Recent reviews by groovy

A masterpiece of an immersive sim FPS.

I adored this game. It single-handedly made me want to play more third-person shooters. Unfortunately, I don't know how many can top this one.

One of my favorite games in recent memory.

Almost inconceivably addictive. Caveat emptor.

<Mild spoilers for weapon upgrade system>

Good fun and I adore the artstyle.

That being said, there's quite a lot of things that are just plain obnoxious, the majority of which are found within the weapon upgrade system. The game doesn't give you enough information about what each upgrade does, and once you've bought an upgrade, it's too late. For example:

Upgrade your Pistol into a Flare Gun? Enjoy having on-fire enemies rapidly drain your health when they run into you.

Upgrade your SMG into a Nail Gun? Congratulations -- now you get to deal with those nails ricocheting into you, doing you a considerable amount of harm. (Same goes for the Frag Grenade.)

Upgrade your Shotgun into an Auto Loader? Awesome! Except now it has considerably worse spread for some reason. (Same with the Dual SMGs, though I suppose the increased spread there is at least expected.)

The game also has a nasty habit of putting enemies right around corners (especially in E1), which tends to put you in positions of taking unavoidable damage. The levels are mostly very linear, so there's not really an opportunity to flank.

Would still recommend for a modern DOOM-like. just know that it's far from perfect.

The first third is a ton of fun. The second third is pretty fun. The final third can be a bit tedious , but it's still fun overall.

- Most of the guns are powerful and satisfying to use, though some of the lower-level magic weapons feel a bit lacking in strength.
- Very replayable (assuming you enjoy the core mechanics, of course) due to the "New Game +X" modes.

- The performance dips relatively frequentlydue to the sheer amount of things happening on screen -- this is by far my biggest complaint about the game.
- Chapter 2 and especially Chapter 3 can be a bit tedious at times due to some randomly generated switch hunting
- The screen shake mechanic is incredibly annoying (until you buy the upgrades that reduce it). I'm not a fan of gatekeeping accessibility behind in-game unlocks.
- The "+X Attacks" stat is incredibly OP and disincentives ever getting rid of a weapon that has it.
- A minor thing, but it'd be nice if secrets would occasionally contain a weapon instead of just treasures.

Most of my complaints are relatively small and are vastly overshadowed by how fun and strangely relaxing it is. Overall, definitely recommend this one for fans of retro shooters.

More open-world and less linear than RE7, but still arguably just as enjoyable.
The combat is simple but fun; however, the "puzzles" tend to be too simple and generally kind of lackluster.
This game is a lot more heavy on exploration than the previous one, including more secret areas which lead to lots of engaging exploration.
The graphics are fantastic, and the outdoor setting + raytracing really give the RE Engine a chance to show what it's capable of.
There's one section of the game that's kind of confusing and annoying to navigate (Heisenberg's factory), but other than that the levels are very well designed and the exploration is very fun and rewarding.
All the unlockable weapons (along with all the stuff you're pretty much guaranteed to miss on your first play-through) really helps with replayability.
Definite recommendation.

You could say I like this game a bit.
Casual mode is in a state of dismay at the moment, but the game is still a timeless masterpiece.
If you're going to pick up the game right now, I'd say avoid Casual mode like the plague and just stick to Community servers, at least until Valve is able to do something about all the bots.

This game is absolutely packed with things that seem purely designed to annoy the player.

It really says something when "coming to a dead stop after running for too long" is the second most obnoxious part of the game.
The absolute worst is the sheer number of things that insta-kill, combined with the slow load time and the re-performing of boring, time-consuming things after you're been unfairly killed.

And whose moronic idea was it for manual save points to be locked behind a slow, two-way portal?
Christ Almighty.

I like the game's aesthetic, and the controls are really good. The gameplay overall is good, but there's just so much tedious stuff, specifically after you've just been executed for the tenth time, that it makes the rest not worth it.

4/10

I love this game, though this version definitely has its fair share of bugs. These are the ones that most negatively affected by experience:

- Zombie A.I. is a bit borked and like 1 out of every 5 or 6 will just run away from you, which makes it difficult to group them together.

- Clicking alt fire too quickly after taking out the Spray Can doesn't show the correct animation (i.e. you can't see that you're about to throw it) -- so if you press alt fire again, you end up dropping it in front of you, resulting in you burning to death.

- Life Leech primary fire is broken to the point of being basically useless. Also it doesn't really provide any feedback that it's actually doing damage.

- Life Leech alt fire will sometimes bug out and shoot a LOT of projectiles at once (enough to basically insta-kill even Cheogh).

- The Spray Can doesn't do anywhere near the damage it did in OG Blood, in particular against Butchers.

Hopefully these will all be fixed in future updates. If they are, then it'd be 10/10 from me.