Bioshock Remastered has great visuals. The director's commentary is good too.
Only about 6 hours into the game and I'm completely hooked. There are so many things that are just perfect that it's hard to know where to start. HLD takes the essence of everything that was good about SNES-era adventure gaming, sprinkles in some Samurai Jack, bits of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, a little Devil May Cry, queues from Journey and before you know it it's tweaking all the right neurons to inspire nostalgia for a golden age of gaming that never actually existed outside this game. The exclusively visual storytelling (not a single word printed or spoken to convey the story), minimalistic tutorials (the rare single line instructions are terse even by Twitter standards), moody atmospheric music (think Blade Runner meets Super Metroid), exploring and backtracking (a la Zelda, Super Metroid), guns, dash, and swordplay combat (right out of DMC, if DMC was a top-down adventure), pattern-based frustrating boss fights (think Ys, but without the ability to go level grind to give you an edge), all combine to make this one of the best games I've played in years. I usually don't do this, but every once in a while I feel the need to address other reviews. The game tells you right up front it was designed to work with a controller, and it works perfectly with a controller. This is supposed to closely resemble a 90' console game so it' pretty much a given that you need a game pad for it. Complaining that the keyboard and mouse controls aren't an optimal way to play Hyper Light Drifter is like complaining that Starcraft II doesn't work very well with your steering wheel controller.
With the exception of an obscure Japanese game - Wonder Project J2, this is the first point and click adventure I've ever played. I found it challenging. Some of the puzzles were very annoying but every time I got stuck it was because I had overlooked some interactive item on one of the screens. I imagine that says more about me as a n00b to point-and-cick than the design of the game itself. The voice acting was top-notch and really stood out. The story was interesting, but a little preachy and sort of fell apart at the end. There were a lot of compelling lead-ins but considerably fewer satisfying payoffs. Possible spoilers ahead. The whole Christian terrorist backstory seemed a little contrived and didn't really add anything to the narrative except maybe to illustrate the writer's own anti-theism. There were one or two fun twists, and some outright hilarious comic relief. The trouble I had trying to run the game in full-screen without distorting the aspect ratio is inexcusable for a game released in 2015. I'm now much more intimately familiar with the game engine and it's proclivities than any player should reasonably need to be. Making me screw with my video drivers and create custom modes was pretty amateurish. The retro look is sufficient to evoke the proper amount of nostalgia - the retro troubleshooting did not need to come along for the ride. All in all I had fun. Took off one star for the BS of not supporting 1080x1920, and one star for the problems with the narrative. Otherwise this was a really fun game. Took me probably 8 hours total to complete and was something that was easy to fire up and play around with between other tasks.
Very impressive effort. A lot of careful thought and consideration went into interpreting events from the mind of a 2-year-old. The game also has a subtle but clear premise that I think anyone who is a parent or wants to be needs to be told or reminded of from time to time. This doesn't really qualify as survival horror. The developers captured fear in a beautiful and poetic way that really translates well on the screen, but the game isn't primarily about fear, nor is survival really an aspect. The game is about how a child too young to understand might subconsciously try to process a sudden loss of the comfort and security which is the only thing he/she has ever known. Controls are intuitive, sound is atmospheric and convincing, visuals are solid, puzzles are straightforward. I easily played through the whole thing in an afternoon, and was perfectly satisfied with the length.
