Recent reviews by soulFire

_very_ short (~8 hours) but packs a lot into those 8 hours. Visually stunning for sure, linear story and combat/puzzles are quite basic throughout, but a fun (short) ride nonetheless.

slow start, but it gets better. In many ways I liked Forbidden West more than the first game; Zero Dawn; combat/mechanics, enemies/AI, environments, etc. have all leveled up a bit from the first game... some of the battles and bosses are ridiculously fun. Everything improved, that is, except the story. It gets better after reconnecting with legacy characters, of which only a handful were memorable anyway, and then learning of the Zeniths.

There was a bit more wonder in the first game learning about the true nature of Aloy and the world she'd been 'born' into, discovering what happened to the 'ancients' and exploring post apocalyptic ruins, etc. but story aside, FW is an awesome sequel, another testament to the devs talents and dedication, worth playing whether having played the first game or not. Though if you care much about story you'll likely want to visit the first game for a primer on Aloy and the Horzion 'universe' despite FW lengthy recap.

It's important to note as some of the PS ports are rough out of the gate, HFW is very well polished and optimized for PC here. the game ran smoothly on highest settings with a 2080 Ti.

Really enjoyed this game, probably in my top 10 favorite games of all time... very much looking forward to the sequel release for PC and hoping my 2080 Ti can still handle it.

fun! ...aaaand addictive. Controller recommended, but keyboard works fine for me.

Notes:
* Playtime: There's a good 20+ hours of main mission/story, and easily another 20+ to max level. Haven't played any coop yet, but single player is still a blast, and while you'll be carrying you team bots, they are more helpful than hindrance.
* Graphics: Seems to be pretty well optimized for PC, runs smooth with high setting, ray tracing and DLSS (on 2080 TI). In game graphics are nice, character animations are some of the best I've seen.
* Anti-cheat: "Easy Anitcheat", like they picked the first anti-cheat out of the phone book, rears it's ugly head again and is still the absolute garbage you expect, tainting everything it touches; causing the game to crash randomly and without explanation, typically false flagging and choking on common stuff like RAM RGB lighting. So be prepared to go poking around in task manager killing random drivers/services it thinks are suspect until the game runs. Sadly it's probably there to stay even in single player due to leader boards and whatnot. Hard to fault the game though, the devs and designers did a great job here, but all it takes is one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in a suit to buy into the whole "easy anti-cheat" scam and risk all steam reviews gone bad for reasons unrelated to the game itself. Unfortunately this complaint is necessary; if we don't complain, it won't change. And sometimes it works; Id software took it right back out of DOOM Eternal after being bombarded with complaints, but not all developers are as smart as Id.

yup

yup!

I've put a lot of hours into the game so clearly I must be enjoying it right? After all Gunfire games is 'inspired by the overwhelming positive response'... I can't help but picture Stuart Smally looking into a mirror and proclaiming "and gosh darn it, people like me!" Or Sally Field, bless her heart, tearing up on stage "you like me, you really like me!"

Well, I'm here to knock the devs down a few pegs, because while the game has gotten a few things right, mainly those established from the first game, it also has some major flaws, showstoppers even, starting early on in the game, but becoming painfully apparent, after investing over a hundred hours, severe enough to put the game down forever, and worse, evidence of how much Gunfire games truly despises it's player base. All while thanking them from the bottom of their hearts? $$$

As a 'souls-like' game, Remnant is meant to be challenging! Even on the easiest mode, it can be. There are a few needlessly annoying and cheesy boss moves, but for the most part there is an equal measure of 'reward' in their defeat; the feeling of overcoming a difficult challenge with patience, preparation, and persistence. This is the challenge/reward balance that From Software has all but perfected now. A formula that's difficult to copy, but when the devs are intentionally trying to punish the player, not for making mistakes mind you, but simply for having the balls to play their game, they might as well be shooting their own feet.

These are not glitches or bugs, these are intentional decisions made by the devs, presumably to 'challenge' the player... more likely to turn them off from the game, and perhaps all Gunfire, forever. Perhaps these issues might have been avoided had someone else written this review, or if I had watched You Tube walk-through of every section of map before entering, effectively eliminating whatever joy from discovery remains. Though the purpose of the map randomization seems to be to discourage such walk-throughs? While 'procedurally generated maps' sounds like a cool feature, this game is NOT actually procedural, and the randomized maps serve absolutely no other legitimate purpose... in an otherwise entirely linear game!?!

* Because the maps in the game are 'randomized'; certain players will get certain bosses and certain items while others will get different ones. If you're looking for a specific boss or item that isn't in your game 'roll', you're SOL. They do have an 'Adventure' mode that, in theory, should allow you to re-roll a specific world map so you can find the bosses and items you didn't get, and in theory, take rewards back to your campaign. This is not entirely true, and in fact, in the most crucial aspects, it's entirely false. Yes, you can keep re-rolling worlds until you get one with a starting point that is likely to contain the boss/item you seek. And yes, you can sometimes keep the boss items dropped... However, for some reason this does not include 'quest items'. Of course it's these quest items that in many cases unlock some of the most desirable items, especially for creating 'builds'. Random items are not rewarded in Adventure mode, such as unlocking the pulse rifle, and rewarded with scraps instead... seriously?

* Let's take the 'Tranquil Heart' relic as another example. To acquire this item, one must first get a roll of the N'Erud map most likely to contain the required room/boss/item. One must then trade this item twice in two other worlds in order to acquire the 'Tranquil Heart'. Rather than simply grabbing the quest item from adventure mode, one must roll a new campaign from scratch, then pray that the new campaign roll contains the proper versions of all three worlds. Including defeating the mandatory Labyrinth in-between, that's about 80% of the game to replay. That's if they're lucky enough to have gotten the right roll and they won't know until well into the campaign again. If at any point during the new campaign they discover some essential link between worlds to acquire the Relic does not exist? They must start from scratch all over again. Think about the odds of rolling all three worlds and how many times one must potentially replay, from scratch, the campaign in order to acquire it? "Replay-ability" is one thing... that's just plain torture.

* As with any souls-like game, the game doesn't provide any hand holding about where to go or what to do beyond a map marker showing the location to progress in the main 'story' line. There's a lot to do and find in between, and the game provides few hints about what to do or where to go. That's a good thing, and makes exploration interesting. There's a healthy dose of trial and error in solving puzzles and unlocking items. However, the whole point of offering the player trial and error challenges is that eventually the player must succeed to progress. Elden Ring is infamous for letting the player make mistakes, often devastating ones. Even Elden Ring had the novel idea of providing a 'Save Game' feature, so that if players make a mistake devastating enough, they can go back and try again. Remnant decided to forego save functionality while simultaneously introducing vendors that will take critical quest items from you without any warning or explanation and they're gone... forever. The Nightweavers web for example, seems to accept any random quest item in your inventory and usually gives you some other random item in return. When you first encounter the web, it's not clear what it is, except that it looks very much like another web nearby which is a portal. So naturally, one might assume this too is a portal that requires a key which could be any of the odd quest items in your inventory. Nope! The web just gobbles it up without warning and the item is gone... for good! What if that item happened to be that crucial quest item that had to be in that special roll of N'Erud and two subsequent worlds to trade twice to get that 'Tranquil Heart' relic needed for your build? Would you have felt challenged? Regretful for making a mistake you somehow should have known better? Or would you feel outright robbed and cheated by the game for absolutely no reason nor fault of your own?

* It gets worse... I'd love to know the reason behind really bad decisions like teleporting you out of a boss arena just before you can pick up the loot drop. Is this supposed to be funny? Again, this is not a glitch or a bug, this is an intentional decision made by people developing the game. I even 're-rolled' the world to fight this particular boss again, and literately the second I'm in range of the loot, I get teleported out of the arena, and there is no way to enter it again! How is this challenging or rewarding or even remotely funny (if that's what the devs intended?). The only explanation here is some sick sadistic bastard(s) in their midst... who must genuinely despise those playing their game.

* I might chalk this up to poor play-testing, but unfortunately these issues are so abundant throughout the game, they can only be intentional. With certain NPCs and bosses, there are choices which have distinctly different outcomes, often in terms of the rewards given. I can live with whatever choice I make given whatever information is provided, but when the choice, or wrong choice, is made for me because the game tricks you, it's punishing the player for no reason. It's not as though the game is tricking you with some clever puzzle or gimmick you should be able to figure out or know better some how... it's with dumb stuff like button UI that isn't labeled and tells you nothing about what it does. So when one NPC asks you if you want to kill or save another NPC, and you've made your decision, but clicking on the button does the opposite of your decision, again for no apparent reason, that is nothing but piss poor game design or just plain spiteful.

A truly phenomenal game. There are dozens of reasons why this game has won dozens of awards. The menu system isn't one of them though. The weapon and crafting menus are far more difficult than they need to be and too often distract from the game and especially combat. This is perhaps made worse by the PC port. Poor menu design seems to plague even the best modern games, as it seems the designers would be out of a job if it were not for perpetually reinventing the most basic of game-play elements... and so we witness another rebirth of the 'weapon cross' and 'crafting grid'? The level of convolution here has to be experienced to be believed.

Still, it could be (and has been) said that some of that difficulty is intentionally built-in and can be alleviated somewhat through 'holster' upgrades and practice. But it’s frustrating enough early on that it frequently interrupts an otherwise highly immersive game and makes it more difficult to play the way it was intended. I'd strongly recommend reviewing some key-bindings when this thing starts biting you... at least you can do that.

Aside from that the game is absolutely flawless in every regard, often groundbreaking, and deserves a much more thorough and thoughtful review than just drawing attention to it’s Achilles heel. Again, along with those dozens (hundreds?) of awards are just as many glowing reviews, and it would be futile for me to attempt to augment them here. Thus my recommendation is to skip them all and just experience the game for yourself. So this ‘review’ is more for the developers’ eyes than their audience... and I'm probably beating a dead horse in that regard as well.

Without exception though, a must play game.

NOTE: Pay attention to your VRAM usage in the graphics menu! There are many bad reviews on steam mainly because the game is crashing a lot. I gave Hogwarts a horrible review for the same reason, and they still haven't fixed that disaster. And Hogwarts isn’t ½ the game TLoU is... so I get it, bad ports and bad optimizations equals bad reviews. So, before you play, go to the graphics options and make sure you're VRAM usage is within the provided limits. I too started crashing every few minutes in the "Highway Exit" map, then noticed my VRAM usage was beyond the recommended limit. After reviewing those settings, using DLSS, I was able to use ‘Ultra’ settings for all but character textures, which had me perfectly pegged at the 11GB limit for my 2090 Ti. The game ran smoothly without crashes from then on with no noticeable framerate drops even with VSYNC (and FPS cap) off. Thankfully, at least the pregame options menus are phenomenal as well, and serve as a great example of how graphics settings should be provided, especially that VRAM bar graph! Pay attention to it to save yourself a ruined game experience here! It's one of the most beautifully rendered games out there, so a little extra effort up front getting the graphics settings right will be worth your time.

Well, at least this game will almost certainly become famous for the goofiest, laziest, boss creature ever to be ill-conceived. I don't mean the boss is lazy, though it does waddle in circles like a giant clam on stilts. I mean the developers were lazy in every aspect of its design, animation, conception, reason for existing, etc. Yes, I'm referring to the (soon to be) infamous 'HamburGroot'; a 15-foot-tall stick-figure Groot with a giant Portabella mushroom burger head... with chicken feet?

Clearly the whole 'genetic mutation' theme was provided more out of necessity as an excuse for poor design than it was required as a plot point. "This thing looks stoooopid, man!" "Dude! Who cares! It's a mutant!"

To be fair, the laziness and incompleteness is at least consistent throughout the creature and player design/animations… In a dimension of selective physics and anatomy, where feet suddenly become disconnected from the ground and magically hover and slide into place after stiffening into '1st position'. But even among the rest of the goofball ensemble of this game, or every enemy in every other indie game in existence for that matter, HamburGroot 'sticks’ out.

The creature looks like it might have the usual leg and arm joints, as a two-year-old could draw them, but apparently even those must have been too much for the animation team, apparently abandoning the bone concept altogether to let it waddle around like a scarecrow in a full body cast... made of seaweed? In fact, the creature is so pitiful and pathetic, that when it came time to try and give this thing some kind of attack (and to avoid complete humiliation from players and fellow designers alike), the only possible solution was 'blindness'. And perhaps deafness as well since I don't recall this 15-foot-tall walking wood pile making so much as a peep...

Yup, as soon as you see the HamburGroot, you don't. Somehow, out of nowhere, it instantly blinds the player with a green fog.... spores(?)… which lasts for an inordinate amount of time, leaving the player with no other strategy than to waste ammo into the green void. As an added attack effect, and to achieve complete disorientation and incapacitation of the player, the fog then seems to somehow attach itself to the player, so that even as the player turns their body to attempt to gain bearings, the fog turns with them... making it impossible to tell if your character is even moving at all. I think the devs literally just place a semitransparent green plane in front of the players FOV to create the ‘spore fog’ effect… just insanely lazy. You literally see nothing but green; no breaks or density in the fog, no floors or walls or any surroundings. Yet it is certainly highly effective at blocking the player from ever seeing the pathetic HamburGroot itself... as they are simultaneously tasked with somehow defeating it.

Occasionally, while 'battling' HamburGroot, random green lines appear in the sky or orange circles appear on the ground. I have no idea what these are? Presumably these are (elemental?) condiments emitting from the HamburGroot? I think these shapes cause damage(?) I mean I died while otherwise completely blind, so I assume they did?

The saddest part is that the game does start off with some hints of promise as it begins to reveal its overall 'plan' and 'formula'... it's clear the devs thought a lot about what they wanted the game to be. The elemental weapons and weaknesses provide some interesting ingredients for a much better game than this managed to be... nothing new here, but certainly stuff that could work well if it were only given the proper environment in which to flourish. However, it becomes clearer early on, that the game is only ever a bland and half-baked version of what it wanted to be. I was really 'rooting' for this game... I really wanted to like it, but I cannot in good faith recommend it. Not even a 'maybe on sale?' caveat, as you'll just end up sorely dissatisfied, jonesing for the game it teased you about and pretended to be. It's a real shame because it does have the occasional 'cool' factor that leaves you wondering 'if only...' that magical thing would happen, but it never does... and it just gets worse, not better, as it’s better instincts are abandoned and disappointment sinks in.

One can only hope the devs aren't so badly humiliated by the legacy of HamburGroot that they flee off the grid forever, and instead, pick themselves up, take what's left of the good ingredients here, head back to the kitchen, and cook up a bigger/better (fully baked) dish.

HamburGroot:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/scars-above/images/f/f8/SA_fungus_humanoid.jpg

very nice.