Recent reviews by John Carmack: Technomancer

What board-spanning head injury did you all suffer that made you think adding in DRM that's somehow worse than Denuvo into the game that's a sibling to the one that's just had a resurgence of popularity, and probably has gained some popularity in and of itself because of it? What con-cussion did Capcom as a whole experience that made them think ramming a rusty spiked phallus into the collective anuses of exclusively paying customers was a reasonable course of action that would make them money and gain them loyalty? Trick question, it's going to gain them neither.

I really don't know what the plan was, here. Was it about money? Did all ten of those lost sales due to piracy spook you into ruining the game for people that actually bought it? Or is it more about control, sending a message that you can lobotomize your game and there's nothing the audience of it can do about it? If they don't like it, they can either deal with an objectively worse piece of software or pound sand, right? Are they just insecure, and think people modding their games means they didn't do a good enough job? Maybe it was that rumor that the lewd kind put a Puritanical fear of God back into them, as if libidinous nerds haven't been Big Banging their Bullfangoes to Chun-Li's naked form for 30 years.

Make no mistake, I love Monster Hunter. I have for practically as long as I can remember, from the heady days of Monster Hunter Freedom on the PSP to this most recent playthrough of Monster Hunter World, it as a series has improved my skills, made me friends, and offered me countless hours of entertainment. That includes RIse, although my time played on Steam doesn't reflect it as much. I played it a ton on Nintendo Switch before I caught it on sale to play with other friends. But I won't be doing that now, will I? You adding in malicious malware that removed functionality and somehow tanked the performance of a handheld game has seen to that, if I can even get it running in the first place.

It's not the 1990s anymore, Capcom. It's time to grow up.

Been a while, huh? No, I haven't adapted my lungs to breathe serpents of molten rock or inexplicably flying electrified jellyfish yet, but stick around, ten years is minuscule on an evolutionary scale.

Some of you have been calling this a $15 hotfix. That'd be fair criticism if I was actually as old and bitter as I claim to be. No, what I call it is what PC game expansion packs were when publishers were minutely more subtle about wanting to bleed all collective currencies out of our scrumptious wallet-veins. That may sound confusing (and gross), but bear with me. Sure, it might be silly to assume such a thing when this is a standalone release, however, the only thing that differs from actual DLC is how many bullet points are in your Steam library. If you can stomach the notion of technically owning two versions of a game on a single platform, then this is a return to form to the former term in the phrase "expansion pack," and a glorious example of what a remastered edition of a game can be. Or, a remake of a game could be? Those descriptors were always nebulous to me, but you know what I mean.

If that was too much flowery language for you, don't worry, I'm no botanist. If you had the audacity to scroll down to the Steam reviews looking for something as depraved as a review for a video game, then what you need to know is that Risk of Rain Returns is a wonderful romp through an alien world that can and will slap your stupid mug off, and then give you a new one like that one episode of Ed, Edd, & Eddy. But, fortunately, in a fun way, with satisfying game feel, lots of playable characters that all feel unique, difficultly that only constantly suckerpunches you if you want it to, lovingly crafted worldbuilding and art direction that most people probably wouldn't pay attention to, and a soundtrack that puts most "actual" prog rock bands to shame. Seriously, go throw the extra few bucks Chris's way, he deserves it.

And when you get to Providence, look him dead in his face analogue and tell him he's a city in Rhode Island so you can pop him in the mouth while he's recovering from the lamest closing statement I could think of.

It's exactly what it says on the tin. Tired of not being able to hang with your friends and play cards, board games, D&D, or whatever? Now you can, even if the world is ending!

A certain PS1 platformer, but you're playing as a (debatably) prettier elf girl instead of Backwards Dracula.

Real talk, though, this game is scratching a lot of itches, and it PAINS me that it only has maybe an hour's worth of content. Everyone's going to compare it to Symphony of the Night, but I think that's only one of many inspirations outside of the obvious Record of Lodoss War. It has little sprinklings of games like Cave Story, Outland, Metroid, and Hollow Knight as well, and those are the icing on top of this (admittedly familiar) cake. The combat and puzzles are simple, but really well implemented, the bosses are great too, and it turned me on to a great anime series from the 90's that I had zero idea about until now. Imagine that you never heard of Dragon Ball until seeing the release of DBZ Kakarot. That's how I feel!

I legitimately cannot wait for more. A+ introduction, I hope the whole game is this good, as it with Bloodstained's level of content is approaching the perfect Metroidvania.

Holy hot damn, is this game amazing. Or, well, at least 2/3s of it is, anyway, since Episode 3 isn't out yet at the time I write this. Still, this is one of the few Early Access games I didn't feel like an idiot paying for it, because this is the true sequel to Quake we've all been waiting for.

Action? Sublime. Every weapon is satisfying and the enemy design is superb.
Atmosphere? Both campy and fun, and dark and genuinely creepy.
Level design? Varied and interesting while also removing... most of the jank from older shooters.
Graphics? Brilliantly captures the aesthetics of 90's shooters while not looking completely dated.
Soundtrack? Like Quake and Doom 2k16 had a violent, headbanging murderbaby.

And all those elements together form one of the best shooters I've played in my life, with tons of replay value for me. This is seriously one of the best Andrew Jacksons I've spent on a video game, and I recommend anybody that's a fan of the FPS genre to do the same.

EDIT: EPISODE 3 IS KICKASS TOO, GO BUY THIS GAME NOW!

It's about time I got around to playing this, the way people online talk about it. This game is... ugh. It's honestly really hard to pinpoint my feelings on it. Well, I put over 100 hours into it, so I might as well give it a shot.

To start, the positives. This is the best gameplay in the series, period, at least when it comes to combat. Everything is tight, responsive, weighty, and, most importantly, fun. You don't need to rely on VATS most of the time since your crosshair/sights are a good indicator of where your bullets are going to go. Guns feel like guns and do appropriate damage, and you have a hotkey for throwing grenades and doing a melee rifle butt. I love what they did with Power Armor, too, treating it as its own "vehicle" with a power source that gives you an enourmous advantage in DR and Strength, but comes at the cost of using up fusion cores. The maps are also really fun to explore, including ones from DLC. While they do get kinda samey after a while, they still differentiated themselves to me a lot as opposed to 3's RUINED CITY, RUINED SUBURB, RUINED METRO, and New Vegas's DESERT. The graphics are pretty good, too, and still run decently on my three-year-old laptop. The people look like people instead of weird potato-faced blow-up dolls, and I love the reworked creature designs. There are a few things that did bug me in terms of things like weapon and sound design, but those are easily fixed with mods, so I give them a pass. I also did like how you could expand upon your bases and make them into full fledged towns, even though I never did much with it outside of Sanctuary Hills.

Now, for what really bugged me. The story, the characters, the writing, the choices you can make, the role playing... all of it is garbage. Like, it's seriously one of the most boring narratives I've ever experienced in a video game. While it didn't actively make me angry like Fallout 3's main story, Fallout 3 also had interesting sidequests and characters, let alone something of New Vegas's (or 1 or 2's, let's be real) caliber which has amazing main and side stories. This game has... none of that. Zero. It's just one big blah of stories and characters you've heard tons of times before. Now, there are characters and quests I did like, but they are few and far between even compared to the narrative disaster of Fallout 3. And that really sucks, because I genuinely had high hopes for the game after playing the opening couple hours. It had a great setup, and a fully voiced protagonist that you could build upon, but the quality of the writing took a nosedive after that. This game also has contracted Mass Effect 3 disease where your choices barely matter, and any attempt to roleplay is rewarded with you railroaded into doing what the game wants. Want to side with the Brotherhood, but don't want to murder all of the Railroad in cold blood? Too bad! They're obviously evil because your CO says so! Want to convince the radiation worshiping cult that maybe murdering everyone on the island is a bad idea? Shame, because the only way to solve that problem is to nuke their entire base. Wanna talk the OTHER cult out of killing themselves on a broken park ride? Too bad! Even though you have 10 natural Charisma and several items and perks buffing it further, there is literally no option to try to stop them. There's barely a point in investing in speech skills or even just talking because it all just boils down to DO THING I SAY, AND MAYBE GET MORE MONEY IF YOU WIN A DICE ROLL. It's honestly saddening to see something with the Fallout name have so little to offer in storytelling and roleplaying.

Another thing that bugs me is the overreliance of radiant (eg, boring fetch and kill busywork) quests to pad out ranking up in a faction and making progress. I don't really have much else to say about it, watering down quests like that is something I never like, especially when it's this important in the game to rebuilding settlements and whatnot. That also kills some of the interesting parts of the world to me. There's maybe one interesting town in the game in Diamond City, but the others are barebones so you can build off them yourself. I really thought there should be more, the wasteland is a big place, after all, you can't be the first person to think of doing this.

I just don't understand the rabid love I see this game getting. It's not horrible, far from the worst thing I've ever played, and I don't regret putting the time I did into it, but I simply don't comprehend the perfect scores I see this game getting EVERYWHERE. If I were to put a numbered score on it (which I don't really like doing), I'd probably give it a 7/10, because there are some MAJOR flaws to this experience, but it's still ultimately a good one.

tl;dr: It's a good game, but a terrible RPG and a terrible sequel to any of the previous Fallout games. I would wait until you see it heavily discounted unless you're absolutely dying to play a decent open-world shooter.

Get out while you still can.

THE WIND IS PUSHIN' MEEEEEE-

Uh. Excuse me. *ahem*

Dragon's Dogma is a third-person action RPG, created by the director of most of the Devil May Cry series and various Capcom devs, and it shows. It plays somewhere between Dark Souls, Skyrim, and DMC, and has some of the best features of each. It even has some Shadow of the Colossus in there, since you can climb on the bigger monsters. Furthermore, I like this game because it feels like a living, breathing world. There's a mountain of content, a lot of varied areas, tons of gameplay styles, and each one is as fun as the last. I like to call the Sorcerers "framerate killers", considering some of the wackier spells you can get with them, like a giant tornado. Not that the frame rate is an issue with this game. Although my hours don't reflect it, I played the pants off this game back on PS3, and I loved every second of it.

Some hooligan dragon destroyed your village and stole your still-beating heart. Are you a bad enough dude to go kick his tail and get it back?

Sometimes, you just want to hop on a server with a couple friends, and do absolutely nothing for hours. Garry's Mod is good for that, and you can do many different kinds of nothing with it. Want to play hide and seek, even though you're a grown adult? Maybe build junk out of props and ragdolls from nearly any game, and hope it runs, or flies, or... whatever? Or even marathon dumb YouTube videos in a virtual movie theater? I'm sure I'm missing something. In my playtime, I've barely scratched the surface.

Although I don't play it anymore, I still wholeheartedly recommend Garry's Mod, as it manages to capture the nostalgic joy of hanging out with friends, or simply messing around with whatever you can get your childish hands on. It's a good Summer Break game.

This game's an odd one. It's something between a first-person shooter, survival horror, and roguelike game, with its main story told through collectables, sort of like Slender. Because of this, the atmosphere is actually spot on, and the synthwave soundtrack only helps with that.

The main selling point, I believe, is the incredibly realistic firearm physics and handling. You start with a random handgun, either a Colt M1911A1, a Glock 17 (or 18, it's kinda hard to tell, but the wiki page says it's a 17), or a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver, and each one has unique mechanics. Firing while moving or when under fire yourself is difficult, as every outside stimulus effects your targeting. You have to rack the slides on the autopistols when reloading, fumble with the magazines, load bullets into them, and take extra care to make sure your gun is ready to fire. Every type of bullet is lethal, where even one shot can kill you. You have to target weakpoints on the main enemies of the game, which can disable certain functions of them, they aren't damage sponges. You can put the safety on, hold your handgun and flashlight at the same time, preload other magazines you can find, and a slew of other realistic features.

I realize this probably sounds really annoying to most players, but I'm an absolute freak about guns and how they're protrayed in media, and this game scratched all the right itches. Either way, I say this is worth checking out for the five bucks it costs.