Recent reviews by Rain

hmm, alright, let's see what do we have here:
First of all, big part of negative reviews comes from the fact that game is a bit rough on the edges (I mean it's Early Access after all) and a bit too high price for such a content.
Secondly, Eugen Systems trapped themselves years ago when they released Wargame: Red Dragon back in 2014 which had around 1000 units on start. Many people simply want everything at once and quick, without understanding how it works from the perspective of the developer. Are they right with that? Well, hard to say, but despite a rough start with WARNO, I personally want to express my gratitude to devs, since they've heard us and tried to deliver us what we wanted. If they succeeded or not is a bit different question which I'll try to discuss below, but the fact itself that they heard us worth mentioning, imo. So I totally disliked all the toxic reviewers that throw dirt at the devs and the game.

Now, these are all my personal thoughts and they may not be the same with majority of people, so whether it's worth believing me or not is up to you, the reader.

First, about good things in game:
For a large scale realistic war RTS the visuals are stunning. I absolutely loved these small touches like randomized models in infantry squads, following 80s trends (for instance some Soviet soldiers wear aviator glasses which were quite popular during Afghanistan era). Also, some US planes have these drawings on the side, similar to what real pilots actually drawn on their jets. Explosions and graphics overall are cool too!

Secondly, music... Now we're slowly going to what I have mixed feelings about. While I totally loved the vibe in main menu, I do believe that having such songs during actual firefight where people die is a bit... Wrong? I certainly don't want to have these songs removed, but I think adding more alarming songs, similar to classic wargame battle themes would be a benefit. I mean current music would totally suit to some menu, or after battle screen, but not actual firefight, where it hurts the immersion. The sounds of units are just a placeholder from what I understand, but I loved the IDEA of trying to make it sound like an old radio. It's just that it needs better implementation, imo.

Third, the UI. While I personally can live with general UI ideas, the after-battle screen that looks like a board with a pencil-written text looks out of place.

Fourth, the gameplay. While I liked the idea that we can arm helicopters with whatever missiles we prefer, general game balance is far off and way less enjoying than it was in Wargame, imo. I understand that devs wanted to have differences from Red Dragon and wanted to make game more "mobile/active" so that people would be able to counterattack from several directions and thus, turn tables upside down, instead of turtling, however this way the game turns more into a race rather than RTS. Most questions comes to infantry. I tried holding a town on "two ways" map and it turns out that squads are dying way too quick, especially because they can't resupply people from supply trucks.
Speaking of supply trucks, did I get it right, that they don't even fix your mechanical units anymore? Imo, it's not such a good idea.
Also, I really miss ol' good FOBs from Wargames :'(
Anyway, jokes aside, I do believe that the game needs to be a little bit slower than what it is at the moment. With tougher units that don't die within a matter of several seconds. I will change the review to something more understandable for people who never played eugen's games before, but for now I just wanted to highlight some moments which I believe worth telling to devs. I still have my trust in devs and I do think they will fix many things with time, it's just toxic people that made me want to write something that would support devs on the first place (even though I also brought in some criticism. But I still love ya guys <3).

Best game about pushing the buttons! 10/10 would push one more!

On a serious note though, if you enjoy games like "The Stanley Parable" or "Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald", then you should definitely try this one as well. Especially for the given price. Sadly, nothing more I can tell you about this game as I don't want to spoiler anything.

A game from the creators of The Stanley Parable. Basically this phrase says it all, as our heist game is in the same genre even. If you liked 'The Stanley Parable' then you are probably going to like this one as well. Lots of humor, great voice acting, some secrets collectibles, e.t.c.

For those of you unaware of Stanley Parable is, however, here's brief explanation of our game: It all starts when protagonist spawns behind the scenes. Then, when you knock the door some game manager opens up and explains us that the game itself is made "live". And when a player plays it, they are assisted with the help of the game crew. But game devs went on strike, company went understaffed and something bad happened, so instead of placing you in the line, game spawned two players at the same time. So you are offered to help to the game manager and work as behind-the-scenes man, manually enabling various scripts, weather effects e.t.c. Speaking in advance - yes, you can act like a total idiot and ruin everything. In fact, it's one of the main gameplay features. So yeah, instead of actual heist game, what you have here is narrative driven linear comedy, which is easy to learn and fun to play.

On the downside however, is game lenght (I've managed to complete the game twice within an hour) and the fact that game is rather linear. You won't be able to open a "wrong" door and turn the storyline upside down, like it was with The Stanley Parable. Then again, should you really complain on the free game of such quality? I personally wouldn't.

Interesting puzzle concept. Gives you quite a challenge. Challenge for both, your brain and your skill, as it's kind of a game where you need to plan a theft and complete it as quickly as possible, before timer runs out and security arrives on scene. Game can still be a bit sharp on some edges, however, but it's still in Early Access, so most of those issues can be easily forgiven. Only real issue here is lack of workshop, if you ask me.
Giving that review only for the sake of autumn sale badge, though.

Rather interesting visual novel, where you'll keep replaying everything again and again 'till you manage dig to the very core of the situation.

UBOAT is a sandbox WWII submarine simulator, where you’ll take a role of the commanding officer, accepting the orders from the HQ, hiring the crew, upgrading your boat and, of course, controlling actual german uboat. At this point game is in early access, so storyline is nonexistent just yet, however you’ll be able to pick multiple missions and do standard patrols in an open world deep sea.

As it was mentioned before, storyline is nonexistent at this point, so each mission you take has a really brief explanation, be it vanilla patrol, or some diversion at the enemy port. Sometimes your mission objectives may change during actual game. For example my first assignment was vanilla patrol deep in the ocean, however on my way to the patrol area, our boat radio engineer caught SOS signal from a friendly uboat, which had been severely damaged and needed some spare parts for the repairs. It’s also worth mentioning that the ocean is alive: sometimes your crew may encounter vessels, irrelevant to the current mission. So yeah, all in all, each mission of yours is a different adventure, not necessary fulfilled with combat.

However, dynamic missions are not the most unusual part about UBOAT. Perhaps the most interesting feature there is the fact that you control a crew member in an FPS, or an RTS mode. To put it in a more clear way – you don’t control actual boat, but rather you are in charge of the people who operate it. For example, one of your crew members spots an enemy aircraft. In FPS mode you need to quickly reach for the upper deck and personally mount the machinegun, in order to actually try to bring the enemy down. The machine gun is not the only thing you can operate in this game, though. Almost every aspect of the boat is controlled with actual human. Only thing you need is switching to a person with right knowledge degree every now and then. At this point some of the boat subsystems are still operated by the AI and don’t have own ‘minigame’, but I assume that devs will fix that in newer versions of the game.

Although, for people who don’t enjoy first person view experience, there’s always an alternative – by scrolling the mouse wheel, you’ll change the view to an RTS mode, where you’ll have to issue orders to other people via few clicks. Sometimes, however, you’ll need to act really quickly. For example your sub was hit at multiple places, so there are breaches all over the hull. Hence why there’s a feature that allows you to stop, or increase the time speed and issue right orders for the repairing all those hull breaches, or leaving the boat section instead.

Speaking of the repairs, I can’t forget but to mention supplies: Before actual mission, you’ll have to check whether you have enough supplies for a long trip. That includes almost everything, be it some food, fuel, ammo, spare parts, additional crew members with the required education degree - you name it. And yes, managing all those resources is vital sometimes. For example you can switch engine from consuming the fuel to consuming electricity and vice versa. Such twin engine approach doesn’t only help with getting away from radars, but also allows you to save up some fuel. On the other hand there’s food, which affects your troop morale. Troops with low morale act less efficiently and in a tight situation, when every second matters, they may panic and mess things up.

Last, but not least is your boat upgrades: For each successfully completed mission you gain some experience, which stacks in levels. Each level gives you one point which you can spend at the port by talking to a high ranked officer and requesting a ‘favor’ from them. Such requests may include more available units under your control, or the ability to leave friendly ports without HQ permission, e.t.c. The warehouse where you purchase supplies also serves as UBOAT upgrading station, where you can tweak certain parts of your vessel, be it improved engine, or advanced radio and such.

The overall graphics of the game looks quite well. Not much I can comment on, really: Be it calm weather, or storm in the sea, be it day, or night, or even dawn, all of those times of the day are unique and may thrill you when seeing it for the first time. Actually, exception can be nighttime, because it gets really dark around. I’d say a bit too dark, because sometimes I couldn’t even see my own boat.

The sound is done on a pretty decent level. Upon starting the game, you can choose the language of the NPC’s speech, which is really comfy. The music is top quality too. I totally loved devs’ choice of the radio songs. There are 2 slight problems however: All of the current songs are English ones (which is quite strange, considering the fact we operate German uboat), plus there’s just few of them. I wish there was more radio waves with different content.

The PRO’s:

• Different ways of operating your boat
  You can choose to play as an actual officer, or play an RTS game instead.
  
• Fully operational submarine in your hands
  Seriously now, not only you control actual boat, but also manage the supplies, change relations with crew, or actually change crew members. Almost every boat subsystem can be operated manually.
  
• Boat upgrades and crew veterancy
  You can’t do much with green rookies and usual boat, but as time passes you slowly turn your vessel into a true beast with top notch equipment and experienced veterans under your command.

The CON’s:

• Game is quite complicated
  Don’t get me wrong, it is simulator, and those are supposed to be complicated in terms of difficulty. However, it’s one of few games where I had to complete tutorial for 2 times before gaining more or less common understanding with the game. Speaking of tutorial, it’s not even finished yet. In other words it stops half way through the mission, so nobody is going to babysit you through whole adventure and explain how to get new upgrades and crew members, or how to get to a port even.
  
• The nights are way too dark
  Seriously, maybe it’s just a nitpicking, but I can’t even see my own boat during night time!
  
• The ladders can be quite inconvenient at times
  Most of the time this isn’t a big deal really, but when problems hit the fan and every second matters, you start panicking and can’t climb up or down without any problems.
  
• A bit strange logic behind boat upgrades
  Maybe it’s just a nitpicking again, but I don’t think that spending actual money on food and uboat upgrades in a military port is a correct thing. Weren’t there some standards as for issuing certain amount of food and fuel per mission?

The Conclusion:
UBOAT is still an early access game. There is way more decent content yet to come, however even at current state, the game looks and feels really impressive, to say the least. Normally I’m rather skeptical on early access games, however UBOAT is one of those exceptions which everyone should try!

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Deck of Ashes is a turn-based roguelike card game with quite interesting lore, which encourages different varieties of deck building and exploration. The game offers multiple heroes, each featuring unique playstyle and storyline.

The story presents typical antiheroic concept, showing us a medieval fantasy world, which has been corrupted by a dangerous ash plague, cursing everything on its way. Your Alter ego is one of those people who are responsible for whole mess. Each playable character (yes, there are several of them) has unique personality and own reasons as for stopping the plague. The story itself, while not rich on description, has some interesting minor plot twists, although on a global scale it’s unlikely that many players would find the concept too unique.

Overall, you can divide the game on 3 stages: exploration, camp and actual battles:
Exploration can be considered a separate turn-based game, where your hero decides what to do and how to spend their time most efficiently. You’ll fight local enemies, gather resources and encounter random events, some of which may have a positive or negative impact on a set of battles. It’s worth mentioning that you are travelling on a region, belonging to some boss. Bosses may vary from some undead creature to a demon. Each has personal story and character, which you’d learn through a dialogue with your master. Throughout whole chapter time, that boss will be seeking for you and destroying some of the pathways on the map, thus, making the level somewhat dynamic.

Your character never travels alone - there is a party, which is always ready to help you by upgrading your hero and selling some new card blueprints. Each person in your camp is responsible for different upgrades and crafts. For example the herbalist can heal you, remove the illnesses and increase some of your character’s stats, be it maximum health, or critical strike, etc. Sometimes your allies may temporary leave the camp though, so don’t rely on their help too much.

During the battle stage, Deck of Ashes resembles majority of other similar games:
Player has 3 stacks of cards. First one is card blueprints. These cards don’t participate during actual fight. You can craft them for ashes – a special resource, obtainable after the battle. Second stack consists of actual cards you can play during the battle. As soon as you play a card, it immediately goes to third stack, which is called ‘Deck of Ashes’. After the fight is finished, your character has several hours to either heal wounds, or restore the cards from deck of ashes, back into playable stack. Sometimes during a fight, players can remain empty handed. That’s why there’s a special card which allows restoring several cards, in exchange for your character’s health. Also, there are phoenix cards, which are never sent to the deck of ashes. Keep in mind that despite the fact that your character can quite often win even the hardest battle, you still won’t be able to fully recover after it, so game presents the dilemma whether it’s worth having only few difficult battles, or many easier fights.

Whole game slightly resembles some dark universe cartoon comic strip. It’s worth mentioning that drawing quality looks pretty neat: Enemies seem to be different from one another even visually. They vary from some huge insect or ghosts, up to spores or mushrooms of some sort. Backgrounds during battles, while not that big in numbers, still look on a decent level. However what really seems lacking in this game is chapter biomes – following the storyline, your party is visiting cities, forests, swamps, e.t.c. However, all of these chapter locations on the global map are done with the help of the same set of background pictures.

Perhaps, whole sound chapter can be separated on actual sounds part, which includes music as well, and the part featuring voice acting. While overall sound quality is good, I’d like to mention that actual voice could’ve been performed in a slightly better way. Somehow I didn’t feel like I was playing a dangerous criminal, who robbed and killed rich and poor alike, because the voice of the main character was somewhat trembling and sounded a bit unsure, which is uncommon for such type of people. Then again, maybe I’m just nitpicking. Besides, many other card games don’t feature any voice acting at all.

The PRO’s:

• Game has quite interesting concept:
  Let’s put it straight – there are not that many card games where you need to think as for how to spend your time in the most profitable way. Simply fighting the enemies would drag you exhausted, without any chance to recover your best cards and thus, failing sooner or later. That’s why you’ll also need to travel around the map, decide if it’s worth gathering resources, or encountering an event instead.
  
  
• Dynamic maps:
  That’s another thing that I don’t see often. Sometimes the boss would just destroy the path you wanted to use and that really can mix up your plans. Besides, the initial idea looks really interesting.
  
  
• Interesting lore:
  It’d be a big lie to say that the game is rich on lore, or that the game universe is too unique. Instead, it’s one of those games where player collects the info about game lore by small pieces. But the way you find out more about this world, or those philosophic talks between main character and their mentor – all of these things are done with care and thus, it’s really interesting to track the story of the game.

The CON’s:

• Inability to rest properly:
  The problem that seems like a big plot hole is the fact that your character can heal wounds and restore the cards only after the battle. However you may spend about half of the day travelling on many tiles. Sometimes you’d even read the story about your character slaying great monsters, or having some rest here and there, but you won’t be able to restore health, or cards. Nope, only after the card battle. Sure enough, you can do so in camp, but this ability is still quite limited.
  
  
• Lore could’ve been a bit richer:
  Not a huge problem, but rather a wish for an improvement. There are a lot of moments where game just copy pastes same phrases. For example when boss is looking for you and destroys the road. All of them literally say same set of words. This could’ve been performed on a different scale, by showing us how exactly bosses look for us, by hanging innocents and burning towns in desperate attempts to find the character.
  
  
• Inability to escape fight:
  Let’s put it straight: it’s a roguelike game, featuring permanent death. Sure, escaping each fight would be ridiculous, but sometimes players may just find themselves exhausted and ambushed literally few steps away from the camp. If game featured some sort of retreat option after main character kills one of the enemies, or at least after set amount of turns, it’d be really neat improvement in my eyes.
  
  
• Global map in each chapter is located on the same biome with same house and tree images:
  It hits the immersion. Especially in a game which requires imagination. Just try to pretend that you are reading an interesting book with dull and similar pictures. It’s not a big deal, but still could be done better.

Overall, Deck of Ashes leaves really good impression. Sure enough, some moments seem a bit unpolished, however they barely affect overall product quality. The game offers quite different cards with various effects, the art looks good and the plot is interesting to follow. Perhaps, I can recommend it to everybody who enjoys roguelike games, or card based games.

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Night Crisis is a coop action game, strongly inspired by Battlefield franchise in many aspects. It introduces infantry, as well as aerial and vehicular combat, while also bringing up different soldier classes and level progression system. Initial idea, multiplied by quite appealing graphics, sounds like fun so far. So what could’ve possibly gone wrong? Let’s see…

The story of the game world can be found in special sub menu section. To put it in a few sentences: The Earth had enough of corrupt leaders and decided to get rid of them. Even Mother Nature itself started rioting by bringing the tornadoes and heatwaves. The corrupt leaders decided to tighten the laws and created various militaristic organizations. So the players are here to defend what’s left of freedom, natural resources and land. It’s worth mentioning that game texts are usually full of typos. However, such typos are just minor easily fixable issues, compared to the other problems of the Night Crisis.

So, the game greets us with main menu with live 3D background. As soon you start moving your mouse, background camera moves as well. As if not enough, camera moves on high speed and also does it even during the loading times, so quite soon you’ll feel dizzy.

Now, some of you may have thought of tweaking mouse speed to avoid such inconvenience and here’s another surprise: You can’t launch options in game menu. You can open OPTIONS tab during the actual match, though, but it’s needless to say that pause feature doesn’t work in online games, so such approach is quite strange and inconvenient, to say the least.

Compared to everything of what was written above, the fact itself that the menu is quite clunky and needlessly overloaded with subsections, some of which have same name, isn’t even a big deal.

So, Night Crisis offers 3 game modes:
CP, FFA and SND:
FFA is a simple defense match against AI, but unlike, for example, games, similar to Killing Floor, or No More Room In Hell, Night Crisis spices everything up with vehicles.
CP is somewhat similar to Battlefield games: Players must capture and hold strategic positions, except their spawns are premade, so capturing a position won’t grant you a new spawn point.
SND makes players arm and blow up the bombs, which are already placed on the map.

All in all, Night Crisis offers 12 maps. Most of them need serious rework, as each has holes to fall through, or places where you can get stuck. The players must choose one of four available classes and team up in order to complete simple missions. Each killed enemy, or completed mission grant them experience for chosen class. The more experience you get, the more weapons are available for your choice.

Obviously, gameplay itself at current state is still quite far from perfect. For example starting weapons have weird sway. Even if you stand still and aim, sometimes your character would activate animation of stretching, which significally lowers your chances of killing anyone. The recoil on some weapons is unbearable too, so in half of the cases it’s easier to shoot without taking steady aim. When you turn your head, your screen also sways from one side to another. Sometimes there’s also a delay between you actually turning your head and weapon moving to that side, which is really inconvenient. Now multiply that with overly bright special effects and you’ll have a feeling that you’re high on drugs and everything around is some weird illusion of your sick imagination.

The vehicles are also far from being called finished: You can easily look through your tank’s cannon when you’re maneuvering it. Speaking of cannons – forget about where you aim your cannon, because the recoil on vehicles’ main weapons is too high to hit anything. As if not enough, duo to maps’ odd collision you can get stuck in a small pit, or even on a flat narrow plain.

Speaking of the AI: I’m not going to cover basic infantry issues, but rather concentrate attention on drones and helicopters instead. Say, do you enjoy being spawnkilled? Well, if you do, then Night Crisis is definitely your choice, because if you die during CP, or SND match, it’s almost guaranteed endgame – enemy drones, tanks and helicopters will put you down the second you spawn.

While big part of the sounds and music are okay, it’s still really far from being called good – the amount of bugs and weird things in this game is insane! Have you crashed a helicopter? Well, enjoy the annoying alarm sound glitch even after you died! The music in menu have weird algorithm of working, because it only works when game wants it to work.

While I can’t say that graphics in this game is terrible, I can’t call it great either. I mean if we look at things separately, they look fine, in some way pretty even. But when they are combined altogether, something feels out of place. Sure, weapon and enemy models look okay, so do various special effects, but… Overall picture doesn’t. Again, it’s not bad, but something in it feels inconsistent. What you clearly can call bad, though, is the optimization, because even my decent PC had some issues during SND and CP matches.

Before jumping to conclusions, here’s short list of good and bad things once again:
The PRO’s:

• Initial concept still looks interesting and somewhat promising. The idea of a cooperative game with decent graphics and vehicular combat is really fresh, as most big companies just ignore coop in games lately.

…and the CON’s:

• Insane amount of bugs and underdeveloped things
  The chat doesn’t always show up at proper place. It also doesn’t always bring new messages in time. Some maps have collision issues. Server itself can simply drop the host(!) from the game. The UI is buggy at times. Some of the enemies can walk in the air. I also had huge amount of sound related problems. Game has quite some typos in words, and many other issues.
  
• Lack of optimization
  Even my PC with GeForce 1060 GTX (6GB) and 16GB RAM has some FPS issues when map gets crowdy. I can only guess what issues weaker PCs may encounter.
  
• Inconvenient moving camera at main menu
  I still don’t understand why the developer did such camera on the first place. It makes game look cheap and unpolished.
  
• Clear lack of tutorials
  You’ll have to learn how things work during actual match. Many keys aren’t really self-explanatory, so understanding what’s what can be really annoying.

The first and most important question here is whether the game worth its money. Unfortunately, despite interesting concept I’m going to have to say NO. Not at this moment at least. What you are buying right now is a pre-alpha game which is usually shown to a small bunch of sponsors behind the closed doors. It has really simple plot, only 3 basic gamemodes and a ton of game breaking issues as a bonus.

I realize that the developers put a lot of effort in their game and it’s a bit sad that, despite said efforts, I’m still giving the game a negative rating, but on the other side of things I have potential buyers who will buy the game after reading the review. And that’s a big responsibility as well. Obviously, the game is still in progress and it was released to EA recently. So despite all the criticism, I still have hopes that in a long term Night Crisis will actually shine. I’ll try to keep an eye after the game and hopefully change this review to a positive one someday.

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RIOT: Civil Unrest is a tactical RTS about the local protests all around the globe. The players can play as the police force, or the rioters. The game consists of the multiple campaigns, loosely based on the real life events, each in a different country. Unfortunately, the developers decided not to get involved into the political discussion too deep, so in case of interest, players will have to search for the additional information by themselves.

The story in each of the multiple short campaigns is represented via few lines of text. While the text itself isn’t really a big deal, the problem arises in the briefings, as there are basically no briefings whatsoever. Players are given short task, which, in most cases sounds like ‘protect the equipment/belongings’, or ‘push the opposing side off that square’ and that’s literally it. Why are we pushing these people away? Is it because they block the way for upcoming stuff, or because they are too annoying? What’ll happen if the police ruin rioters’ camp? What actually happens when we complete the campaign? Why aren’t we given bigger picture? Sure, in real life things aren’t always explained to lower ranked people, but after all, it’s a game! They are supposed to have some sort of a narrative!

Now, to game’s credit, it’s worth mentioning that each campaign features a fresh newspaper with a brief result of the skirmish, but even these articles don’t quite explain the situation properly, instead serving as some sort of aftermath stats panel. The global storyline, or what game tries to present us as a global story, is mostly explained through the short serie videos after yet another campaign was completed. It is unclear, though, why the developers didn’t use the experience of Hitman: Blood Money, where newspapers also served in better understanding of the plot.

However, there’s a reason why developers actually chose such approach: Game wants to remain neutral towards the all sides of the conflict, as you are able to play as both, the police and the rioters, so maybe I’m a bit too pushy.

The gameplay is actually quite entertaining and can drag players in rather quickly. You have to give credit to the developers for the original concept, as games with a full focus on riots aren’t seen often. I can only recall ‘Riot Police’ from 2004 and ‘RIOT – Civil Unrest’, as funny as it may seem.

Both sides of the conflict have different approaches to the battle and several ways of utilizing their strategy, be it full scale rebellion, or just peaceful protest. Before mission starts, players are free to choose the squads, their equipment (and a leader, if you are playing as rioters). Each squad and equipment piece has a set variety of bonuses, suitable for different situations, although most of the stats are never explained during the choice phase. After preparations are done, you’ll be given a short task and then start the actual mission.

Most of the missions would require one of the sides pushing their opponents away from the territory, or destroying/defending the equipment in a set of time. Quite often you won’t be able to simply push the enemy away, so you’ll have to use squads' special abilities. Cops, for example, are low on numbers, but able to use powerful stun and smoke grenades, or even a truck with water cannon. Rebels, on the other hand, prefer quantity over quality and use this advantage to scare the police off.

While the game doesn’t appreciate the violent approach, you can still choose heavy equipment for the protestors, supply them with the molotovs and make it a full scale rebellion. Don’t be surprised to find out that the cops are arresting your members and overall act more confident, though. As if not enough, if you keep doing violent protests for multiple missions in a row, with time you’ll get significally shorter on people. So in the end, you’d either need to replay some missions, in order to gain more positive score, or enjoy having to play as dozen of rebels against a fully equipped police army.

It works in a similar way if you play as the police force, though: brutal arresting tactics and crippling the civilians would have a negative impact on the global mass media and, as a result, few matches later you’ll face an insane amount of well-equipped insurgents, thirsty for blood.

Last but not least, the game features some modding resources and the ability to play custom matches on all maps, where you can set own rules for each level separately, which really helps with replayability of the game. Another interesting feature is Multiplayer, although, unlike many other games, RIOT –Civil Unrest also offers some sort of multiplayer, where people play together at one PC, using several gamepads. In other words, multiplayer in this game is a really 'specific’ thing.

The sound is of a decent kind, really. I totally enjoyed the main menu theme and overall audio quality. The problem arises on a different thing, though. And that thing is the visual quality of the game. Indeed, game is pixelized on purpose, but it’s not the actual gameplay graphics that looks confusing, but rather video briefings quality: Quite often game zooms certain events during the videos. It wouldn’t be a big deal if the quality was increased too, but instead you’ll keep watching at a huge pile of messed up pixels, trying to understand what on the Earth is going on.
(Link with few examples goes below: https://imgur.com/a/61vQc7e )

A quick PRO’s and CON’s analysis:
The PRO’s:

• Unique idea and concept of the game
  
• Diverse gameplay
  Both sides use way too different approaches and yet, the game still feels quite balanced.
  
• The importance of a tactical aspect
  Both sides have tons of the unique equipment suitable for utilizing different strategies.
  
• Wide variety of the gamemodes.
  Apart from what was mentioned before, there’s also a journalist gamemode, where you are supposed to take the best shots from riots, and usual spectator mode, which may show you interesting approach to a mission you can hardly complete.
  
• The game concept is really thought provoking
  That’s something personal, as I’m a huge police fan, but during the gameplay I’ve caught myself multiple times on thinking whether I represent the good, or the bad guys. I’m sure revolution lovers may feel the same.

…and the CON’s:

• The graphics
  Again, that mostly covers the visuals during the videos, as the developers could've made them in a higher resolution.
  
• Lack of storyline
  Sure enough, authors didn’t feel like picking any sides, but in the end of the day it damages the game, as it’s quite unclear who succeded in each campaign. It's also unclear whether the riots had been suppressed, or rioters achieved in what they wanted, e.t.c...
  
• Inability to select multiple squads at same time
  Now that’s really weird for an RTS game, but each squad should be clicked on separately. It's quite uncomfortable, to say the least.

So what is RIOT – Civil Unrest? Coming up from both, positive and negative points, it seems like more of a ‘YES’ than a ‘NO’ game. Sure, it’s not perfect, it has flaws and feels somewhat unpolished and slightly underdeveloped, but the original setting, wide variety of the equipment and overall unusual idea, manage to save the game from a failure. Can I recommend it? Perhaps, I can, especially to those people who enjoy playing as the police, because decent games about the cops are quite rare these days.

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Resident Evil 2 – Remake is, as you can judge by its name, a remake of one of the most iconic horror games, originally released in 1998. Game manages to combine quest and survival horror parts & keeps them very well-balanced. This time Capcom decided to introduce original universe to those people who are still unfamiliar with it, by recreating whole game from scratch and moving it to a decent 3D engine. And so far it seems they made the right choice!

The story takes place in 1998, when unknown virus outbreak hits Raccoon city. Virus itself has 100% death rate for every infected person. People affected by the virus turn mad and try to bite everybody, or even eat them alive. Local police force offers a shelter inside the police station but such decision creates a trap, resulting whole police station building to be besieged by the hordes of the infected. As if not enough, wounded people who found safe haven inside the building also turn zombies and start attacking everyone.

Players’ll take a look on this whole situation from the view of two common people – Leon Kennedy, an outsider police rookie, and Claire Redfield, usual girl, searching for her brother. Both campaigns are interconnected and both characters visit same places every now and then. Game also offers second runs, where some of the events, including the endings, may alternate, depending on which hero reached key places first.

Last but not least, there are 2 additional scenarios, where 2 secondary characters, USS member named Hunk and local meme, TOFU (yes, huge walking human-size piece of cheese) have to reach the extraction point. Each campaign playthrough grants players with various bonuses, such as costumes for characters, or weapon skins. Capcom also promised bringing additional low-poly models straight from original RE2 and yet another additional gamemode, called ‘The Ghost Survivors’, which would tell us what could’ve happened if some secondary characters didn’t die.

Gameplay itself presents us a challenging 3rd person old school survival horror, which encourages long, slow and thoughtful area exploration with careful inventory item management. There aren’t many enemies present on the map, but the ones you meet may provide you with quite some challenge. Zombies alone, while being slow and stupid, can crawl over the tables, break doors and windows, for example. Combine that with low amount of ammo and literally tons of health for each monster, and you’ll get a challenge even with such a simple enemy type. So, to put it the right way – sometimes it’s better to avoid the fight, or at least incapacite your enemy by shooting out their limbs, or else you are risking to be left armless while facing yet another pack of enemies.

Game also possesses a lot of riddles. Some of them may confuse a new player at start, but in fact they’re not too hard and usually become rather easy, once you find all the necessary items. Speaking of items – overall you can divide them on 3 main categories:
-Quest items, that need to be viewed, or placed somewhere;
-Weaponry, which is… actual guns, weapon upgrades, ammo & powder;
-Healing items, which include various herbs, sprays e.t.c.
Sometimes, in order to solve a riddle, or craft useful stuff, you’ll have to combine multiple things in one piece, or gather necessary information, by examining an item closely through the inventory. The last thing worth mentioning here is inventory upgrade. It happens when your character finds empty combat pouches and picks them up.

So, overall gameplay looks like this: you explore the area, while fighting, or avoiding different creatures, find out what blocks your path and solve this riddle. Then you unlock multiple doors, which connect multiple old rooms and open new pass forward. Gameplay slightly changes once (spoiler alert!) a huge immortal boss arrives. He starts hunting for your character, so you’ll have to watch your step carefully and escape as soon as he finds you. This idea, however, falls short on practice, as even though it sounds cool on paper, on practice this boss mostly annoys you. Luckily, you won’t meet him too often.

To put it real simple – the graphics looks amazing. You can see that by screenshots, but apart from top notch model quality, Capcom also brought high quality animations, advanced limb system, where you can shoot off various body parts of your enemies, and, of course, advanced gore system. You’ll see a lot of blood and torn off bodies and limbs, so consider that not only as appreciation, but also as a warning, in case you’re a sensitive person.

Overall, game atmosphere feels really apocalyptic, and graphics plays vital role in it – all those rotten bodies, burnt cars and broken lighting inside the building, all of it immerses the player into a cruel unforgiving world, filled with evil and despair.

Just the same as with graphics, the sound feels really amazing, be it calm ambient, or some distant roar of yet another zombie woken up. Perhaps, we can say that the graphics in RE2 – Remake serves as driving force of the atmosphere, but it wouldn’t have about half of that atmosphere without the sound of such quality.

Now, as all important points’ve already been covered, it’s time to make some conclusions, so let’s observe good and bad points of the game overall:

• High replayability value:
  Game features multiple campaigns which slightly vary, depending on who visited a key place first. Also additional scenarios, secrets, easter eggs and extra costumes. Oh, and different weapons for each character, of course!
  
• Advanced gore and limb system:
  Having an ability to disable the enemy by simply dismembering body part adds up some tactical depth to a well-known old school gameplay. It’s not a revolutionary feature, indeed, but it is done on a really decent level.
  
• True old school horror atmosphere:
  I wasn’t really scared while playing the game, but all of that attention to small details and work on enemy AI shouldn’t leave average player emotionless. Shooting your last magazine into a zombie and then seeing it stand up and still slowly walking towards you is… impressing, to say the least. Same applies to the cutscenes.

• Minor holes in game mechanics and plot:
  There are a lot of examples, really, so I’ll only go with 2 of them: Why does one boss hit takes about the same amount of damage as zombie mouth bite, filled with virus bacteria? Or the moment when Leon meets Claire but they’re separated with the locked gate. Couldn’t Claire just climb it over?
  
• Annoying boss at the police station:
  Main issue with that guy is his incredible stupidity and slow speed. Things get really annoying, however, when you need to walk from one building wing to another, yet he just stalks you and so you have to make huge detours in order to drop him off your tail.
  
• Old school issues:
  All those nasty things like clunky inventory, inability to discharge weapon magazine, e.t.c.
  
• Some changes in canon:
  While some of the plot changes were valuable, it still feels awkward, because it strikes on the game lore in general.

Overall, it’s rather clear that RE2 – Remake is a really successful remake of an infamous cult classic horror game. All of the key elements and characters are present. Atmosphere feels so old yet so… qualitative. It’s one of those few AAA titles nowadays that fully deserves the money asked.

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