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Recent reviews by fenster

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4 people found this review helpful
4.8 hrs on record
The Swapper is an atmospheric 2D puzzle game which takes place on a mostly-deserted space station. The puzzles primarily consist of making clones of your character (which jump and move in unison with you) and then “swapping” your current self with one of your clones. While the story is a bit abstract, the puzzles are expertly crafted and strike the right balance of difficulty and creativity.

In the Swapper, you play an astronaut who is exploring a mostly-empty space station. It is quickly revealed that the inhabitants of the station found a unique type of rock species which contains a shared conscience. The rocks are seemingly benign, but as you solve puzzles and make progress deeper into the story, more is revealed on the nature of the rocks and of the researchers. By the end, Swapper asks a lot of deep questions about conscience, the soul, and existence. Some of it is genuinely intriguing and thought-provoking, but I would be lying if I said some of it didn’t go a bit over my head.

One thing is for certain: the Swapper absolutely oozes atmosphere. The vastness and emptiness of the space station which you are exploring is really incredible; a top-notch music soundtrack and the claymation graphics certainly help.

Of course, the puzzles themselves in the Swapper are truly the star of the game. At the beginning of the game, puzzles are relatively straight-forward but are still interesting and creative. By the end, more mechanics are introduced and there are some puzzles which I found quite difficult -- one in particular had me walk away for a bit and I literally thought of the solution while taking a shower. Most importantly, all of the puzzles in the Swapper never feel like they are cheating you; the solution always feels on the tip of your fingers and, once you reach it, is always extremely satisfying.

Anyone who hasn’t played the Swapper and loves puzzle games, especially along the lines of Portal, should absolutely play this game. The story is interesting (if not a bit confusing), the puzzles are excellent, and it’s all accented with excellent music and graphics. It’s a short experience, but definitely one worth the price of entry.
Posted February 15, 2015.
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4 people found this review helpful
18.6 hrs on record
As a long time Metal Gear Solid fan, I was really intrigued by the concept of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. In many ways, what you see is what you get with Revengeance -- it’s the kind of insane, high octane thrill ride we’ve come to expect from Platinum with Metal Gear tropes and characters crammed in. Revengeance treads the “over-the-top” line extremely well; despite having a total nonsense story, the characters are surprisingly endearing, the cutscenes are very well produced, and the action is simply a hell of a lot of fun.

In Revengeance, you play as Raiden, the main protagonist from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and the cyber ninja from MGS4. Fans who hated Raiden in MGS2 (and you’re certainly not alone) can take solace in the fact that this is more of the MGS4-style Raiden; Quinton Flynn voices Raiden in a gruff, jaded tone and there is little Rose to speak of. The story is something about a corporation harvesting brains and a senator fueling a war economy -- truthfully it is even more nonsensical than a normal MGS storyline (which is saying something), but it fits the theme of the overall game well. Metal Gear Solid fans will find subtle nods to past games and many of the hallmark oddities of the series are present here (see: cardboard boxes).

It’s worth mentioning that cutscenes are done extremely well, and while voice acting is pretty subpar, there are some standout performances among the group. The cheesy dialogue classic to the MGS franchise is present in spades, which may be grating for newcomers, but for series fans it is always great to hear. There are a fair amount of long cutscenes, which I think worked against the game’s momentum at times. I love MGS cutscenes, but in an intense action game like this, they sometimes killed the pacing of the gameplay. There is a codec in Revengeance, and while the conversations are interesting enough, I again felt like they killed the pacing a bit.

Gameplay itself plays like other Platinum action games -- the focus is on quick reactions to enemy attacks and building combos. The action is incredibly over-the-top; within the first few minutes of the game you destroy a Metal Gear Ray by slicing it in half, only after running down the side of a building and jumping on rockets in mid-air. It may be a bit too ridiculous for some, but if you can embrace the crazy, it’s actually pretty amazing. Occassionally I felt like Revengeance wanted me to really try and be stealthy, but to be honest I think stealth is best left to the Solid series. The mechanics for stealth aren’t nearly as satisfying in Revengeance and I almost wish they had forgone the option altogether. Regardless, the parry system is satisfying, boss fights are incredibly epic (mostly), and there is a lot of side content for those who want even more of the combat system after the game is over.

Revengeance is relatively short but packs in a lot of side content, including tons of VR missions and two DLC missions (in the Steam version). I’d recommend playing both DLC missions. The second is definitely the weaker of the two, but I enjoyed both and they provided some longevity to the game.

Those looking for a balls-out action game should find themselves very pleased with Revengeance. The Metal Gear theme is the icing on the cake for longtime fans, but it’s not even remotely necessary to understand the lore to enjoy this game to its fullest. The action is satisfying, cutscenes are frequently fun to watch, and the craziness is set to full throttle. Check out this game.
Posted February 1, 2015. Last edited February 2, 2015.
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433 people found this review helpful
17 people found this review funny
28.7 hrs on record (21.2 hrs at review time)
Banished is a distillation of what a lot of city-building fans missed from newer SimCity games. It’s a smart, fun twist on the concept -- instead of ruling over a metropolis through a mayor’s lens, you play a more intricate role in the development of a small colony. Every citizen is somebody you can see and control (though not directly), and your role is to see that your citizens are well-fed, happy, and warm through the long winters. The result is a more nuanced and satisfying game than the EA flagship franchise which inspired it.

Every Banished game starts on a randomly generated map, where you control a small band of settlers (about 10 adults and 10 children) who have ostensibly been banished from wherever they came from. You have nothing but the minimal supplies they carried with them, and the resources of the land around you. Your first objective is to survive the coming winter, which you can do by building houses, creating a source of food (a fishing dock or gatherer’s hut would do), and a source of heat for winter (firewood). All of these things require resources such as lumber, stone, and iron, which your citizens can scrounge from the land around them.

After the first winter, your options explode. The basic idea is to increase the population of your town by building homes, while balancing the basic needs of the citizens with the resources required for those needs. Every citizen in your town is a resource as well; the player personally assigns jobs to accomplish every task, and must make sure their labor force is well balanced and not spread too thin. Should the population dip and you no longer have enough farmers, for instance, the consequences can be dire.

All of this may sound a little daunting, and it can be, but Banished provides a helpful tutorial at the outset to ease the difficulty curve a bit. I was able to get rolling with my city and survive my first winter with its help. The mechanics are satisfying and relatively deep, although after 20 hours or so I found myself finding a groove and more or less following a formula for increasing the population of my town. It was still fun to see my town sprawl across the map (which can be sizeable), but the gameplay got a bit tired.

Banished does come with robust mod support and for those who find themselves growing tired of the gameplay, there is an extensive library of mods which breathe new life into the game. Colonial Charter is a large mod which adds an incredible amount of new content and greatly extends the life of Banished. It’s great to see mod support for a game like this, and it’s a shining example of why we should see more mod support for games going forward.

Overall, I’d recommend Banished to anyone pursuing that city simulation itch, but finding themselves disappointed with recent EA offerings. Populations of your city won’t rocket into the millions, but the level of control and visibility into the workings of the simulation is very satisfying. It’s a game which, while probably inspired by games like SimCity, does plenty to establish itself in this genre with new ideas.
Posted January 25, 2015. Last edited January 25, 2015.
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299 people found this review helpful
13 people found this review funny
1.9 hrs on record
Gone Home is not a game for everyone. There’s no combat, no action, no cutscenes, no stats, no leveling up, and no heroics. It’s a short experience, and those who are looking at a strict dollars to hours ratio will find Gone Home one of the worst monetary investments available on the market (especially at its original retail price). That said, Gone Home is intimately unique and compelling game for those who are drawn to a story mechanic which is tragically underrepresented in video games -- the human experience.

In Gone Home, you play a young 20-something woman who has come back from travelling Europe on a late flight home in the 1990s. Gameplay starts just outside the home, where you find the house seemingly vacant with some hints that something may be wrong. The rest is up to you to figure out by exploring the house and investigating what happened and where everybody is. Primarily, you are following the story of your younger sister, but your parents and the old tenant of the home also form a bit of a side story -- should you choose to piece it together.

Occasionally you will pick up an item which will trigger a small journal entry from your sister, but outside of that, the entire story is really yours to unfold via inference. Gone Home draws no connections for you, but rather lets you connect the dots yourself as your travel from room to room and pick up items or just observe the detailed environment around you. You could choose not to do this and beeline to the end of the game, but fleshing out the world in which you and your family live is the primary satisfaction of Gone Home.

It certainly helps that the setting is expertly realized. Gone Home takes place in the 1990’s, ostensibly to help explain the plethora of hand-written notes strewn about the house which help with unravelling the mystery of the house. But the entire home is crafted with obvious obsession to detail -- you’ll find lots of references to 1990s pop culture and fashion, and those living in the Pacific NW will find a lot of familiar names and places which are central to its Oregon setting. Occasionally it does feel like Gone Home is almost pandering its setting a little too much to those who will appreciate the references, but for the most part I found it well done.

The second brilliant part of Gone Home is hard to talk about without ruining the narrative a little (so if you are serious about playing this game and have not done so, maybe skip this paragraph). Gone Home takes place at night, during a thunderstorm, in an old house with a mysterious (perhaps supernatural) history. It’s not an inherently scary game, but it’s undeniably spooky at times. The catch is that Gone Home makes its presentation at face value -- it lets the player craft the story into something more than it really is based on the expectations of it being a video game. Gone Home plays on these expectations in some genius ways, and at the end of the game leaves the player with a refreshing narrative not about saving the world or killing the bad guy, but about an experience that each and every player can relate to in some way that is meaningful and personal.

If you’re the type of player looking for bang-for-buck, or something more action-oriented, Gone Home was never going to be your game and that’s fine. But everyone else should consider this a must-play, if nothing else because it is a wonderful and refreshing diversion from the norm.
Posted January 6, 2015.
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7 people found this review helpful
5.9 hrs on record
Hotline Miami is a classic example that you shouldn’t judge a game by its cover. First impressions from screenshots and videos may leave you thinking of it as a run of the mill, top-down shooter where you blast baddies with guns (with some ultra-violence mixed in); end of story. But if you aren’t familiar with what it actually is, as I was not, then the reality is that Hotline Miami is something much more thrilling, intricate, and insightful than what your initial impression probably suggests. Not only is the action unique and fast paced, it is all accented with an outstanding soundtrack and surprisingly smart narrative in this stellar game by Devolver Digital.

Hotline Miami has you playing in late 1980's Miami, controlling a character who receives phone calls from a mysterious antagonist of sorts. Each phone call provides you with a target to assassinate, who is usually tucked away in a building behind all manner of bodyguards and thugs. Typically you start the level with no more than your fists, but you can steal melee weapons and guns from bad guys to unleash carnage more efficiently. As more missions are completed, newer masks (which can grant you passive buffs) are unlocked, as well as new weapons.

The brilliant twist in Hotline Miami is that enemies move and react at a breakneck pace, and your character dies in a single shot or melee hit. The result is that many levels will have you dying dozens of times if you want to run the level efficiently and with a good score -- thankfully Hotline Miami spends virtually zero time between your death and the start of your next run. Clearing a level feels like a perfectly orchestrated heist of brutality and cunning. It’s very similar to something like Super Meat Boy in that regard, but the gameplay itself is different in a very refreshing and unique way.

In most top-down shooters, you wouldn't expect much in the way of narrative. Hotline Miami doesn't have a stand-out narrative and it’s certainly not the focus here, but I was impressed with the way Devolver Digital used small environmental changes to make large implications to the player. These small breadcrumbs build up to a pretty compelling plot; I found myself attached to a character who speaks virtually no dialogue. It helps that the mood is set so perfectly in Hotline Miami; the music is absolutely perfect for every scene (and amazing on its own as well), and the gritty, colorful graphics create a very realized setting for the action taking place.

One thing worth mentioning is that Hotline Miami is an insanely brutal and violent game. It’s intentionally over the top and discomforting, and frequently your hand will be forced to perform some gratuitous acts against questionably innocent people without reason. What’s unexpected is that HM makes some extraordinary comments on violence in games for those who follow the relatively abstract story. For those interested who have beat the game (or don’t mind some spoilers), I would highly recommend reading Rami Ismail’s excellent article on Gamasutra entitled “Why Hotline Miami is an Important Game.”

That said, you don’t really need to care about the underlying message to enjoy Hotline Miami. It is a rollercoaster of high-octane, violence fueled fun, with some commentary if you care enough about it. The length and difficulty are just right, and it’s hard not to have a smile on your face as you slowly put together your perfect, bloody infiltration to the fantastic soundtrack. Truly, Hotline Miami is one of the most complete and enjoyable games you can play on PC today -- check it out.
Posted December 29, 2014.
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5 people found this review helpful
47.2 hrs on record
It has become an increasing occurrence lately to see popular Japanese console games being ported to PC. In many cases, these ports are half-baked without features many PC gamers have come to expect, but in Valkyria Chronicles, Sega has done a masterful job of porting over one of the PS3’s cult classics. Valkyria Chronicles is a tactics strategy game that is not only a great example of PC ports done well (see the end of this review for a quick port summary), but an expertly crafted game in and of itself. Though it has occasional pacing problems and runs a bit long, Valkyria Chronicles is solid enough in terms of narrative and gameplay that it ranks itself among other tactics greats such as Fire Emblem and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

VC takes place in a thinly veiled, slightly more fantastical version of World World II era Europe. The meat of the game is similar to other tactics games; you control a small squad of soldiers on a battlefield, each with different specialties and abilities. A turn consists of moving and taking actions with these characters in an over-the-shoulder third person view, allowing you to move and attack with a personal perspective of the battlefield. After using up enough command points, the enemy takes its turn, and so on. Each victory nets you experience and money based mostly on how many turns you took to complete the mission, which you can then use to level up your soldiers and upgrade their equipment. Progression is handled well and by the end of the game, I found myself pretty content with how far many of my soldiers had come in terms of skills and abilities. Core combat mechanics are fun and satisfying, although I found that some mission-specific mechanics could have been explained a little better.

Battles themselves feel well-varied throughout the course of the game, and usually strike a fair balance in terms of difficulty (later missions get pretty darn tough). It doesn’t explicitly tell you, but VC does allow for saves during a mission -- a point of contention in some tactics games. In many ways it is a nice feature because you may sometimes unwillingly send your allies into a hellstorm of enemy fire without realizing it, and it makes the game a bit more accessible to newer players. The fact that VC gives rewards based on fast mission completion, however, means that it can be very tempting to continually save and reload once you understand more about the mission and the enemies you are facing (or if you make a crucial mistake). Obviously that’s a choice that’s completely in the hands of a player, but it’s a serious temptation when you are effectively penalized for not doing so. Unfortunately, mid-mission saving and loading makes missions a little less satisfying to complete and makes an already long game take considerably longer -- I’d encourage anyone playing VC with experience in this genre to use this feature as little as possible.

Valkyria Chronicles’ story itself is surprisingly pretty good, though it does take a long time before it gets interesting. The plot gradually unrolls through a huge amount of dialogue, so be warned that this is a pretty long (30-40 hour) game if you want to experience everything. Characters have some depth and relationships are multi-dimensional, which is helped along by mostly quality voice acting. To Valkyria Chronicles’ credit, it takes the brutal atrocities of World War II head on, and does so with sufficient tact, but the juxtaposition against its whimsical presentation is a bit jarring at times. Anyone who outright hates anime may have some trouble with the visual art style, though anime tropes are used sparingly and everyone but the most close-minded should find the characters and style perfectly fine, if not likeable. It’s also worth noting that the musical score throughout Valkyria Chronicles is beautiful and very well done, from the opening title screen to the final battle.

Finally, some quick port details. I was able to run VC at 1080p at 60 FPS on a GTX 570 with no issues whatsoever. It supports both mouse/keyboard and Xbox gamepad support, and works well with both. Cutscenes are still rendered in their PS3 resolution, but look perfectly serviceable.

Overall, any tactics fan will find a ton to like in Valkyria Chronicles. For those less familiar with the genre, VC is a decent starting point in that it is not too punishing and offers up an enjoyable war tale. Combat is rich and satisfying, and the sheer amount of content offered to the player is impressive. It may be a bit much for those looking for a short and sweet experience, but for most players, Valkyria Chronicles will be worth every minute.
Posted December 9, 2014.
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271 people found this review helpful
4 people found this review funny
7.2 hrs on record
Antichamber is easy to dismiss as a Portal clone at first glance; it is a first person puzzle game wherein you move from chamber to chamber, equipped with a puzzle “gun” which interacts with your environment. But while Portal deals mostly in learning the rules of its mechanics and then adding complexity to those mechanics, Antichamber is a game which aims to subvert your expectations about how a puzzle should fundamentally work. It makes you question the unspoken rules that video games abide by. Frequently, it is simply brilliant and mind blowing, though occasionally it’s too obscure or random for its own good (especially in later parts of the game).

There’s no real story to speak of in Antichamber, but the entire experience is expertly accented in a very sterile atmosphere and minimal graphics. Sound design is also minimal, but well done. Certain audio cues can give you hints to where you are in the world, and the simple tick-tock of a clock can become a fixture of an entire portion of the game. It’s definitely a polished game which looks and feels nice.

Of course, the real meat of Antichamber is the puzzles, and it’s hard to say much about them without revealing part of what makes this game special. Suffice it to say that it is one of the most unique and creative games that I have ever played. Environments are frequently non-Euclidean in nature, and rely heavily on perspective or understanding the rules of the universe which Antichamber itself has defined.

There is inherent difficulty in designing that kind of puzzle; if you don’t abide necessarily by the rules of physics or perspective that we’ve come to rely on, puzzles can have arbitrarily hard solutions. For the most part, especially in early parts of the game, Antichamber does an excellent job of staying consistent and teaching you the ways of its mind-melting world.

But in the later hours, you are bound to run into situations where a puzzle solution will feel almost entirely arbitrary. Frustration will set in, and occasionally solutions don’t have the satisfying payoff they were designed for. There was one instance where I resorted to some online hints because, it turns out, I had completed an earlier puzzle in a non-traditional way and didn’t have the resources the game expected me to have. It took quite a bit of digging before finally understanding how I was supposed to complete the prior puzzle so I could complete the current one.

One very smart addition to curb some of this difficulty is the ability to, at any point, press escape and jump out to the central hub of the world. From there, you can see your progress and also a map of the entire area you have so-far discovered. You can jump in to any area you’ve previously visited, and I found it helpful to jump from puzzle to puzzle I didn’t know how to solve. Typically inspiration would strike somewhere, and my frustrations would yield relatively quickly.

Overall, Antichamber is a smart, mostly incredible puzzle game. Moments of frustration are almost inevitable here, and for the most part the balance is hit just right so that frustration results in joyous satisfaction when you make progress. It occasionally missteps and frustration just leads to greater frustration, but it’s easy to forgive when so much of the game is so good. Highly recommended.
Posted November 17, 2014.
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61 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
16.3 hrs on record
Rogue Legacy is a 2D platforming action game by Cellar Door Games, an independent Canadian studio. It’s categorized as a roguelike, which for the uninitiated, is a sub-genre that typically includes procedurally generated levels and permanent death (meaning once you die, you start over from the beginning). Rogue Legacy has both of those, but it adds in some RPG mechanics which make the imposing threat of death easier to swallow, while not altogether curbing the difficulty that fans of the genre have come to expect.

At the beginning of Rogue Legacy, you are a generic sword-wielding hero who is tasked to fight through a dungeon. There’s some reason for doing so, and there are diaries strewn about the world to help piece together exactly what’s going on, but for the most part the narrative is in the back seat throughout Rogue Legacy and that’s totally fine.

It’s hard to overstate just how much fun the minute to minute gameplay is in Rogue Legacy. Controls feel tight and the mechanics are all-around solid and enjoyable. Any fan of 2D platformers such as Spelunky will find themselves at home here. The dungeon is split into four separate areas, and while they are distinct in aesthetic and difficulty, they do tend to blend together after ten or twenty hours in the game.

The main distinguishing factor of Rogue Legacy is the way in which death, and subsequent life after death, occurs. Upon dying (which will happen -- a lot), you get to choose a new “heir” among three choices to attempt another run through the game. Each heir can have all sorts of randomly assigned genetic traits which affect how the game plays. Discovering the novelty of some of these traits is fun in and of itself, so I won’t ruin them here, but I will say the traits are pretty well balanced, creative, and occasionally good for a laugh.

The other unique aspect of death is that your character continually gets stronger in whatever way you choose. As you traipse throughout the dungeon, your character collects gold from chests and enemies. You can invest gold after dying in a huge amount of ways; you can boost stats such as strength and armor, unlock new classes, or buy new equipment. It’s almost impossible to beat the game during the early hours because of the upgrade system, and how weak your initial character is. Having to rely on more than sheer skill may be a problem for some, but the feeling of progression through boosting your inherent power is pretty satisfying (as in most RPGs) and makes the whole experience very addicting.

Toward the end of Legacy, when your character is strong enough to make it most of the way through the dungeon before dying, each run can take about 30 minutes or more, and I found it becomes a bit of a grind. Luckily the grind doesn’t last too long (at least it didn’t for me) before you become powerful enough to beat the final boss and finish the dungeon. There is a nicely done New Game+ option, and it’s a telling sign that I immediately dove back in upon completion my first time around.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Rogue Legacy. The RPG mechanics do an excellent (or evil, depending on how you look at it) job of cranking up the “Just one more run” factor that roguelikes are infamous for. Blending rewarding and difficult gameplay with a really smart way to make death a little less punishing goes a long way to make Rogue Legacy one of the best games in the genre.
Posted November 10, 2014.
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12 people found this review helpful
28.2 hrs on record
In years to come, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is probably a game most people will remember for its single distinguishing mechanic. In some ways it’s a shame, because while Mordor does invent a refreshing spin on the open-world genre, it also does a lot of the small things right to create an overall polished and enjoyable experience. Mordor is an open-world game developed by Monolith Productions, a long-time -- but rarely noteworthy -- developer from the Pacific NW. This time Monolith has created an outstanding Lord of the Rings action game which hits all the right notes.

After a brief and well-executed tutorial, the player is quickly thrust into the land of Mordor; the evil wasteland wherein the main villain of Lord of the Rings, Sauron, makes his home. Besides Sauron, there’s also orcs -- a lot of orcs. You have a sword, dagger, and bow at your disposal, and the majority of the game is spent fighting through swaths of Sauron's brutish pawns. Combat in Mordor is pretty much a straight copy from the Rocksteady Batman games. It’s an excellent system that works well in this environment, and Monolith did a great job of nailing the aspects of what makes that system work; animations are fluid for practically every scenario, timing feels precise, and you always feel in control. What’s more, combat kills in Mordor are executed with a bone-crunching, heads-flying brutality you won’t find in the Batman games, and it’s really satisfying. Even after 30 hours of slaying orcs, a slow-motion zoom in shot of me lopping off an orc’s head never got old.

Stealth is actually done pretty well too, and the bow mechanics feel tight. Mordor never feels like it’s getting in your way; they make some smart tradeoffs with character movement and climbing, making them easy and quick in lieu of realism. As the game progresses, you’ll unlock ways to make your character more powerful and more dynamic. By the end, there are tons of approaches to every situation, and even more impressive is that I was actually *using* the large variety of skills available to me. The different methods of combat and infiltration are so accessible and easy that it encourages experimentation until the very end of the game. I did feel as though the late game abilities were so powerful that it made the last few hours of the game too easy, but in some ways it was fun just to shred through hundreds of orcs in dynamite fashion.

My exposure to Lord of the Rings is admittedly mostly based on the movies; I’ve read the hobbit and parts of the trilogy, but it was clear even to me that much of the story is structured to disturb as small of the lore as possible. The story is bland and uninspired and the small cast of characters feel pretty one-note. But the story here is not the main attraction, and in fact, the real fun comes from the narrative that you frequently will spin yourself using the Nemesis system.

The Nemesis system is an inventive mechanic wherein strong and noteworthy orcs are added to a constantly rotating pool of captains. Each captain is given a name, VO, personal strengths and weaknesses, and a ranking in the pecking order, which creates a depth to each individual orc. Orcs who manage to kill you are rewarded with greater power, and you can be sure that they’ll taunt you the next time they see you. The result is that you end up creating your own narrative with the orcs from your story, which is often more entertaining than the ones the writers create for you.

There’s no doubt that the Nemesis system makes Shadow of Mordor stick out from the open-world masses, but it deserves a lot of credit for being an all-around outstanding game. It’s true that it wouldn’t be as remarkable without it, but Mordor still impresses with a very tight combat system which is great fun and does an impressive job of encouraging experimentation. The beauty of this fusion of polished, inspired mechanics with it’s own unique ideas is that Shadow of Mordor feels bigger and better than the games which inspired it. I highly recommend it.
Posted November 4, 2014. Last edited November 4, 2014.
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72 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
33.6 hrs on record
The Witcher 2 is a narrative driven action RPG by Polish developers CD Projekt Red. To be reductive, it contains a lot of action-like RPG combat and deep mechanics common to Bethesda games, but is also extremely narrative driven to the tune of something Bioware might put out. Over the course of the game, much of the Witcher's many turning gears become an immensely enjoyable machine, though it jumps to a rough start and could use a more enjoyable combat system. I did play with the Combat Rebalance mod, which allegedly makes the combat better; truly I think it just made it more trivial, but those may be two sides of the same coin in this case.

I started Witcher 2 having never played the Witcher 1, and generally not knowing what the game was about or how it worked. Let me be blunt -- that is the absolute worst way to start the Witcher 2. The game does offer an overall useless tutorial (if you have the Enhanced Edition), but otherwise it throws you right into a pretty hot mess. Very little is explained in the way of combat mechanics, the many systems at your control (things like potions, crafting, magic abilities), and the context of the warring monarchs and their mysterious assassin which are central to its plotline. Overall, it’s a little daunting to start. That said, I highly recommend you persevere; lying on the other side is a huge payoff.

What makes Witcher 2 shine is the well crafted, incredibly epic story of politicking and sorcery. What’s even more impressive is the dynamic way in which it is presented to you; very few games give you the sense of control over the story the way Witcher does. The game is divided into 3 acts, and the second act can be completely different based on decisions you make in the first act. You will start in a different location, have different characters to interact with, and different quests. Even more impressive is that Witcher 2 does a good job of staying away from the typical good/bad archetypes; characters usually feel complex and your decisions almost always fall into a gray area. It never feels like the game is pushing you one direction or the other; sometimes being the bad guy pays off...other times, not so much.

The plot itself is very interesting, though you won’t find anything revolutionary about it. Voice acting is typically well done, which is good because there is a LOT of it. At least half the game can easily be spent talking to characters and fleshing out the world in which Witcher 2 takes place. Cutscenes are serviceable, but nothing extraordinary. Like many games of this scope, much of the Witcher 2 lacks a certain polish -- the game certainly looks beautiful, but animations are often clunky and transitions are not done well.

Lacking the most polish, certainly, is the combat. Combat in Witcher 2 feels mostly like a buffer between unlocking more of the story. With the Combat Rebalance mod, parrying is automatic and after some initial struggle, I quickly learned to spam the same ability over and over again, accented by mashing attack and rolling around. I easily beat 95% of encounters this way. While you have a lot of options in terms of equipment etc., the majority is useless or unnecessary and I would have liked a little more variety in loot and spells. I wouldn’t say the combat is outright bad, but it is certainly mediocre and not the highlight here.

Overall, while there is a lot to nitpick about Witcher 2, I highly enjoyed it. It’s a beautiful game which offers up one of the most interesting stories you can find in the medium. Decisions are impactful and rewarding, even if combat is not. If you like Skyrim, or Mass Effect, and wish there was a game which blended the two together into a great PC game, look no further than Witcher 2.
Posted October 13, 2014. Last edited October 13, 2014.
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