Recent reviews by Adanos

Definitely one of the best stealth games I've encountered. It plays like how I wanted stealth to feel in the Elder Scrolls games, and the world-building and story-telling are just as good. It also resembles Bioshock with its steampunk style and chaos system, which changes the ending based on the choices you make and your play style.

Combat elements seem alright, but I went for pure stealth and low chaos during my first playthrough. Will come back for a high-chaos run in the future.

The DLCs offer more quality content that expands upon the main story more than I would have expected.

For a good number of hours DRG is a fun and sometimes tense co-op with a decent variety of mission types and a cool atmosphere. I exclusively played as the Driller, but I have heard that all the classes are viable and have good kits.

Most of the gameplay is satisfying enough, but the platforming is not good. I couldn't say how many times my character failed to properly climb a ledge and/or slipped off due to wonky physics. Fall damage is also more punishing than it needs to be. For a game with so much traversal of complex terrain they sure didn't do much polishing.

The co-op aspects of DRG are generally pretty good in-level (there should be better HUD alerts when friends are downed etc) but having to rotate between doing your missions and those of your friends is annoying because overlap is rare.

On the other hand, playing solo past difficulty level 3 is unreasonably challenging and not viable for most players. If you're going to make it unreliable for players to be able to mutually progress in their missions in co-op then at least tune solo mode appropriately.

After reaching your first promotion and unlocking all the weapons for your class the gameplay becomes more of a grind, having experienced all the biomes and enemies and missions already. There are "overclocks" for your weapons, but what you get is RNG-based and I ended up with mostly mods for other classes. In a perfect world this would make you want to try out the other classes, but having to save up resources again to unlock another set of weapons wasn't something I wanted to do.

The cosmetics are a predictable and somewhat charming addition (and points for being able to buy them with in-game currency), but you have to buy the same stuff again if you want to use it on other classes, which is stupid and makes me less inclined to try playing them. Even some of the emotes are somehow class-specific.

It's hard for me to say whether I can truly recommend this game. On second thought, the 60+ hours played probably answers that question, but because of the eventual staleness and QoL issues I can't really give it a strong endorsement. Hopefully they'll make improvements over time.

Hades is the first "roguelite" I've attempted so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I was surprised and impressed by how many hours it kept me engaged with relatively lean core content.

Completing my first run took about 20 attempts, which clocked in at around 15 hours. After this point progression comes from a combination of RNG and repetition, but continues being supported by great writing and voice acting. There's a good amount of story and unique dialogue to unlock, and amenities to purchase at home for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The fast-paced gameplay continued being fun for quite a while longer, with many weapon and boon combinations to experiment with.

Around the 45 hour mark is where I think the player should be tying up loose ends and reaching the conclusion of the game, but progression slows down to a trickle. The side quests and epilogue require you to have over a dozen interactions per character with each run yielding just one precious piece of conversation each (if they're even present). The game is also not very clear about the importance of increasing closeness and I squandered many opportunities to progress early on by either choosing to hold on to my nectar or exchange it for other resources that seemed more important at the time.

Hades impresses with its beautiful art, witty dialogue, great voice talent, and fun fast-paced action. It requires too much time and repetition to access the full story and easily becomes a completionist trap, but otherwise I strongly recommend giving it a try.

Prey is an immersive sci-fi FPS with similarities to Bioshock and Control. It's story-heavy with a vast network of characters (mostly deceased) who's agendas and interconnections are revealed as you gather intel and put the pieces together. Progression is mostly linear with a few karma-based choices yielding slightly divergent endings.

Gameplay mainly takes place inside a space station, but also takes you out from its relative comfort and into the very uncomfortably disorienting experience of navigating between airlocks. Enemies remain threatening until pretty late in the game and are creepy enough to want to generally avoid. This isn't really a horror game, but it definitely has its moments.

The game uses a somewhat unconventional crafting system where just about every object can be "disassembled" into its elementary components, which are then used to fabricate weapons and upgrades. There are a lot of "junk" items that can thankfully be converted into something immediately useful as well.

Much of the weapon kit is familiar with heavy resemblance to that of Half-Life 2. The exceptions are a surprisingly reliable stun gun and the GLOO cannon, which functions as both tool and weapon.

Neuromods (See: Bioshock's plasmids) add a great deal to the combat experience giving the character superhuman stat and movement bonuses and unlocking powerful elemental and paranormal abilities.

Great game with little to complain about. Hope to see a sequel in the future.

Control is a well crafted Sci-Fi action/thriller with an immersive, meta-infused narrative style and telekinetic combat that makes you feel like a walking calamity. Much of the story is told through scattered writings, recordings, and videos that can be dense at times, but they deftly create an eerie X-Files-esque world with plenty of mystery. The visuals are excellent, with great shading that gives the game's many dark areas added depth.

Jesse's telekinetic powers are fun and always useful, and they compliment the sidearm so effectively that you're able to push the offensive almost indefinitely. The decision to use recharge delay rather than ammo depletion was a good call that doesn't trivialize combat at all.

The game allows you to manipulate and weaponize the environment to a degree that I have not seen done before. Chunks of stone can be torn from any surface and large objects can sometimes be broken into smaller ones still usable as projectiles. The amount of detail is often incredible, with post-battle rooms looking like the aftermath of a tornado.

All this sustained power comes at the cost of having a very small hp pool, and even after maxing the hp upgrade tree late in the game I personally think Jesse feels a bit too fragile. I was impressed however by the robust set of difficulty tweaks offered in the settings that allow you to boost health or damage values to your preference.

Recommended strongly to Sci-Fi fans who enjoy games like Half-Life 2 and Prey, and those who enjoy Remedy's narrative style.

A short and relaxing little adventure that's certain to lift your spirits. Serves well as as a cozy stress-free interlude between longer, more demanding titles.

Shadow of Mordor starts out strong with its "nemesis system" that lets you infiltrate and disrupt the ranks of Sauron's army in a variety of ways. Combat is smooth and fast paced with satisfyingly lethal abilities and finishers to employ. Gameplay continues to feel fresh and exciting as you tier up to take on bigger groups of enemies and work your way up the ranks, culminating in some epic war chief encounters. This is where things unfortunately start to plateau.

The second region offers very little that you haven't already experienced. You will max out your skill tree just as combat begins to get stale. The appeal of taking on hordes of enemies wanes as captains become increasingly immune to multiple forms of attack, forcing you into tediously drawn-out encounters. The numerous rescue missions involve killing orcs under prescribed bonus conditions to release slaves, who then tell you to rescue more slaves by killing more orcs. Meanwhile, finishing the quest lines for each of your weapons rewards you with lore but disappointingly no new combat abilities. The additions of branding and mounted combat don't diversify things enough to justify wanting to subjugate another entire region.

At this point the story needs to start carrying more weight but the premise shines brighter than the story itself. The dynamic between Talion and Celebrimbor is interesting, but the plot is a straight-forward quest for revenge with a few one-dimensional side characters and surprisingly unmemorable boss encounters. Collectible artifacts offer some interesting tidbits of lore while collecting ithildin bewilderingly leads to nothing lore-related at all.

Then there's the Bright Lord DLC where you are in possession of The One Ring and eager to unleash its power in a well earned and cathartic final act. But it turns out pre-wraith Celebrimbor is quite weak with less hp, no ranged focus, and none of the improved combat perks that you enjoyed as Talion. Using the ring gives you a few precious seconds to even the playing field, but filling the meter again is a dull chore. War chiefs and their guard captains are oppressively resilient while side missions send you scrambling to hold back multiple fronts of orcs that somehow manage to quickly destroy your stone towers with swords and spears.

Shadow of Mordor relies too heavily on its combat to carry it as far as it tries to go. If they had invested more into the story and characters and consolidated progression into one of the two regions I think it would have been better. Despite the hours I put in to get as much out of the experience as I could there are too few positive elements spanning only half of the duration for me to be able to really recommend this game.

Very fun little action adventure game that makes up for its short length with some very polished and balanced design:

• Challenging enough to add some excitement and easy enough to be generally relaxing to play.
  
• Fun, quick-paced combat with a kit versatile enough to keep things feeling fresh for the duration.
  
• A charming story with unexpected depth and gentleness towards the universality of death and loss.
  
• World design complex enough to require some creative thinking while simple enough to not get tedious.
  
• A reasonable number of collectibles that add a little extra post-clear content with enough hints to avoid having to look things up online.

It also has a really solid soundtrack. Check it out!

The good:

• Scenery so beautifully picturesque it makes you want to experience it firsthand.
  
• A fascinating post-apocalyptic story with plenty of background lore to slowly piece together through detective work and exploration, which I love.
  
• Very cool and imaginative machine designs.
  
• Fun combat that encourages creative use of weapons and methods of engagement. I was generally drawn towards the predictably reliable "stealth archer" approach, but there are situations when that isn't the most effective strategy.
  
• Just about every skill on the tree is actually useful, which is kind of rare.

The meh:

• The side characters (other than Nil) aren't particularly memorable.
  
• The final battles aren't particularly challenging or interesting.
  
• The enemy target focus tends be fixed on the player even when getting help from friendly machines or NPCs.
  
• The hunter bow is redundant, especially later in the game. The tearblast arrow is clearly better than its hardpoint counterpart, and harvest arrows are pretty much pointless. A snapshot bow with fire arrows would have been the preferred option.
  
• Combat balancing in the DLC area isn't great. The tougher enemies - namely Scorchers - are so aggressive and resilient that brute forcing myself through fights using explosives ended up being the most viable strategy.

Horizon is a game that shines in many areas: the gameplay, story, world building, visuals, and art design are all impressively well done. Most of my complaints are fairly minor and specific in scope. Honestly one of the best open world RPGs I have played. I look forward to playing the sequels once they get to PC.

Fun stealth survival with decent action elements. The story is an engaging period piece taking place in 1300's France. The grim ambiance is well depicted and complimented by beautiful scenery. The voice acting is solid with many endearing interactions, and the real-time coop between the characters (especially Amicia and Hugo) is interesting. In fact it would have been nice if they'd incorporated more of that into solving more complex puzzles and adding flair to enemy encounters.

On the other hand, autosaves are sometimes poorly timed, triggering after points of no return or not triggering after exploring side paths and looting chests. Guards are generally very dim but extremely punishing in combat. I don't know why there's a dodge function when getting caught means immediate death.

Would recommended to anyone who enjoys story-driven adventures like Tomb Raider and Last of Us.