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Recent reviews by Kalnaur

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Showing 1-10 of 23 entries
1 person found this review helpful
79.9 hrs on record (3.9 hrs at review time)
The shooting and weapons are fun, it's a little simple, but kind of nice in that way.

Sometimes you just wanna shoot things and get a fun story, this has both.

Edit: Now that I'm done with all the games, I want to follow up. The shooting always felt smooth, I rarely felt like it wasn't my fault if I died (and the checkpoint system is generous). All the stories are fun (though I understand that some are less liked than others). The games and I'd argue the series itself is at its best when it just treats you like the lucky-as-hell-one-man-army you're meant to be, with an occasional sprinkle of fantasy/sci-fi weirdness.

They're good games, all of them.

Just don't ask me what I think of the multiplayer. No, seriously, don't ask me, because I didn't play it at all.
Posted October 18, 2021. Last edited January 28, 2022.
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253 people found this review helpful
17 people found this review funny
3,436.3 hrs on record (2,978.5 hrs at review time)
It's been over two years and 3000 hours since I first started to play ARK. I've seen the good, and the bad, and the what the hell. I've seen the angry folks who can't forgive any misstep, the people who bend over backwards to defend the developer, and everyone in between that just wants to play the damned game. It's hard to talk about the game without talking about the development cycle so here's the preamble: This was an Early Access game. It had a checkered past of being filled chock full of bugs (falling through the map when logged out, for example), running at least a year longer in development time than intended, and putting out a paid DLC expansion while still in development. These are all things that have happened.

Now, with that out of the way, yes, I recommend ARK. With caveats.

Quite a few, actually.

You see, what first got me here, and might be getting you here, is the notion of taming dinosaurs. And let me tell you, I still love riding a rex and eating things. I love having a grouping of dinos that are just . . . mine. I grew up loving dinosaurs. I still love them. What kept me here is that plus building. I love building. It's fun to make things, giant things, pretty things, fantastic things. But, what enables these things in a way that makes them enjoyable are (A) mods. Lots of mods. (B) an unofficial server (C) reasonable people to play with, regardless of PvE or PvP.

Let's hit up the main game experience first. You load into your chosen world, and are prompted to create your version of a dude or a lady, then, when finished, you spawn in, naked but for some undies laying somewhere on a beach or the jungle. And then, almost immediately after, you are eaten. You may or may not even see your attacker. You spawn again. This time, you get a good look around (and almost assuredly turn down your graphical settings; the game has been optimized but it's still overly demanding) and you get to see the raptor running at you before being attacked by the rest of the raptors following that one, and boom, dead again. You spawn in a third time and, assuming you aren't on a PvP server where griefers reign, you will live. You see a few wandering creatures, and you start picking berries from bushes so you don't starve. Hitting trees for thatch. Picking up stones from the ground. Now you have a stone pick, a building plan you start with, and you can start to harvest rocks. And then a dilophosaurus spits on you, blinding you while it eats you. You spawn in again, and once again are naked and tool-less. You can now choose: run to your corpse to retrieve your belongings, or start anew. Here's what you'll keep if you die: your experience, and your “engrams” building plans that you have personally memorized. Anything and everything else can be lost. Dinosaurs, buildings, items, anything. If you're on PvP, the you ARE setting yourself up for potentially losing hours to days to even months of work in the possible blink of an eye. On PvE, you only lose the items on you when you die, your dinosaurs to other dinosaurs, or structures to rampaging beasts that detect you or a tamed dino, which they apparently find super interesting and immediately tasty, and they will chew through your house to get to the meaty treat inside. That means a sufficient wall will keep those out. There are ways to safeguard, but the potential for loss is always there.

Now, on to the points. There are free official map “mods”, and the best of those, visually, is one called Ragnarok. The original Island is fine for starting out on, but Ragnarok has a bit of everything, including a smattering of most of the things from Scorched Earth, the DLC expansion they released during development. There are also building and decoration mods, Structures + being the most well known, so well known that Wildcard themselves have decided to implement features of that mod into the base game; it includes a variety of quality of life features that allow for easier building as well as automation of some of the more tedious farming and upkeep requirements. There are decorative mods, the most robust being eco's series of mods. There is a rather in depth building mod for medieval style building called Castles, Keeps, and Forts, which allows for a different style and look over the original materials. There's even mods to speed along the taming times by causing hunger while simultaneously delivering torpor. If all this seems like a lot to cover, it is, at first. You may or may not be better off trying ARK in single player to test it out vanilla first, but sooner or later, you'll want a server, because this game isn't built nor balanced for single player.

When you pick servers, if you happen to be a masochist, I'd suggest choosing an official server, which will have default tame times and harvesting ratios and the whole thing will take you a while. If you hate yourself, choose an offical PvP server. Otherwise, I heartily suggest finding a friend, an acquaintance, or just picking at random and signing in to an unofficial server. See, those servers can change taming times to be more reasonable. There are dinosaurs that, without the super master taming food, can take upwards of 8 hours, depending on the level. This is reasonable only if you have a tight knit group willing to take shifts to tend to the creature. Even in PvE, a wandering meat eater of some kind can happen upon the unconscious dinosaur and ruin the tame. It can be even harder/worse with “passive” tames, where you toss it food and then wait as it wanders, possibly coming in contact with all manner of dangerous creatures. A server with altered stats for taming, harvesting, breeding, and more is in my opinion a must for full enjoyment of the game past the mark of a week.

Which I feel leads me to the last point, if you join a server where there are griefers, PvE or PvP, you're gonna have a bad time. PvP griefing is obvious, but even worse is the PvE griefer which builds items to block spawns, and then continues to check in so their built roadblocks don't decay. You will need to find reasonable folks, regardless of your preferred playstyle (unless that playstyle is griefer, in which case, I dunno man).

With those three things taken care of, the game will be a wonderful experience. 2000 of those 3000 hours I've played have been on modded, changed stat maps in PvE, and it's why I've played as long as I have.

Also, as a note, though this game has offically been launched, it is still under development. They are revamping some of their earlier creatures, putting out new DLC, and they patch it constantly. The game as-is is over 100 gigs of information on a hard drive. You'll need several gigs more if you want mods. It doesn't run well on low end machines, I doubt it's ever going to be optimized for them. Also, find an active server, otherwise you're waiting on the admin to update the server for way too long.

Happy hunting, and tame a rex for me, survivors.
Posted January 8, 2018.
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3 people found this review helpful
17.6 hrs on record
I'll be honest, I thought Crysis was more recent. I didn't realize it was a game from 10 years ago. It has a high graphic quality, good music, and solid voice acting. Shame about that story, though. I feel kind of like they decided what they wanted to show off with their game engine, and then adapted the story and stages to fit.

I also wasn't expecting stages, but something more open world like Blood Dragon et al, however, this isn't Far Cry, but Crysis, and even though there is totally a feel at the beginning of being "open world", that basically ends in the back half of the game. The gameplay is pretty good, and the mechanics are just interesting enough to keep me playing, though I also admit to slight modification of the energy drain for a more enjoyable experience. Having the suit to enhance things like stealth or jumping or being human Sonic was fun. I wish the guns had been as interesting, but as with a fair amount of shooters, all the gun fun is also in the back half. At least the myriad of attachments allow you to customize the few guns you actually do get into something attuned to your playstyle.

Overall, Crysis is a solid game; it has weird narrative cul-de-sacs it detours into, and it takes a while to get to the inevitable "twist", but it's a fun shooter with enough enhancements and graphical pretty to make me assume it's at least 5 years younger than it actually is.
Posted August 6, 2017.
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16 people found this review helpful
688.0 hrs on record (139.7 hrs at review time)
I have played No Man's Sky for over 100 hours now, and I can say without a doubt that it is totally my kind of game.

The problem is, it might not be your kind of game. Read on, dear customer, read on.

The first thing you must understand about No Man's Sky is the gameplay, or more generally, the goal. The big question of "what do I DO in No Man's Sky" is best addressed by, "explore and harvest planets at your leisure in an effort to work up to being able to warp to other planets and systems of planets to do the same thing". This game isn't really about the survival, or the mining, or the upgrades you get, or the languages you learn, or the milestones you achieve, or the crafting recipes you find. It's not even about the plants, animals, and rocks that you catalog and collect money from uploading. It's not about the space battles you have, or the factions of aliens you meet, or flying in any realistic manner whatsoever. And it's 100% not about leaving anything more than the most superficial of impact on the game world.

It is not about your personal power. Sure, you can do more and go more places when you have more, but that's still not what this game is about.

This game is about cresting over a hill, seeing the sprawling mass of land before you, and just drinking in the place you are, right then, right there. It's seeing those planets in the distance and either knowing as they hang in the sky, like some 70s sci-fi novel cover, that you could go there, or that you've already been there. It's finding that cave that just sings, or happening across a great beast trying to climb that side of a mountain.

It's about moments, about the journey, about making up stories for the planets in your head. It's about leaving a planet when you want to, and looking for something else. The elements in the game that you can achieve are not the point, and if you think every creature and rock and plant are the same, you aren't really looking that hard at them. Not hard enough.

This game is a love-letter to those book covers, those sprawling, desolate vistas, huge, strange columns of rock, and yes, even the occasional grassy, pleasant planet. It's a love letter to the idea that you could not own, or even greatly impact those images, only visit them, and share them with others. This is not your sky, that's in the name. You own nothing but what you can take with you. And the writing, while generally sort of shallow, is also akin to those old, musty books.

This isn't a game about doing what you want in the midst of space. It's about experiencing everything we think of as mundane in games.

If that's not for you, if you want “real” flight controls, a hard-line story that rewards your effort, deep, meaningful alien interaction, quests, or even the ability to play with friends, this is not the game for you. This game is part harvesting game, part walking simulator, and part point and click adventure game, wrapped around a universe that is expansive as it is small.

It may not be your kind of game, but it's mine, and I heartily recommend it.

It's October 18th, 2020, and I'm updating this review because a lot has happened to this game since release. This now IS a game about doing what you want in the midst of space. Of making bases and establishing yourself, of a more coherent storyline and lore throughout the too-big world of No Man's Sky. Aliens might not give meaningful interaction, but there's a chance that they'll give you a quest, or provide options to learn their language or practice it with them, there's specific quest NPCs on every space station, as well as several mostly unseen guilds that put out these random commissions that give more or less specific types of quests; mercenaries are about taking out pirates or depots or some other attack action, Explorer quests are usually about interacting with flora and fauna, and trader quests commonly ask you to buy/make/find some item and deliver it. There are even multiplayer features. Giant worms on various planets (I've seen multiple planets with them thus far), freighters in mid-space with their own procedurally generated "dungeon" and story inside them, various other encounters of the random kind, both in space and on planets, sometimes crashed ships still have NPCs by them and helping fix the ship gives a reward, the tech is given out through tech trees now, there's a LOT more to this game.

If "part walking sim, part harvesting survival game" wasn't your thing, well, by god are there more options than you can shake a Vy'keen Dagger at now.
Posted August 30, 2016. Last edited October 18, 2020.
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12 people found this review helpful
3.2 hrs on record
Catlateral Damage is in essence about FPS platforming, and then knocking things off shelves, beds, dressers and more, and getting things on the floor (knocking a book from the shelf to a table doesn't count, it must be on the ground). There is an option to pick things up with your mouth (X on the controller), which also doubles as your meow button, you can simply push things with your nose (i.e. walk into them) or bat at them to the side (left and right trigger) or push them forward (LB/RB) with your paws, as well as crouch (B button). Knocking a new object to the ground adds it to your "collection". You can also knock cat photos to the ground to collect them as well. Sparkling items (scratching posts, toilet paper rolls, potted plants on the ground, etc) can be batted about a few times in return for upgrades, though the upgrades do not seem permanent for each cat, sadly (future update, maybe?).

The two game modes are Objective (knock X amount of points worth of objects to the ground in Y amount of time; bonus if you knock certain objects over) and Litterbox mode (a freestyle, relaxing mode). There are also secret areas to find, such as the Supermarkat (Go "shopping" within the time limit) and Meowseum (Break a certain dollar amount of priceless artifacts and displays within a time limit).

Certain objectives (knocking over a certain amount of objects in certain modes, knocking over cat pictures, completing an objective with just your nose, playing on a "Caturday", etc) unlock new cats to play as.

All in all, a fun time, if a bit silly. Since there's no real end-state (no set story or stages) it's more of a fun time-waster, and also where the Katamari comparison breaks down. Also, you don't save progress in your Objective or Litterbox mode (it does remember how many houses you've trashed in Objective mode) so you restart at the beginning houses each time and work your way up to new random ones as you go.

Overall, lots of fun, but maybe not worth the 10 bucks it currently is priced at (dependent on your penchant for wanting to be a cat, of course).

Final note: my wife calls it "A-hole Cat Simulator", if that makes any difference.
Posted May 31, 2015. Last edited May 31, 2015.
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49 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
27.4 hrs on record
BioShock 2 is good. Not exactly a surprise given the content of other available reviews on Steam, but why is it good seems the more important thing, something I'll try to address here. I'm going to tell you why I think BioShock 2 is a worthy successor in the series.

First things first, to get right down to brass tacks BioShock 2 is a sequel, it is mostly more of the same gameplay (with a few twists) and the few innovations don't exactly break the bank in the inventiveness department. A few new weapons and interesting plasmid variations and a small smattering of new enemy types don't do much to dispel the notion that the combat is totally more BiShock. But that's not what makes a BioShock game, not really. Sure, the combat has to be engaging enough to drive the narrative forward, but in this game it does that just enough. No, much like the first, the true draw is the dark and twisted story, the narrative tapestry that shows the dark and twisted nature of those living in Rapture.

This game has you playing as a Big Daddy, the stalwart if myopic defenders of the Little Sisters. In particular, you play a “prototype”, a nameless everyman changed into a monster but also a kind of father, and it is the theme of fatherhood that, like the first game, shares the roost with a political ideology to form the basis of the disastrous tale of the fall of Rapture. Where the first game gazed on what genetics truly determine, on the pure unbridled force of Libertarianism and Capitalism, this game focuses on what it means to be a parent, and the equal sociopolitical dangers of a Communistic ideal that crosses the line into religious fervor. It is the other side of the coin to Andrew Ryan's Rapture ideal of the individual's power in Rapture, the ideal of not just the social as one entity in a metaphorical manner, but what might happen if science could allow us all to actually become one. And just as in the first game, the dangers of extremist politics show how such ideas can rip a society, and in particular a family apart.

This is the crux of the story: as the first game contained two father figures for the original protagonist, the Big Daddy is one of two parent figures presented in the game. Unlike before where you were being acted upon as a child with two parental figures, now you are one of the agents of change, and your actions effect the story in a more noticeable (if still superficial) manner.

It also drips the kind of scary, jarring atmosphere that is at once engaging to behold and terrifying to think about, the constructive and destructive nature of humankind. Water drips, walls crack, but unlike before the underwater world outside Rapture is at least nominally explored, and it is beautiful, but sadly littered with the detritus of the once grand city. The decay of the amazing city of Rapture is at once enthralling and disturbing, an emotional range that was demonstrated in BioShock, and is absolutely in full effect here.

To add to the positives Minerva's Den, a small DLC adventure contained within this game, is a wonderful look at how every last person in Rapture was hurt, changed, damaged by the vision of Andrew Ryan. Rapture is a crucible and all it seems to produce is tragedy, and each game with it as it's setting allows us to see something of ourselves in it's tragedy.

With arresting visuals, a story just as dark as it's sibling, and the upgraded combat engine, this game is well worth the time. It is the other side of the coin, the “2” in this case being a quite literal extension of the first, and that is a very good thing indeed.
Posted November 23, 2014.
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11 people found this review helpful
21.2 hrs on record (21.2 hrs at review time)
There have been many superhero games throughout the years. Most of them have been sidescrolling "beat 'em ups" in the vein of the Final Fight series. Others were horrible adaptations like the Superman game for the N64. Arkham Asylum has been, with few minor exceptions, one of the most on-point adaptations of a superhero property into a game that I have ever played.

First, the format, a 3-D "metroidvania/Legend of Zelda" type deal where new tools open new areas and items to get, plays nicely into the feel of the game. That same format also helps with the "lone hero" feeling that is in many ways the essence of Batman. You feel like yes, you are alone, but you aren't out of your depth. Also, the classic animated series voices help set the tone of the game; dark with just a bit of humor here and there.

The game world is lush and well rendered, created in that gritty style also befiting a game about The Bat. Ruined sewers, secret tunnels, and crawling through airways and up walls all give this sense of being secretive, careful, and thought out. The world you have been given to play in is tailor made to adhere to the common action/stealth tropes that exist in other Batman works.

The combat and movement can be . . . halting at times. In particular the "hold button to run" command, something that I thought I had seen the end of when analog sticks came to prominent use, feels forced and unintuitive. When the combat flows, slighlty pauses on a big hit, and Batman is leaping to and fro kicking, punching and generally kicking ass, it looks good, and it feels good to be doing it, but there aren't any ways to "do" the one move you like, really. And the combat system is at its best when you have maxed out all your available attack options.

The fightable enemies are simple and never waver from the basic human stock of "Joker goon fight"; they are either unarmed, armed with a melee weapon, armed with a firearm, a stun baton, or they are giant mutant freaks. This includes the "boss fights", making the gameplay and world far more engaging than the actual combat. That said, most of the combat is short and simple. I think the longest normal skirmish took maybe a minute. And the best parts of combat aren't specifically the combat so much as the setpieces where you have high perches to disappear to. You can swoop down, take out a goon, and then grapple up into the shadows, listening and watching as the other goons start to freak out as you take them down one by one.

And finally the story, which at least matches the quality of the old animated Batman series movies for plots. Joker has a crazy plan, and Batman has to stop him. The winding way Bruce has to do this is what makes up the bulk of the game. Some of the story points feel contrived, but overall, the story flows from point to point in a logical way. What helps in this is that Batman himself often tells the player (and Oracle over his headset) the next step. And when Batman tells you something in this game, a combination of the voicework and the writing just seems to make the next plotpoint make sense.

With solid voicework, a lonely, beautifully crafted world, and a combat and stealth system that is only sometimes marred by its own trappings, this is a solid, wonderfully made title that anyone who counts themselves as a superhero fan in general or a Batman fan in particular should own.
Posted November 23, 2014.
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3 people found this review helpful
2.7 hrs on record
Fairy Bloom Freesia is a fun but forgettable game that I would not and did not pay full price for.

With that out of the way, this game is an arena fighter (waves of enemies in a simple, enclosed stage) with the ability to power yourself up with new attacks by killing them monsters. The story is paper thin anime fare of the kind that you've seen a million times before, and if anime style is your bag, then this is right around where you should be. But don't expect platforming ( other than the simple platforms in each stage), and don't expect this to take long (beating the game took me all of 2.7 hours, and I took my time in some of the boss fights). You can New Game Plus this sucker, though I'm drawing a blank as to why, unless there's some hidden content I am missing in not going through the game again. Still, for the folks looking to complete their moveset with every move evar, this is a boon.

The game is cute, short, fun and 100% anime. If that's your thing, go ahead and grab it. Just . . . do so during a sale. 8 bucks is a bit much for the amount of content this game presents.
Posted June 10, 2014.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
23.3 hrs on record
Bioshock has now become essentially a household name in the realm of gaming, and you probably don't need my word on it, but here it goes. Once upon a time there was a game called Bioshock that was a beautiful, disturbing, wonderful take on the dystopian effects of true freedom as it relates to anyone doing any type of work without moral or lawful restraint. Science, industry, firearms and more have created a havok-ridden world for you to explore, and what a dark, disturbing, beautiful and thought-provoking world it is.

Honestly, I only have one issue with the game, and explaining it in full would create some very unwanted spoilers for the late acts of the game, but suffice it to say that when the story is nearly at an end, they stretch it just a bit more, and it is this stretching, this needless extension of an otherwise tight and complete story that mars the presentation somewhat. But this is a rather small nitpick in what is a compelling and entertaining shooter. And make no mistake, it is a shooter, so if that isn't your bag, you might not enjoy the game.

However, I don't really dig “First Person Shooter” type games, and I am heartily recommending this game for all the people, so take from that what you will.
Posted June 10, 2014.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
0.2 hrs on record
Evoland is, at its core, a game about games, and the ability to enjoy the game is based heavily on a player's ability to chuckle or even laugh out loud at each reference the game makes. It is an action RPG/RPG that switches up its mechanics to illustrate a point, a simple and barebones fight engine in whatever form it takes, and it often pokes lighthearted fun at everything that came before and is happening now.

It starts in the black and white(ish) graphics of the old Gameboy, and each treasure chest, instead of giving you equipment or items, gives you a new feature, a game instance (such as a forced battle), a slight quip, and encouragement to continue on and exploring the world. Or a star or card, of which the game has many; they're both linked to achievements, and after obtaining them all, it sort of made me think about all the random collections games have you do for very little reward, and I realized these were also part of the game poking fun at games.

And it's all in fun. References to the Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Crystalis, Diablo and even Mario games abound, without having to be direct one-to-one examples. More often they are not-so-subtle amalgams of the elements of those games. And the shifting playstyles and new “Additions” to the game overall feel . . . right. They work very well together. This game being simple does not mean it is inferior.

However, one might feel that the battle systems are sometimes too . . . easy. Almost like an RPG where you've leveled to 99 or a Zelda game after getting all the hearts, there is not a lot of difficulty to be found here. But that is just as well, to me, as the game's not really about the difficulty, but where we've been.

For a fun, simple romp through an interactive history of game mechanics, I say you can't really go wrong. My only real reservation is that I don't actually feel that the game is “worth” $10; I would suggest getting it on a sale for at least 50% off.

But other than that, the game is fun, provided you don't take yourself (or it) to seriously.
Posted June 10, 2014.
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Showing 1-10 of 23 entries