Recent reviews by KP557

Helldivers 2 is still great and probably my game of the year for 2024. It has some of the best shooting and gunplay I've ever seen in a shooter, the stratagems are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome. Friendly fire being always on is the best decision this game could have ever made both for comedy and gameplay. Not to mention having the best monetization and dare i say best live service not just in 2024 but possibly of any game before it.

EDIT: SONY HAVE BACKPEDALED ON THEIR MANDATORY PSN LINKING. I'm changing my review back to POSITIVE and everyone else should do the same. Support Arrowhead and keep dunking on Sony wherever possible. FOR DEMOCRACY! FOR LIBERTY! FOR SUPER EARTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Aesthetics and music are on point. Feels like a PS2 game (in a good way). But there's way too many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics. I appreciate the pokemon-esque types and all that. But did we also need a ♥♥♥♥ ton of buffs, debuffs, etc. related to each one. While the mechanics themselves are sound, there's just way too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ much going on here. And the balancing past the first area is ♥♥♥♥. Can't recommend on that alone.

If I could put a neutral review, I would. But for multiple factors, I can't recommend it, especially at full price.

The pros:
-art style and general atmosphere (as others have pointed out) is very Mike Mignola Hellboy reminiscient, its really cool
-music/SFX are great
-Just the presence of Ron Perlman is a W
-upgrade system is nice and simple
-the shooting itself is fun as is learning how each weapon works
-game isn't super RNG dependent, you can usually scrape by on the stuff you find/buy and its pretty easy to unlock and try new stuff often
-runes are nice when you get them. beat a boss, find a rune adding something new to your kit so youre more likely to find upgrades/items in the future. tho it does suck to initially have so many paths you can't take because "you need something to get across this"

Cons (Pretty much all gameplay):
-I'm ok with the fixed camera angles but they are so unhelpful at times and you can do nothing about it
-getting into/exiting/moving around cover is so sluggish and feels like ass, how does this happen when its a core ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanic of the game
-I also felt that aiming with the mouse was sort of sluggish too but ymmv on that tbh
-i swear enemies with guns have autoaim if you're not in cover. you can dodge one shot from the same enemy just to get smacked by a second or third and it feels ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful. this is particularly egregious in the Preacher fights.
-there are some enemies that are melee only and a smaller subset that you have to let get closer to you to even be able to shoot them. and then you have a 0.5s reaction window to dodge or try to kill them or get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. WHY.
-theres a whole mechanic built around light. turn on a light, nearby enemies get stunned, you can actually see in a small-ish area around it. this is fine. what is not fine is feeling like you're pinned down by gunfire that you can't see where its coming from exactly and have to either blindfire or risk taking lead because hee hoo, you dont get to see in this room and you really want to even be able to shoot, find cover and generally exist
-speaking of stun, the stun mechanic isn't really explained well if at all. almost all, if not all, enemies have a white bar and a green bar, white for stun, green for health. white bar goes down, enemy gets stunned for a while. different guns have different stun damage. but the game never explains any of this to you, or if it did it was easily overlooked.

I had one very successful run where I got through Chapter 1 and 2, two Preacher encounters and what I believe to be a final boss, died because I made a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapon swap and asked myself if I wanted to go through two sections of 3 levels again just to fight this cancerous boss again. I don't. So I gave up.

If you like roguelikes with small roguelite and RPG elements, consider playing West of Dead. but dont get it full price and know how rough the core gameplay experience feels

100/10 would find Biggie Cheese and his brothers and sisters again

fr tho, solid puzzles, decent va work, really only got stuck at the end and even then that was really on us. fun

Pretty fun. I ended up spending a lot of time grinding early on in the first area because i wanted to explore and show the entire map only to realize it was entirely pointless to do so; its not like normal metroid-vania's. The game tries to say that the areas are like random, ever-changing. Honestly, I didnt notice, every time I went into an area, it felt identical to the last one. maybe its just the map/room rng, i dunno. combat is solid if simple, abilities are pretty cool though some end up being kinda pointless or only used in a couple places. The upgrade tree is really just an excuse to get some big boy upgrades while also taking on a bunch of small little stat boosts. It's nothing crazy but you at least get to choose what you prioritize first. I went the Resist route and it felt pretty cool to feel like such a superpowered badass without the need of the elder shards. Enemy design is fairly unique despite not having many different enemy types. Bosses have some really cool design but ultimately boil down to "hit the weak spot". First half of each boss fight is pretty weak too and difficulty ramps up immensely in the second half. The map is broken up into 3 areas and the third area is also super annoying due to insta-death falls or just losing progress due to falling, enemies with big knockback and a very annoying teleporting miniboss. Also like, there just isn't that much of a story? You play as Eshe but we never really learn anything about them at all, why they're where they are, what their backstory is, anything at all. The world we're in obviously has lore and history to it but I just found myself not understanding any of it at all. Too many names and places with little else in the way of detail.

Got about 16 hours out of it while hitting 94% completion. I say it's worth it enough to pay full price, but you might as well wait for a sale and make it worth your while. If you like metroid-vania's or rogue-lites, you'll like this

I can't recommend this in good faith. I'm all for devs getting a bag, but I got it on sale and I feel ripped off. Selling this at $15 is a disgrace, either the devs, the publisher or both should be ashamed.

I'm bored out of my mind looking and walking around this house, interacting with meaningless things that give meaningless dialogue that amount to nothing in the end. Like I get that this is a concept and a story that resonates somewhat with the developers. But it doesn't go anywhere. It's all just whining and whinging and doesn't feel fulfilling whatsoever. There's this vaguely supernatural ideas, including a strange orb that shows up and all it does is let you change the camera's perspective so you can look all around areas. But then nothing else is even remotely done with this idea in an otherwise completely grounded game and story. Why? and why in god's names in what is basically a visual novel does the text skip after 5 seconds of being on screen. maybe i just dont want to read the text crawl ffs, what is wrong with you

The nicest things I can say is that the presentation is very nice, sans the character models. The way parts of the scenes transition in and out is really cool. I actually really liked the whole "Among the Leaves" section, even if it was short. The idea of characters inter-cutting and adding their own and dialogue and opinions on something was solid too, even if it doesn't happen for 75% of the game.

Don't buy this ♥♥♥♥. Watch a playthrough on Youtube or something. If you want to have a good hour and a half experience, go buy something like Post Void. It's $3 and actually fun

The art style is awesome. This game is beautifully illustrated both in gameplay segments and in cutscenes.

But everything else ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks dude. The premise itself is decent, even if unoriginal (Watch Dogs anyone?). But the game quickly lost me when it became a linear game where all I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do is hold D to go to the right, right mouse to aim, and shoot every 5 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seconds with left click or hit the space button to jump over a gap or climb something. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring. the cops you face and play against spray even more bullets than they do irl. Why bother incorporating a stealth mechanic when it is way easier and way faster just to gun down every mook you see with ruthless intent? Why did you give me the worst shotgun in gaming history? Why in god's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ name did you decide to make fast moving elevators filled with enemies on either side that give next to no reaction time to attack or turn and by the time you do, your corpse is something akin to swiss cheese. Get ♥♥♥♥♥♥, go back to last checkpoint. The platforming is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring and basic as ♥♥♥♥. So are the "puzzles" if you can call them that. And I know I'm playing a 60 year old man for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake, but do you have to shimmy along a ledge or a cable so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slowly? What a waste of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time.

I gave up at the end of Chapter 3. In a final act of the game pissing on me as a player, after reacting quickly and saving myself and my friends at the end of Chapter 1, the main character of that chapter (ngl I forget his name, its been months) returned at the end of Chapter 3 and apologized to the police chief I've been controlling for 2 chapters. Rather than give me the option of whether to forgive him or kill him, the chief and really the game chooses to call him and me by extension a "Murderer" and puts a bullet in his head for me. Thanks so much game. You made my decision not matter whatsoever. ♥♥♥♥ you.

Don't spend $20 on this dreck. If I'm halfway through in two and a half hours, there's no way you're gonna get your money's worth at that price if you play it all the way through. ♥♥♥♥, don't even buy it on sale I say. It's not worth it. It doesn't respect your time or you as a player.

I really like the premise, I really like the way it plays. But I'm sick of getting punished and getting beaten down when ive been told everything's fine in a location or due to bad rng

literally unplayable. I have an 11th Gen I5 and an RTX 3060 in my rig, far more than any minimum or recommended specs. But the game crashes every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time. In the opening text crawl. Not even 2 minutes into gameplay. Why does the game need a launcher anyway? ♥♥♥♥ you Bloober Team and ♥♥♥♥ you if you think I'm gonna spend 30 more bucks for an "upgraded" version of this when you should have given it away to your customers for free you greedy bastards and thieves. Go steal some more assets for Silent Hell 2 why don't you.

It's pretty good. Solid update on the formula of Papers Please.

Pros:
-The story is good. Solid take on what a exaggerated Post Brexit UK would look like. The comedy and easter eggs are nice as well. By the end I even started to really accept the ♥♥♥♥ that the British characters were throwing at me, really got in my head and made me kinda give up and just accept that my character was a Euro when ofc they aren't, which is the whole point. characters are pretty solid throughout and while there aren't really any significant arcs or changes, they're all at least charming in their own ways
-Gameplay is fun and builds up the challenge well, adding new mechanics over time, applying both to work and life outside of work. Some of the upgrades you get are just cosmetic but when you get ones that really improve your work flow it feels great. different enough from papers please to stand on its own and do things its own way
-Music is excellent and the goofy voice "acting" while over the top at times is fun and feels like it belongs
-The pixel art is very detailed and is well done, especially the backgrounds and how areas change from chapter to chapter
-the resource management aspect is pretty good. its tough through the first couple chapters to manage your cash and health while also trying to pay your bills and not get too fatigued by working so many days in a row or not having adequate resources to prevent that fatigue. by the third chapter i was swimming in cash so it wasnt too hard to manage by then but my experience won't be the same as everyone else's

The cons:
-If you want to get the best ending, you really gotta be at your A game and not make too many mistakes, and it can be a struggle to keep up at times. this especially applies to the last chapter, where you have to manage not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up intentionally to further your goals. it can feel super frustrating to get your pay docked because you overlooked one thing when you do not have the time to thoroughly go through every single little detail
-the gameplay does get Incredibly repetitive by the end. By the end of the second chapter you've basically seen all the mechanics that will be in the game, and the third just ramps up the difficulty. midway through the third chapter i just wanted it all to be over, it was a slog to reach the end. i think papers please had the right idea at capping the gameplay to 30 in-game days, 90 is just far too much
-the save system is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid. if you try to go back and restart a day, it creates a whole new save file. and you can only ever have 3 save files at a time. so you constantly have to go back and delete your old progress if you want to restart a day, its obnoxious and makes no sense. papers please nailed this years ago, idk how they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this up


Overall, very good game. Probably an 8/10 or so. Wait for a sale if you're feeling skeptical, but if you liked papers please you'll like this.