A very standard third person action adventure set in the, quite intrigueing, Alan Wake universe. Gameplay is...well, everything you'd expect from a third person actioner, they added a light looter shooter aspect where you can upgrade your guns with mods you loot. The usual weapon types ; Regular, Sniper, Shotty, Grenade launcher.... It's all decent, works fine. You got some powers too, telekinesis, levitate and stuff like that. So...gameplay is solid, fine, ok Story is fun with good acting, music is solid, graphics are solid. again, game is solid. Now technically, despite the graphics being nothing THAT special the game is very demanding, I am playing in 1080p on a 1080ti so that is a bit ...unusual. So the port seems to be a bit unoptimised. The game crashed for me every few hours, not too bad, but still, for a YEAR old game still to have that, very disappointing and it also makes another bug worse. Achievements (if you care, if not please just skip and don't complain to me how achievements are stupid and unnecessary, thank you) are bugged, many of the cumulative achievements (find 120 collectibles, cleanse 25 control points, do 15 side missions, etc) don't work as they should. The game resets the counter on reload. So the only ways to get them are playing through the whole game in one sitting (remember the crashes I mentioned, yeah, good luck with that) or use cheat engine and find the counter address to change it. Even after that, the get all achievements achievement does not unlock. Having 99% the game (missing that one achievement :P ) I am a bit suprised about all the praise the game got. Now don't get me wrong, it is good, but good in like 8/10 territory, not a solid 10 many review sites gave it. I actually like Alan Wake better to be honest. Recommended, but curb your expectations.
This is a real fun little game where you play a robot in a world where the humans who built you are gone and you live on what they left behind. The story will take you on a 2.5-3 hour trip through this world, which for the price (especially with the currently reduced release discount) is fine imho. Graphics are good (game's a few years old) and the soundtrack is great. I read some complaints about the voice acting which I never understood since the deadpan understated delivery is really fitting considering it's robots talking. Flaws are the action sequences which I am not really fond of. They're not THAT bad though, just a bit annoying. there are only a couple of those in the game thankfully. The sequel which seems to be bigger and more involved is slated for release in a few months, so the story will continue.
Ok, plain and simple, one of the worst games I have played, period. It's an exercise in frustration.....even on casual difficulty and not because of any difficulty in the combat or anything, it is just full of gameplay mechanics designed purely to frustrate. It starts fine, good graphics, forgettable music (I actually had to think about this for a second since for a moment I couldn't even remember if the game HAD music, it is just THAT good) and a decently intriguing story. To shortly list what is wrong with this game : - bugs, game crashes and I even had a gamebreaking bug...I actually didn't see the pistol you have to pick up in chapter 2 (iirc) which then leads to a sequence breaking bug in chapter 6 (the game uses the pistol in that sequence. this has been known since release and is still not fixed. Even dumber, in previous cutscenes a pistol just magically appeared in your hands for the purpose of the scene to then just disappear....they just forgot it in that scene and NEVER fixed it despite user feedback. There is also geometry issues, for example, I jumped down a small rock and then hang floating in the air which lead to a checkpoint restart. also a bunch of clipping artifacts and other stuff. very unpolished - checkpoint placement suck, often they are no checkpoints before "puzzle" sequences, example you are fleeing through an area with lotsa fires. you finally get locked in a room which starts to light on fire and you are supposed to shoot some valve on the ceiling. I couldn't see that valve since the flickering of the fire covered the interact highlight glow so I died and had the replay the whole area including difficult fights, joy - many MAAAAANY instances of forced slow walk (for no reason or effect), taking control away from you for nothing, silly and slooooooow interact scenes (can you open and walk through doors ANY slower ?) - oh, and you run like a 70 year old, fat chain smoker with asthma...when you are fully upgraded ! Stay AWAY
If you crave some solid point&clicking you really can't go much wrong here. Stasis and Cayne, the previous games from The Brotherhood were already good games, but BD adds a the flavor of a quite unique world to the mix. Set in a future Africa it has great artwork and backgrounds and quite fascinating characters and lore. You, your estranged brother and a mecha dog are transported from present day to a kinda postapocalyptic future where sentient robots and other weird species are abound. The voice acting is great and the south african accents add to the atmosphere. I especially liked Pooch, the robo dog, the voice actress is great and the audio effect they used on her voice really fits and sounds perfect. Your quest in this intriguing world, is to learn how you got there and how to get back and it took me about 13-14 hours on my first playthrough (there are 4 endings (and one semi-hidden) based on the way you play in a light alignment system, so replays might add to that time depending on your interest). For the price asked that is a fair value for the money to me. The game looks and controls similar to the Fallout games, the real ones, not the Bethesda junk, but let me be very clear, this is NOT an RPG !!! Is it perfect, no, but for me there was not much that annoyed me, mainly at one point in the story you need to basically win a dice game to progress, and if you are unlucky that can get annoying (my first playthrough I won first try and wondered why people were complaining about the dice game, the second time I was not that lucky and yep, I understand now). Most other complaints I had were already fixed by patches.
Bugs....bugs everywhere...and I am not talking about some enemy type in game, this is one of the buggiest games I ever played. I even have a gamebreaking bug, 2 of my characters NEVER inflict ANY damage with ANY weapon on ANY enemy...this is a problem in a hard game like this, believe me. I tried Pistols (they have clip pistol skill), I tried melee (they have no skill, but even in the original they still would hit and do damage occasionally) and I even tried rifles (they have the skill), nothing. I probably did 200 attacks with each of those characters at least during the time I played, never ever did they hit (they either miss or inflict no damage, always). Get the original, considering they didn't even update the UI and it still is just as clunky as in the old one, there is really no reason to play this with all the new bugs....yeah yeah, the graphics are a bit better (don't expect wonders here though !!!! or you will be disappointed). Due to the bug I get I can only give this 1 star, it is basically unplayable for me.
Can't recommend this one, tries to be firewatch, but comes nowhere close. Unlikable characters, bland voice acting, bland story and stretched out like crazy to barely reach 2.5-3 hours of playtime. Clearly made on the cheap as if some graphic artists got together and made a hotel setting and some guy yelled "let's make money" so they slapped together a barebone predictable story with no surprises. choices which are no choices (honestly, for most of the "choices" they at best change the initial sentence your character says, that is it, and in several cases they change NOTHING, of course they have no impact on anything later, endings are the same, later dialogues are not impacted). Pacing is off everywhere, if you are a regular gamer you will often end up where you need to be before the game WANTS you to because the dialogue is still going and we can't interrupt that of course. I had several occasions where I had to sit and listen to dialogue discussing what to do while staring at the thing I had to interact with but couldn't since dialogue is unskippable and while it's going you can't interact with buttons and stuff. On one occasion I even had to wait for ANOTHER dialogue to start and wait for it to finish....which meant I stood there, no one was talking but I still could not interact with anything (I thought the game was bugged) until after a minute the next dialogue started, horrible. There is also no reward for exploration, there is barely stuff to inspect, mostly books you can check the covers off and a very few letters. You don't miss much if you just beeline it to the finish (which brings the already low playtime even lower, my 2.5-3 hours included some exploration until I realized it was pointless). Stay away or wait for a sale, this is not worth the money in any way, shape or form.
You People Wouldn't Believe ... and that is Blade Runner from Westwood appearing on GOG. Hands down one of the best movie adaptations of all time and one classic adventure game. They did pretty much everything right, hit all the right notes to reach the level of atmosphere the movie had. This is a true classic of the 90s. If you are a fan of the movie, there is no question nor doubt here, BUY THIS NOW !!
