That feels like a love-letter to the first Sam. And I'm all in on it.

For a very long time I haven't feel such joy playing my boy running backwards holding left mouse button. This new guys from russia did extremely good with their first project. If atomic heart will be half as good as this - the game will be no brain buy for me.

Level design and enemy placing are great. Overall pacing is not taxing on any department and there even are some gorgeous visuals. I would without even thinking give this game all stars there is if only they would finally rid of rifle reloading and spread. I also miss my favourite four barreled gun shooting green lasers.

I also want to mention that environmental sound design is one of the best out there. Random steam hissing when you walk near pipes or bubbling boilers or some shit like this is making me a bit wet below the torso.

Thanks, random russian dudes, for making me not feel embarrassed playing this game again.

Co-op, friendly fire and instant replay. That means at least one of my five hours was spent on reenacting wild west duels with my buddy after one of us accidentally shot another.

Pretty simple fun. Alas, in second half of the game rooms become so large you don't even see enemies and that made us sad. Would be great if there were not only hostage/bomb missions but also clearing one, because there is no place for your new shotgun to shine. Although, that wouldn't be "Police" stories anymore, would it?

In short: friend = fun, no friend = sad.

Ugh. Just ugh.

Another pseudo walking simulator with nothing to offer. Enemies can't see but they sure do listen. And they listen so good you can sprint past them and they wont notice. What they will notice, though, is you unplugging your mouth in another dimension. And yeah, you cant fight back because you already walk, what more could you want, you silly buffoon?

Level design is 80% tight corridors where you cant even dodge aforementioned blind fucks. And then we have loved by all garden labyrinths, a fucking mine and one single trapdoor which came out of nowhere and mentioned never again.

I won't go into plot department because if author didn't bother, why should I?

This whole creation, I'm sure, wasn't made because author had something to tell or any idea that he wanted to implement. He did it because he wanted to show that he could. Great, dude, cheers to you. But you'll steel have to clean my carpet after yourself.

This should have been the original game.

Well, where do we start? We now have gameplay that works, for starters. And improvements in absolutely every single part of it. Enemies now don't take hours to light up, we get new guns that feel different (even revolver now does not require you to jerk off your reload button to make it faster). Collectibles are no longer in the hundreds and are marked on your radar making you wonder why wasn't this in the original?

I don't care enough for resolution or graphics quality but finally seeing anything other than goddamn woods almost made me tear up. And shadow bastards now no longer gang-raping you if you step out of the road. Wow.

Voice acting quality, though, is oof level. For some reason I was constantly reminded of Subverse's girls. And they sound much, much more enticing and competent.

The plot is that Mr. Scratch now taking over your life and you are trapped in dream world resembling one of spooky show episodes. And that is actually all. After four hours you get told that all you've done is basically nothing and did not count. Scratch is still in real world, and you are still in the dream one.

Overall, much more playable version of Alan Wake with less self-indulgent bullshit and more fun. I would honestly prefer to complete this three times than original game once.

Eh.

That one just threw us into the fray since the first minute of gameplay showing that it will heavily focus on combat. Pretty bad combat with the only challenge being to find a door or a corner and just stunlock enemies to death mind you. And I did not like it.

The first one was focused on solving puzzles even if they were incomprehensible like throw a vase into indestructible walking armour to kill it. And I prefer this much more than what we got here.

Haunted mansion with chthonian underdwellers is a lot more my line than some jolly pirate mateys trying to eat, kill and rape a little girl to stay immortal for another hundred years thanks to some gypsy magic.

Let's see what part three will give us.

I... liked it?

Honestly, I still don't know. But after a torture that was the first game, this one is feeling pretty good. No fucking tranq darts anymore. The only sleeping pill these lizards need is the lead one.

Yeah, weapon, enemy and location variety is nice, although I still have a feeling "this game is good only because the previous one was such a garbage you couldn't even look towards it without tears".

So yeah, I don't know how to side about it. Although there were no one-liners. That I disapprove.

I played it together with my friend as a part of our journey on a way to analyze various horror games. And it looks like I did not have same enjoyment as he did.

Yeah, this game is actually better than a lot of trash with horror label industry pumping out today like some kind of Frankenstein's freak-making factory. There are a lot of interesting ideas like barricading windows or floor platforms so enemies won't come out. Couple of hit or miss puzzles but at least they provide gameplay which is not terrible but not good either.

Alas, my joy went away after a mansion part. The caves with labyrinths and swimming bastards (was that actually Dagon?) dried me out and in the end I was left with a feeling that this game maybe was influential in it's time, but I do not want to see a remake of it today as it is.

The game also runs great on modern systems. And what's that with old games and labyrinths?

Oh yeah, reading Necronomicon was great.

Unofficial Earth Defense Force spin-off telling the story of government-employed ninja who fight primal worms trying to take over the world.

I had two issues with this game not counting that you have to manually unlock FPS every time you start it. First, there was no controller support for me at all. Surprisingly, the game runs absolutely fine on keyboard and mouse giving me no issues with it whatsoever. Second, random crashes after cutscenes. I have no idea why but it just happens. Anyway, that were all technical difficulties I remembered. Now, to game.

No, you don't have to only use heavy sword to fight enemies. I personally had more fun using double swords and found they dealt same amount of damage but with more style points. I'm sure the same could be said about ordinary katana but its moveset is too boring for me to be used. To my amazement I didn't feel like the gameplay was dragging for too long and the game was over before I started complaining. Alas, the bosses get reused near the end making you feel cheated of another over-the-top spectacle that could have been. Also timed ant-lion boss fight that does not work due to bombs not registering explosion when they are right inside his model (actually now that I think about it, it could be that the boss just has too much health for fun battle) can suck my telescopic ninja sword. And for some reason couple of snail helicopters just stopped in midair doing nothing mid fight. But I just assumed that snails piloting helicopters are not entirely the smartest and moved on with my fun. Ah, yes, turret sections are... there. It's definitely a thing that exists there.

Visuals are as varied as ubisoft's open worlds. You always will be fighting in some sort of grey box with only difference being visible skybox. Even level on a plane is just a grey box moving through the air. Seeing such masterfully crafted locations as grey box, grey box under ground, grey box that resembles mall and other variations of grey boxes makes you feel like you died and reincarnated in 2007 cover based shooter.

Even though this game was most likely slapped together in a week I had a lot of fun. Quick time events are constant, yeah, but they are anything but hard. Direction of cutscenes is still amazing and combat doesn't get in the way of enjoyment. I think I would like another game like this today but with actual level design. God bless Keiichiro Ogawa.

This game tries to make a point about something but gets a bit lost. So first we have a story about a child who was kidnapped to be sold or harvested or something else equally as bad. But near the end we get another plot point about her family which kind of confused me as why was it there? It only stays for a short moment, but why? Eh, rookie developers I guess. Plot still good.

Nevertheless, the visuals are great, backgrounds are gritty and monsters are actually unnerving. Good job there, designer developer dude.

Alas the gameplay moments are sometimes too tight for me. If you don't have that sweet pixel perfect spot you have to start again and it sucks. Other than that, puzzles are pretty simple and don't get in the way of the storytelling. Good stuff.

...ok I pull up. Fuck the Gollum's first mini game where you have to guess dice amount (not the second horse one, that's easy). Fuck the stealth segment. Fuck the end boss with no attack telling where you just have to know safe spots or fucking die, why the f*$%# --//TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED//--

Yeah, game good. Price cheap. Try it.