Recent reviews by Ashes

This is just like Dark Souls! But completely different and more colorful!

All the negative reviews posted were because of Take-Two essentially banning mods. The decision has now been reversed and OpenIV has resumed development.

I'm leaving a possitive review to:

1. Let people know that thanks to the huge community outcry we have single-player mods again.
2. Let people who haven't purchased the game know that GTA V is actually an absolutely amazing title that's worth playing.

Dead Cells is a metroidvania/ rogue-like developed by Motion Twin. So far we have, give or take, 50% or less of the content that will be present in the final game. It’s challenging, extremely fun and very rewarding, even at this stage.

Despite being an early access title I should mention that it runs fairly well from a technical standpoint and I have yet to encounter any major issues/bugs. Some of the areas drop my fps quite a bit though, especially “Promenade of the Condemned” which halves it (from 60 to 30, sometimes lower), but this is likely because the PC I’m playing this on is pretty bad for modern standards (GT635M/8GB RAM/i7 3517U). Still, for a 2D pixel game I think I should be able to run it a bit better. On a side note, some people (not me) have been experiencing crashes, but in the newest announcement the devs said they’ll be taking care of that shortly.

Right now there isn’t a lot of graphical options, but I don’t really think there’s any need for anything fancy, options wise, considering that the game is pretty light I imagine most people will be able to run it without any problems. There’s one thing I would like to have though, the FPS unlocked and an FPS limiter aside from V-Sync.

In short, it performs and plays very well, especially for an EA title.

With this out of the way let’s talk about the important stuff.

The gameplay is both challenging and very satisfying, there are plenty of different weapons and items/skills. I honestly can’t really find anything to complain about in this regard. It’s very well executed, feels smooth, very rewarding and there’s enough variety, especially for this early stage of development.

I can’t wait to see what kind of stuff is gonna be implemented in the future. I really enjoy the way you unlock new items/weapons and how upgrading works. Essentially you need to find blueprints and “deposit” them whenever you beat an area at a specific NPC. I won’t go into detail too much to avoid spoiling stuff, but take my word, it’s good.

There’s a lot of different weapon/item categories and like Dark Souls, some of the weapons in the same class have similar movesets, but provide special bonuses or effects. I'm kind of baffled at how many different playstyles and builds are equally viable and fun.

In a nutshell the gameplay is amazing, hitting stuff packs a punch, there’s plenty of variety and it’s incredibly enjoyable. The majority of the game feels pretty well balanced too, which I honestly didn't expect.

I’ve by far not explored everything, but the areas I’ve seen I like a lot. They all have their own different aesthetics and special enemies, but I dislike that there’s still a bit of enemy reusage from earlier stages, I don’t mind it too much, but even a simple difference in appearance would be nice. It's worth mentioning that all of the different areas have their own specific blueprint drops as well.

My biggest complaint so far is that there’s only two bosses. I have yet to see the second one, but I honestly think rogue-likes/metroidvanias need much more than two bosses. I really hope they add more, a lot more. This is the one thing which I feel Dead Cells is seriously lacking. Aside from that, the world is beautiful, graphics are amazing, enemies are not only tough, but really fun to fight. Another cool thing, to compensate for the lack of bosses are enemy elites. These are exactly what you’d expect, champion versions of regular enemies.

I saw a complaint in one of the reviews that the way level progression works is bad. I can’t disagree more with that, I consider myself a rogue-like vet and it’s in fact much more interesting than traditional rogue-likes. Usually you have more than a couple of choices for which area you visit next and as you play more you’ll eventually get runes which allow you to access previously inaccessible locations. The more you play, the more choices you’ll have. I think it’s brilliant actually, no more RNG in progression, you always know what you’re getting yourself into.

Finally I want to mention the random level generation. It’s there, but it’s not great. After a bit over 11 hours I started recognizing most of the patterns. I think there could be a bit more RNG, but considering how levels are structured it’s not a big issue. I should also mention that every area has it’s own palette of random layouts.

Dead Cells is absolutely astonishing. I can’t recommend it enough and considering it’s only 50-ish% complete, I can only imagine it’ll get better. There's plenty to explore, find and kill even at this point in EA. Any metroidvania and rogue-like players will love this. It’s already a great game, I wish the devs the best of luck and I’m fairly confident they won’t disappoint us.

The Behemoth strikes again! And in all the right places.

• Combat is incredibly fun and has a lot of depth.
  
  
• There’s quite a lot of customization.
  
  
• The story is pure comedy gold and the narrator is as outstanding as ever.
  
  
• Tons upon tons of side-quests, types of units, items, generally stuff to find and do.
  
  
• The Pit. An arena located in the city of Pit People. It’s the place where you go for some challenging co-op or pvp.
  
  
• The soundtrack is again in the amazingly light-hearted Behemoth style.
  
  
• The art style is as fantastic as always.
  
  
• The characters are amazing, and the dialog is hilarious. Regardless if we’re talking about random npcs or story characters.
  
  
• The world map is somewhat procedural, large and fun to explore.
  
  
• Full Co-Op and multiplayer support, be it for the main quests, side quests and The Pit.

• The main quest was very short so far. This is in EA, but considering they said that the Story included is a “sizable chunk” is kind of worrying.
  
  
• The game doesn’t give you an awful lot of useful information (e.g. I get a random buff/nerf or effect from a weapon, but there’s no way to see what it is; enemy health in numbers etc.)
  
  
• There’s a lot of items however most of which are purely cosmetic, while others have various combat stats. I wish more of the items had direct effects over stats, even if it’s only a difference in numbers.

Rant time…

EDIT:
-Portals have been nerfed and appear less.
-Some of the new bosses received balancing tweaks.
-Difficulty has been slightly adjusted thanks to the former and quite a bit of balancing changes.
-The final boss had his animations fixed.
-I've personally noticed that they fixed some graphical glitches I was encountering.
-Greedier mode has received its fair share of tweaks, should address most people's complaints.
-And lastly, I haven't mentioned it before, but the new mimic chests received a slight change in their appearance.


You've probably seen a lot of negative reviews from people so far, let me go ahead and say it directly, it's not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. In fact it's pretty good albeit in need of some balancing, polish and a few bug fixes here and there.


Portals
First and foremost I’ve seen more than a few reviews mentioning the new portals. There is nothing wrong with them, what they essentially do, if you haven’t played it yet, is summon enemies until you destroy them, which I think puts a bit of stress on the player and adds difficulty. I can agree they need to be less common, especially in the first floors and that they need to maybe have a lower summon rate, but the core mechanic is fine and I personally liked it.

New Final Chapter and Final Boss
I haven’t played this part yet personally, but I’ve seen more than a couple of gameplay videos and the idea is fun if you ask me, I understand a lot of people were expecting something completely different, but what they did isn’t bad. It’s a clever idea, the new floor basically teleports you through previous floors and you get to fight enemies and bosses from there. It seems like a fitting ending, getting to re-experience certain aspects of the game with an increased difficulty curve.

The new final boss seems like an interesting idea too. I don’t think their decision to turn the ending boss fight into a tougher version of boss rush is the “best”, but it honestly isn’t too big of a problem. As for the way he stands still while in his true form, I’m pretty sure that’s a bug with the animation which should be fixed rather soon. Again, nothing too bad.

New Enemies
The new enemies are what you would expect honestly. They work similarly to older ones, but with new coats of paint and some original ideas here and there. That was made pretty clear throughout the development process of Afterbirth+. The new champions are again, what you would expect, simply new champions.

Greedier Mode
Greedier mode is hard mode, but for greed. It’s exactly what was promised. Why anyone is complaining is beyond me, specifically about this. If memory serves right it’s exactly what people wanted not that long ago, and it’s exactly what they got. I don’t see the issue with this. It’s like people complaining that the regular hard mode just makes the game harder. What did you expect?

New Items and New Character
The new character, Apollyon is a weaker version of Isaac, but starts with an item called “void”, which hands down is one of the funnest additions to Isaac since it was originally made. What the void item does is absorb pedestal items and consume their abilities for actives and absorb passives to give you random stat boosts. When you later use it, it triggers all the effects of the items it absorbed. It’s crazy fun to play around with this.

The other new items are fine, some of them are amazingly fun, some are pretty generic, but there are too many to go into detail about every single one. Whoever says there aren’t fun new items or that they’ve collected most of the new stuff and it sucks already is either lying or being incredibly unreasonable and irrational. There’s new trinkets, actives, passives, cards, hearts, everything. I’ve had tons of fun with some of the new stuff.

Difficulty
Lastly, among all of the complaints, this is the most common one. It’s true that a lot of the new additions along with some re-done balancing and tweaks make the game harder. It’s not insanely harder and it’s definitely not completely unfair, however it does need some rebalancing here and there. If you remember, balancing went to ♥♥♥♥ after the original Afterbirth, but they fixed it with numerous patches and changes and this will undoubtedly be the case again. Be patient and they’ll fix bugs, tune the difficulty and change some of things which irritate players now. It’s not worth getting upset over.


There are four core problems with Afterbirth+. First, the price point is somewhat fair at 6.69$, but it soon won’t be when the discount is over. For 10$ I could buy an entire game and this expansion is nowhere near as big as the first one was.

Which brings me to the second problem. Quantity. This could have easily been patched into the game over time. Comparing this to the original’s amount of content puts it to shame. They did warn us it will be smaller, but considering the price point, this is definitely unfair.

The third and biggest problem in my opinion is the paywall for mods. No game should put mod support behind a paywall. That’s a very, very bad decision, with no excuse. I don’t know if they plan to change this, but it’s definitely a very poor decision.

And last, but not least. The biggest factor for all the negative reviews was Antibirth. It was a mod which gave a lot of players what they wanted. It hit the sweet spots especially for the hardcore fanbase. I personally didn’t like some of the things in Antibirth, since I don’t think they fit in well with the main game, but regardless, it’s really good. It overshadowed Afterbirth+ for a lot of people.


Afterbirth+ is pretty good. I don’t think any of the stuff added was bad and I certainly don’t agree with some people that it made the game worse. It made the game more unbalanced, but that’s going to be fixed and has happened numerous times in the history of Isaac. I do recommend it. The new stuff is pretty good and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Antibirth in comparison is bigger and applies more dynamic changes and additions to the core game. You might like it more or less than Afterbirth+ depending on which aspects of Isaac you enjoyed. Regardless, Antibirth is either going to be partially or fully implemented in the main game through updates or be made available in the Workshop very soon.

First the devs include gameplay affecting microtransactions in an Early Access title after saying that they wouldn't.

Then they put in paid cosmetics and a community market in place. Crates included.

Then they split one game into two different games that both cost 20 bucks each.

Then they completely ignore what the community wants and player feedback for numerous things.

Then they don't fix bugs which have been present since the beginning and are quite frankly annoying.

Then they completely ignore the hacker problem, which by the way, is on its own enough to ruin the game.

And now they add freaking cosmetic DLCs. Not to mention this game has been in Early Access since the dawn of time and that the netcode is absolutely abysmal even if your ping and connection are good.

H1Z1 isn't even that special if you choose to ignore the above, the game itself is mediocre. Stay away from this broken piece of trash game and anything developed by these greedy devs. I honestly regret spending money on this. If I could I would refund it.

Nominated this for The "Test of Time" Award since it's geniunly one of the best co-op experiences I've ever had. Overall the best tower defence game I've played, a huge improvement over the first game and to this day it still feels fresh. After 4, almost 5 years I'm having the same amount of fun I had when I played this the first time. Truly outstanding game.

Detailed review by Ashes

Butcher was made and published by Transhuman Design, the same folks that made King Arthur’s Gold and Trench Run. It was released at the 5th of October 2016 and promises to be an extremely hard Doom/Quake inspired, 2D, fast, sidescrolling shooter. In this review I’ll tell you how and if it lives up to the promises along with other things.

Immediately you’ll notice the devs didn’t lie about the resemblance, Butcher truly is what I imagine a 2D Doom to be. It’s brutal, fast and very, very bloody, albeit a bit more tactical than any classic FPS and definitely more challenging than any Quake or Doom game up to date. There are four difficulties, the easiest of which is called hard, of course.

I got a bit of a Hotline Miami vibe from how the difficulty was structured, for most human-like enemies it would roughly take the same amount of damage to die as it takes you, so unlike corridor shooters where you’d just run and gun, sometimes it’s recommended to stop and actually think about your approach and/or take things slower, it adds a strategic layer of depth. Of course, like in all classic shooters you have enemies which are way bigger and tougher than you, with more impactful guns, but much slower.

One of the things I didn’t like was how long it took to get new guns. For example, you get the best gun in the game near the very end, at the beginning of the last chapter, which doesn’t give you a lot of time to actually enjoy it. Even after beating the game you can’t just go back and start a New Game+ where you have all the things previously unlocked. A simple solution would be to give you less ammo for the better guns, but give them earlier in the game.

Which brings me to another point, after you find a new more powerful gun, you’d all of a sudden get the almost same amount of ammo you get for the starting ones, that isn’t necessarily a complaint though, since ammo in general isn’t exactly much, you might find yourself in a situation where you have no ammo if you forget to manage.

I found the gameplay to be a very good mixture of shooting, platforming and adaptive thinking. Everything feels smooth and just right. Things are very diversified, you'll never get sick of a specific aspect of the game. Most importantly, everything combined makes for an immensely fun experience.

Let’s start off with the world, there is a very non-existent story as you would probably expect with these sorts of games, however Butcher has a very big emphasis on blood and gore. All of the levels are very atmospheric and stay true to the overall theme. There is an abundance of small details e.g. being able to break mostly any prop, completely mutilate bodies and even a few hidden things which I’ll let you discover for yourself.

As far as levels and level design goes, they aren’t exactly the labyrinths of Doom, but they are definitely more open than your traditional sidescrollers, the inclusion of secrets is nice as well, although most of the time they don’t provide much benefit to the player.
Let’s talk a bit about variety, content and length. For a 10$ game I’d say it holds up quite well, what I mean is, there isn’t exactly an abundance of content, but the things which are present are all done amazingly well. I wish it was longer, had more guns, more levels etc., simply because everything is done superbly well. I can’t really complain given the price, I’ve paid more for much shorter games with severely less content. I really want the devs to consider DLC or even a more expensive sequel with more content. Point is, I want more, and I think you will too.

The overall length of BUTCHER at the standard (Hard) difficulty is between 4-7 hours, depending how fast you learn and how often you die. It’s a very unforgiving game, doesn’t take you much to die and when you do, it restarts the whole level. The number of guns is a bit disappointing, there are a total of 6 guns, but all are drastically different from each other, and you’ll find yourself utilizing all of them depending on the given situation and circumstance.

There will be plenty different enemies you encounter though, from humans to robots and they progressively get tougher, but Butcher doesn’t just throw away the previously encountered ones, instead the game uses the newly introduced as an extra ingredient, which adds a lot of variety gameplay wise and forces you to constantly change your approach, actively encouraging adaptive, on the spot thinking.

BUTCHER sounds and looks exactly like a 90s shooter, I found myself enjoying the soundtrack quite a bit, and graphically it’s very, very pleasing given that you like this type of art style. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of details everywhere, both mechanics wise and graphically. Everything combined contributes to the atmosphere and creates an extremely satisfying experience.

I’ve had absolutely no frame dips even on my potato, the game plays at a constant 60fps even on weaker and/or older systems. I haven’t encountered a single game-breaking glitch, or any sort of glitches, to be honest. Controls on mouse and keyboard are very smooth and responsive, also fully rebindable, for the ones of you which prefer gamepads, there is fully functional support for that as well.

There isn’t an excessive number of options, but all the important things, I can think of, are there. You can toggle between on-off for certain effects and post-processing, there are separate audio sliders for music and game sound and, thankfully, you can adjust several gameplay related options as you see fit.

I was very pleasantly surprised by BUTCHER and enjoyed every minute of it. My main problem is the length and overall amount of content, but given the price I can’t really complain. Everything present in the game is done amazingly well, from weapons to music. Gameplay is fun and brutally challenging.

The levels all have their own quirky mechanics, and the atmosphere is amazing. I can, without a doubt, recommend this. Depending on how masochistic you are, you could try the harder difficulties and complete the game more than once or twice. Achievements are there for the OCD parts of you as well. I had a complete blast and hope you do as well.

If you like this sort of in-depth detailed reviews please let me know in the comments. Want to check out more similar reviews for other games? Check out the links below!

Detailed Reviews for:
INSIDE
Jotun
Helldivers
Rocket League
Rants/Quick Reviews for:
Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin
Deadlight
F.E.A.R. 3
RAGE
Payday 2
QUBE
100 Ways

Payday 2 had a rough couple of years, it went from being one of the most played and liked co-op games to an absolute example of how not to do threat consumers. It suffered various gameplay changes of which some were good and some were bad.

There are several things you cannot simply look away from or pretend don't exist or didn't happen. First and foremost, Payday 2 isn't worth the price tag it had and neither the price it currently does have. Why? The core game itself has a very big lack of content, sure they did a few updates, but the most enjoyable and important things are DLCs.

Secondly, Overkill tried to implement gameplay changing micro-transaction in an already pay to play game WITH tons of DLC, which didn't stop releasing even after their now reverted mistake (microtransactions).

And last but not least, most of the better or even best content in the game is sold seperately in these micro-packs which should most definitely be either absolutely free or cheaper. We're talking weapons, perks, characters , mission etc., all the fundamental things you need are DLCs, all the good stuff is in DLCs. Half of the builds are much worse or even completely impossible without DLCs.

I personally neither liked nor supported the countless DLC packs from the very beginning, people used to defend Overkill whenever someone would voice their opinion on the DLC situation, but now the tables have kind of turned, a bit later than they should have in my opinion, Payday lost the majority of the their player base and for good reason.

Ultimately it's up to you as a consumer. I personally will not support the mentality companies like this have. I refuse to pay for what looks like the bare minimum included in 3$, 4$, 5$, 6$ DLC money grabs. Overkill made much more money than they deserve out of what realistically is a somewhat fun, but flawed game. Payday isn't anything too special, it does some things right and some things very wrong. For me personally it was a rather mediocre experience which I hoped would fix it's issue and had some potential, but instead resorted to petty tactics to milk more money.

Detailed review by Ashes

INSIDE is the spiritual successor to Limbo, announced by Playdead shortly after the release of Limbo in 2010 under the codename “Project 2”. Later named “INSIDE” as we know it now, and shown for the first time during Microsoft’s press conference at E3 2014.

I’ve personally been expecting this since I finished Limbo back in 2010, as Playdead’s previous title was truly something special. Straightaway after starting you’ll notice the similarities INSIDE has with Limbo, it feels more or less like a sequel, you’ll be greeted by a similar setting of a rather dark forest and assume control of an agile young child.

The gameplay revolves around the player solving puzzles in order to navigate through the environment and progress. I felt like INSIDE was a less punishing experience when compared to Limbo, but by no chance less enjoyable or innovative. Every puzzle, area and level have their own special mechanics and never overused any particular one of them. From start to finish the experience felt fresh and mesmerizing. I’m honestly surprised by how well designed the puzzles, levels and environments were, throughout the whole experience the solutions were unique and clever, almost never being what you would assume from first glance. At its core, INSIDE is a linear experience, but feels like a living, breathing world.

INSIDE pays a lot of attention to even the smallest details and reaches inexplicable levels of immersion as a result. I felt completely sucked into the world and its wonderfully told story. When I say story don’t expect a narrative, the whole experience is told through the environments and levels themselves. Every place you visit, every mechanic you discover feels like it has its own enigmatic lore behind it. The world of INSIDE is its story, in the end you’ve seen so much, but still know so little. Everything is open to your imagination and interpretation.

This isn’t only an experience, it’s an actual game, and everything it does, it does beyond perfection. It manages to tell a story with no words, seamlessly blend its mechanics with the world and be an outstanding puzzle game at the same time. Every piece of scenery is captivating and beautiful, every mechanic perfected and clever, every puzzle innovative, every moment entrancing.

Is INSIDE worth 20$/€? It definitely is, you have to understand, with this game it isn’t about the length, it’s all about the quality. INSIDE will take you between 3-5 hours to complete. You’re paying this much for several hours which are beyond detailed and polished.

I loved playing through this, it was beautiful, sad and hypnotic. It conveyed more emotion than most of the full priced titles out there without saying a single word. INSIDE is a game which achieves so much with so little. It’s simplistic, fascinating and evocative. I think Playdead proved once more that they are an outstandingly talented studio. INSIDE is something which I will remember in years. It’s truly a masterpiece which never fails to surprise you, and it does it superbly.