Craigjs91
2017
The monster design is awesome, especially the mimics which add a constant feeling of uneasiness and anxiety to the game. Every object might be an enemy in disguise and even though the mimics are the least dangerous enemy in terms of level of threat, the underlying tension they add to the game cannot be overstated. Reminded me of John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing in how you are trapped in a location that is totally isolated from the rest of civilization with monsters that hide in plain sight. This setup gives rise to feelings of loneliness and paranoia which create an oppressive tone to the game. I had to stop and laugh when my wife was watching me play for a little while without any context of the game and said I looked like a crazy person running around hitting inanimate objects with a wrench.
Level design is really creative with a level of verticality you wouldn't expect from an immersive sim like this and has well designed nooks and crannies all over the place usually hiding secret loot to reward the spatially aware explorers among us. There are plenty of side missions that reward you with backstory and upgrades and bring you to places of the ship you might not otherwise explore fully. There are tons of locked doors standing between you and juicy loot and this is where Prey truly shines. The number of ways that exist for you to get into these locked rooms is simply amazing. You can search around like a bloodhound for keycards or passcodes, you can sometimes get in via hidden ventilation ducts, sometimes you can open the door by finding an angle in which you can shoot a projectile through an opening at the unlock button on the other side of the door, if you have developed your hacking ability enough you can sometimes bypass the keycard completely, sometimes rooms are blocked by heavy objects that can only be moved if you have invested enough points into leverage which is essentially the ability to lift heavy objects. Sometimes there is only one specific way to open a door and sometimes there are multiple, it really creates this feeling of freedom and makes how you choose to spend those valuable neuromods that much more important.
The story is quite interesting and has a plot that will constantly keep you guessing as to who you can trust and who is lying to you. There are multiple ways to complete the majority of the main missions and these usually have long term ramifications on the outcome of the story. The ending was a little hit and miss to me. On the one hand, i enjoyed learning what was actually going on and thought it to be quite subversive. On the other hand however, it sort of invalidates a lot of what you did in the game and makes your actions feel slightly less impactful. It is pretty neat though, how the ending ties together nicely with the opening of the game to put a nice thematic bow on everything. In summary, this is one of the best immersive sims available right up there with the greats like Deus Ex and Bioshock.
Level design is really creative with a level of verticality you wouldn't expect from an immersive sim like this and has well designed nooks and crannies all over the place usually hiding secret loot to reward the spatially aware explorers among us. There are plenty of side missions that reward you with backstory and upgrades and bring you to places of the ship you might not otherwise explore fully. There are tons of locked doors standing between you and juicy loot and this is where Prey truly shines. The number of ways that exist for you to get into these locked rooms is simply amazing. You can search around like a bloodhound for keycards or passcodes, you can sometimes get in via hidden ventilation ducts, sometimes you can open the door by finding an angle in which you can shoot a projectile through an opening at the unlock button on the other side of the door, if you have developed your hacking ability enough you can sometimes bypass the keycard completely, sometimes rooms are blocked by heavy objects that can only be moved if you have invested enough points into leverage which is essentially the ability to lift heavy objects. Sometimes there is only one specific way to open a door and sometimes there are multiple, it really creates this feeling of freedom and makes how you choose to spend those valuable neuromods that much more important.
The story is quite interesting and has a plot that will constantly keep you guessing as to who you can trust and who is lying to you. There are multiple ways to complete the majority of the main missions and these usually have long term ramifications on the outcome of the story. The ending was a little hit and miss to me. On the one hand, i enjoyed learning what was actually going on and thought it to be quite subversive. On the other hand however, it sort of invalidates a lot of what you did in the game and makes your actions feel slightly less impactful. It is pretty neat though, how the ending ties together nicely with the opening of the game to put a nice thematic bow on everything. In summary, this is one of the best immersive sims available right up there with the greats like Deus Ex and Bioshock.
2023
I was like 3 years old when the original came out so I never got a chance to experience it when it first released. Because of this I will be judging this game not as a remake but as a new game because in my eyes, that's what it is. I understand this may be a little unfair so I will do my best to be aware of the context in which this game exists. System Shock was originally a DOS game and if you aren't past your prime yet and thus have no idea what DOS is think the Original Doom, Civilization, and Wolfenstein games. So in that context this remake is a wildly impressive step up in terms of quality. However judging based on 2023 standards this game just doesn't hold up when compared to some of the more advanced remakes that have come out in the past few years like Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy 7, and Demon Souls for example.
Starting with the graphics, the visuals here have a style that I really enjoyed because it feels somewhat modern but clearly not shooting for realism. I'm an art style over realism guy so this aspect was fine to me. Realistically speaking though graphically we are looking at something in the neighborhood of 2007's Bioshock level (Note: I will be using Bioshock a lot as comparison because that is pretty close to what this game felt like for me). This was right in the middle of my formative years so maybe that's why I am so fond of that look. For a 2023 game though, the argument could be made the graphical fidelity leaves something to be desired.
As for the gameplay, this is the aspect of the game I found myself liking the least. System Shock plays (again) similar to Bioshock in that there isn't really a cover system and combat engagements are usually spent strafing side to side trying not to get shot while simultaneously shooting your target in hopes they die first, only in this game you don't have magic powers in your left hand that help dispatch of enemies more efficiently. This style of combat feels a little clunky and dated but is mostly fine. The problem here is that you take a lot of damage per hit and healing items are rarer than they feel like they should be. It almost seems like the game wants you to use the respawn mechanic when exploring and save your healing items only for when you are progressing or fighting a boss. This just didn't feel good to me as dying is always something I try to avoid at any cost in games. Because of this most of the game I found myself low on health and stressfully light on healing items. I will add that the game has seemingly robust difficulty options where you can adjust the difficulty of the world/missions, the combat, the puzzles, and the pretty lame cyberspace sections separately. I kept everything on 2 (normal) for my playthrough but in hindsight probably would have had a more enjoyable time setting combat to 1. Sadly I don't think you can change difficulty mid game though so I was pot committed at the point I decided I would want to change it.
The world design and lack of a leash I found to be quite refreshing and Shodan is a memorable antagonist. I love when a game lets you figure out the world at your own pace and doesn't have huge map markers telling you exactly where you need to go. In System Shock you have to figure it out yourself based on logic. This will sometimes be an audio log mentioning a way to get past a certain area and sometimes you will simply have explored everything in an area and thus decide it's time to move on and come back later when you have the proper key or item to progress. While this may be a tedious system of trial and error for some, I found it engaging and immersive. The only issue with this design is that it requires a lot of backtracking if you are actually going in blind and enemies respawn quite often so you will run into scenarios when you don't have the ammo to spare on respawning enemies but need to dispatch them in order to get to where you are trying to go. It's just another wrinkle in a game like this, isn't necessarily bad but at times you will feel like you are being punished for being inquisitive or not immediately figuring out what you need to do.
Ultimately I enjoyed the game, though it felt dated immediately. Part of me enjoyed that it felt like a classic game but another part wished they had updated it to be on par with the present day state of the art. I'd like to hear what went into the decision to remake a game in the 2020's, that originally came out in the early 90's, but only update it to roughly 2000's standards. I imagine they were worried that updating it too much would risk making it not feel like System Shock to a person who loved the original. I can see this argument, but as a person who never played the original it just felt like I was playing an old immersive sim akin to Bioshock... Which is one of my favorite games, but I imagine I wouldn't like it nearly as much if I played it for the first time today.
Starting with the graphics, the visuals here have a style that I really enjoyed because it feels somewhat modern but clearly not shooting for realism. I'm an art style over realism guy so this aspect was fine to me. Realistically speaking though graphically we are looking at something in the neighborhood of 2007's Bioshock level (Note: I will be using Bioshock a lot as comparison because that is pretty close to what this game felt like for me). This was right in the middle of my formative years so maybe that's why I am so fond of that look. For a 2023 game though, the argument could be made the graphical fidelity leaves something to be desired.
As for the gameplay, this is the aspect of the game I found myself liking the least. System Shock plays (again) similar to Bioshock in that there isn't really a cover system and combat engagements are usually spent strafing side to side trying not to get shot while simultaneously shooting your target in hopes they die first, only in this game you don't have magic powers in your left hand that help dispatch of enemies more efficiently. This style of combat feels a little clunky and dated but is mostly fine. The problem here is that you take a lot of damage per hit and healing items are rarer than they feel like they should be. It almost seems like the game wants you to use the respawn mechanic when exploring and save your healing items only for when you are progressing or fighting a boss. This just didn't feel good to me as dying is always something I try to avoid at any cost in games. Because of this most of the game I found myself low on health and stressfully light on healing items. I will add that the game has seemingly robust difficulty options where you can adjust the difficulty of the world/missions, the combat, the puzzles, and the pretty lame cyberspace sections separately. I kept everything on 2 (normal) for my playthrough but in hindsight probably would have had a more enjoyable time setting combat to 1. Sadly I don't think you can change difficulty mid game though so I was pot committed at the point I decided I would want to change it.
The world design and lack of a leash I found to be quite refreshing and Shodan is a memorable antagonist. I love when a game lets you figure out the world at your own pace and doesn't have huge map markers telling you exactly where you need to go. In System Shock you have to figure it out yourself based on logic. This will sometimes be an audio log mentioning a way to get past a certain area and sometimes you will simply have explored everything in an area and thus decide it's time to move on and come back later when you have the proper key or item to progress. While this may be a tedious system of trial and error for some, I found it engaging and immersive. The only issue with this design is that it requires a lot of backtracking if you are actually going in blind and enemies respawn quite often so you will run into scenarios when you don't have the ammo to spare on respawning enemies but need to dispatch them in order to get to where you are trying to go. It's just another wrinkle in a game like this, isn't necessarily bad but at times you will feel like you are being punished for being inquisitive or not immediately figuring out what you need to do.
Ultimately I enjoyed the game, though it felt dated immediately. Part of me enjoyed that it felt like a classic game but another part wished they had updated it to be on par with the present day state of the art. I'd like to hear what went into the decision to remake a game in the 2020's, that originally came out in the early 90's, but only update it to roughly 2000's standards. I imagine they were worried that updating it too much would risk making it not feel like System Shock to a person who loved the original. I can see this argument, but as a person who never played the original it just felt like I was playing an old immersive sim akin to Bioshock... Which is one of my favorite games, but I imagine I wouldn't like it nearly as much if I played it for the first time today.
2022
Dave the Diver is full of style and charm and made me smile more than any game in recent memory. The pixel art cut scenes full of over the top anime-isms are totally endearing and wildly creative. There is a really interesting pairing of gameplay elements here: part Subnautica-esque deep sea exploration, part star-dew valley style resource management game, part restaurant management game ala overcooked. It sounds like it would be really difficult for a game like this to work but somehow it comes together quite well. The game also sprinkles in new minigames and mechanics at the drop of a hat to keep things interesting. These are often loving throwbacks to classic games or comedic nods to some element of pop culture. Most of these sections will put a smile on your face and even the ones that don't never overstay their welcome so even when they miss the mark a bit they will at least not bore you.
This is going to seem odd here, but the same thing I just complimented the game for also becomes my main critique; that is that the game feels like it should be a 5-10 hour experience but the developers keep trying to cram new things into it to increase the runtime. Because pretty much every day involves generally the same loop of fishing, checking on the garden, possibly progressing the story, and maybe playing a minigame before running the sushi restaurant at night 50-75% of what you do every loop will be the same thing you've done dozens of times already. This begins to drag towards the end and I ended up just trying to hurry up and finish it so I didn't reach my limit and abandon ship (ship... get it, diving pun, yes!). Even with this lull at the end I still really enjoyed my time with the game in total. Though when I think about Dave the Diver I am reminded of the difference between the American and British version of The Office. Remember kids, most of the time it's best to leave the audience wanting more instead of giving them more and more until they lose interest.
This is going to seem odd here, but the same thing I just complimented the game for also becomes my main critique; that is that the game feels like it should be a 5-10 hour experience but the developers keep trying to cram new things into it to increase the runtime. Because pretty much every day involves generally the same loop of fishing, checking on the garden, possibly progressing the story, and maybe playing a minigame before running the sushi restaurant at night 50-75% of what you do every loop will be the same thing you've done dozens of times already. This begins to drag towards the end and I ended up just trying to hurry up and finish it so I didn't reach my limit and abandon ship (ship... get it, diving pun, yes!). Even with this lull at the end I still really enjoyed my time with the game in total. Though when I think about Dave the Diver I am reminded of the difference between the American and British version of The Office. Remember kids, most of the time it's best to leave the audience wanting more instead of giving them more and more until they lose interest.
2022
Probably the best of the post-PT psychological horror walking sims. Suffers a bit from the same common issue of this genre where sometimes there is no clear guidance as to what you need to do to progress the plot, but not nearly as bad as others. Ultimately though, anything that gets my non-gamer wife to sit down with me and play a game together is good in my book.
2020
If you are freaked out by not knowing what to do to progress the story, or terrified of opening drawers then this game will be sure to scare the crap out of you. If not, play Madison instead.
2008
The game is gorgeous, but that's essentially all it has going for it. Granted when you do get in a groove and make all your jumps successfully the game does feel good but the minute to minute gameplay here is so clunky and unintuitive that this rarely happens and the punishment for failure is usually death which makes it all the more frustrating. Very often you are in a chase sequence and have to halt your momentum and look around while getting shot at because you have no idea where to go. In a game about free flowing parkour, this is simply unacceptable. Adding to this, the story is generic and at times pretty cringe with the edgy freshman college student anti-establishment jargon laid on quite thick. Mirror's Edge reminded me of those Spider Man games where acrobatically maneuvering around the city is the star of the show, only in this game they rarely let you have that fun due to the story always rudely getting in the way by sending generic bad guys to shoot at you or the clunky controls making you fall and die having to then replay the same sections over and over.
P.S whoever did the button mapping for controllers in this game should never work in the industry again. A game all about jumping and you make jump L1/LB? Why isn't X/A jump like in literally every other game ever created? And the best you can do in the settings is tie it to R1/RB instead. Even the fact that jump is L1/LB and crouch being L2/LT to me doesn't make sense... Am I alone here? The bumper is always the secondary action, not the primary. Literally anything would have made more sense than this. L2 = Crouch and R2 = jump would have made more sense, or A/X = Jump and B/O = crouch. They seriously picked the least intuitive control layout possible.
P.S whoever did the button mapping for controllers in this game should never work in the industry again. A game all about jumping and you make jump L1/LB? Why isn't X/A jump like in literally every other game ever created? And the best you can do in the settings is tie it to R1/RB instead. Even the fact that jump is L1/LB and crouch being L2/LT to me doesn't make sense... Am I alone here? The bumper is always the secondary action, not the primary. Literally anything would have made more sense than this. L2 = Crouch and R2 = jump would have made more sense, or A/X = Jump and B/O = crouch. They seriously picked the least intuitive control layout possible.
2017
A beautiful idea paired with the perfect setting to explore that idea. This game however sadly feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Part typical indie walking sim, part horror, part adventure, part puzzle solver. Scanner Sombre dips it's toe into a number of genres never really committing to any of them so even with it's genius scanner mechanic it ends up feeling half baked. The plot is rather generic and uninspired and honestly does the game a disservice in my opinion. Sometimes less is more, and in this game I don't think we needed backstory, clearly we are deep down in a cave somewhere and are trying to get out - that's all the motivation I need.
This game does have one of those "oh wow" moments that will stay with me for a while. See after you escape the cave the camera slowly travels back through the path of your journey showing you not only how far you've come but also revealing this human snail trail of scanner data that creates this massive anthill-esque work of art that I found strangely beautiful. I'm going to choose to ignore that very last sequence which totally undermined the greatness that occurred right before it. Ultimately Scanner Sombre is worth a playthrough just for the fact that it tried something new and pulled it off relatively well, so give it a go if you are into trying out games with unique ideas.
This game does have one of those "oh wow" moments that will stay with me for a while. See after you escape the cave the camera slowly travels back through the path of your journey showing you not only how far you've come but also revealing this human snail trail of scanner data that creates this massive anthill-esque work of art that I found strangely beautiful. I'm going to choose to ignore that very last sequence which totally undermined the greatness that occurred right before it. Ultimately Scanner Sombre is worth a playthrough just for the fact that it tried something new and pulled it off relatively well, so give it a go if you are into trying out games with unique ideas.
2015
Besides an undeniably cool retro soundtrack I really don't get all the praise this game gets. The gameplay is essentially Pokémon but instead of actually battling during the way too frequent random encounters you instead tickle the enemies or compliment them then play an asteroid-esque mini game to avoid taking damage. I get that it's subversive and uses common video game tropes to create these "I see what you did there" moments, but just being subversive doesn't make something good by default. There needs to be a good game supporting the subversion and I just don't see it here.
Stays true to it's predecessors and brought me back to being a kid trying to build the perfect mech in the original armored core games. An old school game for capital G Gamers where fun gameplay is the main attraction rather than a compelling story, deep world, interesting characters, or moral conundrum being the focal point. This is not to say that the story, world, or characters aren't compelling, but the gameplay is clearly the star of the show here. Combat is fast and frantic yet a touch of that Dark Souls DNA still shines forth during the boss fights that are challenging and require attention and disciplined dodge timing. I will say however, that this is the first Fromsoft game in a long while that didn't totally blow me away and suck me into it's world immediately.
Don't get me wrong the game is super fun and I really enjoyed it, but I think two main things somewhat soured an otherwise amazing experience. The first issue is the way the game is structured with individual levels giving me a really clear stopping point every 10-20 minutes when playing so I didn't find myself as deeply immersed as I did with Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, or Sekiro for example. The second issue is that pretty early on I tried dual wielding the Zimmerman shotguns for a boss fight I was struggling with and never felt the need to experiment with anything else because they felt worlds better than anything else I had tried previously. This left me somewhat shoehorned into a certain build only ever really customizing my shoulder weapons based on what mission I was on. "Why not just use different hand weapons to change it up a bit?" I hear you say: Because why would I purposely make my build less effective just to shake things up? This is why balance is so important in games with lots of build options, you have to save the gamer from their own tendency to optimize the fun out of the game. Later on I found out that double Zimmerman's had basically become a meme so I imagine many people can relate to this one.
Don't get me wrong the game is super fun and I really enjoyed it, but I think two main things somewhat soured an otherwise amazing experience. The first issue is the way the game is structured with individual levels giving me a really clear stopping point every 10-20 minutes when playing so I didn't find myself as deeply immersed as I did with Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, or Sekiro for example. The second issue is that pretty early on I tried dual wielding the Zimmerman shotguns for a boss fight I was struggling with and never felt the need to experiment with anything else because they felt worlds better than anything else I had tried previously. This left me somewhat shoehorned into a certain build only ever really customizing my shoulder weapons based on what mission I was on. "Why not just use different hand weapons to change it up a bit?" I hear you say: Because why would I purposely make my build less effective just to shake things up? This is why balance is so important in games with lots of build options, you have to save the gamer from their own tendency to optimize the fun out of the game. Later on I found out that double Zimmerman's had basically become a meme so I imagine many people can relate to this one.
A deeply intimate delve into the lives of a fictional family that is so well written and the world so meticulously built that they almost seem real. The finches are an eclectic bunch of which the majority lived very short lives. Rumored to be struck by a curse, most of the family met tragic if somewhat comedic ends usually at a very young age. We get to explore the whole family and their stories by investigating Edith's childhood home which is a beautifully designed creation functioning as the architectural equivalent of a family tree. See in the Finch household each family member gets their own room, and when a new Finch is born, the house is expanded upon building a new room on top of the existing house rather than recycling an older room of a departed older family member. This magic idea creates the feeling of travelling through time as we climb further up the house learning about each family member in chronological order.
Exploring the Finch house in the game reminded me of my teenage years when sometimes I would sneak into old abandoned houses and poke around, sometimes I would come across one that was left somewhat furnished. I would scan through their things and sometimes I would get the feeling that I was beginning to get to know who these people were, creating a story of their lives by looking through their belongings. What movies they owned, books they read, drawings, pictures, clothing, etc. Ignoring the morally questionable invasion of privacy, I felt that I gained a sort of personal connection with these unknown people through the objects in their rooms. I imagine a lot of people can relate if they have ever rummaged around in the attic of an old house or maybe had to clean out a storage locker of a deceased family member. This feeling of getting to know someone through their belongings is nailed perfectly by this game.
The story unveils itself through learning each family members interests and ultimately how they died. As you would expect, many of the family members stories are intertwined and thus as you learn about one family member you can usually glean some information of others. At the beginning there is an emotional disconnect as Edith has only heard about her older family members through possibly embellished stories. As we get closer to Edith's room however, we feel the emotional tension grow as we start learning about the fate of her immediate family. This all culminates in an ending that is truly sad yet hopeful, and is sure to pull a tear or two out of most peoples eyes. Digging a little deeper you can piece together that Edie, the great grand mother of our protagonist, and her infatuation with fantastical stories about the curse might be the root cause for a large number of the deaths in the family rather than anything actually supernatural. At the very least Edie uses the curse to explain away generally neglectful parenting and enjoys the popularity it has garnered the Finch family.
If you like a good walking sim every so often and value creative ideas and compelling stories then give this one a go. Judging it based on what it is, I'm not sure if I have played a better game in the genre.
Exploring the Finch house in the game reminded me of my teenage years when sometimes I would sneak into old abandoned houses and poke around, sometimes I would come across one that was left somewhat furnished. I would scan through their things and sometimes I would get the feeling that I was beginning to get to know who these people were, creating a story of their lives by looking through their belongings. What movies they owned, books they read, drawings, pictures, clothing, etc. Ignoring the morally questionable invasion of privacy, I felt that I gained a sort of personal connection with these unknown people through the objects in their rooms. I imagine a lot of people can relate if they have ever rummaged around in the attic of an old house or maybe had to clean out a storage locker of a deceased family member. This feeling of getting to know someone through their belongings is nailed perfectly by this game.
The story unveils itself through learning each family members interests and ultimately how they died. As you would expect, many of the family members stories are intertwined and thus as you learn about one family member you can usually glean some information of others. At the beginning there is an emotional disconnect as Edith has only heard about her older family members through possibly embellished stories. As we get closer to Edith's room however, we feel the emotional tension grow as we start learning about the fate of her immediate family. This all culminates in an ending that is truly sad yet hopeful, and is sure to pull a tear or two out of most peoples eyes. Digging a little deeper you can piece together that Edie, the great grand mother of our protagonist, and her infatuation with fantastical stories about the curse might be the root cause for a large number of the deaths in the family rather than anything actually supernatural. At the very least Edie uses the curse to explain away generally neglectful parenting and enjoys the popularity it has garnered the Finch family.
If you like a good walking sim every so often and value creative ideas and compelling stories then give this one a go. Judging it based on what it is, I'm not sure if I have played a better game in the genre.
2023
Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.
2020
Typically I pass on games like this because I find myself overwhelmed by the plethora of options available to me at any moment. With the sheer magnitude of substantial choices to make like what class to pick, what party to bring with you, whether to sneak around the enemies, outwit them, or face them head on, or how to handle the surprisingly large number of ways to solve main quest conflicts. I simply find myself in a state of analysis paralysis or choice overload. Basically I start feeling like my wife when I ask her what she wants to eat for dinner.
Because of this and the fact that it's essentially been in beta for the better part of a decade, I was reluctant to give it a shot. However, thanks to some heavy recommendations from friends and after seeing the backlash this game got from lesser developers for being... Idk too good or something. I felt obligated to give it a try and boy am I glad I did. This is probably the most pure feeling RPG I've played since Dragon Age Origins. And once you come to terms with the fact that rolls aren't always going to go your way, and not every conflict is going to unravel exactly as you planned, you are left with such a beautiful world with an endless chasm of depth and replay-ability. This game is not only a technical marvel but is also a true game FOR gamers. It isn't bloated with launch DLC and overpriced microtransactions, what you see is what you get. Larian Studios seems to be one of the few developers that is still making video games because they love video games, not just trying to squeeze as many dollars and cents as they can out of every project and because of these facts Baldur's Gate 3 should be celebrated.
Because of this and the fact that it's essentially been in beta for the better part of a decade, I was reluctant to give it a shot. However, thanks to some heavy recommendations from friends and after seeing the backlash this game got from lesser developers for being... Idk too good or something. I felt obligated to give it a try and boy am I glad I did. This is probably the most pure feeling RPG I've played since Dragon Age Origins. And once you come to terms with the fact that rolls aren't always going to go your way, and not every conflict is going to unravel exactly as you planned, you are left with such a beautiful world with an endless chasm of depth and replay-ability. This game is not only a technical marvel but is also a true game FOR gamers. It isn't bloated with launch DLC and overpriced microtransactions, what you see is what you get. Larian Studios seems to be one of the few developers that is still making video games because they love video games, not just trying to squeeze as many dollars and cents as they can out of every project and because of these facts Baldur's Gate 3 should be celebrated.
One of the most stylish and most high energy games you'll ever play with probably the best opening 30 minutes you'll find in an action game. Doesn't take itself seriously and is very tongue in cheek most of the time but still makes real comments on the idea of justice and the military industrial complex. And simply put, cutting goons into ribbons in this game is a singular experience that no game since has been able to come close to, very well done.
However, the decision to make parry and attack the same button (where parry is the same button as attack only pushing your analog stick towards the enemy) was a terrible one and I will not listen to anyone who tries to defend it. Because of the fast paced nature of the game when you are attacking an enemy, most of the time you are pushing your analog stick towards said enemy already anyway. This creates situations where you will parry/block when not meaning to and even worse, the opposite where you will try to parry an attack only to swing your weapon at the incoming threat like a doofus and take unnecessary damage. This being a fast paced frantic action game, you need clearly defined and distinct commands in order to get in the flow of combat and this game misses the mark in this regard which is a shame because some of those boss fights would have been truly amazing if not for the clunky controls. The game also doesn't tell you how to perform any of the new skills you unlock at the end of each level, choosing instead to hide it deep down some awful help menu somewhere. Some of said skills require pressing two buttons at the same time which on their own may have a totally different effects meaning even more unintended consequences by not pressing them at the exact same time. Creating a control scheme in which one could attempt to perform a dodge step and instead perform a light attack or just jump in the air is simply put, not a good one.
Another issue is that the timing of the game seems a little off at times and could have used more work. What I mean by this is for example when you finish a fight it takes a little too long for the invisible walls to disappear so you have to stop the action to wait for them the be lifted, killing the pace of the game. A similar thing happens with the intermittent phone calls. You often finish a section and while moving to the next section you get a phone call with the next chunk of dialogue being fed to you. This dialogue should last as long as it takes to get to the next section but it doesn't, I often ran out of real estate before the call was up and had to just wait for the dialogue to finish before I could jump into the next section. This is most blatant when it happens on an elevator: why not just make the elevator ride take as long as the dialogue? But instead the elevator reaches its stop, it lets you out, you slowly walk 20 steps or so and are blocked by a ledge that you have to jump off... But you can't jump while on the phone so you have to wait for 30 seconds for the dialogue to stop before you can continue. This isn't game breaking, but it does negatively effect the pacing of the game... And for a game that is at it's best when you are hopscotching off missiles before cutting a mech's face into a thousand pieces in bullet time while heavy metal roars in the background, this is all the more noticeable.
However, the decision to make parry and attack the same button (where parry is the same button as attack only pushing your analog stick towards the enemy) was a terrible one and I will not listen to anyone who tries to defend it. Because of the fast paced nature of the game when you are attacking an enemy, most of the time you are pushing your analog stick towards said enemy already anyway. This creates situations where you will parry/block when not meaning to and even worse, the opposite where you will try to parry an attack only to swing your weapon at the incoming threat like a doofus and take unnecessary damage. This being a fast paced frantic action game, you need clearly defined and distinct commands in order to get in the flow of combat and this game misses the mark in this regard which is a shame because some of those boss fights would have been truly amazing if not for the clunky controls. The game also doesn't tell you how to perform any of the new skills you unlock at the end of each level, choosing instead to hide it deep down some awful help menu somewhere. Some of said skills require pressing two buttons at the same time which on their own may have a totally different effects meaning even more unintended consequences by not pressing them at the exact same time. Creating a control scheme in which one could attempt to perform a dodge step and instead perform a light attack or just jump in the air is simply put, not a good one.
Another issue is that the timing of the game seems a little off at times and could have used more work. What I mean by this is for example when you finish a fight it takes a little too long for the invisible walls to disappear so you have to stop the action to wait for them the be lifted, killing the pace of the game. A similar thing happens with the intermittent phone calls. You often finish a section and while moving to the next section you get a phone call with the next chunk of dialogue being fed to you. This dialogue should last as long as it takes to get to the next section but it doesn't, I often ran out of real estate before the call was up and had to just wait for the dialogue to finish before I could jump into the next section. This is most blatant when it happens on an elevator: why not just make the elevator ride take as long as the dialogue? But instead the elevator reaches its stop, it lets you out, you slowly walk 20 steps or so and are blocked by a ledge that you have to jump off... But you can't jump while on the phone so you have to wait for 30 seconds for the dialogue to stop before you can continue. This isn't game breaking, but it does negatively effect the pacing of the game... And for a game that is at it's best when you are hopscotching off missiles before cutting a mech's face into a thousand pieces in bullet time while heavy metal roars in the background, this is all the more noticeable.
2023
What a lovely surprise this game was. I've gotten lucky a few times this year randomly stumbling upon an awesome gem that has gone under the radar. I've been looking for a new turn based, squad management game like this for a while and this game is that and so... so much more. The amount of depth in this game in simply amazing, there are a multitude of professions to develop, a rich combat system with challenging strategic fights that never get old, interesting quest lines and lore, and a level of freedom you just don't see that often in games like this. Honestly, I can't say enough how awesome this game is. I highly recommend to anyone who likes the genre.
2021
Whoever it was at Playground games that responded when asked what they can do to improve on the success of Forza Horizon 4 with "more cutscenes of clay faced dweebs saying how cool you are and a non-skippable phone call packed with cringey dialogue after literally every race" should be forced into a piñata and have the life beaten out of them by children with baseball bats. The graphics are marginally better, the collection of cars is marginally more expansive, the map is new and interesting, but ultimately it feels identical to the previous game except for one major difference. In Horizon 4, the focus was rightly set on the racing, whereas in this game there is this weird focus on Mexican culture that just feels so out of place in a racing game. I get it, we are in Mexico, but I don't care about the little parades, or the jade statues, or Aztek ruins I just want to race... Leave me alone. And I literally laughed out loud during the character creation section with all the inclusive junk like being able to have prosthetic limbs and hearing aids for some reason... There's nothing inherently wrong here, but was it really worth it in a game where you spend most of your time sitting in a car and when you do see your character in a cutscene he is usually saying something so cringey it makes you want to cut off any remaining limbs he has and beat him to death with them? I mean honestly there are roughly 8-10 male hair styles yet literally over 100 different types of hearing aid, like wtf were they thinking? This and the over the top celebration of Mexican culture just screams of white people at their worst and most pandering... And it honestly put a sour taste in my mouth regarding this game. Though the racing, as usual, is quite good.