บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย Liquid Mantis

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster could have gone wrong, in many ways but luckily the creators of this remaster admire the original as much as it's fans do. The inclusion of so many of the game's positives without basically any of the annoyances of the original mean that it's a game that is essentially Dead Rising 1 but more of what you love and almost spotless of what you don't. It's a great stepping on point for series newcomers or people who have never tried the original and a great romp if you're a veteran.

I'll be reviewing this from my own personal standpoint as a returning player, you might not get some of this as a newbie.

Dead Rising was infamous for it's difficulty at certain spikes during the game and while some can be mitigated some were serious pain points either left completely out of your control, due to the eccentricities of it's control scheme, the first person camera aiming when using ranged weapons and a mix of all of the above in regards to the game's boss fights. All have been dealt with.

Aiming in Dead Rising 1 is no longer a complete pain in the ass, it took us 18 years folks but we finally did it! You can even auto aim if you aren't directly aiming, which acts as a good way of giving you some space from you and some annoying zombies. The control scheme has been revamped and it's a generally much more approachable game from that standpoint. You can opt for classic controls if you really want that, which for veterans with muscle memory.. it's appreciated but i found the newer controls better than the originals even if it took brainhacking my mind to do so.

Holy god, i need to talk about survivors. They aren't perfect but we've finally done it boys. They actively do not constantly get into trouble or constantly do the most hairbrained things imaginable. They aren't a complete nightmare to ferry around the mall, unless you make it that way. 8 Survivors and a tight corridor come to mind. I have never been so happy to set a set of stairs in my entire life as i had when i stepped out the saferoom as a veteran of the first. There is a new mechanic with character affinity and their AI working better with some weapons as opposed to others but it's very barebones and the can give some unintentionally hilarious dialogue when they try to point out something useful as you're swamped in a zombie horde. Yeah, i think i'll live without getting that 5k pp bonus photo shoot you just mentioned while we're surrounded by ZOMBIES TRYING TO RIP US APART. Nevertheless, the changes to survivors is appreciated like capcom offered me a cold glass of water on a hot day.

Boss Fights in Dead Rising 1 were just simply ballbusters unless you came prepared with good weapons and with forward knowledge or had simply been through the raw pain of beating them before. They have been slightly nerfed, at least some of them have and progressively get more difficult as you get through the game. Probably a good idea of onboarding players instead of throwing them at early game bosses that usually were the bane of early players existences. A single boss has had a significant redesign and frankly, it's actually leagues better than the original game. If you're a vet, you'll know who when you run up on them.

The original game has seriously shown it's age in recent years and while we got a re-release that did give some of the older graphics a bit more life. It does look dated. Deluxe Remaster gives it a massive new breath of life, some areas have a flair that wasn't there before. The game just looks way way better and at the fidelity you can expect from a game nowadays. You can probably nitpick a few things here or there but they are so inconsequential to the overall experience that i think you would have to actively look for them in order to actually notice them. This applies also to the voice acting.

I'm going to be honest, i love TJ rotolo's voice acting as Frank West in the originals and his VA's absence is seriously felt here but his replacement Jas Patrick does a fantastic job of projecting the tone of the original. There were seriously times i thought it would be messed up here or there but the performance is a great emulation of rotolos. I warmed up to it quick and i went in pretty unsure off the back of the announcement trailer. The rest of the cast is the same, you can really tell they trained their performances on the original performances. The smaller more subtle inflections are taken into account in the new VA work. The whole game is also voiced, random ass NPC 231? He's not relegated to the phantom zone of text box with no dialogue. He actually has a voice now, i cannot tell you how much my mind melted to hear old man Otis Washington actually speak on the transceiver after being stuck to a text box FOR 18 YEARS!

Right, do you have any legitimate critique mr.freakingoutaboutstairs?
Yep. An enemy type later in the game. They are a lot more deadly than the original, take them seriously. And use that first person mode and a machine gun like your life depends on it. If you're fighting more than 2, prepare for a bad time. *SPOILER* Mode is too easy and it's solely down to how often and easy it is to find a certain resource as opposed to the original.

That's all i'll add to that for risking spoilers.

The game has crashing issues, i crashed maybe a total of 3 times but the game aggressively autosaves and i barely lost any progress so that's kinda a boon. I wouldn't recommend the game on weaker hardware right now and if you're paranoid about that maybe wait for awhile so these crashes can be patched out currently.

Overall, Capcom has once again knocked it out of the park in regards to it's remasters and i've already established this is perfect for first timers. However there are a few critiques that this Remaster doesn't have a lot of offer a veteran of the series. I disagree, the changes made here are significant and directly effect pacing. Being able to skip time alone kills huge stretches of just.. killing time in the original. I cannot tell you the magic of finding the exact same weapon spawn from 18 years ago, remembered by whoever put it there or wanting to know what Otis Washington would sound like or STAIRS, I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR EVERY SURVIVOR TO SINGLE FILE CLIMB UP A LEDGE. As a fan of the original, it's like christmas morning and i still highly recommend it if you're looking for a replay. You'll get to experience things in a unique way that newcomers will just simply not be able to appreciate and for a good reason.

In terms of value, i understand if it's pushing it a little for some people but to me the price was about worth it for what i got out of it as a returning player but you'll get more bang for your buck as a newbie. Highly recommended.

Dishonored 2 at times shines brightly and it's setpieces are just flatout some of the best the genre has ever had to offer but it is blemished by bugs and sometimes very sensitive AI interactions meaning that for someone who emphasises stealth above all else, it can be a frustrating experience. But if you go in hell and high water and do what seems fun to you as opposed to a perfectionist mindset then Dishonored 2 can be a ton of fun.

Dishonored 2 in many ways plays it safe, rehashing a lot of what made the original a great ride! But new ideas are often few and far between, granted the mechanics it does add are great additions and karnaca is a beautifully realized place. You gain two sets of abilities depending on what protagonist you decide to be, some opt for more brutal and forceful options mixed with a set of abilities that can facilitate perfect stealth or they can turn you into a goldberg machine, the dominos falling into place to get to where you need to be or deliver chaos on a spectacular level. Corvo and Emily respectively. Gameplay wise that decision at the start is a strong and compelling one. But narratively it falls flat, especially if you're fresh off a first playthrough. The game is mostly rehashed dialogue wise save for a handful of interactions and pieces of dialogue. Also i have to say i'm pretty disappointed in the way the game depicts it's chaos levels, it seems to work at first especially when you start a high chaos playthrough but starts to fall flat as you start to realize how it barely changes much at all. Dishonored 1 did this all a bit better, it had a tangible effect. People reacted to you differently. And while admitably the narrative tone is darker in high chaos, it doesn't really have any sort of significant impact on gameplay. Something i can't say for the first game. It is a pretty easy game all the way through due to your buffed powers as opposed to the original dishonored which does get harder if you treat the game with enough hard force.

However all of that aside, while high chaos doesn't have much of an effect narratively as much as the first Dishonored. It's just insanely fun, who cares about all of that non-lethal stuff? The tools you are given in Dishonored 2 are strong, to the point that i'd even argue they were even stronger than the first game's set of tools. You can really be an absolute terror and it's very gratifying after a non-lethal stealth playthrough. You can trivialize a lot of problems and obstacles that you just cannot deal with easily in a non-lethal run. Right, Non-Lethal ghost like stealth. In many ways, it's better and worse an experience than Dishonored 1. Now dishonored 1 wasn't a perfect game either, bugs happened there too but it felt like a lot cleaner an experience. I never felt like i was getting spotted behind walls or dropping a corpse two floors up on a building alerting a guard below me through 2 thick ceilings. Which happens in this game. I've had all sorts of really weird instances happen. Clipping under map geometry, Tesla Towers killing me even when i deactivated them (I loaded a save and this didn't happen after). Clockwork Soldiers just flatout bugging out. Being spotted in a second flat from a random guard who is on the other side of the street while i'm hiding behind a wall and two trees. If i had to say something about the AI is that it's very sensitive, more so than i'm used to. Smart though, they'll investigate a lot of suspicious activity which means you can open them to an ambush or get around them. Granted it's not to MGS V levels where missing guards will go noticed in a big way. Expect trial and error and also a lot of planning if you're doing a complete stealth run and be aware that you might experience some bs.

I have to talk about the missions in this game, some of them are just fantastic. Highlights of the entire game, you'll know when you see them. Slightly gimmicky but undoubtably fantastic and even mindbending to a certain degree. But they all have open gaps to exploit on multiple fronts with very few singular direct ways of dealing with a problem, weaknesses in the enemies they put in your way to exploit, blindspots in security allowing you to sneak in. I highly suggest paying close attention to the level design and the enemy design. You can get away with so much the earlier you do so and with the new powers, it should be cake if you do. To the point i feel like i could comfortably recommend hard for a first playthrough.

Ultimately Dishonored 2 is a slight evolution of the original, doesn't breakdown the walls to do something drastically new but provides more of what is enjoyed from Dishonored 1. If you didn't like the original, found it a bit slow maybe. Then this game is the same sort of deal, maybe even slower if you want to do 100% clean stealth. But i think there is enough on the throwing ♥♥♥♥ at the wall and seeing what sticks end to where you'll probably will have a pretty good time if you don't care about that.

The First Descendant initially has a warm opening and has flashy graphics but relatively quickly devolves into a bad taste. Like you've seen a delicious sandwich but under the surface, it's kinda strange tasting and as you take another bite you realise it's rotten with it's foul progression, it's plodding and frustrating mission structure and just mindblowing levels of bad narrative. It's so bad that even if that "Meal" is free, it's not worth your time or effort at all.

If there is something of what you'll be able to glance at from the many reviews here, it's that TFD doesn't wear many original ideas on it's sleeves. Much of what it does is trying to ape many other examples in the shooter genres but catastrophically fails on every aspect of making them fun. The same objectives you've come to know and love from other games are used in EXCESS here. Stand on objective until you die of boredom! Kill enemy, pick up bomb and put it on thing! Kill enemy, grab item and put it into thing! Defend objective until you die of old age! This is done so often that it becomes very frustrating. The lengthier missions also have similar objectives, climaxing with a boss so bulletspongy and shield heavy that it actually makes you groan out loud.

The progression system.. It's warframe. It's just warframe mixed with a little destiny. Unironically. Except the mechanics you use to progress are directly tied into the cash shop. Yes, yes. You could grind out a million different materials to "Forma" your Descendant *cough* "NOT WARFRAME" *cough* so you can squeeze more stats into your NOT WARFRAME or put an energy activator on it so you can actually power yourself up past your NOT WARFRAMES energy cap. Screw it, i'm just gonna call the game The First Not Warframe for the rest of the review. You can however instantly buy Not Forma and Not Orokin Potatoes for prices that are so much higher than their totally not originals, it makes the game look like an outright scam.

Weapon progression systems are aping a lot of destiny's progression mechanics. Use weapons as fodder for infusion fuel and yada yada. Exotic Weapons, Ultimate Weapons. Same thing. Except Ultimate weapons and their effects are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lame that they might as well just be snazzier purple rarity weapons. However you CAN grind and grind harder to infuse more ultimate weapons to increase the ultimate weapon's unique effects!! Hahahah Nope! No Thanks!

If you can't tell, i'm getting a little agitated. The First Not Warframe is painful. I wanna wrap this ♥♥♥♥ up, so i'm gonna go onto The First Not Warframe's story. Right. Tell me if you've never heard this before. You are a Not Warframe, defender of Not Earth and Humanity who has to fight back an evil interdimensional force of bad guys who augment themselves through biological enhancement and cloning and you also have to fight evil giant monsters from the void. You need to obtain the Ironheart which is the big mcguffin before the bad guys can get it and tear down the interdimensional barrier and destroy Not Earth. In doing so you will have to do the exact same thing you do in the first 3 hours that you will do for the next 20 hours. Sometimes with gaps of leveling and grinding the same places over and over again to level up. Each area voice acted telling you to do the exact same thing you've been doing over and over. Sometimes it's very very unintentionally hilarious voice acting and writing. But most of the time? It honestly starts to sound like a tedious drone. I was tempted to turn off the VA period but i wanted to write up a review to tell you about it.

Your main enemy isn't the general of the evil interdimensional force trying to end of all of humanity, it's not the gigantic abominations trying to cause havoc and annihilate all life as you know it. It's a man. A single annoying man. Called Jeremy. Jeremy is a fellow Not Warframe who to of lack of a better word is a complete ♥♥♥♥. Who's very behaviour and existence makes you question the intelligence of everyone around you in the story. If this man treated me the way that he does the characters in the story to me in real life then he would suddenly accidentally be found buried alive several feet underground surrounded by angry bullet ants while speakers blasting Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed are ringing in his ears. This single hatred for this one man kept me going surprisingly until the progression being so awful got to me.

Does The First Not Warframe have any redeeming values, Mr. Scathing Critic sir? If you want me to be brutally honest?
No. Even free, this game is so much worse than it's competition that it's instantly not worth it. Warframe is Free. Destiny 2 is also free. And both of them have worked through their issues to provide a product that at the very least is serviceable. The Not Warframe is fun to a degree, yes. I cannot deny that it is fun at first but then it falls into nearly every trap that every live service shooter has walked into for a decade. It's not the worst live service shooter I've played, it's not even worth my ire to be frank. It's just horrifying mediocre and disgustingly monetised and as we all know : Mediocrity is death

If you really have time on your hands and you really do like the look of this game, give it a shot but don't expect it to be a long time spent in The First Not Warframe.

No Spoilers.

Shadow the Erdtree is essentially more Elden Ring, which for those who want it then you'll have a great time but anticipate a more difficult experience than you're used to having at least at first. It expects you to at the very least be adept at the game's mechanics. It's problems start to rear it's head when you realise the impacts it has on progression with the base gameplay systems. And while it almost definitely has it's moments and is incredibly fun, you will eventually gigachadding your way through the game or not come to ahead with them.

The bosses and their quality varies with some of them having nigh on sensory overload levels of flashy attacks and some being relatively quaint and genuinely a fun learning experience. Readability goes out the window of a few so be warned, you might need to read them a little harder than you might be normally expected to. The intensity of these attacks does increase drastically from the base game, to the point where the window you are expected to attack in can be very short inbetween. Failure to dodge a certain comboed attack, due to the scadutree (skadoo tree!) mechanics of this dlc. Means you will be treated to immediate death. Which for some will be fine but for others you might have less leeway to be forgiven for a failure like that. Health and damage mitigation outside of Scadutree fragments also matters little. I've had friends who focus on vigor and armor and it does not save them. I recommend to avoid heavy builds due to this in general when tackling this dlc but it's up to you. You might make it work and prove me wrong.

I have to talk about the elephant in the room. Scadutree fragments and Revered Spirit ashes are the main mechanic, you're going into the DLC essentially nerfed and obtaining them give you a portion of your power back with damage/damage reduction and spirit ashes power/torrent hp respectively. This means at least for the first third of the game, you will be destroyed by burst damage sometimes. This matters less for certain builds because you were gonna have to deal with that anyway but for others they are worse effected. Most people are upset about this mechanic for it's implications on how hard the world seems to hit you and the game's difficulty but there is an even bigger reason that people aren't talking about.

Runes. Upgrade Materials are increasingly invalidated by Scadutree fragments. Less so with Upgrade materials but more so Runes and levels overall. It makes grinding for them to progress, you know.. a core mechanic of the base game feel weak at best. You stop caring about your runes as a whole, who cares if you lose this or that? It waters down one of the most engaging modes of progression in these games, it kills the tension of if you make it to the next grace or not and ontop of the scadutree mechanic itself just means you have nothing to hold you back throwing yourself at the problem over and over. Killing the tension. Upgrade Materials are given to you incredibly generously to play around the new items, too generously in my opinion. From the base game, you are given very few chances to obtain ancient dragon stones and in this dlc you are given so many that it stopped being exciting. It used to be the apex and a really big deal. The peak. Finally you can use that weapon at it's full potential after an exceptional feat or an extended questline. You wander around enough, you'll find them here or there. Hidden in some random part of the world. The first one is "oh sweet! i guess they must really want me to give these new weapons a spin!" but by the 4th or 5th one, the magic is gone. For all the complaints with the Skadoo tree fragments, that pain doesn't last forever. If you can stomach your way through 2/3rds of the game, it's much smoother a ride save for a few bosses which still makes the pacing a bit.. weird. But this above is going to last the entire playthrough. Ultimately i think the mechanic makes the game weaker through the above alone, it's not done for thematic effect and you don't truly feel the pressure of being in this shadow realm because of it narratively. You just kinda suddenly realise oh ♥♥♥♥, i guess i'm not as strong anymore. It's done to nerf you which is fine in concept, you can make that interesting but the base game's systems are directly affected and instead of feeling in perfect symphony it feels like a bit of a takeover.

Now this is a lot of complaining and frankly i'm tired of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the fun i had. So i'm going to go back to being positive for the rest of the review.

First off the new items. Simply amazing. Some of them are just flatout gamechangers. Fist weapons are given even more love. The new sorceries are just simply awesome and do a great chunk of damage too. They even give a few other types of magic some love that they just didn't in the base game. So many new fun pieces to play around with. I only messed around with a fraction of them. This extends to consumables as well, some fun little pieces. They almost overshadow options in the base game.. but most of them work in synergy from items you've already accumulated. Some of the newer talismans are cool new contenders indeed and fist weapons are handy even for characters you don't think they would be as useful on. I'm just itching to give a few of these a shot in another NG+ run.

The world at large initially seems very familiar to the base offerings back in the lands between but as you continue, the shadow realm has small eccentricities that add to it until it really comes into it's own. I'm not going to spoil them but they project a massive amount of majesty that even rivals vistas from some of your favorite souls games. The worldbuilding and telling of the story of the world at large also expands. It's a nice little sunsetting of the world that concludes a few mysteries you might have had back in the lands between. It's denizens have equally interesting twists and turns, nothing is as it initially seems in this place but the uncovering of their mysteries yields some truly awesome rewards. Every dungeon i've played is given an equal amount of love and mystery as opposed to catacomb after catacomb but with gimmick.

The length of this DLC is more than what fromsoft touted it to be but less than an Elden Ring 2 than you might think. Think of it as essentially the size of two or three regions from the base game but a very very sweet two or three regions. Each area is very dense and less spaced out than the base game. Nuggets of exploration are rewarded more often than normal which adds to that fun factor. For experienced vets, you won't spend too much time here if you're not interested in wringing out every drop of what this DLC offers but for those who are you'll probably spend double my playtime at around 20ish hours to a 30 or 40 hour playthrough. If you're new then you're in for some hard knocks, just be patient and learn. Don't be afraid to try out new things and solve problems. You're definitely jumping into the deep end here. And for those gatekeeping nerds who constantly tell everyone how to play and act as if their way to play the game is gospel and make everything worse as a result like you're back in kindergarten making fun of other people's beyblades, Touch grass once you've beaten the dlc? Like real life grass, with people and stuff.

My recommendation is going to be difficult and i have to change it for how you're approaching the game. For newcomers, don't buy this dlc immediately and at least beat the game once. Don't progress into NG+ though if you wanna dive into the dlc after though. If you've just come from the back of a 2nd playthrough or you've hit NG+ a few times, definitely grab it. For all of it's faults, Shadow of the Erdtree is great as an expansion.

In many ways Selaco is for the most part an exceptionally competent shooter but a few of its narrative shortcomings create a few pacing issues. Even so for people who desire carnage and destruction and a level of challenge rarely seen in these shooters complimented with literal best in class level design and devilish ai, it raises itself to an absolute recommendation even with only 1/3rd of the content in the game.

The comparisons you've seen to F.E.A.R at least in terms of enemy ai is very apt. They function as a tangible unit. Covering each other. Cornering you. Taking advantage of your vulnerabilities. They change behaviour depending on what weapon you are currently using. Which you can exploit. Kill an early trooper with a shotgun, the rest of the squad will not be as easy to bait out. Which you can take advantage of by going for a flank with a medium to long range weapon. It's so many little details like that, which make Selaco so engaging and tense in combat. Each enemy type is designed to put you out of your comfort zone and force you to adapt which is easier said than done if you've put yourself into a bad position.

As you progress. Gaining a better and explosive arsenal which expands and you can articulate to deal with enemy strengths or your own weaknesses. However the enemy doesn't sit on their ass. They to adapt just as you do, in a never ending chase of who can outflank who. Who can out design who. Who can find better ground to fight than whom. The Worst part? It's a numbers game, baby. You're the underdog with a bad hangover, and they've had 15 minutes of field prep and have been drilling for your imminent murder for weeks. Who cares though? You're better, smarter and you've died enough times to know what to do.

Levels compliment carnage in droves, glass shatters. Explosions rock your screen as you barely slide out of an incoming grenade blast. Right into an enemy who never saw you coming, immediately disappearing in a sheet of purple mist as you unload both barrels of a shotgun in his general direction. Blowing him and a cafeteria television into smithereens in a chaotic explosion. His head and guts rocketing with the velocity of a car crash all across the office turned war zone. Only to realise you walked head on into an engineer armed with a shotgun and an enforcer killing all your momentum so you can't even escape because you didn't think to switch it up, to be unpredictable. A backup plan on the fly. These levels are absolutely great at creating this kind of dynamic in a way that it's inspiration didn't.

With such a difference in power on higher difficulties, you NEED every secret. Every upgrade. Every grenade. Every single bullet. Every single bit of currency you can get for med kits even if you spite the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ med vending machine for cussing you out for not vacuuming you of every credit. It creates this sort of lust for any advantage you can get. And there is a lot of fun in finding that extra bit of loot, of spotting a small detail in the level and realizing it's another breadcrumb to another potential upgrade.

I have to talk about difficulties. As fun as the above sounds, I do not recommend a first time player to go for Captain (V. Hard) Difficulty at first, switch down to Commander. Yes, even if you think you're a bad ass. It's too high intensity at certain levels to the point where you will feel burnout. If you really desire punishment go for it but i regret it. There were many moments of frustration of having all of that work above searching for secrets invalidated in literal seconds from a single mistake, the other difficulties give you a bit more leeway instead of death.

On narrative, i find that it's pretty important in these kinds of games. You might feel differently but it's nice to have at least a sense of what you're doing and where you're going. What your objective is and Selaco can feel very aimless at times and while World building is a strong suit that Selaco has through it's beautifully crafted levels and the occasional email log. It's narrative is very wafer thin, i genuinely had barely a sense of what i was doing, where i was going and why.

It doesn't help that your main character lacks the personality of other female protagonists like Shelly from Ion Fury, which is a very similar character. She is voiced but lacks a sense of personality which makes it hard to like her. She doesn't have to quip constantly, infact she doesn't quip at all. When she arrives at a place familiar or unfamiliar to her, she doesn't reminisce or comment on her environment. She doesn't react to anything. And while it works for certain protagonists, i feel like considering how often she's placed within the narrative.. It's very jarring. You'd imagine she'd at least comment on moments of distress as she's ambushed or put into difficult situations but.. nada.

Overall these are minor downsides (amongst a few others I'll omit for spoilers) to what is a phenomenal game, it deserves your money, time and attention and frankly it's hard not to love. I can see what people see in it but it did take a while to get there for me personally. If you're not as into the classic part of this genre, i'm happy to say that the game makes concessions for you. It's not a straight retro fps boomer shooter, even if it's strongly implied on steam. It's truly its own beast at times. I'm almost forgetting that this is meant to be an early access title. It's not even done man!

An exceptionally high recommendation for anyone that has even remotely touched a FPS Shooter.

Fallen Aces right now is essentially a vertical slice of what this lite immersive sim detective noire fps shooter stands to be and while it's an incredibly sweet one. It's still might be too early for a secured purchase but if you like the smell of that slice, you're in for a game that will keep you on the hook for a longer haul down the line.

I'm not quite prepared to say this is a true immersive sim at the moment, more like an immersive sim lite. While you can execute your objectives with a wide degree of variation of play styles, there isn't as many chances to express that than more traditional immersive sims outside of the non-linear level design. However do not get me wrong, the game is really fun and frankly it's to the game's positives that it didn't lean too hard into that for what narrative the story is trying to tell. Although a Karma meter for killing vs nonlethal and having that reflected in the narrative or world would be nice.

The base mechanics are very polished and quite fun. It feels in someways very similar to it's cousin published game, Gloomwood but with a more lax approach to Loud approaches. Stealth is chiefly rewarded if you can pull it off but it's not met with death upon failure or lack of planning. The Hand to Hand combat is surprisingly in depth and with the amount of nuances that go into FA's environments, a decent chunk of chaos can be caused that is really gratifiying. Ranged combat is used sparingly and almost like a power weapon, giving you an advantage in a hard situation to steamroll a series of mobsters if you use it smartly. Your inventory is small so you can't rely on them consistently and also have items for survival. My only few critiques at this early stage is that Money is easy to come by and also has nothing significant to actually spend it on, it's somewhat a similar situation to Gloomwood funnily enough and currently acts as a sort of "score" more than anything else to be honest.

One step that it elevates itself at it's current early state is the story presentation, delivered through comic book style delivery. Think Max Payne but an old 1930s noire comic book. This extends to the art style obviously and the sound design. You'll be pulling off haymakers with an Indiana Jones sort of flair at times or gritty bar brawls with nothing but a broken bottle in your hand. The enemies taunting you on your misses and recoiling at your hits, your rampage sending a quake of fear into the nearest goon as you send a pool cue into his face. It builds the world with the fantastic talents and voice acting range of Gianni Matragrano who has graced my ears so many times in games recently that i can remember his long name and not ♥♥♥♥ up the pronunciation of it. However the other voice actors are also relatively competent. They sell the world well. A strong candidate as well is the level designs themselves in their aesthetics, they are drastic sometimes in setting and give a good sense of adventure and mystery, right down to the light projected.

Fallen Aces is a polished imsim lite shooter but my recommendation comes down to value, the game is pretty cheap in it's early access state as well. And while if this product was around the same price as say Ultrakill, i would really struggle to recommend it for the amount of content offered. Instead i'm left a bit shaky. Is 3 to 5 hours worth of content now at a small fee worth a potentially much longer game down the line? I'd say yes considering the fun i had with it and the promise shown. I'll come back to Fallen Aces, likely in the coming year to re-review it and replay it when it has more meat on the bone and give a more full look at it.

Privet Comrade! This party sanctioned and approved review has been redacted for spoilers!!

Sonar Shock is to System Shock 1 what Dusk is to Quake. And that's a very very good thing.
Granted it's not the most polished nor the prettiest throwback ever made but it has A LOT for a Shock 1 fan. If you've loved that style of problem solving where you're thrown into the deep end and asked to solve a problem with supplies being scarce. Then this is your game. It has it's own unique artstyle and sound design that keeps things tense. The game is also not a pushover, this game on a normal difficulty is actually pretty difficult at points. You'll die and die often. I however find it harder to recommend this game for everyone unless if you're a shock 2 fan or a fan of similar immersive sims, this game lends to some gameplay motifs that are archaic. Reloading via your interface directly. Zero mouselook. And puzzle design that i actively had to crack out microsoft paint and a notepad for. If any of this sounds alright then you're in!

The artstyle and sound design of this game is horror, don't be fooled by the fact this is inspired by System Shock 1, there will be moments of absolute sudden horror and wild panicking of navigating your inventory or your gun jamming at the wrong time leading to your ghoulish death. You'll be navigating environments that generally put you at unease with a mix of strong artstyle, sound design and general atmosphere. And they definitely vary and have their surprises with where you'll go. This gets slightly weaker as you get towards the end of the game but i concede, it left me with a few moments where i was in dread just turning the corner sometimes.

Which eventually leads to situations where you'll throw your arms up in the air and end up exclaiming when you land at the death screen "chto, chert voz'mi, proiskhodit?!" Uh.. or to say in English "what the hell happened?!". At times it's enhanced by it's sanity mechanic and other times, it's just the good ol immersive sim level design hiding away surprises. It's what elevates this above a traditional throwback immersive sim for me. The story is fairly simple but not without a few surprises and reveals, the game even has some fun sidequests. Some with a tongue in cheek tone which does help with a bit of levity from the doom and gloom of the situation and others with genuinely awesome power up moments. Generally there are so many great moments that honestly sold me on it. So many little examples shows off a significant amount of understanding and love for the genre from this (as far as i know) SINGLE indie developer. Also if you're looking for fun little injokes or easter eggs, there are a ton for you.

Alright, i gotta crack open the can of borsht and get my slice of bread for this. Right, Gameplay.

If you're familiar with System Shock 2 or the way you level up in this game, you'll be familiar with being able to level statistics through a system expending a currency of sorts. That's not the case here, you can level up and gain levels which provides you with having enough skill to operate more complex and powerful weapons. However this also shares the same pool of points you attribute to health (Strength), sanity (Faith) and critical hits (Luck). I highly recommend investing a point at least into one of each. Health is less of an issue in this game because of how scarce health can be later, but sanity restoration is so rare that i could only ever get 3 items that restored my sanity for around the last hour of the game. And i was left with a wiped sanity for most of that hour. Critical Hits have a habit of saving your hide in very clutch situations but some of the more powerful common enemies will take at least two to down efficiently. I'd value health to start with, put points into critical hits around the midgame and end game for for Sanity.

In addition your starting traits are really huge as to how to you play the game, some of them directly invalidating the need to use certain mechanics like using an item to see how much health you have or making certain combat options much stronger. They are fun ways to contextualise your play through and also again very neat little throwbacks to System Shock 2.

The pacing of the game is relatively steady in difficulty until 2/3rds of the way through, the game ramps up quite hard and enemies will start to drain a significant amount of not only health but sanity. Most of the time sanity acts as "little surprises" that might happen while you're playing but on low sanity it can mean that your gun will jam. Now this doesn't sound too much of an issue, until your character is literally fumbling their gun like it's a piano instead of a gun. This will actively get you killed if you opt for magazine based weapons or anything full auto. I highly recommend you avoid full auto guns if you are likely to get hit down to low sanity often. I should mention i didn't play at all with PSI Powers as i tend to build an entire play through around them and i wanted to get a review out as fast as i could because this game is just sweet juice for shock fans buuuut... They seem pretty quirky and pretty neat. They are paced out fairly far from each other so make sure if you're a psi user to rely on at least one weapon class until they start opening up as options.

The save system functions similar to Resident Evil's classic difficulty options, you find Save Disks in the world as it's the only real way you can save. Meaning you are often left with deciding when to use them and balancing that with losing progress if you die which in a game where death can come real fast, does make you sit and think for a bit.

So all of this sounds pretty good? It can't be that good right? Silence Comrade! I'm not done!

It's buggy, a bit buggy. Granted the main softlock that prevented my progression got fixed, there are still a few really strange bugs. While the game is excellent for most of it's runtime, i find that the last section of the game is a little disappointing? I understand what the game is going for and trying to keep the final encounter intense and it did to a certain degree but it was also frustrating with how certain encounter mechanics work. Weapon Slots are also very constrained. You only have two slots, as far as i'm aware. Your small and melee slots are reserved for one and light and heavy slots are reserved for another. However, it does mean you will end up backtracking for certain weapons because your current ones are clean out and the game does have dynamically respawning enemies which can put you in a really big bind.

The game is also pretty difficult at the same time. I once went back to a floor to grab a gun i left there and came face to face with enemies that just straight up ganked me straight out the gate and was forced to just make do with very little ammo on my current objective. I feel like a third slot for a heavy weapon would mean you get to spend more time with some fun options. Melee while starts out strong, it becomes very non-viable as you start to take more sanity damage from enemy attacks which as i mentioned above has very few ways of restoring that sanity at a later stage in the game.

Overall i recommend the game but mostly to people who it's targeted towards but the price point means that if you're willing to take a risk to expand your tastes a bit and you like what you see then the price point feels just right to do that! If you're a fan of immersive sims this game is aimed for you! I highly recommend you take a shot at it, it's so cheap and you get so much considering what it offers for you. Support your indie game developers folks!

So come aboard and bring your spare ammo, Privet! It's a good solid recommendation from me!

This review is spoiler free.

Abiotic Factor is a game chimera of sorts. Immersive Sim, FPS, Survival Horror and of course Sandbox Survival. Enhanced by coop. It wears it's influences on it's sleeves but tries something very fresh. I'd argue it's a very strange beast indeed but in a very good way. It's early days but it's an incredibly promising game and most importantly grippingly fun.

You're probably thinking "Well, then which is it most of all?", i'd probably lean towards Sandbox Survival but so critical is your ability to assess a situation and determine your own path with your current playstyle. It's very immersive simlike. And while it's ways of skinning a metaphorical cat aren't as expansive as a traditional immersive sim, it lets your gameplay expression be reflected through your character itself. Are you a defence analyst? Primarily focused on combat but willing to take a few downsides in xp gain to gain an edge in a fight? Maybe you're focused more on survival? Stealth is a pretty solid option, especially when you're opting to enter a new unknown area. Or perhaps you're playing with friends? You want to be the team player, healing your friends or keeping them fed? You too can be just as much a chimera as abiotic factor is, your playstyle might evolve as your tools expand, you might find one weapon class better than another for you. It also defines how you can handle any given situation, environment or enemy. It's in this that i truly believe this game functions as a cooperative immersive sim experience.

The worldbuilding and story of Abiotic Factor is frankly the best part of it, it's up to you to navigate the maze of corridors. The secrets lying behind a keypad or a hidden vent. The game function primarily around a scientific facility amid complete anarchy and containment breach but it's also not afraid to step outside. The portal worlds as they are dubbed are smaller shorter adventures outside of your standard world progression, usually linear they are a welcome and pleasant trip even when short because of how sweet they are. Each setting is striking or unexpected and takes you by surprise, each presenting unique challenges to overcome. At first it doesn't come across as a Survival Horroresque experience until it's other inspirations start to reveal themselves. To which it will drive you into a unique form of paranoia that happens rarely in games like these. "Is this safe to mess with?" "Should i take a lower profile so i don't risk a death?" It's all mixed with a mystique when you find something strange and alien that you can potentially turn into a tool. "Woah what's this?" It makes you actively want to participate in the game and make you want to learn more about it's world, it's enemies, allies for any sort of advantage you can get to survive. "Wait? This log talked about a weird creature that i might come up against! Which one was that again?" You see what i mean? It's very well thought out.

The environments of Abiotic Factor are characters in of themselves, each with their own unique layouts to figure out intertwined with it's secrets and items to discover and research. It can be so very rich when you get into that loop, it keeps you on the search constantly for that next new item to take advantage of. Keeps you exploring.

The sandbox survival elements are a bit of a mixed bag at least to me and it drastically changes if you're playing in coop. The game really plays into a team dynamic and having more basecentric characters and more offensive characters working together to a goal, someone might be better as a crafter and keeps the base all tidy and maintains everything, filtering water, cooking food and planting crops that other players can take advantage of. You can ultimately play your character as a jack of all trades. You'll inevitably have to spec into a weapon of choice for sure if you want to stay alive.

It's also much much more challenging a game in solo. You just will not have the manpower to do basecentric stuff if you want to progress at a steady and not glacial pace. This might intrigue you if you're looking for a challenge or turn you off if you're not willing to deal with having to do the work of multiple people but you can change multiple gameplay mechanics with a custom setting as you start up your game. I played with default and i do not recommend it for people who want a lax time solo. It's early days so who knows what will change?

I've tried very hard to avoid spoiling anything on this game for a reason, i truly believe that there are many many surprises here that are best discovered yourself, including the inspirations that it wears proudly and all the charm this game has.

I recommend it, yes of course but there are a few problems that will likely be weaned out of early access. (As of 07/05/2024) Mostly to do with a few mechanical annoyances,weapon balance, some sections to do with the main story questline and very rarely a bug. It feels like a game that still has quite a road ahead and it'll be frustrating if you hit a certain point with a dead stop that you wouldn't get if the game was finished. If you don't like that and can't forgive that, then i'd wait until later in the year. This game will be released by the end of the year and you'll have a much more complete experience but if you can't wait, i understand. The game is excellent.

Sorry if you see a few typos, i'm writing out this review in a fairly tired state after completing the main content solo.

Yo sony can you unrestrict all those countries now you've supposedly walked back what a clownshow this was?

Lunacid is an old familiar painting with you the paint in this adventure through a bleak fantasy world. It's a RPG that gives you just enough to immerse yourself into it. An easy recommendation if your even lukewarm on the genre in general, it's a game with few barriers to entry mostly down to taste and it's 100% completion runtime doesn't even exceed 20+ hours but it's a very sweet 20 hours. It's pretty hard to genuinely come up with things to critique but i'll give it a shot.

The artistry is just completely on point, it's inspirations worn on it's sleeves if you've even touched a PS1. Doesn't surprise me it's this good with Kira's development track record. It borders frankly on being a horror game with it's raw atmosphere. Discomfort is the word i'd say. In certain areas like Catacombs, Dungeons or places of overt mystery, the sound and music does such a great job of depicting it in a way that makes you feel nearly always at a state of unease. Sometimes it's even the lack of music that suddenly catches you in this state. Not to say the game doesn't have moments of levity,humour or even wonder. It does a fantastic job even more so than it's precursor of making you feel like you're living in a world that's not just dead but trapped in eternal dream. It's inhabitants are very few and far between which makes meeting them a nice reprieve. It'll sound similar from anyone that's played a Fromsoft game in the last bajillion years. Enemy design is just so spot on amazing. SO SO many striking enemy designs and alarming sound effects, some of them could walk straight into Spooky's House of Jumpscares and fit right in. It's of kira's biggest strengths and Lunacid plays to it.

The story is a very similar case to above. It has a lot of meta narrative to the game itself outside of it's actual ingame lore, it leaves a significant amount to your own hands. To think and surmise yourself. I don't particularly want to get into specifics around it's story, it's really the mystery that drives you forward at certain points. It's not overt in the same way it's inspiration was but it's even less than what you might be expected to and you will have to connect a lot of dots together. If you don't like that, it's fine. You'll get enough out of the journey itself and be meeting new characters to get some good fun out of the story even if you don't really like digging. Try not to worry about if you'll get it or not.

The gameplay is primarily first person and combat is pretty simple and gets fairly easy with a few surprising difficulty spikes and that's my main problem with it's gameplay. Lunacid has a few milestone weapons that eventually become the best weapons to use and while that's not going to be a problem with someone who loves trying out every weapon they get their hands on and upgrading them. It feels really bad getting a weapon and upgrading it only for it to perform poorly later in the game or worse enjoying a weapon and it becoming weaker and weaker over time. The fact you cannot scale weapons upward in damage means that some fun options do become less relevant either through how stat distribution works past a certain point or just the weapon's stats in general.

Alchemy is really difficult to actually invest into without it feeling like a chore. There are a handful of recipes that actually do provide tangible use to you and unless you want to go out of your way to spoil yourself. You'll have to guess those recipes. It feels like a missed chance for MORE exploration. A lore book that has a recipe here or there that scratches even more of that dopamine itch you get from exploration. The items you need for those recipes can be fairly tedious to obtain in mass and rely on drop rates to actually obtain. Expect to be warping to refresh areas so you can do that.

That being said, the weapon and spell roster is just gigantic. There is always going to be some sort of neat toy for you to play with or some bizarre spell that you eventually find a use for way way way down the line. Some of them aren't quite as amazing but most of them are. Some of them are straight up callbacks to other pieces of pop culture or it's inspiration. It all works hand in hand perfectly with exploration. You're always searching for secrets because of these cool items. Which leads directly into one of my final points.

Dungeon Crawling. There is a lot of it in this game and there is a significant amount of secrets, most are very neat weapons and spells that i've mentioned above. Some of them are useful supplies or direct upgrades to your health and mana pools and sometimes.. sometimes there are some very very curious secrets that really mess with you. A little nitpick are that some of them are just insanely difficult to find without some outside knowledge, Axe of Harming and Corpse Transformation comes to mind. The game often is very obscure with some of it's secrets and while it can be an AH HA! moment when you finally get what something meant, most of the time that's not going to happen. You'll be forgiven if you look some of these secrets up.

Overall Lunacid is a no brainer purchase. It's dead cheap. Doesn't have much of a barrier to entry and it's a blast to play if you're into RPGs. It's not even as scary or creepy as kira's games has been in the past. So even the chickens amongst you can give this one a go. If you're really not big on the graphics, artstyle or even the genre. I get it.