... didn't work for me. Too much talking, too little gaming. It would be a great book or series. If you liked Planescape: Torment, you'll like this. It's not that I'm a Icewind Dale kind of player, but more of a Baldur's Gate player. That is, games with good story, deep lore, but where you actually DO more stuff.
The Penumbra and Amnesia games left a huge impression on me. They were the first "true" horror games I played, and several times during gameplay I though "why am I doing this to myself?...". Point for immersion and atmosphere, for sure. I started Soma a few years ago and played 1/3 of it, until I got stuck in a given part and lost interest. Fast forward to now, I don't think I have the mental structure (or the patience) for the traditional sneak-and-run Frictional gameplay, but the setting and atmoshpere were enough to make me want to play it. So I tried the Safe Mode. In case you don't know, it's a mode where the monsters cannot kill you. But it's not only a lazy God Mode. They actually tweaked the AI of the creatures, so they are there, but behave in different ways. They may never get close to you, run away from your, ignore you, or even attack you without causing damage. You can play the whole game without worrying about sneaking, dying or losing progress. Ok, they basically removed THE main gameplay mechanics, and what is left? Well, a pretty good game. It helps that Soma, even in its "normal" way, isn't as focused on scares as the other games. It's bleak and dreadful, sure, but there is a lot of philosophical thinking and even light-hearted dialogue in between. There is a good deal of simple puzzles to make it still feel as a game, but story and atmosphere by themselves keep you going. It's very linear, zero replayability, but the first experience is a great one. I still felt tense, even knowing that I was "safe", but can't say the implementation of Safe Mode is perfect. Some monsters became just an annoyance, insisting in following you close like stray puppies, and spoiling exploration sometimes. There is a couple of times where this gets real bad, but doesn't harm the whole experience. In short, if you have anxiety/patience issues with this kind of games, Safe Mode still is a good option to experience a good story.
I like puzzle games but don't play a lot of them. I found difficulty in this one to be almost perfectly balanced between fair and challenging, just needed external help for two at the end. It's not a long fame, but the lenght fits very well its gameplay. Add to this pleasant graphics, great atmosphere and good story, and you have a truly great experience. If you like this kind of game, there is no reason not to play this one.
I'm not "used" to Bethesda games, this one was the first I really gave a try. It looked promising at the beggining, although as a letf-handed person I spend an awful time trying to make the terrible hardcoded controls to work. The other awful time was managing the inventory and item bloat, thinking that it was meaningful, but yeah, it's one of those "huge" open worlds that are just full of nothing. Useless junk, uninteresting enemies, shallow locations. Thus, exploration? Boring. Settlement management? Boring. Combat? Boring. Increased from normal to hard, but still was able to just shotgun everybody on the face while getting shot, no strategy at all, and the fact that you may just pause in front of your enemies to eat some food and recover health... well, "dumbed down" is a compliment. As a consequence, crafting and upgrading wasn't really meaningful, and, well, boring. By the time I decided to just forget the open world and follow the main story, I already lost interest in this.
When compared to other games in the classic "RPG-Immersive Sim" genre of the late '90s/early '00s, such as System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, VtMB is a buch of steps behind. The world is more shallow, you don't have too many little nice things to discover, the combat is much more awkward. The combat is simply not fun: or it's incredible easy, or you die due to awkward controls. It's truly a game about role-playing and dialogues, not so much about finding creative solutions to problems. It's undeniable that it does the role-playing very well, sure. Unfortunately, even after 20 years of community patches, it's still buggy as hell. It's playable, sure but still prone to crashes and glitches, even with the basic version of the most recent patch (the plus version is even worst in this regard). To be fair, what made me stop playing mid-game was crashes related to the HD texture pack, but the game looks really bad without it. I finished it once, but in this second playthrough, I just think it's not really worth the trouble.
This version is way better than the Steam one, so go for it if you want to try the game. You will still have to jump a few hoots to make it works, though. See the pcgamingwiki page for this. And I don't think it's worth the trouble. The gameplay is rather uninteresting and the story is you basic derivative Lovecraftian stuff. BTW, it looks terrible for a 2006 game. Using Sharpen Corners of Earth and SweetFX, it still looks like a modded original Deus Ex. it wouldn't be a problem with good gameplay, but unfortunately isn't the case.
More than telling another opinion about the game, I can tell you why would you bother with this version instead of the remake. Well, basically because you can grab it on a sale by less than 20% the hefty price of the new shiny one. The original still holds up pretty well graphics- and gameplay-wise. It's not nostalgia googles because it was my first time, and I didn't feel like playing an "old game" at all. Sure, in a vaccum, the remake is superior, but some of its improvements seem to me barely relevant. For instance, the fact that you may move freely back and forth between decks, while the original is strictly linear. Well, unless they changed a lot of the gameplay, there is no reason at all to backtrack after you finished the objetives of a given level. Also, in the original enemies don't respawn: their placement is procedural, but the appearances are stricly scripted, not based on timers or free movement. In the remake they apparently respawn, and if this is good or bad depends on the implementation and your personal taste. If you prefer to save your money, mind that you MUST tweak the game for it to work. But it's simpler tham it seems, follow what you find in the pcgamingwiki page and you'll be fine. What worked for me was playing in full screen (Borderless Gaming made my game stutter), tweaking gamma in the config files to avoid game too bright, forcing anti-aliasing, Vsync and FPS limit with Nvidia profile inspector (you MUST enable Vsync even when borderless, otherwise it will break some scripts), Dead Space Mouse Fix and Widescreen Fix at 0.2. And now my two cents of opinion about the game itself: cool game to play once, but not my preferred style. Too linear, scripted, noisy, full of jump scares and cheesy horror tropes that spoil the atmosphere. Didn't get vere excited about DS 2, since people say that focus even more on action. I prefer something slower and more open as System Shock, but Dead Space is shorter and still worth a run.
I didn't play the game before 2.0, so my review isn't biased by the recent changes. Most people seem to like, but is the game actually good? If you like liner shooters, it may be. Because that's what the game is. You'll spend long, long sections just watching a movie play and pressing buttons when prompted to, and then shoot something by the end. Not what I was expecting. It's not supposed to be a sandbox or immersive sim, but they marketed a lot the open world aspect. But everything outside the main story is really shallow. I had some fun hunting cyberpsychos and doing a couple of side jobs, but soon noticed that they are no more than the good old fetch quests. Since the game doesn't develop the other aspects of gameplay (dialogue choices are meaningless, stealth is just a matter of time before all hell breakes loose), and there is zero consequences about your approach, in the end everything boils down to shooting. And then there is another big issue: combat is bad. Not the shooting itself, it feels ok. But enemy AI is dull as hell. They will just take cover and stay there the whole combat, even if you are outnumbered and without escape. Bu what ruined the things to me was to notice that enemies are coded to stay in pre-determined areas and that's it. So you can enter a room, shoot a few rounds and just walk back to the door. The AI won't chase you, or try to flank you, or surround you. At most, they'll get stuck in some prop and at least let you kill them quickly. So combat gets boring really fast. I tried to increase difficulty to see if I got some challenge, but all this does is to increase their damage, and decrease yours. Then it's exactly the same boring combat, but... longer! This is no Deus Ex, for sure. Perhaps the best comparison would be to No Man's Sky: they share the same "redemption" story, and both desperately throw on you a lot of content, hoping that you won't notice the shalowness of it all.
A lot is written about how this game suffered from published interference and that is just the first half of a supposed whole. Knowing all of that, and that probably we won't ever get a direct sequence, how good is to play the game today? Great, I would say. Some may be turned off by the limited scope of the game world and plot, but for me it worked quite well. It plays almost as a sandbox, with a very detailed Prague as scenary. Yes, the main story is rather short, as it was my first playthrough, following it more closely. However, if you play as my second one, taking your time to investigate every nook and crane, hacking and reading every e-mail and reading every book, you'll have a very respectable 60+ hours of gaming. Gameplay flows way better than Human Revolution, and every style is truly a satisfactory choice. However, stealth still is the most enticing. Simply because going Rambo makes the game too easy after a while. Whole tense stealth sequences can be "solved" by taking down a few enemies, and rarely you'll be fighting againts overwhelming odds. However, is also nice to clear an area and then explore it entirely, Both experiences are rewarding and give you very distinct games to play, which is one of the cornerstones of immersive sims in general. However, there are some immersion-breaking quirks, like being able to steal everything from a room/apartment in front of the owners without question, or murdering a whole institution and then speak politely to the receptiotinst. For one side it's interesting that the game doesn't punish you for choosing a given playstyle. For other, you get almost no significant consequences for it, and playing as respectful non-lethal stealth Adam is basically the same as kleptomaniac psychopat mass-murdeder Adam. If you can get in on a sale, grab the full version. System Rift is more-of-the-same, but A Criminal Past gives you some new spins. If you suffer with crashes, look around the net for possible solutions, they work.
The Talos Principle has an unique premise: you are a robot walking among ruins to solve puzzles with high-technology items, all while discussing philosophy and following a well-crafted story. It's basically everything I like in a single game. The learning curve here is incredible smooth and well-crafted. Every possible strategy and mechanic is presented as a simple puzzle, which gives you all the tools necessary to solve the more complex ones. And there are plenty of them, don't worry, but I seldom got stuck and frustrated in one of the "normal" ones . On top of that, the game still looks good today. Archaeology buffs will recognize many real-world locations, and you may take your time to explore the worlds. Just be aware that there is very little to reward exploration in general, with very few exceptions. While the normal puzzles strike a great balance between difficulty and intuitiveness, the ones to get the stars are... well... a P.I,T.A. For stars you often have to use and connect devices from several different puzzles in a level. This sounds great on paper, but everytime you die, reset a puzzle, leave the level or simply quit the game, all puzzles in that level are reseted. So be ready for a LOT of backtracking and repetition if you wish to get all stars. By the last third of the game, I just skipped them entirely. All you lose without the stars is a few bonus levels and an alternative ending, which is fine, I don't see the point of different endings in puzzle games, since it's not exactly the most exciting games to play again. BTW, the final sequence of the ending I played (and that I think most people would try) it's also terrible. A long and TIMED puzzle that doesn't autosave. I was quite excited by the climax, but repeating it a couple of times tasted more as frustation than satisfaction by the end. Can't say anything about the DLCs, because the game gets a bit repetitive by the end. Perhaps another time. For now, best puzzle game I've ever played.
