TheSlowKenyan
2024
Pacific Drive: An interesting world and a monotonous gameplay loop makes for wasted potential you can steer clear of.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).
I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.
The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.
Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations. I do not recommend this bore of a game.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).
I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.
The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.
Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations. I do not recommend this bore of a game.
2024
The Pony Factory is short and not-so-sweet. You will slowly walk through a dilapidated factory killing three enemies repeatedly while a somewhat annoying song loops. In under twenty minutes, you too can steal the heart of The Pony Factory and kill some idiotic boss on your way out.
There isn't much to see, especially since the whole factory is extremely dark. You also literally retread your footsteps as you walk back the way you came, which for a twenty minute game feels extremely lazy. You get one uninteresting gun that gets a nearly useless upgrade. There are a few scattered writings to read that are somewhat funny, especially the one about the factory dumping tangible sin into the forest's water supply, which believe it or not is seemingly having consequences; but our “hero” Winston has been assured by Hell itself, who helps manage the factory, that these two things are not actually linked and he can stop worrying about it.
Its full price is $4 but honestly? I think that's asking for too much. This is a demo or experiment and it shouldn't be for sale. I do not recommend The Pony Factory.
There isn't much to see, especially since the whole factory is extremely dark. You also literally retread your footsteps as you walk back the way you came, which for a twenty minute game feels extremely lazy. You get one uninteresting gun that gets a nearly useless upgrade. There are a few scattered writings to read that are somewhat funny, especially the one about the factory dumping tangible sin into the forest's water supply, which believe it or not is seemingly having consequences; but our “hero” Winston has been assured by Hell itself, who helps manage the factory, that these two things are not actually linked and he can stop worrying about it.
Its full price is $4 but honestly? I think that's asking for too much. This is a demo or experiment and it shouldn't be for sale. I do not recommend The Pony Factory.
2022
Chop Goblins is not a good game in the way that Elden Ring is a good game, but I had fun with this short and silly romp. If you can get it on sale for under $4, I think it's worth it. I have only played a couple David Szymanski's games, but I'm pretty interested.
It'll probably only last you a couple hours if you 100% the thing like I did, but I enjoyed my time here. It's amusing with its nonsensical “story” and love-to-hate goblins. Your arsenal is thematically clashing yet all works well, and I like that you can stab and shoot at the same time. When you're using a two handed weapon, a third hand and arm appear to help you do some extra damage. I don't think it's as memorable as Squirrel Stapler or Iron Lung, but there's also a bit more to see, here.
There's not much to say about this brief boomer shooter other than I'm glad I gave it my time.
I recommend Chop Goblins, especially if you can get it on sale and don't mind the game being pretty short.
It'll probably only last you a couple hours if you 100% the thing like I did, but I enjoyed my time here. It's amusing with its nonsensical “story” and love-to-hate goblins. Your arsenal is thematically clashing yet all works well, and I like that you can stab and shoot at the same time. When you're using a two handed weapon, a third hand and arm appear to help you do some extra damage. I don't think it's as memorable as Squirrel Stapler or Iron Lung, but there's also a bit more to see, here.
There's not much to say about this brief boomer shooter other than I'm glad I gave it my time.
I recommend Chop Goblins, especially if you can get it on sale and don't mind the game being pretty short.
The Callisto Protocol: A video game designed to teach people the concept of “hurry up and wait”. It's very flashy with excellent textures and lighting effects, but it's a hollow and boring game experience barely worth it even while heavily discounted.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
2024
Dark Days: This is a really lousy experience. Essentially an “escape the room” game with a monster in some of the areas, Dark Days fails to deliver both interesting puzzles and tense scares, and its narrative suffers the classic pitfalls of indie-tier junk.
It opens with a jumpscare, not the most clever but certainly an effective one, as a monster in your front seat lunges at you while you're driving. Jade, your rambling character, pulls over at a motel and shenanigans begin, including introducing a monster who attacks when you “stare” at her. It's a fine concept, but this gal is WAY too sensitive because just having her on screen for an instant is enough to prompt her wrath. It's not very hard to manipulate, though; when you hear her breathing, you can just clam up and wait her out if you want. She'll go away and you can get back to looking for fuses or keys or whatever. You can also just look at walls and strafe when you know she's behind you. By her second encounter she was already no longer frightening to me.
That's the whole game: find the item(s) to escape the room while the monster waits for a reason to kill you, then repeat that a dozen-or-so times. Jade will be speaking to herself the entire game (and cannot be fast forwarded), awkwardly saying nothing to the men speaking to her at various points, and you'll learn a story about some cursed place in the desert and how Jade's wife is sickly. Is it interesting? Absolutely not, my brain was completely off for this game, and my subconscious/muscle memory still managed to get through this mess in under two hours. I love when the bad games are brief.
I won't spoil it, though I sort of will, when I say it ends in exactly the manner you'd think an indie game would. Apparently this game supports VR and I could see the horror working out better there, but even then it's so brief with zero replay value, what's the point? It's cheap, but it's not worth it at all.
I do not recommend Dark Days. It's a waste of time and hard drive space.
It opens with a jumpscare, not the most clever but certainly an effective one, as a monster in your front seat lunges at you while you're driving. Jade, your rambling character, pulls over at a motel and shenanigans begin, including introducing a monster who attacks when you “stare” at her. It's a fine concept, but this gal is WAY too sensitive because just having her on screen for an instant is enough to prompt her wrath. It's not very hard to manipulate, though; when you hear her breathing, you can just clam up and wait her out if you want. She'll go away and you can get back to looking for fuses or keys or whatever. You can also just look at walls and strafe when you know she's behind you. By her second encounter she was already no longer frightening to me.
That's the whole game: find the item(s) to escape the room while the monster waits for a reason to kill you, then repeat that a dozen-or-so times. Jade will be speaking to herself the entire game (and cannot be fast forwarded), awkwardly saying nothing to the men speaking to her at various points, and you'll learn a story about some cursed place in the desert and how Jade's wife is sickly. Is it interesting? Absolutely not, my brain was completely off for this game, and my subconscious/muscle memory still managed to get through this mess in under two hours. I love when the bad games are brief.
I won't spoil it, though I sort of will, when I say it ends in exactly the manner you'd think an indie game would. Apparently this game supports VR and I could see the horror working out better there, but even then it's so brief with zero replay value, what's the point? It's cheap, but it's not worth it at all.
I do not recommend Dark Days. It's a waste of time and hard drive space.
2014
Exoptable Money: Let's not pretend either of us knew what “exoptable” meant until we Googled it today. It doesn't even look like a real word.
Another “game” by Robert Brock, the creator of Presentable Liberty, and in Exoptable Money you do even less than you did there. There is no information nor instructions, simply a velvet-covered box with a red switch in front of you and a rope on the side. Flip the switch and the box comes alive with lights, spraying money up into the air and into your pockets. Pull that rope and you see the upgrade store, offering delights such as more bills per second or adding gems to the reward pool, fueling your finances. Each upgrade runs you the chance of seeing a letter from a mysterious Madame Sinclaire or Doctor Money while a short and ominous track loops indefinitely. Thank god it can be muted.
Things get weird. Like “blood is now flying out of the box”-weird. Eventually the box is spewing so much shit you'll struggle to see your mouse, which is obnoxious.
Exoptable Money is an idler, so as with Presentable Liberty there's an obvious element of “wasted time” here. By design, you do nothing while the game makes you wait until you can buy the next upgrade to speed up the process of waiting -- but while the game's speed is increased, so is the price for the next upgrade, re-lengthening the waiting and maybe making things worse. I've played several “normal” idlers and I think they do something dangerous to the human mind and I'd bet Robert Brock felt that way, too.
There's some good humor here. You only see letters from Madame Sinclaire after buying an upgrade, so it may be a while between them. She'll eventually just send you a totally blank letter in an envelope and you won't get an explanation until the next upgrade where she simply apologizes for the error. Basically two pointless letters. You can also pay 8000 bucks, a pretty steep price, for a measly three additional backgrounds to see. You likely won't even view these because you're going to alt-tab out of this game. Even worse is a tin can you can buy for $50,000 and it does nothing but make a “clang” when you click it.
Like Presentable Liberty, this is clearly a piece of media to make you feel something more so than directly entertain you, if that makes sense. I think it has an interesting mindset behind it and I'm happy I gave it a shot, but I don't recommend Exoptable Money simply because it's an idler that's pretty boring, takes too long to beat, and there isn't even a 3D room for you to interact with. While arguably an idler as well, at least there's a variety of mini-games in Presentable Liberty.
Another “game” by Robert Brock, the creator of Presentable Liberty, and in Exoptable Money you do even less than you did there. There is no information nor instructions, simply a velvet-covered box with a red switch in front of you and a rope on the side. Flip the switch and the box comes alive with lights, spraying money up into the air and into your pockets. Pull that rope and you see the upgrade store, offering delights such as more bills per second or adding gems to the reward pool, fueling your finances. Each upgrade runs you the chance of seeing a letter from a mysterious Madame Sinclaire or Doctor Money while a short and ominous track loops indefinitely. Thank god it can be muted.
Things get weird. Like “blood is now flying out of the box”-weird. Eventually the box is spewing so much shit you'll struggle to see your mouse, which is obnoxious.
Exoptable Money is an idler, so as with Presentable Liberty there's an obvious element of “wasted time” here. By design, you do nothing while the game makes you wait until you can buy the next upgrade to speed up the process of waiting -- but while the game's speed is increased, so is the price for the next upgrade, re-lengthening the waiting and maybe making things worse. I've played several “normal” idlers and I think they do something dangerous to the human mind and I'd bet Robert Brock felt that way, too.
There's some good humor here. You only see letters from Madame Sinclaire after buying an upgrade, so it may be a while between them. She'll eventually just send you a totally blank letter in an envelope and you won't get an explanation until the next upgrade where she simply apologizes for the error. Basically two pointless letters. You can also pay 8000 bucks, a pretty steep price, for a measly three additional backgrounds to see. You likely won't even view these because you're going to alt-tab out of this game. Even worse is a tin can you can buy for $50,000 and it does nothing but make a “clang” when you click it.
Like Presentable Liberty, this is clearly a piece of media to make you feel something more so than directly entertain you, if that makes sense. I think it has an interesting mindset behind it and I'm happy I gave it a shot, but I don't recommend Exoptable Money simply because it's an idler that's pretty boring, takes too long to beat, and there isn't even a 3D room for you to interact with. While arguably an idler as well, at least there's a variety of mini-games in Presentable Liberty.
2014
This was kind of neat, albeit very bleak.
Certainly a “game” to make you feel something bizarre and not really entertain you. You are given a Game Boy to play and you'll read frequent letters sent to your cell and that's sort of it. Most of this game is just learning the world outside of your cell is apparently dying to some horrid virus, though you'll never catch a glimpse of it, your window is too high up to see out of.
I thought it was interesting how I hit a certain point where I was just apathetic about the outside world. Good or bad, it doesn't matter much to my prisoner, who at this point only really lives to hopefully escape (unlikely) or beat the absurdly difficult games on his Game Boy. I found Charlotte, a woman confessing her affection towards me through writings, to be quite sad as I thought that poor woman doesn't even know a single thing about me, including whether or not I'm even alive. Part of me liked getting her kind letters and another part of me was pissed when they'd slide under my door because now I gotta go read something instead of beating this Snake level. Ugh, Charlotte, how inconsiderate.
It's a sad project as its creator took his own life at a young age. Robert Brock makes you feel a lot with very little in Presentable Liberty and he clearly had visions he wanted to display. I wish things had been better for him.
I think Presentable Liberty is worth checking out. It's free and will only take about an hour of your time.
Certainly a “game” to make you feel something bizarre and not really entertain you. You are given a Game Boy to play and you'll read frequent letters sent to your cell and that's sort of it. Most of this game is just learning the world outside of your cell is apparently dying to some horrid virus, though you'll never catch a glimpse of it, your window is too high up to see out of.
I thought it was interesting how I hit a certain point where I was just apathetic about the outside world. Good or bad, it doesn't matter much to my prisoner, who at this point only really lives to hopefully escape (unlikely) or beat the absurdly difficult games on his Game Boy. I found Charlotte, a woman confessing her affection towards me through writings, to be quite sad as I thought that poor woman doesn't even know a single thing about me, including whether or not I'm even alive. Part of me liked getting her kind letters and another part of me was pissed when they'd slide under my door because now I gotta go read something instead of beating this Snake level. Ugh, Charlotte, how inconsiderate.
It's a sad project as its creator took his own life at a young age. Robert Brock makes you feel a lot with very little in Presentable Liberty and he clearly had visions he wanted to display. I wish things had been better for him.
I think Presentable Liberty is worth checking out. It's free and will only take about an hour of your time.
2024
Helldivers 2: I'd wager I'm like most of this game's players in that I did not play the first. Judging that entire video game based on two screenshots -- something I'm sure the developers would love for me to do -- I'd say the original looks like a mobile game that can safely be ignored. You can just 'dive' right into this one and ignore the previous entry.
Want a plot? Watch "Starship Troopers". The devs saved a pretty penny by just taking that movie's world almost wholesale, which is kinda funny timing considering there's a Starship Troopers game in Early Access right now alongside Helldivers 2. Apparently that game's in a weird spot, meanwhile Helldivers is flourishing like mad.
It's good. If you've been seeing your Steam friends list lit up with this and are wondering why, the reason is simply because "It's good". Great atmosphere, audio/visuals, enemy variety, world variety, weapon variety, it's live service but seemingly in the least possible predatory way, etc. You will feel great dropping an Eagle Airstrike on bug holes, closing up a few and obliterating those who'd spawned outside of them. When you and a teammate open a bunker and as the doors slowly roll you press 'B' to fist bump them and they bump back before you two collect the free premium currency inside? You're gonna mutter "Hell yeah."
It's not perfect: there are many 'bugs' that need working on immediately. Characters get locked into poses that affect gameplay, bile spewers will miss yet somehow hit and kill you immediately, joining another team's mission can be horrid as it never connects; and when the devs toss out a patch to address some of these issues? They can make your game randomly crash when your teammate uses a certain weapon type. It has happened to me, of course while walking to the extraction area after completing a map, and it's very infuriating.
For $40, I think Helldivers 2 is a no-brainer. It's best with friends, but I found myself able to play with randoms just fine, which is always a pleasant surprise. You can easily communicate through pings and emotes, and with everybody sharing everything and a total team victory being the best possible outcome, there's not really an incentive to be an asshole. You may still find a few, but that's just the internet for ya.
I recommend Helldivers 2. I'm sure it'll get patched up in time (and it needs it), but it's definitely playable now.
Want a plot? Watch "Starship Troopers". The devs saved a pretty penny by just taking that movie's world almost wholesale, which is kinda funny timing considering there's a Starship Troopers game in Early Access right now alongside Helldivers 2. Apparently that game's in a weird spot, meanwhile Helldivers is flourishing like mad.
It's good. If you've been seeing your Steam friends list lit up with this and are wondering why, the reason is simply because "It's good". Great atmosphere, audio/visuals, enemy variety, world variety, weapon variety, it's live service but seemingly in the least possible predatory way, etc. You will feel great dropping an Eagle Airstrike on bug holes, closing up a few and obliterating those who'd spawned outside of them. When you and a teammate open a bunker and as the doors slowly roll you press 'B' to fist bump them and they bump back before you two collect the free premium currency inside? You're gonna mutter "Hell yeah."
It's not perfect: there are many 'bugs' that need working on immediately. Characters get locked into poses that affect gameplay, bile spewers will miss yet somehow hit and kill you immediately, joining another team's mission can be horrid as it never connects; and when the devs toss out a patch to address some of these issues? They can make your game randomly crash when your teammate uses a certain weapon type. It has happened to me, of course while walking to the extraction area after completing a map, and it's very infuriating.
For $40, I think Helldivers 2 is a no-brainer. It's best with friends, but I found myself able to play with randoms just fine, which is always a pleasant surprise. You can easily communicate through pings and emotes, and with everybody sharing everything and a total team victory being the best possible outcome, there's not really an incentive to be an asshole. You may still find a few, but that's just the internet for ya.
I recommend Helldivers 2. I'm sure it'll get patched up in time (and it needs it), but it's definitely playable now.
2022
Turbo Overkill: Really committing to its title and letting you put the pedal to the metal as Johnny Turbo is quite the speedy killing machine. “Johnny will return...”, but should he? I've seen worse and I've seen better, so I'd say "No" if it's just more of the same.
I've more cons than pros with Turbo Overkill, and while the pros are pretty strong, I just don't think they're quite enough.
This game doesn't run very well which I don't understand. As I type this, it's stuck loading the main menu from the credits since I've just beaten it. I had long loading screens on an SSD (why is dying four times faster than reloading a checkpoint?), bullets freezing in midair, enemies dying but their bodies remain upright and running, FPS drops with seemingly no source, some cutscenes seem to be missing audio cues (which is either a glitch or bad design), terrible checkpoints, and I'd frequently slide into corners/under objects where I'd get stuck. Doesn't feel very “turbo” to get wedged under a rock. I just Alt-F4'd the game to get out of that aforementioned freeze.
The visuals kinda gave me a headache given time. I was reminded of the System Shock remake, only I think I grew accustomed to the blaring lights there and just never quite did here. Maybe this is boomer-brain creeping in as I age, but it was a bit much. When you pick up the DOOM-like upgrades of power fists and what-have-you, it puts a color filter on the screen that made it even harder to see and stand.
Environmental dangers insta-kill you at times which obviously grinds the pacing to a halt for those rooms. Again, not very turbo.
The entire thing is reminiscent of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon but lacks its charm. I don't mind aping off of something else as long as you separate yourself somehow or at least do a damn good job. I don't think they did either of those, here. I don't think it was ever “cringy” but even calling it “serviceable” may be a stretch.
I found myself almost dying instantly, losing all armor and nearly all health, from mid-to-low tier enemies when they used certain attacks like explosives or fire. This was wildly frustrating and didn't make sense to me. I found some of the earlier enemies harder than later ones because of this potential. I played on Street Cleaner (Hard) and there are two difficulties above that, I cannot even imagine how annoying those are.
But the pros I mentioned: Gotta go fast. Johnny Turbo and his chainsaw leg (called a “chegg”, what a gross word) go fast. Some upgrades are just a waste of time and some are obvious necessities, like the one that turns all enemies into health packs if you cut right through the crowds with your chegg. With the right upgrades and the grapple hook, you can basically fly, which felt great.
The weapon upgrades are all pretty good and turn previously useless weapons into powerhouses, like the pistol getting an upgrade to do tons of damage as long as you build up a streak and don't miss. Everything was already pretty tense, but now you feel like every shot needs to count, which can be thrilling.
Some levels have very good arenas and accompanying soundtracks, such as “The Wastes”. I made note of that level because it really nailed both of those, though it did have a lotta green going on and again, potential headaches. Not every level will hit the highs of this one, either, some just suck.
The vehicle segments are all pretty good. Fortunately there are only a few, but I think they were handled well.
You can “cancel” animations and reloads by switching weapons, which Dusk didn't have and drove me insane. Here, it keeps things fluid and fast with the player having the option to do more and get more out of it.
I think Turbo Overkill has shown me that these games need to be short and sweet. Both this and Dusk were too long.
Despite liking some things here, I think I don't really recommend Turbo Overkill. I got it on sale but this was one I could have just missed, easily. It was fun becoming a living chainsaw with guns, but I had to put up with a lot of problems to get there. If you love boomer shooters, you'll enjoy this, but for me? The price of admission felt too high.
I've more cons than pros with Turbo Overkill, and while the pros are pretty strong, I just don't think they're quite enough.
This game doesn't run very well which I don't understand. As I type this, it's stuck loading the main menu from the credits since I've just beaten it. I had long loading screens on an SSD (why is dying four times faster than reloading a checkpoint?), bullets freezing in midair, enemies dying but their bodies remain upright and running, FPS drops with seemingly no source, some cutscenes seem to be missing audio cues (which is either a glitch or bad design), terrible checkpoints, and I'd frequently slide into corners/under objects where I'd get stuck. Doesn't feel very “turbo” to get wedged under a rock. I just Alt-F4'd the game to get out of that aforementioned freeze.
The visuals kinda gave me a headache given time. I was reminded of the System Shock remake, only I think I grew accustomed to the blaring lights there and just never quite did here. Maybe this is boomer-brain creeping in as I age, but it was a bit much. When you pick up the DOOM-like upgrades of power fists and what-have-you, it puts a color filter on the screen that made it even harder to see and stand.
Environmental dangers insta-kill you at times which obviously grinds the pacing to a halt for those rooms. Again, not very turbo.
The entire thing is reminiscent of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon but lacks its charm. I don't mind aping off of something else as long as you separate yourself somehow or at least do a damn good job. I don't think they did either of those, here. I don't think it was ever “cringy” but even calling it “serviceable” may be a stretch.
I found myself almost dying instantly, losing all armor and nearly all health, from mid-to-low tier enemies when they used certain attacks like explosives or fire. This was wildly frustrating and didn't make sense to me. I found some of the earlier enemies harder than later ones because of this potential. I played on Street Cleaner (Hard) and there are two difficulties above that, I cannot even imagine how annoying those are.
But the pros I mentioned: Gotta go fast. Johnny Turbo and his chainsaw leg (called a “chegg”, what a gross word) go fast. Some upgrades are just a waste of time and some are obvious necessities, like the one that turns all enemies into health packs if you cut right through the crowds with your chegg. With the right upgrades and the grapple hook, you can basically fly, which felt great.
The weapon upgrades are all pretty good and turn previously useless weapons into powerhouses, like the pistol getting an upgrade to do tons of damage as long as you build up a streak and don't miss. Everything was already pretty tense, but now you feel like every shot needs to count, which can be thrilling.
Some levels have very good arenas and accompanying soundtracks, such as “The Wastes”. I made note of that level because it really nailed both of those, though it did have a lotta green going on and again, potential headaches. Not every level will hit the highs of this one, either, some just suck.
The vehicle segments are all pretty good. Fortunately there are only a few, but I think they were handled well.
You can “cancel” animations and reloads by switching weapons, which Dusk didn't have and drove me insane. Here, it keeps things fluid and fast with the player having the option to do more and get more out of it.
I think Turbo Overkill has shown me that these games need to be short and sweet. Both this and Dusk were too long.
Despite liking some things here, I think I don't really recommend Turbo Overkill. I got it on sale but this was one I could have just missed, easily. It was fun becoming a living chainsaw with guns, but I had to put up with a lot of problems to get there. If you love boomer shooters, you'll enjoy this, but for me? The price of admission felt too high.
Shadows of Rose: One buying the Winters' Expansion is almost assuredly buying it for this brief campaign. The third person mode for Village was something I had mistakenly thought was merely given away as an update; but no, it's tied to this campaign's purchase (ridiculous). I only had it on for my rerun of Village for a few minutes before Ethan's rapid, jerking motions when running bothered me enough to go back to first person. So that's a dud.
New Mercenaries characters? I am not a fan of the scoring shooter gameplay, so I personally don't see the value in it. Maybe one day, but I doubt it.
For me, the $20 asking price is basically for this: Shadows of Rose. Is it worth it? No, not really. But the optimist in me will admit there is some value here, especially if you were a big fan of Village.
When we meet grown-up Rose in the end of Village, she only gets two minutes of screen time to develop a character. All we really get to see is that, like her father, she has a drive and will gladly fight her own battles. She's adequately admirable in that brief time, but not really enough to make me ask for her own DLC... but that's fine, as long as it's good?
Just like Ethan was in Village, Rose is done dirty here. If when you hear your character is going to be interacting with the “memories” of something and you immediately say to yourself, “Sounds like incoming reused assets to me,” then congratulations: we're equally prophetic. Rose only gets to explore Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento, and a bit of the Village. So we, the player, won't get any new sights through Rose. Pretty disappointing.
Her journey is a personal one where she learns about her father. It's not the most interesting thing in the world, and really the biggest highlight for me was Capcom continuing their running gag of doing whatever they can to make sure you never see Ethan's face.
Rose's powers are the only new thing you'll be doing gameplay-wise (from Village), and all she really has is a stun. It's nice to use in the first chunk of the DLC, the only chunk that really reminded me of “classic” Resident Evil in that you're not given much ammo and need to make the on-the-fly call of whether you're running past this enemy or burning your ammo killing them. While it's a retread of Castle Dimitrescu, which was already a retread of the Baker house, I enjoyed this portion the most.
The second chunk is House Beneviento again and, like the first time around, this offers the scariest moments in the DLC. I really enjoyed the “Let's play with dolls” segment, it was spooky and clever and ramped up in difficulty well.
It ends with yet another retread, this time of Village's Call of Duty-esque shootout ending, just thankfully not as insane and now toned down. The final boss fight is the exact same final boss fight from Village, only now you can actually dodge and counter. Rose gets a special power attack for just this fight and you'll use it three or four times. That was... alright. Might be better if I hadn't just played through Village, though.
It's over in two and a half hours (give or take, I really explored and wasted time) and like Ethan's mold-infested body, it isn't very fresh.
I don't know if Capcom plans to make RE9 with Rose as the main character, but if this DLC was supposed to hype me up for that prospect, it failed. I don't hate Rose or anything, but this largely felt uninspired and unnecessary. I wish Rose got something proper and this certainly isn't it.
I don't recommend Shadows of Rose. It's too expensive for an experience you've largely already had. It's not total junk, but is simply another disappointment when it comes to Resident Evil Village.
New Mercenaries characters? I am not a fan of the scoring shooter gameplay, so I personally don't see the value in it. Maybe one day, but I doubt it.
For me, the $20 asking price is basically for this: Shadows of Rose. Is it worth it? No, not really. But the optimist in me will admit there is some value here, especially if you were a big fan of Village.
When we meet grown-up Rose in the end of Village, she only gets two minutes of screen time to develop a character. All we really get to see is that, like her father, she has a drive and will gladly fight her own battles. She's adequately admirable in that brief time, but not really enough to make me ask for her own DLC... but that's fine, as long as it's good?
Just like Ethan was in Village, Rose is done dirty here. If when you hear your character is going to be interacting with the “memories” of something and you immediately say to yourself, “Sounds like incoming reused assets to me,” then congratulations: we're equally prophetic. Rose only gets to explore Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento, and a bit of the Village. So we, the player, won't get any new sights through Rose. Pretty disappointing.
Her journey is a personal one where she learns about her father. It's not the most interesting thing in the world, and really the biggest highlight for me was Capcom continuing their running gag of doing whatever they can to make sure you never see Ethan's face.
Rose's powers are the only new thing you'll be doing gameplay-wise (from Village), and all she really has is a stun. It's nice to use in the first chunk of the DLC, the only chunk that really reminded me of “classic” Resident Evil in that you're not given much ammo and need to make the on-the-fly call of whether you're running past this enemy or burning your ammo killing them. While it's a retread of Castle Dimitrescu, which was already a retread of the Baker house, I enjoyed this portion the most.
The second chunk is House Beneviento again and, like the first time around, this offers the scariest moments in the DLC. I really enjoyed the “Let's play with dolls” segment, it was spooky and clever and ramped up in difficulty well.
It ends with yet another retread, this time of Village's Call of Duty-esque shootout ending, just thankfully not as insane and now toned down. The final boss fight is the exact same final boss fight from Village, only now you can actually dodge and counter. Rose gets a special power attack for just this fight and you'll use it three or four times. That was... alright. Might be better if I hadn't just played through Village, though.
It's over in two and a half hours (give or take, I really explored and wasted time) and like Ethan's mold-infested body, it isn't very fresh.
I don't know if Capcom plans to make RE9 with Rose as the main character, but if this DLC was supposed to hype me up for that prospect, it failed. I don't hate Rose or anything, but this largely felt uninspired and unnecessary. I wish Rose got something proper and this certainly isn't it.
I don't recommend Shadows of Rose. It's too expensive for an experience you've largely already had. It's not total junk, but is simply another disappointment when it comes to Resident Evil Village.
Resident Evil Village: Kind of feels like wasted potential considering how great of a comeback Resident Evil 7 was for the franchise. Village isn't a bad game, but it's kind of stupid and a worrisome possible step backwards for the series. Perhaps this is a nonissue for a while, though, because clearly Capcom's content to just remake the guaranteed hits rather than experiment with a sequel.
This is my second time playing through Village, and I had somewhat positive memories for the game with my first round. For posterity's sake, I'll add that playing this game at release, I was basically using it as a tool to not fall asleep during a multi-day designer drug bender, and it seems my memory wasn't to be totally trusted (who would have thought). Now, I can see there are obvious problems, here.
Ethan is kind of a non-character to me and has been since being introduced. Gordon Freeman is silent because it was cheaper and easier that way, but Valve got to say that it adds immersion because, with silence, you are Gordon Freeman; Ethan Winters is very similar except for that he actually says what you're thinking, which is harder to design. This is kind of nice, having your character mirror what you wanna say when he goes, “Eat shit!” to a boss. This isn't overdone, either, they keep it sparse.
Ethan's only traits are his level-headedness and tenacity. He won't stop until the job is done, the guy's a Terminator. There are no moral dilemmas or flaws and I think we'd all agree he's pretty shallow, but I still like the guy. His voice actor does a great job, especially during a segment near the end. Ethan's probably the best part of this game.
So man, is it brutal what they do to him, here. Ethan Winters is a punching bag and it's so overdone that when he loses his hand and just “glues” it back on with a health potion, you should immediately never worry about the guy again. He'll clearly be fine and survive whatever torture the writers throw at him; I guess they needed to get their rocks off by having him immediately lose some fingers and get stabbed in almost every single cutscene.
The plot is stupid. Chris Redfield could have saved Ethan a lot of mental anguish with a simple phone call, it's one of those stories. Very contrived to not explain himself early on, then indefensible to not explain things (or even try) once Ethan finds him later. It's only very late into the game that Chris says “Alright Ethan, I guess I owe you an explanation,” when Ethan has already cleaned up three fifths of the mess. Oh, do you? I think you owe me some dry cleaning money and a couple of fingers, asshole.
The entire titular "village" is killed off almost immediately before you learn anything about the people there except for that they're annoying pricks. A waste of location.
There's an effort to tie RE 7 and 8 into the RE franchise other than just having Chris Redfield there, and I don't think this was necessary. I actually kind of liked how in 7 you are just on your own dealing with some whacky Louisiana bullshit until seconds before the credits roll where they shoehorn in Chris. Oh, here? The guy who established Umbrella showed up a while ago! He got inspired by the baddie you're gonna kill!! Who cares? It's shown seconds before the final boss and has zero impact, especially considering what else is happening then.
I wish they had gone in a different direction really badly. Again, wasted potential to me.
Best parts: Ethan's positive attitude, the game looks beautiful (once fixed), the House Beneviento basement (felt like a totally different game, wish we got more of this, love that the monster “talks”), Lady Dimitrescu's... everything (her castle felt like a poor, rushed retread of 7, though), and literally everything The Duke does and says (brother for life).
Worst parts: The horrible FOV and vignette effect that need modding to respectively increase and disable as the game is nausea-inducing unless fixed, Chris' poor communication skills and massive shootout extravaganza, charging for dumb-as-shit DLC (Trauma Pack) that would only get worse for the eventual remakes (Treasure Map/Upgrade Tickets), and Denuvo.
I sort of recommend Resident Evil Village, but wait for a sale and don't expect the best.
This is my second time playing through Village, and I had somewhat positive memories for the game with my first round. For posterity's sake, I'll add that playing this game at release, I was basically using it as a tool to not fall asleep during a multi-day designer drug bender, and it seems my memory wasn't to be totally trusted (who would have thought). Now, I can see there are obvious problems, here.
Ethan is kind of a non-character to me and has been since being introduced. Gordon Freeman is silent because it was cheaper and easier that way, but Valve got to say that it adds immersion because, with silence, you are Gordon Freeman; Ethan Winters is very similar except for that he actually says what you're thinking, which is harder to design. This is kind of nice, having your character mirror what you wanna say when he goes, “Eat shit!” to a boss. This isn't overdone, either, they keep it sparse.
Ethan's only traits are his level-headedness and tenacity. He won't stop until the job is done, the guy's a Terminator. There are no moral dilemmas or flaws and I think we'd all agree he's pretty shallow, but I still like the guy. His voice actor does a great job, especially during a segment near the end. Ethan's probably the best part of this game.
So man, is it brutal what they do to him, here. Ethan Winters is a punching bag and it's so overdone that when he loses his hand and just “glues” it back on with a health potion, you should immediately never worry about the guy again. He'll clearly be fine and survive whatever torture the writers throw at him; I guess they needed to get their rocks off by having him immediately lose some fingers and get stabbed in almost every single cutscene.
The plot is stupid. Chris Redfield could have saved Ethan a lot of mental anguish with a simple phone call, it's one of those stories. Very contrived to not explain himself early on, then indefensible to not explain things (or even try) once Ethan finds him later. It's only very late into the game that Chris says “Alright Ethan, I guess I owe you an explanation,” when Ethan has already cleaned up three fifths of the mess. Oh, do you? I think you owe me some dry cleaning money and a couple of fingers, asshole.
The entire titular "village" is killed off almost immediately before you learn anything about the people there except for that they're annoying pricks. A waste of location.
There's an effort to tie RE 7 and 8 into the RE franchise other than just having Chris Redfield there, and I don't think this was necessary. I actually kind of liked how in 7 you are just on your own dealing with some whacky Louisiana bullshit until seconds before the credits roll where they shoehorn in Chris. Oh, here? The guy who established Umbrella showed up a while ago! He got inspired by the baddie you're gonna kill!! Who cares? It's shown seconds before the final boss and has zero impact, especially considering what else is happening then.
I wish they had gone in a different direction really badly. Again, wasted potential to me.
Best parts: Ethan's positive attitude, the game looks beautiful (once fixed), the House Beneviento basement (felt like a totally different game, wish we got more of this, love that the monster “talks”), Lady Dimitrescu's... everything (her castle felt like a poor, rushed retread of 7, though), and literally everything The Duke does and says (brother for life).
Worst parts: The horrible FOV and vignette effect that need modding to respectively increase and disable as the game is nausea-inducing unless fixed, Chris' poor communication skills and massive shootout extravaganza, charging for dumb-as-shit DLC (Trauma Pack) that would only get worse for the eventual remakes (Treasure Map/Upgrade Tickets), and Denuvo.
I sort of recommend Resident Evil Village, but wait for a sale and don't expect the best.
2018
Dusk: Dusk was pretty loudly recommended to me by Steam frequently for years since its Early Access release and I finally gave it a go after seeing a nice discount and news of an HD upgrade. It's a good game, but ultimately I wasn't all too impressed.
I think my favorite thing about Dusk was that, from a level design perspective, it certainly tries to keep you guessing. You'll pass through a variety of sights, starting with the swamps and foundries and ending up in Escher-inspired labs and Hellish atria. There are the classic Doom-like levels with a couple colored key cards, some hallways and some rooms/areas clearly designed for shootouts, and then there are “narrative” levels that'll remind you of a faster paced Max Payne nightmare sequence: pretty on rails and maybe too much voice over work in the background, but it is never enough to really annoy you.
Problem is I don't think it's enough to ever really excite you, either. The intro is cool, with you just starting in a basement while three chainsaw-wielding psychos try to murder you and you fight back with dual sickles; an interesting melee weapon choice. But after this intro? It's pretty stock stuff.
Don't expect to learn anything about a plot except for two text dumps between the next chapters. I don't need a plot in a game which is focused on the gameplay, but that just means the gameplay has to be tighter than my uncle's grip in the garage that one summer, and I don't think it was. It never hit the highs of any good Doom game and isn't really all that clever, either.
Maybe it's partially the weapons, they're just not that good. The sword is overpowered, especially with its charge attack when you have 100+ health; the dual pistols quickly become completely worthless; the akimbo shotguns and super shotgun can burn through ammo very fast and have a low ammo cap (though the akimbo shotties were very fun); the machine gun is boring and so close to sounding punchy enough but not quite; the hunting rifle is fun, but like the shotguns has a low ammo capacity and not very practical in most of the close quarters areas; the crossbow is the hunting rifle but weaker/faster; and finally the riveter and mortar are very strong but almost identical to one another and probably should just be combined into one explosive weapon, or just lose the mortar entirely.
It has all the staples you'd expect with secret areas inside secrets areas, rooms that turn into enemy-spawning ambushes when you pick up a key, and lame bosses who don't know when to die. Fortunately, there's only one area in the game where you're stuck and deal with wave after wave of enemies, having you kill about 230 of them. A worse developer would have thrown in one of these per chapter, I'm happy restraint was shown because I was done after the one time.
So the gameplay is the game. Is it good? It's fine. I don't think you'll see anything in Dusk you haven't seen elsewhere, but that's not necessarily the worst thing as long as it's done well (see: Lies of P). Unfortunately, I don't think this is done that well. I'm certainly happy I got it on discount, especially since the HD upgrade looks terrible and its saves don't work with the original game, which I ended up sticking with. The worse graphics are better, who woulda thought.
I can see myself coming back to Dusk some day for a little bit o' murder, but no day soon.
I sorta recommend Dusk, but never at full price.
I think my favorite thing about Dusk was that, from a level design perspective, it certainly tries to keep you guessing. You'll pass through a variety of sights, starting with the swamps and foundries and ending up in Escher-inspired labs and Hellish atria. There are the classic Doom-like levels with a couple colored key cards, some hallways and some rooms/areas clearly designed for shootouts, and then there are “narrative” levels that'll remind you of a faster paced Max Payne nightmare sequence: pretty on rails and maybe too much voice over work in the background, but it is never enough to really annoy you.
Problem is I don't think it's enough to ever really excite you, either. The intro is cool, with you just starting in a basement while three chainsaw-wielding psychos try to murder you and you fight back with dual sickles; an interesting melee weapon choice. But after this intro? It's pretty stock stuff.
Don't expect to learn anything about a plot except for two text dumps between the next chapters. I don't need a plot in a game which is focused on the gameplay, but that just means the gameplay has to be tighter than my uncle's grip in the garage that one summer, and I don't think it was. It never hit the highs of any good Doom game and isn't really all that clever, either.
Maybe it's partially the weapons, they're just not that good. The sword is overpowered, especially with its charge attack when you have 100+ health; the dual pistols quickly become completely worthless; the akimbo shotguns and super shotgun can burn through ammo very fast and have a low ammo cap (though the akimbo shotties were very fun); the machine gun is boring and so close to sounding punchy enough but not quite; the hunting rifle is fun, but like the shotguns has a low ammo capacity and not very practical in most of the close quarters areas; the crossbow is the hunting rifle but weaker/faster; and finally the riveter and mortar are very strong but almost identical to one another and probably should just be combined into one explosive weapon, or just lose the mortar entirely.
It has all the staples you'd expect with secret areas inside secrets areas, rooms that turn into enemy-spawning ambushes when you pick up a key, and lame bosses who don't know when to die. Fortunately, there's only one area in the game where you're stuck and deal with wave after wave of enemies, having you kill about 230 of them. A worse developer would have thrown in one of these per chapter, I'm happy restraint was shown because I was done after the one time.
So the gameplay is the game. Is it good? It's fine. I don't think you'll see anything in Dusk you haven't seen elsewhere, but that's not necessarily the worst thing as long as it's done well (see: Lies of P). Unfortunately, I don't think this is done that well. I'm certainly happy I got it on discount, especially since the HD upgrade looks terrible and its saves don't work with the original game, which I ended up sticking with. The worse graphics are better, who woulda thought.
I can see myself coming back to Dusk some day for a little bit o' murder, but no day soon.
I sorta recommend Dusk, but never at full price.
2024
Just as Cats Hidden in Paris was, 100 Capitalist Cats is exactly what you'd expect, except I think the formula has been somewhat improved. I didn't give it 4.5 stars because it's some masterpiece everyone needs to play, but simply because it improves on what the series was going for.
For one, there's a hint button, now. Don't want to use it? Then don't, but having the option is nice for those few, final cats. I also think highlighting the found cats with a light yellow instead of the harsher blue of the Paris game was easier on the eyes!
The light jazz is nice in a lulling kind of way. This game's premise combined with the music seems like a great way to pass out in bed if you were able to play it on your phone.
You can play the whole, brief game for free, despite the titular capitalism. It was a nice palate cleanser.
For one, there's a hint button, now. Don't want to use it? Then don't, but having the option is nice for those few, final cats. I also think highlighting the found cats with a light yellow instead of the harsher blue of the Paris game was easier on the eyes!
The light jazz is nice in a lulling kind of way. This game's premise combined with the music seems like a great way to pass out in bed if you were able to play it on your phone.
You can play the whole, brief game for free, despite the titular capitalism. It was a nice palate cleanser.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Irredeemable garbage that should bring deep shame to every single person in the credits. I will live a worse life having experienced and beaten this. It shouldn't be for sale. Anyone giving this a thumbs up in the Steam reviews needs to be banned from the platform before seeking mental help.
The first Revelations game felt like the IP of Resident Evil farted onto a disc: it burned your nostrils but despite being faint, the spirit of the series still lingered there.
Honestly, the Resident Evil franchise really knows how to make you go back and think that last game you did not like wasn't that bad after all. I was lukewarm on Resident Evil 5. After 6, I thought 5 was a masterpiece, comparatively. After Revelations I thought “At least 6 could be fun in a co-op Michael-Bay-movies-while-hammered kind of way?” and after Revelations 2, I wish I played the Raid mode of Revelations more instead.
Are there more bad Resident Evils than good at this point?
What's good, here? Moira's voice actress is good. Her lines are shit, but she still gives it her all and sometimes it bleeds through the awful writing. She said “Fucking statue!” at one point and I actually thought “Damn, girl, what's your name?”
The main menu has a startling jumpscare that I like. It's not great, but I like the look of it.
One time I said out loud “Turn on your fucking flashlight, Barry,” and he did. That made me laugh.
It looks better than the first game (mind you: that was a 3DS port).
The only reason I gave it 1 star instead of 0.5: the dedicated dodge button was a good choice considering the speed of everything.
That's it.
Quite simply, this is not a Resident Evil game outside of a couple names that don't have any impact on you. They can say “Claire Redfield” all they want – I don't care, it's not her. The “zombies” are more like tweakers than living dead, except for the ones who are way too dead as they look like skeletons in clothes and are no challenge to kill.
This feels like cheap junk that you'd find in your Steam library on accident, not realizing it was part of a Humble Bundle you bought several years ago. Why was this made?
It follows the duo style of play except you control both partners. Each duo has an “Eye” and a “Muscle”: Moira and Claire, Natalia and Barry, respectively. The Eye's duty is to find secret gems, ammo, and hidden enemies. The Muscle shoots anything moving that isn't their Eye. It's not too exciting: you will play mainly as the Eye, looking around in corners for shiny points that you then focus on to make an item materialize or perhaps for the hidden symbols that earn you point multipliers at the end of levels. When baddies emerge, you press Tab and swap over to the person who has guns and kill them all. That's it, over and over again. It's a boring loop.
There are puzzles that Homer Simpson wouldn't even need to think about to solve.
The plot is half-assed gibberish. You're on an island, you want off, figure it out. There's a second Wesker named Alex and she's orchestrating some evil nonsense. I don't think you even figure out what, exactly, just that's she's wiping people out to make a virus... probably. She's trying to turn into a bug because she read some Kafka, maybe? I don't know, but don't worry: she's dead, now.
I got the bad ending because I was too quick at pressing the F key during a certain segment. I was supposed to just push Tab, but I didn't even see it because I'm simply too good at video games. What's weird is apparently the whole journey was so Moira could overcome her fear of guns. She shot her sister when she was young and, understandably, doesn't want to touch another one. I would have thought making her use a gun would be the bad ending, then, but apparently I'm an asshole for thinking so; guns are always good and everyone should want to use them all the time to solve every problem, and they're mindbroken and in need of forced-fixing if they think otherwise. Alright, Capcom.
I was going to play the DLCs but I raged out of The Struggle (feels appropriate) and didn't even try the other one or Raid mode. The game is off my computer and back in the nether where it belongs. This piece of shit crashed on me twice when I alt-tabbed, too, very frustrating.
The episodic content was a shitty idea and apparently Capcom added DRM to this thing recently, several years after it came out (as they did the first Revelations). Why? I wouldn't even recommend torrenting this game, it's THAT bad.
Like the first game, I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations 2, except I strongly recommend you avoid this one. Some games are just bad for you.
The first Revelations game felt like the IP of Resident Evil farted onto a disc: it burned your nostrils but despite being faint, the spirit of the series still lingered there.
Honestly, the Resident Evil franchise really knows how to make you go back and think that last game you did not like wasn't that bad after all. I was lukewarm on Resident Evil 5. After 6, I thought 5 was a masterpiece, comparatively. After Revelations I thought “At least 6 could be fun in a co-op Michael-Bay-movies-while-hammered kind of way?” and after Revelations 2, I wish I played the Raid mode of Revelations more instead.
Are there more bad Resident Evils than good at this point?
What's good, here? Moira's voice actress is good. Her lines are shit, but she still gives it her all and sometimes it bleeds through the awful writing. She said “Fucking statue!” at one point and I actually thought “Damn, girl, what's your name?”
The main menu has a startling jumpscare that I like. It's not great, but I like the look of it.
One time I said out loud “Turn on your fucking flashlight, Barry,” and he did. That made me laugh.
It looks better than the first game (mind you: that was a 3DS port).
The only reason I gave it 1 star instead of 0.5: the dedicated dodge button was a good choice considering the speed of everything.
That's it.
Quite simply, this is not a Resident Evil game outside of a couple names that don't have any impact on you. They can say “Claire Redfield” all they want – I don't care, it's not her. The “zombies” are more like tweakers than living dead, except for the ones who are way too dead as they look like skeletons in clothes and are no challenge to kill.
This feels like cheap junk that you'd find in your Steam library on accident, not realizing it was part of a Humble Bundle you bought several years ago. Why was this made?
It follows the duo style of play except you control both partners. Each duo has an “Eye” and a “Muscle”: Moira and Claire, Natalia and Barry, respectively. The Eye's duty is to find secret gems, ammo, and hidden enemies. The Muscle shoots anything moving that isn't their Eye. It's not too exciting: you will play mainly as the Eye, looking around in corners for shiny points that you then focus on to make an item materialize or perhaps for the hidden symbols that earn you point multipliers at the end of levels. When baddies emerge, you press Tab and swap over to the person who has guns and kill them all. That's it, over and over again. It's a boring loop.
There are puzzles that Homer Simpson wouldn't even need to think about to solve.
The plot is half-assed gibberish. You're on an island, you want off, figure it out. There's a second Wesker named Alex and she's orchestrating some evil nonsense. I don't think you even figure out what, exactly, just that's she's wiping people out to make a virus... probably. She's trying to turn into a bug because she read some Kafka, maybe? I don't know, but don't worry: she's dead, now.
I got the bad ending because I was too quick at pressing the F key during a certain segment. I was supposed to just push Tab, but I didn't even see it because I'm simply too good at video games. What's weird is apparently the whole journey was so Moira could overcome her fear of guns. She shot her sister when she was young and, understandably, doesn't want to touch another one. I would have thought making her use a gun would be the bad ending, then, but apparently I'm an asshole for thinking so; guns are always good and everyone should want to use them all the time to solve every problem, and they're mindbroken and in need of forced-fixing if they think otherwise. Alright, Capcom.
I was going to play the DLCs but I raged out of The Struggle (feels appropriate) and didn't even try the other one or Raid mode. The game is off my computer and back in the nether where it belongs. This piece of shit crashed on me twice when I alt-tabbed, too, very frustrating.
The episodic content was a shitty idea and apparently Capcom added DRM to this thing recently, several years after it came out (as they did the first Revelations). Why? I wouldn't even recommend torrenting this game, it's THAT bad.
Like the first game, I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations 2, except I strongly recommend you avoid this one. Some games are just bad for you.
Resident Evil: Revelations: I guess this may have impressed me if I played it on a 3DS, but I didn't, so it doesn't. This feels like the mere concept of “Resident Evil” was painfully streamlined into something so watered-down that calling it “handheld” or “mobile” doesn't quite do it justice; I feel like I won my copy of RE: Revelations in a box of cereal. It retails at $30 which is a crime.
I really think the only positive things I can say about this game is that, infrequently, some textures look (relatively) crisp. Like I can recall seeing Parker's Kevlar vest and saying to myself “The shine on that looks good, I can see creases that look nice.” The loading times are comically fast, too, though this is simultaneously false because the doors that act as loading screens go through their entire animation despite obviously being done immediately. It reminds me of Mass Effect 2's loading animations making things take longer than needed for no reason, and replacing them with .jpgs made loading instant.
The Raid mode is kind of neat for a few minutes and maybe could be brought into better RE games, but it never will.
The campaign was short, only taking away five hours from me.
I think I'm done with the positives.
Every person looks ill, except for maybe Jill Valentine, who only looks like she needs to cool it on the lip filler, and Chris Redfield, who is still Big McLargeHuge from the RE5 model. Parker looks like a bloated drunk, even in his “prime” shown in flashbacks; Raymond looks like a Dollar Store's knockoff Joker toy; Morgan looks like he was yanked from a vampire novella; you get it. Some more new faces include Quint and Keith who are simply cringe incarnate. “That would be tits,” says Keith, codename Jackass (not kidding). I would feel deep regret if I had anything to do with either of those characters.
Jessica is sexy, though, even when she's dressed like Harley Quinn about to go scuba diving. At least they gave us that.
The world isn't looking very good, either, but its crime is one of banality. When you first walk in its Hall, you may think “Wow, the Queen Zenobia will be easy to get lost in!” but you would be wrong: there's really only three ways out of it and you'll see each route several times. I understand retreading areas is sort of a staple of the series, but ideally you'll have a new weapon or keycard that gets you access to something new. That doesn't really happen, here; you just have to go to the Bridge again because that's where the next cutscene is and it's your third time there.
It plays like something between RE5 and RE6 which, if you're a fan of bad games, may be good news. There's no inventory management system and herbs are as simple as possible with one choice: press Tab and you're back at 100% instantly. You can move and shoot at the same time if that bothered you so terribly (I can't imagine being unable to play the original RE4 because of this), but dodging is still quite the horrible system of mostly luck.
You're swapping between character pairs every few minutes, because apparently this was needed to keep a frenetic pace or something? Calling it “exhausting” would be a stretch, but no pair is given enough time to really do anything before we cut somewhere else, it's just not a good choice.
There's a whole system with a scanner where you go into first person to scan enemies, accumulating points that at 100 give you a green herb. You can also find hidden ammo/items with it. Your movement (and the gameplay) grinds to a halt when you use it. I do not like this thing and I doubt anyone disagrees with me, I'd rather the ammo just be on the ground to begin with.
The plot is vapor. It feels a bit like a farce of the Resident Evil series, but not quite funny enough to be a good show. How exciting is it? There are no zombies and the big bad guy isn't the final boss after injecting himself with Super Mega Deluxxxe T-Virus or anything -- he just goes to jail. The final boss is a guy you just met and, really, you don't have any problems with. But this ride can't end without fireworks, so RE: Revelations lights a sparkler for you to enjoy. How fun.
An easily ignorable, insignificant Resident Evil franchise entry. If you don't own it, I don't see any reason why you need to. I'm not looking forward to its sequel, but unfortunately, I own that -- so here goes.
I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations.
I really think the only positive things I can say about this game is that, infrequently, some textures look (relatively) crisp. Like I can recall seeing Parker's Kevlar vest and saying to myself “The shine on that looks good, I can see creases that look nice.” The loading times are comically fast, too, though this is simultaneously false because the doors that act as loading screens go through their entire animation despite obviously being done immediately. It reminds me of Mass Effect 2's loading animations making things take longer than needed for no reason, and replacing them with .jpgs made loading instant.
The Raid mode is kind of neat for a few minutes and maybe could be brought into better RE games, but it never will.
The campaign was short, only taking away five hours from me.
I think I'm done with the positives.
Every person looks ill, except for maybe Jill Valentine, who only looks like she needs to cool it on the lip filler, and Chris Redfield, who is still Big McLargeHuge from the RE5 model. Parker looks like a bloated drunk, even in his “prime” shown in flashbacks; Raymond looks like a Dollar Store's knockoff Joker toy; Morgan looks like he was yanked from a vampire novella; you get it. Some more new faces include Quint and Keith who are simply cringe incarnate. “That would be tits,” says Keith, codename Jackass (not kidding). I would feel deep regret if I had anything to do with either of those characters.
Jessica is sexy, though, even when she's dressed like Harley Quinn about to go scuba diving. At least they gave us that.
The world isn't looking very good, either, but its crime is one of banality. When you first walk in its Hall, you may think “Wow, the Queen Zenobia will be easy to get lost in!” but you would be wrong: there's really only three ways out of it and you'll see each route several times. I understand retreading areas is sort of a staple of the series, but ideally you'll have a new weapon or keycard that gets you access to something new. That doesn't really happen, here; you just have to go to the Bridge again because that's where the next cutscene is and it's your third time there.
It plays like something between RE5 and RE6 which, if you're a fan of bad games, may be good news. There's no inventory management system and herbs are as simple as possible with one choice: press Tab and you're back at 100% instantly. You can move and shoot at the same time if that bothered you so terribly (I can't imagine being unable to play the original RE4 because of this), but dodging is still quite the horrible system of mostly luck.
You're swapping between character pairs every few minutes, because apparently this was needed to keep a frenetic pace or something? Calling it “exhausting” would be a stretch, but no pair is given enough time to really do anything before we cut somewhere else, it's just not a good choice.
There's a whole system with a scanner where you go into first person to scan enemies, accumulating points that at 100 give you a green herb. You can also find hidden ammo/items with it. Your movement (and the gameplay) grinds to a halt when you use it. I do not like this thing and I doubt anyone disagrees with me, I'd rather the ammo just be on the ground to begin with.
The plot is vapor. It feels a bit like a farce of the Resident Evil series, but not quite funny enough to be a good show. How exciting is it? There are no zombies and the big bad guy isn't the final boss after injecting himself with Super Mega Deluxxxe T-Virus or anything -- he just goes to jail. The final boss is a guy you just met and, really, you don't have any problems with. But this ride can't end without fireworks, so RE: Revelations lights a sparkler for you to enjoy. How fun.
An easily ignorable, insignificant Resident Evil franchise entry. If you don't own it, I don't see any reason why you need to. I'm not looking forward to its sequel, but unfortunately, I own that -- so here goes.
I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations.