Recent reviews by ashlinry

Don't play if you're going through an important time in your life. You will fail school / get fired / be dumped. Balatro is life.

It's been a while since I've played a game with so much content. Worth every penny.

Mechanics may be a little clunky, but this is a great game with a great story.

A few hours in, and I suspected this could be one of my favorite games. After completing it: confirmed.

This may very well be the weirdest game I've ever played. Starting out, it was a bit frustrating - I'm not generally a fan of rouglikes, but it turns out this is more "rouge-lite," so each time you die you at least know you're going to come back stronger.

One third of the way through the game, there was a point where I suddenly hated the game. After accepting what was going on, I stuck with it, and wow. Well done.

It's weird. It's hard. And it's certainly unique. Give it a try.

I kept seeing this game described as "brutal," and 100% there is no other way to describe it. Terrifying, great story, but HARD.

Ugh.

So, I played F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2 probably 10 years ago, and just now decided I should play F.E.A.R. 3. I remembered liking 1 & 2, but this just was not that enjoyable.

First, this would probably have been a lot better as just a movie. The story only really develops during the cutscenes anyway, so it's really just a movie. The combat sequences in between are so monotonous - this game is really just 12 hours of running through a fairly linear world killing the same enemy 75% of the time. 20% of the time you get to kill something else, and the remaining time is spent in suddenly unreasonably difficult battles (in a way that feels way more "this is unbalanced" than "this is challenging"). Honestly, when you've spent an hour straight just running through an area killing the same enemies over and over, it's hard to have much tolerance for dying 10 times trying to kill a Phase Commander.

If you play this right after 1 & 2, I imagine the story means more and it's worth getting through just for that. I would absolutely not recommend playing this without having plated 1 & 2 - there really would be no point.

So much more than I expected it to be.

It's super spooky without being like "our goal is to make you have a heart attack every time you try to play it for 20 minutes" COUGHoutlastCOUGH, but it's certainly scary enough. I would call it "perfect scary." And the story is really well-done.

If you're debating playing this because it's older, definitely give it a try. Most games I would say you know if you'll like them within 30 minutes or so... but honestly, if you're still iffy, give it 1-2 hours, and then decide.

Yes, the combat system kind of sucks. I accidentally blew past the screen telling me how combat worked too, so it doubly sucked until I figured it out. Once you get the hang of it though, it's honestly not THAT bad, and you do get into a groove with it. 100% worth giving it an actual effort for the story.

I played The Witcher games in order, and even though everyone will tell you you don't HAVE to play the others to enjoy 3... I really think you'll have a greater appreciation for 3 if you play 1 & 2 first.

Underrated AF