Recent reviews by Penitence

Dishonored at home. Seems cool at first, sneaking into homes and pilfering their valuables. But that illusion quickly falls apart. Other than buying the three tools and some rope arrows there doesn't feel to be much value in the continued stealing throughout the game. The lockpicking is probably the most unappealing iteration of lockpicking seen in a game. Only aspect that holds up is peeking through keyholes. Peeking around corners however can be pretty annoying sometimes because it'll often happen while you try to loot an item since they use the same keybind, particularly chests. Which by the way are very strange to look at in this game because chests usually just open up to a 3 inch deep flat wooden indent that just contain two loot items while still having like another 12 inches until the chest meets the floor.

The parkour is very stiff, there's no jump button or climbing allowed except for at specifically designated areas. The claw tool exists purely to limit the player's ability in this manner, most of the time the claw is used for something an expert thief should just be able to do with their hands. There is a point where the metal grate for the claw is found on the floor of a home that gets turned on its side thus now making it a wall climb, and that was just silly. The character does do some real sort of climbing however when they climb the metal pipe sections and it does it in a 3rd person camera that just makes you wish you were playing Assassin's Creed instead.

Speaking of getting around, the world navigation is horrendous. The city is divided into 3 sections and each of those sections divided into another 2 or 3 smaller sections. In which they expect you to navigate through random windows that go into an apartment and then leave through another window that goes into the desired area. None of that is communicated to the player with the map menu either. It's even more painful if you accidentally run into these traversal loading screens as you have no option but to load into the new map and then turn around and load back. On top of that all the window and shimmy pathways have an annoying button mash event to get through the animation. And the player does this obnoxious appreciation of the framing of each and every window before trying to open it that gets old very fast.

At last there's the story which could be worse but it's not particularly captivating at least in the way that they tell it. There are some odd plot jumps and motivations behind some characters don't make sense. The interest dwindles pretty early on around chapter 2, but then spikes at 5 because suddenly you're playing an indie horror game??? In the later levels they start making the common merchant follow you around everywhere to give you opportunities to restock ammo, and it just feels like Resident Evil 4's merchant but awkward and without any personality. A lot of this game is just very reminiscent of Dishonored but worse. Those flashback/hallucination segments remind me of meeting with the Outsider in Dishonored, but less interesting. The setting for the game is basically exactly the same as Dishonored as well, a Victorian era city with a bridge on the waterfront with steampunk elements. The first thing you see in the game is that bridge and it looks very similar to the one in Dishonored you see a lot of. Well Thief did come out 2 years after. Also must say worst load menu? When you go to load save data it asks you to pick a second time like it didn't hear you the first time or the choice didn't matter. Much like replaying the game, there's no point in it since the story turns out the exact same and the world isn't any different for it. Whereas in Dishonored the people see you differently based on your actions, you get rewarding dialogue and story developments for being murderous or merciful. Checks all the boxes Thief wished it could.

Aged poorly, was probably okay for its time. Ugly UI. Has a really float-y/friction-less character controller that feels really unnatural to move around with. Back4Blood does a perfect recreation of the formula while keeping it looking good and feeling good, and adding a sense of progression to the game which L4D2 lacks any.

Very fun premise. Simple yet interesting plot. Extremely thoughtful level design. Each individual region connected back to the overworld in a way that made progression flow right along. Level design very reminiscent of Super Metroid, some areas even feel like out of a Metroid game.

ME1: What a fantastic experience. Thoroughly enjoyed spending several of the early hours just on the Citadel talking to everyone and learning the lore. The different alien species are so interesting. And with the mods available it still looked pretty amazing visually. My only complaint is there are too many mountains to drive over and the Mako does not handle it well. Greatly enjoyed everything else, looking forward to the rest.

ME2: Amazing. The ending had so much excitement, felt like being in a badass action movie. There's great and interesting character development from the prequel, and fun new characters and locations introduced. I loved the new hacking minigames, actually enjoyed doing them as opposed to the first game where all the hacking minigames are the exact same. One thing I do miss is being able to talk to your squadmates at any location to hear their thoughts on the location. In this game you need to go to a specific POI in the map to hear what they have to say. Oh also I miss how big the Citadel was before, so much to do there and people to meet; here the Presidium is literally one room. The new galaxy map is neat, it had a fun way of gathering resources. The new loadout system was nice but also felt very small after the last game. Like there are only 3 snipers, 4 if you pick sniper in the weapon choice that comes up. And characters only have 4 skills, just wish there was some sort of middle ground with how much you could do in the first game.

ME3: Fantastic. While there are many of the positive things I'd say about this one that I said about the last game. They are very different in enough ways. It's wonderful to see a game with choices I made two games ago have an impact still. That's an experience you can count happening on one hand basically. I do like how much more expanded the arsenal is, addresses my complaints about it in ME2, although as time went on I ended up carrying less weapons for use of the faster cooldown system. I like how the ship felt more alive in this one than previously. You can randomly come back after a mission and Garrus and another squadmate will be sharing war stories in different rooms of the ship. A lot of them call each other on comms and have interesting and fun dialogue with each other, some that you can even participate in. Although I do miss the crew and ship design of ME2. The final mission was not as epic as the last game's nor was its ending. It did have a lot of nice moments with friends and crazy reveals however just not as great. And then the ending, it leaves some things to be desired for sure. It reminds me of Cyberpunk's multiple ending choices, nearly all being grim sad and hopeless, except you still get one with a sliver of hope and at least a happy conclusion with the people you care about. In this game, all the endings have you die except one that only changes by adding a small glimpse of Shephard still alive at the end. But you don't get to see anyone else know that, just leaves it as a dry unsatisfying cliffhanger. I found the AHEM (Audemus Happy Ending Mod) to rearrange and add scenes that fixed that from feeling incomplete to being a proper satisfying and concluded story. Overall I think 2 was indeed the better game, but I am still very joyed at what ME3 brought to the story and the characters. The story as a whole is wonderful, I'm glad I finally experienced these gems. And some day I hope there are remakes of these games that modernize them to give them a good polish and fix their flaws, none of that cringe excessive Mako ♥♥♥♥ from ME1 lol 😂

Much better than the first game. Has the map I wish the first had for navigating my way to certain things. A lot of new weapons. Much improved upgrade system. Better collectibles. More funny dialogue. 100% more Natalya. I hope they continue remastering the rest of the franchise.

A hugely vast improvement over the first game. Like wow. From the title menu it's impressive to look at, all those different typefaces designed for different menu buttons? Beautiful. And the menu design itself is clean and filled with what the first game was lacking. All around improved visuals from the previous game. It does have somewhat of an optimization problem, mostly if you use VSync, it runs very reasonably once you realize that and do without it, and maybe try some other tweaks. Only technical complaint I have is that the game does some bad flickering when alt tabbed while streaming it.

The story is perfect, it didn't feel anything was missing from it like it did with the first game. The tutorial was immersive, and the intro buildup into the character selection was great. Pulling the classic gaming trope of "second game means adding a second character". The way they tailored the narrative based on which character you choose to play as feels very well done. It was so good that I actually looked forward to playing the game four times to experience the story as good/evil path of both characters. That's pretty rare as I'd typically just like to get as few runs in as possible to get all achievements done. The different outcomes and choices you can make to change the story are staggering. The voice actors do amazing jobs of making their characters feel alive. And the return and surprise of a few characters were pleasantly shocking.

The new powers system is so awesome and the new ones added are not only cool as ♥♥♥♥ but also fun as hell to use. I kind of love Far Reach more than Blink lol Shadow Walk is dope, Mesmerize makes for a cool stealth option for magical play, and Domino just adds on top of that. The new charm crafting is awesome too, allowing one to make stronger versions of found charms which adds for even more depth to your playstyle choice. The fact that you can enjoy all this with NG+ now makes for a perfect replayable experience.

It has to be mentioned somewhere but the music is phenomenal. Especially the custom vocals (and wonderful strings) heard on the streets and the credits, "The Coup" and "On The Sands Of Serkonos" are amazing.

Lastly the level design has to be mentioned because by god they did a fantastic job. I love the modular home of Jindosh, it reminded me of H.H.Holmes murder castle. That was my favorite level to play through. I thought there was no way to peak that and then the next level has you use a device to travel through two points in time to find out what happened there three years ago and a means to navigate the area in ways not possible in the present. It, everything, was so well done, I was captivated.

The game is cute and charming. The dream concept is interesting and allows for a lot of creativity with the genre. The story became more compelling than the core gameplay, it was sad and in some ways relatable. I wish there was a dialogue history as it's easy to blink and miss something that was said. You can fast travel between dungeon rooms which is cool and never seen in the genre. There was a lot of neat weapons and fun references in the game. Despite all that I dreaded making progress after the first few hours due to how painful it is. The lack of variety in the enemies and levels makes it feel kind of empty. Grindiest grind of any roguelite I've seen. Little gains, extremely high costs. It's basically the most important aspect of the genre, so it doesn't matter how good the rest is when that aspect feels like a slog.

Great to see such an oldie get remastered. Never got to play it more than the demos in local Walmarts allowed you to in the gaming section. A fun raucous sandbox full of explosions and mayhem. Pox being voiced by Invader Zim just adds to the experience.

Fun puzzle designs. I do like seeing puzzle games find ways to add new mechanics as you progress, and this one does a pretty good job. The story is just very strange. All the whining from 3D just made for an annoying experience, which improved when she stopped talking. :U

The loyalty discount is a based move. Though without it I don't really think the price is good. Really disappointing that they didn't include any bathroom or bed frame cosmetics in this. Or at all ever like c'mon I want my bathroom corner to look nice >:U