Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον M1SF0RTUNE

Runs great, feels great, plays great, IS great. Move over Overwatch, CoD, Siege, and even Apex Legends. A new contender's in town and they're playing for keeps!

*Edited 12/13/2023 changing from a cautiously-recommended review to a non-recommendation due to the game running far more poorly after the Season One update and a competitor coming out within a month that's been far more worth my time than this.

Bottom line, Modern Warfare 3 (2023) is patch content other games would include for free or maybe for a ~$30 expansion/DLC being charged for $70. There are far better games that came out this year worth $70 and even some are completely Free to Play that are more fun, more original, better optimized with better production value, and most importantly, wasn't forced by a publisher to come out in 16 months. Show some solidarity to Sledgehammer because they tried but I can't in good consciousness recommend this game in spite of the hours of fun grind that can be found in the MP and Zombies despite that.

Here's my thoughts in bullet-point form:
- The Campaign is awful and basically asset flips Warzone maps with a cobbled-together and poorly-written storyline.
- The positive MP tweaks including much better movement, punchier gun feedback with better-feeling recoil and visibility, Loadout systems & (untimed) Perks are something that should've been changed in a patch like most other live service games would do.
- MW2's good camo grind is back but so is the awful UI, optimization and other holdovers felt in last year's guns and plethora of bugs.
- Playing 2009's MW2 maps is nostalgic and just fresh enough to play thanks to MW2019's mechanics and style, but the novelty wears off after a while and some of the maps are really bad stinkers, especially because of the tweaks (looking at you Sub Base, Derail and Favela).
- Zombies is just MW2 DMZ with extra Cold War Outbreak mode additions mixed in. It's fine, I enjoy it sometimes, appreciate something different with the Zombies formula compared to the 30 other games we already played, and it's a chill way to grind weapons outside of MP's sweatfest, but it lacks polish, originality and could use some design overhauls to fit in this iteration's framework.
- I don't really like how everything is homogenized to be more like Warzone in every mode. Warzone's okay (even thanks to S1's overhauls) and can be a lot of fun, but the experiences are starting to blur everything together making other modes start to stand out less and less.
- After Season 1 launched, my game gets constant Packet Bursts that drop frames or even freezes the game often getting me killed unfairly during normal play in either MP or Zombies. It ran a whole lot better back in the Beta and even pre-S1.
- This game feels like trying to justify/milk the $70 value through chores and camo grinding in these two modes and hardly feels genuinely fun thanks to SBMM creating unwinnable games that just waste your time. It's exhausting and the mood fades fast.
- I feel really bad for Sledgehammer not getting to make the games they want to make. They've been forced to crank out WW2 to chase the "back to basics/boots on the ground" trend, Vanguard in barely 2 years due to mismanagement with them and Black Ops Cold War while also chasing the same trend, and then forced again to make this in such a short period just so Activision can make one more batch of money before the Microsoft deal closes. On top of all that, Activision's clearly making them a scapegoat, having them put out public announcements contradictory to the facts of the game's development and probably won't learn their lessons from this game's failures.
- Lastly, The Finals came out just a few weeks after this game did and it's completely Free to Play. I've had a lot more fun just playing that game and experiencing something fresh, new, far more polished, and most importantly, confident. I can even say the same for an Indie multiplayer spy game Deceive Inc. that costs less than half of this game and there's more rewarding things to do and earn. With CoD I feel like I'm in debt to try and have fun, versus The Finals which I feel like I'm profiting more fun than the game asks me to invest.

TL;DR: Wanna play a cool, colorful and stylish cyberpunk game that doesn't hold your hand, expects you to pay attention as well as immerse yourself in the world, story, characters and combat? Or a game that's a no-compromise, no-nonsense recreation of an o.g. classic that can easily rival modern remakes of today?

Then stop reading, pick up this game immediately and enjoy this throwback and successful Kickstarter passion project that brings a great franchise back into the modern age. Oh and while this game is far more cryptic than modern follow-the-waypoint experiences, refrain from looking at a guide. You'll thank yourself later!

----------

I got about a couple hours into the game when I got stuck and was clueless about my objective. I started to open a walkthrough for at least some hint when it stopped me on the very first line. It said something along the lines of "pick up the pieces where the rebellion failed and help them finish their mission that they started." It encouraged me to stop reading the guide and start paying more attention to the audio logs, what the various characters were trying to do and where they went on the station to stop SHODAN, and that was what ultimately transcended the entire experience for me from just a great survival horror/immersive sim to one of the best ever made.

I'm a big System Shock 2 fan, despite the fact I only played it a few years ago. I was stoked for this Remake and held on through baited breath as it went through the vicious cycle of development, but the game that came out on the other side is a love letter to not just System Shock 1 but also the sequel.

Level design, campaign design and the enemy variety are all lifted from the original but given fresh but carefully selected coats of paint and tweaks to make them familiar but fresh. Entire areas from the original are given 1-1 recreations in their layout with a few extra flourishes added to make the space come more alive. The closest I can equate this remake to is a blend of both Halo Anniversary (without that remake's botched art direction) where it's the exact same game you remember, flaws and all, and Resident Evil 1's remake with a refined recreation of the original layout with subtle tweaks to give the formula a few new surprises. It's the kind of game where old guides of the original work just fine here but you'll need new or modern gameplay skills to ultimately succeed.

What's new are subtle but effective tweaks such as the new scrapping system and the simple grid-based inventory management akin to SS2. The cyberspace combat was also refined greatly, keeping the same idea from the original game but making it much more easy on the eyes and even a lot of fun at times. A variety of weapons are plucked from the original but given different functionalities while also introducing a few new weapons. They're all satisfying to use as certain enemies have greater strengths or weaknesses to certain ammo types or weapons, adding to even more of the adaptability and deduction demanded of the player that gives this a remarkably similar feel to recent survival horror games (i.e. the Resident Evil Remakes). It really refines the old "thinking man's shooter" label once given to Bioshock, which is appropriate since that game is a spiritual successor to this franchise.

On top of that there's something lovingly charming about the Kickstarter implementations in this game, such as ID Tags of backers found on the various bodies you'll encounter throughout the station, or a couple of named enemies after some of the backers, even a couple of voice recordings with lines written by higher-level backers. It really gives the game a special kind of comradarie not really seen outside of something like Death Stranding, but it really shows the absolute love the developers poured into this project and it's kind of infectious and hard not to love the game too for grand gestures like these and the no-compromise recreation of a classic experience. The purity on display is honestly heartwarming as a gamer.

Nightdive Studios really poured all their love, passion, commitment and respect for the original into this Remake and I can't recommend it enough whether you're a SS2 fan like me, brand new to the franchise or a series vet since the original. Even Bioshock fans, other Immersive Sim fans and survival horror fans should give this game a shot.

The story is rather vapid and the campaign is extremely disjointed from level to level, especially when compared to the F.E.A.R. franchise that this game draws a lot of similarities to. But where it lacks F.E.A.R.'s story, it definitely recreates the sense of John Woo chaos and destruction in the moment-to-moment gunplay and is honestly pretty intense and satisfying. It's a fun setpiece-to-setpiece style of game and if you enjoy action shooters you'll have a great time here for a great price.

This experience was such a wonderful and pleasant little surprise. What it lacks in scale it more than makes up for in fantastic writing, a genius use of a "time loop" system, great characters, intriguing attention to detail with history, interesting themes about morality and subject morality dot the experience, and even some other little surprises come packaged in this humble but well-crafted adventure-mystery-puzzler. If you're looking for a small but powerful little storytelling experience, I can't recommend this enough!

This is the modern successor to The Ship, Assassin's Creed and/or Trouble in Terrorist Town I've always wanted! Can't recommend this enough if you're a fan of deception-driven games!

Fantastic entry in the franchise, and Hitman 3 confirmed to import levels from both Hitman 1 and 2 as well as import your progression from this game into the sequel. Now's a great time to jump into the World of Assassination!

Let's make one thing very clear. At full price, you're paying $30 for Resident Evil 3 Remake, and you're paying $30 for Resident Evil Resistance. And no, that's not entirely a good thing, unfortunately.

Minor spoilers ahead.

---------

Where to start... Resident Evil 2 Remake was an ambitious, finely engineered machine. It was Resident Evil 2 but remixed to fit the modern climate, while also sprinkling its own ideas to make it a wholly unique game on its own, distinct from the original Resident Evil 2. It ditched a compelling mechanic with unique A/B and B/A campaign runs telling entirely different stories in lieu of a story that fits cleanly into the established series canon with some very minor retweaks (and some unwanted repetition), but it made up for it with the compelling and terrifying Mr. X, motion capture, art direction, acting, and the sense of tension zombies lost over the years.

Then here comes Resident Evil 3 Remake, a thoughtless, sloppy, and compromised experience that cherrypicks moments from the original game, tosses far too much out, and takes too many cues from the wrong pages of Resident Evil design over the years.

The biggest disappointment in this game comes in the form of the co-star of this game next to Jill Valentine; Nemesis. He's hyped up as the unstoppable force against you, and the rivalry you'll have to endure throughout the game from the word "go," yet the game seemed to completely miss the point of what made Nemesis special in the first place. The original Nemesis inspired Alien Isolation's Alien AI; a stalker that could hit you anytime, anywhere while you're looking for key items, weapons, ammo, or just trying to find the door to the next area. RE3 Remake, however, almost completely squanders this opportunity in favor of large, and often-scripted setpiece sequences that ring hollow and deflate a lot of the tension. By the end of the game, Nemesis barely feels like a threat and more of a mild nuisance who's only intimidating because the cinematics want to make us think he is. This hurts because the opening hour of the game shows what this dynamic could've been like had they decided to design their game around him and not on trying to make a big fireworks show of his rivalry with Jill.

Level design also took a serious blow. Where RE2make feels like it opened up the city outside the original's scope and vision, RE3make seemed to box itself in, lock a bunch of doors, and throw out a lot of the nice furniture along with it. The game starts as a continuation of the ideas RE2make began but then quickly devolves into linear action with very little room to maneuver or explore. It feels rushed, uncreative, and dispassionate, like a game that took the engine, assets, but had zero ambition and didn't want to add anything fresh or any new meaningful new mechanics that weren't checkboxes from the original game.

Speaking of mechanics, RE2 Remake added new ideas such as breakable knives, and how they and grenades could be used defensively when grabbed, or how the game supplied boards for shoring up windows to mitigate zombie spawns. These are abandoned, defaulting to an RE3 that feels far too safe, such as going back to unbreakable knives, no defenses against grabs, and even re-adds enemies that could one-hit kill you with a single lunge from the bad game design textbook of yore. The only (un)original idea this game attempts to introduce is mashing a quick-time event to mitigate damage when grabbed, which is something noticeably and lazily bolted on to a pre-existing RE2make animation.

So much of this is inferior to RE2 Remake in general, from the writing to the pacing, the level design and the boss design. Gimmicks replace player resourcefulness, parts of the story feel contrived to pad for time. Parts that were cut from the previous game's remake were substituted with new and interesting things, like RE2's orphanage and the way the "2nd Run" remixes the levels and enemy placements. This game, RE3, removes the decision branches from the original game that led to different encounters or strategies (and altering story beats) and doesn't replace them with anything.

Well, that's not entirely true. Enter Resident Evil Resistance.

For the other half of your game purchase, you're getting RE3's stab at a Dead by Daylight-style mode. One mastermind who can place zombies in an environment, four survivors to go against them. I've had enough time in the Open Beta to understand enough of the game's tricks and find it a bit underwhelming.

On top of missing basic features like a Push-to-Talk, the mode doesn't feel very well balanced. There are cheap instances in some maps where the Mastermind can overpower the players in confined spaces with Mr. X summons, and other times the players can completely shut down and disable the mastermind from being able to act if they're fast and coordinated enough. PC controls for the Mastermind are also awful, and some interface management as the survivors is finnicky and clumsy.

Compared to the inspiration, Dead by Daylight, the Killer in that game was often overpowered and can easily take out one player, but a coordinated enough group of players can use that time to keep tackling objectives, whereas a skilled enough Killer can figure out how to micromanage each player and pin them into corners with their abilities. In Resistance, the Mastermind is often underpowered and easily subdued by the hacker character the survivors can choose, limiting their options (which are already limited because of randomly occurring zombie spawns in a "deck" style format). Some powerful zombies can appear but they can't be manually controlled unlike the standard fare or the big boss types, meaning you're constantly fighting to score damage that can easily be treated and don't slow the players down enough when they're pushing with power weapons. Oh, and in Resistance, the players can respawn. The only penalty is to the Timer, which is increased by the survivors through zombie kills and teamwork, while hits and knockdowns reduce the time along with kills. This means players can respawn and still act instead of being taken out of the game to give the Mastermind a foothold, and the maps are broken up into "areas" instead of a single map to complete objectives. If the players all arrive at the door to the next area, the Mastermind instantly loses all their zombie spawns they made and are suddenly ejected into the next area.

It all just feels clumsy and somewhat stiff to play. Between inventory management as the survivors to using the camera views for zombie placement, to the Peer-to-Peer connection that can lag and stall the match to unpleasant degrees. Level design is really restricted, camera views are obstructed by quite a bit (and are easily shot out), the frequent commentary from the mastermind gets a little grating at times, it all comes off as a fun novelty that pales in comparison to its' competitors in balance and design.

---------

So in summary, RE3 feels like unambitious table scraps of RE2 and RE3, with little substance even on repeat playthroughs. It not only compromises a lot of what the original game offered and challenged, but it backtracked strides in design made by its predecessor feeling like a half-hearted recreation project with premade assets, and not a proper redesign. Resistance, meanwhile, never "feels" polished or balanced enough to stay past the novelty stage.

There's a lot of fun to be had here, and if you enjoyed the over-the-shoulder gameplay of the RE2 remake, you'll get more of that here. But you're basically playing a glorified expansion pack along with a shoddily executed multiplayer mode that might've compromised the package as a result. This game is worth playing, but absolutely not at $60.

Every single person that made this game a reality should be proud of what they've accomplished here, and we as fans of the series are lucky to have such creativity, passion, and talent among us to bring us one of the finest remakes of our generation. With tight gunplay, intricate level design that expertly remixes the original layouts, impeccable atmosphere, stunning music, an incredible degree of polish, and a redemption of Half-Life's closing chapters in a fantastic re-imagining, this game stands confidently on its own, even standing side by side to the rest of the franchise that it spawned from.

Regardless of whether you've never played Half-Life 1 before, or you've been a fan since the beginning, you owe it to yourself to give this passion project a try. I hope the example that the Crowbar Collective has laid out with this remake will become a standard for the craft of not just mod creation, but game creation for years to come.

But more importantly, I hope Valve are proud of all the hard work and sacrifice it took to make such a quality entry in the series.

TL;DR This is a must-buy. It's not the Half-Life game we expected but it's a terrific entry that we got with immersive and intuitive mechanics, satisfying gunplay, and a solid, intriguing new chapter in the franchise that really proves so much of what VR can do as a gaming platform.

--------

So I love VR. I have a Vive, a Quest, PSVR, and my father owns an Oculus Rift. There's been some tremendous efforts done by Indie developers creating VR classics like Arizona Sunshine, Onward, Pavlov, and one of my personal favorites, The Gallery Episodes 1 and 2. However, we never really had that system seller that proved the potential of the system (saying as somebody who hasn't played Boneworks or The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners).

That changes with Half-Life: Alyx. This is not just a throwaway chapter in the Half-Life franchise, it's a meaty and interesting expansion of the world that gives some hints as to what's to come next in the series. Better still, it fits in VR like a glove. This isn't a PC game paired down to work with VR controls, and it's not just a short walk in the park that'll kill 2-3 hours of your day. My playtime took me around 10 hours; the typical length for a Half-Life game, so this game definitely won't sell you short.

But first, why did this game need to be in VR, and is it worth getting a headset for? For a $1000 Index, no, but for something much more affordable and consumer-friendly like a Rift S or an Oculus Quest, it's a very high recommendation. Much to my surprise, Half-Life as a franchise translates well into VR, as the series had always had elements of exploration, puzzles, physics, scripted setpieces, and minimalism in mechanics with a tightness in controls. When you see the world to scale, you're rifling through shelves and drawers for ammo or getting a look at the vast city from a balcony, it's just as immersive as ever if not more so than its predecessors.

For this who've dabbled in VR already, where things tended to feel sort of weightless, flimsy and fiddly. This game is responsive, physics items and weapons feel weighty, controls are simple, efficient, and well-designed for each control style, and you have a better sense of presence than most VR games. Your hand won't just hover through walls, and you're not playing with PC game mechanics bolted onto motion controllers. Guns have impact, firefights are intense and exhilaratingly messy scraps with the added mechanics of reloading and managing a very minute amount of items you can carry. All the controls feel responsive, switching guns is fast and easy, reloading is made easy with proximity to your weapon as opposed to trying to jam the clip in with the physics glitching out on you. It feels like a tightly designed and polished product, and the game world is so densely packed with detail, it's always a treat to look up close and take in the sights at so many angles.

Puzzles are also here, from physics puzzles to navigation puzzles straight out of the Half-Life playbook, though some new VR mechanics that involve hacking with a multitool make frequent appearances. Personally I grew tired of these specific puzzles after a while but they made for nice breaks from the firefights and you're typically rewarded with ammo, supplies, and the all-important Resins.

New to Half-Life is an upgrade system, where you can scour and scavenge through the world to find little blocks of currency called Resin, which you use to upgrade your guns to have things like laser sights, auto-loading magazines for the shotgun, or a laser sight that can make shooting quickly in tight quarters a helpful punch. While this is a huge break from Half-Life's style of progression by collecting a vast arsenal, it makes you personally attached to your small amount of guns and serves as a fun exploration-promoting alternative that fits well in a setting like VR.

And you'll wanna explore too. This game is absolutely beautiful. Animations are fluid, detailed, expressive, and convey a sense of weight and presence. Lighting is jaw-dropping even in the pitch dark. The detail on so many models in the game is astounding, and the fact you can pick them up and look at their exquisite texture work shows the confidence a company like Valve has for their new engine. You'll go through smaller environments than you would in previous games, but don't let that trick you into thinking the game doesn't have a sense of scale which it absolutely does. If you thought Half-Life 2's citadel looked big, wait 'til you see how big it *actually* is.

Finally, the story. I refuse to talk about any spoilers, but as it says on the tin, it's a mid-quel to HL1 and HL2, and I can't safely call it a self-contained, isolated storyline as it does require familiarity with the story, characters, and world in every primary Half-Life game starring everyone's favorite crowbar-wielding scientist. It'll throw some twists and turns that hardcore fans definitely ought not to miss as it sets up some new plot points we might get to explore in the ever-elusive Half-Life 3. The game's tone ultimately fits Alyx's more optimistic personality, even with the grim situation of the world and City 17 as well as some of the tense or morbid situations this game will put you in. Other than that, it's a well-paced, generally simple plot and premise with an ending that'll really turn heads, while paying plenty of homage to the games that came before as it carves out its' own unique identity with the style of writing, humor, and directions to characters both old and new.

And there's also a character called Jeff. That's all you need to know.

In summary, this game makes an incredibly strong case for the viability and potential of VR with engaging, satisfying, and immersive mechanics with an incredible amount of polish, and just might be the killer app we've all been waiting for. I understand the doubts and frustrations of not being able to play this as the average consumer who waited 13 years for a sequel, but don't underestimate this game as a gimmicky cash-grab. It's made with love, passion, and precision, and Valve took a huge risk to show the world what the power and immersion that only VR can do.

We might have great multiplayer gems like Pavlov and Onward, we might have tight singleplayer adventures like Arizona Sunshine, Boneworks, and The Gallery, but Valve came back swinging while proving that they still have what it takes to redefine the gaming industry once again with technological achievements and immersive storytelling.