Neue Rezensionen von Fate

Imagine that you have a friend. Depending on who you are, I realize that might be difficult, but stick with me here.

This friend is... unsavory. Disreputable, even, but he knows a good time when he sees it, and jumps wholeheartedly in to experience everything that good time has to offer.

This friend is Bulletstorm. Darkly comic at its best, purile at its worst, Bulletstorm is home to some of the best shooting you'll ever see. It's got highs in its core gameplay loop that make all but the most expertly-designed first person shooters look like sad clones of the original Doom, and it's got surprisingly tenacious emotional downbeats in its plot.

In the end, Bulletstorm is the guy who goes with you to a party and ends up defecating in Grandma's urn. You don't really want to be associated with him, necessarily, but ha ha oh wow there's good times here.

This review is spoiler-free.

Good AND fun, in a surprising number of ways, not all of which are immediately evident.
A work demonstrating the state of the art in hybrid FPS/RPGs, and a true piece of science fiction, Prey (2017) asks questions about human nature and allows for individual choice in a surprising number of directions. The game has notable consequence for each organically-made decision point without underplaying their consequences or tipping its hand. Vastly better than its in-title-only predecessor in every way. Provides an excellent, challenging experience that requires a variety of strategies to get through any situation. Like any good survival game, there are fat and lean times and resource management is always on your mind. Deus Ex wants you to think that there are "three paths", and while that's true for many games in the FPS/RPG subgenre, it comes off as the developers intending you to build for one of the three paths and use it constantly.
Not here. You'll find yourself switching between shooting, running, hiding, and ... we'll say unconventional solutions frequently. The shooting, when there is shooting, is excellent. The hiding, when there is hiding - and there WILL be hiding - is also very good. The running feels right, the unconventionals are definitely unconventional and just as fun. All paths are equally viable, and the difficulty is dynamic even within its categories. The game never speaks to you as though it's dumbing its concepts down, and it allows for engaging play in a variety of spaces.

Buy this game. It's good. It's fun. Effort 10. Result 10, that's a full-points 10/10 for me. Arkane knocked it out of the park.

I'ma play again.

The best Metroid game that Nintendo refuses to make.

Like SOMA, but good. Like Portal, but better.

Spec Ops: The Line is best described by a metaphor. It is an AKM in the hands of a first-year philosophy student at UCLA. The shooting is serviceable and fine for what it is, but unpolished because no amount of polish will shine that particular turd up. The story hates itself for what it's doing, hates you because you're in this situation too, and hates the society that has made doing these things normal because if we all just put the gun down and talked none of this would be necessary.

"If we could all just stop being self-interested, stop being selfish and angry and thinking only about what we want," says Spec Ops: The Line, "maybe the world would be a better place and you wouldn't have to listen to me preach at you about ethics and how your choices don't matter, you filthy murderer."

MIND
BLOWN

BUY
THIS
NOW

SUPER
HOT

Having completed the community-administrated tutorial section, I now feel like I've got a handle on how to play. I can finally begin exploring this accurate 1:1 scale recreation of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Just... just buy it. Play the first one if you haven't, then play this one. It's everything Hotline Miami was, but so much more of it.

It's OK.

Remember when Claptrap was funny? Me, neither.