Recent reviews by Anchovy Emulsion

One of the most enjoyable and addictive gaming experiences I've ever had. After 147 hours played on Game Pass, I figured I should actually purchase this masterpiece for real and transfer my save over to Steam.

I really enjoyed this game and the way it crafts a sense of horror through combination of atmosphere, storytelling and psychology. While there are a few jump-scares and monster scenes, the tensest moments in the game are during the story-driven interactions with other hotel guests. The narrative invites you to consider whether anyone is truly who they say they are, and how to strike a balance between openness and vulnerability, or independence and apprehension in life.

It's a short experience, but full of memorable moments, environments and characters. My favourite horror game since Amnesia:TDD, and definitely worth the full price.

Minor plot spoiler and TW: As someone who carries the weight of childhood traumas in adulthood, and has wrestled with suicidal ideations, the protagonist's journey in learning to trust and develop relationships in spite of anxiety and fear of abandonment really resonated with me. Their backstory was told in a really tasteful way which didn't feel forced.

As a big fan of the BioShock and Dishonored series, I'd always wanted to play the seminal title System Shock, but was put off by its age. This remake has allowed me to experience the legendary game in a way I never thought possible.

The art style, atmosphere, and sound design are all fantastic. As for the gameplay, it definitely feels like a 90s game and that's something you'll either love or hate. Be prepared for a lot of back-tracking; I spent a good chunk of my playtime re-tracing my steps and trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing and where I was supposed to be going, but I enjoyed every moment of it.

Gunplay and combat becomes a little mundane towards the mid-to-late game, as certain loadouts will make short work of even the toughest bosses. More challenging than the combat itself, is managing your resources to ensure you can recover and survive the next fights.

A great game overall, which will give you that 90s System Shock experience but with modern graphics and quality of life improvements.

Two tips I wish I'd known in the beginning:

- Audio and data logs you'll find around the station will act as your quest guide, and contain vital directions for you to follow. When you're stuck, or unsure what your objective is, the logs will always point you in the right direction. Often you'll need to listen/read multiple logs to piece together the information you need.

- Use the notepad in the Steam overlay, or have a pen and paper handy for writing down access codes you'll need later on in the levels/story.

TTK is ridiculously short given the maps allow more angles for the enemy than you'll ever be able to cover. Squads camp out in windows, and anything outside of a building or cover is obliterated the second it is spotted. Squad gameplay and pushing objectives is therefore redundant. People are either camping, or running around like headless chickens and insta-dying the second someone lurking in any one of the 60 windows on your screen spots you.

Cyberpunk is a compelling RPG set in a beautiful, detailed and vibrant world. It's a little rough around the edges, but that doesn't ruin what is an incredible game overall.

Fundamentally a good game as all Europa Universalis' have been, but US$270 of DLC (that's $361 for me as an Australian) is an absolute rort. A lot of these DLCs are merely fixing the broken vanilla mechanics, or adding tiny features which should have been included in the first release (Muslim portraits). Even in this age of paid addons, most companies would issue small patches and tweaks where Paradox have instead released US$15 DLC packs. This is a great game, by all means. But I can't recommend a title from a company which seeks to bleed it's loyal fans dry every time they issue an update.

For a game which promised limitless possibilities and the wonder of exploration, No Man's Sky offers very little in the way of actual discovery. It takes only several hours before one realises that most terrain, aliens, creatures, plants, and entire systems are barely distinguishable from one another. No Man's Sky failed to deliver on it's core concept of allowing the player to become a pioneer, to feel like you're traversing worlds which no one else has seen.

The near worthless upgrades system, ridiculously tedious early-game inventory management, weak dialogue in interraction with aliens, terrible aim-assists, and restricted flight controls all add to what is already a fairly miserable and uninspiring experience to begin with. Hello Games have promised to deliver extra content, but when they've delivered a launch-day product so below even the most modest of expectations, how can we trust that NMS will ever be the game which was marketed to us?

Not recommended.

Robbed a petrol station and escaped the police in a golf cart while listening to death metal on my custom radio station.

10/10