zortch is magnificently simple. satisfyingly tuned guns and movement paired with engaging labyrinthine levels engrossed by N64 visuals are such a treat. it's all so wonderful. the dev put in so much joy into zortch and playing it is an exercise in evoking it. admittedly it's not very hard, or at least on 'warrior' difficulty, as the game buries you in ammo and health pickups. but the exploration and combat encounters are just so fun. kicking enemies to knock them off their feet, lobbing dynamite to gib a whole mob, crawling through vents to uncover secrets, it's a kitbash of turok violence, quake anxiety, and half-life investigation. it's unfathomably underpriced for $5. zortch is undervalued for how good it is despite its short playtime.

never finished perseus mandate before, so i thought it was about time to do so. PM is the lowest the first F.E.A.R. can get, full of depressingly bland lighting, boring skirmishes, and weak additions. LithTech lighting is some of the greatest to be found in a game from its time and even today. Pitch-black silhouettes of enemies and deep voids accent the surfaces of F.E.A.R. to create an impeccable atmosphere. fighting in the shadows, exploring vents in a vacuum, and witnessing horrors in the dark, the stark lighting is great in the base game. timegate studios, for some reason, thought that the game should just have global illumination turned to 11, making nighttime outdoors combat incredibly drab. no muzzle flashes to light up dark corners or flashlights to cut through shadows, just plain ol', evenly lit arenas for 90% of the game. the arenas dont make it any better. many of them are boring single-floor, open rooms with boxes as the only cover. gone are the anxiously close-quarters gunfights of the original F.E.A.R. as most encounters are quick skirmishes across large rooms and halls. the verticality of the original made it even tenser when fighting enemies as they could flank from above or take a long winding path for a surprise attack. enemies in PM can barely surprise you. the new enemies arent even that interesting. the mercs are the same thing as the clone soldiers, so they're basically clones of clones. the quick ninja mercs are too tanky and quick to be entertaining fights, made worse by their usually terrible arenas. the new monster enemies are neat, made better by the area they're introduced in. that's probably the highlight of the expansion, the underground area where the invisible beasts kill your buddy chen. timegate remembered about the great lighting and puts it to great use while also putting f.e.a.r. in a new locale. it's a nerve-wracking level where you tiptoe and obsess over your flashlight battery. but good things always end and you get thrust back into the grinder of boring to decent fights. the new weapons arent even that exciting with a 'new' assault rifle (it has a scope?!?! woah..), a weaker railgun equivalent, a kinda sick grenade launcher, and a neat laser beam rifle. the placeable turret isnt really worth mentioning. Its only value is that it can distract enemies. the highs reached f.e.a.r.'s baseline, with great horror visuals and atmosphere on occasion. however, the lows were so low and more common, just dragging the expansion into a pitiful crater. it does scratch the f.e.a.r. gameplay loop at times, but it's not wholly worth getting into unless you're a big f.e.a.r.-head, which is the only reason i even decided to play it after hearing it was disappointing. a middle-of-the-road expansion, so replay f.e.a.r.

so grossly uninspired and disappointingly a waste of talent. the art style, enemy designs, and music (for the most part) sit atop a mound of rotting garbage bags housed in a dumpster painted to look like fallout 4 and bioshock infinite. i shit you not, theres a part in the game where youre in an elevator, and outside its glass, you see an underwater facility to which the protag makes a bioshock reference by saying, "this is some kinda rapture!" plus the music sounds so similar to the bioshock rapture reveal lol. incessantly grabbing onto every bit of incomprehensibly mundane litter to craft upgrades is mind-numbing which then gets exacerbated by its lifeless open world. exploration is something you want to avoid. empty rooms, ongoing hordes of enemies, pathetic traversal, major hallmarks of terrible open world design. halfway through the game, i didnt know you could drive cars and that joyful discovery was immediately soured by enemy corpses bringing my car to an instant trudge. the loot doesnt even justify the poor exploration. i did some of the "polygon" facility dungeon things and decided i didnt want to waste my time anymore with them after the third or fourth one. even though these dungeons, and the majority of story missions, have the best level design to offer in atomic heart, they are still just so boring. especially with a story so sporadic, so schizophrenic, there is almost nothing to get invested in. it's supposed to be this sorta story where the protagonist is being gaslighted by everybody he meets. it's supposed to make the player think about their mysterious origin and who may actually be the villain. in reality i just had no fucking idea what was going on. not sure if it was just a misfortunately poorly translated english script, but so much shit felt redundant, out of left field, or the equivalent of water going up your nose. combat is almost okay. melee is suprisingly alright, gunplay is nice, enemies are annoying as fuck though. especially that red nerve monster guy, pusschy or whatever. the enemies just jump all over the place and knock you down sometimes. manageable in small numbers, annoying when theres like 4 of them and then you get stuck on a prop or geometry.

just such a fucking sad experience more than anything. i honestly wished this was a fake video game instead of actually being playable. i think the one moment that mightve broken me the most was when the song "The Alien" from the soundtrack of Annihilation (2018) began playing in a 'pivotal' moment, and chickens began spawning around me. ironically, the positive with this game is that it's so bad that it's helping me love video games again because i dont want anybody to ever make something like this again.

honest to god one of the most beautiful cyberpunk cityscapes ever. carlos lizarraga's level design and 3D modeling are so gorgeously bleak, i want a more fleshed out game or RPG, ANYTHING with this mamoru oshii level of detail. more cyberpunk games need the blue-gray gloom of ghost in the shell or patlabor 2 rather than vaporwave exuberance. the visuals and banging soundtrack were the biggest reasons for me to complete the game, but the gameplay was still pretty commendable. the beginning of the game is slow, boringly slow. you have dual revolvers and smgs, killing enemies that make DOOM riflemen look like einstein. but once you get the shotgun, the game begins to elevate. the extra movement from the shotgun blast, gaining extra height or boosting yourself backwards, makes the arena fights so much more engaging. it's another weapon-swap doom eternal retro fps, but its movement is restrained. there are no jump pads, monkey bars, dashing, or even bhopping. you have to slide and wallrun to dodge hellfire. it's the constant movement and arena encounters where you'll find the retro part of the game, the movement itself is unique to itself. gamers will see a wall run and call it titanfall. sprawl's wall run isn't infinite. you lose height over time and can only jump off a wall two times. combine that with the somewhat pitiful slide that cant be abused for movement, and youve got a game that plays like a trudge through mud when compared to the impossible speeds of titanfall 2 making the comparison unfair since theyre wholly different experiences. oddly enough, as the game expanded with its arsenal and enemy roster, the game got better (although the bossfights are a bit lackluster, not terrible just a bit eh). i say this is odd because FPSs tend to fall off in the end third or quarter of their playtime, but this game is so concise in what it aims to do that it has no bloat and doesnt lose steam. the limited movement and heavy weaponry come together to make decent to amazingly satisfying combat when the arena allows for fluidity. there are moments of bland, too-open arena fights or claustrophobic halls that can be too frustrating depending on the enemy, but the feeling of struggling to stay above enemies to headshot them in slow-mo while weapon swapping is phenomenal.

somehow the combat is both frantic and methodical. slowly paced with constrained movement and max payne bullet time while having hordes of enemies and bullets to dodge. but those instances of bliss with the gunfights are only occasional, momentarily beautiful violence. more often than not, the enemies are too simple to keep the gameplay loop interesting where so many enemies are the same thing but with variations in their health pool. the potential was impeccable, but the delivery was competent.

you ever just need to explore decrepit buildings filled to the brim with psychotic vagrants? plunge into urban decay and feel the dried blood and grime beneath your fingernails as you fight for your life. condemned is ashamedly nigh forgotten, understandably so when its sister game is fucking F.E.A.R. revisiting this game, though, was greater on a second playthrough, in both highs and lows. the atmosphere is disgusting. festering paranoia, rotting buildings, filthy footsteps, and ghastly whispers, condemned is one of the few games where i still got startled while knowing what was coming. the utter dilapidation of metro city is tangible in its industrial despair and collapsing floors, but the sickly enemies add to it alongside being able to rip off a weapon from the wall. incredibly simple, brutally visceral. the combat is rudimentary. it's a man killing another man with a rock and huffing with each swing. dodging is only a coincidence or a misstep. you either take a hit or adapt and block hits. yea the last chapter is a bit of a fumble, taking the horror into the background by throwing more and more enemies and guns. yea, the game is janky with audio bugs and a shoddy pc port. yea, maybe there were a few too many guns to overshadow the melee combat. but holy hell, there are not many games this cathartically terrifying. raw, cruel combat and dreadfully dense atmosphere, condemned may not be better than F.E.A.R. (and it's really hard to top F.E.A.R.), but it scratches a specific itch in my brain that not many other games can.

a blindingly fast thrill ride that got better as it went on. nonstop action, obliterating weapons, a power fantasy akin to doom eternal with combo-swapping and speeding around the arena. most of what i initially said when the game was in early access still stands, but the enemies feel better to fight. the biggest issue with this game is excess. more often than not 30+ min levels, an arsenal bigger than it should be, and a gigantic enemy roster with just as much superfluity as the weapons. its overwhelming at times in that you have to fight battle after battle against countless hordes of enemies. in one of the end-game levels, there were like 900 enemies to kill! the combat is buttery smooth, but there can still be too much of a good thing. im not trying to contract carpal tunnel. there are also weapons that fill out similar roles to each other which leads to some guns not having as concise of a role in the sandbox as they should. i mostly think of the minigun vs dual uzis in this instance. i cant tell the difference between them besides one shoots faster and the other may be worse at longer ranges? why not just make the uzi the automatic hitscan weapon and just keep the minigun as a flamethrower? theres more like the microwave beam just kinda not being that useful or the accurate alt fire of the uzi kinda just being better than the normal uzi or- yea the weapons could've been tweaked a bit. theyre all good fun to use, but it's more than what's needed or even used. the augments are similar, i got all of them and didnt even use half of them i think. some augments are just clearly better choices like the chainsaw slide kills giving health and armor, extremely necessary on high difficulties since only enemies drop health on some of those difficulties.

overall though the game's pretty great, chainsaw sliding through groups of flesh and steel is beyond fun. a good boom shoot, couldve been amazing but it seriously is hard to go wrong with a breakneck FPS that has a protagonist with chainsaws for limbs.

map 18 is one of the most evil things i've ever played. in fact, this whole WAD is a malevolent spirit, made to torment the player with hordes of demons and intricate arenas. excited to finish this later. On the last episode now and cant believe that a doom WAD can be this good and make me start loving games again. good stuff.

cross that. Map 28 is fucking insane. lovely doom wad, so wonderfully cruel.

20/12/2023 - man this whole fucking thing is insane, unbelievably good.

it's so unbelievably funny that the game fromsoftware would make for the american xbox to be published by the american megacorporation microsoft was a power fantasy filled with unfeasible amounts of american stereotyping. the excessive craving for hollywood heroism, the cultic obsession with freedom, and the unapologetic use of violence to get what one wants, alongside some other idiosyncracies like the freedom of the press and glorification of the military, metal wolf chaos is like a game trying to appeal to americans from an outsider perspective. and as an american it works because it makes for such a ridiculously funny game. pair that with the terrible voice acting and batshit insane plot, the hyper-american reality of this game's world becomes beyond entertaining. blowing shit up because "im the president of the great united states of america," stomping on tiny army men and rescuing hostages because you "believe in your own justice," saving the country from richard hawk's tyranny because i want him to "suck on my missile punch." the absurdity of its combat scenarios and the stupidity of its dialogue are so good, im probably gonna be quoting this game for a while now and my friends are gonna think my mind's deteriorated more than it has. and that soundtrack? jesus christ. kota hoshino, but also shohei tsuchiya, are fucking insane. the music is so good, ranging from hip-hop anthems to sporadic jazz to inspiring rock music, the ost takes a trip through the musical history of america while providing banger after banger. desperately need to play evergrace more than ever now to hear that soundtrack.

metal wolf chaos is basically as what i see most people describe it as, a worse armored core game. but in the writing and jank of its combat, it's wholly a new experience. a road trip through american iconography. a figurative slice of americana that comes close to being as sweet as apple pie. a must play for anybody checking out fromsoft's older ludography, or anybody wanting to play a game that's "so bad that it's good."

god is made of steel, and his name is michael wilson.

you gib a fucking dragon and travel across time, but sometimes trip into the snore zone. a hit or miss expansion for quake. half of the levels are good labyrinthian crawls where you fight tooth and nail, but the other half are sloppily jumbled rooms with boring visuals and seemingly half-assedly designed. episode 2 was my favorite because of the beautiful new textures. god, curse of osiris is a charming but also great looking level with the statues and art. the murals for each zone are also really nice. the new weapons are alright, the best one being the multi-rocket rocket launcher (for obvious reasons) and the new nail guns are pretty much just nail guns that do more damage. the new enemies are neat, nothing to write home about though. really only for the quakeheads that want more official quake content, otherwise, just play arcane dimensions or something. speaking of which, i should go download that.

a quaint lil game with an oddly engaging gameplay loop for how simple and repetitive it can get. it's not a long game, but you can beat it at your own pace, so take all the time you need. alongside that, there's also minimal challenge or danger. each area has its own unique threat and geography so you have to play accordingly to these differing obstacles. the windy maze of the mangroves, the ruins and dangerous fish of devil's spine, the tight passages of gale cliffs, and stellar basin is just a big donut with a monster in the middle. the constant threats that you do have to look out for are the night stressors and how you may have to finesse turning your boat to avoid crashing into stuff. aside from that, it's just a nice game to play every once in a while to wind down. its QTE fishing mini games are fun throughout its runtime, but the constant mystery of the isles and its inhabitants help to maintain interest. i was surprised by how invested i was in its mysteries. they really brought the game up a bit. the only big issue i have with it is the pacing of upgrades. toward the end of the game, you only get to play around with new upgrades for a tiny bit before moving on to the next one or beating the game. the intended final area, devil's spine, gives the player a trinket that drastically increases fishing speed by like 370% or something. i wouldve loved to play with it but i was already about to finish the game so there goes that. then again, i dont know if it's entirely the game's fault because the player is given so much power over how they can pace the game. you didn't have to leave devil's spine for last, you couldve explored for a bit and theoretically gotten that fishing charm faster. or hopefully started with the statue that rewards it. neat game, not a jaw dropper but something you'll know you can complete (not finishing elden ring yet for over a year sits in my head rent free).

the supposed f.e.a.r. successor is really only successful in replicating the spectacle of its main influence's combat. aside from the flair of gunfights, supernatural themes, and enemies that yell into crunchy mics, trepang2 is a wholly different experience. the maps are larger, the game throws hordes of enemies at the player, and it's really not that scary compared to f.e.a.r. trepang2 is instead about doing what it says in the steam description: making you the "ultimate badass." as cringe as the word can be, it's the defining word of the power fantasy that this game set out to create. enemies fly like feathers, and your guns pulverize flesh into a paste. almost effortlessly, the game makes you feel powerful. gunfights are the main meat and potatoes here. guns are deafening, and the excessive particles almost make f.e.a.r. run for its money if it wasn't so blinding half the time and also how f.e.a.r.'s environment was more reactive due to how small the arenas were. i'll be honest, i only really played this because the demo was cool, but i only played that because i thought it would be more like f.e.a.r.. instead, this is an attack on your senses. f.e.a.r. was more methodical, slower paced. trepang2 is a lightning bolt shot out of a cannon. the visuals will overwhelm you with the particles and incredibly dark lighting. the hordes of enemies will send you into a panic. then to top it all off, you have to manage bullet time, ammo, invisibility, and stamina. the combat is a test to see how far you can push yourself, an enduring battle with overstimulation. i like this direction, even more so with how it creates a sense of resource management with your abilities while also constantly being aware of your positioning. It's tense. It's exuberant. It's a fun time. the ai is competent while also being dumb at the same time. you can outsmart them, but they can certainly outplay you with a good flank if you dont keep them in check. thats one thing trepang2 differs from f.e.a.r., the enemy ai doesnt feel as menacing or cooperative. The clone soldiers in that game were truly scary foes mainly due to f.e.a.r.'s immaculate level design. in trepang2, the enemies sometimes just run around looking for you instead of using their environment to their advantage. for as much as i compare trepang2 to f.e.a.r., they really are two different games just with some similar mechanics and themes. trepang2 is a good game but one so derivative of what came before and what the developers find cool that it sometimes felt hard for it to show its voice. from the obvious f.e.a.r. inspirations to scp-like agencies to a fucking backrooms level (yes, there is for some reason a BACKROOMS level in this game), trepang2 continuously wears its inspirations on its sleeve like it was its favorite sweater instead of showing the cool ass shirt beneath it. but you could see that shirt only in moments of its acrobatic destruction of blinding viscera and screaming opfor radios. its globe-trotting campaign was also a good unique aspect of the game. i really liked how it had a hub, but even better was how each mission was set in a new part of the world with sometimes different objectives. the side missions were alright for the most part, mostly being wave defense objectives, but the one horror-focused mission was probably when the game did horror at its best since it never overstayed its welcome and felt more original. one thing it did right was its higher focus on action, because even if f.e.a.r. was its main influence it didnt have to be just as horror-centric. the horror in this game isn't great for the most part, but it was competent at its best while riffing off of some dumb internet horror trend at its worst.

trepang2 is fucking obscene, and i love it for that. but i wanted it to be more comfortable in being that instead of relying on past works from other people. it has a foundation made of great inspirations and almost succeeded in fully separating itself from them through its mystery and thrilling combat. then again, even though it's not something completely original, it's a very good time for turning human bodies into a red mist from just one shot of a spas-12 shotgun. it's been too long since ive used a shotgun this good. recommended if you want to fuck shit up.

played on and off with some friends for a bit, but now that i havent returned to it for a while, i gotta say that it's both fun and disappointing. the ai companions are a neat idea, but i never really got much use for them. coop definitely hampered that, but even when kelvin was still alive he was mostly there to jumpscare my friends and i (which i missed after he died). paranoia is still very good. besides the survival mechanics, paranoia is what this game continues to do good from its predecessor. the woods feel alive, the wind is ominous, the night darkness is an engulfing evil to be avoided. the one improvement i like the most is the building system, it feels very intuitive and promotes curiosity in what can be achieved through it. it's very formatted. the building is almost like rust's walls and foundation system, but it's more intricate in that you can carve out windows and doorframes or build ramps versus stairs instead of walls, and more. so aside from being more of the forest and a more fun building system, the biggest downsides are progression pacing and the fact that the game's still unfinished. back when i played, it felt like there were some missing things like animal head trophies. they added these back in though so eh, but i felt like i had seen pretty much all that was added. i think in my very first play session i had already gotten my hands on the pistol which was insane because in the forest i hadnt even ever gotten the crossbow. granted i never finished that game, but it felt cryptic and rewarding to find any new equipment in the first game! here, the pistol is just laying out in the open in a raft offshore instead of a hidden cave or buried box. its obviously unfinished, but since i enjoyed the first forest and i like this new building system i just hope that it can leave early access in a good state. really only get this game if you LOVE the first game and crave anything like it.