Recent reviews by blake++

Fantastic campaign and great Spec Ops. A total classic. AI is still a bit off sometimes and your teammates still suck, but it's still good. Completed on Veteran in 5 hours.

NOTE: If the game bugs and has too high of a resolution, visit here: https://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/faq.htm

Thirty Flights of Loving, like Gravity Bone, is a narrative experience rather than a game. There is some interaction, but it's limited, and extremely linear. It's a great experience that leaves you totally confused and absolutely wanting more from this weird world. You are utterly starved of context, dropped into the end of someone's life as you go through the events they went through before they arrived at that point.

I am far too out of my depth to critique this in any meaningful way, but I will say I heavily enjoyed this experience. I don't know what it all means, but I recommend it.

• Environment, soundtrack, and vibes are stellar; game is oozing with style and imagination
  
• Strange but charming methods of storytelling and exposition; it'll stick with you, even though you don't know exactly what stuck
  
• Platforming sequences feel nerve-wracking but aren't punishing

• Extremely simple mechanics are introduced but game is too short to do anything with them, so they just kinda feel pointless
  
• Crashes when changing resolution and pressing escape again
  
• Mouse accel; can't turn off
  
• Character move speed is a bit fast in the first level
  
• Ends way too soon

If you like Jazzpunk, or you liked the trailer for Jazzpunk, or you just like the idea of this game, download it and play it real quick. At worst, you'll lose 15 minutes. It's truly a delight.

Warning for rose-tinted glasses here: This is a super nostalgic game for me; I played it back when it was free on Desura (I think).

How. How in the ♥♥♥♥ do you make a game like this so reliant on twitch aim and not include a sensitivity slider?? The ♥♥♥♥ are you smoking? Dennaton learned from Hotline Miami 1 and included a slider in Hotline Miami 2; How could you not learn from THEM and include one in your Hotline Miami Roguelike? I'm not changing my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Windows sensitivity just to play this game.

The developer is aware of this issue and has no plans to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1608640/discussions/0/3819658443212585620

I saw it in the trailer but apparently this game REALLY relies on slow motion which is so incredibly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring. It was boring in Katana Zero, it's boring here. I don't want to slow the game down. I want my adrenaline to rush. But the game is so designed around this mechanic existing, so enemies are much harder to deal with without it.

I am angry because we were so close to greatness here. I came here because Raycevick (YouTube content creator) made this game sound like a gift from the heavens, but having played it, I am sorely disappointed. I regret my purchase.

Cruelty Squad first presents itself as a wacky, cheap, and difficult Hitman-style game; the visuals are amateurish, the sounds are meh, the soundtrack sounds okay at best and bad at worst. You'll likely die about 8 times trying to complete the first mission. But then you learn that things you do in levels is actually permanent; when you come back, enemies & weapons respawn and enemies reappear, but your money, arsenal, and equipment persist throughout missions. With a unique death system of scaling difficulty and options per death, Cruelty Squad manages to make levels extremely multifaceted, requiring multiple playthroughs to fully explore the level and discover all its secrets. This creates unique decisions that the player has to make on how to best earn cash and build up their arsenal. As you make these decisions, you unintentionally read into the lore, and discover how all the seemingly unexplained gameplay mechanics actually fit together quite nicely. And then you realize that you actually really like the visuals, the sounds, and the soundtrack.

Cruelty Squad is a lot of things, but I will say that it is FUN. Figuring out how to properly play this game is probably most of the fun any casual enjoyer is going to have. You will likely die a lot, but it manages to not be frustrating. Until the last level of the first ending anyway.

Speaking of endings, Cruelty Squad has a lot of depth underneath the surface. There is a lot to uncover and a lot to do. If you find yourself enthralled by the world, the characters, and the general strangeness that is Cruelty Squad, I recommend you to continue looking deeper and trying to figure out all Cruelty Squad has to offer. As for me though, Cruelty Squad did not grab me enough for me to spend the amount of time necessary to legitimately discover all the oddities the game has to offer.

• Some menus hurt to look at
  
• One level, Fatberg Casino, arbitrarily has invisible walls. Why?
  
• Kaizos are still kaizos. Dumb unpredictable traps that the game pulls often. It's not clever, it's cheap.
  
• Weapon and equipment choices reset every time you launch the game

Despite my lack of interest beyond the first ending, I can wholeheartedly recommend Cruelty Squad. It's not a must-play, but I do think it's definitely a game avid gamers should pick up.

I took 6.3 hours to reach the First Ending.

I really did try to like this series. I played 2033 Redux all the way through, and upon playing an hour of this game, I am calling it quits.

Exodus begins with some light linear exploration leading into a boring typical action QTE and heavy action cutscenes which I am left out of. It follows up with some incredibly contrived dialog with admittedly stunning environments. And then I get shot trying to save an old lady and her grandson from dying, but I don't die surprisingly (this is important later). Then I get up, get handheld through some basic tutorial stuff with LOTS of transitional cutscenes and incredibly boring gameplay, and I don't really get to do anything interesting until I kick down the door to the base commander's office.

This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ captured my wife and gave the orders to kill two innocent people (and many more confirmed through dialog). But I don't kill him (it's a cutscene), just knock him out. I say hi to my wife, revealing that my dead friend's dogtags stopped the bullet that would've killed me earlier!! (The game expects me to have this emotional reaction like "oh he's watching over me" but it feels entirely undeserved and extremely cheesy. Immersion breaking.) But wait, the commander we thought we knocked out is actually still awake and starts fighting me for my gun! I end up accidentally firing, destroying the important looking electronics next to me, and then my wife knocks him away. He explains the basic gist of what's going on, and then attempts to alert his comrades before my wife actually knocks him out. And then after that?

WE DON'T KILL HIM. I get forced out of the room by a cutscene, and I do not get to put a bullet in his brain. We then head into the next area in which we get to kill all of his goons instead. (?????)
If you're new to this series, this may seem like a strange point to highlight, but I have killed so many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ people in Metro 2033. The fact that we don't kill this man who is very blatantly EVIL is so astonishing to me that I have to quit, uninstall the game, and leave a negative review.

I gave Metro my best shot, and really tried to like it, but I just can't. There's much better material out there.

• Played on Realistic
  
• Initially played with real body; turned off much later due to awkward interactions
  
• Seated mode (standing can be very taxing since a mission takes HOURS (in a good way))
  
• Virtual stock (Aim is incredibly shakey without it; still not great but)
  
• On Valve Index

• Exposition is heavy handed and really linear at first, but it quickly goes away
  
• Lots of cool features like your safe zone actually being a safe zone and properly persisting every item between loads
  
• Staying calm under pressure is very rewarded especially with how scary even basic combat can be
  
• The potential here is phenomenal; good takes on STALKER's base ideas with enemy design and atmosphere

• Gun cleaning is super cool but putting it into the vice to clean it is extremely wonky
  
• Index controls aren't spectacular and require a bit of getting used to, but ultimately I think they're pretty decent for what they are
  
• Zero human presence; there are pseudohumans, but they don't fill the same niche that other stalkers do in STALKER. World feels super empty, and I can't care for the lore because of it
  
• Managing items is a bit weird with the backpack system. Makes it hard to actually grab things unless you stay super organized and be very careful, which makes sense, but it becomes that much more of a chore.
  
• Opening drawers and cabinets is incredibly unintuitive and feels awful
  
• Dropping things can fall into the world if dropped at certain spots
  
• If your head turns, your body turns. This results in me looking where my gun is to grab my gun, but not grabbing it because my body turns with my head turning. This would be okay if the grab region was large, but it isn't, so there's a lot of moments where the immersion is ruined because you get surprised by an enemy but you cant grab your gun because you simply don't remember exactly where you need to grab to grab the gun.
  
• In seated mode, if you play in a chair with armrests (aka most computer chairs), accessing your pistol and your map is troubling, since the armrests block where you need to grab them from.

At a certain point, I just got tired of the game's annoying issues with VR that impact my experience. There's a sequel coming out in 2024, and I think everyone who was interested in this game should check that out instead.

• Played on Survival + Ranger Hardcore
  
• Crosshair off
  
• Hints off
  
• Max graphics; advanced PhysX

I was expecting a linear STALKER with how major fans talk up this game and talk about its similarity to STALKER. I expected that I would be missing some information about how the game is played due to turning off hints, but I was recommended the above settings by the accompanying Metro Discord community.

• Environments are delightfully interactable and fully featured. lots of little cool details; lots of it occurs via voice acting, which can be hit or miss
  
• There's a ton of little conversations here and there between characters that you can easily miss (that are actually interesting and not pointless drivel like other games)
  
• Visuals are fantastic
  
• Actual human vs human combat is pretty solid and reminiscent of STALKER in how dangerous it can be.
  
• Silhouettes, anomalies, etc are really reminiscent of STALKER
  
• Neat details of looting, like pushing corpses over to get access to pockets
  
• The later parts of the game where you are no longer handheld are pretty good. A bit tough to handle due to the sheer amount of enemies, but handleable and fun. Very linear though
  
• Scorpions are cool as ♥♥♥♥ and a super smart use of the flashlight

• QOL/Bugs
  
  • Boot up sequence takes you a full minute to get to the main menu. I'm not exaggerating.
    
  • Intro/end cutscene is 30 fps
    
  • There's the normal difficulty selection when you start a new game, but there's also Normal and Hardcore in the options. There is no explanation for this; I had to ask in the Discord
    
  • Subtitles are extremely large for no reason
    
  • In the mission where you get to the library, there is a trap that has an invisible trigger. It's debris falling from the library. There is no hint/signal anywhere that this is a trap, just kinda happens.
    
  • If you shoot lurkers as they come out of the tunnel and kill them instantly, they finish the animation of exiting the tunnel and THEN die. Lurkers also have issues with frequent random clipping into the ground, making them invincible when they approach you as your bullets don't hit them.
  
  
• AI & NPCs
  
  • Friendly NPCs dont walk/run as fast as you
    
  • NPC dialogue (so far) is tending to be on the CoD side of trying to be badass over realistic (STALKER does this too)
    
  • The voice acting is really bad at times (STALKER does this too)
    
  • Khan's (a friendly NPC in the game) mysterious shtick is just honestly really annoying lol
    
  • Often enemies will only attack you and not friendly AI, even when said friendlies are in the way between the monster and you
  
  
• Game & Enemy Design
  
  • Game begins with an intro where you climb up a rusty ladder which breaks and barely get caught in time. Not a good first impression unless you're trying to set the tone for a generic linear shooter (this is 5D foreshadowing rofl)
    
  • You are handheld by AI for almost every encounter in the first 3-4 hours of the game.
    
  • Red flashing constantly when you are immensely hurt. It doesn't stop until you get health. WHY?
    
  • This game is not immersive. Running from 15+ cops firing assault weapons at me and magically dodging them all as well as watching a friendly jump-stab a Nazi (that he could've shot) who was about to execute me is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Call of Duty tier ♥♥♥♥, not an "immersive shooter". It's about as immersive as Wolfenstein.
    
  • Melee hitreg is awful. Speaking of melee combat, if you sneak up on someone and try to backstab, it'll do the animation even though the regular melee is an instant kill. This can cause scenarios where the animation is screwing you over because it gives enemies too much time to potentially see you and blow your cover.
    
  • STEALTH: Not Good. The stealth AI is awful, and they're terrible at clearing a room; they seem to not be able to see you if you aren't in the path of their searchlight, which is serviceable if your stealth sequences are at night, but one stealth sequence was at sunset, and they definitely should've seen me but didn't. Also, there is a three minute (at best) uninterrupted stealth sequence where you have to sneak through the Communists' side of a warzone and then the Nazis' side of the warzone. It's awful and I had to exploit dumb AI in order to do it. There is no checkpoint for a very long time (much longer than what is normal for the game). Suppressors also don't make a noticeable difference on your ability to be stealthy (hello???).
    
  • The Librarians are cool in concept, but the effect it has of you having to memorize where the holes and doors are while one slowly stalks you and the other is flanking you is awful.

My difficulty options, while more immersive, did actually end up affecting my experience of the game. Here are some of the various issues I encountered that I am certain or at least believe stem from my setting selection.

• No UI showing for QTEs. i just had to spam M1, W, and E and guess one of them will do the trick lol
  
• I've had to look up multiple times how to do basic things like how to select my throwing knives. Can't do it though cuz no weapon wheel.
  
• You cannot aim down sights with the shotgun. This is only bad because you don't have a crosshair.
  
• Looting consists of mashing E everywhere; ammo and other resources don't stand out enough to be selective about where you press E.
  
• Friendly NPCs (whom you fight with a LOT) do not do as much damage as you (they do more like a quarter of the damage you do); it's generally a good idea to let them do most of the fighting (which isn't immersive) and stay a distance away to avoid wasting ammo, only using it to help yourself. This is most important in the end-game after you leave for the library due to there not being another ammo shop past this point. Had some pretty major close calls with ammo.
  
• Hold M and then press right click to bring up your HUD and ammo counts. I did not know this was a thing at all until the very end of the game.
  
• You can charge your flashlight by holding F and then clicking mouse 1. I didn't know this was a thing until I accidentally held F for too long.
  
• You cannot carry a third weapon. It says you can in the binds, but you can't due to the Ranger Hardcore difficulty.
  
• It appears that there's some sort of moral system in place; this is not made obvious to you if you are not familiar with the game already. I noticed it due to musical cues, but it's very easy to miss.

Metro 2033 is not STALKER. I'd say it's not even close enough comparatively for fans of STALKER's gameplay to enjoy it. What I will say is that it fills a middle ground if someone was put off by STALKER's sheer difficulty and slower-paced gameplay, but wanted to experience the atmosphere and ideas. I don't hate Metro 2033, but I definitely don't love it. If I want COD, I'd play COD. If I want STALKER, I'm playing STALKER.
People say that Metro: Last Light is just 2033 with a new story, so I think I'll be avoiding it and just moving onto Exodus.

Outcore initially shows promise as a "meta-game" of sorts where the game is based around your operating system instead of a world or level. Lumi is the main character, and you're supposed to assist her with unlocking her memories. I anticipated some sort of corruption plot to unfold due to hints from the trailer, but as far as I got, I only got hints of this.

Instead, the game quickly turns into a boring and floaty 2D platformer that makes many attempts at humor to engage the player (which usually aren't funny). Then it turns into some sort of pseudo-coding challenge (that feels weird and out-of-place) where you write a script for a bot to follow so it can accomplish a task. It's called an idle game, but if you actually try to idle to accomplish the optional bonus content, it caps out at 2000 coins (not enough lol; I idled for 9.5 hours so that's why my playtime is so high). Then it's back to platforming again, this time in a more open larger level where you talk to NPCs. It does a LOT of Undertale parodying, but none of it is done well.

I will say that some of the jokes are very funny and the star throwing teleport mechanic is interesting.

Ultimately, Outcore has a lot of ideas and most of them just aren't developed well enough. I'd recommend playing other games that will offer much more rewarding experiences.

Followed this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=732999296
Copied over music as well
Played on Hard skill

• Difficult; miniboss enemies are especially brutal and unforgiving
  
• Rewarded for playing a slow and methodical playstyle
  
• SFX from some enemies like the Undead can get repetitive
  
• Levels are intuitive to navigate
  
• Challenges usually tend to be interesting
  
• Regular guns (that have super variants) seem useless compared to their super counterparts? there's no point in equipping the regular shotgun or the regular nailgun once you have the upgraded version; EDIT: I later found on reddit that the original versions have no use or niche use, depending on who you ask. Some say that the originals are better suited for the audience back then, when everyone still aimed with keyboard, so weapons like the Super Nailgun that chew through ammo if you're not careful make the Nailgun a viable option.
  
• Shamblers have insane amounts of HP and a brutal instant ranged attack. i dont really know how to deal with them; edit, idk how the ♥♥♥♥ i was supposed to figure out that the shambler takes half damage from explosives. wtf. EDIT EDIT: I later found the lightning gun, making fights with them trivial. Fighting them without that weapon is a nightmare though
  
• Secrets can be hidden really well and often require unique parkour challenges to get to them
  
• The autosaves aren't actually saves? i quit the game and i just had zero saves. had to just manually load back into the level. just lost like 2.7 hours of progress i think lmao

Shortly after these notes, I stopped playing and returned after a week, continuing where I left off. After a couple of levels, I ended up discovering that I wasn't really having fun.

• I often felt like I had too many tools in my toolbag; Though I have 8 weapons, a few of them could be totally removed. The regular versions should upgrade into their Super versions, simply removing the regular versions entirely. The Axe is useless.
  
• I quickly found that it wasn't the combat I enjoyed, but the movement and the environments. Trying to speedrun a level by bunnyhopping while dodging enemies was probably the most fun I had playing.
  
• The save system is incredibly flawed and counterintuitive, although this could be due to the mod I installed.

While I did not enjoy my short time with Quake, I did enjoy a lot of its aspects. The environments, levels, and enemies are crafted wonderfully and with care, and I can see how each enemy plays a relatively unique role in a fight. The movement and movement options you have are flawless. The weapon designs for the Rocket Launcher, Grenade Launcher, Super Shotgun, Super Nailgun are spectacular.

However, speaking from a perspective of someone who wasn't even alive when Quake came out, I think the ultimate recommendation I can give to those who want to enjoy Quake is to enjoy what Quake spawned and appreciate its legacy. The combat just doesn't grab me like other shooter titles do (eg DOOM Eternal, ULTRAKILL). While I think some aspects of the combat are flawed, I think the combat as a whole is good; it's just not really my style.

If you want to know more about my perspective and what my favorite games are, I have plenty of reviews on my profile.