Recent reviews by Vice Commander

It's bad, it's dumb. About 15-20% of the dialog is the words "idiot" and "stupid." It's a comedy item hunt game, but it's not particularly funny.

But it's short! It's like two hours long. On sale it's less than a cup of coffee. If you want something dumb and easy to play for two hours it's hard to go wrong with this game. I wouldn't say that I recommend it, but for $2, why not?

When I have try to convince myself that I should recommend Shadow of the Erdtree, then I know that I have to not recommend it. You should only buy Shadow of the Erdtree if you really, really like Elden Ring and previous FromSoftware Souls games.

Shadow of the Erdtree is a flanderization of Elden Ring; it is a set of the highest highs and abyssal lows of the base game. Some examples of what I mean:

* The base game is one of the most beautiful games I have played, and some of the most beautiful areas in the game are in SOTE.
* The base game is plagued by reused enemies, and not only does SOTE reuse its new enemies, but it reuses even more of the same enemies from the base game! Remember the ~11 Ulcerated Tree Spirits? There are another four or so in the DLC.
* The base game's bosses like Margit have been teased as holding their attacks to catch you and comboing for excessively long times to force you to dodge over and over. SOTE has the longest combos and attack-hold fakeouts in the game.
* The base game has bosses that look cool but mess with your camera - there is even more of that in SOTE.
* The base game's large world necessitates lots of downtime searching for upgrades. SOTE has a massive PS2-era collect-a-thon that every boss is balanced around.
* A few of the best bosses in the game are in the DLC, along with some of the worst.
* The map is massive, but very conspicuously empty. Elden Ring was praised for having so much to do in its open world, and that stops in SOTE. The map is massive proportionately massively empty, though with the collect-a-thon mentioned above, you are greatly punished if you do not want to go wandering around the world.
* Elden Ring has rich lore that is not communicated well, and the poor communication continues in the DLC, only the bits of lore you do get are meaningless and conflict with the base game.

I love the Souls games, but after I beat the final boss of SOTE, I didn't feel accomplishment or even very much satisfaction, just relief knowing that I didn't have to keep playing the DLC. If you love Elden Ring, then this is more Elden Ring, but it pains me to say that I could not in good conscience recommend this DLC to anyone else. Even with the flaws on Elden Ring I would recommend that game to anyone, but I can't do this same for Shadow of the Erdtree. You will likely get your money's worth out of the DLC, but unless you know what you're getting into, not your time's worth. It breaks my heart that I can't recommend this to someone buying Elden Ring for the first time.

The difficulty tends to from cakewalk to getting one-shot by spongy enemies depending on if the content is required for the story or optional. It also takes about 17-20 hours for the combat to become fun. Good game and well-made, but if you've played AAA third-person adventure titles before then this game won't be anything new.

The only real answer to if I recommend Control - if I think it's a good game - is yes. I think?

This game is very well-made, made with such obvious passion and soul and a clear vision in how the final game would come out. The game is more than competent in telling its story and the stories within the stories with intrigue and drama. The settings are gorgeous, there is a visual style that sets it apart from other similar shooters, and the combat is chaotic and dynamic. However, despite finishing the game and all its DLCs, I can't really say that it was particularly [i[fun.[/i]. Even when actively playing through the game I struggled to know whether or not I liked it. It was competent, there are great moments, there's lots of fun story to dig into, but I always had to force myself to come back to it.
If I had to describe what this game is, then I would say that it's a very well-produced SCP game where the main character is one of the teenagers from the movie [i[Chronicle[/i] except instead of a teenage boy they're a woman written by Joss Whedon, and the whole game was developed by people that wish they were making an HBO series.
Some examples of what I mean:

* The combat is - and this is truly impressive - boring. There is a good variety of enemies in wide, varied combat arenas spread throughout the game. You can shoot them, blow them up with sticky mines, throw forklifts at them, brainwash them, body slam them from the top rope, and do all of that while flying and dashing around: yet I was never once engaged by the combat. Despite being nominally a shooter, the gun you get is mostly useless once you have the ability to throw objects. Throwing objects auto-locks onto enemies and does way, WAY more damage to them, even with maximum damage mods on your gun, especially later in the game. Some enemies can juke your projectiles, but a quick second volley takes them out anyway, and you can be tricksy with the angles of your thrown objects to make them impossible to dodge. Ultimately, the game turns into whack-a-mole with throwing rocks and heavy machinery at dudes spawning into your sealed-off arena until the game lets you leave. Random mooks, combat gauntlets, magic object encounters, and bosses all devolve into floating in the air while you fling objects, wait for your energy to recharge, and repeat. I ended up avoiding all combat whenever possible as it felt like a time-wasting annoyance.

* There are lots of videos and government-orientation-esque film reels that you can watch, and they're all well-done with each adding some interest into what is going on and what was happening before the central plot occurs. Practically speaking, though, it means that outside of the combat arenas, you'll find a sci-fi video or audio log and then stand there in-game for two minutes watching it. And there is a LOT of this kind of content. It's all very intriguing and deep and faceted but the reality is that it feels like I am pausing my game to watch a tame 1:30 YouTube analog horror video. I've played System Shock 2 and Bioshock before, I love audio logs and reading material, but in Control it is excessive and halts the flow of the game. I'd say that maybe a fifth to a quarter of the entire game is standing, in-game, watching something. This ties into my HBO comment from above, as while all of this intrigue and information is great to watch, it conflicts with Control being a game. With the reels and cutscenes and videos all the pacing goes out the window.

* The story is fun, but sets up way too much mystery that takes way too long to pay off. You know in the first two hours that the higher-ups in this government organization knew something deep and important about the plot that was shady beyond the whole magical-item thing that is their business as usual. But then for the next thirty hours I keep getting that build-up! And all in those two-minute shorts, remember! I won't spoil what the payoff is, but the payoff neatly coincides with the end of the game and is so obvious and insipid that it's barely worth mentioning anyway. Any time I wondered "what is going on here?" it was answered shortly, answered in twenty hours of game time, or "answered" with faux-overly-redacted material, and it was never answered in a way that I felt satisfied my initial interest.

* The characters are all so... bland! The situation each character finds themselves in is infinitely more interesting than the characters themselves. The main character Jesse Faden is a very "well... that just happened!" kind of self-aware protagonist. She'll go through the most horrible events and come out the other side with chipper "time to get back on track" attitude. Every other character is one-dimensional and is something you have probably seen before in a game. The only interesting characters are maybe Dr. Darling and Ahti the janitor, except Dr. Darling is almost entirely experienced through the pace-killer videos and Ahti has little payoff to his character outside of a cool but short segment near the end of the game where he himself is not present. Even the mysterious, terrifying, otherworldly Board has a light-hearted tone to its speech, and its speech is subtitled static!

As I finish writing this review, I feel that it is overly negative. I do recommend Control. I truly believe that Control is a game that some people will find to be their favorite game of all time. The game is dripping in style and striking imagery, with great graphics and cool tech built into every shifting wall of the Oldest House. I think that if you read through the Steam store page and watch the trailer and think the game looks interesting that you will absolutely get your money's worth with it. I think this is an alright game that shot for the stars, and for that, even with its flaws, maybe you should give it a shot. Check out some Let's Plays or stream VODs to see if it interests you - as long as it's not the crucial story moments, the game is so long that you probably won't ruin the experience by seeing setpiece spoilers.

I give this game 3 salvos of forklifts and office desks into invisible screaming flesh butterflies out of 5.

Every character has really intense brows and if I play this game for long enough I start to hear the motion tracker beeps after I take my headset off

The story is bland, the characters are predictable, and you'll be hearing the same marine lines over and over, but it presents it all with this oo-rah earnestness that makes it actually rather endearing. The maps are all huge and well designed, and the gameplay is good and tense. If you like other tactics games like XCOM or Dawn of War 2's campaign then you'll probably like this one too.

This game pioneers the Junk Economy.

At Level 1 Medical I scoffed at filler items. "This empty mug is marked '(Junk)'?" I asked. "Miss me with that garbage," I said foolishly, "my inventory gets cluttered enough as it is."

At Level 3 Maintenance, I would pick up some of the more valuable pieces of junk. "I'll just grab this broken laptop for now, sure..." I told myself. "The recycle station is right there in the middle of the level, and I can carry a bit more... just to get the last few credits for that modkit back on Research..."

By Level 5 Flight Deck, I was the trash queen. Plastic sample containers? I'll make room, that's one WHOLE company credit. Dull scalpels, empty mugs, blood plasma bags? Put those in my pipe and smoke vaporize 'em. That's SCRAP, baby. That's FREE value. Did you know that you can drink the booze you find around the station? I didn't. I was too busy vaporizing all the bottles I found for 5 scrap a piece. Ashtrays? Bedpans? E-readers? I don't need this weaponry, or my ammo, or these key quest items, I need to make room for the real valuables. Horrible cyborg monstrosities stalking the corridors? No problem. I'll atomize a whole hallway full of mutants in cold blood if I even think I see a body at the end of it. Not because I hate the station AI, or because I want to avenge Tri-Optimum's dead. No, I want to rifle through that corpse's pockets for empty soda cans. Heck I'll loot the mutants too in case one of them has a granola bar wrapper. I'll lay waste to this whole godforsaken station for even a morsel of (Junk). I left SHODAN's cameras and CPU nodes untouched on the later levels just so she could see and comprehend me throwing half of her "beautiful" station into the recycle bin for Tri-Op funny money. I entered Citadel a prisoner. I left Citadel a junk god.

The game is good too, and it's an excellent remake. I highly recommend, and on sale it's a no-brainer. Cyberspace sucks but look up the original game's cyberspace and you'll agree that the remake's rework could really be worse. Play 3223 for your first go.

Embrace the junk, and it will embrace you.