Recent reviews by hamoun76

An amazing story and amazing video game. Shame that it had a very rocky start and received a lot of (deserved) criticism. Right now, as of patch 1.52, it still has a few bugs and glitches so beware. My game crashed HEAVILY at the start, something like a crash every 15 minutes. Changing my page file settings lowered the frequency, and crashes went away completely after the prologue.

The game is absolutely gorgeous. The ray-tracing is amazing and human faces are very realistic. Can't say the same about AI though. The cons:
NPCs in cars will absolutely murder you and they don't give a damn about scratching, damaging, or crashing their own cars. Also they will run you over without a second thought. Additionally, the driving physics are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Enemy AI are immediately alerted to you, so if you want to go stealth, you must have a silenced, high-powered revolver that one shot headshots. Anything else is useless. Difficulty-scaling in the sidejobs is a bit whack. Most of them are too difficult to do in the beginning even though they are available to you, and after a while, they all become too easy.

The pros: amazing storytelling and voice-acting. The addition of Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand was definitely a huge plus point. The dialogue is something you just never want to skip and I found myself doing all of the sidequests and gigs just to get his running commentary. You are faced with many choices throughout the game. Even though there are technically 4 main endings only, I still think they are varied enough. Overall, even though I have some gripes with the AI, the difficulty-scaling and some glitches, the experience of playing through this game more than make up for them.

Amazing art, soundtrack and gameplay elements. Short first playthrough, but tons of replayability.

As a Visual novel fan, don't sleep on this one. It's a really fun high school comedy without any weird extra storylines or witches or anything of the sort. Just a fun romcom with interesting characters. There is an interesting dating mechanic in this one where you have to have everyday conversations with characters to become close to them and become friends, to eventually graduate to lover status. You're better of using a guide for this one because some answers that you may think are strange are actually the good choices and some answers that you think are good are the "boring" ones. I don't know maybe it's a cultural thing. Other then that, it's a heartwarming VN with no unnecessary drama. Only drawbacks I can think of is, 40 percent of the beginning of the VN is "shared" in all routes so subsequent playthrough will involve a lot of skipping and be generally shorter. And the MC can sometimes be too much of a pervert but one can argue it adds to the comedy.

All in all, don't miss out on Fureraba, it'll be worth your while.

Absolutely recommended for fans of this type of game, especially if you care about and like a rather deep and rich story. Be sure to use the community made FAR patch.

A really short review, If you enjoy free roam games set in a criminal underworld A.K.A GTA style games, you will definitely enjoy Sleeping Dogs. The game IS a bit dated at this point, and the amount of activities you can participate in are far less than GTA, it is still a very entertaining game. The reason is the atmosphere and setting of the game. The game world has a certain fresh feeling to it. The feeling of being an undercover cop infiltrating the Hong Kong triads is really great and I wish they made a sequel or reboot of the game using modern tech. Still, for a 2012 game it's really good. Be warned though, the final 1/4th of the game feels very rushed and the ending is very sudden and doesn't tie up loose ends. The included DLC are fun but don't have much to do with the main story other than being set after it. And some of the side quests can get repetitive if you intend to 100% the game like me. Still, I recommend the game in a sale, I got 40 hours of mostly fun and enjoyment for a negligible price.

Pretty much self-explanatory.

Have you ever played a game, where after you finish it, you are just left dumbfounded, depressed, and only think about the game and it's ending? Where, you can't do anything in real life for like, a week, because you're constantly thinking about the game? A game that is so immersive and atmospheric, that you actually feel a part of it, where you actually feel like you're the protagonist, and in her shoes, even if your genders may differ?!

For me, Life Is Strange was that kind of game, and there aren't many games out there that can give me this feeling. A feeling where you crave for more, even though you know the story has been wrapped up and finished...

As soon as you launch LiS, you'll know that it's a very immersive, atmospheric and "artsy" game. It has it's own style, and even though the textures and graphics won't be able to blow you away, the way that they are done (The textures are hand-painted), coupled with the most amazing effects I've seen in a while and an astonishing attention to detail, will surely satisfy any person. And again, the impact of the effects and environmental details cannot be understated, they're what gives this game a "soul". As soon as you enter the room of one of the main characters, you ACTUALLY feel like you're in the room of a real-world teenager with that specific personality, be it Max, who is a shy yet caring 19 year old girl with some social anxiety and self-esteem issues, or Chloe the rebel, who has just had enough of this town that she lives in after it took everything from her that she loved and cared about.

And then there's the soundtrack. Music in a game can have a profound impact on setting the mood for the player or just making them enjoy their time in the game, and nothing is as satisfying as listening to a song played at the right time with the right lyrics. The soundtrack in this game is just amazing, They absolutely succeed in making you join the protagonist in their world and... and just get lost in it. I became a huge fan of Syd Matters just by listening to his soundtrack in this game.

And then there's the actual gameplay. Here we have a typical episodic adventure game with a story rich world and choices that have consequences further down the storyline, but with a twist: the ability to go back in time. Now, some people say that it's just a fancy way of exploring different effects your choices have on the story, and it's essentially doing the same thing as making a save or checkpoint and then returning to it, like a quick-save/quick-load function.

But I have to disagree, first of all, the main difference here is the protagonist is actually aware of this power, and by using it, she can see all the different outcomes and doubt her choices, question whether she made the right ones, and transfer the same doubt to the player. The other main difference is that this time travel feature becomes a huge part of the story and actually moves it forward, especially in the last two episodes but I'm not going to spoil anything here. The time manipulation feature can also be used to solve some puzzles, but they're not THAT complicated, and if you're patient enough, most of them can be completed without having to resort to using the internet, but don't get me wrong, they're not that easy.

Although LiS is almost a completely perfect game in my mind, I think it does have it's faults... one of the main beefs I had with it was that it seemed that the developers had put much of their effort in a specific path, and it was somehow considered the "main path" and the other outcome wasn't as fleshed out story wise as the other part, although it seems that this won't matter since looking at the global stats for the game, approximately 80 percent of people followed said path and thus, would not have the same complaint I did. If you are really curious and have actually finished the game, then read the next part, If you haven't, then for the love god AVOID SPOILERS!

***************************SPOILER!!*************

I felt like the developers spent most of their time developing the story around the fact that Max's relationship with Chloe was romantic rather than platonic, and to be honest, it seemed kind of forced. Yes, you got the choice to kiss or don't kiss chloe and you could've done things to help/impress her (or not) but still, sometimes it was like we were being forced to believe that they were in love, even though in my eyes it seemed like they were the best of friends, especially up until episode 3 and the kiss and romantic elements just felt too sudden and out of place for me. You could see what I mean if you checked her journal, where after not kissing her she will still comment about actually wanting to do it. Don't get me wrong, I love that they included this, and the story between them after this point was amazing, but it makes me sad that they didn't work that much on the relationship between Max and Warren. At the end you do get the option to kiss him (if you made the right choices beforehand) but that's just about it.If you choose the "look" option on him again, which I think many people missed, Max will say very shyly that at least she kissed Warren to let him know how she feels, and to me that's a clear indication of love. I feel like they could've spent more time together, and if there were choices that we could make so that Max told Warren about his powers sooner and actually used his help and tagged along with him, it would've been awesome. But I see why they spent most of their time on Chloe, since they had to make the player care about her to make the final choice harder, but I still think it was hard even when they were best friends.

************SPOILER END!!***************

And you might hear some people say that , most of your choices would not matter, but I think that's wrong. Not only will your choices impact the kind of end you get if you make one of the choices, it's also about the experience you made Max go through. In a game that's about travelling past in time, you must expect some of the experiences the character has had with other people be "erased" when she goes before said experience. But the important thing is that it's still there, it's still with Max, and the player. They have experienced and they will remember it, even if they're the only people that will.



Other than some small nitpicks here and there, I believe this game is a fantastic work of art, and considering the fact that the first episode is completely free now, you should definitely check it out.

I promise, you will be hella impressed!!

It's a nice and beautiful game for it's price, I especially liked the art style,and the overall feel. I'm really looking forward to future games published by Iranian developers and especially Bearded Bird studios.

This game is completely different from the one they were advertising. I got bored after about 20 hours, but still pushed myself to play hoping something amazing would happen. I'm still completely disappointed. They say steam is refunding this regardless of your playtime, so I might give that a shot.