Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον Farismarvelous

TOBY PLEASE GIVE ME CHAPTER 5

White Knuckle feels like something out of my nightmares, it's dark, decrepit and endless, always in a rush to keep moving up not understanding how or why you're there or what purpose you serve being there.

It's brutalist architecture, uncomforting visuals and it's moody atmosphere, constantly moving using what little tools you can scavenge from each room, all ever-changing while having to manage your inventory, letting your hands rest before you continue climbing while surviving the traps and entities in there and the unforgiving nature of this massive unfamiliar structure.

White Knuckle isn't a game for everyone, it's a roguelite climbing horror game where you're on the timer and you have to keep going through randomly generated handcrafted rooms trying to reach the next area until you can escape to the surface avoiding any and all creatures you find while getting enough roaches to spend so you can get more resources or give yourself another life for if you fail and die.

It's incredibly addicting, the thrill and stress of it all and it can feel almost dynamic at times having to grab resources or make choices on the run while managing both your hands and your inventory, especially when you die and have one last life remaining and zero resources, it's not instant game over because you can turn your run around and get to the next area.

A worry of mine during my experience of the original demo was that it wouldn't have enough variety for it's early access release but thus far it has a decent amount of variety with so much more to come, new areas, new entities, new encounters and new perks that can help you get the edge you need to survive.

I'm not usually one for roguelike/roguelite games as I don't enjoy dying and losing everything and getting nothing in return but White Knuckle impressed me with it's core gameplay loop while introducing more each run that I didn’t get to initially see the first time, especially the further I got, I don't think all the variety is there just yet but the foundation of it is great.

The horror aspect of White Knuckle impressed me as well and had me very stressed out while giving me some unique fun and terrifying scenarios here and there to offset all the standard climbing rooms and serve as a challenge to the player if they can manage all of it and come on top.

I have seen some comparisons of this game to another climbing game called Peaks of Yore both from people in the reviews and people I'm familiar with, I think to me both are great and provide a very different experience for what they're trying to achieve, whether it was inspired or not, White Knuckle carves out it's own unique space both as a climbing game and a horror game and it comes out as something I haven't experienced before, not to mention that it has some strong Survival Horror DNA to it as well with managing limited resources and avoiding enemies.

I'm very much looking forward to the full release of White Knuckle and I'm incredibly excited for what they do next with the game.

Intravenous is an incredible stealth game, I loved every second of it's hardcore tactical stealth gameplay, I have been looking badly for a game like this for so long, a slow extremely detailed and difficult experience where I felt I was truly hunted down.

I went through most levels without killing or knocking out enemies, complete ghost, they never knew I was there and it felt extremely rewarding, I can very much tell the developer knows their stuff, Intravenous is a love letter to early stealth games like Metal Gear and specially Splinter Cell.

Lighting system, sound system, different movement options, different floor materials affect how much noise you make, the more equipment you have the louder you are and you'll be spotted more easily, suppressed guns still make enough noise to attract close enemies, equipment slowed me down so I went through most levels with just a pistol as a last resort.

When I did have to fight for my life, it was super intense and difficult and the AI works quite well most of the time, they aren't dumb and they'll notice if you forget to close a door or turn off a light, they'll see blood on the ground from a guy you killed and dragged, they'll flank you, they'll surround you, they'll pair up and stay together to make it harder for you to take them out, they'll conduct slow tactical searches room by room near the last position you were spotted at.

I played on "true" difficulty and the last mission was brutal, I screwed myself by wasting my last save thinking I didn't save and so I had to stealthily kill 27 guys while I had a pixel of health, one mag left and body armor that only slowed me down, it all felt completely hopeless knowing that one single mistake would be the end of me but I continued nevertheless, that feeling of hopelessness with all odds stacked against you right at the end of the game was beautiful.

There's quite a decent amount of levels and the game is a bit lengthy for an indie game, the level design is great and enjoyable but becomes a bit more limiting later on if you're going for ghost, the pixel art is pretty sweet and there's definitely a bit of variety and replayability to tackle things differently.

I do think the top down perspective, while great and limiting can make things harder to tell whether parts of the environment actually cover you or not specially when you're sneaking in the moment, I remember standing up behind store shelves thinking I couldn't be seen and I got blasted by a shotgun immediately after.

The sound design is great and massive props to the composer because all the music in the game is fantastic and fits perfectly whether you're at home relaxing before going back out there, going through a base stealthily or having to fight for your life as you get hunted down, it really enhanced the experience.

As for the story, it was alright, I enjoyed seeing it unfold but to me it wasn't anything too special, some of the dialogue can be a bit dumb and goofy but other than that I think Intravenous is a fantastic extremely underrated stealth game that is very mechanically in depth and is well done.

I tend to be more positive and look at what there is instead of what isn't but I can't with Dying Light 2.

To give a bit of backstory, I originally started the game january of 2023, played up until reaching the city and I dropped it for nearly 2 years, there were lots of things that bothered me but coming back to it after all this time, it seems like Techland has changed and improved a lot of things since then and I had a much better experience with the game.

Regardless of the updates, I still felt a bit disappointed with Dying Light 2, I'm a massive fan of the first game, did two entire playthroughs doing almost everything there is, well over 120 hours and it is a fantastic game, from it's fun parkour and nice combat to the horrifying nightmare that happens when the sun goes down that made me hesitate if I wanted to leave my safehouse.

Dying Light 2 isn't a bad game, I think it's an enjoyable decent game with some stuff to like about, from all the new parkour moves you can pull off to the new additions for the combat, making human combat actually decent.

There's a lot to like about it and I DID enjoy my time with it but it's just not what I expected/wanted, even with my expectations lowered I still felt disappointed at the story and even more disappointed as I remember the game we didn't get, the game they showed off in E3 2018/2019, I so wish we got that instead.

I didn't like the story, I didn't find it too interesting, I didn't find many characters too interesting, some were alright at best, the story is long but it feels like during most of it not much happens in the story and when it finally picks up the pace, the game just ends.

I enjoyed the gameplay, some things felt worse, some things were better but the night chase system felt like a major annoyance, night time wasn't scary, it was annoying and it was stupidly easy to escape with the glider any time.

I tried doing most of the side content as well and there's so much but a lot of it felt underbaked and with how much there was, it felt less that I was playing a game to enjoy it and more busy work, felt extremely ubisoft-y to me and it didn't help with all the RPG elements the game had.

Dying Light 2 feels like an arcadey video game while Dying Light 1 feels a lot more realistic and horror-ish, I hope Techland learns from DL2 and makes Dying Light The Beast more in line with how the first game was while still keeping some of the improvements DL2 brought in.

Dying Light 2 is okay, it's just okay and that's disappointing.

Love this way more than any other mountain climbing game, super intense and requires tons of skill to master, good stuff!