You walk from point a to b, clean up, repeat. All combined with a rather bland story that has no memorable moments. The world looks nice tho, I just wish they put more gameplay into it.
Firewatch had so much potential to be something really special and for the first 2 hours that exactly what you get. A truly beautiful and immersive sim that sets up a big mystery for the player to explore ... except ... there is no mystery after all. Just a mere 2 hours further the game is over and the story will resolve in the most mundane way possible. The writing is simply awful to the point where after playing it you wonder what the point of the game was to begin with. At least it looks nice and it's only 4 hours long.
Obviously this is not a Dark Souls/Demon's Souls level game, both in content as well as polish, but nevertheless it is one of the beste Soulslike games that have been released in recent years. If you like Dark Souls, you will probably get your money's worth out of Mortal Shell. The combat is great and the various shells and mechanics offer a nice variety to combat compared to most other games of the genre. People say the game is easier than Dark Souls but that does not factor in the fact that neither summons nor specialized builds exist in this game. Overall the difficulty is comparable. Graphics are fine, artstyle is good (a little too edgy for my taste, but that is personal preference), sound is good. Controls are great. The game is not that long, but there are no major dips in quality. Enemy variety is low, which is the biggest downside of the game, but it's not a dealbreaker.
Cult of the Lamb used a lot of visuals and very little gameplay in it's advertisement and that is for good reason. The artstyle is offensively edgy, as in 14 year old internet edgelord level edgy. In many areas it clearly goes for a "Happy Tree Friends" kinda style, but combined with the very much "dark for the sake of dark" tone of the game, it really just shoves the "you play the bad guy" message into your face. The game is pretty repetitive, it's a mix of a basic dungeon crawler and a basic management game, neither of the two aspects has any significant amount of depth to it, leading to the game becoming busywork less than half into the playtime. The game has surprisingly little lore to it, tons of themes are mentioned briefly and never explored upon. Most of the game's story has no real background to it, it's just there and that's it. All in all it just seems like there was a ton of potential wasted, both regarding the story and the gameplay and as I said, less edgyness would have probably made for a better atmosphere.
Mortal Shell is clearly strongly inspired by Dark Souls, and the devs have no problem admitting it. After all why shouldn't you get inspired by a timeless classic to make a new game. It's nowhere near as difficult as Sekiro and with the invincibily mechanic more accessible than Dark Souls. I'd put it similar to Elden Ring in difficulty, maybe a little easier. But to make this very clear, Mortal Shell is by no means an easy game, and the difficulty is by design part of the game's identity. The setting is a little too "edgy" for my taste. Everything is really abstract and very grim and dark and obscure. But then again, that is up to taste and the core of the game is clearly the gameplay. Combat is extremly solid, no frame lags, very little bugs or glitches, no input delay, no bad animations. Everything works exactly as intended, moments where you die because of the game and not your own fault are rare. 9/10 for the genre. The "Shell" mechanic is pretty cool, the upgrade system is basic, but it works. The story and lore are weird and unclear, again too obscure and weird for the sake of weird for my taste, but then, that's just personal preference. The game looks pretty good, not like a AAA game, but still, pretty good. The enemy variety is not that high and the game is not very long at ~15 hours, but the game has no low points or downtime and no boring or frustrating enemy types. All in all, if you're a fan of Souls-like games, you should consider giving this game a chance.
Far Cry 2 is probably the most forgotten game of the series, for all the wrong reasons in my opinion. Disclaimer: Play the game with the "Far Cry 2: Redux" Mod. It fixes most of the games worst flaws and my review will ignore said issues due to them being easily fixable by just installing this one tiny mod. FC2 is probably best described as a "Ubisoft light" game. It clearly follows the "check all the boxes of this list" formula, but neither as boring as the newest installments of the series, nor as tedious as the recent Assassin's Creed games. I'd call it just the right amount. FC2 is probably one of the most immersive games ever made as in there is no tons of menues to go through and tons of mechanics you have to keep in mind and work through. Almost everything is done inside the game world. The game's world has been called too monotonous and depressing, but that's kinda the point, that's quite literally how the real world equivalent to the place looks like. Sure it's far from perfect, the enemies that keep respawning, the balancing of some missions, the vehicle physics, etc. but that's just something to be expected from a game this age and secondly and probably most importantly the latests entries into the series are way worse in those regards. Sure the "open world" is not that open, but again the game is from 2008 so what exactly are you expecting? FC2 is a slow game, but I don't think that's a bad thing at all, it all adds to the immersion and the enemy density will make sure there's not much downtime. The ways you can attack enemy camps, especially with the fire physics are plentiful and will ensure that the encounters feel different, even though they are of course pretty similar. If you are looking for a really solid FPS in a very underused setting and can deal with some jank, you are in for a great time.
When it was first released Gothic was a milestone of RPGs and has had a massive influence on the genre. Now, two decades later it's undeniable that it's age is showing and various aspects of the game feel clunky by modern standards. However, despite this and thanks to the existence of mods, it still holds up, not just as a playable piece of video game history, but as a game actually worth playing. Must play for all RPG fans.
If it wasn't for the game being free on amazon prime gaming, i probably wouldn't have heard about it, but so i gave it a shot. First off, the art style is amazing and the atmosphere is pretty unique. However the gameplay loop just isn't that great. It's normal for Roguelite games to be repetitive, but here it's just not entertaining after a while. You go from ship to ship shooting and looting to find parts to make upgrades to keep shooting and looting, ship after ship. There is some variety in weapons and enemies, but the main gameplay stays the same. No matter what weapon you are using and what you upgrade there is no fundamental change in the way the fights work. There is no story to keep you motivated, there are no big surprises and despite the "procedural generation" a lot of the ships look and feel the same. It's fun for a while, but unless you can enjoy the repetitive grind you will probably stop playing the game before finishing it.
One of the best, although also one of the hardest Metroidvanias of all time. Visuals and soundtrack are stunning and the world is huge. If you like the genre and are up for a challenge, it's a must have.
The description and especially the trailers make you expect something entirely different to what the game actually is. The game is neither packed with action and fights, nor does it offer significant strategic depth. You will spend a lot of time simply waiting for stuff to happen or take a lot of time to do very little. The UI feels very clunky and overall the game just doesn't feel thought out. Despite overshooting the minimum required specs by a massive margin, the game crashed repeatedly and stuttering is a frequent occurrence. The story and characters are incredibly generic and stereotypical, so much so that they border on satirical, however they both serve no purpose other than a backdrop so this could be overlooked. As is traditional for Paradox games, you can spend a lot more money on rather little content in the form of DLCs. Unless there is a heavy discount and you're a big fan of mech games, probably go buy something else.
