Recent reviews by blake++

Hotline Miami is an incredible top-down reflex shooter, focusing on extremely fast close-range fights and big combos. It's gritty, it's edgy, it's bloody, and it's so much fun. There's nothing quite like the adrenaline rush the gameplay can give you, and the euphoria resulting from you walking back over your bloodbath.
The story is confusing, but not at all necessary to understanding what you need to do.
The music is a perfect backdrop to your insane killing sprees and is perfectly scored, in addition to being (from the time) relatively unknown artists. You'll be listening to it far after you finish this game.
The graphics are just pixel graphics, but I think it's a perfect pairing for the overall themes of the series. Plus, they look decent, and they get the job done.
AMA in the comments about the game and I'll answer ASAP.

There's a thousand YouTube and Steam reviews praising this game, and for good reason. It's spectacular.

This series is definitely one of my favorites for good reason. 100% completion in 16 hours.

Since there's no achievements, I beat it on veteran. Joined the mile high club.

A really short but imaginative and terrifying game about being trapped in the bottom of a coffin at the bottom of an ocean of blood.
The game plays delightfully with your senses, trying to always leave you feeling like something bad could happen.
There are jumpscares, but they're very well earned, and are enhanced by the atmosphere created throughout your playtime.
However, I feel like there could've been more management mechanics in your coffin.
But definitely pick this one up if you're looking for some short and sweet horror.

Time shown is time to 100% complete the game, all achievements (5.9 hours).

Pros:
-Humor still holds up
-Lot of witty jokes; lots of dumb fun ones as well
-Fun storyline to follow

Cons:
-♥♥♥♥♥♥ options; not able to change resolution a bunch, tinker any other settings. Really bad. Full screen also causes instability, even moreso than the base game already has.
-Press esc to exit fullscreen but not reenter it.
-Cannot esc to menu out of cutscenes or skip them. Why? It makes returning to get all the bios and extra achievements a chore.
-Bios (aka right click on a character and get a short snippet about them in a menu) can be ridiculous to find since some characters show up for such ridiculously short amounts of time; also not a lot of hints towards their location (especially bad in chapters with tons of paths and characters)
-Cannot choose solely ending cutscenes (WHY)
-Cannot select intermission cutscenes (WHY)
-Crashes all the time. All. The. Time. Thankfully, I didn't lose any save data at all.

Despite all these problems, it's good to have a collection of these legendary games easily available like this. Whether it's the best it could be, it's the best version of these games available. I think.
Buy on a VERY heavy sale.
Best played in a Discord call with friends where they pick choices as well.

Biggest reason for not recommended review is because of the Epic exclusive deal. Bought this off of a reseller for that reason. Played the Ultimate Deluxe Edition or whatever it's called. Didn't play DLC outside of Arms Race because I got so bored.
If released without exclusivity, I would still give it a not recommended, because it doesn't improve on BL2 enough to warrant that.

Pros:
-Comedy was alright. Maybe its because I'm a zoomer but it was a lot funnier than BL2
-Gameplay has been polished much more than the previous entry; short intro sequence, less escort missions compared to BL2, less "wait for person to get to place". way more replayable IF the story was any good
-Some of the sidequests can genuinely tug at the heartstrings (Grace's birthday party) or be hilariously funny (Microtransaction Hell)
-Really solid soundtrack. Favorites: sanctuary theme, im looking for a specific human head, ava's on the case, dark water
-Less stupid overpowered guns that are locked behind quest rewards like bl2 did (orphan maker, some moxxi slag weapons). if you really want something locked behind a quest reward, you have the crazy earl rewards shop
-No slag (thank ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ christ)
-Can fast travel without going through loading screen within a map
-Sliding and mantling are good additions
-Eridium's use being expanded is awesome
-AI can revive you
-Arms Race is a cool idea
-Claptrap has less of a presence than the previous game, and manages to actually be funny and annoying rather than just annoying

Cons:
-Zero endgame content
-Bad story. Antagonists weren't awful but were not as interesting as bl2. troy > tyreen
-Typhon Deleon is the only really likable and multifaceted character introduced. Some other characters have been flanderized to where it feels like they are only a vehicle for the story
-Way too easy. no raid bosses are hard; all done either on the first or second try, with ♥♥♥♥ gear. running a moze banjo bear build but without a good shield.
-So few raid bosses compared to bl2. Where's the content? Takedowns suffer the same fate.
-Ava sucks. It's another case of "we have this very flawed character but we forgot to make her likable". Characters die for her sake while other characters conveniently forget the fact that she caused those deaths
-Mayhem modifiers are simply an inconvenience. Why does mayhem 11 drop less loot?
-Not as optimized as it could or should be
-Dialogue from vault hunter every time you come into a new area (why)
-Anoints aren't terrible in concept but are lacking in execution; a lot of them are way too OP for their own good
-Borderlands series STILL has its trademark awkward dialogue, both basic and intense, that ruins any immersion you had and slows the pace to a crawl.
-QA testing was not done for Iron Bear fitting under many doors and openings it *should* be able to fit through.
-Takedown at the Guardian Breach is difficult for all the wrong reasons
-Arms Race: Too easy to skip immediately to mayhem 10 with the loot you get

It could be my build that's way too OP, but i should not be able to get to level 72, do an easy farm on any mayhem level for electric banjo, and obliterate every single boss. It's just bad balancing that's inexcusable (especially in 2021, 2 years after this game came to PC, where developers can easily push patches to any platform). I don't mind broken builds, as long as you have to put in a lot of work to get that build working.

If you're new to Borderlands, buy BL2 with all the DLC when it's on a big sale. Don't pick this up, it's not really that worth it.

PROS:
-Delightfully simple
-Impeccable soundtrack
-Fun story with a delightful atmosphere
-Lots of personality plus a great sense of humor
-Unnamed levels are really cool exploration pieces
-Really satisfying to find all the locations on the map
-The Tower and Final Challenge are awesome vertical sequences
-Escort mission is such an excellent idea
-Game is great at challenging you in the final sections by making you use what you've learned in isolation together and in harder sections
-Ton of cool mechanics that build on the idea of flipping and the basic gameplay mechanics
-Reward for getting all trinkets is really cool and cute
-Offers further challenge in the form of time trials
-Custom level support + built in level editor
-JUST RECENTLY got an update where as a direct result of the source code being available, the game received a ton of QoL stuff (despite it being an 11 year old singleplayer game)

CONS:
-Veni Vidi Vici (one of the hardest optional sequences in the game) is too easy to get to despite being super early in the game
-Some checkpoints level design causes you to accidentally hit other checkpoints or go to other areas due to stuff like conveyors or just positioning (cuckoo x backsliders)
-Brass Sent Us in Under the Top is really stupid for forcing you to stay off screen but the cycle keeps going offscreen, so you have to estimate how far along it is
-Too much visual noise in the flip lines area; rectangles in background need to be more transparent
-Trinkets (optional collectibles) don't have names that are puns on the areas you find them in for organization's sake and also for cool puns

I played this game all the way through once before on a 3DS on a road trip from Texas to Tennessee, and it was an absolute blast. Decided to pick it up again recently just for the sake of having it on Steam. Got all 20 trinkets and explored the map in its entirety. There's a bunch of optional challenges you could do, but I was satisfied with the campaign + trinkets.

Short, but well worth the money. A must-have for any platformer fan, or just a fan of games. Pick it up when you can!

Apparently it's a really good platformer according to a lot of people.
I just don't think so. Played light and dark world finishing Salt Factory, and just wasn't having fun.
Not because of the difficulty; I perfected HM1, HM2, done LASO runs on Halos, and am in the process of iron manning every single Celeste chapter; and I'm almost done. I KNOW difficulty.
But I also know frustration. This game is just frustrating. I had fun playing all those difficult games, but I did not have fun playing this one.
Meatboy is a nightmare to control. He slips and slides all over the place. And the worst part is that most of this game doesn't revolve around long sections of going really fast; it's usually slow and precise. It feels like they made a game around a character that it doesn't work for.
Other characters don't resolve the issue (as far as I got). They're either clones of Meatboy with slight changes, or completely awful to control (worse than Meatboy) like Naira or whatever the fish's name is.
Environmental danger hitboxes like saws and salt have hitboxes that seem to extend outside what the actual geometry looks like, resulting in deaths that feel like they aren't my fault but the game's.

Don't really have much to say unlike my other reviews. Game isn't fun.

After getting my save corrupted in Fallout 3 (which happens every time I try to play a Bethesda game), I got so sick of it. It happened with New Vegas, it happened with Skyrim, and it happened again with 3. Bethesda games are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash at actually working. So I decided to just play another RPG hopefully made by a company that isn't just making houses of cards and calling them games, where the slightest issue will ruin your entire save file.
I remembered that I had STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels in my library. I decided to finally give them a shot. And boy, am I glad I did because STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is an excellent immersive simulator that still holds up today. Despite a couple of issues, it remains as one of the best RPGs I've ever played.
Best of all? I experienced zero crashes, no save corruptions, no softlocks, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

MODS USED:
Zone Reclamation Project (+SoC Script and Sound Fixes)
Absolute Nature
Absolute Structures
Modified Actor.ltx to raise the height of the player to be more eye level with other NPCs

OPTIONS:
Maxed graphics
No crosshair
Turned off music
Turned off antialiasing
Played on Master

As another member of the Zone, an area surrounding Chernobyl after the nuclear reactor explosion, you play as an unnamed STALKER (a person residing in the Zone illegally). You wake up with amnesia, and the only objective on your PDA: Find Strelok. Kill Strelok.

COMBAT
--
STALKER is an immersive sim;, and one thing you immediately discover in STALKER is that you die *really fast.* Headshots are instant kill, and all NPCs have about as much HP as you do. Cover-based shooting and quick thinking is a must. You have to constantly stay on your feet in firefights and anticipate what the enemy might do, and catch them out in the open. Mostly, you'll want to go for headshots, as you won't find a lot of ammo and enemies can take quite a few bullets before going down. Luckily, there's a stagger system in place, where certain shots will stagger enemies, allowing you to line up a headshot. This is easier said than done, considering most firefights will involve you in you or a group plus you versus another group.
Weapons have certain ammo types that they work with, as well as certain weapons having ammo types that are best for certain situations. You can switch between them on the fly, allowing for different decisions based on the type of enemy you're fighting. Ammo types aren't labelled for gameplay purposes and instead for realism purposes (aka GP-23 ammo is 5.59x45mm i think), so you'll need to learn which ammo types go with which weapons. You learn it over time pretty easily, and the icons are different for types of ammo so it's easy to find while looting bodies and stashes.

AI
--
Human enemies are quite intelligent for the most part.. They have tactics, and mostly stay under cover unless to change position or fire at you. They'll properly hide behind cover to decrease their hitbox as much as possible to avoid dying. They'll flank you, or rush you at the same time to catch you off guard behind cover. A couple of times, I swore they waited until they heard my reload to push me, just so they could catch me while I'm not ready. All the fights vs humans are very involved, as its usually you vs a group. There's a lot of decisions to make, which makes for very engaging gunfights.
Animals and mutant enemies have the most realistic-feeling AI. Dogs will run around in circles to avoid gunfire, and hunt in packs often. If you shoot one dog out of a group, sometimes it'll scare the other dogs away and sometimes not. Different types of mutants will act differently when attacking. Some choosing to stay put and others moving quickly into darker spots to ambush. Of course, since this is a game from 07, sometimes you can exploit either AI to your benefit, which hurts the immersion.

INVENTORY
--
In STALKER, you have a set weight limit of 50kg, with one late-game piece of equipment allowing you to up it to 70kg. 50kg sounds like a good bit, but keeping a full arsenal for different situations, plus plenty of health and antirad items, as well as food, different weapon attachments, and artifacts means that you soon will find out you don't have as much as you thought. Often, you'll come into difficult decisions where you may have to sacrifice a great weapon in order to proceed while under your weight limit. These types of decisions add to the gameplay.
While your weight limit is definitely a limit, it's a soft limit. This means that you can carry 10kg more than your weight limit, but suffer severe detriments to stamina and stamina recovery. You'll sometimes want to carry above your weight limit so you can mule weapons back to the trader if the path is mostly safe. Once you hit 10kg over your weight limit and beyond, you will not be able to move though.

On the topic of inventory, I'll talk about artifacts. Artifacts are various items produced by anomalies in the Zone. You're able to equip the items, but they often come with both buffs and nerfs. Such as, one will give you bullet damage resistance BUT you'll constantly gain radiation unless you mitigate it with another artifact. While I did not use this system to its fullest extent in my playthrough as I should've, it can make the game a lot easier or harder depending on your artifact combination.

You can also equip a variety of armor and suits that protect against the elements, physical damage, or both.

STALKER also has durability. For armor, this affects the potency of its buffs to your stats (such as, a radiation suit that sustains damage will slowly get worse and worse at deflecting radiation as durability goes down). For weapons, this can affect your damage and accuracy (I think). This does not affect artifacts.

STALKER's humans often carry weapons on them with plenty of ammo. Except for when you loot their bodies, the ammo they expended was just enough to only give you a few bullets. While this isn't the best for realism, it's done for gameplay balance. You'll want to loot pretty much all enemies you kill, as the ammo you can get from them is invaluable.

TRAVEL
--

STALKER lacks a fast travel system. Instead, any place you want to go to, you'll have to walk/run there. While this sounds like a pain in the ass, I was not bothered by it. With the aliveness of the Zone (enemy patrols, packs of animals, radiation pockets, etc), each trip to a place will feel slightly different. You can also get artifacts to boost your endurance, so you can just run everywhere without much trouble at all.
You'll also come across random barriers, various sidequests, and random events that will help keep you entertained and give you rewards.

HORROR
--
Yeah, this game is a horror game (at times).
In the Zone, you'll often find yourself going on underground expeditions going through quiet tunnels, abandoned buildings, run-down laboratories, etc. With anomalies, mutants, and other STALKERs occupying these grounds, you'll find yourself terrified during these expeditions.
For example, you'll be walking through a quiet corridor in an underground lab. The hiss of a pipe two rooms away echoing through the maze-like hallways makes you think there may be someone or something over there. It could just be machinery. Maybe an anomaly. It could be a fellow STALKER. Worse, it could be a mutant, lurking in the shadows, so far removed from anything normal. Then, you hear a clatter. A box, dropped in the room ahead. You can barely peer into it; with no nightvision on your suit and all you have is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flashlight, you have no clue what you're getting into.


CONTINUED IN COMMENTS BECAUSE STEAM LIMITS THE AMOUNT OF CHARACTERS YOU CAN HAVE

Broken servers full of persistent cheaters on MP, a mediocre campaign carried by its latter half that does not manage to encourage movement in its gameplay and rather cover-based shooting.
Campaign's mechanics are introduced in one level and then discarded the same level, even though there was so much more they could pull out of those concepts. Master difficulty is just stupid and encourages even more cover-based shooting, while Hard is way too easy for the bosses.
Movement mechanics still need polishing to make it feel more consistent. Does not feel intuitive but you can definitely learn it to become great at it.

I really did like this game. But instead of keeping the toggle to turn off the scenes which contains depictions of suicide done directly by the player, they felt the need to ♥♥♥♥ over old customers by removing these scenes entirely.
I'm not any sort of SJW-hater or /pol/tard. But ♥♥♥♥ me, this is just absolutely idiotic. Keep the toggle and stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ people over who want the product who preferred it's inclusion and weren't offended by it.

Do not buy this game.