Recent reviews by Sage

Relaxing, time-consuming and an unofficial requirement for German naturalisation process.

[Spoiler-free]

They say you were born in the small town of Harvest and, apparently, you've lived there all your life. The trouble is, you wake up one morning with amnesia and can't remember any of it.

Yeah, sounds familiar and boring, yet-another-amnesia-based-story, go and find out who you are and what secret of yours you forgot, who knows about it, bla-bla. But don't get fooled by this banal start, it's totally not that simple. Already after 5 minutes of playing you will notice that something is wrong not only with your amnesia but with literally everything and everybody around you. unless you are a total psychosociopath taking daily bath in tibetian male babies' blood and eating vegan sausages locked in a public library's toilet or wondering why women wear hidjab in mortal kombat 11

I'm not that person who is into quests or point-and-click games, especially puzzles as I always think that at one point they will make me feel either dumb or bored or angry but this one got my courage attention because:

1. It was made in 90's
2. I found some reactions to this game interesting
3. I saw some really graphic screenshots and I didn't even know it was possible to release a game with such content uncensored but well see 1.

So here is why I recommend it:


It's a very cruel and truly dark parody on an american lifestyle and its ideals, nuclear families, perfect from outside but with the full spectrum of their skeletons in the closet. And even if the whole action takes place in the America of 50's, you will soon understand that it was relevant in 1996 when the game was out as well as in 2019.

Here are some of the skeletons topics you might (depending on your actions and dialogue choices) encounter in the game: child molestation, corporal punishment, extreme nationalism, spouse abuse, incest, sexism .. and some other tabooed (in many societies) stuff which obviously appeared due to commies', gays', gamers', feminists', aliens' and other unequivocally devilish powers' activities and which also make part of this pile of topics aroused in the game. You know, these topics discussion of which becomes a holywar either demonized or ignored for some reasons.

You might end up reconsidering your definition of dark humor after playing this game. Here it's not subtle, not hidden, not censored. The game itself is (and as it was in 1996) politically incorrect, rude, very offensive and sarcastic. If you are a SJW and still curious about the game, just keep in mind that it was put for a reason and not just for the sake of shocking.


A really nice cast of memorable and unique characters, including the main kidder character Steve himself. The inhabitants of Harvest are eccentric parodies of real people, at first you probably will see them as banal and dull but each of them have their own personality, and some of them are unique in their own banal or dull way.
The dialogues are truly intriguing, you won't even think about skipping a single line. Once an important event happens in Harvest, each of them will have their unique view on it and reaction you will want to know. I also found the voice acting (NA-English version) excellent.

Some characters you encounter in the game are not even needed to continue with the plot: they serve to build the atmosphere, give you some hints where to go / what to search for.


To my taste - this is the horror the way it's supposed to be. Yes, there is gore and some of gory scenes you might find disturbing but unlike in dozens of horror movies / games, it's not the main trigger to scare the player. That bizarre ambience of a twisted town, the way people talk to you, react and behave, the feeling of paranoia, fear and desperation, yet, an urge to find out why you feel like this and the need to escape - this is what makes the fundament for the horror here.


Technically the game is pretty simple. Point-and-Click as it is.
Certain dialogue choices which you initially were able to see might disappear after you chose a line, but if you type the disappeared word (the dialogue follows a key word / combination of words), you regain the access to that line, so once you interact with a person, especially for the first time, try to memorize all the keywords you see on your screen, - some of them can come hidden. There are also truly hidden keywords which won't appear on your screen but which will trigger certain reactions / dialogues. You can google them.

As for puzzles, I can't say whether they should be called difficult or not, I'd say they were logical enough not to get stuck and avoid what to do / where to go. I think if you pay enough attention to the dialogues and your eyes will get used to mid-nineties graphics to notice some triggers, items, switchers, you are gonna be fine. I personally looked up into the walkthrough only 2 times, and didn't regret as I still can't figure out how I was supposed to know that solution. But yeah, as I said, I'm not a puzzle-lover, so I probably just missed something or didn't listen carefully to a certain dialogue line.
The combat system is primitive and a bit crappy but simple to feel and understand and you will probably win a fight as long as you are playing with a mouse and have at least 1 functionning finger.

I didn't notice any serious critical bugs. Still, I'd recommend to save as often as possible, the game might be over for you at the moment in any way possible when you expect it the least, just because you picked up a crappy dialogue line or triggered a cutscene during a nighttime or sth.


It would be spoiling to speak about the contents of the message here and the message itself consists of many multiple parts presented in the game as consequences of your dialogues or action choices and some cutscenes. All I'd like to say here is that I really found the way it was delivered great and straight-forward. Throughout my whole journey in Harvest, I constantly felt that whoever wanted to deliver the message, was pi$$ed about about the situation and people who create it and the only form he could reach the player's mind would be mocking at the whole thing in a dark, expressive, absurd way so some players would recognize the problem and its causes, maybe even in themselves.
Some people, who are not able to perceive satire or simply are not aware of its existence, would probably consider this game meaninglessly violent, intentionally trashy, focusing their attention only on gory aspect and, ironically, won't notice or, for the safety of their own ego, ignore the fact that all this hypocrisy shown and well-described in the game, come from someone normal like them.

As for negative points:

- Seriously, I still have no idea how I was supposed to know some puzzle solutions, they were neither logical nor obvious to me. I saw some people's rage on the same moment of the game they were stuck exactly on the same thing! But still, you can blame it on me, as I suck at puzzles in general.

- There are a couple of minor bugs which will stop the day-night cycle of the game preventing you from finishing importang actions and tasks. Solution: there are some triggers which can unbug the cycle, if you feel like you have done everything possible and stuck, google - it can really be a bug.

- - - - - - -

Without this brilliant combination of humor and truly serious topics it would be perceived just as another trashy B-movie from 90's without any inner message but just for "wow, cool" or "ew, gross" reaction. This is a truly dark and well-made surreal satire, can't hesitate to recommend it to lovers of this genre.

ʙᴜᴛᴛʜᴜʀᴛ ᴀʟᴇʀᴛ: ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ʙᴇʟᴏᴡ ɪs ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴍʏ ᴏᴘɪɴɪᴏɴ, ɪ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡs ʜɪɢʜʟʏ ᴅᴇᴘᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ sᴇᴇᴋ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ɢᴀᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇxᴘᴇᴄᴛ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴍᴇ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅɪɴɢ ғʀᴏᴍ ʏᴏᴜ, sᴏ ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ʟʏɴᴄʜ ᴍᴇ.

If you still feel offended by this review, re-read what’s written above and quit watching anime, ty <3


The game which used to be very dark (not even talking about the KF 2.52 mod which is a true masterpiece), grungy, hard (on Hell on Earth), coop-rewarding, became a shiny casual dumb shooter with plastic mechanics, pneumatic-like neon weapons, unbalanced gameplay, trader who reminds you how great you are. All this made to generic metal music in an environment filled with guts and corpses and fog (why there is always this freaking fog in new games?). Come on, people love metal music and gore, - add some! Doesn’t matter that it reminds a bad snuff / horror film where the only way to make a scary atmosphere is to splash tons of blood into the viewers’ screens. Launch KF-Mod / KF1 on HoE and then compare it to KF2 on HoE. No need in tons of guts and blood with shiny effects, no need in the ost which is no more than a pile of sounds and noises. They dumbed down the game, killed the feeling of danger, the urge to team up and cooperate with this sci-fi and skin madness, voices, robots (!), nutcrackers, cookies, santas, circus dogs and ♥♥♥♥. Don’t forget your teammates running around in pyjamas with bucket on their heads and shiny yellow-pink weapons.

A Robot *facepalm*:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1613696494

It's utterly heartbreaking to see Killing Floor to become such a pile of trash.

During the early access which I played as well, they were experimenting with microtransactions and people’s reaction to them, rather than with weapons, perks and overall gameplay: the maps were ready, the weapons were ready, the mechanics they created didn’t change much either. “So yeah we are going to open a new store here in your place and allowing you to buy stuff from us before our store even opens.” How would you react to this?

Talking of the Store:

Killing Floor 1:

- 20+ purchasable cosmetic items;
- 50+ whitelisted mutators;

Killing Floor 2:

- 2770+ purchasable cosmetic items;
- 2 whitelisted mutators ;

How is this even acceptable?


2.1 Surroundings:

- Luckily there are still some talented mappers and modders out there who make this game viable. But TWI can’t hope that all the work will be done by the community. Official “About the Game” Description from the Steam Store: .. players descend into continental Europe where the outbreak caused by Horzine Biotech’s failed experiment has quickly spread and gained unstoppable momentum, essentially paralyzing the European Union ... the specimen clones are everywhere and civilization is in disarray; communications have failed, governments have collapsed, and military forces have been systematically eradicated... Except for some weird stuff still happening with “governments collapsed” and “eradicated military forces” like a random hipster milkmaid wearing a dot dress killing a gigantic nutcracker with a shiny medic shotgun shooting cyan syringes.

Fleshpound King aka Nutcrakcer *facepalm*:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1613696612

- When KF2 was just out, it had 3 maps: Burning Paris, Outpost and Biotics Lab. Where can we play now? In Infernal Realm, Catacombs, Krampus Lair, killing ginger men, clowns, elves with neon-textured weapons, pyjamas and shark-masks. What should we expect on the Thanksgiving day? Turkeys filled with villain tomatoes, salat-guns and armored aprons? What’s your target audience’ age, Tripwire?

2.2 Weapons and Perks:

- In KF1 as well as in the KFMod every perk and weapon played a certain role. You had to know what weapon to use when you played as Support against an FP, whom to cover when they are reloading, share dosh, how many headshots it takes to kill a SC, aim to heal if you played as medic, carry the whole team when they are spectating - with any perk, not only medic or zerk. Start with only knife and pistol if below level 5, stick to and watch your teammates to survive - learn and feel the game.

- Now you start with a reskin class weapon and once you are at the traders’ you see a store bloated with weird guns you have no idea about, just pick up anything looking big and mighty, upgrade it and you still will be able to survive long enough on highest difficulty which is already extremely trivialized.
That amount of weapons as well as perks’ choice don’t make that much difference anymore since there is no variety in the sense of “High Damage = Slow guns” or “Faster Firing = Smaller damage”, thanks to upgrades! The earlier existing differences faded, many weapons do same DPS, thus giving players more independence and frag-bragging in a coop-shooter.

- Not to forget: you can sprint in KF2 and there is a sound warning you that FP/SC spawned somewhere on the map! Yes, these two new things have to be mentioned together. Be prepared, and don’t bother counting waves, we understand not everybody can count to 7 or even 10 :o

- Also, don’t bother trying to understand how to kill them because there are your teammates to rely on - the only time you run and stick to them is when there is a big bad zed with glowing red lights or a chainsaw chasing your shiny ass. The rest of the time you can keep fragging little clots and crawlers so you can use you score as an argument when somebody failed to save you from a quarter pound and you call them a noob.


I understand it’s very hard to resist a common trend and not to create something without gamification hooks keeping people invested by dangling a carrot in front of them. But hard doesn’t mean impossible or that you should at least give it a try?

I don’t want to sound like a grandma and say that earlier games were better than nowadays just because they got older, but oldschool games make players think what devs had in their heads while building a level and now it’s the devs who make effort to understand what’s in an ordinary player’s head and try to polish their game till that state when it will bring them enough money, making their product tasteless and soulless. Why focusing on the game design and game mechanics when you can just make game development a sort of social science and create everything relying on analysis and data? Such attitude has conditioned a generation of gamers into that type of mindset that they need to be constantly rewarded for playing, and Killing Floor 2 wasn’t an exception: a freshly-baked MBA graduate rushes into the TWI’s office, make them discover what customer lifetime value means and instead of improving an earlier-great game in terms of atmosphere and gameplay and fundamental quality change, they start to press better buttons boosting revenue and players’ overall playtime through artificially created stimuli like unlockables, rewards, skin drops, tons of in-game achievements, weekly events, seasonal events, bonuses when you participate in them, double-bonuses when you participate in both, disney-like villain bosses (Seriously, did you even hear what Hans / Patriarch says now when the boss wave starts?). I forgot to mention a trader who .. compliments and glorifies you once you killed a scrake or a fleshpound! In addition to that, she reminds you to heal your teammates, buy missing ammo and armor like if you were diagnosed with ADHD. They cared about all this this ♥♥♥♥ and not about the Game itself.

...

Please, love our product, we made it for you! We love you! Love us? And love our game? Please?

Pathetic.

- CS:GO was overwritten by this game in steam, the only decent reason for that is players' migrated inventories (thank you). Together with that this game has overtaken CS:GO's reviews, which feels a bit shady given that CS:GO was made unavailable (I'm aware of the method to launch it, but let's be honest: it's hidden, you gotta know how - why?).

- Graphics look oversaturated, dusty and as if the warmth filter was overtweaked. I personally don't feel visual harmony. This also affects players' models and skins' appearance.

- .. speaking of which, if you are making money with skins, beware that the way materials and texture look is now completely different, it's not known whether it was intentional but the appearance of many (especially older) skins looks deteriorated comparing to that in CS:GO (google screenshot comparisons or try out yourself). 2000-15000€ dopplers and gems look completely fine though, if not better. Be careful with applying collector stickers to your weapons, find a way to preview first. The way skins look like now can change the market dynamics.

- What are the reasons to make the game "more friendly to newcomers" by adding audioradius to radar, bullet tracing, new spray patterns, colored smokes etc., when.. smurfing is still there? The logic behind these priorities is beyond my understanding.

- ELO and Matchmaking. *Sigh* I want to believe, they just didn't get to it yet. It's non-sensical. Does trust factor even exist?

- AI Anticheat. I hope as well that it still has "work in progress" status. Cheating is still possible, and I'm not even talking about S-tier hardware/dma device cheats.

- It's 2023 and it still feels like taking a ♥♥♥♥ shower after enabling voice communication and chat. What, making the game free didn't get you enough data to recognize and ban abusive behavior patterns? Automated voice/text chat recognition, no? Guess keeping the game notorious for it's community has become part of its identity.

- The game in general is moving farer and farer away from it's simplicity and own character.


- - -

There is a lot to write, really but I don't see a point to write everything down.

A good start would be separating this game's reviews from CS:GO first.

60 fps