2020
The game looks really good, but it has nothing going for it in gamplay.
The shooting itself is alright, altough aiming is clunky. A main mechanic is covering behind graves(?) or other objects, but you have to hug them really close, and the animation between standing and covering is very little, so you'll of course get damaged. Literally everything is clunky and feels slow, you have to wait like a second between rolls, not giving enough time to get to safety. When going into cover you again have to wait a second before you can roll or do anything.
Upgrades, weapons, perks are usually what makes rougelites(k) but this game lacks everything. Like 4 gun types, sometimes with debuff modifiers like making the enemies bleed. Upgrades and perks/abilities have nothing really. Everything is basic and boring.
The shooting itself is alright, altough aiming is clunky. A main mechanic is covering behind graves(?) or other objects, but you have to hug them really close, and the animation between standing and covering is very little, so you'll of course get damaged. Literally everything is clunky and feels slow, you have to wait like a second between rolls, not giving enough time to get to safety. When going into cover you again have to wait a second before you can roll or do anything.
Upgrades, weapons, perks are usually what makes rougelites(k) but this game lacks everything. Like 4 gun types, sometimes with debuff modifiers like making the enemies bleed. Upgrades and perks/abilities have nothing really. Everything is basic and boring.
2019
Holy fucking shit how could a game this bad be ever made. I feel like the devs wanted this game to be a cross between Fallout and Doom, but just failed miserably.
Firstly the story, it was really bad and boring. It uses the basic theres a big bad, find some people to defeat it with, which is fine. And the fine things end there. The story just doesn't take itself seriously, its like a parody of itself. For example at the start of the game, your mother just gets killed and you are just like: Eh, who cares, lets go kill some monsters. Every interactions with other characters just feel out of place, and with ten layers of irony on top.
The shooting itself was pretty good, it felt like Doom shooting. But the enemies. Oh the enemies. A lot of enemies just take so much fucking ammo to kill, they are just so spongy. Like for fucking real, why do I need to shoot you in the head THREE TIMES just for you to die??? The game isn't hard, just frustrating. The main way the devs tried to make the game harder is just spamming so much enemies that you run out of ammo. The other is making an enemy so spongy you run out of ammo. And when you come across a difficult encounter all you can realistically do is sit behind cover, and shoot like 2 bullets every 20 seconds until the enemies die.
There are some good moments with the abilities, they can be really cool. But them being on a long cooldown, and not having any chance to go close to enemies because you'll die really quickly if they start throwing grenades, it just makes abilities not usable. There are like 5 bosses in the entire game, but youll have like 20 encounters with them, and it just makes them boring too.
The world doesn't feel empty, just annoying. There are things to do, the 3 same things all over the map. So it too just gets boring and repetative. You can also find data pads with some lore on them, but with the story being so bad it's not even worth reading.
Firstly the story, it was really bad and boring. It uses the basic theres a big bad, find some people to defeat it with, which is fine. And the fine things end there. The story just doesn't take itself seriously, its like a parody of itself. For example at the start of the game, your mother just gets killed and you are just like: Eh, who cares, lets go kill some monsters. Every interactions with other characters just feel out of place, and with ten layers of irony on top.
The shooting itself was pretty good, it felt like Doom shooting. But the enemies. Oh the enemies. A lot of enemies just take so much fucking ammo to kill, they are just so spongy. Like for fucking real, why do I need to shoot you in the head THREE TIMES just for you to die??? The game isn't hard, just frustrating. The main way the devs tried to make the game harder is just spamming so much enemies that you run out of ammo. The other is making an enemy so spongy you run out of ammo. And when you come across a difficult encounter all you can realistically do is sit behind cover, and shoot like 2 bullets every 20 seconds until the enemies die.
There are some good moments with the abilities, they can be really cool. But them being on a long cooldown, and not having any chance to go close to enemies because you'll die really quickly if they start throwing grenades, it just makes abilities not usable. There are like 5 bosses in the entire game, but youll have like 20 encounters with them, and it just makes them boring too.
The world doesn't feel empty, just annoying. There are things to do, the 3 same things all over the map. So it too just gets boring and repetative. You can also find data pads with some lore on them, but with the story being so bad it's not even worth reading.
2017
A nice, short narrative game. You go from room to room watching recordings of the space station's crew's, while you also download the AI of the station, as that was the job you were hired to do. The recordings were nice, but there weren't really anything else to do, just walk, listen, walk, listen. Which is fine, but for me the story wasn't all that interesting, until the end. The end was really good, with a good twist. And with how short the game was, the previous boring story didn't seem that long in contrast. So it was fine.
2019
Phew, this game was a ride. You are just trying to find a new place to settle down, quite some time after the nukes have been dropped, but always find the worst places.
The gunplay was really good, shooting, aiming and the such felt really good. You also have the option to customize your guns with attachments you find. And at first I loved it, then I realized the attachments don't do too much. Like I can feel the difference in power or accuracy, but there aren't enough of them where you could truly customize a gun.
The survival elements like fixing your gas mask and crafting filters didn't really add any depth to the game imo, but they also weren't annoying. So they are just kinda there.
The levels tho. So there are multiple levels, where you can explore mostly anything, mostly freely. So there are multiple open worlds. Which are great, I loved exploring stuff and unlocking new attachments and looting shit. But A lot of times you just don't know what to do to actually progress. You do have a map, with a marker, but I found some examples where it just points to the wrong thing. And some passageways or interactables blend in so much that I was just running around a room not realizing I had to flip a lever.
The overall pacing was also kinda jank, can't really pinpoint my problem with it tho.
The story was pretty good too, I liked it a lot. Altough with the ending, I didn't even know that there were "moral points", so I just got the bad ending :(
The gunplay was really good, shooting, aiming and the such felt really good. You also have the option to customize your guns with attachments you find. And at first I loved it, then I realized the attachments don't do too much. Like I can feel the difference in power or accuracy, but there aren't enough of them where you could truly customize a gun.
The survival elements like fixing your gas mask and crafting filters didn't really add any depth to the game imo, but they also weren't annoying. So they are just kinda there.
The levels tho. So there are multiple levels, where you can explore mostly anything, mostly freely. So there are multiple open worlds. Which are great, I loved exploring stuff and unlocking new attachments and looting shit. But A lot of times you just don't know what to do to actually progress. You do have a map, with a marker, but I found some examples where it just points to the wrong thing. And some passageways or interactables blend in so much that I was just running around a room not realizing I had to flip a lever.
The overall pacing was also kinda jank, can't really pinpoint my problem with it tho.
The story was pretty good too, I liked it a lot. Altough with the ending, I didn't even know that there were "moral points", so I just got the bad ending :(
2014
You awaken as a robot in a garden of puzzles, as a God tries to lead you to eternal life, while you think about some philospohical shit.
This is probably one of my favourite games with a puzzle tag but as a puzzle game it leaves some to be desired.
So like 2/3s of the puzzles are great, some even phenomenal. But the other 1/3, just, jesus. They struggle a lot with a good balance of noise(noise as in the puzzle, not audio). Sometimes there's so little noise I accidentally solve it, other times I'm having a meltdown just trying to work out what is going on. Some puzzles are just not sightreadable at all, you have no idea what you are supposed to do just placing shit and hoping it works. Some puzzles were more like Where's Waldo Puzzles, where instead of trying to figure out what to do with your items, you have to look into every nook and cranny just to find a connector behind some random ass wall(and thus waste a bunch of time, trying to solve the puzzle without one of the components), and just generally fucking with the environment just to line something up.
But keep in mind this is only like 1/3s of the puzzles, the others are great.
But the story, oh man. I rarely get invested in a story so much as to actually read every piece of text I come across, and collect everything. The story focuses a lot on identity, understanding of the world, free will, all of the good philosophy shit while you solve puzzles and learn the story of a scientist doing sciency stuff and changing the world.
The music and voice acting complemented everything perfectly imo.
This is probably one of my favourite games with a puzzle tag but as a puzzle game it leaves some to be desired.
So like 2/3s of the puzzles are great, some even phenomenal. But the other 1/3, just, jesus. They struggle a lot with a good balance of noise(noise as in the puzzle, not audio). Sometimes there's so little noise I accidentally solve it, other times I'm having a meltdown just trying to work out what is going on. Some puzzles are just not sightreadable at all, you have no idea what you are supposed to do just placing shit and hoping it works. Some puzzles were more like Where's Waldo Puzzles, where instead of trying to figure out what to do with your items, you have to look into every nook and cranny just to find a connector behind some random ass wall(and thus waste a bunch of time, trying to solve the puzzle without one of the components), and just generally fucking with the environment just to line something up.
But keep in mind this is only like 1/3s of the puzzles, the others are great.
But the story, oh man. I rarely get invested in a story so much as to actually read every piece of text I come across, and collect everything. The story focuses a lot on identity, understanding of the world, free will, all of the good philosophy shit while you solve puzzles and learn the story of a scientist doing sciency stuff and changing the world.
The music and voice acting complemented everything perfectly imo.
2011
This is a pretty big upgrade from Asylum, a lot of the issues were fixed and is overall feels less bloated.
The story was pretty meh, but I never really liked superhero stuff so this wasn't really surprising for me.
The combat has evolved a lot since Asylum, but there's still a lot of problems. When there are 10+ enemies it just becomes annoying to deal with anything, and even with less enemies the combat can become really annoying.
The stealth sections were just infuriating for me. These 2 might be chalked up to me having a major case of skill issue but still, the combat is still more or less clunky and annoying.
The charm and feel of the game didn't really get me, as I said I'm not a big fan superhero stuff so it most of the time fell flat for me, but sometimes it was actually really cool tho.
So it barely gets a pass from me. Also there are hot women :)
The story was pretty meh, but I never really liked superhero stuff so this wasn't really surprising for me.
The combat has evolved a lot since Asylum, but there's still a lot of problems. When there are 10+ enemies it just becomes annoying to deal with anything, and even with less enemies the combat can become really annoying.
The stealth sections were just infuriating for me. These 2 might be chalked up to me having a major case of skill issue but still, the combat is still more or less clunky and annoying.
The charm and feel of the game didn't really get me, as I said I'm not a big fan superhero stuff so it most of the time fell flat for me, but sometimes it was actually really cool tho.
So it barely gets a pass from me. Also there are hot women :)
2008
One of the best physics puzzle games I have ever played.
2021
at first I was enjoying it quite a bit, music, visuals were pretty good, and the concept was also intruiging. But of man is this just unpolished and tedious. When mind scanning people sometimes it's really hard to know which answer is the right one, when using the devices for the illnesses some are really unfair, and it's not that it's hard, just unfair. Also the game is waaaayyy too long, it got so fucking tedious towards the end, I just couldn't bother to treat people well. Story is pretty good too ig
2012
Holy shit what a great game. It is imo, one of the best, most unique GTA "clones" of all time. The combat is really good, the shooting felt a bit weird, but not too bad. The driving also was a bit, weird, but once you get used to it it's pretty good. But the story, oh the story, it's amazing. The music is also pretty good. If you like gta, arkham, yakuza, or anything similar it is a must play. Even if you don't like those, imho it still is a must play.
there is just a lot of annoying shit
2019
I wanted to like this game so much, the framework is great, great gunplay, great systems(weapon tinkering, modifying, speech stuff, perks and stats), but the game doesn't really use them, like theres 4 weapons mods and there just isnt a lot to do, not a lot of weapons, and a meh story. But definitely excited for TOW2, as this one's framework is good, they just need to add much more content really.
2023
Wow what a good game, I'm actually compelled to write a longer review.
--the good--
-Sybil has got cake
-Platforming and movement in general is so smooth and good, it was a blast just backtracking. The many movement options also opened up the game to a lot of sequence breaking and some of my playtime can be attributed to this, because even tho I knew I was going the wrong way I just wanted to prove to myself that that obstacle can be beaten with less upgrades.
-Combat is the same, just so smooth and good, sadly there are only 2 bosses but I guess that isn't the main focus of the game.
-The style is super good, it perfectly encapsulates the retro game feel, while adding a lot to it.
-The music is just phenomenal.
-And these makes the atmosphere amazing too, I just can't really explain it.
-Cheap, like what the fuck how can this game be this cheap.
--the bad--
-Most of my playtime can also be attributed to randomly running in circles, exploration is really bad. Same looking rooms over and over and no clear indication on where you are meant to be going.
-BUT the developer has said that in the next update he will add a map, that will be a good bandage.
-For me achievements are essential to a good game, but there are no.(They will be added in the next update probably too! :D)
-Short.(I guess for the price it is expected, this really isn't a negative tho, with the movement it has some replay value to it too.)
-Sybil rejected my request to sit on my face :(
Overall a very very VERY good game, and for the price it's very worth it! I'd rate it a 4/5, and when the issues I talked about get fixed I would bump it up to 4.5/5.
please for the love of god please Sybil sit on my faaceeeee :(
--the good--
-Sybil has got cake
-Platforming and movement in general is so smooth and good, it was a blast just backtracking. The many movement options also opened up the game to a lot of sequence breaking and some of my playtime can be attributed to this, because even tho I knew I was going the wrong way I just wanted to prove to myself that that obstacle can be beaten with less upgrades.
-Combat is the same, just so smooth and good, sadly there are only 2 bosses but I guess that isn't the main focus of the game.
-The style is super good, it perfectly encapsulates the retro game feel, while adding a lot to it.
-The music is just phenomenal.
-And these makes the atmosphere amazing too, I just can't really explain it.
-Cheap, like what the fuck how can this game be this cheap.
--the bad--
-Most of my playtime can also be attributed to randomly running in circles, exploration is really bad. Same looking rooms over and over and no clear indication on where you are meant to be going.
-BUT the developer has said that in the next update he will add a map, that will be a good bandage.
-For me achievements are essential to a good game, but there are no.(They will be added in the next update probably too! :D)
-Short.(I guess for the price it is expected, this really isn't a negative tho, with the movement it has some replay value to it too.)
-Sybil rejected my request to sit on my face :(
Overall a very very VERY good game, and for the price it's very worth it! I'd rate it a 4/5, and when the issues I talked about get fixed I would bump it up to 4.5/5.
please for the love of god please Sybil sit on my faaceeeee :(
This review contains spoilers
I love the world, and the characters but quite a lot of times you just can't do what you want to, or the game does the entire opposite of ehat you want, or just has vague options. My whole playthrough has been ruined by one choice, Connor not becoming a deviant in the ship, and when Markus was doing the revolution I thought maybe I can join sides with Markus now, but no. So I had to kill off Connor my favorite character. (also Kara and the others died cus I chose the revolution as Markus but who cares about them really) (also I want hot steamy gay sex with Connor)
2022
This review contains spoilers
The game was good however there was a big problem in it, atleast for me. If you complete a sidequest with a character, there is no way to speak with them again, and it was pretty shit when I actually get emotionally attached to a character, complete all of their quests, and that's it. Can't even talk with them again. And when you complete a quest with an ending you either have to take that ending or leave it. So if you haven't finished all of the quests and you want to 100% the game you have to leave that ending, and later go for another one. I went for 100% in the game and luckily I left one of my favourite endings for last accidentally.