Recent reviews by Luminaire

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying this, especially considering I got it for free (Steam is currently giving it away until December 18th [2024]). The art style is very good; it's reminiscent of games like Bastion and the newer 2D Rayman games with its use of vibrant primary colors & oil paint aesthetic. The platforming is also similar to Rayman, and it has a Metroidvania design that encourages you to replay earlier levels after gaining new abilities as well as backtrack in the same level to explore multiple areas that branch off from the main path. Level & enemy design is creative, though combat is simplistic and underwhelming. Controls are not as bad as a lot of Steam reviews state; jumping in particular is dynamic, as the longer you hold it down, the farther & higher you jump, so you often have to time your jumps accordingly to avoid enemies & environmental hazards.

For those wondering whether or not they should grab this during the current giveaway, I absolutely think it's worth playing. It's cute, lighthearted fun and has a classic 2D platformer vibe. I can see this appealing to both casual players as well as those looking for a decent challenge, as its difficulty scales very well. There are other games that do what this does better (Hollow Knight, Ori And The Blind Forest, and Rayman Origins & Legends come to mind); regardless, this is a surprisingly good indie 2D platformer that exceeded my expectations.

Vampire Survivors is, at its essence, a crackhead simulator - it relies on a very simple concept which feeds the player a steady stream of dopamine hits on a loop, always keeping them coming back for more while they see strings of numbers and multi-colored jewels swirling around behind their eyelids. The gameplay can best be described as reverse Bullet Hell doled out in half-hour Roguelike runs - rather than having massive amounts & varieties of projectiles & obstacles to dodge, you produce massive amounts of projectiles & area-of-effect attacks to obliterate insane amounts of enemies (and I mean insane...it can get into the hundreds of thousands, most of which spawn in the last ten minutes of a run). The premise is extremely simple - inputs include up, down, left, and right, and weapons activate on their own and become increasingly devastating as you level them up and learn how to combine & evolve them in different ways. Despite its obvious throwbacks to the 8-bit era (especially Castlevania, from which this heavily lifts its aesthetics), there is no platforming or puzzle solving or backtracking (not in the base game, anyway); strategy is entirely based around the weapons & items you choose and level up with your XP, but there's a lot of depth underneath the seemingly brain-dead '80s action glory. There are a ton of characters from which to choose, each with their own unique stats & starting weapon, and an enormous amount of secrets to unlock and collectibles to find, all of which add more & more to the simple premise and give you an amazing variety of approaches to such a singular game. The retro graphics & audio are a lot of fun, and the game is extremely self-aware, which makes its style, gameplay, humor, and brand of nostalgia all land perfectly, especially for those of us who grew up on videogames from the 8-bit era. This is, at its soul, a celebration of classic action games.

Poncle struck gold with such a basic game that costs as much as a cup of coffee, and they've continued expanding upon it with several DLC add-ons, each better than the one preceding it. Vampire Survivors is a great experience on any platform - console, Steam Deck, any kind of PC (I assume the absolutely bonkers amount of things capable of happening on screen at once requires more than integrated graphics, but I think this would run well even on an old budget GPU) going into any display. This benefits a lot from using an arcade stick, but anything with an analog stick, d-pad, or WASD / arrow keys will work. I can't recommend this game enough - the gratification is as immediate as smut, but it builds over time as you keep coming back and exploring, unlocking, collecting, and figuring things out. A great experience for both casual & serious gamers regardless of whether they've been playing videogames for a few decades or a few months.

After three playthroughs and several hours with the Mercenaries arcade mode, I can confidently say that this is my favorite videogame remake I’ve ever played and personal favorite entry in the entire Resident Evil series. This is largely due to the fact that the original RE4 is one of my all-time favorite games, and the original and the remake are two sides of the same biohazardous coin.

Story & Presentation

While a lot of scripted sequences play out almost identically to the original, this remake has its own re-imagined approach to the source material. The cheesy, B movie-esque camp & charm are dialed down as this remake is drenched in a somber, moody atmosphere. Like the graphical & mechanical updates, the overall presentation - especially the characterization - has been given a new coat of paint, which is the first thing I noticed and the biggest difference overall between this and the ‘05 classic. Gone are the wide open, brightly lit environments and larger-than-life characters chewing that scenery; RE4 ‘23 is a much darker, more claustrophobic affair. The more fanatical, cultish aspects of Los Illuminados are played up in favor of the original’s “mustache-twirling villain” treatment, and unfortunately, Leon’s hammed-up interactions with both Salazar and Saddler which were a treat to watch in the original game are minimized. This feels like a modern action / horror thriller, whereas the original felt very much like an ‘80s / early ’90s blockbuster action flick; from popcorn movie to bleeding-edge auteur film.

However, this is not an inherently bad thing; it’s simply a different take on the source material, and despite having less of what made the original’s plot magical, there is a lot to love here. The writing, especially the characterization, is much stronger in many ways. Ashley is much more mature & three-dimensional and she actually has an arc. Leon’s nonchalant, one-liner-cracking demeanor has shifted into a brooding veteran of the Umbrella wars, hardened by the events of RE2. Their chemistry is much more refined and adds nuance to the narrative. There is still a good deal of humor - Luis and The Merchant in particular bring a lot of levity to the table, and Leon still cracks wise in ways that both fit & lighten the mood - but this is a markedly different experience, and I believe it's for the better. I don’t think Capcom could capture lightning in a bottle a second time; an attempt to would most likely be disappointing and redundant, while the new approach is a fresh take that is very well executed.

Gameplay

Everything that made the original fun to play is dialed up to eleven. Combat is expanded upon in ways that make it much more dynamic, animations are smooth as butter, environments & character models are packed with detail, and the roughly 20 hour long campaign is loaded with incentives to replay it multiple times, most of all - for me personally - because it is just so damn fun. This is packed with quality-of-life updates including full control of the camera, being able to move while doing so and while aiming, and custom keybinds for weapons (up to eight, with all weapons returning except for incendiary grenades; heavy grenades and a crossbow have been added in their place) to easily switch between them without having to interrupt the flow by opening your inventory. To balance out how much faster and more lethal you are, the enemies are much more numerous & aggressive. The knife plays a much bigger role, as you can use it to fend off enemies who grab you, kill downed enemies before they mutate into a stronger form, and parry melee attacks & projectiles. Combining the parry system with melee attacks & gunplay to chain together combos is sublimely satisfying and easily the best addition to combat. In certain areas, there is also a greater emphasis on utilizing stealth to sneak up on enemies for a one-hit knife kill, and in a game where crowd control is central to the combat, this gives you the ability to thin out the herd before you pull out the big guns, make a beeline for the next objective, or continue to stealthily clear enemies until you're detected. This variety of play styles add to an already dynamic combat system.

Level Design

Fans of the original will notice some areas and sequences are omitted, streamlined, or combined, but the overall layout & flow of the three main sections (the castle especially, which remains my favorite part of the game) feel much more organic as a result, keeping in line with the story’s emphasis on gritty realism over campy excess. Enemies remain largely the same in appearance but with a host of new details, and boss fights range from more fleshed-out and interactive to streamlined (sometimes to a fault), with one major boss fight conspicuously absent. Little touches such as scouting ahead with binoculars (which you only do once at the beginning of the original game) are expanded into recurring motifs, and the quick-time events are replaced with either timed evasion prompts, cutscenes, or interactive sequences. Not everything is well modernized, however; one thing that particularly bugged me was the inability to shoot enemies through breakable barriers. I found that notably absent, as you will often walk into or out of a room and into a horde of enemies without the ability to preemptively engage them.

Business Model

The only flaw with the RE4 remake I’d consider major is Capcom’s business model in this era of post-release content; the Separate Ways story expansion that came free with the original game is a $10 DLC add-on (and I assume that will be the case with Assignment Ada if Capcom develops that too), but that isn’t even the worst of it. The ‘pay-to-win’ system here is appalling, as you can purchase “exclusive upgrade tickets” which allow you to immediately buff a weapon far earlier in the game than you should, breaking the balance and ruining a first run. The fact that these tickets can be earned in-game by doing mini-quests (which add a good bit of fun and an extra hour or so to the campaign) only makes the stink of these add-ons worse. Also, if you’re like me and didn’t want to support Capcom by buying the deluxe edition but wound up liking the game so much that you want the bonus deluxe content, guess what: you’re stuck paying an extra $20 for that stuff instead of $10.

Conclusion

Apart from these obnoxious cash grabs and the few minor qualms I have with the game itself, this is not only an incredible remake of one of the greatest games ever made but one of the greatest games ever made on its own merit. The replay value is enormous; I'm eager to do a fourth playthrough to attempt the S+ Pro run, and there are plenty of replay incentives for speed runners, completionists, and people who just love this game. On top of that, this has the best Mercenaries mode in the entire series, and Separate Ways is just as fun as the main campaign (if not more so, but I'll explore that in a separate review). In this lifelong Resident Evil fan’s humble opinion, this is by far the best entry in the series to come out in recent years (with the RE2 remake and RE7 trailing behind it in a distant second & third), featuring an amazing amount of polish & depth in the graphics, gameplay, writing, and audio, art, & level design. It puts its own masterful modern spin on a classic, and I highly recommend it to both fans of the original and players new to the game or series as this is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Let me start with the obligatory "Keep 'em coming, Sony" statement. The PC ports of Sony games in recent years have been fantastic, and I'm very much looking forward to future ports of The Last Of Us, Ghost Of Tsushima, and other PlayStation titles. You want our money, we want your games - it's mutually beneficial, Sony, so by all means, keep 'em coming.

This Uncharted collection is a great value, featuring two AAA games (A Thief's End roughly 20-25 hours in length and The Lost Legacy around 10-15 hours depending on how much you explore and spend time hunting down collectibles - I like to think of them as an LP and an EP, respectively) with amazing production values. Apart from flickering lights and crackles & pops in audio (which were barely noticeable and which I only encountered a handful of times in my 36 hours spent finishing both campaigns), this is an impeccable port as far as I can tell. On an i7-5930K / 2080 Super build, I'm averaging 80-120 FPS at 1440p on max settings with DLSS Quality (with drops to the 60s & 70s in areas with big, elaborate environments filled with NPCs or during large-scale scripted action sequences). This is my first experience with Uncharted; I've not played the first three games in the series, so I'm completely unfamiliar with the backstory, yet both the Nathan Drake centered A Thief's End and the Chloe Frazer centered The Lost Legacy provide a lot of context and work well as self-contained games. The amount of detail in any given scene is staggering, and the way they seamlessly blend platforming & parkour, gunfights, brawls, and vehicular gameplay with cutscenes (all rendered in-game) is almost unparalleled (Max Payne comes to mind in terms of presentation). This is easily one of the most cinematic games I've ever played; it is extremely linear & scripted, and that suits this type of game and storytelling very well as it feels very much like a highly interactive movie.

A note on Tomb Raider as the two franchises are similar in many ways and often compared - I grew up on the original PS1 games and am a fan of the franchise, but after playing this, I'd have to say that Uncharted is much better than the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. The two games in this collection just feel superior...the gameplay mechanics are much tighter & more fluid, and they are much leaner games. Tomb Raider 2013's sequels introduced a lot of large hub areas with tedious, redundant mini-quests to pad the length of the campaigns, causing the narrative progression to stagnate on many occasions for far too long. That element is absent in Uncharted as you are always moving forward; even in the level halfway through The Lost Legacy with a large hub area and branching areas leading off from it, you never feel stuck in any one place performing repetitive tasks...the plot is always moving forward. While I do still love the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, revisiting them after playing this has given me a much different perspective of them. They're simply not as lean, fluid (both mechanically & narratively), or seamless, nor do they do action-packed spectacle quite as well.

I immensely enjoyed this and feel I more than got my money's worth. I had faith pre-ordering this given Sony's track record with PC ports, and that faith has paid off. Now, Sony, please bring an Uncharted 1-3 collection to PC (preferably remastered and optimized as well as this) so I can experience what I've been missing out on!

David Lynchian surreality? Check. Anthropomorphized fish? Check. A meme-worthy musical dance number (with fish)? Check. Extremely linear 20 minute long single player campaign with some rudimentary philosophical musings & subtext about free will and nihilism? Check. Priced appropriately (free)? Check!

If you go through your entire life only playing one game in which you're a sardine who's banished to the bowels of a machine and must choose between going UP or DOWN, How Fish Is Made is hands down the one to get.

Wowsers. This is a disappointing remaster of one of the best decision-based narrative games I’ve ever played. It has none of the features you'd expect from a 2022 remaster (no ultra-wide, HDR, or DLSS or FSR support, though it runs well at native render resolution), and I’ve experienced several bugs at launch, the most bothersome being subtitles showing up as the file name for the dialogue rather than the dialogue itself every time I enter a new area. Though this can be remedied by restarting the checkpoint, it’s a nuisance to have to do this so frequently. I hope that combined with the occasional flickering lighting, inconsistent colorization, and random audio drops will be patched quickly. The graphical update is decent - dialing everything up to "hella high" and comparing it to the original at its highest settings yields a slight improvement (textures are more detailed, colors & lighting more vibrant and animations smoother despite some awkwardness) - but they are negligible at best. All the pre-rendered cutscenes from the original are exactly the same rather than rendered using the in-game engine. This is an obvious cash grab - essentially the same game from 2015 with a bit more polish but very little effort behind it. "Insert groan here," as Max would say.

I still love the game – it’s well written and has some great characters and an engaging coming-of-age story that utilizes a time rewinding gameplay mechanic to drive the narrative and introduce some clever puzzles. The choices you make (which you can often rewind and change on-the-spot but must settle on to progress from one scene to the next) are often gut-wrenching with real pathos and deep consequences that ripple throughout the 12-14 hour campaign; this bolsters replay value as you'll likely want to play it twice to see the varying outcomes. However, as I said, this isn’t a significant enough improvement over the original release in any way to recommend buying if you already have the original game. If you've never played it, this might be worth getting during a deep sale (hopefully by then the bugs will have been patched) unless you can find the original for much cheaper. Disappointing, as I was hoping this would be the definitive edition of Life Is Strange.

Sony has a history of mixed results when it comes to their PC ports, so I was delighted with God Of War as its port is on par with Red Dead Redemption 2's. It's rare to see a port with this much polish at launch. God Of War was already a visual marvel in 2018, but on PC, the graphics are enhanced - details in the environments, characters, and shadows & reflections are much more refined. Even on a lower-end system, you shouldn't have trouble hitting 60FPS, and there are the usual PC graphics settings (with ultra-wide and DLSS 2.3 & FSR support) that you can adjust to "original" (the PS4 Pro equivalent), low, high, or ultra to custom-tailor your experience. Even though the game is over three years old, the graphics have aged remarkably well, and DLSS implementation helps you hit your target resolution & frame rate while looking as good (and in some cases, better) than Temporal AA in the native resolution. For reference, my i7-5930K / 2080 Super build averages 90-120FPS (120 being the cap) at 2560x1440 using ultra settings and Balanced DLSS (1486x836 render resolution). Quality DLSS (1708x960) will make that drop by roughly 20FPS, but the upscaling differences are negligible at 1440p and up. I did blind tests with several friends - none could tell the difference between those three settings, and two of them even preferred DLSS over the native 1440p with TAA. However, Performance (720p) and especially Ultra Performance (480p) DLSS rendering has notably flatter textural details (foliage in particular stands out) and a noisy shimmer over many bright environments, so I would recommend dialing down graphics settings before resorting to those if you're not hitting your desired frame rate. Also worth noting are the load speeds; I have this on a Sabrent NVMe PCIe 3.0 drive (3400 MB/s), and there is barely any load time. Even loading into the game from the main menu only takes a couple seconds.

All that said about the port quality, this is still God Of War - it's the same epic action/adventure masterpiece drawing from Norse mythology and set in a magical fantasy world immense in scale. There are light RPG elements mixed with surprisingly complex hack n' slash style combat mechanics, and the narrative keeps you engaged & progressing forward at a good pace while leaving a lot of room to explore, go on side-quests, hunt down collectibles, and backtrack as you gain new powers (completionists will enjoy its Metroidvania-esque world design and the rearrangements in New Game +). Of course, most people already know this and are only here to see how well-optimized & improved it is on PC, so my suggestion is obviously to buy it if you've never played it (or have only played it on the original PS4 and want to play it again). This is the definitive edition of one of the best games not only of 2018 but of the last decade.

As a huge Resident Evil fan, I expected a lot from Village, and Capcom delivered in some ways yet stumbled in others. All in all, it is a good entry in the main Resident Evil canon and an absolute blast, but it could've been a better game with a few changes.

Resident Evil games tend to lean more toward more classic survival horror (heavy emphasis on puzzle solving and conserving ammo & healing items à la RE1, 2, and 7) or action horror (more emphasis on combat and action set pieces à la RE4, 5, and especially 6), and while Village is a direct sequel to the excellent RE7, it’s also a spiritual successor to RE4. It takes disparate elements from both approaches and puts them together, and though it works in a lot of ways, it misses the mark in others. There are a lot of good, visceral scares here, an atmosphere with a lot of tension & unease, and some great cinematic set pieces, but you rarely have to worry about running out of inventory space as you're constantly finding ammo & healing items and the parts to craft them (none of which take up space in your inventory). This undercuts much of the sense of dread that makes these games work so well. Using RE4's design of finding currency to spend on upgrading weapons & increasing inventory space and the return of a traveling merchant also ensures that running short on ammo, heals, or space will rarely if ever happen. I cannot decide whether this is a quality of life choice or an element that's detrimental to the game's aim - perhaps a bit of both.

The first-person perspective from RE7 returns and works very well here, immersing you in a larger-scale world of horrors. However, where RE7 was cohesive and progressing from one area to the next felt like a natural series of segues (apart from one specific instance), Village feels a bit disconnected. There are separate areas branching out from the main hub (the titular village), each with their own different aesthetic, enemies, and boss fight. There's certainly variety to be found here, but at the cost of disjointedness. The overarching plot helps to better tie things together, but when you have one area that invokes Silent Hill followed by another that invokes Metro Exodus (and one that goes full-out Call Of Duty), your brain is going to notice that. Most notable (and disappointing) was the fact that one of these sections (arguably the best one) was clearly conceived of by Capcom as something much larger and longer but cut very short due to budget and/or time constraints, and the result - while still great - falls short of brilliance due to this and feels like a huge missed opportunity. I also have issues with the writing - the plot gives you very little for a majority of the game only to have a huge, twisty exposition dump arrive in the final hour. Additionally, many of the characters are underdeveloped and merely caricatures who - while well-designed and brimming with personality - are defined solely by their motivation (or worse, simply their appearance) without a fleshed out backstory to make us care enough about them.

I did enjoy the gameplay very much, but I have some issues about it too. The gunplay is very fun & satisfying, but many of Village's big battles don't make you use your brain as much as previous titles in the series have. Most enemies lack specific weaknesses you must discover & exploit and instead just go down by shooting at them repeatedly while evading their attacks. Dodge & melee commands are noticeably absent; the gameplay mechanics are identical to RE7’s, but this game, being much more action-oriented, often has you facing off against waves of enemies. I felt like a dedicated melee command and especially a dodge command would’ve made combat feel much more fluid & dynamic, much in the way the action-oriented RE3 remake had a dodge mechanic that added a lot to its combat.

Regardless of these faults, Village has a lot of both dread and allure. Exploration here is fluid and filled with puzzles (much like most RE games, they’re fun but not very difficult), and the branching hub-based world has a Metroidvania design that keeps you revisiting the titular village and seeing how it changes over the course of the story as you unlock previously inaccessible areas. Returning from the RE2 & 3 remakes is the map design that turns rooms blue once you’ve found everything in them, further reinforcing exploration. After you finish the campaign, Mercenaries (a single player arcade mode) opens up as well as a slew of incentives to replay the campaign apart from simply wanting to (I began a second playthrough immediately after my first ended), including achieving specific tasks to earn completion points with which you can unlock concept art, 3D figurines, and, most importantly, new weapons & infinite ammo. The variety of weapons are very fun, and you can shake up combat by mixing your standard pistol / shotgun / rifle loadout with mines, pipe bombs, a grenade launcher, a sniper rifle, various melee weapons (including an unlockable lightsaber!), and the almighty magnum (of which there are three variations, as there are with most of the gun types here).

Resident Evil Village is a balancing act of action and survival horror that, despite some conspicuous missteps, is a very good game and enjoyable experience overall. It blends varying elements well and does many different things at once competently. There were many moments that made me think “Wow, I can’t wait to replay this so I can experience that again,” and I even found some set pieces so anxiety-inducing that I needed to stop playing and take a breather. I highly recommend this to fans of Resident Evil and survival horror, though I think RE7 and RE4 - the two games it merges - are better. Village is a couple steps shy of being the brilliant blend of action & survival horror it tries to be.

Little Nightmares is an excellent 2.5D sidescroller in the vein of Limbo and especially Inside; vaguely plotted with an abstract story told entirely through visuals. It's a very well-crafted game with great graphics, audio & score, and gameplay, but its art design is the true standout. The gorgeous claymation-like style and creative, disturbing levels littered with detail and nightmarish atmosphere are masterful. The game manages to make you feel deeply minuscule against the backdrop of its enormous scenery filled with enemies who tower over and chase you, and though they may be bigger & stronger, you have the brainpower to outwit them; the puzzles are clever but never so difficult that I had to rely on a walkthrough. I'd learn through trial-and-error how to effectively hide from & avoid enemies and progress through an area after two or three attempts at most. Though far from the most difficult game in the genre (Inside's puzzles are more complex & interesting overall, though Little Nightmare features 2.5D movement and not just visuals), it does require some basic problem solving & logical thinking.

Though the campaign is only 2-3 hours long, it is so enjoyable and the art design so brilliant that it is well worth playing (and playing again). As the game progresses, so does the variety of scenery - from dark, dank industrial warehouses to towering libraries & kitchens to Kabuki-inspired sections, the style is the star of the show and will stick with you long after you finish the game. A- (9 out of 10).

An excellent tool for sociopaths and pathological liars to hone their skills on deceiving & manipulating people. Especially useful for aspiring serial killers, politicians, and con-artists. A+

In all seriousness, Among Us is some of the most fun I've ever had in an online multiplayer game. A couple friends got me into this, and now I'm trying to get more of my friends into it...the fact that the playerbase has grown enormously so quickly due to word-of-mouth is a testament to how truly fun it is. I played a few rounds on the free smartphone version (which is cramped and difficult to type and complete certain tasks with) then immediately got it on Steam. The premise is simple (think Clue mixed with Poker) but very fun, playing with friends especially so, and using an app like Discord to voice chat with them while playing - while making it a little too easy to spot the impostor(s) - adds an extra layer to the game, giving the deception tactics you employ more complexity. Despite the game itself being rather small and repetitive, the dynamic social aspect of it drives its replay value way up, and matches are highly customizable. All this combined with Innersloth actively expanding on the code and adding more servers to accommodate the sudden playerbase proliferation (in addition to working on a new map, bringing the total amount up to four) makes the five dollar price tag worth it. The only concern I have is that while all maps and most skins are currently free, the game may become increasingly monetized in the future.

If you have a smartphone, I recommend giving this a try (free with ads) to see if you like it and think you'll be playing it enough to justify buying it for PC which is a much better experience.