Recent reviews by horactix

halo 1 was too slow and tedious but halo 3 was quite good especially in co-op

quite fun until you get to xen then it's crappy

Good port of a legendary game. Only negatives are the lack of customized controls (Konami confirmed a fix soon) and how long it took to bring more Metal Gear to Steam.
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Unfortunately, nowadays you have GEEKS that want to drown everything in 4k and ultra-realistic poopgraphics using emulation. Even this game from 1998. But where are those good old fashioned pixels, on which we used to rely?
Lucky there's a Metal Gear Guy.
Also I frickin' hate Kojima worshippers. They're like a bunch of Megs.

Touhou is a game about “Evil Eye Sigma” - the main character and protagonist, a flying eyeball tank that shoots missiles and bombs killing as many small flying Japanese girls as possible.
So why am I playing as the loser knife lady when I should be playing as Evil Eye Sigma?

Fire Emblem Awakening is the 13th mainline entry in the Fire Emblem series developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. It was intended to be the last Fire Emblem game in the series as a sendoff to fans- and the quality really shows that they put everything they had into this one.
The gameplay's the strongest its ever been, with breakable weapons and randomized enemy abilities challenging you to adapt with new tactics on the fly. Dark magic might be a bit overpowered and axes a little underpowered- but every class has their place in Normal and Hard mode, which are the ideal ways to play Fire Emblem anyway.
Graphically, this game is outstanding. Diving into a 3d combat environment whenever one of your units engage an enemy, coupled with dazzling effects and potent sound effects makes every battle feel like it has meaning. The artwork is marvelous especially considering earlier games' design.
Awakening has a brilliant and memorable cast of characters- with exceptional voice acting which gives them much more life than other characters in the series. The main characters, Robin and Chrom showcase an exceptional dynamic between mysterious sorcerer and charismatic upcoming lord. The supporting characters are also heavy hitters- with some of my favorites being: Lissa, Gregor, Frederick, Priam(holy crap is that Solid Snake?!!), Owain and the greatest fictional character ever created, Donnel Tinhead.
Anna is also finally playable in this one- and frankly she has the best design in this game as well. I still remember the first time I played her paralogue mission, writing her off as surrounded and dead before she dodged every single attack and obliterated the barbarians.
The plot is great, and an allegory of defeating one's inner self. Sure, this game uses that trope of "friendship and bonds will defeat the evil guy blah blahh blah" during the final boss, but this game came out in 2013 so that's before all the cringey anime ruined that kind of story. The "important" choices between cutscenes don't matter much, but I don't think Intelligent Systems was ever going to make this game branch out their plot so differently anyways.
The DLC is fantastic as well, the introduction of the Dread Fighter class and Limit Breaker put on Donnel made him annihilate Apotheosis, which was a tremendous undertaking in of itself.
I still stand by the statement that Awakening is the best Fire Emblem game- and the ONLY Fire Emblem game I would recommend to any gamer at all. There's just so much to enjoy.

Definitely not as impressive as its predecessor, Genso Wanderer Reloaded. If you are looking for a dungeon crawler game, PLAY RELOADED FIRST. And/or if you are looking for an impressive Touhou fangame, PLAY RELOADED FIRST.

Now, if you REALLY enjoyed Reloaded, you could play this game, but it feels like an expansion pack rather than a true prequel, which is definitely not worth $35- they reuse so many assets can you really call this sequel?

It sounds good at first too- It's Genso Wanderer, but you have an Army. And you deploy them all. And you can play as any character you recruit. WAOW AWESOME! Until it takes 1 minute for everyone to finish their attacks- snowballing into at least an hour for every repetitive nothingburger dungeon. Then you have to grind so your Army members aren't useless for each dungeon after you beat the "Lotus Labyrinth". Then you begin to contemplate why the developers thought the Army thing was a good idea. Maybe it could've been executed better as Touhou Fire Emblem Tactical RPG, but as a dungeon crawler it makes me want to vomit.

Also they replaced Reisen's Genso Wanderer VA- what the heck, man?

POSTAL 2 is pretty much GTA but if it was actually fun. Sure, it doesn't have pretty graphics or the soulless and godless city of Los Angeles, but you can pee gasoline, fly with a shovel, and throw a diseased cow head into a gay nightclub.
The value to cost ratio of this game is a steal especially when you consider POSTAL 2 is $10 normally- or $1 during a sale.
I would rather play my $1 POSTAL 2 100 times more instead of a $60 Call of Duty or $20 earthbound inspired rpg any day of the week.

win 5 games in a row, feel nothing
lose 5 games in a row, uninstall
many such cases

My bias towards Metal Gear does not stop me from addressing the elephant in the room of MGSV:Ground Zeroes. Price. When this game came out, it was marked as $40. Now, 4 copy and paste forgettable missions, 1 main mission (around 10-20 minutes to 100%), and 2 fan service missions are NOT worth all that much. Now, in 2023, it's $20. That's the same price of The Phantom Pain- which is a completed game! Well, actually it's not, but it's still plenty of more game than this one! It's a bit more sensible than $40 but come on, this game should've been $5 on release. It should be $5 right now. Even better, it should've been free. But KONAMI needs their money- understandable, whatever.
With that being said, I feel like this game's story had a bigger impact on me than all of Phantom Pain. Even though it's only one mission, the heavy emotion displayed by Big Boss, Chico, Paz and Miller (fiddle!!) is so poignant that you really felt you lost something- even if you didn't play Peace Walker (which most people didn't, lol). Also it has MGSV gameplay and graphics so that's an instant win.
Final verdict: Get it on sale. Or through the definitive experience.

Great game overall, plenty of personalization, customization and replayability- as well as unexpectedly amazing music.
The freedom this game grants you to achieve your objectives is unbelievable, in a good way.
The fights (if you decide to get in one) are unexpectedly fast-paced and punchy.
Online multiplayer with friends is a chaotic mess and it's terrific.
If you can overlook the slightly saturated 2D graphics, then you've got an extremely entertaining game on your hands.