Recent reviews by Novelty Jack

This is the kind of game you play if you want a relatively quick, fulfilling Souls-like experience that doesn't get too complex or difficult. It'd be an excellent gateway to more challenging games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring or whatever the elitist kids are playing these days.

I think parts of the story may be a little lost in translation (literally), but it can be pieced together with a (worthwhile) second playthrough or some YT videos or a wiki scan or whatever. Not as opaque as other SoulsBorne-type games, but there's still nuance and thought-provoking elements.

I got everything worth getting on my second playthrough, no guides, and I'm not a very good completionist. Give it a play now, or wait for a sale, you probably won't regret it either way.

Everything enjoyable about Dark Souls, made better and in a much, much larger world with SO MUCH CONTENT.

If you tried this game before the 1.11 patch and were disappointed due to performance issues, I cannot recommend enough that you give it another go, now. On a system that struggled to hold 60 FPS for more than a second while looking at a wall on the lowest graphical settings, during action-packed gameplay I am now seeing MINIMUM 70 FPS at 1440p on the original PS4 graphics settings + a few tweaks to field of view, lighting, and texture details for even prettier visuals.
I have never seen a game absolutely leap in performance like this on a single patch. Wild.

Besides that, if you never played this on the PS4, you're missing out on one of the most well-designed, entertaining, and narratively beautiful open-world games to-date. Check this ♥♥♥♥ out.

This game is a pretty shallow experience. More than 300 hours, multiple playthroughs, and some real effort to find enjoyment has brought me no closer to wanting to recommend this game to anyone who likes open world games at triple-A prices. The missions are incredibly samey, solving anything without just straight violence is slightly more tedious than the violence itself, and when you're forced to resolve things any other way, all you're really doing is wading through lines and lines of dialogue that add little to nothing to the gameplay and narrative. Been playing since launch and through all these 'big' patches the game hasn't felt improved in any significant way other than to smooth over the multitudes of egregious bugs.

-Gunplay is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ standard. Since day 1, Borderlands has had vastly more combat variety, even without the series's iconic outlandish weapons.
-Weapon variety is virtually cosmetic. All automatic and semi-automatic weapons play about the same and sniping is made damn near useless by the amount of cover available to enemies in a huge percentage of the game.
-Hacking/stealth are wildly overpowered
-Crafting is the only way to get decent armor that doesn't make you look like a blind chimp dressed you. Even then, it's a struggle to find pieces that fit the aesthetic you want.
-You have to look like an absolute moron to be well-equipped since your clothing is your armor and you have no control over how it looks, which I guess is fine if you're willing to look away every time you open the inventory menu since gameplay is exclusively first-person and how you're dressed has zero impact on the game or dialogue.
-The world's lore is interesting, but not especially impactful or informative to the experience. For example, you'll never pick up an e-book full of flavor text with information on it that'll help you make a more rewarding decision in a future mission or conversation.
-Location ambiance is very repetitive and nothing interesting happens unless you're doing a mission.
-The small shootouts, with no significant rewards, between the police and gangs becomes background noise after you come across the exact same skirmish for the 800th time.
-Despite every patch claiming otherwise, NPC pedestrians are STILL incredibly likely to be standing 1 to 15 steps away from their exact clone.
-Three major patches and more than a few ability/mod descriptions are STILL misleading/inaccurate/obtuse and a major gun type has retained a CRIPPLING bug that doesn't allow it to be effectively modded, like every other gun.
-When modding weapons, you have effectively two choices: Barely noticeable damage or mediocre stealth.

I could go on, but there's truly nothing special about this game and unless you're buying it at a bargain-bin price, don't waste your money. The very foundations of the game are what make it bad-to-mediocre. Unless one of the upcoming patches is a damn-near complete overhaul of the game that adds completely new mechanics, more distinct and expansive story paths, and a vastly more robust way to explore the world AND SUBSTANTIAL REASONS TO DO SO, CDPR is just not going to be able to salvage this one. Cyberpunk 2077 is okay, at the very best—far, far from the triple-A experience that was advertised. But if you REALLY, REALLY like the cyberpunk genre, you might find a glimmer of enjoyment here, whether it's for the art or just a really basic cyberpunk fps game. As long as you don't mind narratively disappointing endings.

You might have heard this game compared to Silent Hill. This is a disservice to The Medium and I strongly recommend that you don't listen to anyone saying this. But also understand that you're very likely to enjoy the game if you *do* like Silent Hill. Yes, there are similar themes of trauma, hauntings, limbo, transitions to the afterlife, one's experience shaping an 'other self' and the world around you, but The Medium is a fundamentally different game from its most common comparison and going into it with expectations of a Silent Hill experience is probably going to disappoint.

What do I mean?

Rather than being set in a huge, open maps in which many locations must be traveled to and revisited several times, The Medium takes place in many beautiful and disturbing smaller areas with puzzles of their own. Granted, these puzzles are not especially complex, but the point behind them is to convey the story, which is the real puzzle. In so doing, the developers have given the player more breathing room with which to piece together what is actually going on, rather than drowning them in convoluted 'guess what I was thinking' style puzzles spanning tediously distant locations and forcing the story to take a backseat for long periods.

Threats to the characters' lives are few and moderately distant between and were clearly not the focus of the core gameplay so I wouldn't call The Medium a survival horror experience. Rather, it's a narrative-driven cinematic experience that has puzzles with static threats sprinkled in and some short cat-and-mouse segments. While these short events still made for exciting moments, I was hoping for something closer to the Clocktower series. That is to say, rather than one-room unavoidable, short encounters, I had hoped for the boogeymen of the game to be more active threats that might appear when, for example, a player moved carelessly through the map or failed to solve a puzzle too many times.
TL;DR Combat and long cat-and-mouse segments aren't a thing in The Medium and while the game *might* have benefited from them, you'll only miss them if you were already expecting them.

The story is interesting and emotional and as deep as is reasonable for a single game. You won't be getting massive truckloads of lore fodder just yet since we don't know if sequels/prequels/etc are planned, but there are enough dangling threads the devs could weave into more games within this universe.

I feel like the protagonist's personality had too few opportunities to really shine through. Hard to describe why. Might just be me so take that part with considerably more salt than the rest of this review.

The art is, of course, incredible. Zdzisław Beksiński would have probably been proud to see his style of hellscape rendered so faithfully and accurately.
I can't speak to performance, since my rig is good, but not a top-of-the-line, damn-near-clarktech, liquid-nitro-cooled, eldritch abomination. The game runs well, but you'll definitely need one of those abominations to run this on max graphics, 60fps, with ultra ray-tracing.

Have you ever wanted to play a single, near-monochromatic level of Left 4 Dead for hours on end, most of which is spent playing long, tedious games of Red Light-Green Light and praying you don't make the single, easy mistake it takes to make a run virtually impossible? There are some of you masochistic degenerates out there that would say yes, and to you I say, have fun. You'll be gleefully bashing your head against a spiked, salted wall for weeks on end, your three friends begrudgingly agreeing to play this game with you because they don't want to hurt your feelings. Don't have three friends willing to play this with you? Have fun looking at the first three levels without ever seeing how they end, outside of Youtube videos. There's a community, but—wouldn't you know it—it's toxic.

For the rest of us that prefer spending more time in our day actually getting somewhere and having fun, I cannot recommend enough that you DO NOT pay real money for this game. That's not to say it's not worth experiencing for yourself all the interesting art, animations, sound design, and overall great horror vibes, but those alone do not make up for the travesty of tedious, repetitive gameplay you're in for with GTFO.

Here's how it breaks down:
You are one of four prisoners sentenced to carry out a suicide mission in the bowels of a research station, not long after MS-DOS was invented, apparently. You're given a target or a task and it's your job to...do something, then bounce.

Enemy behavior is what slows the game down the most. You need to wait for them to stop glowing and convulsing before you can get closer for a not-quite-stealth kill, they hear you and attack if you don't crouch-walk, and, you can't shine your flashlight on them or they wake up and attack. They also wake up every enemy within what feels like 50 feet of them, who all do the same in turn. Did I mention they're EVERYWHERE? There's a few varieties, but they all basically behave the same annoying way, have unavoidable melee attacks, and fire homing ranged attacks.

Now, why is that computer history info relevant? Because ALL of the interfaces used to (TEDIOUSLY) gather information about your environment and available resources are in the form of clumsy, command-line terminals and if you don't know how that works, you'll have to hit up your friendly, neighborhood search engine for a clue. There are some helpful tips on-screen to get you started, but chances are, you're going to be putting in a command and wondering why it doesn't work or what commands are even available, some of which you need to know to progress through the level. You get the hang of it, though. Eventually.

This is the state of the game and why it's not fun, unless you enjoy the gaming equivalent of cutting your tongue and sipping lemon juice every five minutes:

1. Everything is generated randomly, easily screwing you over on loot and unfair hazards/enemy placement.
2. More than half the loot is a complete waste or doesn't sufficiently do their job. For example, there's a flashlight that occupies your hands and doesn't allow you to help your team fight baddies, but hey, it pierces the ubiquitous fog for about 5 extra feet, in a 3 foot cone.
3. The lack of ammunition demands impeccable aim against hordes of hardy enemies that are flailing about like the incredible-arm-flailing-inflatable-tube-men, then invalidates headshots by having enemies' heads pop after a couple shots while their body continues to move even faster, adopting a smaller, crawling profile and even wilder animations. There's no actual reward for doing this besides a two-second stun, as the enemy doesn't even seem to take extra damage from the hit location.
4. The net code and the ridiculously choppy animations that result from it, exacerbates the problems listed in no. 3.
5. ALL of the worst, most game-haltingly tedious obstacles CANNOT be avoided, such as poison mist, blinding fog, and endless-horde-triggering events that force you split the group.
6. The available weapons are either uselessly unreliable and disappointing, or boring and the only effective choice. No middle ground.
7. YOU. HAVE. NO. AGENCY. Yes, you control, a camera with arms, but in the end, a lot of what ends a run is not up to you. It's up to the very random weapon spread, ping, level generation, manifestation of bugs, and whether or not any of your three team mates are going to be screwed over by those same issues.

I have to hand it to GTFO, the first dozen runs are thrilling, interesting, even a little fun, and even loading up the game is a cinematic experience that really gets you excited to understand what's is going on and what horrors you might witness. Quickly, it becomes an experience equivalent to re-watching every season of a sit-com you never liked in the first place. Disappointment, boredom, frustration, and confusion. When you beat a level, it does not feel like you earned it or played well, it is by the grace of impartial fortune, unless you're willing to delude yourself into feeling otherwise.

TL;DR
The name of the game is TEDIUM. Walk, crawl, stop, crawl, stop, crawl, bash, walk, stop, crawl, stop, crawl, hack?, shoot, die, rinse repeat until enough things don't go randomly wrong and you somehow see that victory screen. It stops being tense and exciting long before that 47th+ run of the same level. Good luck, you're actually going to need it.

Yeah, it's pretty fun and fast.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Super tight controls, fun time manipulation mechanics, a unique health/magic restoration system that's integrated with the action wonderfully. There's a 'secret' property to the gems that you collect throughout the game, but it's not very well explained that it's not significant enough to affect gameplay. Guaranteed you won't lament its absence of substance, though. Overall, VERY fun experience and a story that's both unique and doesn't try too hard.

I'm very picky and I'd say this is an excellent tongue-in-cheek homage to some of the best Castlevania games. It definitely deserves the 'overwhelmingly positive' rating it has at the time of this review and it's not even complete, though it will be soon.

Let's make this clear: this is a Fromsoft game, NOT a SoulsBorne title. I'm a huge fan of the Souls series and I'm delighted every time I can form headcannon that links Sekiro with Bloodborne, but those previous games absolutely should not have a bearing on one's perception of this game.

Sekiro is tough and unforgiving, but anyone who complains that it is not fair, is not taking the ques the game repeatedly gives you on how it wants you to approach obstacles and enemies.

The swordplay mechanics are extremely well polished and feel both satisfying and empowering when mastered. I enjoy the fact that spamming the attack button is not an option unless the enemy is not intended to be the type of challenge that requires finesse. For an RPG, it feels right that weak enemies do not require as much effort later on, but you still can't mindlessly swipe at them. Bosses feel like epic and worthwhile challenges that test one's ability to read animations and put your arsenal to effective and creative use. The deflection mechanic, specifically, is considerably more generous than it makes itself out to be and once the player grasps just how generous, even the most difficult sections and enemies of the game begin to feel that much more fun, instead of nerve-racking twitchfests, though good reaction times and careful planning will remain necessities. There are some balancing issues with the sidearms and special attacks, specifically, the speed at which some attacks come out, and their range or damage, are so infrequently worth their risk and/or cost that you'll find yourself reverting to a small pool of the available arsenal and making solitary use of your sword and deflections for the vast majority of encounters.

Speaking of encounters, this is NOT a Devil May Cry game, where you can face off against five to seven enemies and expect to be able to handle them with only a moderate amount of effort. In Sekiro, if you want to engage several enemies at once, be ready for a very boring and protracted fight in which you're chipping damage at even the weakest enemies in the group, lest everyone bury you in a pile of their own chip damage. The player needs to make use of the stealth and stealth-kill mechanics to avoid this and reduce enemy numbers before they can fight back until you're facing either a two-on-one or one-on-one fight. Even then, some stronger/trickier enemy types should not be engaged if the player is outnumbered. The AI has been extremely well designed and the way earlier enemies fight can give the player insight into how they should expect later enemies to fight and what certain types of animations mean. It feel SO badass when you fight a complicated enemy in the first few hours of the game, learn how they behave, and use that knowledge later to predict how an entirely new enemy might behave, anticipating the timing and pattern of their unique movements. It almost feels like you're actually learning a martial art because animations are not repetitive or overly similar between different enemies. As far as the tough enemies go, if you can't handle learning to outplay them, your experience is going to be a very boring series of long encounters consisting of hit-and-run tactics and cheesing. This is not how the game is meant to be played and is a lot more fun if you use stealth and practiced swordplay to defeat your enemies.

The environments are gorgeous, the level design is excellent and traversing it all can be quite fun, especially coming from the Dark Souls / Bloodborne world, where the world is exaggerated and interesting, but only exploreable in a limited way. Sekiro lets you run around with a ton of freedom and it feels great...if only it were as rewarding as it is cinematic. There are quite a few things in the game worth exploring for, but most of the time, you'll be running into the odd, not-very-useful consumable and the bitter taste of disappointment and frustration that you risked so much for a few coins or minor luck charm. This makes future exploration feel more tedious, even when there's a worthwhile item at the end of the unbeaten path, which kind of sucks.

The air of mystery is more faint in this game than in other titles, but there's still a lot of juicy lore to dig through, with intriguing implications when things get cryptic. As mentioned, I found many things I'd like to think are related to the Bloodborne world, but that's just me. Unless you enjoy watching the average English dub anime or absolutely ABHOR reading subtitles, DO NOT play this game on English audio. The voice over was handled poorly and comes across as disgustingly cheesy, trashing the atmosphere. I don't speak Japanese so the game's native language sounded great and natural to me. Much better experience.

If you want an actual challenge and wished combat was more fast-paced than in Dark Souls, Sekiro is your game. It has stealth, it has brawling, it has ninja-trope warfare, mystery, fantasy, gorgeous/scary visuals, epic fights, emotional moments, and multiple endings to satisfy many tastes. Very much recommended.

Takes almost every aspect of Dark Souls gameplay and puts it into a Dead Space-like sci-fi setting also reminiscent of Doom. Even takes a couple ideas from games like Hollow knight, namely having to defeat a shade of your former self when you die to recover your currency/experience. Overall it will definitely scratch that Dark Souls itch if it ever makes it to a full and much more refined version. Controller is highly recommended, but keyboard is still viable. They don't tell you what the dodge button is though, which is Alt. Defnitely, definitely worth checking out. I'd love to see this game developed more. Right now, it's a little jank with low frames on some higher-end PCs, less than immersive animations, etc., pretty much standard stuff for a game that's still in early development so I wouldn't judge it based on most of the issues the demo has. I don't know how likely it would be at this point, but if this game is ever developed to be graphically comparable to Warframe and even remotely as polished as Dark Souls 3 controls, we'll have a HELL (HAH!) of a game on our double-thumbed, genetically modified hands.