I have been playing videogames for over 30 years now, and it's not easy to genuinely surprise me with some clever ideas and plot twists. Control managed that. It's really buggy, more than it should be. Several freezes, black screens, quests not completing. But it's a story made properly, by very competent storywriters. The characters are greatly written, the dialogues are good, the exploration is great and rewarding. So it's surely a great game.
Dredge is one fantastic game. The atmosphere is unique, just the right amount of creepy, makinh you feel something is always a bit "off" and you don't understand what. And I LOVE the fishing mechanics.
Make a game set in WW2 Italy. Make the dad being a General in the WW" German army. Censor the name of the German high commander. What madness is this? 1 star.
The devs really put a lot of good ideas in this game, and the result is something new, funny, packed with secrets, and really entertaining. I have been playng games for over 30 years and it's great to see this level of ingenuity in a game.
NOX is one of my all-time greatest games. In my humble opinion, much much better than any of the Diablo games. Played it when I was 14 and TO THIS DAY I still have the original hard-copy on CD. Absolutely fantastic story, it's a mixture between D&D and Diablo (Hello, mimics chests that gave me permanet trust issues in any other videogame for the rest of my life!). I could not reccoment a game more than I can reccomend NOX for its fantastic game and nostalgia feeling.
If I could give half-stars, this review would be a 3.5 stars. The game is first of all very entertaining and visually appealing. The music is good, controls of the character are just on point and smooth, and combat is fun and opens a lot of possibilities. The story is also well told (even though the ending takes a turn into the paranormal that I did not fully appreciate and felt quite a letdown-but still was ok). My main critique to this game is that it's just way, way too easy. I played in normal difficulty in a NO-embrace run and never used either serums or guns, I only used a melee mace, but I always felt overpowered respect to the enemies. I killed the lvl 18 Skal in Whitechapel being only lvl 6. I defeated the lvl 33 Priwen boss toward the end of the game while being lvl 22 myself. The fight has been challenging, don't get me wrong, but this boss and the boss you face in the graveyard (you know which one I am talking about) are the only two real challenges in the whole game. Even though I purposefully crippled myself doing no embraces and not using serums or weapons, I never felt the pressure to kill a citizen for the XP. The whole moral dilemma the game seems to advertise so much simply never existed. Perhaps one has to play in hard mode to get to that point? Norrmal mode is described as "the way Vampys is meant to be played", but a vampire that never felt the slightest need for blood seems not the right way to me. The other main critique is that many things in the game just don't work well. Many times a character openly tells you something, and way later in the dialogue you ask again the very same thing, or you end up "re-descovering" that same thing as a hint for the NPC, even though it was already told to you. Dr. Reid probably has bad memory. Another example is how inconsequential the Y choices in dialogues are; maybe 1% of all the choices makes a difference (i.e., gives you a hint for the NPC or not). Overall good game anyway and I am happy I played it.
From the very first moment you lunch Stygian, you understand it's not one of the other millions of games out there. It has been made with passion, knowledge, and amazing skills, and all of these things shine through in every single istant in the game. The hand drawings are beautiful, the story is simply captivating, and the lovecraftian atmosphere perfectly rendered. The dialogues and stories are incredibly well written and the references to Lovecraft's work are perfectly placed and accurate. I have rarely played a game of such quality. The game mechanics are also very fun to use, and while I feel the combat system could be polished slightly (for example, some icons to click become obstructed when many characters are close together), the overall experience is just great. Go over the occasional bug and let yourself be mesmerised by this game, you will not regret purchasing it even at full price.
CDPR: releases The Witcher 3 with built-in an amazing card game, GWENT, PEOPLE: Wow, GWENT is great, we love it! CDPR: releases stand-alone GWENT game with substantial changes to original GWENT PEOPLE: well, that's very different... but it's still a good game CDPR: completely changes the game, crippling its core mechanics, introducing unwanted features, and making a card game that's unplayable with touch controls. ^^ solid logic right there ^^ GWENT as it stands now has nothing of the original GWENT game found in the witcher. Where the original game was a game of strategy and outsmarting the opponent, the current one is a brawl where who lucked out the most wins. There are only 2 rows, melee and ranged, completelylimiting your strategy. The card abilities are risible and go completely against the idea of the original game. The game's useless animations will suck up most of your computer's power. The tutorial itself is bugged and wouldn't complete on my machine even i I won the battles. Rules like "tactical advantage" make no sense. Cards' powers are badly explained. They picked a near-perfect and extremely fun game, and turned it into a pile of garbage. By ar the worst card game I have played.
