If you loved the Cat Lady, are a fan of dark and serious topics and point and click games, this innocent looking game has some emotions in store for you if you dare. Just be aware, the game doesn´t f*ck around sometimes with its themes. Gameplay wise you can get stuck having to come up with a solution only a boneheaded crackhead would think of, other times it is very obvious what to do. Other times I had to look up a walkthrough, I´m not ashamed to say so, like any alice themed game, logic can be very hit or miss. The themes obviously go from alice and wizard of oz and anne frank to many other works of art. The opening of fran bows parents reminded me of dexter/batman of all things lol. But what makes this personal, after all is said and done is that it has its own charme. It is a form of happysad or dark and sweet rarely seen. Gameplay is great but annoying from time to time, art can also due to its low res nature be hard to distinguish from what is interactive and what is not, you just clickspam everything. I do like my Point n Click a bit more "guided" as to not waste time that feels like filler or a grind. Not much to complain about otherwise, but what stands out and still makes me itch is when the game suddenly gets serious and dark tothe point of having emotional flashbacks and then hits right home. "Daddy didn´t care, mommy wasn´t there". C-PTSD people will empathize alot with this game. It is a dark fcking world fran bow has to fight through. It is a survivors story. As a survivor myself I had to lay the game down a couple of times to take a breath. Not to mention like with the cat lady, suppress the urge to cry from time to time. So yes, big trigger warning and also walkthrough cheesing warning. Otherwise a fantastic simplistic sweet n dark adventure.
We all have been there but this Point n CLick takes melancholy to the next level with a serious blend of topics and corniness, an artstyle handcrafted and charming with puzzles that aren´t too cryptic or complicated while sometimes maybe being also too easy. Soundtrack was great too, except a few college rock interlude songs. The topics get recycled a bit and it feels like some discussions get repeated too foten so expect some eyeroll n skip sections, while others hit home in a emotionally charged furious tornado of self reflection for whoever had been at the deepest abyss in their life. Which during times of massneurosis as we suffer from nowadays, isn´t all too rare anymore. What i loved most about the story though was the hook of seeing the protagonist become self emancipated again through sheer hate and then using that energy with the power of friendship to eventually stop breaking bad and finidng joy in living again. I bet someone could write an entire essay like its a joker movie review, but to make it simple: its a daring game for anyone who never knew how dark life can get, truly a horror movie for the naive and happy. but to me, and like for susan, just another day in battle.
Very nostalgic game from my childhood. Very foreward thinking with RPG elements, factions, open world, missions and side missions, different task outcomes. Like stalker, it´s a hybrid genre and sort of a one of its kind. Has all the bugs you would think it has and all the jank as well including some of the goofiest looking NPC´s of all time as well. Nontheless I played the living hell out of it. I always viewed it as a weird crossbreed between a first person GTA and Far Cry 2 with a sprinkle stalker. A weird first draft of design philosophies we came to see in later games. It´s actually not possible to make a review with the character length limitations on GOG, so I advise you to buy it, give it a try and see for yourself. Watch some gameplay on youtube. You will see what I mean.
Ever thought this CINEMATIC game needs to be smooth? think again! the devs think it´s fine if you have terrible framepacing in a storybased, cinematic game.
The pawn issue is something inherent to the online nature of Dragons Dogma. Meaning, if you want the pawn, rental, system to work correctly you need the steam version. But if you just want to play the damn game without the weeb´s need to enjoy a game with some rental/pawn online system, the GOG version does indeed work as intended and equal to the steam version. It´s just, as always, that the online functionality has been cut down or eliminated with GOG. If you want a drm free singleplayer only experience of this, this is fine. Last two patches were regarding the online nature only. Whoever reads this in 10 years when capcom shut down the servers, don´t worry, no one gives a shite anyway. Games have to be enjoyed singleplayer, there shouldn´t be a relianceon a online rental/pawn system in the first place. Just classic stupid japanese MMO neurotics in action. Ignore it, enjoy the game offline. it´s fine.
I mean, the gameplay is fun, fine even, has that bit of ubisoft formula about it, the general issue is, just how b movie the story is. It´s bad..... the wehrmacht is portrayed as some sort of comedy skit asset and you justfeel like you throw baguettes at hugo boss satire figures. It´s cringey. I personally prefer it much more serious and sophisticated. Graphics are fine, but the game has no real sense of aesthetics. Has that generic 2009 look to it. Many say it´s a masterpiece, but that´s only because it is very well polished. The consensus in general is, that with each step you take back paris from the nazis, you gain color, an original idea, but, to be honest, its stupid. Why not make it all color in the beginning? Black n white noir does make the game very drab in the beginning. Shooting feels awful, as many third person games were in the 2000´s. It didn´t age well in that regard. I guess the originality is just that the entire game is you playing as a french resistance fighter against nazis. I personally would prefer a game where you play a german resistance fighter within germany. THis concept would have worked much better in a wolfenstein paderborn scenario. Black n white alpine aesthetics like the game Mundaun...... Paris couldn´t grab me. I never felt any particular atmospheric or cultural vibes coming from that place. I mean, if you want a open world(ish) french resistance third person shooter/stealth game, go ahead, this is it and the only one in existance. But prepare for cringe moments, repetitive gameplay loops and some annoying 2009 game issues.
The game itself is still available in the classic version and you can still switch to DX11 and disable RT, but, here is what i assume pisses everyone off so much because it is what pisses me off alot: This is probably a butchered Direct3D11on12 (look it up) job. I understand why RT is so expensive and accept that fact, but a Ryzen 5600 should at least be able to get 60 FPS in the towns with RT on and maybe bottleneck around 60 to 90 fps like spiderman. Instead it´s more like a cpu bottlenecks even on RTX2000 Dollar monster cards in the area of 30 to 60 fps and even below 30 if you got a ryzen 3600 or something. DX12 version is a overhead, wrapper, whatever, they needed to do DX12 to get RT to work as DXR requires DX12. BUT since that DX12 is butchered and not native, it creates cpu overhead and gpu overhead which even with RT OFF gives you less FPS on any setup vs the original directx 11 version. If you know see where this is going: its a free update, a free update nobody can enjoy except with 25 to 40 fps on even 12900K´s or by switching back to the classic GOTY version and ignore this update entirely. It´s free, but not playable, not just because of the awful RT performance cost, fps loss by API switch, but also because like on console, the camera is now stuttery, framepacing is broken, these baffoons managed to introduce shader compilation stutter into a once smooth running game and they still haven´t properly fixed the traversal stutter. The best part of this free update is the option to ignore it, ignore the fact you can only get 60fps+ with RT by using DLSS3 and the best part, truly now is hulk hogans texture pack. ALso cobblestone walkways are now parallaxed/tesselated, draw distances are increased, those things im glad CDPR fixed and improved. Not everything is negative. But the broken framepacing is the worst part. RT i can ignore, dx12 too, but the framepacing PISSES ME OFF. Cyberpunk is weirdly enough smoother... wtf?
It´s even more linear than Thief Deadly Shadows, Thief Deadly Shadows was semi linear, acceptable, this is just linear. This game has amazing Unreal Engine 3 visuals, but lacks any proper design choice. It has this awful fog when crouching, that indicates wether you are visible or not. Fog vignette. all this type of stuff is just, why modern gaming has become a joke. Oldschool designers rationalized according to the graphics with shadows and lighting, and these designers tried themselves at it too, but unlike the originals, they couldn´t properly design levels and shadows so players know when they are visible or not. that´s the BAIN of soft shadows in this games 2014 era. it required stencil shadows or raytracing. neither was legitimate at the time. So, it was like dishonored, just an empty husk of it´s formerself with some shitty story and cringe characters to add to the mix. I don´t know. It´s like emo garrett meets, cringey batwoman and both have an adventure of game designers trying their first steps in a thief game, while ignoring what made thief great by avoiding to play the originals. It´s decent for casuals, people unfamiliar with the brand and even genre. And that´s why it gets the hate.
Gets rid of all the issues ive had with software rendering, from my 5800X barely able to sustain above 70 fps in 480 in the original. Gives the games back then emulated 3D look actual 3D like many sourceports did with doom and such, so nothing lost there unless you are a software render fanatic still mentally stuck in 1998. The only time I missed software render was with the unfiltered textures in quake which got lost in the 3D HW accelerated mode, but this port keeps it all truthfully as original, even though you gotta adjust brightness and gamma to get the same values as the original. Its darker than the original. Can´t say if I missed some stuff that seems broken vs the original, windows break, enemies feel more satisfying to shoot than the original, feels like true ukrainian quake now but still has unfiltered textures which is awesome. Movement is smooth, vsync off, framerate locks work perfectly, vulkan dx12 and dx11 support so it runs on any 10 year old modern machine, mouse input is perfect and still lower latency than the overhead you had with quake enhanced. Sound works just fine, tried the chasm portable and there I had sound issues where the volume sliders didnt work, so, thats fixed for me. To me, it seems like a nightdive quality port of a cult classic and I can heartily recommend it so far, but lets wait for final release, some fans always uncover something that isn´t right compared to the original. I just hope, since the devs of this port seem unknown on the storepage and i have to google extensively to find out who made it, that they also patch whatever fans uncover. Wishlisted and stoked to play.
With the early access being over one day, final release somewhere next year on steam, performance and bugs ironed out like with any game development by then, this demo which is years behind the actual product, since it´s an alpha build, is already extremely well done to me for an indie thief inspired attempt. atmospheric, smooth to play, intriguing world, solid AI, overall, with a bit more refinement and fixing, would become an alltime classic. People complaining about the visuals, are probably the same who at the same time play, for example, valheim, but don´t complain about how ugly valheim as a game can be, because the gameplay is stronger than the face, so what´s up with complaints about the minimalistic nature of the visuals in gloomwood? Makes no sense and those complaints shall be ignored. This game looks better than most 3d lowpoly games, even without volumetric and modern effects. Texture artistry is a thing and while many old school lowrestexture inspired games fail at producing any sophisticated, acquired taste in shape, form, face or surfacedetail and just mix and mash random low res assets, gloomwood like many of the more accomplished throwback style games nails the aesthetics with careful design, detail and sophisticated taste just like thief did it. I seriously got strong Call of Cthuhu Dark Corners of the Earth, Resident Evil and Thief vibes from it and I can´t wait to buy the game once its done. It´s a must play for any stealth/thief fan. Stealth is already a rarity these days with weeb and MMO and other genres of games taking priority, people getting shorter and shorter attention spans and the lack of patience shifting the market to dopamineaddiction peddling gameplay loops, so the fact gloomwood has action and stealth, and depending on difficulty, even manages to turn into a sorta survival horror game, is a great feat, but that´s only a glimpse seen in this demo. let´s wait for the final game. the magnum opus as of yet of dillon and david.
