A free release that serves as prequel or sequel to Stasis, I mean, Samantha is a big part of Stasis and here she is, so is a prequel, but the ending implies it is a sequel, so I don't really know. It plays just as any point and click adventure game, art and atmosphere are still great, can't say I found any trippy weird object placement like in Stasis. The mixing of the audio for conversations is better, and hey, now we got settings inside the game, that's an improvement. Gameplay is more involved, this time the PDAs you find add not only flavour, but contain clues to solve the puzzles, no moon logic either, although crafting a lever from a metallic tube and a blade is kind of a stretch, also, there are a couple of texts I found had no function even tho they looked like they were important at first glance, one was binary code and the other some sort of incomplete cypher. Story is still the usual megacorp human experimentation shennanigans, and you can see the plot twist coming from a mile away. Interesting how all the NPCs depicted fall in a range from assholes to psychos, unlike Stasis, where a few felt like regular people. But this is not a long game and all these characters have deep knowledge of the "research" so is understandable they all are depicted this way. In the end, this is a great PaC, short, but free, so there are no excuses not to play it, I'd recommend playing Stasis first for story context, but is not necessary.
Point and click adventure with horror themaetic, the game works just asit should, I didn't find any "moon logic" puzzles, but pixel hunting is still required some times, graphics are good, great ambience, sound is good, but not great, sound loops are noticeable if you pay attention and the voice acting is sometimes good, sometimes meh. Storywise John is kind of slow on taking in the gravity of his situation and keeps looking for his family even tho every PDA you find states how everyone dies (hardly a spoiler), but I'll cut him some slack since being in stasis for months or years would probably have such side effects. There are also story points that make no sense, but talking about them would be major spoilers. Also, what's up with the art? At some point I saw a row of typebars in a console, like if it was a typewriter, without keyboard or anything. There are little details like that all over the place, which only makes me question the sanity of the protagonist, even tho nowhere in the game is hinted at this being some sort of comatose dream (unlike Sanitarium). Something very annoying is that there are no settings in game, but they come in a separate executable, and sometimes the volume levels reset to max for no reason. To avoid this, use Winndows' volume mixer to lower the game's volume, funny how windows remembers what volume levels you want for this executable, but the game itself fails at it. Enjoyable game, great atmosphere, but somewhat weak story. Still worth a playthrough, we don't get many horror PaC adevntures so the addition is welcome.
Cartoonish story for a cartoonish game, that said the gameplay is good, controls are smooth and each dungeon has some unique enemies, unfortunately there arer some places where enemies respawn endlessly as soon as you are out of sight, which is annoying, the platforming is not particualrly challenging and bosses are pretty easy, but you can challenge yourself by not carrying potions with you. Overall is pretty middle of the road, but it has the best monkey transformation, look at that adorable happy monkey face.
Pretty much the same mechanics than the previous games, your companions are likeable with some interesting backstories, the main quest is short if you isolate it, but there are plenty of side missions, unfortunately, you have to see the future inorder to know what wuild you want to runn, I was avoiding every possible fight until I hit a point where I needed charisma 7 (with no possible alternative) and with no karma left to invest I had to go guns blazing, I was surprised by this since so far there was always an alternative, from hacking to bluffing my way through, but not this time. Overall, the game is not bad, but you have to hyperfocus on a single skill if you want to be competent at it, I guess this is to encourage several playthroughs with different builds, but since the story is very rigid playing multiple times is a chore, storywise.
The game is satisfyingly smooth to play, guns now are a viable alternative to the sword, with a lot of weapon variants to choose, and an upgrade system that allows certain degree of customization, sword play has improved too, sword skills only require a directional input instead of double tap, this makes a world of difference, spells have a dedicated button for each one, again, big improvement, with a decent amoount of passive skills to further your murderous potential. And get this, there's no fall damage , no stamina and no recovery time between sword skills. My favorite change tho: The game doesn't rate your "performance" after each fight. All these changes make the moment to moment gameplay enjoyable and you will play until you get tired of goring demons, and believe me, you will get tire of it because... The game is no longer a linear experience with carefully crafted levels, it is in all intent and purposes, a looter shooter, is built to get you into a loop of revisiting zones to farm loot to get minimal increments on stats and repeat endlesssly, nothing encapsulates this better than the masamune orbs, a rare curerncy used to upgrade the base stats of weapons and purify charms from negative effects, this processes are prohibitely expensive, but again, the game will only throw a few orbs your way each time. It sounds boring, and it is because there are only three distinctive biomes. Finally, Lo Wang is an insufferable prick this time, he throws insults and sarcasm at everything that breathes, and his relationship with his coprotagonist is antagonistic at best, which makes the ending more jarring than anything else. In the end, the game made big improvements on the combat, but the story and the narrative are weak, stretched thin in a bloated pustule of content. My advice is to only do the side missions that give skills and ignore the rest, no matter how enjoyable the combat is, you want to spend as little time as possible with this game.
Talk about big departures from original material. The game is a serviceable FPS, ironically, the guns are not the highlight of the game, every gun has a small magazine with unnecesarily long reload animations, only useful when upgraded, but not all upgrades are made equal, and the "specioal" upgrade tend to be bad i.e, akimbo for SMGs, but you have to hold a button to activate it, and the second SMG doesn't get its own clip so you end up eating through bullets twice as fast, a.k.a. reloading your gun twice as much, hardly an upgrade if you ask me. On the other hand you get the sword, which is a powerful piece of equipment, with special katana skills to further your murderous potential, there's even a skill that allows you to heal when you damage enemies with such special moves, and that's why I think the game is tailored more towards swordplay than gunmplay. However, the swordplay is not the best either, special skill are charged by double tapping a directional key, which interrupts the flow of your movement, so you'll end up soaking damage more than dodging damage, it is also unfortunate you don't get invisibility frames during the animations of these charged attacks, furthening the vicious loop of spamming charged attacks to stay alive long enough to charge another attack, and trust me, even if that sounds like an easy win combo, it is not, enemies will often outnnumber you 10 to 1 and you'll eventually die if you stand still for more than three seconds. There are also ki skills(spells) that are activated pretty much like the sword skills, double tapping a directional button, so they mostly suck too. And finally but not least, the game grades you after each encounter, and that is a sin coming from a janky piece of software. All in all, the game does a lot, but doesn't excel in anything, the saving grace is the characters, Lo Wang is no longer an usufferable stereotype, he's just an stereotype, and the story is interesting enough for you to keep going.
Point and click adventure that seems to be taking out from the Sierra days , extreme pixel hunting with a lot of brute forcing because puzzles often don't make sense, thankfully there's a button to reveal interactable objects because most of them are very easy to miss. There are some issues with audio mixing in dialogues, mostly because all actors sound like they phoned it in. There are even grammatical errors in subtitles. Broken Sword did it better.
PSA, check PCgamingwiki for game improvements and fixes, believe it or not, if you set the refresh rate beyond 85 the game automatically uses the lowest resolution, no matter what your configuration is. Functionally the game is sound, you drive around, shoot Nazis and blow up things, is basically "WW2 GTA", except that the tone and the writing is all over the place, NPC related to the story are incredibly cartoonish it breaks the illusion, I feel like Wolfenstein has better control of these aspects and that franchise has freaking mechahittler on it. As a matter of fact, forget what I said, this is not GTA WW2, is more like Saints Row WW2 edition. As mentioned before, even the GOG version (which is the fixed version), is wanky to run, but the most annoying thing is that the camera jitters during cinematics like if it was filmed by someone with Parkinson's. At the end of the day, this is a schizophrenic amalgamation of genres, with some serious ludonarrative issues. If you want old timey GTA, play Mafia 1-2, if you want a more accurate depiction of the grueling experience that was Nazi occupation, you can always pick one of the many campaigns set in the heart of battle like some CoD, Medal of Honor or Brothers in Arms.
A supernatural mystery at sea, and you have to put it all together through death scenes, evaluate the relationships of the characters and pay attention to the details, which can be a challenge on itself with 1 bit graphics, but don't believe for a second I hold the grapphics againts it, on the contrary, it's all part of the soul of the game, alongside the amazing music and voice acting. I was enthralled by it and spent like 8 hours straight playing it, I have to admit I brute forced some of the names because they don't get remotely mentioned ever, but it was fun. The only thing that could make it better would be if after achieving all the fates you could watch all the scenes in chronological order in the main menu or the journal. I hope we can see another game in the series some day.
After over 15 years we finally get a PN sequel, and let me tell you, it's like not a week had gone by. That speaks volumes of the quality of the first game and the commitment of the devs to the second. The artstyle is colorful, cartoonish and a little bit dismorphic. Exactly the same as before, but in higher resolution, with better effects, animations and lighting, Music is fantastic, a great company during exploration and fitting for each level, the Psi King stage has my favorite music in the game, audio design is excellent too with a cast of VA on par. Level design is imaginative, with the mind dives beign once again a highlith of the game, they integrate very each character's story, revealing their backstory not only throw the narration, but throw the scenary itself, I think Bob's mind is probably the best example of this. Control are tight and responisve, most of the platforming is pretty straightforward, but If you want to be a completionist you will have to get creative some times to get all those sweet collectibles. Story doesn't lag behind, picking right where the first game ended, Raz is now thrown into a new conspiracy, with a whole new cast of characters, including Raz' family. And let me tell you, I think is adorable see Raz' father embracing his psychic powers. I thought I saw the plot twist coming from a mile away, but then realized I was only half right. All is not perfect story wise there are some plot points that are dubious, but they don't detract from the experience imo. I encountered no bugs, no glitches, no crashes, and microsttuter only 3 times in 27 hours of paytime. Overall, I loved this game, I am ashamed I waited so long to play it, but honestly, I was afraid they would have messed it up, that's what I get for avoiding spoilers for almost 3 years. This is an expertly crafted game that has everything I could have ever wanted from a Psychonauts sequel. I juust hope we don't have to wait another 15 years for the next one.
