Recent reviews by Barf

Love this game. Impeccable re-working of the original. Cyan still does the most internally coherent world building of any studio around.

Thought provoking and moving. Really made me think about the power I have over my own reality. Gorgeous.

It's great - AAA immersive sim

Pretty much the best boomer shooter out there. Pretty pretty good.

Loved Dungeon of the Endless. Got this during the fall steam sale.

Really fun rogue like with tower defense elements. The gameplay and discovery are fantastic. Characters are super fun. The storytelling isn't on the level of Hades, but the world is worth your time!

EDIT: ok, months later, after a lot of patches and enhanced stability, I think I can finally recommend this game.

It is EXCEPTIONAL game design and storytelling. It's beyond anything else on the market. And now, finally, the stability matches the creative ambition.

Highly recommended.

EDIT: I continue to hold that this game is - as a game - incredible. But as a piece of technology, it is absolute garbage. I am crashing every five minutes trying to complete Act 3. it's awful. Absolutely awful.

This game is incredible. So complex, so many player choices.

And it's insanely unstable, the further into it you get.

I'm now at the end of Act 2, and the game has started routinely crashing every 20 minutes. It's infuriating.

The game itself is beautiful. The stability is for ♥♥♥♥.

Exceptional immersive sim design. Thief / Prey / Deus Ex, with a heavy heavy dose of survival horror atmosphere.

Some of the best level design going, along with a very considered, deliberate intuition for world building.

Highly recommended!!

Wow. The best designed game I've played in maybe five years. Mechanically it's more sound than just about any controller bound game I've seen. Beautiful, rich environments, and the surprising, funny, impactful story you'd expect from a full Half Life game (which this is). I wanna see more games with this ambition, on any format, ever.

Arkane continues to be the most adventerous AAA dev out there.

A rogue-like crossed with an immersive sim. Multiple systems interacting to produce complexity with a high degree of repeatability.

The story is weaker than it was in Prey. The meta-wrapper is interesting, but the individual stories of the characters on board leave something to be desired. Gameplay is king here.

A+ writing and narrative design. A real masterclass in allowing players to discover a fully realized world + characters at their own pace. The AR recording mechanic is pretty genius, and is almost definitely going to be stolen by a AAA team sometime in the future; the ability to re-wind and replay deeply layered scenes, with new details to pay attention to each replay, is an incredible way to engage players with backstory and build environmental puzzles.

My only real criticism would be the lack of meaningful choice / agency on the part of the player. I'd love to see Fullbright tackle a story that places players in the middle of the action, with decisions to make, on their next go round. They've clearly proven themselves with character and environmental storytelling; the next step is allowing the player to be an agent of change (perhaps chaos) inside that wonderful worlds they create.

But despite that critcism: this is a game that made me feel feelings. And that's worth something.