Recent reviews by Sparrowhawk

I admit I'm only 5 hours in as of writing this.

First, the bad: $70 games, not cool. Got it on greenmangaming. Charging people extra to pay the game two days early? Transparently greedy and stupid. It's a doom game, it'll sell just fine. Calm down.

Okay, so the game itself is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun so far. At first I was a little frustrated because of the way it felt in terms of how you move and the executions and such, but I think that was down to me having just finished Doom Eternal again right before playing this one, you know just to whet my appetite. Anyway, once you get used to the way you feel in this game, it feels great. The Slayer feels more anchored and brutal but not really "slow" by any means. The execution animations a lot faster and quite frankly a good deal of them are just flat out gone. I like the somewhat longer animations in Doom Eternal, but they had a tendency to sometimes leave me feeling a bit disoriented afterwards. This are quicker usually just involving a punch or a kick but really keep the pace up. Also, the game feels very different in terms of setting. It feels more like they are going for a quake style vibe...in fact I'm sure of it. There's a nail gun, a spike gun, the levels feel very quakey. In fact Quake was originally going to be a melee focused game, but they just couldn't dial it in right during development and so went back to guns. Here's to hoping maybe we get some kind of really cool Quake tie-in game. They've got the groundwork laid. Multiple "realms" and factions. Quake Ranger guy could be someone from another realm we haven't seen yet. Or hell, he could just be a sentinel.

Either way if you're looking at getting it and you feel like you'd enjoy it I say go for it.

It runs fine on my 2070S at 1440p with details set highish. I had to set DLSS to performance but I'm getting consistently at or above 50fps and that's really all I need to feel like a game is smooth enough. The DLSS doesn't seem to make the game look weird or upscaled like it does in some games. It's not breaking my immersion anyway.

Eurojank

Not much to say. The game is what I expected, a fun really nice looking third person souls-ish beat 'em up type game in a really interesting setting. It's fun.

As for performance, I have ryzen 3700X and a 2070S, it runs smooth at near 60fps at high-ish settings with DLSS, looks really nice. Have had 0 crashes in many hours of playing.

I don't blame people for holding off on this one. It seems like it legitimately had a crappy launch. I think I lucked out, because it has always run ok for me and not crashed. I've got an AMD 3700X CPU with an nvidia RTX 2070S and I can run it at 1440p med-high settings with DLSS set to quality. I dunno why it works ok for me, but it does...

And oh is it good. This game is scratching a MAJOR soulsborne itch for me. The combat feels good, the art design, level design and aesthetic is right up my alley, very dark and unique. The Umbra mechanic is great, reminds me of one of my other favorite games Soul Reaver from when I was a teenager. I find myself thinking about how I'm gonna get to play more when I get home. That doesn't happen for me with many games anymore.

I'm 34 hours in, I've been taking my time but not going slow, and I think I might be half way through? Love it.

I dunno why these games are called soulslikes...I mean I know "why" but I don't think it's a helpful comparison. They feel more like a looter shooter or a diablo type game (with a lot less loot in my opinion).

Anyway the gameplay is pretty satisfying, the game looks nice, the multiplayer is fun. The adventure mode adds some interesting replay value. The story is....fine I guess. Not bad, not great, voice acting not memorable at all.

I dunno why I bought this game. I don't like it. It's a mediocre soulslike game with an anime aesthetic that I don't like, complete with weirdly oversexualized female characters. If that sounds like your kinda thing or you just don't care, go for it. Must have gotten this on sale when I had more disposable income.

This is a spiritual successor to the Souls series and Bloodborne and hell even Sekiro to some extent. I have no real complaints about this game, only nitpicks that aren't even worth hashing out. I have 177 or so hrs in this game and I am about to finally go square off with what i think is the final boss. There is a LOT to do. The square footage of the world might not be as huge as some open world games, but the variation and the attention to detail and design put into it is astounding. I played the game at a pace that let me explore most everything and I avoided looking anything up online unless I was TRULY stumped. Those things could be the reason it took me so many hours to get this far, but it went by pretty quickly.

It's Quake.

Slick visuals, good music, fast paced, neat mechanic. I just think it's too hard. I like challenging games that reward you. From Software is probably my current favorite developer. This one is hard but not in a good way. It's monotonous. Do some really hard wall jumps, do some more, hit the blue thing, go try to kill the dudes, hit the other blue thing, kill a dude, make one wrong move and do it all again. I'll check in on the game in a few months maybe, see if I feel differently. Right now it just feels like work.

Recommend with caveats. The game has bugs and needs more features like matchmaking, etc.

BUT....the atmosphere is amazing. The sound design, music, graphics, art style and level design are all an awesome cyberpunk vibe.