39 reviews liked by Riley
Alien: Isolation
2014
All the nay-sayers moan that they spent half their gametime in a closet....I don't get it. Everytime I tried to hide in one, I got found, even when the Working Joe didn't even see where I had hidden.
Perhaps it's because I played it on the hardest difficulty. Or because all of y'all are a bunch of pussies who can't handle a few spooks and the constant threat of horrific death.
Ok, that might be a bit mean, and yea, even on the easiest mode, you'll die quite often and maybe you don't feel like carrying on.
But it is doable on the hardest difficulty. It's just a lot of trial and error. A real challenge. And y'know what makes games fun? Challenge. If there's no challenge, it's a boring game.
And Isolation is sure no cakewalk.
The A.I in this bad boy, holy hell, why is this not the norm for games for today?
The aesthetic and environments are stunning. Ugh, I wanna live in this game!
The gameplay is fun, inventive and offers a lot of freedom to the player.
The sound design works so well into the fear of the Alien. The escaping steam, banging pipes, or any loud noises sound an awful lot like the Xenomorph, and it shits you up even when it's not even there with you.
And the music. The music will start popping off for no reason at times and get ya blood pumping. It's exhilirating!
The nay-sayers complain that you end up doing the same few tasks over and over again, and whilst that is somewhat true, each section of Sevastapol brings a new challenge to spruce up your sequence of events.
A big bit of criticism I've seen is that there is a big lull during the section after we've dealt with the first Alien. Whilst I did sort of miss the Xenomorph's presence, the game instead strips you of your weapons, and gives you a new android enemy type to face. A new challenge!
And after all that hutzpah, you get to wander round an Alien nest for 20 minutes! (or 45, if you're me)
After that point, I wasn't that much scared of the Aliens, I was more in fear of the goddam facehuggers. They're so fucken small and they show up without any warning, it's insane.
Yea, I don't get most of the complaints. Except for the fact that the game started to feel a bit long by the end.
Isolation is consistently fun. I cleared it in like a week because I kept thinking about wanting to explore more and conquer it all! It's such an engrossing game!
In the future, I definitely want to play this again on the easier setting just to go back and collect everything, but also take in the environment even more.
I love the vibes so much omg.
In conclusion, fuck IGN for sinking this game with their crappy review. This is top tier gourmet gaming.
Perhaps it's because I played it on the hardest difficulty. Or because all of y'all are a bunch of pussies who can't handle a few spooks and the constant threat of horrific death.
Ok, that might be a bit mean, and yea, even on the easiest mode, you'll die quite often and maybe you don't feel like carrying on.
But it is doable on the hardest difficulty. It's just a lot of trial and error. A real challenge. And y'know what makes games fun? Challenge. If there's no challenge, it's a boring game.
And Isolation is sure no cakewalk.
The A.I in this bad boy, holy hell, why is this not the norm for games for today?
The aesthetic and environments are stunning. Ugh, I wanna live in this game!
The gameplay is fun, inventive and offers a lot of freedom to the player.
The sound design works so well into the fear of the Alien. The escaping steam, banging pipes, or any loud noises sound an awful lot like the Xenomorph, and it shits you up even when it's not even there with you.
And the music. The music will start popping off for no reason at times and get ya blood pumping. It's exhilirating!
The nay-sayers complain that you end up doing the same few tasks over and over again, and whilst that is somewhat true, each section of Sevastapol brings a new challenge to spruce up your sequence of events.
A big bit of criticism I've seen is that there is a big lull during the section after we've dealt with the first Alien. Whilst I did sort of miss the Xenomorph's presence, the game instead strips you of your weapons, and gives you a new android enemy type to face. A new challenge!
And after all that hutzpah, you get to wander round an Alien nest for 20 minutes! (or 45, if you're me)
After that point, I wasn't that much scared of the Aliens, I was more in fear of the goddam facehuggers. They're so fucken small and they show up without any warning, it's insane.
Yea, I don't get most of the complaints. Except for the fact that the game started to feel a bit long by the end.
Isolation is consistently fun. I cleared it in like a week because I kept thinking about wanting to explore more and conquer it all! It's such an engrossing game!
In the future, I definitely want to play this again on the easier setting just to go back and collect everything, but also take in the environment even more.
I love the vibes so much omg.
In conclusion, fuck IGN for sinking this game with their crappy review. This is top tier gourmet gaming.
Cyberpunk 2077
2020
With my 500 hours or so with this game, I had one hell of an adventure (Review after patch 1.61)
Let me just start off by saying I love the living hell out of this game. Cyberpunk 2077 is in a dark dystopian future ruled by mega corps set in the New United States of America in the “City of Dreams” aka Night City. The graphics look amazing. I love seeing all the neon lights and pollution in the air that give you an ominous vibe. The visuals are absolutely stunning, the architecture looks futuristic and well designed. You’ll see neon lights, trash, advertisements, crime, corruption everywhere you go which tell a story within itself. But don’t get me wrong visuals still need some work since there’s noticeable pop in and some parts of the city feel lifeless. As for bugs, and believe me when I say this there isn’t that many. As a player from day one yes this game was a massive buggy mess but now I barely encounter bugs. Crashes are still a big problem on PS5 but not so much on XSX. Overall for an RPG, it isn’t all that great since I don’t like how level 50 is the max level and I don’t like how CDPR handled street cred since you can max that out very early on in the game if you’re going for 100%. You can go for all kinds of builds that suit your play style and like any traditional RPG you can invest perk points in skill trees depending on the build you want. You can be netrunner that specializes in quick hacking your enemies or machines. You can be a gunner that specializes with guns and using them to significantly increase the damage of your weapons. Or you can do a blades-only run with stealth where you only use swords and knives to zero your enemies. You also get that sense of immersion. Something many people say is that your choices don’t matter which is NOT true. Your choices don’t generally affect the outcomes of the main story but your choices will affect the outcomes of side quests. Your choices will hurt people for your own personal gain or you can be a pacifist that gives hope to people while gaining respect. Even with 500 hours I still find choices that I missed and witness outcomes I haven’t seen before. And on VERY rare occasions you get outcome depending on the gender you choose. You can also do missions in a variety of ways. You can get through side quests without bloodshed and you can approach situations in many ways. You can steal key cards to get into places safely, you can find a way to sneak in without raising the alarm, you can use your own money to get in safely and of course you can just go in guns blazing if you want. There’s also plenty of different guns that work differently few of which have their own exclusive features. You can use power guns that can knock down enemies or make bullets bounce off walls to hit targets, you can use tech weapons to shoot through walls or you can use smarts guns that can target your enemies around a corner. And as I said before there are guns with exclusive features for example there’s a sniper that has a built in silencer, there’s a sniper that has bullets that can explode, there’s a shotgun that has extra power and can hold more bullets than a regular shotgun or you can get a pistol that has a built in flame mele attack. Weapons that have exclusive features are known as “Iconic” weapons and I highly recommend getting as many as possible to see what you like best. On top of all that you can upgrade your weapons to make them even more powerful or you can add mods that do fire, poison, electric damage, or increase your critical rate etc. And if guns aren’t your thing and prefer to use swords or knives or really any mele weapons you can upgrade and modify them as well. It’s also important to upgrade your weapons via the crafting. This imo is one of the most challenging things to do, I highly recommend looting as much as you can so you can disassemble guns/mele weapons to upgrade your favorite weapons or if you need money you can sell the loot you get. You can also get cyberware which makes gameplay a HELL of a lot more fun. You should use certain cyberware depending on the build you’re going for. For example if you going for gunner build you should get berserk cyberware or if you’re going with a blades only run then get a sandevistan, then again you can experiment however you want to with build you so desire. Clothing in this game looks so great that it’s a shame you never actually get to see V wear it when exploring the city or in combat. There’s also a good selection of vehicles to purchase. Unfortunately, some cars can be very expensive to obtain and you CAN’T customize them. The sound design for this game is well done. This is definitely one of those games you should play with headphones to get every last detail of what you can hear. The sounds of AVs, cars, people, advertisements and gunshots echoing through Night City sounds perfect. There’s even a district called Pacifica (this district is abandoned by the general public due to poverty and crime) where the speaker system that plays advertisements are broken and glitched out which I believe is an amazing little detail. Speaking of sounds, the music is among some of the best I’ve ever heard for a video game. Definitely take the time to listen to all the radios to see what music suits your tastes, the music is so damn good that sometimes I would just drive around to hear the music instead of head to my next objective. And beside the music you hear from the radio, the ambient music you can hear while exploring the city. It adds another layer to the ominous vibe you’ll get from this game. And holy cow the stealth and combat music is GODLY. And the ost you’ll listen to during the main story and side stories fits in the atmosphere so well whether something sad, interesting, exciting or dark is going to happen. The ost just knows how to play along with the vibe. Other than that, there are plenty of things to do in Night City that can take a little over 100 hours to 100%.
As for the story… it’s fucking AWESOME! The main story always had me hooked. Something I found very disappointing is that your life path doesn’t affect how the story will play out at all. But even at that, the story was just incredible. I absolutely loved the characters you’ll meet. They all have personality and their voice acting never feels off, just on point. I love the main characters V, I love the idea of being a solo Edgerunner and a professional one at that to be the best in Night City. I absolutely love the combination of dark noir storytelling in this game. There are many times where people inevitably get hurt or zeroed and it’s sad to see it happen. Even if didn’t have an attachment to them I at least feel sympathetic. And like I said before, your choices can and will hurt people. I had many times where I felt guilty and sadly there’s no such thing as happy endings in Night City. Side quests were also INCREDIBLE. You’ll meet all kinds of people you can befriend and very few you can romance. I also highly recommend reading as many computer messages as you can because you can learn new things about certain characters that I would’ve never known about. And that’s not all but if you really want to dedicate yourself to this game, READ ALL THE DATA SHARDS YOU FIND. Not going to lie, many of them might be uninteresting but it helps you understand how dark the world of Cyberpunk 2077 truly is. You’ll find data shards about what happened to the world and you can even come up with a timeline of what happened within the last 100 years or so. You’ll even read about shards from people moments before they flatline. If you care enough about lore and world building I highly recommend reading as many as you can.
Overall, I believe CDPR did a FANTASTIC job with Cyberpunk 2077 despite the messy launch. They did a great job on doing their research on the Cyberpunk genre. They nailed the aesthetic of Night City to fit in with Cyberpunk and nailed the storytelling to fit in as well. And man I just can’t get enough of the gameplay. With each new playthrough I just love using different builds and picking different choices for different outcomes whether is bad or good. I don’t blame people for disliking or hating this game as even I still have my fair share of problems as well since I can’t say this is my favorite RPG, not even by a long shot. But I can say for sure this one is definitely my favorite video game of all time. I can’t wait to see what CDPR has in store for me whenever Project Orion releases. (I will rewrite this review after the Phantom Liberty expansion and 1.7 update are out)
Let me just start off by saying I love the living hell out of this game. Cyberpunk 2077 is in a dark dystopian future ruled by mega corps set in the New United States of America in the “City of Dreams” aka Night City. The graphics look amazing. I love seeing all the neon lights and pollution in the air that give you an ominous vibe. The visuals are absolutely stunning, the architecture looks futuristic and well designed. You’ll see neon lights, trash, advertisements, crime, corruption everywhere you go which tell a story within itself. But don’t get me wrong visuals still need some work since there’s noticeable pop in and some parts of the city feel lifeless. As for bugs, and believe me when I say this there isn’t that many. As a player from day one yes this game was a massive buggy mess but now I barely encounter bugs. Crashes are still a big problem on PS5 but not so much on XSX. Overall for an RPG, it isn’t all that great since I don’t like how level 50 is the max level and I don’t like how CDPR handled street cred since you can max that out very early on in the game if you’re going for 100%. You can go for all kinds of builds that suit your play style and like any traditional RPG you can invest perk points in skill trees depending on the build you want. You can be netrunner that specializes in quick hacking your enemies or machines. You can be a gunner that specializes with guns and using them to significantly increase the damage of your weapons. Or you can do a blades-only run with stealth where you only use swords and knives to zero your enemies. You also get that sense of immersion. Something many people say is that your choices don’t matter which is NOT true. Your choices don’t generally affect the outcomes of the main story but your choices will affect the outcomes of side quests. Your choices will hurt people for your own personal gain or you can be a pacifist that gives hope to people while gaining respect. Even with 500 hours I still find choices that I missed and witness outcomes I haven’t seen before. And on VERY rare occasions you get outcome depending on the gender you choose. You can also do missions in a variety of ways. You can get through side quests without bloodshed and you can approach situations in many ways. You can steal key cards to get into places safely, you can find a way to sneak in without raising the alarm, you can use your own money to get in safely and of course you can just go in guns blazing if you want. There’s also plenty of different guns that work differently few of which have their own exclusive features. You can use power guns that can knock down enemies or make bullets bounce off walls to hit targets, you can use tech weapons to shoot through walls or you can use smarts guns that can target your enemies around a corner. And as I said before there are guns with exclusive features for example there’s a sniper that has a built in silencer, there’s a sniper that has bullets that can explode, there’s a shotgun that has extra power and can hold more bullets than a regular shotgun or you can get a pistol that has a built in flame mele attack. Weapons that have exclusive features are known as “Iconic” weapons and I highly recommend getting as many as possible to see what you like best. On top of all that you can upgrade your weapons to make them even more powerful or you can add mods that do fire, poison, electric damage, or increase your critical rate etc. And if guns aren’t your thing and prefer to use swords or knives or really any mele weapons you can upgrade and modify them as well. It’s also important to upgrade your weapons via the crafting. This imo is one of the most challenging things to do, I highly recommend looting as much as you can so you can disassemble guns/mele weapons to upgrade your favorite weapons or if you need money you can sell the loot you get. You can also get cyberware which makes gameplay a HELL of a lot more fun. You should use certain cyberware depending on the build you’re going for. For example if you going for gunner build you should get berserk cyberware or if you’re going with a blades only run then get a sandevistan, then again you can experiment however you want to with build you so desire. Clothing in this game looks so great that it’s a shame you never actually get to see V wear it when exploring the city or in combat. There’s also a good selection of vehicles to purchase. Unfortunately, some cars can be very expensive to obtain and you CAN’T customize them. The sound design for this game is well done. This is definitely one of those games you should play with headphones to get every last detail of what you can hear. The sounds of AVs, cars, people, advertisements and gunshots echoing through Night City sounds perfect. There’s even a district called Pacifica (this district is abandoned by the general public due to poverty and crime) where the speaker system that plays advertisements are broken and glitched out which I believe is an amazing little detail. Speaking of sounds, the music is among some of the best I’ve ever heard for a video game. Definitely take the time to listen to all the radios to see what music suits your tastes, the music is so damn good that sometimes I would just drive around to hear the music instead of head to my next objective. And beside the music you hear from the radio, the ambient music you can hear while exploring the city. It adds another layer to the ominous vibe you’ll get from this game. And holy cow the stealth and combat music is GODLY. And the ost you’ll listen to during the main story and side stories fits in the atmosphere so well whether something sad, interesting, exciting or dark is going to happen. The ost just knows how to play along with the vibe. Other than that, there are plenty of things to do in Night City that can take a little over 100 hours to 100%.
As for the story… it’s fucking AWESOME! The main story always had me hooked. Something I found very disappointing is that your life path doesn’t affect how the story will play out at all. But even at that, the story was just incredible. I absolutely loved the characters you’ll meet. They all have personality and their voice acting never feels off, just on point. I love the main characters V, I love the idea of being a solo Edgerunner and a professional one at that to be the best in Night City. I absolutely love the combination of dark noir storytelling in this game. There are many times where people inevitably get hurt or zeroed and it’s sad to see it happen. Even if didn’t have an attachment to them I at least feel sympathetic. And like I said before, your choices can and will hurt people. I had many times where I felt guilty and sadly there’s no such thing as happy endings in Night City. Side quests were also INCREDIBLE. You’ll meet all kinds of people you can befriend and very few you can romance. I also highly recommend reading as many computer messages as you can because you can learn new things about certain characters that I would’ve never known about. And that’s not all but if you really want to dedicate yourself to this game, READ ALL THE DATA SHARDS YOU FIND. Not going to lie, many of them might be uninteresting but it helps you understand how dark the world of Cyberpunk 2077 truly is. You’ll find data shards about what happened to the world and you can even come up with a timeline of what happened within the last 100 years or so. You’ll even read about shards from people moments before they flatline. If you care enough about lore and world building I highly recommend reading as many as you can.
Overall, I believe CDPR did a FANTASTIC job with Cyberpunk 2077 despite the messy launch. They did a great job on doing their research on the Cyberpunk genre. They nailed the aesthetic of Night City to fit in with Cyberpunk and nailed the storytelling to fit in as well. And man I just can’t get enough of the gameplay. With each new playthrough I just love using different builds and picking different choices for different outcomes whether is bad or good. I don’t blame people for disliking or hating this game as even I still have my fair share of problems as well since I can’t say this is my favorite RPG, not even by a long shot. But I can say for sure this one is definitely my favorite video game of all time. I can’t wait to see what CDPR has in store for me whenever Project Orion releases. (I will rewrite this review after the Phantom Liberty expansion and 1.7 update are out)
Saints Row
2022
this game feels like they really wanted to make a game about "be gay do crimes" but management kept meddling with it to where its really bad and not funny but atleast the customization is fun
Congratulations to this game for crossing the incredibly low bar of Non-Binary representation who isn't a robot or weird alien
I'm not even kidding
I'm not even kidding
Janky as hell and rough, but a pretty fun game for 20 bucks. Playing either side has a decent learning curve to it, but the survivors is much easier to pull together than the raiders. My major complaints really fall onto how infrequently you get access to the raiders so you're punished very hard with little room to build for playing raider poorly and Buu especially demands some margin for error to get to the point where you can become successful with him. Frieza and Cell by comparison are much more simple and have some amount of training wheels to make their early game a lot more tolerable.
Think the game could do with talking about what it's got going forward and not having this idiotic microtransactions model, but as it stands I've gotten a lot out of my time put in so far. I never played DBD so it's nice to play one of these games and just like it, but I'll play anything DB related for such a low price. Looking forward to seeing how it develops.
Think the game could do with talking about what it's got going forward and not having this idiotic microtransactions model, but as it stands I've gotten a lot out of my time put in so far. I never played DBD so it's nice to play one of these games and just like it, but I'll play anything DB related for such a low price. Looking forward to seeing how it develops.
It's a lot of fun. A little jank but if you're a fan of the universe it's a new take on it.
God of War III
2010
This review contains spoilers
Holy shit, finally! After getting pissed at the first God of War and being disappointed with the second one, I was beginning to lose hope with this franchise, but I was holding out for the third one to see how this trilogy was gonna end, and I’m so glad I did. God of War III is fucking awesome. I have no other way to put it, so much of what I disliked from the first two games is either completely gone, or vastly reduced. Enemies don’t feel like damage sponges anymore, puzzle sections aren’t anywhere near as monotonous or common, exploration is incentivized greatly through the level design, set pieces are way, way more frequent, same goes for bosses, and goddamn, the combat is fun for once! This is what I wanted from God of War.
The first thing you notice when you start up the game is just how fucking good it looks, holy shit is the jump to the next generation notable. The PS2 games didn’t look bad by any means, but this is on another fucking level. The particle effects are especially significant when trying to sell the scale of this game, and speaking of the game’s scale, holy fuck, you fight some absolutely monstrous bosses and enemies, this shit is insane.
While we’re on the topic of the bosses, these are the best the series has seen this far. Now that you finally get to go after the big gods, the ones that everyone knows, you can tell the devs got excited and really put their all into it. My favorite was probably Hades, the presentation on that was ridiculous, I loved the way he was introduced and his character design is probably my favorite overall. His weapon is also awesome, and the fact that we get to use them after killing him is amazing. The Poseidon fight was also fucking badass, especially considering that he's the first thing you fight. This was also what I meant when I said that the game looks incredible, because holy shit did they make good use of particle effects for these two fights.
I also really liked the story, and I mean sure, it's overly edgy and pretty predictable, but it was fucking cool. It was a great continuation from the second game, and it’s nice that the sense of continuity isn’t broken in the gameplay, since you keep all the items you gained in the second game, like the Icarus Wings and the Golden Fleece. I also kinda loved the ending, there are some real emotional moments, especially towards the end with Pandora. The whole ending sequence was alright, the walking around in the darkness overstayed its welcome a little too much to me, and was a bit of a pace breaker, but I can excuse it just because of how much I liked everything before and after it.
After the credits rolled, all I could think about was how glad I was that I stuck out with this series. I absolutely plan on revisiting this game. That being said, I really have to replay God of War (2018) now to see what the game looks like with context. I’m also massively anticipating God of War Ragnarök, I can’t wait to see where the story goes, and how it will end, for real this time.
The first thing you notice when you start up the game is just how fucking good it looks, holy shit is the jump to the next generation notable. The PS2 games didn’t look bad by any means, but this is on another fucking level. The particle effects are especially significant when trying to sell the scale of this game, and speaking of the game’s scale, holy fuck, you fight some absolutely monstrous bosses and enemies, this shit is insane.
While we’re on the topic of the bosses, these are the best the series has seen this far. Now that you finally get to go after the big gods, the ones that everyone knows, you can tell the devs got excited and really put their all into it. My favorite was probably Hades, the presentation on that was ridiculous, I loved the way he was introduced and his character design is probably my favorite overall. His weapon is also awesome, and the fact that we get to use them after killing him is amazing. The Poseidon fight was also fucking badass, especially considering that he's the first thing you fight. This was also what I meant when I said that the game looks incredible, because holy shit did they make good use of particle effects for these two fights.
I also really liked the story, and I mean sure, it's overly edgy and pretty predictable, but it was fucking cool. It was a great continuation from the second game, and it’s nice that the sense of continuity isn’t broken in the gameplay, since you keep all the items you gained in the second game, like the Icarus Wings and the Golden Fleece. I also kinda loved the ending, there are some real emotional moments, especially towards the end with Pandora. The whole ending sequence was alright, the walking around in the darkness overstayed its welcome a little too much to me, and was a bit of a pace breaker, but I can excuse it just because of how much I liked everything before and after it.
After the credits rolled, all I could think about was how glad I was that I stuck out with this series. I absolutely plan on revisiting this game. That being said, I really have to replay God of War (2018) now to see what the game looks like with context. I’m also massively anticipating God of War Ragnarök, I can’t wait to see where the story goes, and how it will end, for real this time.
God of War II
2009
Much more of a spectacle than the first. Pretty to look at for a ps2 game, but without much of a narrative to drive it forward, it feels like you’re just going from random place to random place solving environmental puzzles and killing hoards of enemies. Like the other games, there’s one or two cool spells that are fun to use and the rest I never really bothered with. Ultimately pretty fun but really don’t see a need to ever replay.
Boring af, it was a struggle getting through it thankfully its short. The open world is boring.
A generic lego game with nothing unique about it.
The most dull experience of my life.
No cool character abilities that makes them unique, just all blends together. Felt like a chore.
A generic lego game with nothing unique about it.
The most dull experience of my life.
No cool character abilities that makes them unique, just all blends together. Felt like a chore.
Dead Island
2011
This game isn't... Great... in fact, kinda mid.
The trailer is honestly the best part about this game.
Most of the game is repetitive af especially the missions, the game is boring if you're playing it alone.
Just a generic Zombie Looter game.
I hope for its weapon system, weapon decay, characters, mission and etc to be improved in the second game but its looking a bit more quirky tonally so idk how I'm going to feel about that because those are really hit or miss.
For some reason I'm looking forward to the second game despite the negativity on the first, maybe its nostalgia but Idk something about it has me by the balls.
The trailer is honestly the best part about this game.
Most of the game is repetitive af especially the missions, the game is boring if you're playing it alone.
Just a generic Zombie Looter game.
I hope for its weapon system, weapon decay, characters, mission and etc to be improved in the second game but its looking a bit more quirky tonally so idk how I'm going to feel about that because those are really hit or miss.
For some reason I'm looking forward to the second game despite the negativity on the first, maybe its nostalgia but Idk something about it has me by the balls.