doomercore
83 reviews liked by doomercore
Half-Life
1998
The onely game that can think of rivaling halo in my opinion.
Felvidek
2024
A really good game that could have been a really great game. Nailed the aesthetics, tone and soundtrack. The music in particular really stood out to me and was a real highlight of the game. A few tracks such as the one that plays in the main castle made me stand still and just listen for a bit. This wasn't a one off encounter, but constantly throughout the game I just had to pause and think to myself, "nice". Really great stuff.
Where the game fell flat for me is in plot progression and characters. I think what was most frustrating to me was clearly he was able to write some fun dialogue and banter, as the two leads were enjoyable to read and watch interact. The rest of the cast just didn't work for me due to lack of proper development. It felt like a waste of what could have potentially been one of the best games I played this year. I say all this but I did give this game an 8/10. This game was a joy to play and I easily recommend it. Its cheap, its short, its a novel gaming experience. Go play it.
Where the game fell flat for me is in plot progression and characters. I think what was most frustrating to me was clearly he was able to write some fun dialogue and banter, as the two leads were enjoyable to read and watch interact. The rest of the cast just didn't work for me due to lack of proper development. It felt like a waste of what could have potentially been one of the best games I played this year. I say all this but I did give this game an 8/10. This game was a joy to play and I easily recommend it. Its cheap, its short, its a novel gaming experience. Go play it.
Escape from Tarkov
2017
Bunch of incompetent scum ruining what little potential their game had, trying to nickle and dime their long-time supporters, going back on every single promise they made, just lying through their teeth. This game deserves nothing but death, and no, I am not just some kid crying because "waa game difficult." It's not even a difficult game if you were to remove all the cheaters from it, and I've been here even before the Alpha times, so stfu.
Fallout
1997
They don't make RPGs like these no more
Undertale
2015
This review contains spoilers
Where it Shines:
Music - 8/10
Quirkyness - 7/10
Humour - 7/10
The Good:
So Undertale is definitely an achievement for such as mall team. The throwback to weird SNES era JRPGs like Earthbound is apparent, as well as all the references to other things.
The humour, world, and music are probably what the game does best. It also has a very interesting cast of characters, though some can get pretty annoying pretty quickly.
The Bad:
Hoo boy. Where to start. I wanted to like this more than I did. But this game is a little too "look at me I'm an indie game" if you catch my drift.
What starts as a deliberate, well paced adventure, quickly becomes a slog in the last couple of hours. Obtuse puzzles, annoying bosses, and a story almost entirely exposition dumped onto you like you're some kind of exposition flushing toilet.
I went pacifist route, and I think that's part of the issue. The pacifist route has become so proliferous in this game that even going in to this knowing almost nothing, I knew I was supposed to do that route to get the good ending. But the weird ass flower battle at the end is such a fucking insane choice, it looks like garbage and plays like garbage.
So then I realized oh, you're supposed to befriend some characters, and I missed Undyne because you'd have to go back and talk to her if you want to befriend her; it's not linear.
This game wants you to play it multiple times. I have no desire to play it multiple times. I don't think the story, the endings, or the gameplay are good enough for that.
It also tried to break the fourth wall a bunch but it's really obvious and not very well integrated into the story. The game really feels like it's 3edgy5me and uses literal rage faces and memes. I don't think that makes it subversive or meta, it just makes it obnoxious, which explains it's fanbase.
This game is overrated as heck.
Summary:
I don't regret playing it, but I would not go out of my way to recommend it to anyone. It has a lot of good things going for it, and I can see some people loving it (clearly many do), but this game is just not as good as people make it out to be. I think something like One Shot does a much better job of being evocative and quirky.
TL;DR - As Peter Griffin would say "It insists upon itself".
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
Music - 8/10
Quirkyness - 7/10
Humour - 7/10
The Good:
So Undertale is definitely an achievement for such as mall team. The throwback to weird SNES era JRPGs like Earthbound is apparent, as well as all the references to other things.
The humour, world, and music are probably what the game does best. It also has a very interesting cast of characters, though some can get pretty annoying pretty quickly.
The Bad:
Hoo boy. Where to start. I wanted to like this more than I did. But this game is a little too "look at me I'm an indie game" if you catch my drift.
What starts as a deliberate, well paced adventure, quickly becomes a slog in the last couple of hours. Obtuse puzzles, annoying bosses, and a story almost entirely exposition dumped onto you like you're some kind of exposition flushing toilet.
I went pacifist route, and I think that's part of the issue. The pacifist route has become so proliferous in this game that even going in to this knowing almost nothing, I knew I was supposed to do that route to get the good ending. But the weird ass flower battle at the end is such a fucking insane choice, it looks like garbage and plays like garbage.
So then I realized oh, you're supposed to befriend some characters, and I missed Undyne because you'd have to go back and talk to her if you want to befriend her; it's not linear.
This game wants you to play it multiple times. I have no desire to play it multiple times. I don't think the story, the endings, or the gameplay are good enough for that.
It also tried to break the fourth wall a bunch but it's really obvious and not very well integrated into the story. The game really feels like it's 3edgy5me and uses literal rage faces and memes. I don't think that makes it subversive or meta, it just makes it obnoxious, which explains it's fanbase.
This game is overrated as heck.
Summary:
I don't regret playing it, but I would not go out of my way to recommend it to anyone. It has a lot of good things going for it, and I can see some people loving it (clearly many do), but this game is just not as good as people make it out to be. I think something like One Shot does a much better job of being evocative and quirky.
TL;DR - As Peter Griffin would say "It insists upon itself".
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
I feel like I played this game at an incredibly fortunate time in my life. Struggling to commit to any game for more than a few hours I was burned out on most modern game genres such as shooters, platformers and RPGs. When I first saw this recommended to me on steam during a sale I was intrigued by the art-style and main gameplay mechanic. I didn't have particularly high hopes I just knew it was highly rated and had a unique aesthetic. If you had told me I was going to play through the game in one long 8 hour session whilst losing track of the time I'd have been shocked. This game is good. REALLY good.
Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-assess what in the actual fuck is happening.
Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.
This game and Outer Wilds are two games that completely changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.
Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-assess what in the actual fuck is happening.
Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.
This game and Outer Wilds are two games that completely changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.
Lost Ark
2018
Where it Shines:
Overpowered Combat - 7/10
Fun Spells - 7/10
Character Creator - 6/10
The Good:
Lost Ark surprised me. The combat from the get go, rather than gatekeeping you behind a few spells, just loads you to the tits with tons of fun abilities. Every spell is overpowered to the point of being ridiculous, and you consistently will one hit kill enemies and even bosses early one. I put in about 20~ hours so I didn't get into late game where it no doubt gets grindy, but those hours I put in where fun for the most part.
The Bad:
I mean, it's F2P hell. Tons of stupid events and gacha garbage and overpriced cosmetics and other nonsense constantly cluttering up the UI and your experience.
And as much as I just praised the combat, it's way, way, WAY too easy. I kept waiting for it to get a little more interesting, but it was just a one hit KO fest the entire 20 hours, which is a shame, because it is fun to use the abilities, but if it's too easy it becomes sort of pointless as you feel like you're just playing with cheats on.
There's also way too much dialogue. Every fucking character and their uncle has some story to tell you that goes on for several minutes that after a while you just start spamming skip because the story is basic and uninteresting anyway, and the NPC quests are even more so. Typical "Oh no I lost someone/something in this area, go get it for me" repeated ad infinitum.
Summary:
What I played of it was fun, but I think the most unfortunate part about this game is that it could have been a really, really cool experience if not dragged down by it's overly easy difficulty, verbose quests, and gacha garbage. If this was a proper diablo competitor and was around $30 without all the other crap dragging it down, it may have been a balanced and fun experience, and one of my top games of the year. But as it stands, I can't really recommend it over literally anything else in the genre.
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
Overpowered Combat - 7/10
Fun Spells - 7/10
Character Creator - 6/10
The Good:
Lost Ark surprised me. The combat from the get go, rather than gatekeeping you behind a few spells, just loads you to the tits with tons of fun abilities. Every spell is overpowered to the point of being ridiculous, and you consistently will one hit kill enemies and even bosses early one. I put in about 20~ hours so I didn't get into late game where it no doubt gets grindy, but those hours I put in where fun for the most part.
The Bad:
I mean, it's F2P hell. Tons of stupid events and gacha garbage and overpriced cosmetics and other nonsense constantly cluttering up the UI and your experience.
And as much as I just praised the combat, it's way, way, WAY too easy. I kept waiting for it to get a little more interesting, but it was just a one hit KO fest the entire 20 hours, which is a shame, because it is fun to use the abilities, but if it's too easy it becomes sort of pointless as you feel like you're just playing with cheats on.
There's also way too much dialogue. Every fucking character and their uncle has some story to tell you that goes on for several minutes that after a while you just start spamming skip because the story is basic and uninteresting anyway, and the NPC quests are even more so. Typical "Oh no I lost someone/something in this area, go get it for me" repeated ad infinitum.
Summary:
What I played of it was fun, but I think the most unfortunate part about this game is that it could have been a really, really cool experience if not dragged down by it's overly easy difficulty, verbose quests, and gacha garbage. If this was a proper diablo competitor and was around $30 without all the other crap dragging it down, it may have been a balanced and fun experience, and one of my top games of the year. But as it stands, I can't really recommend it over literally anything else in the genre.
Note on my ratings:
Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.
1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
Elden Ring
2022
This was my first real Souls Game, that I've finished on my own. So I'm pretty much a noob regarding that. I enjoyed it so much that I also got the platinum trophy for it. The game just blew my mind. The open world is so detailed and alive. In every corner is something to explore but also always something that wants to kill you. The lore/story is really interesting and well thought out. Everywhere you can find pieces of it and put it together like a puzzle. The Boss-fights are so intense and fun. One of the best gaming experiences of the last few years. Here and there are some technical issues but overall amazing game
Content Warning
2024
Worse lethal company. In concept this game is fun. In practice it is also fun...for about an hour or two. This game is as entertaining as the group playing it. Actually going on the drop to the old world played second fiddle to whatever manic shit my friends were cooking up in their video. Realizing that he spent the first 60 percent of the footage posing next to backdrops in the starting zone before immediately cutting to us screaming and dying will forever be a massive plus in this games favour.
Content Warning
2024
its alright, feels like it needs alot more to be more appealing, a bit stale as of now. wish it leaned in a bit more to the horror