Awful game. Worth 2 stars only because of the art style - it's Darksiders after all. I wouldn't even think it's possible for me to delete a Darksiders game after 3 hours without any desire to continue playing but here Iam. What makes this game so bad? Well it's a Dark Souls clone. DS is like a cancer in the industry - every half-arsed developer is trying to clone it, thinking that it will make their game sell better, but it's a fact proven time and time again - that almost everything Dark Souls is praised for, is something that is considered a fault in literally every other game. Because it is. Sparse checkpoints - bad. Simplistic combat that relies on one single skill - bad. Enemies with ridiculous health - bad. You take all those mechanics without the "oh, but it's challenge" label and you are left with a bad game. Happened to every DS clone and they still don't learn. But this one takes it a step further. Remember that point about one single skill the whole game relies on? Both in Dark Souls and in Darksiders 3 that skill is timing, except in Dark Souls most of the time it's very clear when you need to time your dodge and any attack can be interrupted by it. It also gives you a long invulnerabilty frame. In this game your attacks can't be interrupted and the dodge is short and it's invulnerability frame is even shorter. You must make your dodge eligible for a counterattack and this is impossible to do consistently because in addition to activation being unreliable, there are no clear indicators (except for a few enemies that have sound ques) when their attack reaches a phase of "counterattack eligibility" for a dodge. So imagine that - you have zero ways to affect the fight in any way other than timing - just like in Dark Souls. But unlike Dark Souls that one skill also has an element of luck. That's Darksiders 3 gameplay. And that is unplayable.
They've made good use of UE4 with the environments and the voice acting is absolutely superb, as are the dialogues. They are lifelike and characters are well-written. However where I expected some kind of thrilling mystic secret and exploration of relationships between protagonist and Alice, I found a very unsatisying explanation for who Alice is and what the character's motives were. And the mystery was never there, or explained. In fact the game chases you away from it (literally), the moment you feel something interesting is about to happen, and then shorty ends. That's perhaps the main feeling I have from this game - Unsatisfaction. Unsatisfying story, unsatisfying background behind characters. Unsatisfying length. I am sure writers felt they were being clever, but the truth of __reality__ is that clever is not usually what we are looking for.
Hellblade uses many novel and tried tecniques to deliver what I consider to be the best pacing and atmosphere in any game I played, which is quite an achievement considering they number in the thousands. It's a great effort and hopefully a precedent to explore this topic in other games. Hopefully with more to them than just the topic alone. Also some of the best acting performance I have ever seen, incredible animation and almost perfect production quality. Beyond that, however, Senua's Sacrifise is an example of a focused product - literally everything that doesn't directly correlate with the game's main theme and story exposition is as barebones as it gets. Top-notch quality, but barebones. The combat - primitive, exploration - primitive, puzzles - primitive. Even the menus are primitive. What elements do exist, exist solely to contribute to the theme of psychosis, like the adaptive difficulty, audio warning and the focus(i.e. time slow) mechanic. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifise is an experience worth having and a game worth buying, but another one like this will not be needed. Games are more than just atmosphere. Much, much more.
I don't think this title was ever as deserved as The Witcher 3 deserves it. Sure, there were Deus Ex, Dragon Age: Origins, Legend of Zelda and other games to bear this title, by setting a new highest standard bar. But the thing is: it's 2016. All those games and the things they brought are expected now. To match them is an achievement still. But to beat all of them in every respect? That's not something you see every day. Or year. Or decade. It's true that some games posess better gameplay. The controls in Witcher 3 are the worst thing in the game - they are clunky and unresponsive, and will be the reason for 90% of your deaths. And some games have better plots (though not many), some - better characters (though very few). No game, in my opinion, has better quests than Witcher 3. But to combine excellent combat, great storyline, fantastic characters, incredibly well-written and interesting quests with an INSANE amount of content AND to keep ALL of that consistently at that level of quality through the entire experience? No game has ever done that. No game ever even come CLOSE to doing that. Not Deus Ex. Not Zelda. Nothing. If you haven't played this game yet, I can only assume, you have been too busy. Dedicate your next vacation to the Witcher 3. It'll be the best one you've had.
Cryostasis is in many ways a traditional Russian/Ukrainian game. It is unbelievably atmospheric, scary and very good looking. And of course technical quality is a downside. In terms of difference of feeling this is the best horror game ever created. Reason is this: In all horror games, even the top quality ones like Amnesia: The dark descend and Dead Space what actually scares you is that loud noise that appears when you don't expect it in complete silence. What keeps the tension is your fear of this happening again. Cryostasis does differently. It captures the feeling any human gets when he or she feels how close death is. Captures is *perfectly* and uses it for delivering the horror to the player. You are not afraid of loud screaming and ugly face jumping into the camera any minute. You are afraid for the main character's death. By monster's hand, by cold, storm anything. The game creates this need to move forward, survive. When you actually need to fight you will be warned, give weapons, etc. it's not the sudden screaming that scares, and that great. Action Forms did a very hard thing to do. It's a shame that they died after this game, I suppose it didn't sell very well. That said, when you play the game, be prepared, for frame drops, crashes, glitches and all that nasty immersion-breaking crap, 1C has always been so good at ignoring.
I bought the game in Steam... And I am quite confused now. Cuz I can't preload on steam yet... I am sure the game will be amazing, but I am not sure if I should maybe cancel my preorder on Steam and buy it from here... The price is the same after all.
