Recent reviews by Phaota

Very enjoyable and relaxing cute game with excellent animations to the various animals, especially the cat. There are some minor annoying things, like the wind-blowing vents sending your character flying with barely a hint of the cat's head near the grill, or not being able to drop down accurately at times since the cat wants to leap instead of just drop, or putting a rim around the putting green that makes it impossible to get the ball back up onto it so that you can make a hole, but everything works smoothly and plays great. I never had any hitches or clipping into areas that were missing hit boxes. Highly recommended for both cat/animal lovers and just having fun in a virtual Japanese city with a lot of interesting locations to explore and find stuff.

Ignore all the haters. This is a highly enjoyable game with beautifully crafted environments, unique characters and fun fighting situations. It's like "Red Dead Redemption 2" of fantasy games with it's massive open-world. For fans of Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" book, game, film universe; this is as closest we will ever get to having a game in the same vein. BTW, Pratchett came up with a LOT of what is in the Potterverse well before J.K. created it. Hogwarts is like the Unseen University, just more beautiful and with professors that give a crap about education and Hogsmeade is a smaller form of Ankh-Morpork. Yes, there are the occasional bugs, but that is going to be expected in such a huge world game. Hopefully the devs will be more open-minded in regards to fixing them than Rockstar, since they just gave up on RDR2.

Didn't even know about this great simulator until I started watching Kurt J. Mac on YouTube in his Twitch live stream. Being that I love to power wash myself, it was a no-brainer purchase. Though the concept seems crazy for a game, it is quite enjoyable and relaxing. I love all the dedication put into the location and vehicle details, more so the accurate sounds of the water streams hitting different kinds of surfaces. I find it funny that the locations are near an active volcano, making for some heavy duty cleaning on several areas. Highly recommend this title. You'll love it.

Very thorough and interesting read on the development of the game from conception to release, with lots of engaging tidbits of imagery, videos, 3D models, sound effects, etc. If you are a Half-Life fan, especially for "Alyx", then this is a no-brainer purchase. Well worth the time to enjoy.

I've loved this game and the original one since it came out back in 1997, so it is awesome that Steam has it available. I could play my original disc version, but Win 7 doesn't like Windows 3.1/95 games. This have never been an easy game series to master. The questions are often time quite difficult, and crazy (but that's the fun of it all). It would have been nice it the host, Cookie, had continued through into the rest of the games, but he stepped down for another actor after this outting. Everything about the first three Jack games are great. The humor, the setting, the difficulty (which can piss you off at times since you come away saying to yourself, "Crap! I knew that! Why didn't I choose that answer!?" Even the credits are hilarious with the fake commercials. If you love quirky, fun and challenging trivia games, don't miss this or Volumes 1 (the Xtra Larged Edition) and 2, the Volume 4 - The Ride. Skip Volume 3. It got bad reviews back when it was first released.

Being a big fan of the original classic game, this looked like a no-brainer purchase. I wasn't disappointed. The graphics are fantastic, the gameplay is addicting, the action intense (and sometimes quite infuriating), the voice acting perfectly done, the humor excellent and a superb soundtrack. I like that it basically takes place in the late 80s. This is indicated by the big brick cellphone Lo Wang uses in his car during the prologue cinematic and that he is listening to (as well as singing along with) the great Stan Bush song "The Touch" from "The Transformers Animated Movie" (1986). Wang is accompanied throughout the game by a friendly demon-ish spirit, Hoji, that attaches to him via a mask on his leg and only reappears visually during cinematic scenes. I say demon-ish in that he isn't a monster. His appearance is more like a jester with a dull one-color patchwork outfit sewn together and his mask is harlequin-like in design. Their conversations are always interesting and often funny. There is so much to like about this new revision of the game. One of the little bits I love is when you get into a really big fight, and you are hacking and slashing down enemies all around you, part of the way into it or near the end, Lo Wang will laugh out loud at the craziness of the situation or say some funny line. BTW, be sure to shoot all the rabbits you see, but also be prepared to take on the hardcore dark hare that appears every so often. It's sort of a nod to the killer rabbit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" film.

Another fun thing the developers did is give random nods to the original game via hidden areas that use the same graphics as back then. It really is impressive to see how much computer animation has come when you can look at them side by side in places like this. You go from blocky, flat, low-tech graphics to near photo realism.

I used to be big into game soundtracks, but fell out for many, many years. This game has drawn me back in. I'm actually listening to the soundtrack right now as I type this review (which comes with the collector's edition of the game, though I had to balance the songs volume wise in my audio editor. Their base levels were way too high. Reminded me of the great "Black Mesa Source" game soundtrack). You will really enjoy the music in this game. It goes from atmospheric to all-out action to Asian chamber music, some with choir portions that remind me of the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" soundtrack. I still need to put the songs in play order though. They are all mixed up instead of being sequential as heard while playing. I dislike it when they do that. It's better to hear a soundtrack like it is in the movie or game, in play order.

The one thing that I have trouble with is the use of the special powers. Most of the time, I hardly use them. Resorting more to the hack 'n' slash sword play or long distance gunning. Being that you need to use a combination of keys and a mouse buttons, most often it's just annoying. Yes, they are useful at times, especially the healing ability (when you can get it activated) and the shockwave attack.

All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this game to all FPS (first person shooter) fans. You will not be disappointed. But, I will warn you that there are times when you'll yell with irritation after being killed more times than needed during a battle.

Loved this game when it first came out in 1997 and played it a LOT. Back then, it was quite scary at times. Sure, the gameplay can be a bit repetitive and the enemies are very stupid A.I. wise, but it's still fun to play. My two main complaints about bringing it to Steam is that it should have been updated to use the w-a-d-s keys for movement instead of the arrow buttons and the graphics ought to have been overhauled. Back in the day, the visuals were top notch, now they look like old .gif files. This goes more so with the full motion video cutscenes. Here, we have a problem. The audio is missing from them. Another small issue is the lack of a keyboard layout setting so you can customize your keys. Even with the issues, it's fun to have the chance to play this title again after all these years. I still have my four CD-ROM jewel case set of the original 90s release, with the 50 pages booklet that came with it. This is a good thing since I can call upon that for help. BTW, for those that need to know, Page Up/Down keys for Looking Up/Down, Home/End sets your viewing angle tilt, ~ tilde key turns your run mode on/off, A key is jump, Z for crouch, H key displays mouse/keyboard functions and I key is your Inventory/Settings button menu. Double Clicking on green health potions in the menu while make your character drink it. You can't go past mid-point in the health bar though. Holding down both mouse buttons at the same time will give you free view mode so you can pan the camera around the environment.