Recent reviews by _fxd

A game worthy of its hype, and now one of my favourite games ever.

I bought Dark Souls at retail back in 2013 after years of the chat online about it, but due to an unwillingness to dedicate the time to understand it as well as being a bit more impatient than I am now, I cast it and the Souls series aside. After seeing Demon's Souls PS5, I told myself I'd give the series another go and I'm so glad that I did.

Put simply, Dark Souls is one of the best games I've ever played. The gameplay is top notch, and the depths you can go to (no pun intended) are bewildering. The atmosphere is constantly tense and thrilling, and the sense of reward you get from completing an area or finally killing a boss are unmatched in this genre. That is to say if Dark Souls hasn't now created its own sub-genre of action RPG, which Valve seems to think given the inclusion of a "Souls-like" tag in its store.

I can think of a few minor areas of the game that were maybe a bit too complicated and made me think "how was I supposed to know how to do that?", but then again I'm playing 8 years after its PC release and the hints left by players on the ground are sparse, which I know would have rectified these issues (without spoilers, certain jumps to be made, or areas you need to access not being entirely obvious is what I'm referencing here).

I think Dark Souls is a must-play for anyone interested in action RPGs, its lore or even just the allure surrounding the series as a whole. It's an experience I'll now be comparing other games against, and the only downside I can think of after completing it is that I'll never get to do it for the first time again.

Time taken to beat: 40 hours

Score: 10/10

A superb Assassin's Creed experience that is unfortunately getting worse as time passes.

I think if I had played Assassin's Creed II in 2009 my opinion of the game would be very different. Playing in 2020 made me appreciate the fantastic story and setting, while making me realise just how far we've come in open world gameplay variety and the level of polish games like this have ten years on.

Having only played the first two games, it's objectively true that the story of both the real and Animus world are leagues ahead in ACII. We now have a likeable protagonist who grows as the game progresses and who we root for and are wanting to see where his story goes. As for Desmond, while still being a bit of a blank state the worldbuilding behind it is much more fleshed out and the idea of a thousand year long battle between Templars and Assassins is a pretty damn cool idea, regardless of what medium it comes in.

Unfortunately, as the genre has continued to grow over the past ten years ACII's gameplay feels more dated every day. Yes it's more vastly superior to the first game, but instead of 5 missions over and over again we've now got about 10. The story context behind each mission does well to cover this monotony up, by the end of the game I really felt it begin to drag. Some of this could be contributed to me being a completionist and painfully collecting every last treasure in Venice but I feel some blame has to be placed on Ubisoft for how comical they've made collectibles feel with almost all of their current IPs.

All in all, it's a fantastic Assassin's Creed game, just make sure you play through the story and do the odd side mission, trying to complete everything the game throws at you will make you leave the game with a lesser opinion of it.

Time taken to beat (100%): 21 hours

Score 7.5/10

The perfect indie ARPG.

I think anyone who's been on Steam from around 2010 onwards will have a copy of Bastion on their account, usually picked up from a Humble Bundle from a bygone time or maybe one of their friends bought it for them on a deep deep discount. I was certainly one of those people and finally got around to checking this off the backlog after seeing all the hype around Supergiant's latest release Hades. And I can't believe I've been waiting this long to get around to it.

This game is very much a product of its time; an indie release in 2011 with a hand drawn art style, a standout feature (the narrator) and a simple yet satisfying ARPG gameplay loop. While the game may draw on this gameplay from others in the genre, the graphics are stunning and the soundtrack is so unique and different, yet feels like it fits the world that the game lives in.

It's been said to death previously but the narrator takes this game from a great game to another level. Now a staple of Supergiant games, the extensive use of reactive commentary not only encourages you to see just how far he'll go to describe your actions in the game, but also to see how much you can figure out about the world and background of the game from him.

I think the only bad thing I can say about the game is that without the modifiers that the game provides it can be a pretty easy ride. This might be the developer's choice to cater to players that don't want to worry about difficulty and experience the story and then also let those who want a challenge to make one themselves, but given that there's a specific "Story Mode" difficulty setting for the former, I think a gradual difficulty increase would have made the journey's conclusion more satisfying.

A must play for a Sunday binge to experience the whole game in one sitting.

Time taken to beat (100%): 14 hours

Score 9/10

Silly YouTuber bait, and not very interesting.

I don't really know what I was expecting with this...but it's your run of the mill time management and physics(?) game in a similar vein to Surgeon Simulator or Five Nights At Freddy's.

It has as much depth as a puddle, I've seen Flash games on Newgrounds with more depth than this and that was fifteen years ago.

That being said, it essentially comes off as someone's side project they made for a laugh, which I certainly hope is how this came about.

Watch one of the hundreds of YouTubers who have played this instead of buying, even at its sale price of less than two quid it's not really worth your time.

Time taken to beat: 2 hours

Score 2/10

Recommended for expanded MP offering, not recommended for lacklustre SP.

Having come from Jedi Knight 2, Jedi Academy's singleplayer is laughably poor. The disjointed mission offering takes the series' biggest strength of it's large, complex levels and turns them into short, linear missions. While this was no doubt done in order to appeal to a larger audience due to Jedi Knight 2's success, it totally alienated me and I rushed through it fairly quickly (granted I think I must have played the campaign to death growing up since the mid 2000s).

The story is awful, plain and simple. Kyle Katarn has become a side character and is replaced with an uninteresting main character Jaden and annoying sidekick Rosh. Even Mara Jade from Mysteries of the Sith who I thought lacked any development (since I'm not clued up on the Expanded Universe) had a more interesting story. It's so cookie-cutter and basic.

The excellent gameplay introduced by JK2 is brought back here and expanded upon with more lightsabre options, although I do feel that both the double bladed and dual lightsabre options don't have as much depth when duelling and become more spammy as a result rather than the refined single sabre offerings. Unfortunately since we have the sabre from the start of the singleplayer, guns are almost entirely pointless and are never used. This is all the more irrelevant when the game forces you to pick weapons and explosives before every mission. Granted there is one mission where your sabre is taken away...but you can still use your Force powers which again are more useful than most of the guns.

Graphically I found it to be less interesting than it's predecessor. While JK2 focuses on really bringing some of the original trilogy's environments to life (whether in Imperial ships, Cloud City or Yavin's forests), most of Jedi Academy's levels are a lot more generic and in areas that don't evoke any sort of excitement.

Multiplayer is the only redeeming factor here, as we have the same game modes with JK2 with a few additions like the impressive Siege mode.

All in all, if you're after the most active multiplayer base for the Jedi Knight series as well as access to plenty of excellent mods then Jedi Academy is worth picking up. But if you're only interested in the story then just pretend the series ended with Jedi Knight 2.

Time taken to beat: 6 hours

Singleplayer Score: 5/10

Multiplayer Score: 8/10

One of the best Star Wars games ever made, a must-play for any fan of IP.

Seventeen years later and we still haven't seen lightsaber combat that outdoes JK2/JKA. With fantastic level design, a great story with appearances from the original trilogy cast and the most satisfying Star Wars combat to date, Jedi Knight II stands tall alongside Knights of the Old Republic as the best Star Wars video games ever made.

Storywise we finally get a proper insight into Kyle Katarn alongside a great cast of characters. Unlike before where we've seen Kyle Katarn first as a blank slate and then in goofy live action scenes, we finally get a better insight into his characters and his transformation as the story progresses, along with having the charming rogue persona much like Han Solo, which you can't help but love.

The gameplay is where the game shines. You can easily spend hours replaying the later levels (when you have full access to all max level force abilities) and mess with the stormtrooper AI using mind trick, lightening and grip among others, and also engage in lightsaber duels which to this day are still a blast. With three very different lightsaber stances, there's a lot of depth here, and that really comes out in Multiplayer in which I'm not ashamed to say I spent hundreds of hours in my youth learning the best movements/combos for each style. The guns also handle great, and unlike Jedi Academy you're forced into using them for the first quarter of the game which while controversial among fans is something I'm actually a fan of. It makes obtaining your lightsaber all the more rewarding, and unlike JKA are actually used and aren't essentially dead content.

Graphics and sound wise I'm amazed at how well this game holds up compared to other games of this era. It still looks absolutely fantastic and much like the other entries in this series the game has fantastic attention to detail when it comes to the source material.

Overall to me this game has the full package for any Star Wars fan. It's an absolute must play and is a game that will stand the test of time (as it already has) as a classic.

Time taken to beat: 9 hours

Score: 10/10

A lacklustre story that jumps all over the place, bad level design and large spikes in difficulty make this entry very skippable.

I really don't know what happened here, this game is such a step down from its predecessor is every way.

Firstly the story is pretty wild, we're introduced to Mara Jade who apart from some offhand comments about her being a smuggler we don't really learn anything about. A quick Wiki check shows she was married to Luke Skywalker...? What? Well that's news to me, for someone so important to the Expanded Universe I didn't really feel like I learned anything about her.

Graphics wise its pretty much identical to the previous game, with some new swamp and city environments. To be honest I was more a fan of the valleys from the previous game, but I won't hold that against the game.

The gameplay is where the game really takes a dip. In Dark Forces II the levels while large and open always kept you going in the right direction. Here, there are multiple occasions where your path forward is a hidden vent or wall that's you need to break, and the game gives no indication or hint in your datapad that that's what you need to find. On top of that, the last few levels take a MASSIVE jump in difficulty, so much so that you're better off just skipping the enemies some of which can take you from 100 health to none in one hit. Combine that with being unable to use guns to stay at a distance and also being heavily restricted in which force powers you can take (as well as being given less points to enter overall) and the whole latter half of the game becomes a real slog to finish.

All you need to know is that the outcome of this game is mentioned in the title crawl for Jedi Knight II and then never again. It's really not worth a playthrough.

Time taken to beat: 6 hours

Score: 5/10

A fantastic Star Wars adventure with superb level design.

NOTE: The Steam version of the game is perfectly fine, comments suggesting to get the GOG version are outdated. All that's required if you want a higher resolution is to install a program called dgVoodoo and the game plays without issues.

This game really takes this series from feeling like a side story to a fully fledged Star Wars experience. An improved story with multiple endings, a real sense of progression with the acquisition of the lightsaber and force powers and some crazy big levels with level design that really does stand the test of time.

I think it's fair to say though that the live action sequences haven't stood that same test however. Obvious greenscreen CGI work that was a product of its time can be pretty ugly at times but I find it to be of the "So bad it's good" quality.

Again like the first game the game capitalises on the fanastic art and sound direction of the films and as such holds up here. The loud booming of John WIlliam's score here does wonders for the game's atmosphere.

The addition of Light and Dark force powers can be hit or miss. Some powers like Protection, Jump and Speed can be really useful while others like Lightning and Mind Trick require lock ons make them pretty useless. Why go through the trouble of using it when you could swipe them with your saber in a fraction of the time? It does mix up up the gameplay at least, and is a welcome change after playing through the first part of the game with mostly the stormtrooper rifle as it like its predecessor is clearly the best option. What really shines here are the levels, they are absolutely huge at times and it's pretty amazing that they were able to cram it all in when this was at the start of the 3D game boom.

Overall this is a fantastic Star Wars game. Twenty three years ago I would have had a list of improvements I'd like to see in the sequel, but thankfully they already did that with Jedi Knight II.

Time taken to beat: 7.5 hours

Score: 8/10

A great 90s shooter, they don't make them like they used to.

Despite being 25 years old, Dark Forces still holds up, bar some vertical aiming issues that require some tweaking. Thankfully a generous autoaim system helps compensate for this while not making the game too easy.

When compared to the later instalments, the story in Dark Forces can seem pretty basic and Kyle Katarn may as well be a silent protagonist, although appearances from Darth Vader and other memorable characters from the original trilogy keep it from getting stale.

Graphically the game captures the art design from the original trilogy very well, same with the sound (as most Star Wars games too, it's hard to mess that up even through MIDI).

I find it sad that people compare this to DOOM so much when people just see the shooting and call it a day. The verticality and puzzle solving are great and at no point I encountered the usual "Where the hell am I supposed to go" that many games from this era suffer from.

Overall I'm glad I revisited this. While not an essential play to catch up on the full Jedi Knight story, it's a fantastic game of its genre and is nice to see where the story of Kyle Katarn began.

Time taken to beat: 7.5 hours

Score: 7/10

A great little dungeon crawler roguelike with a satisfying gameplay loop, but that falls short in almost every other aspect.

I couldn't even tell you what the story in Ziggurat involved, I forgot it about 30 seconds after watching the opening cutscene. While it's clearly not where the development was focused, it essentially turns the rest of the game into a roguelike shooting gallery. Which isn't a bad thing when the gameplay is this good!

No two weapons feel the same and each one has its advantages and disadvantages. This makes you have to think on the fly when you have the chance to swap out your weapons and whether it's worth doing considering the enemies you're facing at the time. This switches up each playthrough and keeps things interesting. The game is tough yet fair, at no point was there an enemy or boss that I thought had a cheap move that I thought was impossible to dodge or avoid damage from. It feels great to get an enemy pattern down and you have a great sense of skill progression as you blast through the early levels that initially seemed difficult.

The graphics are...serviceable. Not great but not terrible. It doesn't feel like the team were going for a specific tone to the game as enemy styles vary from killer carrots, to generic skeletons to...flying fish? It all just feels a bit silly, but given the rest of the game doesn't have this sort of care free feeling to it, it comes off as a bit odd.

Overall, a solid game that I'd recommend for a few playthroughs. However it's not a game I'll be revisiting or have the desire to go back to any time soon.

Time taken to beat (100%): 23 hours

Score: 6/10