Recent reviews by Grinning Zero

Still Wakes the Deep is a phenomenal psychological horror game that is excellently crafted. From start to finish I was hooked and could not put this game down during my playthough. The game is beautiful, the acting is well above most games these days, and the feeling of dread that you experience while trying to survive is second to none.

That said, while I wholeheartedly recommend the game there are a couple criticisms I do have:

1) The game could be a bit longer. I clocked in at 4 hours of playtime which for a $35 game is very short. I was not expecting a 100 hour slugfest in any way, but I think adding a couple extra characters that we could play as would be a great addition.

2) There are bugs in the game that required me to restart at checkpoint. While overall the game played very smooth, especially once I turned on nvidia DLSS, the bugs I encountered did break some of the tension.

That said, I highly recommend this game even at its current price just for the experience alone. This is definitely something I'll periodically come back and play again.

Observer is a game I wanted to enjoy, but did not actually get to play. While the game may look decent and has solid atmosphere out of the gate, I cannot recommend this game based off of my experience purely off the fact that there are bugs that should not be present in a remaster that was released 4 years ago. While you may not encounter these bugs and may have more patience than I do, the two bugs I encountered were enough for me to pursue a refund.

The game was running fine for almost two hours until I became permanently stuck on the stairs going from the ground floor to the first floor which lead to me having to reload to my last save. Immediately after I ran into an even bigger bug that effectively killed my playthrough.

A game breaking bug in which neither vision modes or the action wheel was brought up 4 years ago is still present: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1386900/discussions/0/2989789048618374636/?ctp=3

I attempted the solution using a Hex editor plugin in Notepad++ as outlined in the PC gaming wiki for this issue but unfortunately this did not resolve the bug. Sure I could just boot up an old save file, but the problem here is this is a 4 year old game breaking bug.

This is a game that is very much the definition of "ok". It's not a bad game by any means but I highly suggest picking this up on sale. This is not a game I would pay full price for but for anyone who enjoys Warhammer this is likely up your alley.

The Good:
- Nice choice of weapons.
- Great soundtrack.
- Awesome atmosphere.

The Mid:
- Campaign is very short. About six or so hours.
- Despite the nice choice of weapons they often feel like they lack punch except for the las cannon.
- Not enough time is spent with the characters.

The Bad:
- I had 3 separate occasions within the 6 hour campaign where the game crashed to desktop. This happened specifically within cutscenes.

Ladies.... gentlemen.... This is a real treat of a game and not in the "oh its another good game" kind of treat. Its a game that at its core is incredibly enjoyable despite not being perfect. Few games, if any, nowadays can claim to be "incredibly good" or at least I think most games nowadays in this genre just feel.... meh. So is Fallout just another isometric, turn-based combat RPG that you can blow through and forget all about?

The Art of Choice

No, actually Fallout is quite possibly one of the most revolutionary RPGs of its time that happens to also be pretty good overall. I understand we can point to games like Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, etc that all have been major milestones for the RPG genre but before all of these titles Fallout rose to the challenge of changing the way RPG games were made. What do I mean by this? Well.... Fallout offered and still offers choice, something that other games did have in the late 90s but wasn't as in depth as Fallout which is something I think is essential to truly provide an RPG experience that is worthwhile (Also... drink a shot every time I put the word "RPG" in here.). The decisions you make in Fallout truly matter in respect to how the game plays and ends. As a matter of fact there are several endings that can occur as a result of your choices much like Fallout: New Vegas (Several devs that worked on Fallout 1 and 2 worked on New Vegas while they were a part of Obsidian).

Things I Love About Fallout

What about other parts of the game? Glad you didn’t ask. Beyond choice Fallout offers a small number of well-developed locations that provide a backdrop to the overall story. That story being centered around finding a new water chip for your vault, Vault 13. One thing leads to another and you’re journeying across the wastelands of California where you’ll either doom or save the wasteland. On this journey you encounter several characters whom you’ll ultimately influence, destroy, or save which determines who is left standing at the end of this journey.

With the story and characters, comes your own character. You’ll develop a character using the classic Fallout setup of skills that you’ll add points to, perks, and of course the special attributes. You can have a highly intelligent but weak nerd like character or a super strong but incredibly dim one. Of course you aren’t limited to these two sub-types. You can make any character you want that fits the style of play you want to shoot for which reminds me….

Fallout, as an RPG, does something else VERY well. It gives you the choice of how to play. You aren’t shoehorned into one style and while I am on it those characters I mentioned can all die. No one is safe in this wasteland. Speaking of safe, you’ll also die a lot in this game. You hear a lot of talk about Dark Souls being difficult, but unless you’re experienced with this game…. You’ll die…. A lot. Overall I could go on and on but for the sake of keeping it short, lets talk about a few things that aren’t that great.

The Not so Good Things

Unfortunately for myself the isometric setup isn’t as good as more modern titles. Other titles such as Wasteland 2 and Divinity Original Sin perform better in this setup, but of course this is the difference between a game released 24 years ago compared to ones released 7 to 8 years ago. It didn’t age as well as I would have liked, but isn’t hard to work with.

The hex-based movement system is something I am not a fan of, again its not hard to work with but it feels clunky. At times the movement system doesn’t like to work the way it should and even causes companions to block doors for a time (oddly enough without modding the game you can’t force companions to move, but Fallout 2 remedied this in the base version).

The UI isn’t super friendly, but in some ways I’d say its better than newer Fallouts where at least you get images of the items you hold compared to lines of text.

Last but not least, while the game holds a lot of re-playability I can’t help but wish it had a bit more content at times. There are plenty of quests, but diving into the development of the game I found a lot of content had been cut just looking into the cut content wiki for Fallout and wow…. This game was initially aimed to be massive. Then again, what game doesn’t have cut content. I will say I do wonder what it would have been like had Fallout released with all of the content that didn’t make it into the game.

TL;DR

This is the kind of game you don’t play just once. You dive in again and again until you have learned every detail of this game. It has depth that many modern RPGs of the genre don’t have with choices to make that will leave you wondering if you really made the right choice. The gameplay overall is enjoyable and despite its age and clumsiness at times, it has a charm to it that leaves me wanting to play again.

So, in short, yes you should play this game! It’s a grand total of $10, with the original series collection only being $20 (Includes Fallout 2 and Tactics) and it provides hours of re-playability.

This has quite possibly been one of the best shooters I have played in a while. The atmosphere is incredible and you can clearly tell the love the devs have for this title. I highly recommend it and the first two games in this stellar conclusion to the Metro Trilogy.

Alright, so I have finally finished this game after it sat in my library for a couple years. Having finished it I am not sure I can recommend this title which as many people have said before is why I wish there was a meh button. So anyways here is the good:

+The story-line is great, I was fully engaged with the idea of Lincoln Clay getting revenge for the events that take place at the start of the game.
+Great characters all around. My personal favorite was John Donovan, but seeing Vito Scalleta return was awesome as well.
+Amazing atmosphere. Honestly, the environments were really great and had solid immersion at times, but that immersion was easily broken as you'll see below.
+The combat was actually pretty good. Bullets felt like they did real damage and the physics behind the combat made any situation you are fighting in feel really alive.

Now for the bad:
-The game has tons of visual glitches. You'll see floating objects. Objects randomly glowing and whatnot as well as objects that appear out of nowhere.
-The A.I. is not that good. Now don't get me wrong I played this on hardcore and the A.I. was actually not that bad as it played aggressive, flanked, used throwable weapons, etc. However, the rest of the games A.I. sucks. Pedestrians will run into walls, not react to nearly getting run over, and just generally do nothing at all like they are not even there.
-Ridiculously repetitive gameplay slows this game down a lot. A lot of the missions that lead to the story missions could have been more unique and held more weight. Overall I found myself becoming impatient and irritated at doing the same mission style over the entire game.
-Underutilized characters. I really wish they would have used the mob bosses moreoften, provided more meaningful characters that didn't just show up and die, and of course more interactive pedestrians.
-Lack of any solid side activities that are not part of the go here, steal this, deliver this formula.
-Lack of any real world interaction. Despite a great setting and story, the game does not provide any interaction with the world as a whole. You won't find random events like you would find in GTA, you won't feel like there is a war going on the city, and you feel as if the game is empty.

So would I recommend this? Not really as you can find better open world games that have similar mechanics than this one. The game at times doesn't know if it wants to be Scarface or The Godfather videogame or GTA. It doesn't particularly excel at anything which is unfortunate because this game had a lot of potential. I do believe Hanger 13, if they make a new iteration of Mafia, could make a superior and truly worth Mafia game in the future but the formula for the next game should stick to something more unique that sets the future of this series apart from all the other cookie cutter open world titles we have seen these last several years.

Its only one of the greatest RPG games of all time. Go buy it already and quite wasting time looking at these reviews ya ding-dong.

Of course you probably want more info so here you go.

The Good:
+Fantastic Story
+Great music
+Memorable characters
+Beautiful game world
+Plenty of quests
+Large amount of exploration

The Bad:
-Combat is the weakest part of this game by far
-The game world sometimes feels too big

Yeeaaahhhh, thats about all I got to say about this game. Seriously, you will not regret buying this title!

This is a great game that has a lot of aspects of XCOM (The modern versions, I never played old-school XCOM so lets not get our facts mixed up). Below I have made a quick roundup of the good and the bad of Mutant: Year Zero

The Good:
+Story is pretty decent with bits of lore scattered around the game world
+Characters are interesting and add to the atmosphere
+Beautiful graphics of course
+Music is great and fits the theme of the game quite well
+Tactical gameplay works fairly well within the game

The Bad:
-Repetitive gameplay, especially towards the end
-Some fights will feel difficult for no reason with very little to counter this at times
-I would have liked to see more missions (The main campaign plus DLC is 20-30 hours long)

All in all, I can't really come up with more things to add without being nitpicky. Go out there and enjoy this title.

What do I say about 2016's best shooter? It is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome. There is no other way I can really put it. The gameplay is fast paced, badass, and filled with the sounds of demons being ripped apart by the legend himself, the Doom Marine. Go out and buy this title. You absolutely will not regret it!

Having recently completed the main game and reflecting on how much I enjoyed it I decided to dive into this title. Not much to say here, if you read the description you are getting exactly what you pay for and I believe that this is a well made DLC that, although does not have a large amount of content to play with, is worth your time. I highly recommend this DLC with the main game even if only to satiate curiosity.

The Good:
+Same mechanics as main game except less punishing.
+Interesting short story that takes a little bit of time to get used to or to even understand.

The Bad:
-This is NOT a big deal to myself personally, but for $9.99 I do wish there was at least another hour or two of content. It gets the job done however.