Recent reviews by Lavernius Regalis

n.b.: Most of my playtime was on the standalone version of DOOM Eternal, prior to the Bethesda Launcher being retired, thus my seemingly low play time here on Steam.


DOOM Eternal is an odd game compared to its predecessor. It feels almost less like a sequel to DOOM (2016) and more like a reboot—it picks up quite a while after the story of DOOM (2016) ends, leaving many more questions than answers there, and it plays almost nothing like DOOM (2016) did. It's also an incredibly polarizing game. There will definitely be players who prefer the simplicity of DOOM (2016) compared to the complex moving parts of DOOM Eternal, but at least for my money, Eternal is closer to what I've been looking for than DOOM (2016) was.

Looking back on DOOM (2016), the combat there actually feels much more conservative than it was probably intended to be. While the game suggests aggressive play, the focus on health management and aggressive enemy AI meant that hanging back and avoiding damage ended up often being the preferable option. The glory kill system of DOOM (2016) felt, at least to me, insufficient to stay topped off, and the weapons and rune upgrade system had pairings that heavily incentivized defensive play. DOOM Eternal eschews this arrangement entirely. Close-range damage and finisher options provide vital refills of health, ammo, and armor alike, there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors aspect to the weapons to encourage regularly switching to whatever suits the situation best, and Eternal also simply prevents you from carrying too much of any one ammo type at a time. Dashing and double-jumping provide strong mobility options, and enemies have clear weak points that can be exploited.

The new gameplay loop can be a double-edged sword: I enjoyed the frantic action the new systems encouraged, but some players will distinctly dislike some of the changes—the interlude platforming sections, the fact that simple melee attacks can't kill enemies anymore unless they've already been staggered, and the heavy-handed approach Eternal takes to storytelling, for example. I didn't especially mind these things myself, at least not when compared to the aforementioned improvements to the gameplay loop.

There is, of course, a catch: DOOM Eternal can sometimes feel exhausting to actually sit down and play. The game demands you always be switched on—if you slip up or let your guard down for even a split-second, you’re liable to find yourself on death’s door. A game like ULTRAKILL demands perfection to achieve a high score, but DOOM Eternal demands perfection to simply stay alive. Combine that with levels which can be incredibly long (potentially an hour per level) and the inability to create manual mid-level saves, and I find the prospect of going back to replay DOOM Eternal now a little bit troublesome. Which is a shame, because it is an exceptionally well-crafted title which performs spectacularly on a variety of hardware, no less.

DOOM Eternal feels like an exemplar of what a sequel should be, to me: It's not just more of the same, it's a strong, dramatic evolution from its predecessor. It actually tries to do something different and be something different, even if it won't appeal to all the same players that its predecessor did. It tries to reimagine the feeling of playing the '90s DOOM games in a In any event, the game has had its ups and downs, the snubbing of its composer Mick Gordon chief amongst its low points. But we’ve also had a suite of modding tools and a mod browser recently be introduced (at long last!), so DOOM Eternal certainly shouldn’t lack for replayability going forward. I leave the reader to judge these matters for themself. Personally, though, I think DOOM Eternal mostly hits the mark.

Played on: Desktop (i9-9900K, RTX 2070 SUPER)
Excellent. Well in excess of 120 FPS with all settings nearly maxed out. No stuttering, no crashing, and a suite of options to fine-tune performance as needed. I’ve yet to launch this on my Steam Deck, but benchmarks abound for it already, showing the performance there to be fantastic, as well.

I'd like to be able to write a full review of this game—the visuals are captivating, the setting is interesting, and the gameplay, from what I have yet seen of it, seems serviceable. But the performance on display here is hellaciously bad. I've seen titles with inconsistent frame times and shader compilation issues before, but this has to be the worst I've gotten my hands on yet. Your PC's specifications do not matter: This game will perform poorly and you will experience stutters and dips well below 30 FPS on a very regular basis. Unfortunate, to say the least, and as a result I won't be able to write a full review. I've found it too disorienting to stomach playing through.

I tend to avoid going into early access titles as a matter of principle, with only a few exceptions that prove the rule. I found Selaco’s demo, while technically impressive, to be a little overly meandering and in need of some refinement, so Selaco was originally going to simply stay on my wishlist – I would simply wait until it was done to finally take a look. But a few folks whose opinions I hold in high regard had nothing but enthusiastic praise for the early access release, so I decided to bite the bullet and see what’s up.

The visual design of Selaco is meticulous. The deliberately pixelated style and voxel-based environmental objects give the game a sharp appearance, complemented by the generous use of various effects and dramatic lighting. The spaces you’ll traverse are richly-detailed and full of various bits of nonsense to interact with, rather like an old Build Engine game (Duke Nukem or whatnot). And somehow, the weapons – which are 2D sprites – have carefully-choreographed animations, even down to inspecting them and watching them sway idle in your hands. My sole dislike about the visuals is that the enemies are also 2D sprites. Selaco does run on a port of an over-30-year-old game engine (more on that below), so some concessions must be granted, but I do feel that readability in firefights would be greater with either actual models or with foes that have more interpolated animations. Still, for that to be the sole (subjective) blemish on the game’s visual design is impressive.

Selaco’s audio design somehow outdoes its visuals, with expressive enemies, bombastic weapons, near-tangible environmental sounds, and a stellar drum-and-bass soundtrack. Besides giving the entire game a punchy feeling, the audio design is also vital for situational awareness: the enemy callouts ensure you’re able to discern if there are still enemies chasing you down and (of course) where you’re inevitably being flanked from. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is the handiwork of Lawrence Steele (aka SatsumaAudio), and ranges from more mellow environmental tracks to the most driving combat music I have heard at least since Hi-Fi Rush. It all comes together into a highly consistent package, complementing the visuals well.

In point of fact, Selaco is running on a fork of GZDoom, a port of the Doom engine. I’m not familiar with all the intricacies that went into making Selaco function at all, but I must point out that the engine choice does come with its downsides. Performance decidedly suffers as a result – there are times, infrequent as they are, where even my system, with an i9 CPU and an RTX graphics card, experiences some notable drops to the framerate. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced any crashes or similar issues, and I’ve only had to reload a save once due to getting stuck on a piece of the environment. Still, don’t underestimate Selaco. It’s a more demanding title than it might suggest at first glance.

60Hz / 9W TDP / Recommended Settings

Despite the old-school game engine, Selaco’s best point of comparison for how it plays on a moment-to-moment basis is probably Monolith Productions’ 2005 shooter F.E.A.R., minus the slow-mo ability. Sliding across the ground and flipping over pieces of the environment to use as cover against the aggressive enemies gives Selaco a distinct Hard Boiled feel, and without the ability to slow time you’ll need to be light on your feet to avoid a swift demise. Enemies will use smoke grenades, shields, explosives, heavy weapons, and more to distract and put pressure on you while simultaneously moving to flank you.

Over the course of the first one-third of the campaign currently available in early access, Selaco presents a wide variety of environments to progress through, and thankfully the meandering hospital introduction quickly gives way to more pointed and focused level design for the rest of the campaign. The introduction of new foes (and new equipment for old foes), as well as new weapons and equipment for the player, felt like it kept up a fairly good cadence throughout this first chapter of Selaco, although there is an optional sequence of levels at the end which is both (1) markedly more difficult than the rest of the campaign, and (2) comparatively lacking in variety. The fact that, for better or worse, nothing new is really introduced in that last optional sequence is the sole mark I currently have against the campaign of Selaco, and even then, it’s still okay – it would just be nice to be able to maintain that high-water mark from start to finish.

Selaco is an early access title which launched with an included level editor and immediate support for Steam Workshop, the game files themselves are contained in a non-binarized, unencrypted format in an archive that can be opened with 7-Zip, and the source code for the entire game is included in a .ZIP archive in the install folder. Magnificent. I don’t have anything else to say here.

Selaco is a game of perfection – the developers clearly demand it from themselves in virtually every aspect, and the game demands it from the players. For an early access title, this is already a fully-fledged 8-hour-long campaign with myriad snippets of lore and environmental storytelling, all serving to punctuate a variety of intense close-quarters battles. If the next two chapters are each anywhere near as long and as meticulously-crafted as Selaco’s first chapter is, this game will be an absolute steal at that point – and it’s already worth the price of admission as-is.

I recommend Selaco.

What an incredible bit of level design Adam Foster has pulled off here. This is a dynamic, interconnected little labyrinth full of exotic designs that perfectly encapsulate the Half-Life aesthetic, alongside a host of combat encounters that are far and away better than anything one could hope to find in Half-Life 2. I'm loathe to go into too much detail, as this is essentially just a chapter for Half-Life 2, and can be played either simply in Half-Life 2 or using any of your favorite mods (e.g., Gunship Mark II's MMod), and thus too much specific detail here might spoil the experience. Suffice it to say, then, that this is a grand tour of Half-Life 2's better aspects of design, condensed into an immensely-satisfying two-or-so-hours-long romp. MINERVA hits the ground running, and doesn't let up even to the end.

I had heard nothing of Hi-Fi RUSH until nearly two weeks after its release. The first thing I saw was the game’s reception, virtually unanimous in its praise. Then came the trailers, and finally the thing that pushed me to actually pick it up: a spoiler of a particular sequence in the game which had me—a longtime fan of the Prodigy—absolutely enthralled. Now, I’ve cleared the campaign once, and I can’t very well sit by without writing a little about the master class of design that is Hi-Fi RUSH.

The visual design of this title will be timeless. From start to finish, this feels like playing through a comic book or mid-2000s cartoon show, and the game is utterly committed to this goal. Transitions from 3D environments to 2D cutscenes are immaculate, and freeze-frames, while not literally pastel-chalked, are nevertheless used in a sparing yet brilliant way. Environments are beautifully constructed, character design is distinct from start to finish, and animation and facial expressiveness are both spectacular. The addition of options like DLSS is welcome, as they often fare better for image quality than regular anti-aliasing, especially in this scenario.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929450253

To my mind, the audio design in Hi-Fi RUSH is similarly brilliant, evoking that same mid-2000s cartoon absurdity and distinctness, while being paired with some heavy-hitting tracks. Enemy attacks are all telegraphed with distinct visual and audio cues, and everything flows naturally given the game’s aesthetics. But the music is what sold me on this game, given how central rhythm is to its mechanics. When crucial moments break out tracks from Nine Inch Nails or the Prodigy to drive the action, something very special happens. Someone practically took the songs out of my playlists and put them into the climax of this game’s action. If you don’t actually like the music in question, this might be a miss for you, but the commitment to style is brilliant, and I adored it.

Hi-Fi RUSH, shockingly, is an Unreal Engine 4 game. Be that as it may, performance and optimization seems to be impeccable. I’ve yet to try firing the game up on my laptop—I suspect performance will not be great there, but it remains to be seen. Regardless, stability was perfect, and I was running at a locked 144 FPS from start to finish, save for the 60 FPS cutscenes. No shader compilation stutter, no bugs, no glitches, no crashes, all on a game just released. This is the watermark to shoot for in game development.

60Hz / 10W TDP / Medium Settings, TSR Balanced

It’s a spectacle fighter in the vein of Devil May Cry, but everything in the game’s world—footsteps, machinery, attacks—has been synchronized to the rhythm of a rock soundtrack. This could have gone very well, or very, very poorly. Luckily, then, it works fantastically here. Anything that attacks you can be avoided, and virtually anything can be parried, as well. The fact that everything strikes on-beat also means that odd and hard to master timings are largely non-existent.

Most of your enemies are robots, largely of a bipedal variety, but this doesn’t hinder variety, as something new is introduced with every level. Indeed, I’d say the variety probably feels better than in Devil May Cry, and the enemies themselves aren’t such pushovers compared to the bosses, either. This variety also extends to the player’s options, varying from a melange of attacks and combinations to a small array of team-based attacks, briefly phasing in an ally to strike before they dash out of the field again. To an extent, these allied attacks could be spammed, but doing so hinders your ability to effectively defend yourself by cluttering up the field and hurting readability, and so isn't generally preferable.

In practice, what Hi-Fi RUSH’s mechanics and design really contribute to is a constant sense of momentum. You’ll want to move to the rhythm even when you aren’t in the thick of a fight, and you’ll hardly ever want to stop, despite the fantastic views to take in. The middle third or so of the game does slow down a bit, but the opening and finale are both absolutely stellar.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2930541360

While the version of Unreal Engine Hi-Fi RUSH uses is heavily modified and somewhat locked down, that hasn’t prevented the community from summarily circumventing the game’s file signature requirement. This has only been used for a handful of small modding projects, though, so I wouldn't expect too much in this regard. XCOM 2 with a full software development kit, this game is most certainly not.

I’m sort of still in awe that this game is—that it exists. There’s no catch. There’s no “gotcha.” My only real complaints are a few quality-of-life quibbles (rebinding a menu prompt here, a localization issue or typo there). The soundtrack, whether licensed or original, is fantastic and drives you onwards at every turn. Functionally zero technical issues, shockingly good mouse and keyboard controls—(yes, I did complete my playthrough with a mouse and keyboard)—and no oddball monetization schemes, either (Devil May Cry, take some notes, please). This game could cost twice as much and still be worth the price of admittance.

What a truly wonderful game. Play this.

I recommend Hi-Fi RUSH.

It's just unfortunate that we'll never get another game from Tango after this one.

Elden Ring. I enjoyed most of From Software’s other titles up to this point, so I was (cautiously) optimistic about what is, in theory, their swan song for the Soulslike formula. A friend sent me a copy as a gift, so for once I actually played through a game at its time of release, concurrently with everyone else. And looking back on it now, I’m hard-pressed to think of any other game where my thoughts have shifted and evolved over time so much as they have here.

Elden Ring presents a visually stunning, inspired, and mysterious world at first blush, with baroque vistas seemingly around every corner and grotesque enemies hiding in the shadows. The audio design is similarly exceptional, with visceral sounds in battle and theatrical voice acting accompanied by a bombastic orchestral score. There’s certainly a part of me that prefers the simpler tracks from Demon’s Souls and the original Dark Souls—they did have a distinct character that the new tracks lack—but that’s splitting hairs. First impressions matter, and Elden Ring does well in its opening few hours.

It’s after facing a few bosses and trekking through a few catacombs and mines that a few cracks in the foundation begin to show. For as large and impressive as Elden Ring’s world is, much of the side content feels overly repetitive, constructed of the same prefab elements snapped together in different orders and with mildly different enemy placements. Item gathering will grow more tiring as the game goes on, as you locate yet another extraneous crafting material or spell you won't use. And even seemingly-unique bosses will be reused again and again, with very little fanfare.

But one of my greatest sources of frustration in Elden Ring is simply to do with the enemy design. As I proceeded through Elden Ring’s mainline progression, taking on its “remembrance” boss battles, I was left raising my eyebrows more and more with each passing area. First the bosses, and later even common enemies, began employing a common toolset: long, long attack combos, whirlwind slashes, area-of-effect shouts and slams, lightning-fast strikes with virtually no wind-up nor warning, and attacks that can lop off almost your entire health bar in a single stroke. This is manageable with a cooperative partner or one of Elden Ring’s spirit summons, but it just feels lacking compared to the puzzle-piece and rock-paper-scissors fights of the previous Souls games or the clashing of swords in Sekiro. It’s more frustrating to overcome than it is fun, in my book.

Moreover, by the time you reach Elden Ring’s capital city and face off against the area boss, the game has already essentially played its entire hand. If you’ve been completing the side content up until that point, you’ll just be seeing repeats from then on. The same boss as twenty hours ago, but with an inverted color scheme and a much greater health pool and damage output. The same props and terrain features, but with snow instead of sand. The same rewards: too many repetitive mini-dungeons with something at the end you’re liable never to actually use.

There are inklings of greatness in Elden Ring, and there are some significant improvements over previous From Software titles, but there are also plenty of missteps and repeated mistakes. Input buffering that betrays the player on a regular basis, despite the game demanding faster and more accurate responses than ever before. Fights against multiple poorly-paired boss enemies at once which still stand in the shadow of what came in previous titles. A user interface that’s still so outdated it stands to learn something from Morrowind of all games. Quest design that’s still so esoteric, the only way you’ll see any reasonable amount of content in this now-open world is by checking the wiki as you play. And player character mechanics that are still fundamentally the same as they were thirteen years before Elden Ring’s release.

Did I enjoy my first playthrough of Elden Ring? For the most part, yes. But having done that, and having played through cooperatively once, as well, I have very little interest in ever revisiting the Lands Between again. It would be three hours of fun packed into at least thirty hours of game. In a sense, Elden Ring is just too big for its own good, and despite its superficial design changes, it feels stagnant in many ways—and the fact that something that could've been so close to knocking it out of the park has been dragged down by these various missteps is, I think, the most frustrating thing of all.

Played on: Desktop (i9-9900K, RTX 2070 SUPER)
There’s no mincing words here, performance is not good, as is pretty much customary for From Software’s titles. The move to an open world has just made these issues all the more pronounced. There are crashes without rhyme or reason, long-standing bugs, and even on my system, I experienced easily reproducible frame drops well below 60 FPS. And for a title not that much grander on a technical level than Sekiro, Elden Ring manages to turn my desktop into a space heater for no particularly good reason. All that plus a 60 FPS lock and a deliberate block on ultrawide setups, and you’ve got a recipe for a poor port.

By now my repertoire of retro-throwback FPS games is getting pretty big, and one could be forgiven for thinking that my purchase of ULTRAKILL serves to make that repertoire even bigger. But in reality, ULTRAKILL is something much, much different…

The obvious reason for ULTRAKILL being counted among titles like DUSK, AMID EVIL, or Ion Fury – apart from the publisher – is the visual design. ULTRAKILL deliberately evokes the style of a PSX game, with options similar to DUSK and AMID EVIL for pixelating and crunching down the visuals if you should so desire. I prefer something somewhat more playable here, and thus play ULTRAKILL at native resolution with those options disabled – and while the design is simple, there’s an elegance to that simplicity that helps the game play to its strengths. Backgrounds aren’t overly cluttered, enemies are easy to identify, and levels start off visually simple before becoming gradually more complex as the game goes on. The result is an incredibly playable experience which, despite superficial similarities to other New Blood titles, still manages to set itself apart.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2850165176

On occasion, I’ll heap overbearing praise on a game that I’m reviewing for something it just does right, and ULTRAKILL has managed to earn such praise. The audio design in ULTRAKILL thus far is utterly outstanding, from the bassy weapon sounds and clear enemy cues to the stellar environmental sounds and music - a medley of metallic post-rock and classical tracks which come together surprisingly well. I felt the audio design in DOOM (2016) was actually fairly weak, particularly the weapon sounds - but ULTRAKILL has no such faults. Far from having weak weapon sounds, the weapons here are so powerful and loud that they occasionally break the game's sound engine, causing the game's audio to go mute for a split-second – and that isn't a bug, as far as I'm concerned, it's a feature.

While I’ve yet to try running ULTRAKILL on my old laptop, I suspect this game will perform as well as – or better than – DUSK, another title that I was able to easily run on low-end hardware. I only experienced one crash during my time playing, as a result of somehow launching myself out of the map at relativistic speed, but beyond that I experienced hardly any other bugs or glitches throughout. This is a surprisingly well-polished and well-designed title for Early Access.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2850165191

Most of New Blood’s other titles heretofore have had somewhat conventional retro-throwback gameplay, despite their emphasis on mobility and dodging. DUSK, AMID EVIL, and the like are a selection of very good games, but they still aren’t necessarily groundbreaking in their design principles. Enter ULTRAKILL, a game that has been marketed as Devil May Quake. This is a game that eschews ammo management and health pickups in favor of some of the best movement I’ve seen in a first-person shooter and health regeneration by bathing in the freshly-spilled blood of your enemies. Weapons feature numerous alternate-fire modes which can be chained together, you can parry enemy attacks and projectiles alike, and every enemy attack can be dodged or avoided one way or another.

One of the things that sets ULTRAKILL apart from its predecessors is the inclusion of a style meter and ranking system. More conventional titles would offer end-of-level stats such as enemies killed, secrets found, and time elapsed, but ULTRAKILL offers actual rankings from D to S for time, kills, and style. The more advanced techniques you employ in the course of a level, the higher your style goes, in service of the sometimes-elusive Perfect ranking. There are challenges, secrets, unique enemies, and excellent boss encounters to be found here, and apart from Devil May Cry meets arena shooter, my only other frame of reference for ULTRAKILL would be a Soulslike title – something like Bloodborne or Sekiro. I’ll offer another honorable mention to the parrying functionality, which allows you to not only reflect enemy projectiles, but also to parry your own shotgun shells to make them go faster and explode. This game manages to be novel and engaging throughout, and I love it.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2360057192

For the time being, ULTRAKILL falls into a spot somewhere between AMID EVIL and Ion Fury in terms of support for community content. While it is possible to customize the game’s endless mode (the Cyber Grind) with new textures and a skybox, and while custom endless mode arenas are available, there is nothing comparable to DUSK’s SDK publicly available yet. I’m hopeful to see more support for community content in the future, as I think there’s a lot of potential here for user-made maps, but we’ll have to see; the ULTRAKILL map editor is still in testing at the time of writing. Still, it seems that the editor will go beyond the scope of simply designing new levels, as some scripting and trickery is evidently possible, granting map makers even more options in their work. Just... maybe don't linger too long in the community circles, since this game has developed a dubiously eccentric online following.

The ULTRAKILL Demo released in Summer 2020 was good, but I still had my concerns about the level design and aesthetics. I’m happy to say, then, that ULTRAKILL in Early Access is nothing short of great, and it manages to improve on all the areas I thought the demo could have done better in. I can safely say that ULTRAKILL is the best title I’ve seen from New Blood yet – and that’s saying something, when ULTRAKILL might have just as well stood in the shadows of DUSK and AMID EVIL.

I guess I’ll crib from another review to truly sum it up: ULTRAKILL isn't a retro throwback. ULTRAKILL is everything I wanted the 2016 DOOM reboot to be, and more. It's very good and you should play it.

I recommend ULTRAKILL.

Far Cry 2 is a strange game. It’s been sitting in my backlog for a long time now, as I had tried to start playing it several times but each playthrough fizzled out by the time the tutorial section had concluded. Now, I’ve finally gotten back to it and played it from start to finish, using it as a sort of video game palate-cleanser between some more linear and scripted adventure titles I had been playing. So how does the odd one out of the Far Cry series hold up?

Far Cry 2 is curious compared to its successors - despite being older than all but the original Far Cry, this game has managed to retain its title as the most detailed entry in the entire Far Cry series, relishing in simulating all the little things of its world. Dynamic weather, clouds, a long day-night cycle, foliage deformation and damage, and some pretty - and also dangerous - fire effects are all on display here, to name just a few of Far Cry 2’s visual features. This game can’t beat Crysis in terms of visuals, but it is very clearly trying to do so, and it does come closer than one might expect.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182097165

Audio design in Far Cry 2 is rather odd. The game inherits the looped-sounding weapon audio of its predecessor, Far Cry, and also comes with similar-quality voice acting, albeit for a different reason: without exception, characters in Far Cry 2 speak as if they are performing an auction chant, whether in combat or in story dialogue. Environmental sounds are distinct, and fire effects, when combined with their potentially ferocious spread, highlight the danger of weapons like the Molotov cocktail or flamethrower. Still, the voice acting steals attention away from any other decent sound design in-game, simply due to how absurdly quickly and emotionlessly everyone in Far Cry 2 speaks.

At the time of release, Far Cry 2 was a rather demanding game. Thankfully, most semi-modern processors and GPUs will have few issues pushing frames for this game, and it generally runs well as a result. Unfortunately, though, while it does run decently enough on modern hardware, Far Cry 2 does not play nicely with high refresh rates, despite native support in the game’s options. There are several bugs which will grind the game to a halt if the game exceeds 60 FPS, which relegates this title to a less-than-stellar refresh rate regardless of your hardware.

Anyone who has already played a more recent Far Cry title will clearly see prototypical elements of those more modern games on display here in Far Cry 2. But, not unlike the differences between Dark Souls and Dark Souls III, Far Cry 2 lacks the quality-of-life features and streamlined elements that the sequels have made into an Ubisoft trademark. This is a rough-around-the-edges and unforgiving first-person shooter, where guns jam and break, health is only recovered with resource-limited healing items, the player suffers from malaria, and above all else, where enemies are utterly relentless, hurling themselves at the player, giving chase in cars, and almost never disengaging. I’m also reminded somewhat of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, as, apart from its unrelenting gameplay, Far Cry 2 does its best to immerse the player in a semi-open world, never breaking from its first-person perspective.

Face Full of Eyes does a much better job of analyzing Far Cry 2 than I can manage within this character-limited review, and I accordingly recommend his analysis for a more detailed look at what Far Cry 2 does as a game. Suffice it to say, though, that for a theoretically run-of-the-mill first-person shooter, Far Cry 2 manages to set itself apart - perhaps at times to the detriment of the game’s actual gameplay experience, even if it suits the objective of creating a war-torn African environment.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182097409

The gameplay of Far Cry 2 alone can’t explain the game’s entire singleplayer experience - much can be attributed to how the game’s campaign was designed, and to how the plot (or lack thereof) was crafted. After choosing a face to play as and sitting through a brief opening cinematic, Far Cry 2 saddles you with malaria, introduces its antagonist, and then turns you loose on the world. The game revolves around a number of missions - weapons shop ambush missions to unlock new weapons, assassionation missions for extra money (uncut diamonds), and jobs for one of two interchangeable factions. Each mission could be summed up as “drive somewhere, kill someone/destroy something/steal an item, drive somewhere else.” Along the way, you’ll have to pass seemingly instantly-respawning checkpoints dozens of times, speeding through them or clearing them out each time. Quite simply, the game is repetitive, whether for better or for worse, and I had to take it in increments. And then, eventually, the game ends, somewhat unceremoniously. It’s a bold way to tell a “story,” at the very least, and unlike the thematically similar Spec Ops: The Line, this game isn’t unbearable to actually play.

Besides the game engine and weapons, Far Cry 2’s multiplayer component has little in common with the singleplayer campaign’s open-ended design. Instead, Far Cry 2 offers an array of run-of-the-mill adversarial game modes, with options for six different somewhat arbitrary “classes” based on primary and secondary weapons. The game’s limited-yet-present support for community content gives Far Cry 2’s multiplayer a bit more longevity, but the same was attempted with Far Cry 3, and much alike Far Cry 3, the multiplayer here has died off considerably thanks to its lack of unique or satisfying mechanics beyond a level editor.

Far Cry 2 has no SDK (unlike its obvious competitor, Crysis), but does ship with a fairly detailed level editor, a feature that was touted fairly heavily during the game’s development. This is (or, perhaps, was) an appreciable inclusion, but it is still fairly limiting, given that players are locked to using only the game’s base assets regardless of the situation. Besides this, some actual mods for game content have been created, though they are generally rough around the edges and rebalance the experience (for example, crucially reducing the absurd respawn time of enemy checkpoints) rather than adding new features.


https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182097492

I mentioned earlier that Far Cry 2 is a strange game, an outlier in the Far Cry series in many respects. It has very little to do with the original Far Cry, apart from its inclusion of hang gliders, and while it clearly contains the bones of the modern Far Cry formula (3, Blood Dragon, 4, Primal, 5, New Dawn), the game lacks many of the simplifications or amenities that the more modern Far Cry titles provide the player with. So, is this strange, rough-around-the-edges tech demo of an open world game worth playing? Well, to me, it was - but as I indicated in my introduction, I had to play it at the right time, and as I mentioned previously, I also ‘had’ to play it with a few mods installed to mitigate some of the aggravating features. I found it enjoyable enough to finish (even if it does get repetitive), and I also thought it was rather unique, whether for better or for worse - and it isn’t a terrible price to begin with.

I would recommend Far Cry 2, but would suggest waiting for a sale.

For all my years of gaming, I actually hadn't played a Tomb Raider nor Uncharted game until this one, when it went on sale for the low, low price of zero dollars on Steam. And for whatever reason, I actually elected to slog through this 2013 reboot to a beloved franchise, despite its many flaws. When the credits finally began to scroll at the end, I was left wondering just one thing: How on earth did this game receive such acclaim at its time of release?

While the audiovisual presentation and production value are both fair for its time, Tomb Raider certainly won’t keep you captivated with its gameplay. The shooting mechanics are tolerable if unimpressive, and the climbing system is serviceable, but they are rarely employed in particularly interesting ways. There is a disorienting amount of camera shake while running, and strafe-running also forces the camera to pan in the direction you are moving (both needless issues that were fixed in the follow-up Rise of the Tomb Raider). Still, the weapons start off decent and later become somewhat entertaining, as your shotgun gains the ability to fire incendiary rounds and your pistol receives a suppressor. But the Tomb Raider reboot is, ostensibly, a story-focused game, and the presentation and gameplay are largely in service to that.

Critics have lauded Tomb Raider for its story. Imagine my disappointment, then, to discover that Tomb Raider’s plot falls completely flat, suffering from glaring pacing issues, an overabundance of cutscenes for sections that ought to have been implemented as actual gameplay, and a protagonist that has supposedly been humanized compared to past incarnations but who instead comes off as a dual-personality, military-trained killer, acting like a wet noodle in cutscenes and gunning down and literally executing droves of enemies during actual gameplay. The game opts in many sequences to force the player into quick-time events, pyrotechnics-filled linear pathways, and mandatory slow-walking and/or crawling hallways, not to mention shooting galleries full of cultists. Those cultists serve as an utterly irredeemable antagonist faction, unlimited in number and both comically evil and ineffectual, all in a purportedly gritty and cinematic game.

Between gameplay sections, linear or otherwise, Tomb Raider overwhelms the player with cutscenes wherein Lara continually fails to learn from virtually anything that has occurred throughout the plot. The game seems to relish in injuring and punishing Lara, leaving us with a whimpering, bleeding protagonist seemingly constantly on the cusp of death if not for their Wolverine-like constitution. These injuries and this constant disempowerment of Lara seem to be for shock value more than anything else, and they nearly feel like playing out someone’s sadomasochistic fetish in a video game, seriously contributing to the game’s gap between narrative and mechanics.

While the gameplay in those less linear sections is bearable, the enemies you fight become more aggravating as the plot progresses, with the island’s improbable hordes of lemming-like cultists donning metal plating for armor, turning themselves into veritable bullet-sponges. Thus, the singleplayer component of Tomb Raider—the only reason to play it—fails to leverage its mechanics in an interesting or enjoyable way, fails to craft a compelling narrative, and fails to provide the player with any reason to suspend their disbelief and actually take the game seriously. I pushed through and completed the campaign, and even the supposedly better latter third of the game was eminently frustrating.

I’m still trying to figure out who Tomb Raider was made for. The dissonance in this title is overwhelming, and while the game seems to want the player to take its plot seriously, that plot is so contrived that I often couldn’t help but roll my eyes and wait for the cutscenes to end. There are inklings of something decent in Tomb Raider, but they are largely overshadowed by the game’s aggravating linear sections and absurd pyrotechnics. The price I paid for Tomb Raider seems about right to me—I can't recommend anyone put money up for a title that falls flat and overstays its welcome as much as this one did.

Played on: Desktop (i9-9900K, RTX 2070 SUPER)
I found performance to be generally acceptable, with Tomb Raider running at an uncapped framerate easily and with no crashes at any point. I did encounter a single bug that necessitated reloading from a checkpoint, but this set me back barely 30 seconds, and I had no other issues throughout apart from some odd visual artifacts with water surfaces.

Black Mesa represents a pretty interesting success story in games development, but that story also rhymes with how many of Valve’s now-flagship franchises got their starts, too: transitioning from lowly mods worked on during free time to full-fledged standalone games published on Steam. All things considered, Black Mesa has earned its seat at this mod-to-game table, and having played Black Mesa in its mod form almost a decade ago, it’s high time that I revisit this title.

Black Mesa launched out of early access in May 2020, but one should temper their expectations for the visuals going in: this is a Source Engine game through and through, and while Crowbar Collective has done some impressive work to get more out of this engine visually, it still shows its age in some respects (i.e., lack of ambient occlusion). That said, Black Mesa only has a few fair points of comparison: the other Half-Life titles, now including Alyx - and more appropriately still, the twenty-plus-year-old original Half-Life, which Black Mesa unsurprisingly blows out of the water. This is a mostly-faithful adaptation of Half-Life, and visually Black Mesa accomplishes what it sets out to do. It does diverge more from its source material toward the latter chapters, however, and it arguably does so to great aesthetic effect. At the very least, the game is a technical marvel, pushing the Source Engine to its limits in order to achieve what it does.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2177937248

Black Mesa’s audio is a bit of a mixed bag - while it’s generally decent, there are some issues that mar the overall experience. Voice acting is competent if not outstanding, though this is to be expected when most of the voices are that of either generic scientists or generic guards. Crowbar’s attempt at voicing the G-Man is admirable, albeit still somewhat noticeably off, and the HECU Marine voiceovers can’t quite compare to the iconic, bass-heavy lines of the original Half-Life soldiers. Weapons generally sound satisfying, and the new music, while stylistically different from Kelly Bailey’s score, does the job and helps to mix things up - and some tracks are nothing short of stellar. My only real complaint is one which unfortunately affects all aspects of the game’s sound design: treble seems to be overemphasized, giving many sounds something of a sharp, piercing quality to them. It’s fine if you’re using speakers, but it can feel like listening to chalk being dragged across a blackboard if you’re wearing headphones.

Performance for the release version of Black Mesa is a bit unimpressive, despite the Source Engine’s age. I haven’t had any issues with stability, but my current system makes for a better high-end benchmark than it does an average player’s. I’ve had no performance issues yet with the game settings maxed out, but your mileage may vary - I would suggest a reasonably powerful desktop if you’re intent on playing Black Mesa, i.e., a GTX 960/R9 380 or better if possible, as opposed to the original Half-Life, which could even be made to run on a Chromebook with a Linux distro.

Black Mesa originated as a Half-Life 2 mod, and it retains some of these roots to this day. Still, the gameplay isn’t straight from 2004, even if many of Half-Life 2’s sensibilities punctuate the design of Black Mesa. Some features are standard fare, such as your ability to carry a veritable arsenal of weapons, lack of regenerating health, low-field of view flashlight, and, of course, physics-based puzzles. But Crowbar Collective has also updated some features, including optional toggles in the settings for quality-of-life improvements and alternate movement options. Thus, it’s left up to the player whether they want to deal with crouch-jumping for themselves, or if they prefer to have a sprinting option at all. Beyond that, the game plays like a well-polished Source Engine title from the era of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - which isn’t a bad thing in my book. This is a fast-paced quasi-old school first-person shooter, with a linear design done right.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2177937400

Black Mesa combines two design philosophies together in its campaign: first, it seeks to faithfully recreate and update the Black Mesa Research Facility using the latest version of the Source Engine; second, it aims to improve on areas of the original Half-Life that were lackluster, whether through minor tweaks or more considerable redesigns. Thus, many areas of the game seem familiar albeit larger than they once were, and many encounters are similarly uncanny. But Black Mesa is not content to simply copy what was done in 1998 and redesign the set dressing, so weapons may be acquired at different points in the game than before, new encounters, set pieces, and pathways can be discovered, the research facility staff are considerably more interactive than before, and the player’s goals are more clear than they were in 1998. Moreover, the latter portion of Black Mesa, the formerly controversial Xen chapters, have been rebuilt from the ground up, to largely good effect. There are some occasional pacing issues, difficult encounters, and elements that aren’t quite up to scratch when compared to a Valve title, but Black Mesa’s campaign is largely a story of design success, taking simple moments from Valve’s 1998 classic and transforming them into truly memorable scenes. The singleplayer campaign is far and away the star of the show here.

The multiplayer component of Black Mesa is, like the campaign, a modernization of what could be found in classic Half-Life - in this case, the classic deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, with a suite of arena-like maps to complement them. This is decidedly a throwback, reminiscent of Half-Life: Deathmatch and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch in both good and bad ways. Unfortunately, there isn’t a sizable community for this multiplayer mode, but as of the time of writing a handful of servers do still have players duking it out, reminding me somewhat of the very small but dedicated following that kept Fortress Forever alive for so long. There are no progression systems, gimmicky game-modes, or similar to be found here, and Black Mesa itself is a fairly niche title compared to mainstream shooters, so I suspect the community for the multiplayer component will remain small.

Black Mesa is a Source Engine game, and it comes with Workshop integration as-is. It’s good to see that a game born of a mod remains true to its roots with support for community content, and a number of maps (both single- and multiplayer), weapon/player models, and enemy redesigns, as well as sound packs and bug fixes, can be found on the Workshop within seconds. By all accounts, Black Mesa is a stellar performer on this front, and I quickly found several mods that improved on some of my few qualms with the game.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2177937562

So this is Black Mesa the game, finally released nearly a decade after Black Mesa the mod. Is it worth having a proper price tag on the Steam store, as opposed to the original mod from Mod DB? Well, for the most part, yes - it’s a very impressive piece of work and a testament to the capabilities of the modding community when the appropriate tools are at their disposal. I don’t know if I would pick it up at full price, but it’s on sale often enough, and whether you’ve played the original Half-Life or not, Black Mesa is worth a play through to experience the halls of the eponymous research facility once more, this time through a different, more detailed lens.

I would recommend Black Mesa, but would suggest waiting for a sale.