2020
My adventure with retro-FPS games started with the innocent, but hyper-fast Post Void, which is available on the Steam store for less than a tenner. For the price of a panini from polish Żabka, I received a crazy, roguelike, almost surreal combination of Doom and Hotline Miami, in which you have to defeat 11 narrow, randomly generated rooms in a row, filled with an increasingly crazy set of enemies and colorful wallpapers reminiscent of 1970s kitsch.
The plot is simple - after an inhuman headache tears you from the peaceful sanctuary of the Void, you must carry your disembodied head through a tragedy of violence and chaos confined within four walls as its life force pours out of it with every passing second.
Post Void is like a drug from a cyberpunk movie. It spins, distorts, flashes and screams with colors. In short - it ruthlessly attacks your senses and lulls your attention with a hypnotizing artistic direction. It only takes ten seconds to give you motion sickness, then a migraine... and then you magically get the hang of it and you're thrown into an addictive loop.
The game took me 5 hours and is quite difficult to master, but if you use your head and analyze your mistakes during hundreds of failed attempts, you can beat it. Under the influence of adrenaline, wiping cold sweat from forehead and staring manically with bloodshot eyes, but you can.
For fans of: ADHD, psychedelia, speedruns, surrealism, the 70s, FPS genre, short and fast games and men in black.
This game is fucking metal. Like, Voivod-level metal. And if you showed it to a Victorian child, it would die instantly.
The plot is simple - after an inhuman headache tears you from the peaceful sanctuary of the Void, you must carry your disembodied head through a tragedy of violence and chaos confined within four walls as its life force pours out of it with every passing second.
Post Void is like a drug from a cyberpunk movie. It spins, distorts, flashes and screams with colors. In short - it ruthlessly attacks your senses and lulls your attention with a hypnotizing artistic direction. It only takes ten seconds to give you motion sickness, then a migraine... and then you magically get the hang of it and you're thrown into an addictive loop.
The game took me 5 hours and is quite difficult to master, but if you use your head and analyze your mistakes during hundreds of failed attempts, you can beat it. Under the influence of adrenaline, wiping cold sweat from forehead and staring manically with bloodshot eyes, but you can.
For fans of: ADHD, psychedelia, speedruns, surrealism, the 70s, FPS genre, short and fast games and men in black.
This game is fucking metal. Like, Voivod-level metal. And if you showed it to a Victorian child, it would die instantly.
2013
Mind-bending, clever, fun and surreal puzzle-game without a story. The main theme of the game is conveyed through pictures with simple, yet brilliant messages.
In that sense, puzzles can be analogy for our daily life and our struggles. "Taking the first step can be harder than the rest of the challenge.", for example; or "When you absorb your surroundings, you may notice things that you didn't see before.". Often these were so clever, that I straight-up laughed, thinking that the game just taunts me.
Visuals are pretty dated and considering the fact it has stylized art style - I think this is pretty shocking. Still, I am not playing the games for visuals. Visuals can only enrich the experience, but never let it down or destroy it.
This game showed me that I am not stupid, I just tend to rush through the things too much and I should often slow down. Immerse and analyse.
I liked it! It requires a lot of outside-the-box thinking, but it pays off pretty well.
My only critique of this would be that sometimes it is too cryptic. It doesn't say how map works, only suggest how it might work. Also, because of this whole work with the pictures, you might lose the sight of your sole purpose - beating the game. This whole time I thought that you beat the game with collecting all of them, which is not true. You have to escape the chamber.
Ending is such a bullshit. They really didn't have a better idea, did they?
In that sense, puzzles can be analogy for our daily life and our struggles. "Taking the first step can be harder than the rest of the challenge.", for example; or "When you absorb your surroundings, you may notice things that you didn't see before.". Often these were so clever, that I straight-up laughed, thinking that the game just taunts me.
Visuals are pretty dated and considering the fact it has stylized art style - I think this is pretty shocking. Still, I am not playing the games for visuals. Visuals can only enrich the experience, but never let it down or destroy it.
This game showed me that I am not stupid, I just tend to rush through the things too much and I should often slow down. Immerse and analyse.
I liked it! It requires a lot of outside-the-box thinking, but it pays off pretty well.
My only critique of this would be that sometimes it is too cryptic. It doesn't say how map works, only suggest how it might work. Also, because of this whole work with the pictures, you might lose the sight of your sole purpose - beating the game. This whole time I thought that you beat the game with collecting all of them, which is not true. You have to escape the chamber.
Ending is such a bullshit. They really didn't have a better idea, did they?
2018
From a purely gameplay perspective, Celeste is an extremely well-thought-out and almost perfect game. Its responsiveness, difficulty and creativity are simply unmatched. The best games in the history of the precision-platformer genre can learn from it.
Unfortunately, I'm a aspiring writer and I approach a medium like games based on the following principle: 65% plot, world and narrative, 35% gameplay.
Celeste is a typical, "cool", modern quirky game about trans girl Madeline's depression, anxiety and self-acceptance. Its main themes and message are really beautiful - "remember about yourself and take care of yourself!", or "sometimes self-improvement is necessary in order to avoid hurting others."
Nevertheless, I think that the narrative of this game is quite shallow - the game uses trivial metaphors and does not explore such serious themes well enough, and it cannot hide behind minimalism like Journey. It's not bad per se, it's just simply overrated.
It does it story in most surface level self-help book way possible.
In some way, it's the result of the fact that I simply feel like I've outgrown such quirky games and since the release of Undertale, I've been starting to roll my eyes at the sight of them.
Regardless, it's still a game bordering on greatness. It's just missing that "something" to complete the whole picture in satisfying manner. And since its level-design is integral to the story and vice-versa, I think that a rating of 8.5/10 is fair enough in the perspective of not having this icing on the cake.
Unfortunately, I'm a aspiring writer and I approach a medium like games based on the following principle: 65% plot, world and narrative, 35% gameplay.
Celeste is a typical, "cool", modern quirky game about trans girl Madeline's depression, anxiety and self-acceptance. Its main themes and message are really beautiful - "remember about yourself and take care of yourself!", or "sometimes self-improvement is necessary in order to avoid hurting others."
Nevertheless, I think that the narrative of this game is quite shallow - the game uses trivial metaphors and does not explore such serious themes well enough, and it cannot hide behind minimalism like Journey. It's not bad per se, it's just simply overrated.
It does it story in most surface level self-help book way possible.
In some way, it's the result of the fact that I simply feel like I've outgrown such quirky games and since the release of Undertale, I've been starting to roll my eyes at the sight of them.
Regardless, it's still a game bordering on greatness. It's just missing that "something" to complete the whole picture in satisfying manner. And since its level-design is integral to the story and vice-versa, I think that a rating of 8.5/10 is fair enough in the perspective of not having this icing on the cake.
2001
The first of the Gothics is a pretty immersive game with unique personal charm. It requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but over time it pays off with a interesting, well-designed world, iconic voice acting, challenging mechanics of melee combat and nice pacing. You start off as an absolute zero who has trouble even trampling an ordinary beetle. This makes progressing in this clumsy but open world even more satisfying.
Still - the fact that this game does not have autoloot by default makes it absolutely unplayable in any other configuration. The sprint exclusive only for a wallet full of ore in the era of constant backtracking is just straight-up time wasting. Broken game economy makes power-gaming this one easy task - for me, too easy. It should be more balanced. When you begin the game, you have no ore and so much to spend it on. 3 chapters after, you can have even thousands of them and no reason to spend.
Besides, I like to pick and choose from whole palette of junk while playing immersive RPGs. It's a bit sad that the game is constructed in such a way that you always end it with the same weapon and grinding for better items becomes pointless at some stage - you always end up with Ancient Ore Armor given to you in form of a quest and Uriziel.
The lack of cyclical autosave, and the full number of game-breaking bugs, such as the one at the end of the game, also do not help. I'm warning you, player! Save your game before talking to Xardas in the Orc ruins. And never overwrite, because you may get softlocked and lose the entire 30 hours of the game. Not to say, the final boss had nice idea, but execution was anti-climatic.
It's also a pity that a game based narratively on a novel about a hero who goes from being an ordinary pushover to becoming a magician - has such crappy and wooden spell casting mechanics.
There was a time when I was playing around with a blue water mage robe on and slashing everything I could with my sword because the spell casting mechanics were just plain unpleasant.
My compatriots from Poland love to overestimate it, but millions of flies can't be wrong - there is something to this shit. Games like Skyrim are boring and cliche in comparison to this. When it was released in 2001, it had to be mind-blowing experience.
Still - the fact that this game does not have autoloot by default makes it absolutely unplayable in any other configuration. The sprint exclusive only for a wallet full of ore in the era of constant backtracking is just straight-up time wasting. Broken game economy makes power-gaming this one easy task - for me, too easy. It should be more balanced. When you begin the game, you have no ore and so much to spend it on. 3 chapters after, you can have even thousands of them and no reason to spend.
Besides, I like to pick and choose from whole palette of junk while playing immersive RPGs. It's a bit sad that the game is constructed in such a way that you always end it with the same weapon and grinding for better items becomes pointless at some stage - you always end up with Ancient Ore Armor given to you in form of a quest and Uriziel.
The lack of cyclical autosave, and the full number of game-breaking bugs, such as the one at the end of the game, also do not help. I'm warning you, player! Save your game before talking to Xardas in the Orc ruins. And never overwrite, because you may get softlocked and lose the entire 30 hours of the game. Not to say, the final boss had nice idea, but execution was anti-climatic.
It's also a pity that a game based narratively on a novel about a hero who goes from being an ordinary pushover to becoming a magician - has such crappy and wooden spell casting mechanics.
There was a time when I was playing around with a blue water mage robe on and slashing everything I could with my sword because the spell casting mechanics were just plain unpleasant.
My compatriots from Poland love to overestimate it, but millions of flies can't be wrong - there is something to this shit. Games like Skyrim are boring and cliche in comparison to this. When it was released in 2001, it had to be mind-blowing experience.
2022
Fun if you have friends to play with.
2021
Love from first sight. I love fencing and this game is THE BEST fencing sim on the market. Spiritual successor of Bushido Blade - good, precise and realistic gameplay that doesnt allow you to spam, atmospheric level designs and soundtrack... its almost like reliving my dreams in sword dueling.
My 11 year old selfs wet dream. Probably the best fighting game I've ever played. Fun as fuck, massive amount of community content, engaging, satisfying - this game is fucking sick.
2022
This review contains spoilers
I love cosmic horrors, and this one is pretty fucking good. Short, cohesive and really mysterious. I would recommend it to basically anyone.
But game is basically 1 hour setup to one jumpscare.
But game is basically 1 hour setup to one jumpscare.
2020
Mindblowing trans-humanist piece of media.
Much more advanced than the previous one, but much less scary. I find both games almost equal, because this game delves much deeper into the topic.
I didnt complete it, but it was fun time playing co-op with my best friend. The game itself wasnt engaging enough to delve deeper into it tho.
Skyrim is just boring and cliché. Theres not much to do there and my rating is so low, because I was stupid enough to waste 30 hours for this game, only to realize that everything I do is just pointless, and nothing really interests me in this world. Its just baffling how overrated and overhyped this game is.
I remember time when I was little kid and played this on my sister's Wii. It was my favourite SSB both gameplay-wise and aestheticaly. Very memorable and I even liked the story mode.
Interesting, but also not overambitious concept, good writing and abstract visuals carry this short, 15 minute experience. Main character is very likeable, which made this game pleasure to play.
2020
I like bosses, Mayday and Zuke. But this game is so fucking millennial, I hate it. The absolute worst is moralistic, even pretentious at some point way the game presents itself.