Recent reviews by Kyrii

Mindless shooting and blowing things up can only get you so far.

Death Rattle is once again another Boom-Shoot done in the vein of the likes of Heretic and Hexen, and much like the highly revered and recent Amid Evil, offers large-scale environments and massive waves of enemies that 90’s PC’s had no chance in hell of rendering. And much unlike Amid Evil, heavily focuses on environmental destruction to great effect!

And… that’s kind of it.

Sadly, Death Rattle is a one-trick pony that delivers mindless waves of enemies to chuck grenades at, launch devastating spells into and piledrive hundreds of arrows from your trusty crossbow into which it delivers in spades, while weapon variety, enemy behavior and even difficulty is sadly lacking.

You only ever have a crossbow at your disposal and with only two tracks of a tranquil piano and a heavy thrash of the guitar make for very shallow and repetitive combat despite the large-scale destruction and chaos you can wreak.

Combat is also dragged down by an endless wave of resources, where even breaking empty crates gives you all the means to recruit your own army, with some levels giving me roughly 30-60 Mana and Health Potions per level from loot drops that I rarely used.

Hell, the few times I did actually die were my own fault as I dashed through the ground and fell off the world, where I learned the game was giving me a plethora of checkpoints but they also respawned all the enemy triggers and resources!

Not to mention, you can’t rebind any of your keys so falling back to figuring out my control scheme once I got past the tutorial had me sitting back for a few minutes punching every key on my keyboard to figure out how to upgrade my spells.

So, uh, what DOES this game do well?

Welp, the little story we do get is pretty corny and admittedly done by a single dude and seems to enjoy chewing the scenery, especially with voice acting the bosses!

Beyond that, you do have an RPG level-progression system which was pretty much the main hook that motivated me to keep playing as you can essentially become a one-man-army near the end of the game that even with the Mana and Health Upgrades cut in half judging from the status bar, you become pretty much unstoppable by level 5 if you focus on mana and health regen.

And yet, despite all this, I played for a solid 8 hours. I can’t deny the fun I was having either.

That was, until I got soft-locked.

On level 18, my crossbow and grenades stopped working, forcing me to use mana from there on out, which for the first time made progression an actual challenge, except constant deaths and reloads failed to fix my broken weapons and with no save/load functionality outside of continue and and new game I was forced to throw in the towel.

So yeah, this negative rating was given out spite of being denied the fight with the final boss.

There’s a pretty good game in here if it got the right amount of fixes. Actually enemy placement instead of spawning waves in front of you (and sometimes IN you!) and perhaps utilizing the level destruction with the combat could have been fantastic to see.

The dev is obviously a one-man-show and despite all my negative criticism, he still got me hooked for a solid 8 hours.

If you do feel inclined to give this a shot, bear in mind this could serve to be a good stress-reliever instead of a difficult Boom-Shoot!

Hand Drawn for me and you! Dead, however, need not apply!

When people think of Boom-Shoots, the 2D sprites of Doom or the Low-Poly Models of Quake come to mind. Many other shooters will happily serve that aesthetic up on a silver platter so it’s always charming to see one break that mold with its own touch of creativity! Kingdom of the Dead is more than happy to delve into the pulpy aesthetics of 50’s pulp magazines and gnarly graphic novels of the 90’s by mimicking a hand-drawn art style that genuinely works for the most part!

KotD thrusts you into the roomy Trench coat and brooding Stetson hat of Agent Chamberlain, a Gatekeeper by trade whose job is to keep the Dead out of the affairs of the living with the help of his trusty talking sword. Right off the bat I was getting Nocturne vibes with the time period and overall story and while it doesn’t go flavor text up until the end, I was surprised by the actual writing chops on display, with bosses being astonishingly memorable even if they have about two or three lines and even an ending that kind of surprised me with the twist it took D:

Gameplay wise, it’s a run n’ gun Shoot em’ up with a heavy focus on movement and agile navigation, swapping weapons to pound the dead back into the dirt with precision aiming and even dishing out a sword that can be charged for a devastating attack! Most of the time it felt pretty damn easy even on harder difficulties but I assume it’s to do with my precision as I reckon those who cannot get a hang of headshots would be in for a rough time.

Levels are also large and well-crafted with boss arena’s that offer a ton of movement and attack opportunities and by and large, the designs of the bosses and their domains themselves are absolutely RAD.

Despite that, it’s just… too easy!

Bosses can go down in less than a minute if you know what you are doing with some weapons able to take a quarter of their health down in one blow while I found enemies in their large numbers more cumbersome when they box you in.

Speaking of which, their animations leave much to be desired, as most of the time that is where my immersion broke away from the pulpy hand-drawn aesthetic when clumsy flailing and walking animations interrupted the mood. Weapons feel the same, with the shotgun firing almost too quickly with an animation that I swear is skipping frames.

On the few times I died, I also noticed my ammo was not resupplied, which is especially infuriating when I lose hundreds of rounds to a monster spam but I assume it gave me the difficulty I so desired LOL.

That being said, KotD is still a fun little romp and well worth the time investment, not to mention the music is pretty killer and fits the tone to a tee.

Remember to quench the thirst of your Sword, Gatekeeper. Seriously, its secondary attack is OP as hell! ;D

Much like the real Pole’s who fought against the German War Machine that Fateful September in 1939, this whole experience was pure PAIN.

The Invasion of Poland is a criminally overlooked period of WWII in videogaming, with only literature and movies filling that void. So color me surprised when I come across a game in production by a small team aiming to recreate this never-before-seen dark period of European History as a WWII FPS with design principles intended to emulate Medal of Honor and Call of Duty 1 and 2 with meticulous attention to detail regarding rare weapons and historical accuracy.

And following one delay after another, I learned they straight up lied!

Oh god, where do I begin?

Okay, I’ll start with the few good points. The game features rare guns such as the Becker 1899 (beating COD:Vanguard by a few months, nice touch!), the PM Mors and the KBSP 1938M. They all have crunchy reloads and punchy firing animations. The Mission Briefings also get quite desperate as the game goes on and the ragdolls are delightfully broken at times.

That’s it. Every other morsel of this game is baffling or pure unadulterated agony.

The game story starts off simple with Poles holding off against a German Offensive, long enough for the main protagonist to make a poetic note on the dehumanization of warfare, only to promptly forget about it and never preach philosophy ever again.

And why does everyone sound so BRITISH?

All the voice-acting in this game is atrocious. Many of the VA’s straight-up have pop-in, background noise and their delivery is… has the voice director informed them what kind of game this is? They almost sound like they are doing a parody of a WWII shooter then trying to be anything remotely historically accurate with one guy straight up saying ‘Dude’ with the delivery of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo (I think it was one of the NPC’s in the Warsaw Level). Hell, practically every mod I’ve played in the last 5 years has had better voice acting.

So, how’s the game? And what did you imply by saying the Dev’s lied earlier?

This plays nothing like Medal of Honor, hot damn it doesn’t even play like the Original Call of Duty. Sure, it’s got 3 weapon slots and medkits but you lug them around and use them like COD:WW2 from 2017 but the damage is so high and the healing animations are so drawn out it brings the game to a crawl just healing up and doing so on the fly is straight up suicide.

Damage output is absurd in favor of the enemy, with AI either not even acknowledging you to dropping you dead with one Machinegun Burst. Rifleman can be picked off like flies around a light bulb but the SMG Troopers are Glass Tiger’s! it’s near impossible trying to pick them off fairly as they can nail you even if one inch of your body is exposed and most of my deaths can be attributed to their many-notched MP-28’s.

Oh yeah, it also takes a full minute of loading on every death. And is it just me but does every level require two loading screens?

Nothing in Land of War is redeemable. I have never in the last 20+ years of gaming seen so many horribly implemented mechanics in one product. The movement, the tank controls and weapon sway are some of the worst I have ever experienced.

The Main protagonist turns like a fridge on sticks of butter, the tank controls are damn near impossible to learn in the short level they are introduced in, the weapon-sway from damage inflicted by enemy gunfire throws off your aim by 90 degrees, the bolt-action rifles are borderline useless and the damage output from the automatic weapons are so high it makes you wonder why they even bothered putting in so many bolt-actions if every other alternative is superior in EVERY WAY.

Optimization? Oh jeez I forgot about that. There is none! Despite my Beefy System Spec's the Micro-Lag was atrocious on some levels and my temps absolutely sky-rocketed during heavy fighting. Dumping it down to Medium helped but not with the lag that's for damn sure!

So, what is that right now? 3 “Worst I have ever experienced” moments in just one game? Perhaps I was too rough on Ride to Hell after all…

How does the game end? Apparently you blow yourself up and our main lead just pulls a “And that’s how my story ends” like it’s Indigo Prophecy or some ♥♥♥♥. I rage-quit during the flight mission on Level 9 because after an hour of flying around like a Smooth-Brain I could barely hit anything and I just watched the last mission on youtube. Saved myself quite the deflating ending I guess, even if Poland's Defeat was basically the Elephant in the room throughout the game but anyone who dragged themselves through the trenches of this mortifying experience should have gotten a better send-off then just text on a black screen.

This ain’t a so bad it’s good kind of game, it’s too frustrating to be one. Don’t even bother picking this up on sale. Don't even bother torrenting it.

Look, the Dev’s tried but they failed. The Invasion of Poland is a damn good concept to tackle in an FPS and despite everything, I can at least applaud them for bringing attention to a lesser-known Battle in WWII to those who live outside Poland.

If anyone tries to tackle this again, please hire decent Voice Actors, Sheesh!

The Mid 00’s definitely had it’s phases, and one of them being the criminally underrated and significantly underutilized “Psychic Power’s” Action game of the likes of Geist, Psi-Op’s and of course Second Sight!

Unfortunately for 13 year old me who picked up this game 16 years prior, it was a stealth-action game, something I absolutely sucked at!

Suffice to say, I never finished it, so considering Second Sight got a surprise re-release on Steam in early April this year I took it upon myself to finally getting around to finishing it! And you know what? Psi-Op’s was a better action game and probably the better choice for an impatient teenager like myself! But Second Sight is still a hell of a time now that I have actual patience!

Second Sight begins with our bald main lead John Vattic waking up with the Thriller Starter pack, amnesia and confined to a hospital bed! Just as soon as he regains consciousness Mr. Clean begins demonstrating Psychic Abilities such as Self-Healing, Telekinesis and patient scrubs full of military-grade hardware while battling both Government Goons and Violent Vietnam Flashbacks that seem to be changing the present day!

Story wise, it’s pretty corny but I can’t deny it throws a hell of a lot of loops for the player to wrap their mind around. Coupled with an enthralling atmosphere and some seriously foreboding tunes, Second Sight definitely demonstrates one hell of a Thriller Presentation despite it’s dated nature!

Art Design wise, it aged gracefully! Instead of going for a more realistic approach to it’s graphics, Codemasters decided to use their own art aesthetic present in their Timesplitter’s trilogy with highly expressive facial expressions in the cutscenes and very engrossing level design and details. Considering this was their only PC Release, it’s both endearing to see Second Sight get a second chance while simultaneously depressing knowing their equally enthralling TimeSplitter’s series remained locked to Old-Gen Consoles for all eternity D:

But let’s get down to basics. Second Sight is a Stealth Action game, how does it play? Surprisingly well! The player can swap between a fixed camera, a third person and even a first person perspective and each one has their pro’s and cons. Third-Person is pretty much the main method of combat while Fixed Camera can help the player navigate larger set-pieces and highlight enemy locations while FPS sadly locks you in place but is fantastic for shooting goons behind some good cover.

Stealth itself is also astonishingly forgiving, allowing the player to try and evade Mook’s once you are spotted instead of going to an instant game over (Which was the style at the time!) so using your power’s to appropriately slip past the fuzz is very invigorating instead of frustrating!

Sadly, Second Sight is… Oh let’s face it, not only is it a bit dated, it’s just not a great port.

While I’m happy to see Second Sight relaunch, it’s pretty bare-bones and requires a bit of third-party bug-fixes and tinkering to get the proper playing experience. Even with that done, the main game has a bevy of problems.

Controls on the fly are incredibly clunky in a jam and while selecting weapons and powers pauses the game it is quite a momentum breaker. This also brings in a notable jarring problem on Normal Difficulty, John is an outright Bullet Sponge against opponents armed with a firearm but is an bonafide glass canon when facing anyone else, this coupled with either brain-dead AI that wouldn’t notice you breakdancing down the hall to being pinpoint assassins who invite Agent 47 over for Poker every Friday at the drop of a hat once a gun is introduced makes the overall difficulty very uneven. Enemy numbers are also just silly, with a near endless wave of armed guards scrambling out of bathrooms and broom closets once you are spotted makings picking off goons a moot point if all your work can be undone once a camera catches a glimpse of your gnarly bum peaking around a corner.

Level design is also pretty funky in places, with some fun and lively animated weapons limited to a single level in some instances while most of them tend to force the player down a single path with only one way of proceeding outside of a few that introduce vents to crawl past obstacles. Not to mention a SERIOUSLY under-utilized Squad Mechanic that coupled with the possessor ability could make for a game of it’s own! A squad-based psychic-action game would be AMAZING.

And yet here I am, recommending this despite all it’s crappy problems.

It’s not just the nostalgia talking, Second Sight has some serious design-chops and a near-timeless art style and a foreboding Main Theme that has stuck with me all these years later. It’s got some problems but all our favorites from the past do.

Either play it raw with low resolution or find yourself a fix. I played with 1600x1200 resolution and had a hell of a time giving Second Sight a Second Chance! ;)

Old Memories of Goldeneye linger in the back of my sub-conscious like watching my dad play Doom over his shoulder in the mid 90’s. It defined my taste in FPS’s but going back to it years later in my adulthood left a bad taste in my mouth due to the now ancient and fragile tech it is permanently tied to (That controller has objectively aged the worst, 1v1 me!). And the sad part is, it ain’t ever gonna get the proper rerelease/remaster the world desperately needs.

Welp, if that’s not gonna happen, then fans might as well make a Boomer-Shooter Love-Letter to it instead!

The Spy Who Shot Me absolutely wear’s it’s influences like a finely trimmed suit, right down to the low-res models and textures without the warping and single-digit frame-rate. It’s certainly charming and the presentation doesn’t give any false pretenses about how the rest of the game is going to play out. No high-tension, no gripping story, just a romp through brightly lit Spy Cliches with it’s tongue planted in both cheeks.

The main character himself is endlessly suave much like some of the earlier interpretations of 007 himself while the world around him feels like it flopped out of No One Lives Forever and Austin Powers. And the levels, while very low-def, are just are charming with their N64 limitations. Many set-pieces don’t even remotely hide their Goldeneye Muse while a few take some pages right out of the N64 port of The World Is Not enough and… SkiFree? I swear one level is straight-up just SkiFree. Imitations aside, most levels are quite varied with the Train Level in particular being particularly memorable with the roof-top hopping, enemy popping and ducking and weaving under quite the tight time limit!

Weapon selection while basic, also delivers the basic FPS arsenal with many levels hiding them away for some of the most observant players such as a sniper rifle and a very effective Shotgun that can nail dudes from down the hall! Objects in the environment can also be smashed to bits in delightful glory so trodding through some familiar levels is not as cumbersome with some literal scenery chewing!

Wait, Familiar as in nostalgic or just repetitive?

Yeah, some levels in this game do lack the charm of others and feel very samey. And the enemies that inhabit them can be just as recognizable from both an art-style and a gameplay perspective as most enemies just charge the player and they only focus on ranged attacks near the end game so expect the first levels to be a breeze if you have a shotgun on hand.

Difficulty is also very mix and matched with most of the game being a cake-walk and most of my deaths were incurred on sudden time limits or slippery movement sending me to my death.

Oh hell, movement in this is pretty sloppy even with the fixes. I’ve found myself getting stuck in doorframes or on pillars in the heat of the moment and the snow mountain level is just pain incarnate with it’s slippery walkways and 10 foot death drops! Sheesh, Agent 7’s ankles are made of Biscuit Wafers!

There is also a VERY nasty bug I encountered a couple of times where the enemies will suddenly become immune to my bullets! Thankfully this can be remedied by restarting a checkpoint or the level itself (most are thankfully very short!) and grenades are still effective in taking out enemies but it’s still a serious problem that I currently have no knowledge how it even occurs!

And yet, despite all that I can’t deny the fun I had with The Spy Who Shot Me. It’s a comedy through and through and a short one at that. Definitely worth checking out for those Nostalgic for late 90’s console FPS’s so pick it up on sale if you so desire.

It’s got it’s fair share of blemishes, but so do our childhood games!

During the Source Modding Gold-Rush of 2005-2010, many teams and individuals threw their works onto the web with varied success. Some became classics, most were thrown together for the fun of it, others became learning lessons in Game-Development while an alarming majority Released a few promo’s and renders on their MODDB page and went silent from there on out. That was the death-rattle of many high-concept Total-Conversions and grand-scope Singleplayer Campaigns. Feature’s intended to have them stand out among the crowd quickly became feature-creep and brought production to a stand-still.

Happy to say, Snowdrop Escape may be late to the party but it sure jumped the many hurdles of mod development and delivered quite the project in the end with all it’s features intact!

SE plants you into the role of a Mercenary named James, unaffiliated with Eli’s Rebels but he sure as hell isn’t a fan of the Combine Either. Working for a break-away militant faction that may or may not be in cahoots with a certain Scientific Competitor to Black Mesa, he straps himself into his Kevlar vest and pockets deep enough for at least 4 or 5 weapons at any time and goes on a mission to crack the skulls of both Rebel Scum and Combine Fascists alike!

Gameplay is pretty straight-forward much like HL2 but has a much vaster arsenal of weapons to chose from. Everything from M1 Garands to AKM’s and the fabled Alyx-Gun and a Sawn-Off Shotgun can be used to great effect against new enemies such as Bullsquids and even a Rebel Juggernaut! While enemy skirmishes are fewer and further between compared to the Base HL2, most of the game is focused on Puzzles and Exploration and further sells that James isn’t as robust as Gordon Freeman’s HEV suit considering how considerably less damage he can sustain without his armor topped up. However, the limited weapon capacity by category is a bit cumbersome but understandable due to the sheer number of weapons available. However, there is an unlimited weapon capacity mod on MODDB users can try out if they are stubborn HL2 Purists like me ;)

Level design wise, it’s impeccable! Levels are obscenely well detailed and with the right amount of clutter to sell a very believable environment without snagging the player down with very high quality car models and room scenery-dressing. It can prove quite the hassle if a rogue explosive throws objects into your path but otherwise it’s top notch!
Puzzles are also very common throughout but most I had no trouble dealing with. Most are physics objects hustling but there is a series of doorcodes related to obscenely prolonged timed input codes with one at the very end driving me to the point of just noclipping through it to get to the final boss-fight.

Music is also very top-notch and very in-vogue with the HL2 setting. Lore too is also lightly touched upon with remnants of the old Russian Government leaving Civil Instructions to a dwindling and terrified population. While the subject of alternate worlds and Aperture itself is a bit jittery it feels like they took pages out of Epistle 3’s intended Narrative so I can’t blame them for treading TOO far away from the initial source material.

However, it isn’t long before the player remembers this isn’t a full AAA product.

Put simply, the voice acting just sucks. It’s very amateurish and while suitable for an old mod from the late 00’s, feels out of place nowadays. There were a couple that were quite decent such as the Combine Officer at the end but most are non-English actors delivered janky lines in an uneven script. The English translations too are pretty uneven and badly written, it certainly could have used more script-doctoring by an English speaker!
Gameplay also takes a dive in Chapter 4 with a very crappy Cloud-Section that was just trial and error. Seriously. Just God Mode your way through, no one is going to hold it against you!

Despite all that, Snowdrop Escape is a VERY highly polished Mod that very well could have been a timeless classic if it came out in the Gold-Rush era of HL2 modding and is well worth your time today. It’s got some blemishes but it’s a ripe trip! The same team is working on a follow-up taking place in Mongolia of all places and I am stoked to see what they can do, especially considering it’s going to be significantly more action-focused with puzzles taking a backseat this time around!

Don’t let this mod escape your attention, it’s free, what’s stopping you? ;)

...Well it’s… um… it was an… an experience?

I’m happily confused, is that a proper description?

The last couple of years have certainly introduced a slew of new and inspiring aesthetics from foreign markets, that we know for sure. Some have even grown from the heavy influence of popular games from the west. Now, most of these are battle-royales and uninspired mobile crap young kids use to vacate their parents bank accounts but every once in awhile we get a game like Immortal Legacy. Made with total and UTMOST sincerity and baffling design decisions, taking bits and bobs from many games over the last 8 years to create a bizarre amalgamation of scenarios in an attempt to make it big in the videogame industry.

Something Immortal Legacy failed at, tremendously. But it made a fan out of me!

The game begins in the backseat of a futuristic aircraft heading to a mysterious island, the main character, only dubbed TYRE, mulls over his tragic and equally mysterious and promptly forgotten-and never-addressed-again past before the metal coffin he was riding in is severed in two and plunges him straight into the world of action set-pieces and MacGuffin hunting!

At least for the first half. It’s 2013’s Tomb Raider just without the disturbing amount of Lara Croft abuse porn!

Yeah, this game is a master-class of picking up concepts and then throwing them away. Right off the bat we are rescued by a streamer-waifu who then gets kidnapped and we don’t see her much until the very last cutscene of the end of the game, which is the defining trait of everything following it. Our Waifu-Bait running into the fray of very rapey mercenaries and not acknowledging it? You got it! A climbing mechanic that is most certainly a leftover from the PS4 VR port? Absolutely! Sudden body-horror and survival horror elements ripped straight out of Resident Evil 7? Oh it’s the entire second half of the game!

I’d hate it if it wasn’t just so charming and sincere!

The shooting is A-okay, the weapon juggling is pretty liberal and the combat is by-the-numbers, the boss-fights suck yet the actual budget of the modeling is AAA despite having the length and tone of a mid-00’s eurojank shooter. This is Chinese-Jank, and I LOVE it!

I haven’t felt this charmed by a mediocre game in awhile so I’m gonna stop with the hints of whats to come. It’s not a good port by any means and the astoundingly lackluster options and lack of key-bind changing is gonna be a major turn-off but it’s nothing too extreme. But I can’t help but recommend this game when it goes on sale!

It’s no surprise that Immortal Legacy failed yet I wish it didn’t! With the burgeoning Chinese videogame market, I hope we get more experiences like this over mobile games and crappy battle-royales! Give her a go! You’ll be confused as all hell!

The ultimate Crippling Depression Simulator for the Environmental Activist in your family!

Okay but for reals, G-String is a damn treat, just don’t play it if you are in a bad mood!

G-String started out in humble pastures, the booming Half-Life 2 modding scene of the late 00’s. What initially began as a few concept maps set in an apocalyptic city soon got the Half-Life modding curse of becoming more ambitious.
But unlike most mods that get too big for their breeches and the team grows up and move away from modding as life takes hold, G-String prevailed with a hell of a Beta release in 2011! It was clunky, uneven, pretty shoddily paced and had some serious tone issues but the foundation was delightfully grim and enticing.
Little did I know at the time it would take 10 more years of hard work for G-String to iron out the kink’s in it’s rusty armor before striding confidently onto the Steam Platform with a 20 dollar price tag I happily paid for without a second thought! So, how is it compared to the original mod?

G-String starts out with a grim text-crawl of the future. Corruption, War and Pollution rule the land and despite all of humanities greatest achievements, the whole damn planet is on the verge of total collapse. However, that’s all our Heroine Myo Hyori know’s as she straps on her bio-suit and waltzes into another day of Telepathic Testing, just as a war high above the institute cascades a debris field down below, throwing what remains of Myo’s world into insurmountable turmoil. Gordon Freeman could relate, but at least Myo didn’t pull the damn switch to Armageddon!

Right off the bat, the aesthetics of G-String hit you in SPADES. The bleached color-palette of a world that hasn’t seen a proper sunny day in decades, endless acid-rain stained city-scapes crawling with sexual frustration and degeneracy, blistering neon blaring from every rooftop and an infinite sea of crumbling infrastructure, buildings built on buildings, leading far into the horizon of whatever is left of the United States.

So yeah, G-String has a pretty damn bleak yet enticing aesthetic.

Every level in the game is just OOZING detail, disgusting charm and revolting sexual overtones. From the acidic mud sucking at Myo’s boots to clanky hallways of abstract steel and glass, G-String is perhaps one of the most audio-driven and sexually charged FPS I’ve played and the sound design hit’s like a freight train. The whole damn city feels both alive and isolated, every room just itches with atmosphere and dread from radio-chatter of armed gunman marching against the drum-beat of an army of disintegrating sex-bots while various rebel groups vie for control of drip-fed resources fueling their desperate ideologies. And Myo is stuck somewhere in the middle, swimming through the actual garbage water underneath a super-apartment to fighting sex-bots crawling out of the flotsam leading all the way to the very top of the world, G-String is the Apex of inspired yet disgusting level design, I love it!

And don’t get me started on the soundtrack. Composed by Evaura herself, it’s a damn treat even on it’s own but it’s absolutely something else. Hearing abstract electric synth while a man on an old radio play raves about Man’s conquest over nature while a category 5 hurricane beats down on the player has to be seen to be believed.

So, I’ve raved and worshiped the ground G-String walks on, is this game truly the Depressing and tetanus-ridden Second Coming of Christ? Welp, at it’s core, it’s still Source, and it’s still Half-Life 2.

The Engine, while pushed to it’s limits, really is legitimately pushed to it’s limits. Some of these levels are just too long and too numerous for me to recommend to some folks with a limited attention span, and while the combat is certainly more impactful then the Base Half-Life 2 both sound and aftermath-wise, it’s pretty clunky. Blood decals are very smeared, dismemberment is many times too easy to achieve even with the games weakest weapons and they throw enemies around the room like they got broadsided by a car bomb and DAMN you can die real quick, either from the unusual number of death-pits to the ridiculous pinpoint accuracy of every armed gunman you come across.

Concepts are also introduced and then forgotten early in the game, such as readable terminals and divergent pathways, coupled with a lack of enemy variety and a Pyrokinesis ability that feels more like a lit match in early levels and only becomes a legitimate weapon late-game.

And that ending is… well, it was memorable?

And yet, this is still one of my favorite games of the year. Nothing else has matched G-Strings atmosphere in recent memory and it’s perhaps going down as one of the most depressingly captivating adventures I’ve endured from the first person, I guess I’ll need to give STALKER a genuine go when it stops crashing on me but as it stands, G-String is king. Evaura is a one-woman modding army and talented musician extraordinaire and all those years of hard work paid off if you ask me.

After everything I’ve seen in this game, I can’t help but ponder about the less-then-subtle themes G-String explored. Will the world perish in Nuclear War, Political Upheaval, Global Climate Change or perhaps all three at once? I don’t know, who am I? Nostradamus? I’ve been enduring prophecies on cheap cable tv regarding what the world has in store for us for the last 30 years of my life and if all goes well I’ll probably endure it for 30 years more.

As it stands, crack open a good beer and enjoy your day, maybe you’ll be in the right mood to endure G-String. It’s a hell of a ride and if I learned one thing from the 40 hours I put into this game, we humans are a stubborn sport and will do anything other then roll over and perish. Even if that catastrophe we must face came about at our own hands, we tend to get used to surviving that ;)

Now this is the REAL Ghostbusters 3!

Originally coming out in 2009 when talks of a Ghostbusters sequel on the silver screen had all but faded outside of rumors and speculation, it served as a hell of a boost for the Ghostbuster’s series in the eyes of fans and newcomers alike! While some brushed it off as a cash-grab, those who actually played it were left speechless. It was straight up a legit sequel to Ghostbusters 2, featuring talent from the entire original cast! And while Rick Moranis was nothing but a reference and Dana was a no-show in the game, the devs managed to get the additional talent of William Atherton as Peck, Annie Potts as Jenine, the unmistakable Brian Murray as the Mayor and even the Legendary Max Von Sydow as Vigo the Carpathian! That’s a hell of a roster for a movie, let alone a videogame!

Yet time moves on and eventually the original steam release disappeared and original copies became harder to come across. But eventually it reared it’s remastered head once more… as an Epic Games exclusive!

But a year later, it finally lands on steam once more. Is this remaster all it’s cracked up to be considering it’s now 10 gigabytes larger? Oh yeah, you betcha!

The game starts off 2 years after the events of Ghostbusters 2, the crew are facing increasing paranormal activity in New York City and decide to bring in a new recruit, a doughy-faced young lad who despite his fear and apprehension is more then willing to do anything to gain the trust and favor of his Childhood Heroes. Or at the very least, be a very good human guinea pig for all the new experimental proton-pack firemodes!

Story-wise, it’s a damn treat! Every character feels so genuine, especially considering it was written by many of the actors! And while it’s no masterpiece, I can’t deny the quips and humor feel like such a breathe of fresh air compared to the disappointment of the 2016 reboot. Likewise, the tone, atmosphere and even the music feel so on-point with the Original 84’ classic!

On the gameplay front, it’s a damn treat! While some have accused the game of being a Third-Person Shooter with a Ghostbuster’s paintjob, it downplays the fun design of the enemies you face with the help of your proton packs! While some levels are filled with physical enemies of everyday objects possessed by ghosts, you straight up go to town on rooms of specters (as well as the room itself, sheesh! This game is destructible!) who want nothing more then to drag you to hell! And with 8 new fire-modes in your proton pack, dozens of different foes to trap or shatter, your fight through New York City is anything but forgettable!

So what’s wrong? Not much if you ask me!

I’ve had times where the ridiculous destructibility snags me in tight spots, some arena’s are a bit tricky to trap ghost and face physical enemies at once who have a heavy tendency to knock the rookie down on his ass but that comes down to identifying the real threat first at the end of the day. Also, the last two levels no longer count your destruction bill which takes the fun out of wrecking rooms if you ask me!

Perhaps the biggest gripe I have is that it’s too short at only 7 levels, one of which is a revisit. I’ve also encountered one crash but some folks had nothing but crashes so maybe I was just lucky.

But after putting in so many hours just fiddling with arena’s and racking up millions of dollars in damage, I couldn’t recommend this remaster enough. After the death of Harold Ramis in 2014, I can’t help but feel this is the ultimate send-off to the original crew.

Strap on that Unlicensed Nuclear Accelerator and start trapping some Ghosts, New-Blood!

Welp, hands down the best Duke Nukem Mod out there! ;)

Okay, but for reals, Ion Fury was a damn treat! It’s main inspiration, Duke Nukem 3D, was a staple in my household in the 90’s but I never really jumped into the modding scene for that game until 2012 thanks to a very dependable and lively community that has tinkered with the game engine in sourceports well into the modern age, so color me surprised to see a team assemble to build the first game running on the fabled community driven Eduke32 engine! Well, outside of old sourcecode for the infamous Megaton Edition but that’s a whole other Gearbox Software story… D:

Ion Fury starts off with our Heroine, Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison knocking back some over-priced Rye on the Rocks in a Cyberpunk City that can’t decide if it’s the 1980’s or the 22nd Century, only to have her drunken stupor foiled by the invasion of thousands of cybernetically enhanced Trans-Humanist cultists led by the crazed Dr. Heskel, voiced by Jon St. John himself! Not wanting to let that 10 dollar drink stain the carpet in vain, Bombshell spins the massive cylinder of her 3-barreled revolver and goes to town on some cloaked-cybernetic asses!

Right off the bat, it feels like a Duke Nukem Total Conversion, and that ain’t a bad thing! Guns are punchy, shooting is tight, the music rocks and level interaction is top notch! Practically everything in a room can be smashed and even panels of computers, cars and machinery can be dented with unique destroyed textures before being splattered in blood, gibs, scrap metal debris and hundreds of bullet casings!

Levels themselves are also out of this world in terms of detail! There is no way even the smallest level in Ion Fury could run on the highest-end PC even years after Duke3D’s initial release in 96’! Each episode drags Bombshell through a variety of different levels all over the city and even on it’s outskirts, making the eye-candy a pleasure to behold and a treat to explore! The aesthetics are also quite appealing, while some of the industrial levels near the end start to become monotonous, the sheer blend of 90’s Ford Broncho’s and bulky 486 Computers colliding with Cyber-Futuristic cityscapes and sci-fi tech has a lot of charm and coupled with the war-torn atmosphere, each level feels like it tries to offer a new bit of lived-in decay and chaos despite the scenery now over-run with Robed Terminators rewarding secrets bursting from the floorboards!

So yeah, Ion Fury is everything we loved from 90’s FPS’s with tons of enemies to mince into gibs, plenty of things to blow up and hundreds of easter-eggs to drive home the sense this game was built by an army of nerds! So, what’s the catch?

It also imports some of the problems of 90’s FPS’s. Most of the time, scoring headshots and kills can be a breeze but sometimes due to the angle of shooting and the enemies being sprites, I’ll have plenty of unnecessary deaths due to my bullets flying through my intended target or catching on invisible wings of art-scenery, not to mention Bombsells Bowling Bombs can vary from being my main weapon to borderline useless once bodies and steps get in the way. Enemies also have a nasty habit of running and flying around the room like over-amped energizer bunnies, making harder levels more infuriating then fun as you have to deal with knee-high spider heads and flying drones zipping around the room leeching off your health while big-honcho’s send Bombshell to an early grave.

Also holy HELL that ending boss-fight is an endurance-test of my patience! A boss just opening the floodgates to every bullet-sponge enemy in the game isn’t my idea of a memorable boss-fight other then keyboard-breaking rage!

Other then those blemishes, Ion Fury is a damn near essential game through and through for me! To say I’m stoked for it’s Expansion Pack this summer is an understatement! I honestly can’t wait to pack on another 15-30 hours. This should be the first game you play if you want to dip your toes into the Boomer-Shooter scene and I can’t recommend it enough!

No harm no foul on cheating that ending boss-fight if you want, though. I won’t judge ;)