Recent reviews by Wutz

Purchase does not equal ownership lmao
"One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game."

TLDR: The music is the only thing you are buying here, if to you nine songs are not worth whatever price is being asked, dont buy. Playtime: 5-6 hrs

Story:
Something, something, demons and hell and rage, oh yeah and METAL. The story has little to no impact on the "game" itself and consists of the very same boss being slain over and over again until the final boss battle.

Level design and graphics:
All levels are linear in design and allow for no alternate pathing, although i would not rate this to be a bad thing. Graphics are simplified and give of a more catoonish look, while being more forgiving in clipping and mapping. Nonetheless i encountered a good amount of bugs from enemies stuck in walls, being shot through walls, to clipping issues and flickering textures.

Music:
The music throughout the game is an absolute banger, but that is all the marketing for this game is about so it better be good.

Gameplay:
The single most infuriating thing about this game and main reason why i would not recommend buying it. The players move- and actionset is supposed to be on-beat, since this is necessary for combos, mulitplier and therefore damage. On its own and for probably half of the playtime this rythm concept works just fine. However i already noticed in the trailers for this game, that something felt off.
Literally everything in this game is on-beat, but the enemy move- and actionsets are not. With the exception of AoE attacks enemies will move and attack you off-beat pretty much all the time which gets more noticeable the tougher enemies become later in the game.
So first you are forced to move off-beat if you do not want to take damage or even die and second you can not dodge enemy attacks appart from simply running from them. There are no skill checks whatsoever to damage or dodge an enemy and since boss fights are a culmination of all the above, they are the least fun i played in quite some time.

Conclusion:
The music is fantasic and had me headbanging for most of my playthrough and the visual effects help elevate the beat to its best. However we are talking about a video game and the "game" portion underdelivers quite drasticly, so much so that the music loses a lot of its initial appeal. If you are in it for the music go ahead you will have a lot of fun, but if you came here for anything else stay clear.

Much love, stay safe everyone

Greetings Ladys and Gents,

first off, should you play this game: hell yeah you should!
And here is why:

Story
At the very core this game is a story game, so if thats what you are into this is a mustplay. However the greater part of hints and lore are to be found as texts, so keep that mind. Nevertheless Horizon Zero Dawn tells its story in the top tier of storytelling. You are fed small chunks of the story to imagine for yourself what happened to humanity, right until the very end.

Gameplay
Where you start with great respect for every machine and blue light in the dark, you will soon find yourself mastering every one of them proportional to your understanding of weaknesses and weakspots. However i recommend playing the dlc after finishing the main story, since the dlc weapons are much too powerfull when not playing on hard or very hard difficulty.

Visual Design
The visuals in Horizon Zero Dawn are nothing short of astounding. From water and screen space reflections to flora and fauna the level of detail really sets the sceen of a new world in old and rusty ruins of a civilization long gone.

Side Quests/Collectibles
I would like to give a special shoutout to the side quests and collectibles. Every mission tells its own little story and deviates enough to feel new, except the occasional fetch quest. The collectibles in this game achive a near perfect distribution with enough to make you hunt for them but not too much for you to become discouraged (yes, im looking at you GTA5).

In any case, i recommend playing this game at least once in your lifetime just to experience this marvellous piece of storytelling.
Stay safe everyone

Now with even more cookies!

First things first: I can not recommend buying this game for any price above 5 Euros (probs not even then).

Starting off with a basic overview:
- Takes around 10 hrs to finish the game
- Contains 5 cases (if you count the "final" case)
- Mixture of Visual Novel and interactive Point-and-Click
- Is absolutely not worth the price tag Steam puts on it

What is this game about?
Well, unsurprisingly it is about Mr Holmes solving crimes with the help of Dr Watson, while once or twice being disturbed by a generic side character or himself.

But what is the story like?
To be fair I could not quite make out a "main" story, although the game tries its best to connect the cases Holmes is tasked with. All four cases tell their own story and in my opinion are best seen as such. The occasional bits of story about Holmes and his "daughter" Kate are thrown onto the stage between cases and culminate in the grand finale which turns out to be the dullest, lamest, most boring and uneventful 60 minutes of the whole game.

Ehm ok, but what about the gameplay?
Horrible. Most of it is nothing more than an interactive version of these poorly made point-and-click "adventures". You are being guided by the taskbook with no real chance of doing anything else, exploring the surrounding streets of London, or any side quests. Controls and movement feel way older than they should and graphics are not the most modern aswell.
You will need to find some clues or make the deductions yourself, but its not too big of a deal, even in the harder of two difficulties and with no real consequences, regardless of your verdict or evidence that you might have missed.

Right, but should I play it?
If you find it rotting in your library give it a try, if you would need to spent money for the love of god please dont, look for an "Adventure Bundle" on the bundle website of your choice and pick it up with some other indie games for ~ three Euros.

To sum up:
- Did have fun from time to time
- Did enjoy some of the tasks
- Did not feel at home with the storytelling
- Hated the movement
- Would not play again

Hope that wasnt too sarcastic to be helpful
Take care ladies and gents

If you are into interactive storytelling than Orwell is definitly worth your time.
Since the game wil not require immense loads of said time you should ask yourself if the estimated 10 Euros are an acceptable price to pay. If you still do decide to give it a go, then game will take you on a journey for the next 5-11 hrs (ca. 4.5 hrs for the first playthrough plus two more if you would like to get the full experience with all endings and two more playthroughs).

Orwell comes with a brilliantly written story that will suck you in, so be prepared to spend the mentioned ~11 hours almost in one session. The way you are being guided through the game is very well described by saying its an interactive story, but in the way it is set up is very unique and leaves you with the nervous thought that something similar might be somewhat imagineable in the real world.

Anyways i encourage you the give it a try and see for yourself, even if you might be better off getting the game for a cheaper price.

Take care everyone :3

I just finished the game and i am baffled how the story got me to think about my own phone and therefore my data. The way of piecing together passwords, people and events felt absolutly convincing to me and made a great puzzle aswell as a deep and dark story in the end.

Fun simulator if you are into building and fixing PCs, because thats all this is about and it will need a lot of determination in this field of interest, if you want to exceed 10-15 hrs of playtime

Just to make this clear from the very beginning, the story mode in this trilogy is a rather short one and loses its replayability after the 2nd or 3rd run to me. I finished my first run with doing every side mission and other things like secrets in under eight hours. With that being said i would recommend to pick this game up while its on sale with an 80%-90% discount.

The game mechanics are very straight forward to anyone who ever touched a RPG/ARPG before. You have your companion (only one since she is part of the story) and three major classes to chose from (melee, ranged and a hybrid class). The skill trees are very generous in boosting your stats and should allow for quite an easy time fighting your enemys, unless you choose the highest difficulty which is a total pain in the butt.

Coop and PvP happens to be a thing in this game series aswell - and omg yes it has battle royale - but the PvP can be called dead by now, so coop remains and i can not give you any reports about this since i was not able to try it out.

The graphics and general esthetics are very well designed and have the typical amount of steampunk in them as you would expect from a game in this genre and with this name. Voice acting and conversations are one of the best i have heard in an ARPG for a long time and really help building a bond with the characters. Adding to this is the fairly large amount of secrets and easter eggs that may be found during a playthrough which reach from King Arthur to Monty Python and Angry Birds.

If you have the bucks to spent and are looking for are fun game that does not require spending weeks on, then this game will definitely have you covert.

First things first:
If you are planning on playing with friends do not use the enhanced version, play the original one.
For the Single Player go ahead and use the new version.

Lets start with the positve things:

- Obviously the graphics are more detailed and not as dark as the original game
- The new HUD with added map and improved waypointer is the best change made to the game
- Movement does feel a little bit more responsive
- Inventory and Echo Log design rework does keep enough of the old game while being new and fresh
- Loading bar in the loading screens is a nice little addition
- Auto pickup is such a nice thing to have


And some things i found to be not so well made:

- Clipping is infuriating, so much that it has great potential to ruin your whole gamplay experience
(e.g.: Rocks not bigger than a football will stop you in a car dead on spot just like driving into a wall; edges in the ground that seem to be only graphical can be clipping edges and will not allow your character to walk over them; clipping of any stairs/slopes etc. will make you furious while playing since those are only accessible directly from the front; Rooftops have hit-/clippingboxes that extends far beyond the graphical borders, therefore jumping on rooftops is more infuriating than it ever was and makes New Haven chest runs a freaking nightmare)
- Echo Logs playing while walking away from the person you got the misson from will have the origins of the sound playing in relative positioning of the npcs location on the map
- Many Echo Log character models in the dlcs have not been reworked or loaded in properly since they will show up as untextured placeholders
- Echo Logs will show up randomly on the screen while on a mission without playing any sound
- Echo Logs are different in volume and can be painfully loud, throughout the main story and game they are acceptable, but be aware of the dlcs. Before you load into Tartarus Station or T-bone Junction make sure to lower the volume to the absolute minimum since Claptrap and Athena will still blast your headset off, even with minimum settings
- The pathfinding algorithm for Mordecais Bloodwing skill with the enhanced edition makes it nothing more than some useless bird, since it now requires the character to have direct line of sight with an enemy for Bloodwing to attack and all of this with very limited range and Bloodwing getting stuck in walls, the floor, barrels, you name it
- While the game is loading up with its fancy loading screen dont you dare clicking anything else or opening lets say your browser, since it will crash the game and reset your graphic settings (same goes for AltF4ing out of the game)
- Switching items in the inventory is lagging and does not feel right at all



I will describe the multiplayer "experience" separately, since it wont affect you (as much) in SP:

- To start off it is an ablosute mess to find an open lobby, since the main menu is utterly obscured on how to get there
- Loading into a multiplayer lobby or hosting one with your friends and tabbing out of the game while loading a map will simply crash the game
- Since the multiplayer is now entirely client sided the waypointer on the map and hud will no longer synchronise with the hosts active mission if you do not have the exact same mission in single player while loading into the lobby.
- Microphone settings will reset to "on" with every restart of the game, which is not noticeable in SP but will drive you insane if plaing with a friend - oh and dont trust the game when it says mic is "off", it will still be on in the MP lobby and game after a restart
- Enemy levels used to scale in stats and not so much in level if someone was to join your game. The enhanced version does scale without exception the level of your enemeys with rising player numbers. The moment you encounter an enemy two or three levels above you your damage output will almost drop to zero (e.g.: level 29 character with level 13 sniper does 2308 damage to an level 29 enemy, same character level, same weapon does 20 damage to an level 31 enemy and is completely useless). Yes this will happen to you in SP aswell but only if skip all side missions and run straight from level to level, in MP however with the nice scaling the second mini boss took 20 mins to take down since even after doing every side mission possible me and my friend were level 9 and said boss was still level 13 and therefore almost undefeatable
- While in multiplayer only the host is able to aquire/turn in missions or to interact with objects like doors, switches, etc. this will cause you sometimes to get softlocked if anyone else but the host tries to open a door, which is crucial for progressing in the level, since the door will be marked as "opened" for all players but will not actually be opening due to the input not being made by the host. This will cause the door to stay shut but will no loger be available for interaction, even for the host



To sum this up i will not recommend buying the game with this current price tag, a sale with 50% discount would make it more attractive. If you are looking for a smooth multiplayer experience i beg you to use the original version, since all the improvements with the enhanced version do not cover up the rage and discomfort this game still inficted. For the Single Player you can use the enhanced edition, however the clipping and other stuff mentioned will still have you rage from time to time but the improvements do definitely make up for it.

Stay safe everyone <3