The strangest part of the game is its first few minutes, where I simply could not get past the loading screen. It took a good while of googling and PCGamingWiki shenanigans. IIRC it was fancy reg editing and also naming the exe to DXHR.exe (Deus Ex Human Revolution) from a Steam Discussion to make AMD apply correct settings to play the game. The platforming engine itself may remind you of Legend, trying to have too much variety that the core gameplay feels too punishing with certain long climbing/shimmying sections that make you lose a few minutes' worth of progress when making mistakes. Maybe I'm just impatient, and the demo available on the internet can help you decide better. Now, if the cover art isn't giving it away to you, Lara is most sexualized in this game. The first real level of the game (also the first hour) has Lara in a revealing diving suit to find an underwater ruin, but she doesn't even have flippers on, opting to go through avoiding the deathtraps within barefooted when she gets out of the water. Subsequent land levels also let you choose if you want her to wear longer or shorter pants, which is really nice. The dirty effects on her model as she goes through levels is well done and invites you to enjoy how she looks. I'm not saying this aspect of the game is bad, just that you have to keep it in mind when making your purchase. On the other hand the 2013 reboot goes a different direction where it's revealed she's a Terminator in disguise, but you do get clothes that cover more of the body fitting the activities and less "ogle positions" (let's just say the underwater cave in Underworld has some sus-looking climbing sections). Overall it's classically frustrating experience, but you do get to look at Lara a lot as she goes through the paces. Feel free to use mods and the menu-hook if you find yourself being too frustrated to have fun.
The Tomb Raider Legend engine gets serious polish to make the joy of exploring lost ruins and sleuthing arounddeath traps (or experiencing them, which is just as fun) to a modern audience that is used for WASD + Mouse movement. It's not the most accessible experience though, as the run and gun combat requires you to get good with the dodging button mechanic (you can't "jump away" to dodge despite them using similiar-looking animations) and the puzzle bosses being absolutely brutal with their demands in execution, thinking and finesse. Ironically the final boss is not even the hardest one. This is made worse by the fact the pistols are no longer automatic (you have to click every shot) and there's a ton of quick time events. Thankfully PCGamingWiki once again tells mods that solve these issues and if you find yourself getting too frustrated you can always use the TRAE-Menu-Hook to get a good look around the level, slow down the game's pace or even just noclip past some parts you find too frustrating. You play games to feel good, not to prove something to people on the internet...right? Lara couldn't have looked any better though, to the point some may say she looks too great for the game to be taken as one. There are unlockable outfits for the hardcore gamers if you find the default sleeveless she uses too distracting, or once again just use the menu-hook.
Tomb Raider Legend had a lot of great ideas that belong in an action film. Motorcycle chases, puzzle boss fights and a colourful cast of characters. Unfortunately, resources are clearly stretched thin as the motorcycle sections feel too simple and too long, the platforming isn't as forgiving as the 2013 reboot, and there is too much chatter between Lara and her friends over the radio to really appreciate the many vistas the game has to offer. It is still worth playing, just check out PCGamingWiki's page and see which fixes appeal to you.
Have you ever wanted to dissappear into a place where no one will find you? Then strap in and walk through this dreamscape. The high-fidelity sound design is exceptionally good, enhanced with reverb that has a lot of care put into it. Seriously, I'm deaf on one ear so a lot of games sound "artificial" to me but in here everything feels very real to my brain - from the flow of water, electricity hums to wind passing through giant passages. And I don't even have a VR headset! The game also lets you enjoy the experience your own way. By default the game comes with an unsettling lost footage CRT styled filter, but you can adjust them to your liking from 0% to 100% (they start at 50). The movement also feels too slow to me, but the speed, even the acceleration can be tweaked. I used 0.05 for a Source-like experience along with turning off most filters and setting lighting to minimal for a cozy familiar experience. My only complaint is that you still hear a breathing sound when you sit despite turning off the "mouth" volume down (maybe that's a bug?) and not being able to adjust your base height. No other game comes close so I am still giving this a solid 5, but them's the breaks, yeah. The place has inhabitants, sure, but there is no concept of "scary thing trying to get you". Everything scary you see or hear won't scream loudly or barrel towards you like in those weird jumpscare games. I just treat them the same way I treat my neighbours. The game has let me calm myself down in ways I really needed, and for that I thank the developers wholeheartedly for making the game despite them not thanking me for playing the game despite doing so in the demo. Maybe they will when I actually reach the end, who knows, lol. Remember to take a break and sit every once in a while. You might even find a corner of the world you like existing in. You can stay there as long as you'd like. <3
The first BloodRayne can be described as mindless fun with simple if repetitive gameplay with gratituous amounts of sexual content. The sequel, on paper tries their best to expand upon the first in every way, adding more enemy types, weapon combos, improved graphics, rotating camera so you can ogle at Rayne, and even a naked woman without genitals. I don't care about the blue tattoed skin, they were definitely putting a naked woman in the game. Sadly, this is where the lack of polish starts showing... The game is drastically overhauled to be slower-paced like the Batman Arkham Knight games. In practice, the manual lock-on is absolute pain but necessary since there is no melee tracking & you can't really block. Rayne also gets knocked down if she gets hit too much, which, coming from BloodRayne 1 feels really silly - she even has quips for getting back up in embarassment! The aforementioned ogle camera is a curse to the gameplay itself, as the lerp is too slow & it's too close to let you see enemies from behind reliably. The level design changed, it now focuses on defeating waves of enemies in a certain area. No longer can you rush through the level ignoring enemies - but it feels like padding, more than anything. Speaking of which, many require you to harpoon enemies into an environmental meat grinder - awesome concept, but massively overused & the game isn't clear on how to properly throw the goobers into them, which is annoying when others are trying to thwart you. The final nail in the coffin is the game's minibosses - there are many, and black dhampirs near the aquarium stage just ruined my desire to finish the game without cheating. Ironically, they have no explanations on their weakpoint, but much harder than bosses with a healthbar. In conclusion there's a lot more precision involved to play through the game, which is not something I'm happy to do when the game is about vulptous women. It's obvious this game was super rushed, a real shame...
It's no secret Fallout 4 is one of the most modded games on ModNexus, beating even New Vegas. This is great, because the formula is exactly the same as Fallout 3: groan-worthy main questline, with triple-A open world experience. This time you don't even have to play for an hour to finish the prologue!!! Bethesda still does a great job at making self-contained experiences scattered across the map, be it combat or stories. My favourite moment was having NAC Weathers X installed, stumbling upon the Glowing Sea, and seeing vivid sunset-like red like I've never seen before. The Grognak Comics building also has a nice story, but most importantly when your female character puts on the Conan the Barbarian suit she will mysteriously have a brown bra to match, and that's hilarious. As The Best Of Times Moddinglinked recommends, most mods (even Quality of Life ones) don't work on the latest patch, so having to spend nearly 10 hours modding just to experience the game it was meant to be can be a turn-off for some people. Judging by the review directly before mine, I assume the vanilla version is a hot mess. Unfortunately, your character has voiced dialogue (did I mention they speak *every* line?), ruining even more of your hopes of any role-playing experience across playthroughs Still, atleast she sounds like a grizzled fighter when being hurt, unlike New Vegas. Of course, you can mod to change it.
The only Saints Row thing about this game is the returning characters (of which there are two). They also made Kinzie sound really suggestive when getting hurt, despite sounding perfectly humane in the previous games - love it or hate it. Overall, this game feels like Bethesda touching the Fallout series: when playing through the main story, the gameplay feels half-baked, like it was made from a Unity game template, the self-aware cutscenes aren't really enough to justify the action part of the experience. The 5 stars is because of the game's unsung hero: world design. I have clocked about 200 hours (more than SR4!) just holding the walk button and admiring the attention to detail in the world. The denizens of hell all look the same, representing stifled diversity & self expression. Some rest on benches, others sleep on bare mattressess on the soot-filled rooftops. Poverty? We're gonna need a new definition... Out of nowhere, a bloke will express a fervor of frustration. Another will literally chased by flesh-eating insects, suffering. And sometimes, they get zapped by lighting, just because. And sometimes, you may even see someone be on the city payphone for ages, spending all of their pennies trying to connect to the outside world - with no response. And that's not even talking about the buildings yet. The slums are my favourite area, each window of the gigantic buildings representing prolonged torment of hell. Partially burnt clothes, heaps of TV recievers on rooftops existing merely as a place of rest from the exploitative society. All of this paints the most cohesive "show, don't tell" writing I've ever seen in an open world. Asset reuse doesn't necessarily mean bad. Still, I shoot the demons sometimes, just for kicks. I found the game most fun with no main missions completed - it opens up just the right amount of open-world activities without ruining the game's atmosphere. Though, I had to disable the free roam nagging through a mod...
That title isn't spambait; there is no Obsidian's Fallout writing to be had here. There is a main quest where you help your dad (played by Liam Neeson) achieve his dreams of drinkable water. It's a noble quest, but you are specifically "Dad's kid" by every story-related NPC. No matter what you do, word gets around, and the local radio DJ just *knows* you're looking for daddy when you barge into his office. Bethesda is great at making mini experiences spread across an open world, where each little town has their own arc and even dungeons have bits of stories. They won't win any awards on their own, but there's something special about traversing the plains and finding a contained storybook in each of them, so to speak. However, the dialogue choices are very black-and-white - either you are a deity or a supervillain. If you wanted an actual immersive Role-Playing Game by Bethesda go play Daggerfall (or its Unity fan-version). +1 star though because the voice actress in this game is less meek than in New Vegas. Seriously, it's so grating to hear a Level 1 character sound of getting hurt when you're Level 30. (It's possible to mod over the voice files from this game to that game though) Combat is super jank and potentially more repetitive than New Vegas, but the weapon condition/repairing mechanic ensures you'll often be using weapons that you pick up. (NV has less overworld combat, more forgiving repair system & even portable repair kits). Almost forgot, get an auto-save manager mod. This game does not have good autosave. Also if you hate green tint check out Clarity.
If you are willing to spend about 5 hours to follow a reputable modding guide like Viva New Vegas just to get the game working to its full potential, then you will witness a world torn to shreds, every community ravaging the land for what they can. Otherwise I'd regard the game more akin to torture device, bringing your hopes up with the writing yet shattering it with every bug & crash You read the previous paragraph about installing Quality of Life mods being a requirement, right? At least an auto-save manager. The DLCs are somewhat all over the place in practice, for example my favourite Dead Money turns the game into bleak horror with memorable characters & writing... however, there is an anxiety-inducing mechanic where to proceed through some areas, you have to find a "speaker" within an area and shoot it before the high-pitched beeping timer runs out (they don't even bother to show you an example of how it looks like) I'm autistic (sensitive to stimuli) and have poor perception, so finding these speakers were so painful & difficult they took me out of the story and into pain - just suffering. Because of this, on my first playthrough, every word the characters said went into my right ear and went out the left. On the second playthrough, I discovered I could tgm (godmode) to let the explosion happen, permanently disabling the mechanic (I turned it off again ofc). Suddenly, there was calm. I no longer felt like I was going to die in real life. Elitists may call this a "skill issue", but I was able to appreciate the story much better this time around. (There is an in-game difficulty option, but it only affects combat.) Combat is improved from Fallout 3 overall, but still jank. At heart, it's really just how you interact with the world, rather than the highlight. It doesn't help that Laura Bailey sounds like a pushable teenage girl in this game, which is going to be really weird when you're Level 50. P/S: If you dislike brown tint, check out Clarity mod.
Bloodrayne 1 is a mindless, lovable bunch of sex & violence, blended together in a way that leaves lots of room for self-expression. At the basics, you can slash your way though enemies, pick up their guns and use it against their friends, all while moving at the speed of cocaine (in comparison to the sequel). There's the unlimited bullet time for coolness, harpoon for bringing an enemy closer to aid you & spice things up... or you can just play on Easy and walk into bullets if you wanted to. The voice acting is definitely more sensual in the first game, most notably Rayne uses the same pained grunts when getting shot for jumping; either you hate it and curse the developers for not having a voice volume slider, or you love it so much it becomes a guilty pleasure (we're talking *every* jump here, Quake 1 style). Rayne is silent for both things in the sequel. BloodRayne 2 expands upon the action formula, but is much harder as a result - you have to know what you're doing. There's multiple Blood Rage modes, you always have "guns", and everything is more polished across the board. But... Rayne feels slower & weaker in this installment in comparison - she can get knocked down by common enemies, who now move about as fast as you are. Then there's the constant miniboss enemies that require specific maneuvers to take down; otherwise you can't progress. Most regrettably, you cannot pick up enemy weapons anymore and refilling your ammo is more involved. This control overload is compounded by there being NO DIFFICULTY SETTING. Either you learn how to play it properly, or use cheats and be bored by the only challenge left - throwing enemies into meat grinders. and boy do you have a lot of meat grinders!(did I mention these are forced?) There's more story in the second game, but I was too frustrated & not having fun to care about it to be honest. P/S: You can google for free demos of both games, Terminal Cut are mostly the same game with better hardware support & assets.
