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Starcrawlers is basically a turn based Legend of Grimrock in space and that is an awesome combo. It has many good qualities and few downsides although the downsides are pretty annoying and ended up ruining my enjoyment. You pick a class and assign your points to different attributes and special attacks you can upgrade. You can also hire additional crawlers and can pick which ones to go on mission with based on. Having the engineer or hacker on your team gives you additonal options. You can distribute loot to your crew to get them better armor or weapons. You can either increase or decrease your standing with various factions. This is an awesome concept but I found it all had little impact on the story or gameplay. Most maps are very similar and only have about three or four variations that the majority of maps are made from. There are story missions to progress with but there are a lot of optional side missions you can choose to do. There is one mission, where you have to trap an enemy called a “Gorzilla” that made me quit the game I hated it so much. The game is a first person dungeon crawler up until you have to get into a stupid puzzle trying to trap this thing. It felt out of place and unneeded. It is a story mission and can’t be completed without this puzzle. The turn based combat was great, felt like a space based JRPG. I played on Linux. It never crashed once on me. It has options for Vsync, AA, AF, an FOV slider that goes up to 100, three other graphics options, it has manual saving outside of combat, and runs great. ALT-Tab didn’t work. I used version 1_1_3_3_27395 from GOG. My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.0.2 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate | Kernel 5.0.7-1-MANJARO
I enjoy interactive movie type games for the most part and Tender Loving Care seemed like it would be a good fit. While it didn’t deliver everything I had hoped it was a solid “game”. The plot was quite good up until the end and the inbetween bits where you’re answering questions for Dr. Turner were enetrtaining and thought provoking. I found the end kind of came out of nowhere with little buildup but then again sometimes violent situations do come out of nowhere so maybe I should see it as realistic. I was also disappointed that all of the answers I gave in between weren’t touched on at the end of the game. There are 7 endings to the game and which you receive is influenced by your answers so it’s not like they didn’t have an effect but maybe having a clue as to how you ened up at that ending would have been nice. Not everything needs to be spelled out though so it’s not a big deal in the end. I still enjoyed the story. I do wish that more of an explanation was given about the menu options and save system as I had to do some trial and error to figure it all out. I played TLC on Linux. I used PlayOnLinux as there is no native version for Linux. Initially there is no video when beginning a game but after adding "--disable-gpu" to the launch options fixed that. I had no crashes at all, no glitches or bugs aside from the initial issue. I used PlayOnLinux version 4.3.4 and game version 1.0(12852) from GOG. I paid $6.47 CAD for TLC and it was easily worth that price, I would have even paid up to $15 CAD for it. I would recommend Tender Loving Care to anyone who enjoys FMV games such as The Bunker, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker or even other interactive movie type games such as the Telltale Games. My Score: 8/10 My System: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.3.3 | Manjaro Mate | Kernel 4.20.11-1-MANJARO
Ruiner takes a certain kind of player to enjoy it. It can be very masochistic to play it, you have to expect to die often. Normally I don’t enjoy this kind of game, and truth betold there were times where I didn’t enjoy playing the game, but overall it had a lot going for it. The soundtrack is awesome, the story is good (minus the cliffhanger ending), there are lots of ways to play by how you spend upgrade points, the lore is good and the gameplay is, for the most part, very fun. There are some wrinkles here and there but no game is perfect and not much is major. The gameplay itself is the games main strength. If I can give one piece of advice it is to never stop moving. The game is very fast paced and most of the time when I kept dying over and over in some spots I tended to notice I had stopped moving or slowed down. It is a very tough game but there are ways to help yourself. One of the best parts of the game is that you can reallocate your upgrade points any time you want. Some games don’t allow this and you come to find out ¾ of the way through the game finding out you wish you had of spent the points differently and now are screwed. Ruiner not only allows you to reallocate them it encourages it and I think in some cases expects it of you. More than once when I was having a tough time against a certain enemy I figured out what ability would do a better job against them and experimented finding it. There are a large variety of ranged and melee weapons to compliment as variety of play styles. As far as things that I didn’t like there wasn’t too much. Some enemies you have to face multiple times which I find sloppy and dislike usually. One specific enemy we have to beat 4 times, the last 3 of which are back to back to back. He just keeps getting revived and we have to keep doing it. I find boss fights who can be revived to be a cheap cop out and would rather prefer a smarter enemy. The ending also left a lot to be desired. I am not against cliffhanger endings but the best way I can put it is there could have been more closure than what we got. From a technical standpoint Ruiner was a mixed bag. There was no manual save option. I will give it credit that most of the checkpoints aren’t too far apart but nothing beats the option of manual saves. The game did crash to desktop once on me but other than that ran great. There were also 3 cinematics that only gave me a white screen and one cinematic that the text didn’t display at all. Luckily I was able to watch these on Youtube. The game had four AA levels, Vsync, ability to change difficulty, ALT-Tab support, four other graphics options to tinker with and support for framerates over 60. It did lack ambient occlusion, tessellation and refresh rate options though. Overall the game is well worth playing and was a good amount of fun. It got on my nerves a bit and had some annoying glitches but was worth the journey. I played on Linux and with a keyboard and mouse. My score: 7.5/10 My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | EVGA CLC 240 | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.1.4 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming | Corsair AX1200 | InWin 303 White | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.17.11-84.current | AOC G2460P @1920*1080 144hz
Layers of Fear is a great game. One that is genuinely creepy and has a great story to explore. Most of it’s negative quirks are not huge and the positives outweigh it. The graphics are overall well done. The lighting and shadows are great and the art direction serves the creepy vibe well. The game is mainly an exploration and puzzle solving game. I still consider it a horror game but by no means a survival horror game. You don’t have to manage your health or ammo and don’t have to worry about dying. The game still managed to put me on edge the further you descend into the protagonist's madness. You are going to want to explore as much as you can as the story is told through items you find such as drawings and mementos which bring flashbacks and memories to you. The game ran really well although it needs a beefy CPU to be able to do that. On my old FX-9590 I was only getting about 40 FPS but with my Ryzen 2600X I was usually 100-144 FPS with the game on highest settings. The game did have a lot of technical issues though. Many times the game would crash at launch. This would happen on multiple versions of the game, different distros, different kernels and different GPU drivers. I was able to finish the game but every time I went to start the game I had to worry if it would launch. The game never crashed if it did load though. The game had a decent number of features and options. There is an FOV slider, two AA levels, a toggle for AF, Vsync, two settings for ambient occlusion and 5 other graphics options. There is support for frame rates above 60 so owners of high refresh monitors can put them to use. The game does use an auto save system instead of manual saves. It saves the game after each room you go through but my issue was that it doesn’t tell you that. I found that out on a forum post from the developer. Some sort of indication the game was saving would have been nice. ALT-Tab didn’t work for me. If you are looking for a horror themed puzzle game such as Conarium then you will probably enjoy this. Blooper Team has really put themselves on the map when it comes to quality exploration/puzzle games that nail their theme such as Layers of Fear with horror or >Observer_ with the Cyberpunk gere. I beat the main game in a little over 3 hours. My rating: 8.5/10 My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.1.1 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.17.2-78.current
If you're looking for a cyberpunk walking sim then >observer_ is a great choice. It is in many ways a throw back to 80's sci fi right down to having Rutger Hauer as a voice actor. It had a great plot, good visuals, good performance and the few quirks it did have didn't overshadow the good parts. The gameplay is a mesh of walking sim in the exploring the apartment building that you are trapped in, solving puzzles and some stealth portions where you have to sneak by monsters who can insta kill you. qThe exploration parts were really well done as there is a good amount of lore and backstory that can be found on the soceity, tenants of the building and present events. The puzzles were pretty well done, most are straight forward and only a couple tried my patience. The stealth portions are a little annoying at times because I found that if I left the game and re opened it the last checkpoint could sometimes be farther back then it should have been when I was close to a monster. I know I saw the game saving but if I quit and came back in I started back further than I was before. This only seemed to be around the monster bits. The visuals were pretty good. The game has good lighting and great art direction. Some things like the blood look kind of strange and the skin of people looked strangly fake but overall it was above average. The game had an alright set of options. You could adjust between two types of AA, a toggle for SSAO, support for Vsync and 7 other options to play with. ALT-Tab also gave me no issues. It does lack certain things such as an FOV slider, manual saves and was locked to 60 FPS. If there is one thing I dislike about being locked to 60 FPS, aside from it not putting my 144hz display to use, is that when locked to 60 I find games often times drop down in to the 50's a lot rather than stay at a smooth 60. >observer_ had this issue as well. I played on Linux and can say it was a well done Linux version. Overall the game ran great maxed out, only the random odd rops into the 50's every so often. It will need a beefy CPU though as back wehn I had my FX-9590 my typical FPS was in the 40's pretty much all the time but my Ryzen CPU fixed that. The game only uses 1-2 CPU cores so performance per core matters a lot. My top CPU usage while playing was 38% and was usually closer to 15-20% for the bulk of my playthrough so having a ton of cores doesn't matter. My total system usage for RAM was 2.5GB-3GB while playing so you won't need tons of RAM either, just a beefy CPU and GPU if you want to max it out. My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.1.1 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.17.2-78.current My score: 8.5/10
I thought the idea of a sci-fi version of Alice in Wonderlands sounded like a very interesting concept but what got made was just average. Not bad mind you, just average. From the graphics, performance, options, puzzles, story, I can think of much worse games but can also think of much better. For starters outside of mentioning of characters names from the Alice in Wonderland universe you never actually get to meet any of them. The story also just kind of ends without any real finale. It isn't even a case of being setup for a sequel so much as it just ends with no real resolution. Throughout the game it seems to allude to a grand conspiracy or secret that will be revealed but nothing ever is. It seems to set up a much bigger payoff that never happens. You also get a hint of a moral dilemma when you have the option of getting power for your space ship but at the expense of the planet you are getting it from. No consequences for your actions ever take place though. The graphics are decent but not great. You won't be thinking at any time that you're playing the next Crysis but they're not an eye sore either. I did notice that a constant issue throughout much of the game was that certain textures, mainly rocks or parts of walls, would flicker very often from their normal color to black and back again. Not game breaking but annoying. Seeing that the last update was over a year ago I doubt these flickering textures will be fixed. The performance overall was good. My usual frame rate was 90-100 FPS but I had drops to the 40's and 50's sometimes for short periods of a few seconds. It was kind of weird as at no point in the game is a lot going on so I am not sure the cause of the drops. The game also never crashed on me once. I played at highest settings at 1920*1080. There aren't too many options for those who like that sort of thing. The game has no FOV slider, no manual save options, no vsync option, only 4 graphics options. There are 4 settings for AA though and ALT-TAB works without any issues. The game play itself was pretty simplistic. You have to navigate through puzzles to progress while having the option to take fuel you find lying around. There's really only 3-4 types of puzzles that happen over and over though. More often than not your throwing objects at buttons and shrinking down to reach certain areas. None of it was really challenging or engaging. Again, I didn't have a bad experience but can't bring myself to praise any part of the game. It took me 3 hours to finish the game. I did not play with a VR headset. Overall if you're desperate for a puzzle game give it a go, there is certainly worse games to play and worse ways to spend a few hours but don't expect too much. I give it 6.5/10
I started off really enjoying Victor Vran. The honeymoon slowly ended though and by halfway through the game I was starting to notice things I didn’t like and then by the end I was just hoping to finish the game and be done with it. Overall the game does many things really well and many things very poorly. The voice acting was a mixed bag just like rest. I instantly noticed the voice of Vran was done by the same man who voices Geralt on The Witcher: Doug Cockle. He does a great job here as well. The voice that is in Victor’s head for the journey is also well done and has some nice comic relief. Maria Teresa Creasey and Deborah Mock who voiced Queen Katerina and Irene both did a terrible job though. Just wooden work with no emotion. The difficulty curve was a broken mess. The game was either insanely difficult or insanely easy all the way through. There were times on casual difficulty where a few enemies were killing me within 3-5 seconds from full health where on normal difficulty many mini bosses were cut through like butter. The game also incorporated many game mechanics I despise. You beat a boss only to have them come back to life and have to be beaten again, enemies who can continue to spawn multiple enemies, bosses with regen health, oh this game has all of those and some have more than one of these crappy mechanics. The save system was also poorly done. So the game auto saves during a level but if you have to exit the level and come back due to work, school, etc then when you reload the game all of the enemies, including bosses, are alive again and back where they were. Basically don’t travel from the hub to an area without the free time to beat that whole area which I don’t enjoy. Now this may seem like I hated the game but I didn’t. The actual gameplay was enjoyable and there was a huge amount of customization you can do to Victor. The sheer variety of weapons, destiny cards and powers you can have can make for pretty much any kind of character build and play style you can think of. The story was well done as well and the main reason I kept playing the game. Overall the game was a mixed bag. Some parts were great and others were terrible with no middle ground. I find it tough to recommend which is sad because the core of the game is good and has a story worth playing through but it is riddled with so many things that I despise. Basically if the things I hate are things you love then you may not care. Another thing I will mention is that the game ran fantastic, 60FPS all the way through, and didn’t crash once. There were 9 different graphicical settings to play with and AA/AF. I wish there was more choices for AA than just FXAA or none but that’s a minor gripe. I finished the game in 13 hours 11 minutes on a combo of normal and casual difficulty. My system: AMD FX-9590 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.0.3 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.15.18-67.current My score: 6.5/10