Darkest Dungeon was a game I never could get into. The grinding required to make progress had a sedative effect on me. But who doesn't love the art? The narrator? The promise of a unique turn-based RPG system? Well Iratus understands these things, but only skin-deep. Darkest Dungeon had this rough, heavily inked art that was dark and also covered up what were essentially Flash animations. Iratus has... High-definition models that have been heavily processed. This HIGHLIGHTS the horrible animations. The narrator? Horrible, horrible performance. Why they got, what I assume is an 80-year-old man to voice Nathan Explosion from Dethklok is beyond me. And I was literally wincing at the writing which I can only describe as embarrassing. There is also a mandatory tutorial that I think actually confused me more than if one didn't exist. The game is not half as complicated as it may seem at first. A lot of this is due to the amount of half-baked ideas that feel shoehorned in. If your minions die, you have to start from scratch! ...Unless you find a brain that's the same level as the guy you lost? There's a crafting system for your minions where you need to stitch together different parts to make them! ...But I always had every one I needed? There's an enemy insanity meter that gives a chance to kill them when drained! ...Or you can just attack their health and get a guaranteed kill? I'm sure there's more complexity later, but I don't feel like the grind is any less severe than the game Iratus is aping. So what does this game bring to the table that Darkest Dungeon doesn't give me? Uh, I can complete this game without dedicating my life to it. That IS a positive, actually. But why would I want to?
It's Katamari Damacy only you're trying to make all these nice fairy tale places gross and evil instead of crunching up everything into a big ball. Throw in some of the stiffest platforming I've ever seen and enemies that undo your work and you have a recipe for a pretty disastrous game. There's also retellings of Grimm's fairy tales with some un-creative liberties that are mind-numbing in their tediousness. Was it made for kids with the patience of an Ent? Is this for adults with head trauma?
Cool art, music and atmosphere, more campy than creepy. But my GOD the presentation is all over the place. This is the worst UI I've ever seen in an adventure game. And it seems like there is just no ideal way to run this game? Either the animations are spastic, but you don't die of old age waiting for the next line, or the animations are fluid but the text takes 20 minutes to get though. Yes, I've messed with the DOSBOX settings, this is just kinda how the game is. The CD audio actually makes this worse because not only is the VO work abysmal, it's not synced at all. As far as I can tell, this is yet ANOTHER Shadow Over Innsmouth adaptation -- excuse me -- ILLsmouth. Also why are all the characters 3.5 feet tall??
This would have blown my mind back in the day. Now? It was pretty entertaining for a couple of hours. The FMV sequences are interesting, but are obviously not novel anymore. It's kinda interesting watching how primitive they are, but also how effective they still are too. As far as an adventure game goes, it's pretty smooth sailing. That is, until you get to the room where you have to watch full MINUTES of leaver pulling just to get to the room you need. Lastly, the DOS version is all interlaced -- you're going to have to dig through forums to download a fix for DOSBOX. Why GOG will sell this game in this state is kind of embarrassing.
It's slow and plodding, even for a walking simulator. There's definitely some chicken-pulley puzzles ala old school adventure games that are NOT flattering. The game just doesn't respect your time. The puzzles are not explained at all and they're so far apart from each other you'll spend so much of your time holding down shift running back and forth trying to figure them out. The writing is very amateurish. Feels more like a Kaiju game than a Lovecraft game. If 'big tentacle monster scary' is all you want out of the source material, it might be worth it on sale.
This is really like a demo more than anything. The plot is basically a 1:1 recreation of Dagon, but that's okay. At least it isn't Shadow Over Innsmouth for the 1,000th time. It's a walking simulator without walking! There are little bits of trivia about Lovecraft's personal life and the history as a whole which are really, really interesting. It's a unique and informative addition to these games. Can't speak for the quality of the DLC, but this demo was a success: I will be buying them.
This is a phenomenal walking simulator! Instantly became one of my favorites. I don't understand the mixed reception at all. There's atmosphere for days, a story that pays homage to the great Silent Hill 2, believable characters, and more than enough twists and turns to keep one entertained. It's all killer, no filler -- aside from a belabored retelling of Hanzel and Gretel. I hate being the guy who says "people just don't get it," but if you had that ending figured out immediately, I want to see the rest of your bingo card.
The game is basically an easier X-COM, but it oozes style. The sound design is top-notch -- the VO effects for the tech priests are basically canon now. The writing is spot-on for 40k and always engaging. The music has some real bangers in there too. The gameplay itself is fairly unremarkable. It's hard for exactly 3 missions, then the game is very easy, even for someone like me who cannot play the original X-COM to save my life. The enemies are all necrons which, although thematic in-universe, are very boring to fight every single mission. There is variety though, but man, I was dying to see an Ork or something once I was 80% through. The Heretik DLC adds dark mechanicum, but that's basically a reskin. There's also a lot of ways to customize your experience. From melee only, to ironman. I wouldn't do permadeath, though. Once one of your tech priests die you cannot get a fresh one until you would have normally unlocked the next slot. Over all, I think this game is very worth it for 40k fans. X-COM fans will be bored in minutes, but if you don't mind games with a little more style than substance, I'd give it a shot.
Mortal Shell learned a lot of the right lessons from the games that inspired it: chunky combat, spacing, stamina management, tone, atmosphere, design. Sadly there are a number of fairly glaring flaws that make this recommendation a tepid one. I'd say this game is really only for die-hard fans. Like I said, the tone is great. The Falgrim swamps are really spooky, and are cloaked in a thick mist that is both unnerving and hides the frankly glaring pop-in problem. It is almost entirely populated by one or two enemy types, though. And unlike other games in the genre, it lacks a lot of landmarks and alternate routes that make navigation less of a chore. "Where is that fallen tree," you'll ask yourself, in a forest of copy-pasted fallen trees. The combat is heavy and deliberate. Sure, it's a blatant copy of better games, but it's a good copy. The biggest problem with it is the terrible AI. Some enemies literally will walk off cliffs to their death right in front of you. It's quite easy to cheese your way through the game just by poking with the starting sword and rolling away. There are a lot of archers in the game, which are possibly the hardest enemies to deal with due to your severely limited ranged options. Speaking of options: you don't have many. You've got 4 characters in the base game, 5 with the DLC (who is basically a random hodgepodge of the other 4). If you don't like their premade stat allotment, tough cookies. There's no way to increase the tank's energy bar to anything less anemic. It's the same story with the weapons: 4 in the base, 5 in the DLC (which isn't a copy this time). All you can upgrade is the damage in a linear fashion. The DLC, while good, is not everyone's cup of tea. It's a roguelite mode, which is surprisingly compelling if you like that sort of thing. If not, the extra weapon might be nice, but that's all you're really getting. The performance isn't great, the last boss is cheap, and the dark sections are lazy, especially the last one.
RUINER is an incredibly middle of the road title. The best part of this game is the witch house soundtrack and the character sketches. Everything else is forgettable. The story is basically just 'save your brother' but everyone has a CRT glued to their forehead. The gameplay is twinstick shooting and melee. You've seen it done better elsewhere. Graphics are pretty meh. The red/black color scheme is simply not very appealing and the only reason it isn't as grating as it could be is because RUINER is only like 3 or 4 hours long. The modeling is straight up bad, which is why I think they leaned on the color scheme. The sketches are great, until you see the in-game model too close. Then everyone looks like Gumby. There are skills and skill trees with various degrees of gamebreaking buffs. Dash forever? Yup, that's broken. Frag grenade with some big damage? Not really. Oddly enough it's kind of nice being able to customize your difficulty this way, but I'd rather just not have a skill tree and have a game balanced around consistent mechanics. I've heard people say the game is hard, and it kind of is before you get good skills, but I died more to my own stupidity than the game itself. Not paying attention to traps and trying to skirt by unavoidable damage during a puzzle segment killed me more than the actual combat. There are nice checkpoints too, so I think the game is fairly forgiving. Like I said: the high points are the music and the art. I think you could safely watch a stream or a Let's Play of this game and get the highlights. Your money is better spent buying the soundtrack on here instead. If you're a fan of witch house, there's some big names (within the tiny genre) here like Sidewalks and Skeletons. Buy the soundtrack, browse the concept art for an hour or two, and skip the game.
