters: Dead Rising 3 is the posterchild of a large multimillion dollar Publisher not understanding or caring why something is popular and steamrolling its appeal flat for maxium mass market chare. We need an Xbox exclusive, Zombies are popular, make populare Zombie Game.

Quite interesting in heinseit how they arguably ripped off the entire look of the then relativly new TV smash hit that was The Walking Dead. Maybe if this wasnt labbeld Dead Rising and comitted to its more serious tone than their could have been something here but everytime this game actually gets to be true to its name sake the tone clashes so awkwardly. Nick Ramos and his crew dont fit at all into this franchise. I get how they wanted more grounded and plucky characters to root for in this wacky, nonsensical series but that doesnt work if the game constanly winks and smiles at the audience. We know Dead Rising is stupid. A series about a snarky reporter beating zombies with gumball maschines and parkbenches. A stonedfaced Father who can weare Baby Pjs and tape chainsaws to rowing paddles.
The Comedy comes from rarely, if ever, pointing at the absurdity. This is life or death for these characters, while we the audience get some credit for knowing thats its absurd without it beeing explained. Ironicly its the reason why people got so invested in the series to begin with.

On the gameplay front the game doesnt fair much better. From the very begining Capcom Vancouver make it clear that they think the main appeal of the series is killing zombies in wacky ways. There is no escorting survivors anymore. Baffling since there is so much focus on Veycles. The Timer is completely irrelevant now, killing all decision making and navigation that was the main fun of the previous Games. All that there is left is killing zombies, wich is further trivilisd by beeing able to craft combo weapon on the fly. Capcom Vancouver in fact hit all the notes in order to make it not fun. In the end I did get about half way through the story before beeing completely misserable and desinstalling it to make space for any other game in the known universe.

Dead Rising 2 really is the most straight forward sequel they could have made, down to using some of the exact same assets and music tracks. Canadien studio Blue Castle Games had their work basicly cut out for them and to their credit: They mostly brought really good quality of life improvments to the formula while adding a fresh cast to the franchise.

Survivor AI is massivly improvement and combo weapons add a lair motivation to the leveling system and exploration. Id say map design took a hit here, I much prefer Willamet to Fortunate City, simply because the latter has can get fairly tedious to navigate while Dead Rising 1 had very little wasted space in its tightly designt Mall setting. What I do prefer is Chuck Green over Frank West.

I know im gona be in the minority here but Chucks ultimate dad persona is infinitly endering to me. From beeing as quick witted as a lobotomized puppy, to his corny one liners and his loving relationship to his daughter Kathy. Chuck is the kinda guy I wanna have beer with.

So many times have I tried to get into The Evil Within. I clawed my way through it on PS3 and I clawed my way through it on PC. This time I was determined to finish this for Halloween, I was confident that Ill do it. I hate this game. Its 15 mediocre Horror Games rolled into one. Theres so many instant kills. I think they want you to improvise and use your tools to fight the enemies in clever ways but there are so few combat rooms to do that. Most of the time you spend in long linear corridors your expected to sneak through with horrible stealth or you have a crash bandicoot style chase scene or you get to train your late stage arthritis with horrible quicktime events. Sure love mashing A to turn that wheel 50 times. I appreaciat how it wants to be unapologetic weird but actually playing it fucking sucks.