Recent reviews by herkesemargarin

Yes, that should work.

Unique art style, great atmosphere and amazing soundtrack, sadly paired with sub-par gameplay, dull combat and outdated platforming. Blasphemous could've been a masterpiece, but alas, it's far from it. If you are a fan of the likes of Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary or the FromSoftware catalogue, you would probably prefer re-playing them over Blasphemous.

Slightly weaker than the original, but we actually have cats this time, hence the recommendation.

As a lifelong fan of Desperados and Commandos series, having enjoyed Shadow Tactics immensely, I had high very hopes for this game. Immediately after starting, many things felt outright wrong, but I kept playing and tried really hard to enjoy it. I would've probably finished the game despite my discomfort, but then a particular event just made me immediately quit the game with good conscience and not look back: the chapter where I got Isabelle, an actual "witch" character (as in fantasy RPG's) and her main skill is literally "Mind Control". Yeah, you read it right. It does exactly what it says, it mind controls enemies.

What the actual ♥♥♥♥? Are we having super powers now?

In my opinion, it was already such a poor decision to depart from the general aesthetics and seriousness of the "Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive" that I was barely holding on. Then the mind control happened, and it was the final straw. Even when I ignore every subjective thought I had regarding the style choices, this single design decision immediately killed all the immersion for me, disregarded all the incentive to keep playing it and invalidated all the great quality of life improvements that were introduced. Imagine playing Red Dead Redemption for hours, finishing 50% of the game, just for the game to reveal to you that you can actually do magic.

This was the biggest "♥♥♥♥ you" I could've ever received from a beloved game series.

I won't be recommending this to anyone in their right mind.

After playing it for no more than 2 hours, you will already be realizing that this game is a complete and utter trash in every aspect imaginable. There is a reason it is on a whopping 95% sale, and trust me, it is not even worth that.

Back to NFSU2.

Just...beautiful.

First of all, I should say that I may have played every good survival and sandbox game ever existed.

Everything about this game has the purpose of stretching activities and making the experience as tedious as possible, with mechanics completely devoid of logic.

- You can dive just for a couple minutes (There exists many people on Earth, who can hold their breathes longer than this), you'll waste %80 of your time diving and swimming back to the surface. I don't care about middle or late game where you have bases and submarines, this is unacceptable in a setting where you have amazing technologies.
- You can't store more than a handful of materials in a single container. You'll waste most of your time with stupid inventory management. Nope, you can't put any containers in your capsule, it has to be in the water. Why? No reason whatsoever.
- Progress is mostly unlocked by timers in the shape of transmissions, you just have to wait for it, no matter how good or fast you play. Want to explore Aurora? Too bad, an explosion needs to happen first, so that you can craft the radiation suit. Whole game consists of these dumb locked progression illusions, it literally makes fun of the player.
- You can't stockpile food or water, they'll expire. You have to continuously farm for basic ingredients in order to survive, no matter how much progress you made. There is little to none you can do to automate these brain-dead activities, and it is not even slightly fun.
- No matter how hard you try to plan your moves, you can't speed up your progress. There is no way. You can't even focus on finding particular basic materials, since at all times they appear at the bare minimum. It actually feels like it is purposefully designed that way, and may even be hard coded, so that you'll always be a few materials off.

And a lot more.

I first played Subnautica in 2015, and it looked very promising back then, but it sadly is one of the worse survival games I've played. Aside from great atmosphere, it has no intrinsic merit whatsoever. Hard to understand why people like this so much.

The game is full of random pop culture and game references. Every scene is chaotically full of them. What is the point? Are they trying to be relatable? Are they trying to prove to us that they are actually living in the 21st century? That they are not boomers? We get it. Jokes aside, if you don’t have anything to tell, using references and trying to be relatable is an easy way to get the attention of the players/readers/viewers.

The jokes are definitely not funny. Lobotomize yourself = watch tv. Really, is this your idea of humor? It’s like one of those boomer comics that depict a young person being completely unaware of their surroundings and get hit by a bus because of the cell phone on their hands.

The puzzles are so idiotic and randomly linked to the story, they almost gave me brain damage. Let me give you an example. The first puzzle I solved was this: There’s a dust creature (?) upstairs that wants to be strong and conquer the world. He’s somehow there, and we somehow help him to get stronger (by making a cocktail from the items we collected beforehand) before we even know that this creature will help us get a knob from the bed (now that he’s stronger than us), which we will melt and get the nails inside it, which then we will put on the drill to make it work. Then we use this drill to get the gears stuck inside the teeth of a crocodile living under the sewage, becauseee, then we will use these gears to make the clock we collected beforehand work, to use its alarm to scare of the giant that’s been blocking our way outside, only to get to the next scene. Can you follow me? How did you even write this? That’s not a story, these are not creative puzzles.

There is no art style in this game. There’s no aesthetic unity. Take the construction scene, for example. Look at the characters in the background, on the top of the construction. Almost every character is drawn in a different style. There’s no unity. This makes me think that the illustrators of the game just piled up different image references from the internet and created a collage scene, and then drew over that scene in photoshop. It isn't artistic or anything. It is the bare minimum that a person working as an illustrator can make.

If you’re a fan of classic point-and-click adventures, and if you ever played and loved the contemporary and more artsy ones like The Dream Machine or the games of Amanita Design (Machinarium, Samorost, Botanicula, Pilgrims), don’t waste your money and time on this game. You will regret it badly.

So very original ... in finding different ways to ♥♥♥♥ you.

Dull combat, boring survival mechanics, sloppy controls, unfair encounters, broken gameplay loop - all designed to waste your time and energy as much as possible, packed into a single game. Aside from the great art style, nothing about this game is working. It is actually unbelievable how much attention and praise this game gets. Go play Factorio, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Minecraft, Divinity: Original Sin or something along these lines if you want to enjoy a true co-op experience, not this.