Recent reviews by Mark_Immortell

Nice game, which is quite similar to the System Shock and Bioshock games, so if you've enjoyed them, you most probably will enjoy this one, too.
Outstanding is IMO the possibilty to reach almost every visible location by using the very cool Gloo Gun. This makes exploration a lot of fun. A little bit annyoing are only the loading screens, when moving from one level to another.
Graphics are fine, sound is awesome. Gameplay is very smooth, controls are very good (especially the favourite wheel allowing to switch stuff very fast; I am wondering, why no other game has adapted this feature).
With about 20 hours for one playthrough, the game has a good length, however, on the downside the game can become a little repetative after a while: at the middle of the game you have seen almost every enemy and have aquired every weapon.
The game is even on normal difficulty quite challenging.
I am enjoying this game a lot.

Despite having some bugs the gameplay is fun: weapon sound and feeling is awesome, atmosphere is great, story telling is good, difficulty is adjustable, controls are ok, sometimes combat is little clunky, graphics I dont care with my low performance laptop, but it looks ok even on low settings.

This game is so creepy, with such an intense atmosphere full of suspense, in my opinion it is a masterpiece (despite the annoying things I talk about later on)!

It is so diversified, none of the levels are repetetive: The first two levels are played like a suspense detective story driven adventure, oh and the hotel scene, best scripted scene of a game ever... the third level is played like a stealth game (not competetive with the Thief series, but so far it is ok), afterwards there are more or less fps action levels (true, the middle part of the game is the weakest point of the game due to strange fps game mechanics, but as far as I experienced, the mysterious atmosphere did not get lost like other reviewers have been written about this part of the game) and during the final 1/3 of the game the superstitous elements of the game rise and are soooo creepy!

Not to mention this unique "mind is going insane" game mechanics, where the screen blures, when you encounter strange things... the heart starts loudly beating... it is a f****** crazy horror and if you do not calm down, you kill yourself... whoever invented that was a genius!

The diversity, the strong suspense and the excellent atmosphere were the reason, why I went on in the game.

Now I'd like to mention some of the annoyances in the game:

Sometimes the save spots are in unfair positions, so you have to repeat the same procedures again and again until you succeed.
The shooter mechanics (no crosshair, you have to use iron sights) is quite innovative, somehow, I liked it, but if you encounter too much enemies you will probably struggle; for example, if you have to reload your gun, the process of reloading takes ages and you will probably die; and if you are hurt, it also takes ages to heal yourself and again, you will probably die. It might be more realistic this way, but it also hampers the shooting experience, on the other side you are always feeling vulnerable, so you might consider to sneak around enemies instead of shooting them down, but this is not alway possible or sometimes even more frustrating.
Of course I have to mention the most famous game breaking bug of this game (so far I encountered only one game breaking bug and the final boss fight was quite buggy; despite these major bugs, I encountered only a few minor bugs, nothing to get excited about): I played the game on Windows7, so I had to deal with the reef bug: you do not see the sorcerers you have to kill (I am sure this was caused by Cthulhu itself... invisible sorcerers... that's it!!!), however, the scenario is great, these monstrous sea waves are scary, but without any FAQ explaining how exactly to aim with the cannon it is impossible to complete this part on modern systems (however, with a detailed description explaining how to do it, this part becomes quite easy to complete, so thanks to the guys who figured it out, for example view this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebc6YMTTJrk
).
Finally, the puzzles are sometimes annoying, because you simply do not know, what you have to do next (at least two times I read a FAQ, but I do not want to spoiler ... in my opinion, with some more patience and some more trial and error than I spent, these passages would have been feasible, too).


So, let me sum up: Despite a few annoyances it is a great game. Everybody who on the one hand likes suspense horror stories, creepy atmosphere and H.P. Lovecraft, and on the other hand likes a lot of diversities in playstyle throughout a game, should definitly give this game a try!

Fantastic game! I really love it, again and again...

But first I had to spend some time to get familiar with the world and its dangers and then I really started enjoying it.

My first Captain rapidly died, and I was pissed off, but hey, now I know, it was Mt. Nomad, who killed me; the second Captain lasted much longer (avoiding any battles, especially Mt. Nomad), now I am playing the sixth Captain and with help of the previous ones within the lineage I was already able to obtain all the legacy items, and I feel it was worth the effort and each Captain discovered more mysteries and dark secrets. But indeed, sometimes it was very frustrating, just got the Impeller and the Memento Mori and... died... died because I had forgotten, that I was heavily wounded... and went into the swamps... bad idea...

Now, I am looking forward to win the game by the Carnelian Exile Quest "the Name which burns", horrifying challenging stuff :)

Thanks, Failbetter Games, for such a great game! And hurry up with the DLC! And don't stop adding new stories, keep it alive!!!