Recent reviews by Elkane

Sony's reverting their decision on forced PSN account linking! WE WON, BROTHERS!

I love the Porject Zimbabwe :)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NOTE: I ONLY HAVE THE BASE VERSION OF THE GAME, NO DLC. I STARTED THE GAME BEFORE THE SUPPOSED "PERFORMANCE PATCH" RELEASED I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT HAS BEEN IMPROVED, IF IT EVEN HAS BEEN. THIS IS A DAY 1 REVIEW. I WILL NOT BE RELATING TO ANY DEAD SPACE GAME AS I HAVE NEVER PLAYED ONE. IN PERSPECTIVE: THIS IS A NEWBIE'S REVIEW

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I played the whole game in 1 sitting. Here are my thoughts.

Performance: 16g Ram, GTX1080, Ryzen 5 5600X. Before properly starting the game, I looked through reviews to see what people recommended: Turn off VSync, Motion Blur, and turn DirectX 12 -> 11. The game at most times was a solid 60 Frames, however there were numerous spots where my frames would tank or I flat out thought my game crashed because the game froze for a good 10-20 seconds. the worst I had seen it apart from flat-out freezing was 25-30 frames and that was for maybe 1 room or 2 at a time. Overall, it was really smooth.

Graphics/details/looks: Beautiful work done. Lighting's incredibly well placed, super disgusting and dank hallways and pits, and a good futuristic-modern stylization. Some of the environments had me stop for a few seconds just to look around and really take a look at it all.
THERE ARE MULTIPLE SEGMENTS WHERE ME, AS SOMEONE WHO ISN'T PRONE TO LIGHT-SENSITIVITY, FOUND SOME SEGMENTS VERY ANNOYING/JARRING. THOSE WHO SUFFER FROM SEIZURES DUE TO FLASHING LIGHTS: I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND PLAYING UNLESS YOU ARE PLAYING IN A VERY-WELL LIT ROOM.

Story: interesting at best but kind of forgettable in my opinion. You're delivering cargo to a prison, get boarded by a "terrorist group", crashland near Callisto's high-end prison. Upon recovery: your awake to your shipmate, Max, dead and are rescued by the prison's 2nd-in-command, Captain Leon Farris. For reasons unknown, He takes you in as a prisoner, Warden's orders, and given a warm welcome to Black Iron Prison. for spoiler purposes, I will refrain from talking further- watch a youtube video or something about the whole game. I'll probably update this review later on if I remember or even care to, mainly to go into detail on my finer thoughts. All I will say is that the ending's big reveal was a bit too easy to predict based on story events.

Characters: Jacob Lee (Josh Duhamel) does a wonderful job as a main character: pretty realistic tone/response to statements made by other characters.
Dani Nakamura (Karen Fukuhara) plays an amazing side character: her stubborn, dismissive, antagonistic attitude shifts rather quickly to an accepting, slightly-dependant, and caring one - it was really odd once I noticed her statements had changed so sudden but it kinda of grows onto you.
Leon Farris (Sam Witwer) was the only actor I recognized from all the way back Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, childhood memories that kind of thing. It was honestly a real suprise once I noticed that it was him. His character's rather bland since there isn't a whole lot that you see of him throughout the game. Very prideful, antagonistic, arrogant, but he plays it well.

Combat/gameplay: I did play with a controller so obviously there will be differing opinions on some aspects here. This game is VERY melee oriented. You do get a lot of ammo and there are various gun types you can find, however you'll find yourself more-often-than-not trying to beat the brain-matter out of enemies.
the gun upgrades are relatively useful, however I'll warn that you wont have every upgrade by the end of the game so if you pick this game up, be sure to find a gun you like to sue and hard-set on that.
Dodging, rather than a button, is holding Left/Right on the L-Analog stick, and alternating for quick-succession attacks. This originally seemed like it would really screw with me, having played a few souls-likes, but it was pretty fluid at times.
There were definitely some bugs regarding combat/deaths: you cut off an arm but a death animation uses both, so you're watching Jacob's head get split open and top-half ripped off when it looks like the enemy's just getting a good look at his teeth and playing with his jaw a bit. Bugs apart from deaths: combat sometimes was awkward: clearly dodging properly but still getting hit and dying from it.
Some fights in the game felt straight up unfair because of the situation it puts you in, but it's entirely possible that it was just me not being careful or thinking strategically.
Regarding my time spent, this was between having to redo segments multiple times from failures, and also from turning back around a lot because I'm a player that likes to check a bunch of corners to make sure they've gotten/found everything. I feel like: from start to finish, no retries or proper scavenging, the game has around 9-10 hours of gameplay.

Jumpscares: lots of cheap ones - high-pitched violin trills and sudden sounds followed by getting attacked. By far the most annoying part was that there's 2 different enemy types that you literally cannot avoid, or at the very least I wasn't able to. "Just making sure you aren't at Full Health the whole time" and some dumb stuff like that.



OVERALL: Pretty fun game, nice horror, beautiful aesthetics, good characters, decent but hopefully-soon: amazing optimization, and interesting combat (though arguable that some segments honestly felt like rage-game material.)
It was best put when talking with a friend who was curious about the game: "It's fun.. but it's okay."
I don't know if I would would buy it full price, but even a minor discount like 25% makes it worth.

I hate this game
EDIT: still hate this game.

A huge step up from the first chapter. Beautiful scenes, lovable characters, and even more music to listen to later on!
I hope you all enjoy the chapter as much as I did helping squash the bugs for you to enjoy it!

I've played every bit of what I have right now in VR.

Easily one of the most unsettling games I've ever played

Ori and A Terrible Day For Rain

Love this soundtrack to bits, and one of my favorite overall. There's tranquial scenery to omminous darkness (as tot what you picture with some of these songs)

definitely worth the dollar ^ -^

Really fun with friends, and a decent time waster. I really wish they would add custom game-modes that you could set yourself, for example: teammates all share every picked-up item and such

This game has led me to my favorite fanbase of all time. I have never been more enthralled in a game. The music, the characters, the backstory(s), and the art style. I've never seen more of an eye-catching game. It's all so beautiful. Every month of patreon support is worth it to fund this great story-branching project. I love it to bits.

While Chapter 2 may be a while away, I know that I'll still love this game to the moon and back.
:)

Sorry if it seems like I'm sucking up to this game, but every cent is worth it XD

Edit: CHAPTER 2 MARCH 27TH LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO
2nd Edit: I hope you all enjoy the 2nd Chapter as much as I did helping squash the bugs!