Recent reviews by blake++

It hurts my eyes. Genuinely.

It's an insane amount of fun, especially with friends. Surprisingly deep systems with interesting mechanics and a procedural generation system that's really good. Definitely a must have game to play with friends on.
If you're looking for a fun but challenging climbing game to do with friends, this is it.

Am I crazy about it? Not really.
Is the dopamine hit insane? Yes.
Should you buy it? Sure, when it goes on sale.

I feel like an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because "what do I MEAN that spark?!?!" Like, what am I even talking about? And while trying to search my heart for the answer, I came to a nasty conclusion. The truth is that the deeper meaning doesn't really matter.

The truth is that when I see this game in my library, I don't want to start it up. The "heists" are lame, the characters are Whatever, the guns are meh, the soundtrack is totally forgettable, the combat is just Boring, the AI sucks, stealth is Meh... but I don't HATE it. I don't know why I don't hate it. Maybe because it's developed by a small group of passionate fans rather than a big dev team. I WANT to like it. But I don't.

Maybe some of these problems might be alleviated by playing more and testing more of the skill tree and tinkering with guns more, but like I said: I just don't want to start up the game.

If you're coming here looking for the golden age of Payday 2 like I was; I don't think you'll find it here.
I wish this game the best of luck.

Played on max settings.

• Really cool reflection of reality of living in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dystopian hellhole but living your life anyway amongst it; a SLUDGE LIFE.
  
• Fantastically weird; oozing with style and SLUDGE
  
• The menu being a laptop that you just throw and ditch is hilarious

• Because of how open this game is, you kinda have to find stuff to do. After a while, it gets really tiring because the basic "moving around" part of the game isn't really that interesting. I've only gotten one ending and frankly I feel like I'm done.
  
• Lack of interactivity; there's a lot more chaos i want to cause but I don't seem to be able to
  
• Tagging has a serious lack of variety
  
• Menu's style is good, but the options are a bit disorienting and odd; settings should autosave after you go to other menu

I love the world, the vibes, and the style on display, but the basic gameplay itself just really fails to be interesting enough to keep me around for longer than an hour. Combine that with the open world and lack of clear direction to the Next Interesting Thing, and I just can't recommend it. I got this for free; if I paid $15 for this, I'd feel like I got scammed. It's harsh but it's the truth.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk was an extremely strange and foreign experience. It's so esoteric it's hard not to laugh at times even though it paints a very brutal picture of some sort of mental illness.

One issue I have with the game is that I'm pretty sure that most of the BGs are just jpeg-crushed and color shifted pictures of reality. One of the images that confirmed this for me is when the girl looks down over the balcony at her apartments. The BG appears to be a famous picture of Ponte City Apartments in Johannesburg.
Another issue I have is that the manual text input part feels very lackluster; I couldn't put "maybe", I could only put Yes or No (it feels like). It really disconnected me from the experience.

I think you might find this game more valuable if you have mental illnesses similar to the character here. For me, it just felt kinda lackluster. I feel like I could learn about a similar experience to this just by reading some works about mental illness on ao3. Ultimately, I can't really recommend this title personally.

I have a background in difficult 2D platformers like N++ (348h) & Celeste (341h). I also have thousands of hours across Source Engine games, where I almost solely played bunnyhop & surf gamemodes. I also am a tier 5 rocket jumper on TF2 with over 2000 hours.

• You feel very in control at all times of your character
  
• Multiple paths exist for a lot of obstacles so you can take your pick

• Movement is still too floaty and basic; feels like default Unity movement
  
• No ability to fastfall really hurts the flow of the game
  
• SFX can be very repetitive when doing rapid sequences of boosters
  
• Sometimes really confusing on where to go since everything looks the exact same
  
• Some jumps are awkwardly precise when they shouldn't be because your hurtbox is weirdly placed
  
• Collectibles are just hidden awkwardly around the map instead of being extra challenges
  
• Gravity switching is way too numerous; despite playing VR, I felt nauseous at several points
  
• The rocket jumping feature is not satisfying

Deadcore really doesn't have a lot going for it. Especially in today's market where precision FPS games with heavy emphasis on movement are highly prevalent, Deadcore is just forgettable. The truth is that with most games like this, 99% of the time the experience you are looking for is one you find in community servers and mods.

Gooner game. Dunno how I forgot vanripper's a coomer. My fault I guess.
Also, runs live or die so heavily on RNG it's insane. The level designs consist of extremely tight corridors which further exacerbates the problem. Visibility is really bad thanks to all ghosts having the same color scheme.

Fun experience, but there's a lot of little details everywhere and the stage manager INSISTS on nagging you over and over again. I barely had any time to soak up the environments. It had a great sense of humor though. Highly recommend!

Settings

• Played on v1.0.11
  
• Black flashbang on
  
• Played on Rookie
  
• Equipment 1

• Gameplay loop is actually quite fun
  
• Gunplay can feel pretty good (except for shotguns)
  
• Dying still has a con (technically) but it's very minor and allows for you to take risks

• The game would be so much more intuitive and easier if it was first person. 2.5D just doesn't work well enough
  
  • Everything's based on your vision cone but it just feels sorta awkward. To scout ahead I usually use a sniper rifle with a medium-range scope and repeatedly zoom in so I don't get blindsided (which is awkward)
    
  • A lot of the atmosphere that makes games like these so tense and interesting is lost due to this disconnected worldview
    
  • Guns feel less natural to handle as a result, especially when they jam
    
  • This also results in sound cues being more simplistic and less spatial
• Issues with enemy AI are reoccurring
  
  • Enemies aren't affected by radiation; when you kill them, in order to loot them you just have to tank the rads. At least let me drag the body or something
    
  • Enemy AI feels really simplistic; often it's just them pushing the everliving ♥♥♥♥ out of you
    
  • Enemies are just better at night fighting than you are
• QoL is not great
  
  • Loot pools are ass; supplies that you need may just not spawn on runs. Since it's singleplayer, I don't think anyone would care if the loot pools bent in the player's favor a bit.
    
  • It's hard to tell what is total junk and what isn't. A rarity rating on items would help players who don't know the item pool well to determine if they should grab something
    
  • The game can track what items you need for crafting something, but doesn't update based on the items you have at home or in the field, which is SO awful.
    
  • General SFX for buttons is ANNOYING; menu music is grating. (how is this not fixed yet???)
    
  • Items will often overlap each other in your inventory when quicklooting
    
  • Skill upgrade notifications cover up valuable info during combat
    
  • In general using your PDA is just an awkward and unfriendly experience. It doesn't have a lot of the info I want
• Runs of the Forest area often feel very samey since there are very few landmarks that actually matter
  
• Shotguns are genuinely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash
  
• Game has a bad first impression
  
  • No tools to tell who is friend or foe. You only learn through losing
    
  • Game kinda just throws you in with zero explanation; it's a wiki game. A lot is intuitive if you've played STALKER before but as someone who's played that but not EFT I had some difficulty adjusting
    
  • It's not clear what people you need to talk to and why. Home Base doesn't have a map showcasing who's who so you kinda have to run around checking each NPC

I really like what Zero Sievert is trying to do, but ultimately I don't really think this perspective works well. It doesn't help there's also a bunch of other issues that should realistically be resolved by now. The game doesn't feel quite as finished as it should be. I don't regret playing Zero Sievert, but I can say that I don't recommend it to others if you're looking for a way to scratch a STALKER-shaped itch. It's just not the same.