Recent reviews by StormCroaker

3.5/5

SIGNALIS is a great, although flawed, Isometric Survival Horror game.
While the art style, sound design, and overall atmosphere are amazing and the story unravels slowly through scattered documents as you make your way through the facility while leaving the ending (at least the one I got since there are apparently multiple) quite up for personal interpretation, not telling you everything explicitly akin to a lot of other Cosmic Horror media.

While I enjoyed the game for the most part, there where some parts of SIGNALIS that felt plainly frustrating or immersion breaking.

1. Visibility
While the game looks great, it can be extremely easy to miss a key items you need to progress the story, making it almost mandatory to look up where you missed it through a guide as to prevent aimlessly wandering around for a long time. Ironically, sometimes certain consumable items like ammo or healing items seem to be slightly highlighted in the dark environments.

2. Act 2: Nowhere
The many puzzle items required in this section of the game, combined with its maze-like lay-out and absence of an area map combined with the visibility problems mentioned above, made this section very frustrating. While I can see how this was meant to be used as a way of immersing the player by making them feel lost, it ended up being more hair-pullingly frustrating than anything else.

3. Act 3
During this act, certain doors will suddenly become impassable for reasons I will not spoil in this review. As such, gathering the required key items becomes a slog even if you know where they are and have already established safe routes to them. Again, this felt like an attempt at further immersion the player, by shifting the lay-out of the area this time, which just ended up making this section more tedious than it should've been.

All in all, SIGNALIS is a great game held back by visibility problems and certain frustrating design choices, albeit with good intent behind them.

Obsessive perfectionism meets whacky evening with friends.

Step 1: Start a game with 2 friends

Step 2: Forget to add a 4th AI-controlled faction

Step 3: Choose to play as the Woodland alliance (your friends pick Marquise de Cat and the Vagabond respectively)

Step 4: Have no faction in the game to directly keep Marquise de Cat's rapid expansion in check

Step 5: Form an alliance with the Vagabond to take down Marquise de Cat

Step 6: Both you and Marquise de Cat get locked into 2 different "Rule over 3 X clearings by the start of your next Birdsong" alternate victory conditions

Step 7: Succeed after a lucky card draw that wipes all their units from the Fox Clearings

Step 8: Start winning instead of your friend who's playing as Marquise de Cat

Step 9: Get stabbed in the back by the Vagabond

Step 10: Both of you lose the game to the Vagabond after they start completing one quest after another while sabotaging your attempts to rule 3 of the same type of clearing.

Fear, Camaraderie, Joy, Betrayal
10/10, would go on this emotional rollercoaster again

GRAPHICS

🔘 Ugly as ♥♥♥♥
🔘 Outdated
🔵 Acceptable
🔘 Beautiful
🔘 It'll replace your life

STORY

🔘 There is no story
🔵 Written by 5 years old child
🔘 Something to remember
🔘 You will miss the characters
🔘 It makes you feel emotional

FUN

🔘 I want to delete it after a few minutes
🔘 Boring
🔵 Have some
🔘 So much. You even want to talk about it with your friends (in case you have one)
🔘 Make you forget about time

MUSIC

🔘 Just mute it
🔘 Not bad
🔵 Enjoyable
🔘 You will have to search for the soundtrack on Youtube
🔘 Make you want to live in the game

REPLAY VALUE

🔘 One-time experience
🔵 If you are completionist, you will want to stick for a while
🔘 You may want to play it again to try new things
🔘 Definitely have to play at least one more time
🔘 There are a lot of cool stuffs that you have to try


TOTAL SCORE: 13/25

It's a solid 3D Platformer and I would personally rate "Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2" higher than a 13/25, but this is mainly because I used to play this as a kid. It's the first game I 100% completed and I enjoyed it the whole way through.

>=20: you dont want to miss this masterpiece
>=15: definitely worth the price
>=8: if its on sale, you could consider to try it
<8: dont waste your time on it

10/10, would get yeeted off of a cliff by a miniboss again.

I'll start this review by saying that I tried Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate's demo on my 3DS ages ago and it didn't click with me at the time. The clunky controls, lack of guidance, it all was just a very confusing and, due this this, an unfun experience.

Queue Monster Hunter: World. While I played my fair share of it back in 2018 when it released on the PS4, I never could've imagined how much it would grow on me after playing it again on my PC. While MHW still has the franchise's trademark "throwing players into the deep end" due to how shallow all of its tutorials are and how they bombard new players with a lot of info, which isn't even all the info.

It's a lot more accessible than previous titles though and this is a sentiment that gets echoed by more veteran players, some even going so far that this accessability is making the game "too easy". There's a nice variety in weapon types and monsters, a decent story, fun and addictive gameplay, ...

I haven't been able to touch Iceborne yet, since it's a post-game expansion and I was advised to finish the base game and base endgame before buying it, but now I can't wait to jump into it once I finish the base game.

All in all I'd say that MHW is a great Action RPG. It's even more fun with friends as well!