Recent reviews by europa

The game is poorly optimized for older and mid-tier builds. It shouldn't, but it will require a beefy setup to run well. VRAM is the tallest wall in this port, with 8GB GPUs suffering the most. Runs well on mine, at 4k+Ultra, however I'm also on a 13600K with 32GB DDR, and a 4080 FE.

The remaster is itself beautiful and jaw-droppingly good, sound and visuals are beatifully designed and it's a rare sight of beauty. Which makes it twice a shame when you realize how few people can actually enjoy it the way it's meant.

Tyrone please

Starting with v1.03.1 from April 18th the game isn't crashing anymore. I'll play and update the review when I'm done. I'm switching to a neutral stance for now.


Old review:

As of today April 15th, v1.03, the game crashes when nearing a bonfire regardless of graphic settings used (fullscreen/windowed, low lighting/shadows/shaders); location (Firelink, High Wall of Lothric); and activity (idling, rolling, walking, fighting):

Unhandled exception at 0x0000000142093C49 in DarkSoulsIII.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0000000000000000.

I first played IMSCARED back in 2012, when the GameJolt edition was just out.
Being italian myself, I was - sadly - skeptic about its value, because we're notoriously bad at making games. I'll admit I was blown away. The low-fi visuals and audio, the fourth-wall breaking, the Yume Nikki vibe. All in all, a well-thought, hand-crafted piece of eeriness. I liked it so much I kept that version for years and gave it a play every now and then, showing it to some of my friends as well.

Then, February 2016 came and on twitter I saw my friend benzoin-gum re-tweeting Ivan's announcement about the Steam release - that was a really nice surprise, and I thought I owed Ivan a beer for the entertaining he's granted me years before, free of charge. Hence I bought it, and that was it, I didn't even want to play it again initially, but shortly after I caved in and gave it a go.

Lo and behold, there were a bunch of new areas to explore, new stuff to see and hear. New chapters, and secrets. I didn't know that, it was a very welcomed surprise. Yes, the game still lives to its old expectations and surpasses itself in this expanded version. I'm one achievement short from completion, but I reckon it won't be long due.

For the price of a pint of beer, I'd recommend this game to anyone who likes Yume Nikki, or had at least one dream in their lifetime where everything was bright yet the sky lied still, and black.

update: 100%

The last chapter was very intensive and frightening. This game is worth your money.

update: 10/2022

The madman actually remade this game from scratch for free, again, for the 10th anniversary

A game to be thankful for.

The wailing siren of an ambulance in the traffic of my backlog. 8/10 so far.

Will update once completed.

A Nicalis remaster of the well-known Pixel game Cave Story.

New, higher-resolution assets, tiles, characters and textures, plus a remastered soundtrack; all of which can be turned off should you prefer to go back to the original. Nice gameplay and a strong story, with replay value. Definitely worth a try.

Pros

• better lighting and shadows
  
• better, more detailed, remade textures
  
• better, higher poly models
  
• fewer bugs
  
• runs hassle-free on modern OS and architectures
  
• great controller support for X360-compatibile devices

Cons

• backgrounds are pre-rendered, thus no remaster was possible
  
• cutscenes are pre-rendered, thus no remaster was possible
  
• soundtrack could've been re-recorded, but then I'd be lamenting how the original one was better
  
• voice-overs couldn't be remastered without casting new (and unfamiliar) voice actors
  
• still has some bugs

Pre-rendered backgrounds can't be remastered or remade (thus, no proper widescreen support here), and even if that was feasible I would rather if they didn't (you'd gain nothing from a wider field of view). So much work has gone into those assets, just listen at the commentary and watch the making-of videos.

Some people define the models as "blocky" because they've never played the original game, nor they have any knowledge about the game itself: models aren't "blocky", it's a stylistic choice (as clearly stated in the commentary) aimed to mimic the mexican paper dolls for the day of the dead. They even considered going 2D because 3D felt too "plastic" back in the day.

Maybe they should've just released it as "Grim Fandango+" or something along those lines to avoid children throwing a fit over "muh remaster". I loved this game back in 1998 and I enjoy having a Windows 8.1 64bit-ready version to run from Steam, hassle-free, with better lighting, models and textures (while keeping it real to the original style), and a behind-the-scenes commentary to boot. It's less than 8$ on sale and barely 15$ any other day. Get a grip.

It was great 17 years ago, it is great today.