Recent reviews by SEND MY BODY TO ARBY'S

I really loved my time with Industria. The game is by no means perfect, but I am going to be very critical of the negative reviews this game has received here. You can think of Industria like a nice slice of Half-Life 2/System Shock 2/Singularity pie. It's not the full pie, just a slice. It's short and sweet; the developers clearly targeted a smaller, high-quality experience over attempting to create a full length title. They stuck the landing.

I went into this game expecting to loathe the combat gameplay like I do in comparable titles, such as Call of Cthulhu. What I found was a highly ambitious attempt to create 3-4 hours of a fully fleshed out experience, including solid combat. It's paced very well; it's precisely as long as it should be given the depth of gameplay systems on offer here. The melee combat, as well as the rifle and shotgun feel excellent, while the pistol and SMG fall behind. By about the half-way point, you're going to be primarily using the rifle and shotgun, so the player won't spend a ton of time with the weapons that feel the worst.

Enemy designs are varied, while a bit limited. This is an area where the game really feels like a playtest for a longer game. I'd compare it directly to the first couple of hours of Half-Life 2: the player's arsenal is limited to basic guns and melee, but the enemies aren't complex enough to cause issues. There are no uber-weapons to deal with especially tough enemies, because there aren't any especially tough enemies. At the point where player power would start to climb exponentially, the game just ends.

The narrative is excellent, but again, it's really baiting something more. The plot is not really resolved and the player is left to speculate about what the info dump in the conclusion really means. I definitely feel that the team has writing chops and a continuation of this plot would lead somewhere interesting.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the music in this game is top notch. There's not a ton of it, but all of it is good. It's a large part of why the game has such strong vibes.

My Recommendation: I like this game; it's special, considering the size of the team. Sometimes you can tell that the developers were genuinely passionate for what they were making and this is one of those times. It's absolutely worth $20. I will be closely watching this studio in the future and I seriously hope they are able to scale up a bit to match their ambitions.

Negative Reviews: I feel there's discourse to be had about indie game prices. $20 is a common target for indies, but it seems like many people have a raw expectation of length when it comes to that price point. A game like Industria shoots for quality over quantity and given the type of game it is, it isn't possible for Bleakmill to have created a game with a AAA scope, considering their size. If they sacrificed gameplay and fidelity to tell a 10 or 15 hour long story, I don't think it would have made the game better. Much of the criticism people have for the game is valid, but cloaked in a sense of entitlement that doesn't take the realities of game development into consideration.

This is it. The VR killer app. It takes full advantage of the medium and is every bit as good as the previous Half-Life titles.

You know that story about the early film audience that stampeded out of the theater, because they thought the image of a train on screen was going to run them over? That's what playing Boneworks feels like. You're a person in 2020 witnessing what video games will look like in a decade; it is a consistently shocking experience.

Past the philosophical stuff, Boneworks is a Half-Life-esque fps game with an emphasis on physics. The most notable thing about it is the amount of emergent gameplay available due to the entire game being a physics simulation. You character's body is occasionally wonky, but the jank is worth it for the experience that is available here. Rather than trying to explain it, I'll tell a story:

I walked into some kind of puzzle room with graffiti all over the walls, hinting at solutions. I see a caged off area with two null bodies inside of it; the door was barred with a padlock that I cracked open with my hand axe. Even with my not-so-subtle entrance, the bodies were still static; just standing there mumbling nonsense to themselves. I sprint towards the closer of the two and bash my axe over his head, neutralizing him instantly. The second was thrown into a rage and lunged at me from across the room. I swipe at him horizontally, several times, attempting to make meaningful contact, but came up empty. At this point, I'm quickly running out of space to back away from the creature, so I opt for a strong overhead slash with my axe. This time, I got contact. To my dismay, the null body was unphased and the blade had lodged itself into the body's chest; I found myself unable to pull it out. Now unarmed, I pushed the body to the ground to buy myself some time, then turned around and sprinted to a safe distance. I drew my pistol that I was hoarding ammunition for and fired a single shot at the shambling creature with my axe sticking out of its chest. Once he fell to the ground, I dislodged the weapon from it and continued on with the puzzle.

This is 10 seconds of Boneworks and it's more interesting than almost anything I have ever experienced in a video game.

It's not perfect, but I would classify it as one of the better console ports I've played. The UI is pretty clunky and the game's main menu is more of a resource hog than actually playing Reach(Modern Warfare 2019 has this issue as well, very strange), but overall performance is buttery smooth. Getting into matches is very quick.

Wishlist: dual bindings, ability to rebind push to talk, more post processing settings, less punishing idle detector.

I really loved 2016's Doom reboot, it's probably my favorite modern video game. It was an attempt to make a game that was enjoyable in the same way the original games were, but keeping with modern game design trends. As much as I enjoyed it, I couldn't help but feel like they had missed something in the update. If you're serious about old school FPS games, Doom 2016 was still lacking in that feel that those mazelike levels of 1993.

DUSK has all the missing pieces.

DUSK doesn't give a damn about appealing to modern audiences, it's an unapologetic throwback to shooters of the mid 90s. In my opinion, DUSK doesn't just do games like Doom and Quake justice, it is every bit as good as them. If you like FPS games at all, you should pick this up and install it immediately, because it is a first class example of the genre.

For starters, this game is very addictive. If you buy it to play with a set of friends, you'll quickly find yourself playing when they're away; levelling new characters, researching interesting builds, etc. It pretty much has the same addictive bits as looter ARPGs, like Diablo, but with satisfying FPS combat.

What I didn't expect from this game is how well made it is beneath the digital slot machine gameplay loop.

The shooting mechanics are actually good, it's not all hit scan, weapons vary to a ridiculous extent, the gunplay just feels fantastic. It also has really good netcode, which surprised me, because the developers could have easily cut corners here and very few players would notice. The whole experience is just solid, through and through.

Oh and this game makes the original Destiny look embarassing, it's a better, more complete, version of the same game, with more personality... and it came out 2 years earlier. If Borderlands 3 has a well done PvP element, it's going to put Destiny in the ground.

This game is wonderfully atmospheric and I recommend everyone play some of it. It's one of the best examples of Lovecraftian horror in video games, but it is deeply flawed.

The first few hours is spooky as hell and I enjoyed every minute of it, my problem with the game is that once the monsters actually show up, I find myself bored to death. The one off sections like the water monster are great, but the default abomination is all about tediously hiding from it as it walks in circles until it gets bored and walks away. The first encounter with it is terrifying, but as you realize this is the "default enemy" it loses its novelty.

Amnesia's gameplay loop is a mix of exploration, puzzle solving, and light stealth. The stealth is a really weak link here, especially if you've played Alien: Isolation, which is basically the same game, but absolute perfection. If you're someone who doesn't play a lot of stealth games, it might not bother you, but if you're a fan of the genre, you're probably going to quit when I did.

Damn good coffee.

This is an immersive sim in the same vein as System Shock 2. In fact, I'd say that it's the most ambitious and faithful immersive sim made since Deus Ex.

It has very deliberate design that may remind you of Dark Souls, but is really grasping at what made Thief and System Shock 2 so fantastic. The sandboxy fluff of Dishonored is gone here, replaced with a tense push towards futher specialization in certain skills and weapons that allow you to survive.

I don't think the plot is anywhere near as interesting as the Looking Glass and Ion Storm sims, but the moment to moment tension of surival makes up for it.

Play this game. Play it on hard. Don't look up cheats.

Both this game and Dishonored are "Thief, but new". Both suffer from bad modern design trends, but Dishonored manages to pull it off without ruining the core game even if the sense of vulnerability is missing. Thief fails to an extent where it pollutes its own name.

The whole game feels like a quick time event, every action is contextual. You cannot jump at will, you hit q to knock people out, picking up anything triggers a lengthy animation. "Tap E to hide a loading screen". At its best it feels like a more restrictive FarCry 3.

Once you get past most of the mechanics being poorly thought out, the rest of the game is better, but still problematic. Most of the stealth feels like those tight sections between the larger areas in a Splinter Cell game. All levels are very small and the sneaking is almost always absurdly close quarters. There's a lot of this in the older Thief games, but it feels like that's the only part that the devs really grasped at all.

It has an upside, though. The game is pretty as hell and the world is cool. If you're someone that enjoys linear story based games like Metro or something, then you'll probably enjoy this.

If it wasn't called Thief, I'd recommend it.