Neue Rezensionen von Kanaev

Pan's Labyrinth

Resident Evil 7 didn't lie about it "returning to the roots". The aura of the original Resident Evil is everywhere in this game, plus it doesn't shine away from the classic fans pondering with reenactment of some memorable moments from the first game.

First of all - this is a game. Not a walking simulator, as some people thought it would be. It's 100% a game and the gameplay is wonderful. Gunplay is very satisfying. Resources are incredibly limited (played on the Madhouse right away) and enemies are fast and can catch up to you even if you are running. Since this is a "classic" RE - killing is optional unless it's a boss. You can run and dodge past everything. Even on the Madhouse.
On the other hand - you can try and kill everything in sight as well, as long as you are precise with your shots and utilize the knife when needed (once again, just like the classics). The knife. Oh the knife. Because of how limited the ammo is - I spent a lot of time dodging the enemies and stabbing them with the knife. Unlike classics, here it's actually useful while still being vastly inferior to the guns (hello 4-6 with overpowered melee).
What I also liked is the "dodging". No, there's no dodge mechanic a la RE3. It's all done by moving and crouching (also there's a block). But attacks of the enemies are telegraphed perfectly, so you can always dodge out of their way if you pay attention and it feels really good to dodge a devastating attack not by pressing a promt that appears on the screen or performing an I-frames move, but by doing it yourself with the controls that are used constantly outside of combat as well.
Also fantastic bosses, but I'll keep quiet about them.
I really-really enjoyed gameplay in this game.

Design wise this game shines as well. As this is a classic RE - a lot of backtracking is to be expected, but it's implemented so perfectly that you don't even feel like it's a backtracking. There's constantly something new in the old locations. They change their looks. Enemies appear / disappear. With newfound keys you can get a whole different perspective at navigating trough the locations.
If to talk about aesthetics - enemies are very frightening and disgusting. I jumped at several occasions from the combination of their looks and how they move. Graphical fidelity is also outstanding, but all female characters gave me uncanny valley feeling. Male characters looked great, so I don't know why is that.

The "scare" factor. This game is frightening, but not all the time. The "horror" genre it delivers constantly shifts in tone. It can be at times atmospheric and fill you with dread. Or it can turn into a b style slasher movie with lots of gore and other disgusting factors like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from which the game obviously took a lot of inspiration for some scenes and designs. The game also often tries to light itself up with ridiculous factor. There are several scenes that should be scary, but they are purposfully presented in such way that you start laughing and having fun. Also some of the enemies are blatanly playing with you for their own amusement. Shock factor is done really great here.
But when the game wants to be dark - it delivers. Some performances by the actors and associated scenes forced me to take a short break. I'm still not entirely "happy" that I watched the "Happy Birthday" videotape.

About tapes - before the release I thought that they would be a big deal and I also heard that we would be able to do some things in the tapes that would change the present, but there's no such thing. There's very little amount of tapes (four) and all but one are completely optional. They give some insight on the characters and past events. Some of them would make more sense after the ending, but they are not as big of a deal as I was led to believe. Just if the tapes were a factor for anyone out there. They are neat little things, but the emphasis is on "little".

Story is great and nicely ties everything together. It also rewards those who paid close attention, because a lot of stuff can be figured out with deduction and memory. Since none of the Resident Evil games ever had any sort of good story - I would go as far as saying this is the best RE game story-wise. They were all B-movies before, and this one is true to that, but still tries to be something more, which it manages to pull off.

Performance. The game is wonderfully optimized. My rig is - GTX 780, i7-3770, 12 GB of RAM. I use a normal HDD and played in 1080p with all settings being at max except for Shadows (they were at High, while the max is Very High). I also used SSAO instead of HBAO+ and Shadow Cache was turned off. Resolution scale 1.0.
The biggest hit out of those three settings is the Shadow Cache. Whlist turning it on the game dipped from 60FPS to ~30. With Shadow Cache off, but other two settings at max I was able to maintain constant 60 fps until I got out of the "prologue", where there started to be drops at some room transitions to 50 fps (but it quickly got back to 60 after the "loading" was done). It wasn't too bad, but I got tired from it quickly and turned the above mentioned two settings down as well, and was able to maintain a stable 60 fps for the duration of the game.

Now for the biggest turn off and probably the only "big" minus of this game - playtime.
I clocked in a bit over thirteen hours for my first playtrough. But. This is Steam playtime. I was playing on the Madhouse difficulty and died a lot. The screen at the end of the game showed me the total of nine hours and twenty two minutes. That's 43 restarts and almost four hours of lost progress. I explored a fair bit. I know I still missed stuff. I got 25 out of 33 coins. Half of the bobble-heads and left several chests unopened because I didn't find enough lock-picks. I did, however, read all notes in the game. I would say my exploration total was pretty good and I've seen most of what the game can offer. There is, however, a decision late in the game which I presume changes the second to last chapter drastically.
Or not. Now that I've cleared it - it doesn't change squat. Three cutscenes are different. One additional fight, but the chapter itself is the same. I honestly expected more...
If you are the type who plays games on easy. Doesn't explore for the items, read the documents and generally just rushes trough the game - I would say that the first playtrough for someone like that it would take around five or six hours for the first playtrough. So, there you have it. The biggest minus of this game. Playtime for the first timers can be anywhere in range from 5 to 15 hours, depending on the difficulty and ability of the one who plays.

Just a quick word about Madhouse - they give you enough tapes. I felt like it was a perfect balance of saves, just like the first Resident Evil. There are autosaves though. They are rare. I think I noticed about seven of them troughout the entire game, and they are placed... weirdly. Like there's only two before the boss fights, while with others you have to rely on your own saves. One of them was incredibly strange because it happened at the transition from one of the save rooms (I'm glad I didn't use the tape right away and opened the door first!). So yeah. I don't think they take away from the challenge factor, because of how weridly they are spread out. And they are at fixed places. Because when I noticed an auto save at one moment I loaded up a previous save and went doing some hard side-stuff, that would have required me to save manually after anyway.

P.S.
It was a fantastic experience and I'm glad that I have bought this game. I wish it was longer, but what there is is incredible.
Almost two years later and still no VR. Nominated for the best VR game of 2018 that we've never got.

Let's review what this product of CAPCOM's greed can offer for the price almost as high as the main game.

Lost in Nightmares is neat. It has atmosphere, puzzles and the looks. I liked it more than the vanilla RE5 and would have liked if the whole game was like that.
But.
There's no combat (almost). The boss is a rehash and the DLC is painfully short and rather linear, although I still liked level design.
The saddest thing that it gave me a glimpse on a game that I would've liked (if they expanded on ideas in DLC and added more freedom in levels), but never got. After playing trough LiN I started liking vanilla less, because of the lost potential.

Desperate Escape, one the other hand is a bad DLC. It's a linear combat galore against, well, everything. There were so many explosions that I started having WW2 flashbacks.
If you enjoy combat in this game (I do, but not in this quantities). You might like it. Story wise there's nothing. I thought it would be about how Jill acquired the information that we were given by her in Vanilla, but no. She knew it all along and it's just about reaching point B to transmit it. Oh, and you don't even get a boss, because they couldn't rehash anyone logically, so you just get more enemies.

I can't say anything about multiplayer modes, because I don't play them and neither I am interested.
Added costumes are fantastic. Much better than anything the vanilla offers.

Overall I wouldn't say it's worth it. Overpriced, barely offers any content and what it gives is mostly bad.

Donnie Darko x Twin Peaks x Butterfly Effect

There's so many things I hate about this game, yet it still was a great experience.
For starters - Chloe. The whole plot depends on the player to like her, but... I don't. I despise her. She is the source of most problems in the plot and no matter how much you work 'against' her - she ain't going nowhere. She would just ♥♥♥♥♥ about how you let her down, but still remain the most major character in the story after the protagonist herself. But when the plot wasn't solely about Chloe - it was fantastic. It really had some touching moments with interesting and lovable characters. Even the most despisable ones had their redeeming moments.
Also there's too much teenage wibe with memes and themes. Which is understandable, since it's a game about teenagers (kind of, despite them being 18 and higher), but it did make me cringe a lot during the first episode until I adapted.

The artstyle in the game is great. It'll make it look good even some years past. Graphically wise there is a need of texture improvement, but most of the time artstyle covers it up. What really bugged me were shadows. I know UE can put out better ones, but developers decided not to bother. Which makes them look horrible at edges.

What I liked the most about the game is location design. Especially personal rooms. Everything is just so filled with personality and detail. It's hard to look at TellTale games and their designs after that.
The world is very lively. I enjoyed interacting with absolutely everything. And there's a lot of interactions.

Decision wise... There are two endings, but it's clear that developers intended there to be only one. And choices don't matter at all for them - you'll still be able to choose either one. What's interesting are the little choices throughout the game did feel to make subtle difference. Not major, no. But the fact that they always were reflected in dialogue made them feel a bit more special. Overall I wouldn't call it an experience that I would like to replay for other choices, but as one singular story - I really enjoyed it. Even with my hate towards Chloe, which reduced my involvement factor significantly. I can see why people go crazy over this game if they liked Chloe.

Gameplay wise... Do you remember DONTNOD previous game? "Remember Me"? In it the only thing I found interesting were the memory remix segments. I really enjoyed them, but not everything else in the game. They took that great mechanic and made a whole game where it's used constantly. Pretty good. But, as a game it's still a walking simulator a la modern TellTale games.

TL;DR: very good story (but not very decision diverse, don't go in it for choice and consequence), lovable characters, great artstyle. Enjoyable experience overall. I got it during 75% sale. It took me ~15 hours to complete. Money well spent.

Абсолютная бессмыслица. Огрызок от ПК версии. Единственное на что он сгодился - это пробудил во мне ностальгию и возврат на неделю в "нормальную" версию после ~двух с половиной лет перерыва. Лучше бы основную в стиме выпустили.

Да, тут есть некоторые уникальные вещи. Те же карты и танки новые. Но "мобильный" геймплей остаётся мобильным и его нисколько не попытались улучшить.

На, собственно, планшете оно наверняка очень даже неплохо и бодро играется. Все задатки для этого есть, но на компьютере, имея "полную" версию - зачем?..

Oxenfree is great. Extra Credits recommendations are always good. I think I should pay it.
...
...
Wait...

:edit:\minimum of two playthroughs is required.

It's an incredible game, but you're better off with fixed GOG version.

The DEFINITIVE version is finally here. Now with 100% more Pleinair!

The best game in Zero Escape series.

"Greatest hits" album of Souls series and Bloodborne. Instead of creating something new, this game uses a lot of locations / ideas / NPCs / enemies from other games in one bundle.

PVE might have been the best in the series, if not for the lack of poise. The fact is that a meagle rat can interrupt you. You get staggered after a single hit by anything.
The combat is still great, if you play as a light weight dodger with fast weapon. If only players had some poise. Enemies DO have it, after all. The system is in the game.

Enemies themselves are cloned in several locations. It's a little bit annoying to see enemies from the first two locations well past the big chunk of the game, but with new "look" and lore, pretending to be new enemies without any connection to their counterparts from earlier. There's still a good variety and they differ in their behavior and form.

Location design is fantastic! They look great and designed well, with good looping for shortcuts (the game does suffer from "does not open from this side" disease though) and enemy placements. And they're bigger than locations from previous games. You would often look from the high place and see a lot of places you have visited or would visit. Simply gorgeous.
It would seem at first that the world is interconnected like it was in Dark Souls, but, sadly, this is not the case. The game is very linear with very few branching paths to different locations.

And one of the hidden locations is a relighted version of one from the main course of the game. There's not a single unique enemy in it, the boss is one of the previous ones with added aggression. And they put there unexplained fanservice items which do not fit in with the lore. The location looks and feels great, but it's still a damned reskin.

Bosses. It's hard for me to judge their difficulty, each boss feels good, that's for sure. Two of the bossfights might go in the top ten boss fights out of all FromSoft games for their sheer feel. And this game contains the best last boss.

PVP might have been the best in the series. It did so many things right this time around. So many things... But it suffers from the same problem as PVE - lack of poise. Every weapon stunlock. Meta is to spam R1 into oblivion.

Parries are harder and much more punishing for mistiming. Which is good, but that also means you can't parry spammers and the first hit stunlocks you so you get hit two-three times always. Aside from overpowered Caestus (it allows to parry like in Dark Souls (on reaction) and has incredibly fast recovery animation, which let's you roll away from attack even if you missed a parry) and they brought a system from Dark Souls II where you can't parry heavy weapons (running and rolling attacks excluded). So they really hit a nice spot with parrying in this game. Time to nerf caestus recovery animation (i.e. - prolong it).

They also "fixed" backstabs. It has a starting animation now, like in DSII, but in DSII even with this animation backstabs were often glitchy and unfair. In this game out of hundreds PVP matches I was backstabbed once and it was my fault (got greedy on attacking one player and his buddy caught me mid animation), while I backstabbed countless parry spammers (besides caestus - recovery from parry is not immediate and with a bit of prediction of a parry you can easily punish players for spamming).

Back to weapons. Light weapons are a meta, since stun-locking and fast attack speed. Are heavy weapons dead? Not entirely.
They brought back an amazing system from Demon's Souls called "hyper armor". When you swing a heavy weapon, at some point in the swing (differs for different weapons) hyper armor activates and you can no longer be staggered out of animation. So you still get hit, but your attack is not interrupted and you can hit your opponent as well. It's incredible. The problem is - hyper armor does not start immediately, so you can still be thrown out of heavy attack by a poke from a dagger while wearing full Havel's. It's still much easier to win with light weapons. The only way you can die from heavy weapons is if you make a mistake. They reduced stamina consumption for rolls, so it's really not that hard to dodge forever. In the end heavy weapons are a gimmick and with them you're hindered against good players by quite a lot. Still winnable though.

Just a small note - range. There's almost no phantom range! Unless you have a bad connection to your opponent - you can have a hitbox porn where weapon only hits you by the length of it's actual model. No bs with double range for pokes like in DSII, which ruined PVP for me there. Now it's always depends on connection. And most of the time connection is good.

Invasions. FromSoft really wants weak players not to suffer? But why? There's already such thing as "offline" for those who dread being invaded.
If you're running by yourself - embered, don't summon anyone and don't use a dried finger - high chances you won't get invaded at all (two covenant areas are exceptions). Until you "touch" online by summoning - you're mostly safe. So invaders mostly invade co-opers and gankers. Which puts them in quite a pickle. It's still doable 1 vs. 2 or even 1 vs. 3 (this games allows up to six players in one session. With max three white summons), but if you get to a tryhard gank - your chances are slim.
Phantoms (whites, reds, blues, purples, whatever) get half amount of estus flasks they have while being in their world. There are no other replenishing healing items. You can have a single divine blessing of siegbrau on yourself and that's it (all spares go to the botomless box). So From finally did it right with healing items both for PVE and PVP. You also get back one Estus flask for every enemy phantom killed (so for red this means if anyone at all dies, since reds are not allied with each other). Semi-same system in PVE, where you get a flask after some number of mobs killed.


In the end it's a great title. But it's a rehash of the previous games, so I don't feel it's possible to rank it very high. It's above Dark Souls II, that's for sure, but is it above Dark Souls and Demon's Souls? No. At least not for the returning player. Because we have already seen everything in it before playing. It was done good before and this game failed to improve ideas, only to copy them.