Recent reviews by Arkveveen

One of the best boomer shooters and Warhammer 40K games out there. The only thing holding back this juicy and satisfying bloody steak of a game is the framerate issues that seem to be caused by copious particles or effects on screen, uneven difficulty, and maybe secret areas that are a bit too hard to find. Maybe the mouse controls, which will sometimes suddenly feel more sensitive and then return to normal. There's a few bugs. But, regardless of the negatives, this game is truly blessed by the Emperor of Man! I have never played a Warhammer game that makes you feel as powerful as Space Marines appear in the lore, until this one. You feel the power and satisfaction in the weapons, the sounds, the gore, and the thundering steps which almost seem to sync up with the music... the latter I'm unsure if it's intentional or not, but it's a nice touch. I can see myself returning to this one time and time again to find all secrets, get all kills, and get better times in the pretty robust chapter and level select.

If you take Quake, add some Duke Nukem 3D and Blood level design, you get something truly special. That is HROT in a nutshell! Tight gunplay, not a single useless weapon ( landmine, maybe ), fun details, plenty of hard-to-find secrets, and all wrapped in a delightful, eerie, surreal, and sometimes darkly comical package! Go get yourself a prague ratter today!

A stunning, fun, rewarding, meaty, satisfying, and cinematic experience that I can see myself coming back to time and time again. I just wish I experienced this game sooner. It's been languishing in my backlog for at least a year, because of the severe performance problems that were affecting AMD users like myself. But now that the game is fixed ( also nicer AMD drivers than ever before ) and in a better spot than it was at launch, I'm so happy that I've gotten to play it! If you love Norse mythology and stunning fantasy open worlds, this game is a must! Heck, we still get all that glorious, angry, and raging God of War action we love.

Astonishing in every way, this is a remake that does one of my favorite games of all time justice! Vastly improved in nearly every single way, you will be hooked for hours and enamored with the optimized visual fidelity. This remake makes the original, despite it being such a masterpiece, feel stiff and clunky in comparison. The original will always have a special place in my heart, but this is a remake that does way more than just pump up the graphics and game feel. It feels almost like a new game in some way. And, best of all, none of the cheesy one-liners or lovable characters have been destroyed by this remake. Well, most of it, there's a few one-liners missing, including some puzzles, events, and scenes which are also missing. I barely even scratched the surface of this meaty game at time of review, but just assume the game maintains this amazing quality throughout.

Returnal is basically an eldritch sci-fi horror game, mixed with a roguelite third person shooter with bullet hell elements. It's amazing, and when you really dig into the game it's addictively rewarding.

The performance is pretty garbage, there is a lot of issues with stuttering, and the game is way too demanding. But I can run it good with all medium settings with high textures. It does run very well for me, but it stutters somewhat heavily in battles and even freezes for a second at times.

Note: If you have a FreeSync/GSync capable monitor, enable it along with AMD Super Resolution in game to "Ultra Quality", if you have similar hardware to mine; AMD RX 6600 XT 8GB, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 3.4Ghz, and 16GB of RAM at 3200Mhz. It appears to make the game run way better and place less strain on the graphics card. Stutters are way less. Still can't escape bad stutters unless I drop most VRAM intensive options to medium except for textures and anti-aliasing which are on high. Game runs beautifully, and I still have a few settings on high if they use the GPU more than the VRAM.

Another issue is that, the progression is heavily tied to your weapons. You see, you unlock "traits" on weapons by using them. You are encouraged to use a variety of weapons, and as you level up proficiency, you will need to find a new weapon to benefit from the level ups at all. But higher level weapons have better stats and more trait slots. This can be a dealbreaker to people who love more direct methods of progression like in Hades or other roguelites with currencies, even experience points in RPG roguelites. The only currency in Returnal is Ether, which can't be used for too much besides purifying corrupted items and unlocking new items for the roster. The progression is limited, but I found it interesting that it's tied so heavily to items and weapons. There are also some cool synergies with risky items, such as parasites.

Returnal has a fantastic story. You are a Scout hired by Astra corporation to explore a strange alien planet. You crash on it due to strange circumstances, and your ordeals begin. It is a mysterious, strange, and creepy story, full of scientific discovery because the main character is much of a scientist as she is a soldier.

After you crash, you have to fight a variety of creatures in handcrafted rooms that are modular, connecting together like puzzles pieces such as in Enter the Gungeon or other good roguelites. The random generation here is seamless, but you will quickly see the same rooms over and over. But that didn't bother me.

Returnal is a bullet hell game, you will often find yourself dodging hundreds of energy projectiles during the incredible bossfights, in complex patterns that are easy to figure out but difficult to master. Normal enemies become harder and harder, shooting more complex bullet patterns, in later biomes.

Returnal is a strange but awesome game. It has a few rough edges with performance, unusual progression based entirely on weapons, and a story that requires you to think carefully about every hint in the often cryptic alien tablets, or during other strange events.

An absolute surprise, and the biggest surprise so far, of 2023. Atomic Heart is a thrill ride with great gunplay, cool abilities, arresting visuals, good atmosphere, decent exploration, punchy evolving guns, and a creative sci-fi world brimming with technological wonders.

It pretty much is a superior Bioshock: Infinite, and unlike Bioshock: Infinite ( as much as I enjoy it too ), the upgrades actually alter the appearance of your weapons for damn once. That isn't the only thing I liked, but it's the first thing I noticed about the weapons and upgrades.

You get the usual goodies to find, which I found enjoyable to collect due to the gravity-glove style interaction of holding down the use key to force open cabinets, drawers, storage containers, and more to suck up crafting components or upgrade parts. Yeah, every game these days has to have crafting, upgrades, and whatever, but Atomic Heart does it well by offering a decent selection of upgrades and weapons. Nothing we haven't seen before though.

The game is somewhat linear, but not too linear, it rewards poking around into various rooms off the beaten path, and it's a world so breathtaking that I want to explore it a lot. At some point, things open up and you get open world sections connecting each major indoor area. From the first minute, you are immersed as much as an immersive sim can possibly immerse you, into a Soviet world of technology and utopia. But, there is a rotten core here full of contradictions and problems, and as per Bioshock or immersive sim tradition, things hit the fan!

Out in the open world sections of the game, you will find little dungeons that each have their own unique puzzles, rewards/loot, and encounters. They are a lot of fun and add a lot to how rewarding exploration can be. The open worlds themselves are filled with enemies or stuff to see. I don't like how enemies basically respawn infinitely, due to repair bots, but overall it's a stunning world I want to sink my teeth into. The open world is the weakest part of the game, but hardly that bad.

As you progress, you fight bosses like many other games, but these bosses are actually quite awesome and memorable, they all have unique mechanics or behaviors.

The music and audio is amazing. Apparently, Mick Gordon did the soundtrack and whatnot, and I can really tell. It really gives us this feeling of a technological utopia gone wrong.

Combat is pretty good and satisfying. Some of the enemies are quite bullet spongey... but they are robots, honestly if they weren't bullet spongey then something is wrong quite frankly. Parts of them fall off in glorious and surprising detail as you battle them and damage them. Enemy variety is damn solid.

The story is pretty interesting, but the main character is an unlikable piece of garbage. The voiceacting is okay and feels kind of off... leading me to believe it's all translated from Russian. I mean, of course it is. I am led to believe that they are trying to make the main character, Agent P-3, into the next Duke Nukem or Caleb from Blood. Because he is a wise-cracking action hero through and through.

A surprise. That is the best way to describe Atomic Heart. It's great, with a few flaws here and there, some undercooked ideas. Luckily, the best parts of this game overwhelm the worst parts.

You know a game is excellent when you can't set it down after 6 straight hours of play!

Hi-Fi RUSH is a combination of Metal Hellsinger and Devil May Cry, perhaps some Bayonetta thrown in there. But it feels like its own thing entirely, overflowing with attitude, character, humor, life, and color. The visual style proves that you don't need high fidelity graphics to have a good game, and that style can also have substance to it. It's just nice to have a modern, polished, really fun and rewarding game that doesn't require insane hardware to run it smoothly at high settings at just a measly 1080p.

I mean, what else can I say about this game? It's apparently replayable and unlocks additional features when you beat it. There's way more content then there seems at first glance. This is a complete and fantastic game for such a nice, low price. Heck, at this rate I'm starting to think Tango Gameworks is my new favorite developer. I love Ghostwire: Tokyo, I love The Evil Within 1 and especially 2, and now Hi-Fi RUSH! This is a game that was desperately needed in these rough times!

A big juicy "boomer shooter", with a few rough edges here and there, but it's engaging, rewarding, and packed with well hidden secret areas in decently designed levels, including very rewarding "super secrets" which grant amazing rewards. I particularly like the Rune system, which reminds me of Painkiller's Tarot Cards since Dread Templar also has Silver and Gold variants of these upgrades you can equip and change at any time with these statues. Silver upgrades are minor but easier to find, often passive bonuses, and gold upgrades are amazing and will often result in changing your guns into more powerful versions! Some of the best secrets in Dread Templar involve references to other retro shooters, such as a big secret involving a certain man who "lived again", whatever that means. ;)

I just wish that Dread Templar's difficulty was more consistent and rose at an expected rate. You will fight a boss at the end of an episode that feels very much like a final boss, then suddenly your journey will continue which isn't unwelcome since I wanted more. Just, expect way more episodes than just 3, this is a juicy game to get into! Eventually, you will hit the final boss for real, and the difficulty is as challenging as you'd expect.

The only real problem is that the gunplay isn't as satisfying as I'd like. The game relies more on screen shaking and view tilting rather than a nice sense of recoil and weapon power, makes the character feel sort of like they are floating around just a bit and not quite as grounded. It isn't THAT bad, the gunplay, and I still enjoyed blasting hordes of demons into giblets!

We are truly in a golden age of retro shooters. It's funny, because I grew up with these kinds of games too, being born on 1987 and growing up in the 90s. It's awesome to see a renewed appreciation for sprawling level design, secret areas, and carrying WAY TOO MANY guns for your own good!

A cozy, silly, and vibrant delight from start to finish. Full of memes, references, and Ren & Stimpy style shenanigans. Varied levels, unique mechanics, and just the right amount of challenge without being unfair. Pizza Tower is definitely going down in game history as a fantastic platformer gem, and worth every penny and every slice of pizza!

Crisis Core is a great precursor to Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but it does suffer from a few issues, mainly the excessively repetitive side missions. You can undertake missions as a member of SOLDIER. They are relaxing, and I tend to like repetitive tasks... although it got pretty bad to the point that I just wanted to get it over with. The only thing that kept me going with the side missions were the fantastic rewards and secret, awesomely overpowered accessories you can acquire. I couldn't beat the insane secret boss, but she is awesome! I had 99% mission completion, with just one left... that secret boss mission. I couldn't find all of the pieces of the Genji Armor set, I found only 2 of 4. This does lend some replayability to the game, and you can basically do some kind of New Game+. There's Hard Mode as well!

Also, the combat is just fantastic ( which helped alleviate how repetitive the side missions were ), and I really enjoyed trying out various builds with the various Materia and accessory sets you can make. You can combine Materia with Materia Fusion to make different kinds of Materia to gain new abilities, stat bonuses, and spells. I found that you absolutely MUST take advantage of Materia Fusion to buff the built-in stat bonus that a Materia tends to have.

The voiceacting is all over the place, the graphics are REALLY nice ( and I did quite like some of the mission locations, such as the desert island maps ), music is okay ( with some standout tracks ), and the story is your typical over-the-top nonsense we know and love! The only issue I had with the story is that, sometimes, it really did not quite make any sense why a character would just appear to talk to the main character and then just go away. It felt quite odd.

I grew up with Final Fantasy 7, so it makes me excited to see that such a classic is receiving love like this to this very day. DEFINITELY play this before you play Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it will help with lore and context.

Crisis Core, a solid game, but repetitive if you're a completionist like me!