Recent reviews by Stragnk

Fantastic game. Can't wait to play the next 2 chapters!

This is a remarkable story with great characters, but I'm classifying it as a story over a game. As for the gameplay, I had the same problem with this game as I did Persona 5, where it starts to get repetitive after your 300th encounter. Now I like RPG's and all, but my main problem with Persona games as a whole is how long they are. In most RPG's, the combat and gameplay never really gets old because the game doesn't last longer than 25 hours.

What I can say about this game that I can't say about Persona 5 however, is the amount of substance within this game's story. I enjoyed this game's story and character development far more than P5's (still was great, but I thought it lacked substance in some parts). I get that this is also a remake, so this is mainly a review for the original story itself that I never had a chance to play.

Should you buy this game? If you've never played the game and want to experience it for the first time, I strongly recommend it. However if you're playing it again, I would say 70$ is a lot to invest in a remake that doesn't offer too much more than the base game.

Extremely relaxing game with so much to do. Every day feels like your contributing towards some sort of routine, while every time you accomplish something you feel like you're checking something off of a "to-do" list. Something else worth mentioning is this game's ability to be engaging towards multiple types of players. Weather you're someone who just wants to take their time and set up their farm, or someone who speedruns the mines and maxes their efficiency, this game has something for everyone.

A HUGE improvement from the original game, which is saying a lot considering that not only was the original game pretty good, but both of them are also free. No free game deserves this much effort put into it, and I'm accepting this as canon to Half-Life since I doubt Valve is going to make another game that takes place after Episode 2.

I've played and loved this game for almost a decade, and I hate to see the treatment it's been getting over the past 7 years. Nobody's asking for a huge new update - we just want a functioning game to play.

No amount of preparing will be enough to be ready to play this game. This game will unveil truths and thoughts about yourself that you might've never even known existed, and you can never forget. There is no turning back after you play this game.

By this point, I've played a fair share of games dealing with mental illnesses/psychological horror, but I don't think any game is able to grasp it as well as Omori. It steadily and subtly introduces new horrors to the player, but most of the time, not in a way that feels forced or "jumpscare-y".

This is probably the best game I've played in the past 5 years. The art style is one of the most creative and recognizable art style's I've seen (I'm also a bit of biased in the form of pixel art, so I understand if not everyone likes that). In addition, I don't think most of the horror/emotional parts of this game would hit so hard if it wasn't for the music. The entire soundtrack has a mix of action/happy/nostalgic/depressing songs, with some songs in particular managing to achieve multiple emotions at once (something I find quite rare in music). The gameplay, for the most part, is pretty standard for a turn-based RPG. Furthermore, I never really found it too difficult (I never got a game over in my first run). That being said, Omori has it's own unique elements that make fighting enemies a lot more fun and creative.

The theme and writing of this game is unlike anything I've seen before, but I want to leave this mostly spoiler free (and trust me this is way better when you know little about it going into it), so I wont be diving deep into that. I've only completed a few neutral endings so far - my opinion on this game might change after seeing those, who knows - but as for now, I give this a 9/10.

my head hurts

Binge watched an entire play through of this game 2 weeks ago.

Pro-tip: Don't binge watch/play this game - knowing what type of game this is won't help you.

Honestly, this has become one of my favorite games of all time. Discovering the Half-Life series rather late (2012) and playing the games of the series even later (2015), I decided to play Half-life 2 first because of up-to-date graphics, and found Half-Life 1 really boring due to it's aged graphics and game mechanics. It was 3 years later when I forced myself to beat Half-Life 1 for the sake of learning more about the series, and I never beat it again.

So when I played Black Mesa towards the end of 2018, it felt like something completely different. It was like it had the awesome combat of Half-Life 1 mixed with the immersion of Half-Life 2. Terrible frame rates due to a bad computer aside, I really liked the game and it changed the way I looked at the original Half-life. Then December of 2019, when Black Mesa pretty much became finished and Xen released, I knew I had to upgrade my computer even if it was only to play this.

Speaking of Xen, the chapters are amazing, completely overhauling the original chapters. My favorite and probably the most underappreciated chapter was Interlooper, due to the amount of new ideas it added in and the massive build up towards the fight with the Nihilanth.

One extra thing that I think should be noted is the soundtrack. The composer, Joel Nielsen, has created probably the best soundtrack I've ever heard of. The Overworld music is fully instrumental+synth and really sets an amazing tone for the game, and extremely memorable. I always found that the Half-Life 1 soundtrack was pretty unsituational and a bit unmemorable, and this game's soundtrack is one of the main reasons I got so interested in this game. Now the Xen Soundtrack... All I have to say is that if you haven't heard of it, listen to it. It's about as Legendary as a soundtrack can get.

So overall, I think Black Mesa is an amazing game, that wasn't even originally a game, but a mod made by a small team of developers. I even considerate of par with my favorite game, Half-Life 2, which I like because it's the most memorable game I've played. Meaning eventually, Black Mesa could become my favorite game, and I'm sure for some people it already has.

The credits was my favorite chapter