Recent reviews by Zeekerss

This is reminding me most of Signalis (in a good way) since I played that a few months ago. But it's also reminding me of Oxenfree and Outer Wilds? Also obviously inspired by Resident Evil and Clock Tower. As the map continues to open up, there is some really fun puzzle design and great moments, and the game feels like it has its own identity. Intriguing characters and story beats; I really began to like the writing and dialogue. So far surprisingly good.

Edit: When the game begins to wrap everything up, the really strong sense of mystery fizzles out. The story reveals itself to be an allegory/metaphor, in which I suppose you just let your inner demon go (somehow). This allows you to escape the shared dream / time loop dimension. There's not much to reassure me that there really is a literal, surface-level layer to the narrative, and the resolution feels a bit anticlimactic to me on a deeper level. I thought Emily's struggle was really deep and difficult to pin down, but maybe that's because it just didn't actually make sense or wasn't as specific as I thought. These are all my first thoughts, and maybe playing the game again would reveal different memories, or there's things that just went over my head.

Either way I still think the game is worth playing. Time loops are fun, the world is fun to explore and unravel with a friend, the characters were charming, and the game has its terrifying and mysterious moments.

It's like if you tried to mix Rainbow Six: Siege with Teardown, leaning fully into the destruction and movement mechanics. I felt ready to protect the safe in the top floor of a building until the foundations literally fell apart

I think Signalis is almost fully carried by incredible story-telling and style. I wish the gameplay encouraged replaying the game, because the story absolutely rewards combing through the subtle details to make connections.

But after finishing it I can't recall any alternate choices I could have made, and without the intrigue of the world-building and story, I think the gameplay would have been a terrible slog. The inventory being so small felt like a clever way to pad the game, since you are forced to back-track. This often led to me making blind guesses on what items I would need in any given trip and hoping it would save me an extra boring five minutes.

Back-tracking could also have been made interesting, but the only thing that ever happens to shake it up is enemies waking up randomly, which was just annoying. Overall the gameplay side of Signalis just feels very skinny and drags the game down. All the non-boss enemies in the game are revealed within the first half, and even when areas are not re-used, the long hallways and boxy rooms start to feel cookie-cutter, despite how much effort was put into the art of the environments to make every room feel real and unique.

The gameplay discourages me from replaying to get more out of the story, so I opted to watch videos on it instead, which doubled my enjoyment and appreciation of Signalis. The story is a very blurry, distorted, corrupted image, but behind all the noise it is surprisingly consistent and does want you to understand, at least on some level. Before long, the chilling atmosphere of this world completely drew me in.

This game is Gang Beasts and more, AND polished, AND near-perfect online as well as local, and it retains all the charm. There were only a couple lame maps and modes, the rest were gold.

I can't complain about anything besides problems that Gang Beasts had as well, such as the knock-out mechanic not always being the funnest. It serves a purpose in keeping the game moving and preventing a stalemate, but there's ways to achieve that other than just disabling someone's controls for an upwards of 15 whole seconds.

Overall I think this takes Gang Beasts' place as the classic, ruthless sumo boxing game from now on.

It's a traditional survival horror experience, very well executed with some really amazing sound design (binaural audio and dynamic reverb) and a focus on combat / self defense. It's clear Frictional Games has gotten down this oppressive atmosphere to a science. When action goes down, it feels epic. The setting is awesome, and the story is simple but interesting enough.

There are just a couple problems:

There isn't much to change up the gameplay until very late. I feel Alien Isolation is a fair comparison since that game has a similar kind of monster. In that game, it felt like the alien changed its behavior throughout, and the dynamic changed drastically as you got new ways of dealing with it. If this game's antagonist gained new behaviors and abilities, it would go such a long way.

This one makes the previous point feel much worse: the pacing becomes kind of awful. There is no downtime. This guy will jump out and attack you constantly--even when the lights are on and you're crawling everywhere, it magically knows the exact area you are in. And this never stops. If there were periods of time where the monster wasn't making a racket, it would shock me when he did appear. Instead, you WILL become nearly desensitized to his presence--considering how terrifying his AI and noises can be, that's impressive.
This hurts the game even more because your main objectives have to compete for your attention; it's very easy to miss key items and notes while being constantly, endlessly oppressed and chased. I wouldn't have gotten so stuck in a few places if I had time to breathe. Instead, I felt like I had to speed-run through looting every room or I was asking to die.

It's probably good for replaying and speed-running. But I don't feel like the monster will surprise me anymore, and I don't think I made any major choices that impacted my run (like choosing between upgrades or something). All-in-all I feel like it just safely delivers on what I wanted at the very least, not some incredible masterpiece. There is potential left

Like the most epic theme park dark ride. a linear, hand-crafted experience, perfect from beginning to end

I didn't play the other games in the series, but it didn't feel like I needed to. Controls feel amazing. Stages are nonlinear to an extent that feels grand and impressive. They do tend to send me flying off of cliffs into death quite often out of nowhere, but that could be my own problem; there's also some VERY tight jumps and insane barrages of enemies and smoke that feel cruel. But it's not enough to sour the experience.
Story feels bogged down with exposition--in a rush, telling rather than showing many of the events. But it's still fun with some epic moments towards the end. Feels very anime.
I had some fun with the bosses. I think they could be better if they focused less on long combos and more on movement and platforming, since that's the best part of the game. But combat systems aren't my thing so I won't say much. It's just that it feels like two different games spliced together when it could be more.

A bit of a difficult learning curve (so expect to bumble around and die a few times) but it has some of the best scares of any Phasmophobia-like horror so far, with added silliness.

This is one of my favorite horror experiences I've ever had, and it is almost entirely because of one chapter in the game which is far better than the rest. (It's chapter 2.) The confusion of getting lost in the hedges in the dark while shouting for my friends, who were also lost in the hedges and screaming, is an unforgettable memory.

Labyrinthine suffers from the same issues you would expect from co-op indie horror, like overly simplistic enemies, awkward death animations, silly/uncanny character models (though you could argue that's a good thing), and general clunkiness and a severe lack of any 'game feel'. BUT it does some things right, like creating moments of drama by suddenly separating players during moments of crisis, taking advantage of the fact that this is a multiplayer horror game.

Being alone? Scary. Being alone with friends in the distance who can't hear you? Mortifying.

The hundreds of ridiculous mod maps and steam remote play make this trash game easily worth the price