The looter shooter where the ghost of a dead rockstar constantly finds himself having to bully you and harangue you into becoming a true hardcore cyberpunk. The name of the game is Cyberpunk.
This isn't so much a review, but an impression of the game as of the first 7 hours in terms of Early Access. I'll likely delete it at some point and update. First of all, the game is extremely unfinished. You WILL lose all your progress at some point in development and the game is not currently completable. Second, it plays weird compared to Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. The original two games were abstracted 2eAD&D to accomodate a C&C style Real Time Strategy effect with roleplaying elements on top of that. I don't think RTWP is a surefire winning formula these days, as evidenced by Pillars 2 or Beamdog's Siege, however, I feel like a lot of my time is being wasted by adhering to 5e too too much. Here, you whiff at opponents uninterestingly with basic attacks for days until eventually you do beat the combat, open the door and move onto the next combat. Combat is pretty limited with not that much encounter variety due to the specific kind of enemy units presently in the game. As far as story vibes go, the cloying tone is WEIRD. Why does everybody low key loathe me? Why is everybody stressed out all the time? Baldur's Gate isn't Dragon Age. Why hasn't Minsc shown up with Boo and a gaping headwound and started kicking evil's ugly butt? I don't think Larry, Darryl and Darryl, Portalbendarwinden, Lord Foreshadow and Bub Snikt are showing up either. Cmon. Also, the companions seem like incompetents and rubes. Character creation is detailed OK with a lot of room for expansion. I'm give these companions a shot, but so far they're just too abrasive to be liked. I like Lae'zel though because she at least has SOME sort of plan. Yeesh. Graphics are mixed. The faces are good but the armor is Dragon Age's impractical melange. Also, yes, female Dwarves can have beards. The environments are unfocused and drab. Motion capture is jank. Music is spot on. VO is screeching and grumbling. I can't recommend this game because it just needs too much work. Off to a good start but blah.
I'm not really one for Early Access games, but WORLD OF HORROR is a one man show that wears its influences on its sleeve. It is a passion project first and foremost, so I gladly decided to try it out. As it stands as of the date of this review, it is a wonderful horror game with a cool look and some compelling storytelling methods. It is a full experience, albeit a very unfinished one. The first thing you'll notice about this game is the sound and music. It has a 1-bit or optional 2-bit graphical style emulating the look of an early 1980's Macintosh. I don't feel it's a requirement for any nostalgia experience if you are a fan of quality pixel art in video games. I love the chiptune soundtrack, but it is not for everyone. Dev, if you're reading this, I want to buy your soundtrack ASAP. Beyond the graphical style, the game itself is essentially a narrative driven digital board game. The basic premise is that you, the plucky protagonist, must solve a series of mysteries related to an Old God. You get five to solve. So far, there are a limited amount, but the dev promises to add more. You select various areas of the town, which act as game boards. The mystery then has you enter a building, which presents a series of rooms where you must react to. Sometimes this leads to combat, which is not very well balanced. You manage various resources, spells and items, which you can gain and lose. Depending on how well you do, you will receive an ending, which gives you an unlockable for future runs. This ultimately serves a narrative horror experience all in service of the story, art and sound. Ultimately, I feel this Early Access game is worth full price of $15 USD, which is something I never say lightly. I believe based on what I have seen, the game is mostly feature complete but far from content complete, which should expand exponentially. I give WORLD OF HORROR a 4/5 with plenty of room for improvement.
Between 1997 and about 2003, there was quite a lot of innovation in PC games. This time period was pretty much the high water mark for video games published traditionally on physical media. It was a transitory time between where video game development was a soft artistic discipline for hobbyists and video game development became a hard business for consumers. The premise is that you lived your whole life in a Vault. There is an issue with your society's water supply, and you are sent out into the harsh wasteland to go solve this crisis. You are given a general idea of where to go and who to speak with, but it's mostly up to you how you go about this. This general lack of direction and focus of the main plot is something that was taken for granted at the time, but now is now rare. Also a rarity by today's standards is how the game trusts character creation upon you. Nowadays, you are not expected to read any sort of manual. You mostly get RPG builds off of assorted forums posts and Youtube videos. The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide is a very amusing work of art unto its own, and gives excellent guidance on how to approach the game. Different skills peak at different stages of the game, and it's mostly all outlined in the guidebook. Check it out. Your combat style changes the difficulty of the game. The skills you choose to focus in developing also effect the difficulty. Dialog can play out differently and can absolutely be failed if you're not paying attention. Thievery is completely viable. The game's reactivity is only truly apparent until multiple playthroughs. The story is one of the all time greats. The main issue of the game is inventory management. The graphics haven't aged the best either, but I think they're iconic. Of note for newer fans is that the 1950's Retro-Futurism is rather muted. Fallout is also actually Post-Post-Apocalyptic, in that people have rebuilt. These details have gotten lost in future installments. All in all, 5/5. Amazing.
I want to put up a quick informative review. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a decent turn-based tactical strategy game. It was a much needed breath of fresh air to the genre when it came out, and helped pave the way for better games. You'll get attached to your dudes in ways you can't imagine, and you'll learn important lessons in the cold, fatalistic nature of the universe when they die horribly. All in all, I thought it was a 4/5 package, but I think 3/5 is an absolutely fair score for the frustration levels. YMMV. FYI: It goes on sale for 80% off very frequently. This is a $10 USD game. Don't buy it for $50.
I haven't played a fishing simulator since the Dreamcast era, so I decided to give Ultimate Fishing Simulator a whirl. It's either one of the most boring games I've ever played, or one of the most compelling. I'm not sure? The basic gist of the game is that you go to various fishing holes and catch fish for money and exp to upgrade your gear and perks to catch bigger fish. That's about it. The game tracks your achievements and you're given a cool lodge to view your biggest catches. Basic fishing on the default Arcade difficulty is fun and relaxing. You select your bait, you cast and you wait for the fish to bite. Once hooked, the fish is given a fluctuating fatigue bar that you have to drain without breaking your line. This later expands to different fishing styles and better gear. You then unlock different fishing holes and attempt to get tougher species. I recommend experimenting at the default lake for a few hours. It's all very relaxing once you figure out how each "battle" will play out and how gear, level and perk progression works. I recommend NOT buying the DLC zones until you know for sure if the game is for you. The DLC maps add a good amount of variety and they support this passion project. The scenery and nature sounds were designed pretty well. The fish are great looking, but not animated particularly well. There's a number of odd real life streaming radio stations you can listen to, but I turned those off for maxo relaxo. The optional MP component is really fascinating. It turns your fishing hole into a small chatroom where you see other players' catches. You also have virtually no player avatar, but other players have no effect on your ability to catch fish. Note: There seems to be no Steam/GOG MP crossover. Fun game, if you're looking for a break from the grind. Devs are on point and are constantly improving the game. 4/5. Help yourself to some Coors Light, play some Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes at a sensible volume and embrace your inner Boomer.
The story is compelling, the lore is ocean deep, the characters are vivid, the game itself is very, very opinionated. Disco Elysium is a perfect endcap for Malebolge the 2010's. It's best experienced semi-blind, with a general idea of what to expect in terms of more serious real life issues it addresses. And, no, it doesn't fit perfectly into any particular media genre. Some technical nitpicks: - The clothing system, while interesting at first blush, ends up being merely a stacking game of big numbers. I ignored it once I hit a net positive in bonuses and wore what I thought looked cool. - There's no fast travel for some reason? Click, click, click, click... - Some of the voice acting really misses its mark. - I wish there was a "Hardcore" mode. I found myself savescumming out of video game habit. This is on me. I don't find hitting percentiles that interesting. - The strictly optimal way to play the game is to bank your skill points and use them when you approach a problem you want to solve in a certain way or need to redo a roll. I picked what seemed good for the narrative I wanted, but I would have had an easier time making those checks if I hadn't. My main issue: While I loved the game aside from the issues above, I felt that the game came uncomfortably close to romanticizing addiction. In real life, addiction doesn't make you interesting. At a safe distance, addicts are extremely tedious and boring people. When they're all up in your face, they're an existential danger. These are not "troubles" that give a guy more character depth, like the flawed macho manly man protagonist out of Hemingway, Burroughs, Thompson... addiction is just a common as hell chronic health problem that can affect anybody. We have to strip away this mystique if we want to address the public health crisis we're facing. Ultimately, Disco Elysium is a top notch effort. It's new, it's fresh, it's bursting with life and ideas, but it's not without its technical or narrative issues. 4/5.
Arcanum is my favorite video game. I don't feel I can really add much in the way of game analysis, since it has all been pretty well dissected over the years. Everything you've heard is true. You'll either love it for it's insane but ultimately unrealized potential, hate it deeply due to being essentially half-baked playable code sold as a real game, or bounce off it forever after being flummoxed by character creation and then promptly eaten by wolves in about 10 to 20 minutes. here's a list of some of the characters I've played over the years: - a half-ogre pit fighter seeking to end racism and class struggle - a wormy gnome charmer with his own posse who talked his way out of the final boss - a serial killer necromancer super model with only a killer dog for a companion - an accident prone dwarf gunslinger and thief - an imbecile half-ogre who uses and abuses Flowers For Algernon style potions to warp the fabrics of time and space with all too temporary magical mastery - a magic-hating inventor and walking half-orc stereotype that just can't get enough of Belle Arcanum holds a very dear and special place in my heart. It's one of the few video games where I feel that the character development system has any true effect on the game. This game has one of the woefully rare examples of you, the character represented as assigned stats and skills on the character sheet, and you, the protagonist of the story, work in full harmonious tandem. It's all incredibly empowering and self-deteriministic. Anyways, I am writing this review to address the fact that Drog has released a new fan patch! Check out the forum for further details. It is now EASIER THAN EVER to get Arcanum up and running in modded state. This is the kind of breakthrough we needed. With this new patch, I can finally now FULLY RECOMMEND Arcanum to newcomers. It's so easy to set up, and runs brilliantly. There has never been a better time before to start Arcanum for the first time or the hundreth time.
From a technical standpoint, TTOEE is the most painfully accurate representation of DND combat in a video game that I've personally seen. This could the game's either biggest strength or biggest weakness, depending on how you feel about that. However, it's completely turn-based tactical combat like actual tabletop DND uses, so credit where credit is due. You roll up your own custom team of DND characters with their own Alignment philosophy that determines how the game starts, but it's mostly just for show. There's some NPC's that can join you as well. The story is your standard DND dungeon delve plot. The dungeon is there. Go conquer it. Were this pen and paper DND, a good DM running the module would make it so the PC's have some motivation and skin in the game through RP opportunities, but this was something that was lost in translation. The slow-paced combat encounters and getting to the next room is the whole game. Don't design an adventuring party. Plan a fantasy ass kicking squad. I want to note that I loved the character design of Zuggtmoy that Troika introduced in this game. There's a fun article on the official DND website called "Zuggtmoy: Demon Queen of Fungi" if you want to look into her history and see what she originally looked like. She's a cool DND villain with some interesting lore. However, Buyer Beware: Unfortunately, the biggest, best, arguably mandatory mod for the game was programmed years ago in Java. Yes, that Java. The Java that nobody uses anymore. Don't install Java. It's a security risk. It shouldn't be on your computer. Oracle 100% knows what's up too, so don't let them kid you. There are ways around this. Don't install Java. If you’re looking for a story-rich RPG, look elsewhere. However, as a Tactics game and a beyond faithful interpretation of the source material, I’d give it a 4/5. I’d argue this is the Troika game with the least to offer me, but I did enjoy it and see its merits and value. Just please be careful when modding.
