Recent reviews by BubbledFetus

I had a ton of fun with Half-Life Alyx. I imagine most people did when it launched. I thought about spamming Gabe's email with feedback, but leaving a quick overview here where it's aggregated with everyone else is probably saner.

I have no reference for VR gaming, it was always a curiosity, only by accidental circumstance I had the time, space, and equipment to finally play it. It's been 5 years since launch, and I wish I could have seen the excitement for this game when it was in the public eye. There are only a handful of 'negative' things I could comment on for the game, and these are mostly just wants. This is a great thing, there is room to grow for something like this, but I largely feel VR is still a novelty for the majority of gamers. There is a more enthusiastic community around it, but I can't help but to feel that Valve just simply wants to experiment more than make compelling games. As evidently they can.

Half-Life Alyx is very very polished, I had overwhelming preconceived notions that I was going to have a 'compromised' experience. That is not the case, and it really is impressive game when you begin to become immersed. That isn't to say there aren't flaws, or perhaps things that I would wish where added. Moment to moment gameplay is very different from an a-typical first person shooter when in VR. All of it is, fascinating, and takes a bit of practice to get used to. On a second run through where I started toying with the developer commentary, it's noticeably easier. A good testament to the pacing and training players go through to be able to complete the game in such a different way.

The game, as one should hope, is immersive, and sometimes frustatingly not. One of the many 'wants' I had was more interactivity with all the different objects littered through out the game as I believe being able to see objects rendered well in VR feel geniunely more real than what can be rendered in any high fidelity video game through just a monitor. It's astounding, just flat out cool and everything has the 'look' of appeal. Some gameplay elements I could do without, some of the puzzles I found to tedious when i just wanted to shoot something or move the plot along, but I felt compelled to go through them to obtain ammo. Other things, I after I got better with the controls was more challenging combat encounters. To be very clear, I was incredibly bad at first, but once you have the controls down you can breeze through each section without much difficulty. The last fundamental flaw, maybe the plot by my personal preference.

I do not know what the general consensus was, but narratively I will say it was deliberately limited experience. This isn't an issue as a stand alone product, but after so many years of returning to the Half-Life universe, I crave closure, desperately. The story IS compelling enough on it's own to finish, and offers some geniunely great moments. I have no doubt that Valve wants to continue making games in Half-Life, but at this point in my life, i'm getting old, rather I'm starting to feel old, and gaming while I still do, is far less appealing than it used to be and I have higher priorities. Yeah, play half life alyx, even if it's been 5 years since launch, it's a great experience.

If you seen the original films, I think you will appreciate this one. However, that's not completely fair, it's a good enough of a game to stand up on it it's own without it's IP i believe. However, the main draw IS it's IP and it excels at this.

I actually couldn't imagine a first person Indiana Jones game at all, it doesn't seem like it should work. The moment to moment gameplay with excellent voice acting, sound design, and general movement feel 100 percent convey the atmosphere of an indiana jones movie defying my expectations.

There are a few sticky points here and there, but nothing very detracting. It's largely a stealth action game with light puzzle solving. If you mess up and it get caught it's no biggy, because who cares you can beat down as many nazis as you want! Fighting is deliberately improvised focused and has weighty and sometimes slapstick feel to it, especially with the faces enemies make and knock out animations when duking it out.

I recommend the game to anyone who is a fan, and anyone that might just want a fun action-adventure game.

It took a long time since launch, but the game is actually pretty reminiscent of some of the best parts of Halo. On the onset, I couldn't recommend the game except for maybe die-hards looking for a casual-ish arena shooter. There is a lot to talk about from a gameplay perspective, being a fan, and the industry as a whole.

In a very brief summary:

Halo: Infinite was missing so much from previous installments from a feature perspective that it effectively killed any momentum or staying power that online multiplayer needed. Many will remember infamously the lack of a dedicated slayer playlist, on top of a incredibly long list of must have features that were seemingly omitted out of spite. Currently, Halo: Infinite has near, but not quite complete feature parity that makes it much much better than it was at launch.

There are still other issues, such as extremely clunky SBMM results, lack of single player dlc, bad ui and so on. Generally speaking these are corners cut that we are seeing in any franchise and it's just a sad state of affaris. For halo infinite, it HAD an enormous amount of potential and goodwill that was slowly burned over the games lifetime and effectively was a lite-live-service title that mostly only put in features that should have been available on launch.

It is good to see, even if it seems to not be very profitable for 343i to continue putting in some updates here and there that players were wanting. Over the course of the games service life, things were turning around, but have slowed. For the most part, the game itself is in a good state. I cannot understate how bad things were at launch, and I do have some hope for future titles and spinoffs that have been rumored to be in the works.

Halo is a legacy franchise at this point and even if there are pretty hard bumps I am mostly satisified with my time with the game and glad to see that there is still a massive interest in halo and I really appreciate that the devs at least tried to make the game better even with that absolutely vile rhetoric you can find on the internet. There is more to talk about, so much more, but in a nutshell, anyone who might be interested in playing the game in 2024 should! But temper expectations to see minimal updates. Oh, and use a controller unless you're a god among men.

Rust is the quintessential survival base building game. The commitment to update the game by the developers is extraordinary and should be commended. By it's very nature, Rust is unforgiving and cruel. The online community is very toxic, but it certainly possible to make friends and meet pleasant people.

For new comers, I recommend starting the game with a friend who has a bit of experience to help. There is an enormous amount of knowledge required to be proficient at every aspect of the game.

The game is so diverse that it's hard to talk about all of the weird qualms somebody can have about it. In general, all of the unique systems in Rust are good enough for what they are, but some may be lacking or unrefined at the time of writing. Ultimately, Rust is a great game, that brings out the worst in people.

I have played Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and am half way through Bloodborne. Dark Souls is my favourite, but Dark Souls III definitely stepped up to the plate. The environments were beautiful and the boss fights were fun and interesting. Though, I will say there is less viable build variety in comparison to Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. Play style leans heavily towards big sword massive health style because of the way poise and armor work. As for new comers, you won't be missing alot in the ways of story, but these games are notorious for their difficulty.