Recent reviews by IRIzzeL

don't look at the reviews and just play the game

pretty good game if you don't have a life

Before playing this game all I knew about it was three things: it's a bullet hell, a third person shooter and a roguelike; and so I went into my playthrough expecting just that.
What I didn't expect was a story that (no exaggeration) shook me to the core.

The story isn't just some random text and little bits you find here and there, like in other roguelikes. I am not kidding when I say that - while the gameplay is obviously very good - the thing that kept me going was the story.
I wanted to keep going to find out what was going to happen to the world and more importantly: us. It didn't take very long until I realized that this game is something very special and now that I finished it I am sure that this is probably my favorite game of all time. All of this sounds like I'm kidding, but I'm not. This game is a masterpiece.

Now, after this intro let's talk about the things that make this game what it is.
First of all some technical stuff. I played Returnal on max settings, raytracing on with upscaling disabled at 1440p resolution. I had no performance issues whatsoever except some rare moments where my framerate dropped slightly
though I have to admit that this doesn't have to mean anything as I'm playing on a 7950X3D and a 4090. The game never crashed and the only bugs I encountered was me getting softlocked due to geting stuck on some object.

The games visuals are great and fit very well together with the story and what is happening. Each "stage" you visit has a very distinct look and the areas within those stages do feel well designed and good to walk around and fight in.
The sound design is fantastic and one of its songs is so good its part of my playlist now. Each enemy makes a distinct noise that helps you telling them apart and helps you knowing what exactly you're fighting which is nice.
The guns sounds are well made and if you use something with a lot of firepower the game makes sure you know that you're holding something powerful .

Now for the gameplay. It took me 19.5hrs to finish the game (or rather the story) with act 1 taking 7.7hrs, act 2 taking 6.6hrs and act 3 taking 5.2hrs. Runs didn't take too long and were usually around 1hr for a successful one. The game itself isn't too difficult and gets easier the longer you play though it is quite punishing and every mistake you make has quite the impact. Even when you feel like you have a lot of health and are safe you can suddenly lose 70% of your life to one hit of some big enemy and at that point you're one mistake away from dying.
This may sound like the game is really diffcult but it's not like you can't avoid taking damage.
Besides a few weapons, most guns feel very strong and can do some serious damage and get stronger and stronger over the course of a playthrough with many different upgrades you can unlock which also applies to your character.
What was a bit annoying was that sometimes it is weirdly annoying to hit certain enemies with certain guns where even when you're aiming directly at them the bullets seem to not go where you're shooting which is a bit weird but not that bad in the end.
The way guns work is also a bit different from other games I've played. Instead of the usual "shoot, reload, shoot" this game works in a way where if you stop shooting a gun it will slowly reload itself and you can't manually reload. Once you run out of bullets most guns feature a small "quicktime event" where you have to hit a skillcheck to reload instantly and are otherwise forced to wait for some time.
Speaking of guns, let's talk about the enemies. There is a good variety in enemy design and what the do with them starting of quite normal and "easy" but later reaching that point where you can really feel the bullet hell part of the game. Every now and then the was so much bullet hell happening that the time to actually attack the enemy was very limited
and depending on the gun felt quite bad because some of them have to be charged, though I expected it so i wasn't annoyed by it. At some point in the story the same enemies you fought before change (won't say how or why as to not spoil anything) and gain new abilities and do more stuff in general which does keep it fresh even when you keep fighting the same enemies over and over.
As for bosses I do like the way they're designed and their difficulty feels good though the last boss is way too easy in my opinion.
The last thing I want to mention is the movement. While it feels quite good overall I had some issues with it feeling a bit too slippery which could be attributed to a skill issue but it made me tilt a few times due to me falling down into the void and losing health so there is that.

Overall I strongly recommend the game and give it a 9.5/10 (-0.5 because of the movement or my skill issue )

very good game, should be goty this year

The Medium is a great game with an interesting Story, which is unfortunately held back in some ways by technical issues.

To get the bad out of the way first:
There are some rough looking animations and visuals like blurry textures and noticeable pop-in of environment.
There are frequent stutters while simply walking around which got better in the last 2 hrs of the game but before that it got really bad at some points.
Other than that I crashed once, got soft locked right at the end of the game and got stuck in terrain twice, with all of these requiring me to reload an earlier save.

Now for the good things: Niwa, The place where the whole game is playing out, feels very well crafted and put together as well as being very immersive.
As a result of that the atmosphere feels great and you're always on the edge of your seat while walking around. The ~6hrs long story is paced quite well while we slowly unravel the mystery of why our character came to Niwa.
Speaking of our character: The protagonist is named Marianne, who can interact with the spirit world and gets to experience things that other humans don't including being able to talk to spirits which puts her in a very unique position in the world. This ability is the foundation of the story itself and makes for an interesting plot. The few other characters in this game feel well written with clear motivations and a proper place in the story
The story itself was very good with most of the questions I had being answered in the end. I won't talk about it here because I think it's best to experience it without knowing anything beforehand. To quickly summarize the general premise: Marianne gets a call urging her to go to a place named "Niwa" to talk about the origin of her powers. Niwa is a huge hotel like structure where a massacre took place resulting in it's shutdown. When Marianne arrives it is abandoned and very run down. After she enters the structure she meets a dead girl and the story unfolds from there.

Lastly I quickly wanted to talk about how the game handles Horror. I like that it doesn't just try to use cheap jump scares to build tension and instead makes the player feel afraid about how something might happen which leaves you constantly feeling afraid without being lame.
That doesn't mean that it isn't trying to scare you, because it is, but it has a much bigger impact than it otherwise would have.

Overall I'd say this is a great game if you can look past the technical issues. Not everyone will have the same experience I have so I recommend it if you enjoy games of this type.

I'd give the game a 7/10, which would be 9/10 without all the aforementioned issues.

great game

BO6 is a good game.
Good Campaign, strong multiplayer and a decent zombie mode.
Warzone exists.
Important things like the gunplay and movement feel very good.
The revamped class editor also marks the first time in years where it doesn't make me feel like I need a PhD just to customize my gun.
There is a lot of stuff to work towards like completing challenges, unlocking mastery camos or grinding to prestige master level 1000 (thank god the old prestige system is back).

There is some bad stuff like the missing anti-cheat or the fact that 90% of the new maps aren't worth playing and many people are already tired of playing them and back to Nuketown for the 768th time (or they quit).
For some reason this game is super buggy too which shouldn't even be possible considering how they "flexed" the fact that they worked on this game for 4 years. I guess they invested more time into making things that cost the player money.
Another thing is the fact that they went 5 steps back with warzone which was arguably a perfect game towards the end of mw3 and that is just sad.

Overall I'd recommend this game because the gameplay is good, although be aware that the devs don't care about you.

very fun and chill. basically a better version of vampire survivors

really good game with an interesting story and cool mechanics. The controls are annoying sometimes, I got my ship stuck once and a certain area is much easier with a controller but this is just minor stuff and doesn't make the game any worse.

must play