Recent reviews by sadboy_ebooks

This is the sort of game I wish I could give a neutral review on, but I'm leaning negative for me personally.

The game is exactly what it says it is, a straight forward arena shooter where you move around really fast and shoot a lot of things. That on it's own is probably enough to convince a lot of people to pick it up and they should if that's what they want out of it.

I just found that it was a little too simple for me. I can forgive it for older titles because they were products of their time and I can enjoy that simplistic charm about them. This game, while it does do some neat things with the body mods and the weapon upgrades, really does just feel like it wants you to make a mad dash through it and just mindlessly shoot bullet hoses. Again, that's not a bad thing but I find myself wanting a little more out of it.

I will also say...the audio design for the weapons is a bit wimpy. This won't bother as many people but we have been spoiled by great sound design in a lot of games recently but I think it's still an underrated feature of games. If I have to hear a double barrel shotgun go off over and over I want it to be just as satisfying the first time I shoot it as the thousandth.

I am still gonna keep an eye on this developer, I am excited to see what come's next despite how I felt here.

The aesthetic is really cool and the general vibe of the game is neat.

That said, I didn't find anything particularly scary or horrific. It's a lot of animations of slow zooms over things that are supposed to be creepy but the combat is so slow and clunky that it's a little hard to take anything too seriously. The enemies just kinda shamble up to you and you have a weird back and forth of just blocking and slashing. Your stamina regenerates so slowly that it all just feels like it's taking too long.

My biggest gripe by far is the loading screens. For whatever reason every area has an animation that has to play out when you enter or exit. This includes just going up and down a flight of stairs...

I'm not sure why you would do that, maybe for the first time entering a new area. It just made me not want to double check areas or explore too much lest I have to suffer another 20 second animation of a guy going down a flight of stairs. I think there's potential here, but I think user interface wise it could've done with a rework.

Perhaps I've been too harsh on the French.

This game is a rare example to me of nailing everything. The turn based combat is actively engaging, the visual identity is clear and oozing it's unique style, and the story keeps you guessing the entire time. The pace of every system is laid out organically enough to keep you interested with new ideas or mechanics for the whole almost 40 hour campaign. Not to mention, the soundtrack is beautiful.

Even after beating the main story, there are still additional end game locations and side quests to keep you entertained. They also have their own narrative rewards making it all the more worth it.

Cannot recommend it strongly enough.

tl;dr It's a really good stealth game that plays kinda like Hotline Miami.

I just recently finished the IV2 campaign and started up the recently released remaster of the IV1 campaign. I actually played a bit of IV1 and I liked the premise but it felt a little off. IV2 made a ton of improvements with the systems and I'm very glad to see them get transferred to IV1 as well so I can go back and experience that story in full.

This game is very clearly someone's very focused and pointed idea, it is what it wants to be without any clutter of unnecessary mechanics or side missions.

Not much more to say about it, more games could stand to focus on an idea instead of being a forever game.

There's another review on here that mentions this is a great skeleton of a game and I could not agree more. Hesitate to give it a negative review as there is a lot of quality polish here. But ultimately I found myself feeling like it is a worse version of Roboquest.

Sound design is lacking and combat just feels a little sluggish, especially when it's clearly trying to emulate Doom Eternal without fully committing to it. Eternal is definitely the gold standard so I don't wanna say it's totally fair to compare it, but I can't help it when the intent to emulate it is so clear.

Upgrades also feel convoluted and strange without actually feeling like they're making a major difference moment to moment. Maybe there are more unlocks down the line but putting them behind the Dead Cells style blueprints I think was a bad call if that's the case. I actually love that as a progression but at least in Dead Cells every unlock felt like a meaningful different gameplay experience potential. In this it boils down to a gun that fires at a different speed slightly with a different ammo type (fire, shock, etc.)

I think maybe with some content releases or updates to weapons maybe this could be great, but I found myself bouncing it off it after 2 hours.

Persona without the High School

It's got the juice

Only problem with this game is Konami didn't let Kojima finish it so now he's gotta spend the rest of his career making progressively stranger projects out of spite.

My only complaint about this game is that Obsidian was never able to make another Fallout game. They took all the good parts of Fallout 3, improved all the bad parts, made the game significantly less stable (it's pretty buggy on modern machines still), and packaged it in one of the most engaging worlds I've experienced to date in an RPG.

Bethesda has a tendency in my opinion to have you as the center of the universe. The world doesn't feel like you exist in it, it feels like the world exists around you. This is something I think Obsidian managed to properly correct with New Vegas and it shines all the time in this way. You are constantly coming across situations and decisions that have real impact on the rest of your playthrough. This game goes on sale constantly and you can often get the whole thing including DLC for less than the cost of lunch most places.

Terraria is the gift that keeps on giving, despite buying this game on sale for $2.50 they continue to pump out content. Most of which has been driven by community interaction and requests. I'm sure most people who play games are familiar with Terraria, but in case you are not I think you should leave the 2D Minecraft comparison at the door.

There was a time where that comparison made more sense, but Terraria prefers to go the direction of exploration and unique boss designs. While the world is randomly generated, there are preset blocks for Biomes and interactions that always occur which makes for a fun carrot to chase.

The only thing that I could see turning people off from this is if they aren't into 2D games at all. Otherwise, this is a great game and I only wish I could play it for the first time again.