We all know the game already. An action packed demon killing bonanza taking place on Mars, where we play one buff dude carrying a stupendous arsenal of glorious weapons. Seeing blood, guts and gore while listening to a banging soundtradck by Mick Gordon is the name of the game. And we are here for it. I bought my copy here, so I can own the game instead of renting it on Steam. Now waiting for the 3 add-ons - Unto the Evil, Hell Followed and Bloodfall - and Doom Eternal.
The good parts: "Keep those screams inside." First off, I will say I recommend playing this game...with headphones, in a darkened room. The sound effects are done RIGHT in this game! And they are truly nervewrecking. And as the game goes on, the sounds and warnings you get through sounds are what will keep you on your toes. And in a closet. Because once you hear the thumps of the alien...find a hiding place, ASAP. There is a walk and a sprint feature, but I am not sure why, because some 70 % of it all will be spent crouching to avoid attracting attention. The alien is as scary as warranted. And it has numerous death animations once it catches you, depending on the angle. And no, the crawl spaces are not safe - it will follow you inside them. Or yank you back out of them. And it cannot be killed. And like in the second movie, only fire can make it run away...for a short while. On higher difficulties, craftable noise devices to lure it away from you will be essential. The mediocre: "No gun for you." This is a heated debate. You see a gun on the floor early in the game, but it cannot be picked up. Or looted for ammo. Because you get your own gun shortly after. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The alien is often right where you are. Why? Because scripted events, that's why. As already mentioned, the alien isn't "learning", it is using set features - walk, search and attack. After the first encounter, the alien is mostly on "walk." It's just nearby. If you make noise - run, firing a gun - it enters "search". If it sees you or other humans, it enters "attack". On higher difficulties, the "search" feature lasts longer. So stay quiet, and stay alive. The bad: "Can I interact, please?" This game is a console port. Originally made for PlayStation 3 and XboX 360. And it shows. Every interaction animation feels clunky, and I keep hitting what feels like airwalls when running because there is no "leap over objects"-function. "Amanda Ripley, Sevastopol Station, signing off."
Not much I can add to existing reviews, so I'll keep it objective. CrossCode is retro-inspired isometric platform puzzle game. You control the digital character (literally, as...well, spoilers and all that) Lea. Our girl Lea is a "Spheromancer"; a ranged ball-thrower. And she can learn various abilities from a rather extensive spelltree. There are 4 different elements in the game - Heat, Cold, Shock and Wave. All which will be learned and must be managed throughout the game. But be careful, staying too long in any elemental mode will eventually cause it to overload and become temporarily disabled. You must guide Lea around in CrossWorld. Along the way she meets friends (and some not so friendly) who parties up with her, though their abilities are non-controllable apart from setting their overall combat behaviour (offensive / defensive / non-combatant). You will also get various comments from party members if you stay in combat for a prolonged time, which can be really funny. Leas elemental abilities are crucial to progress through the ever increasingly difficult challenges and boss fights. All which is sadly done solo - the party fighting is exclusively done in the open world fights against the classic grind monsters. But remember to ball any fauna or flora that you see. Enemies will drop loot, like items or gold, in addition to XP, while the flora will drop required items to craft certain combat gear. Personally, I find the elemental controls quite annoying as they can be rather finicky at times - you take a second too long to select the right one, and a puzzle challenge restart awaits you. The puzzle difficulty can be changed in the options to give you more time to solve it. Guiding a ball from point A to point B might not sound difficult, but... To close it all up, the soundtrack got that genuine 8-bit vibe, and I like it. The late-game puzzles arguably requires a walkthrough unless you're really good. I heartily recommend the game overall.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game to spend a LOT of time on if you want to explore everything. It got unique quests throughout the game for all build types, and lots of guns for each style and personal flair. Handguns, sniper rifles, swords, knives, shotguns and more - it's all here! Just missing a chainsaw. I have played through the game 3 times now, tried all life paths and almost done everything there is to do in the game. Short story short: each life path gives a unique intro mission to the game, and that's about it. A few path-specific responses throughout the game, but nothing interesting. But while the surroundings certainly looks pretty, it's really lack-luster. The AI, both pedestrians and vehicles, doesn't care about you. There is no interaction with them apart from a generic set of usually insulting responses. I had expected so much more. There is still several bugs and glitches, like objects clipping through the environment. And it's not possible to not have your car do a double backflip to get itself unstuck if called in a crowded street. And even an off-roader will not drive off-road to get to you out in the desert - "please walk to the nearest road". The physics are generally atrocious, and any consumable item is mostly pointless. I certainly don't mind all the easter-eggs in the game. In fact, i love them(!), but screw up once, like give a wrong response in the beginning, and you won't get a fancy gun towards the end. And there's is no warning regarding outcomes of the conversations, and there's no going back on a response. Like it is possible to do in real life. The immersiveness, and freedom to do whatever you want, as was promised, is not here. Which is really disappointing. But despite everything, I still recommend the game. But buy Cyberpunk 2077 on sale, because it's not worth the retail price for what it is in its current state.
A GoG game should run out of the box, and all of them have done so so far. Shadow Warrior Redux needs some manual tweaking before it will run properly (Windows 10, 9700K, GTX 1080, 3x 27" in Nvidia Surround, 100 FPS GPU lock, no V-sync). What I did to make the game run (else it would instantly crash when loading a map): When game is installed, right-click on the shortcut and add: -windowmode ...to the Target path. Then go to the Compatibility-tab: Check "Run this program in..." and select "Windows 7". Also check "Disable fullscreen optimization". Other issues: The SFX-volume is MUCH louder in some places, regardless of the ingame audio settings. Like opening doors randomly makes the speakers really scream. I haven't played Shadow Warrior since my Windows 98 PC, as my DOS-box attempts were met with little success. Compared to Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior is way harder, and I found myself required to quick-save / quick-load surprisingly often, even on the first couple levels. It was a thrilling experience. If you want the TRUE ninja sensation (and you have a 17" CRT laying around), go with the DOS-box version. If not, then the Redux is much more suited for modern hardware and monitors.
To get one thing out of the way at once: There are NO guns in this game (other than a brief, scripted thing with a stun-gun). TL;DR version: It's a fairly linear horror game. As mentioned, no weapons. Sometimes, you need to explore and interact with an area to proceed. In others, you need to crouch and sneak around in a section to avoid a monster. Long version: You play most of the game underwater. Not having played Amnesia, which this game is frequently compared with, that claustrophobic feeling creeped me out on its own. Both the visual effects and sound effects of echos whenever metal clanks against metal really makes you think you are in a confined space. ...Which is not a good feeling, especially not in the parts you know there is something lurking about, sharing the limited space you have to move around in. You rarely see it, but you can often hear it when it is nearby. Some technical downsides: The game does not have any index, quest log or map that I have found, that tells you where you need to go, to remind you what you need to do, and it is often confusing what you need to do to move on. There are many instrument lights that doesn't sufficiently stand out compared to the ones you can actually interact with, which to me takes way a lot of the interest in the game. I either want to interact with everything or having it utterly plain what I can and cannot interact with. There are a few 2-choice options, however neither impacts the game other than triggering some additional voice acting, which always is only a little additional piece of the backstory. Being a completionist, I liked being allowed to explore whenever I wanted, except for the couple of part-ending scripted chase scenes where a line from "The Mummy" is called for ("Run, you sons bi***es! Run!"). With the music changing pace as well, they really did get my heart pumping on those occasions. Overall, the game was fine, but was sadly too linear and confined to hold much replay value for me.
The "Kunoichi" add-on as it's know ingame is a DLC which changes the appearance of Lea into a ninja. The ninja skin is functional when moving, dashing, attacking and using spells in all forms. However, she changes back to her classic skin whenever interacting with traders or quest NPCs. But the way she changes forms - which is very much like a ninja, by using what appears to be a smoke bomb - almost makes it worth it. The skin does have its own sprite in the main menu, but does NOT have one in the Status and Party menu windows or in the ingame response HUD, which I personally would like to see, even at an added cost. Installation is done through the GoG Galaxy client: CrossCode - click on the tiny lettered "DLC"-button (next to the "More"-button) and "CrossCode - Ninja skin" will be listed as a check/uncheck option. A "DLC"-button will appear in the game's main menu if done correctly. It is toggled ingame under Inventory - Add-ons - Kunoichi EDIT: Added a star, from 3 to 4.
