Recent reviews by David Szymanski

They took one of the greatest survival horror games ever made, and turned it into another one of the greatest survival horror games ever made.

Brilliant little game that's as atmospheric as it is stressful.

Neat little platformer with great art and a charming vibe. Difficulty spikes pretty quickly into level 2, so expect a fair few deaths. Worth a look for only $4.

My brother made it, so you know it must be good!

Actually a pretty clever little idea. Although there isn't any obvious challenge to Otok, it's still unexpectedly fun to try and make the best looking model city you can with the pieces it gives you. Not something you should expect to play for hours on end but I could see myself booting it up every so often for fun.

Marvelous fun. Everything Teyon nailed with Terminator: Resistance applies here too. If you're a RoboCop fan, purchasing this is a no-brainer. If you aren't a RoboCop fan, there's a high probability this will make you one.

A few key points:

- Not only can you shoot creeps in the groinal region, but there's an entire class of enemies that are armored from the waist up, REQUIRING you to shoot them in the groinal region

- The first level has some of the most ridiculously destructive gunfights I've ever seen in an FPS. It's Hardboiled Tea House Shootout levels of mayhem.

- Yes, the Cobra Assault Cannon is in this game. And yes, the rousing RoboCop theme is in the game. These two things converge at one point in the best possible way.

- RoboCop himself is hilariously deadpan.

- You can, and will, pick up motorcycles and throw them at guys riding other motorcycles. The resulting ragdoll deaths are incredible.

- ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, come

- One of the upgrades for the Auto 9 makes kills extra gory. There is no other purpose to this upgrade. It is Rogue City's version of the bloody mess perk.

- RoboCop wields the combat shotgun with one hand

tl;dr, 10/10 game, well worth the purchase

It's like if Unreal, MDK, and Turok had a baby. It's awesome. Play it.

I'm a simple man. Game has tornadoes? I like.

Absolutely fantastic. Amnesia: The Bunker takes design elements from classic Resident Evil, Arkane games, Alien: Isolation, and Frictional's own previous work to create a tightly-wound little masterpieces of tension and risk/reward problem solving. It's easily the most gameplay-driven of their games since Penumbra: Overture, while still maintaining the horror sensibilities that originally made Amnesia such a success. An easy recommend if you like the resource management of survival horror and the open-ended problem solving of immersive sims, and want to see what happens when those ideas are mixed together by a studio with years of experience making visceral dread-driven horror.

5 hours in and it just keeps getting better. The Callisto Protocol is an action horror game (NOT a survival horror game. Do not buy it expecting a survival horror game) that focuses on brutal close-quarters combat above all else, and actually does a pretty darn good job of it.

At first you'll mostly be getting used to the odd (but eventually pretty smooth) melee system and enduring the requisite scripted setpieces and cutscenes, but after the first hour or so it opens up into a highly enjoyable riff on the ethos and aesthetics of Dead Space and its many inspirations. Combat is brutal and satisfying, with an emphasis on balancing guns, melee, and telekinesis. You end up in a nice rhythm of shooting, beating, and throwing foes with plenty of curb stomps to punctuate everything, and it's very rewarding to successfully tear through multiple enemies with the right combination of all your tools. The tide can turn quickly though, and the game strikes a nice balance of making you feel vulnerable but also making you feel like you can utterly destroy enemies if you're smart and skilled enough.

The aesthetic and atmosphere are also great, again riffing heavily on the industrial sci-fi elements seen in Dead Space. It's especially cool when you're crawling through the bowels of Callisto's prison through dim claustrophobic tunnels lined with ugly utilitarian components and rust.

There's also... the performance. If you're reading through Steam reviews circa TCP's December 2022 launch, you'll probably notice that its average rating is... perhaps lower than one might have assumed given the pre-release buzz. That is almost entirely due to the game's performance issues, which at launch were fairly severe. As of this review there's been a patch to address these issues, and it does seem to have done that to some extent. Most people report less stuttering and I'm personally finding that it feels a lot smoother to play (although there are still regular sequences where it chugs). Given time this will hopefully turn into a non issue, but currently it's definitely the worst part of the game and a legitimate reason to hold off on purchasing if you're uncertain about your hardware.

I'm still gonna recommend The Callisto Protocol, though, because the game itself is quite fun once it gets going, and if you go in expecting a brutally satisfying action horror game in a cool atmospheric setting with pretty visuals, you won't be disappointed.