SkeletonGrimm67
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2000
Everyone that follows or knows me might know that I'm a huge Dinosaur nerd and I'm also a huge fan of the Resident Evil franchise. What do you get when you combine these two things, correct Dino Crisis. Because of that I always wanted to play Dino Crisis for years but for some reason my Dino Crisis 1(PC) Version doesn't let me save my progress. Then I tried to play Dino Crisis 2 and luckily I can save my progress in this game. So here we are and the first thing that I noticed quickly is that Dino Crisis 2 isn't a survival horror game in the style of the Resident Evil like the first Dino Crisis was. It's more of a arcade like game and the majority of the game comes down to mowing down hoards of dinosaurs this may sound repetitive but the game manages to stay interesting by frequently giving you new weapons to fight all kinds of prehistoric reptiles like Raptors, Oviraptors which are your main enemies but you will also encounter Allosaurus, Triceratops and even Marine Reptiles like Plesiosaurus or Mosasaurs. I was surprised that Dino Crisis 2 even included lesser known prehistoric animals like Inostrancevia. Yes, I said "prehistoric animals" on purpose because Inostrancevia, Mosasaurus, Plesiosaurus and Pteranodon aren't Dinosaurs but this was just the Dinosaur-Nerd in me getting the upper hand. Visually the game is still beautiful if you consider when it was released and same can be said about the surprisingly good looking cutscenes.
The controls are arguably the best and most responsive tank controls which is necessary for the arcade like gameplay. Dino Crisis 2 also throws in a few rail-shooting segments which were extremely fun and a a nice change of pace. All in all I really enjoyed this game, it's not hard to beat because of it's focus on action and the arcade like gameplay that rewards you for high combos. I would have like a bigger focus on survival horror but thanks to the genre shift Dino Crisis 2 manages to create it's own identity. Yes the story is nothing special, still the big variety of enemies, weapons and set pieces made the gameplay very entertaining. But the water segment can go fuck itself. Now Capcom, please give us a remake of Dino Crisis 1.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
The controls are arguably the best and most responsive tank controls which is necessary for the arcade like gameplay. Dino Crisis 2 also throws in a few rail-shooting segments which were extremely fun and a a nice change of pace. All in all I really enjoyed this game, it's not hard to beat because of it's focus on action and the arcade like gameplay that rewards you for high combos. I would have like a bigger focus on survival horror but thanks to the genre shift Dino Crisis 2 manages to create it's own identity. Yes the story is nothing special, still the big variety of enemies, weapons and set pieces made the gameplay very entertaining. But the water segment can go fuck itself. Now Capcom, please give us a remake of Dino Crisis 1.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
2024
I've never been the biggest fan of the first Dragons Dogma game. Tbh. I never finished the game yet I still deciced to play the second one. I overall enjoyed Dragons Dogma 2 but I do think it has some major flaws and no I'm not talking about the microtransactions. Because for everyone who has lived under a rock, Capcom has done this for years and never anyone complained. Not for Monster Hunter World and not for Resident Evil 4 Remake. And why even would I buy mtx to ruin the experience that the developers had intended. Anyway this out of the way, I like the character creator and it's probably one of the most detailed ones I've seen in recent years. The climbing monsters was also fun and it reminded me of games like Shadow of the Colossus. I liked that your Main-Pawn has their own voice, it gives you the feeling that your Main-Pawn is an actual side character. The problem comes with the core gameplay loop itself. Most of the quests are Fetch-Quest which maybe was intentional because selling point of Dragons Dogma 2 is the traveling that you do during the quests, almost like on a roadtrip where the journey is the goal.
Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno said that "the traveling is only boring when your game is boring" and I agree but the problem with Dragons Dogma 2 is that the gameplay loop gets indeed boring fast. Because you have these dynamic encounters during your travels between cities where you have to fight Orcs or Ogre. At first fighting them is fun but the more I play the more I noticed that I mostly fought the same enemies at the same locations over and over again. The result is that the fighting gets repetitive very quick and the time between fighting one horde of orcs and the next one was often very small. What did I do ? I told my pawns to wait somewhere and then ran past all of the dynamic encounters. So the core gameplay loop is boring, the characters and quest aren't memorable at all because the dialogues mostly consist out of pressing "next" and in the whole game there were maybe two opportunities to choose your answer. Since the dialogue system is rather shallow, the romancing feels also very trivial. Same can be said about the housing, you can buy 2 houses but you can't customize them. They are only there for you to rest and customization in general isn't a big part of the game. Armor is locked to the vocations which means "Fashion Souls" is not possible. This may not be a problem for some people but I'm just a sucker for customizing stuff and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. A good example is probably the fight against the Dragon Endboss. It kidnaps a character that supposed to be Important to your character based on affinity. The problem is that there is no way for you to tell how high the affinity between your character and the NPC is. Which lead to a hilarious situation where I thought I was romancing Doireann and expected the Dragon to take her hostage but instead that stupid Lizard took her brother for whom I did like two quests. So the Dragon Endboss took a character hostage that I didn't care about and then gave me the decision to fight him or just walk away. I decided to just walk away and got one of the most underwhelming endings in recent years. After that I reloaded my save file, fought the Dragon and got an ending almost identical to the first one. Which disappointed quite a bit and is reminiscent for the rest of the game. Because Dragons Dogma 2 is overall a rather disappointing game with gameplay mechanics that feel rather shallow like the romancing, housing or the dialogues and a core gameplay loop that gets annonying fast. But I liked that the game creates situations that are different for every player s and which you will tell your friends about, similar like Elden Ring did. Like when the first Dragon I was about to beat deciced to jump into the water and get itself eaten by those hentai noodles. I can still recommend the game in some form because you can have fun with it but sadly most of the mechanics lack depth, characters and quests are nothing memorable. This results in a game that's mediocre at best.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno said that "the traveling is only boring when your game is boring" and I agree but the problem with Dragons Dogma 2 is that the gameplay loop gets indeed boring fast. Because you have these dynamic encounters during your travels between cities where you have to fight Orcs or Ogre. At first fighting them is fun but the more I play the more I noticed that I mostly fought the same enemies at the same locations over and over again. The result is that the fighting gets repetitive very quick and the time between fighting one horde of orcs and the next one was often very small. What did I do ? I told my pawns to wait somewhere and then ran past all of the dynamic encounters. So the core gameplay loop is boring, the characters and quest aren't memorable at all because the dialogues mostly consist out of pressing "next" and in the whole game there were maybe two opportunities to choose your answer. Since the dialogue system is rather shallow, the romancing feels also very trivial. Same can be said about the housing, you can buy 2 houses but you can't customize them. They are only there for you to rest and customization in general isn't a big part of the game. Armor is locked to the vocations which means "Fashion Souls" is not possible. This may not be a problem for some people but I'm just a sucker for customizing stuff and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. A good example is probably the fight against the Dragon Endboss. It kidnaps a character that supposed to be Important to your character based on affinity. The problem is that there is no way for you to tell how high the affinity between your character and the NPC is. Which lead to a hilarious situation where I thought I was romancing Doireann and expected the Dragon to take her hostage but instead that stupid Lizard took her brother for whom I did like two quests. So the Dragon Endboss took a character hostage that I didn't care about and then gave me the decision to fight him or just walk away. I decided to just walk away and got one of the most underwhelming endings in recent years. After that I reloaded my save file, fought the Dragon and got an ending almost identical to the first one. Which disappointed quite a bit and is reminiscent for the rest of the game. Because Dragons Dogma 2 is overall a rather disappointing game with gameplay mechanics that feel rather shallow like the romancing, housing or the dialogues and a core gameplay loop that gets annonying fast. But I liked that the game creates situations that are different for every player s and which you will tell your friends about, similar like Elden Ring did. Like when the first Dragon I was about to beat deciced to jump into the water and get itself eaten by those hentai noodles. I can still recommend the game in some form because you can have fun with it but sadly most of the mechanics lack depth, characters and quests are nothing memorable. This results in a game that's mediocre at best.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
2024
Alone in the Dark is the next remake in a long row of remakes that we got over the last few years. But is any good? Yea I mostly enjoyed my my time with the game but a huge disclaimer at the beginning, this "remake" is rarely a remake of the original and more a reimagination because there isn't much left of the original game. Simply there isn’t much left of the original mansion. I just recently played the original game for the first time and I was shocked when I noticed how different this game is. There are many new characters and locations and now you might say that this is a good thing but they also cut a lot of the old rooms of the mansion. So much that I didn't recognize it and I finish the original just 12 days ago. But maybe I'm just suffering from amnesia. What I liked about the game was the cast, it was cool to see David Harbor and Jodie Comer as the main characters. I'm also happy that almost every note is voice acted even with different voices which is great. This contributes to the dense atmosphere and the lore of this game was pretty interesting, you can't say that about the story. It's also more puzzle oriented than survival horror, there are only 4 weapons with no upgrades and the meele attacks also only consist of spamming R1. The game in general is very clunky, I frequently got stuck on objects in the environment and the combat feels clunky too and the hit feedback is bad. There are also only very few types of enemies and one of them are these "facehuggers" things. Fighting them was annonying as hell. They completely ignore bullets and they are the only enemy that has a QTE and you go from QTE to you recover from QTE to camera glitch so you can't see to QTE again until you are dead. Most of the cabinets that you can search loot either don't open very wide so you can't see what's inside and they were empty 90 % of the time anyway which made exploring feel very unsatisfying. The game also only has 2 boss fights, one was very easy and the other one very annyoing. The ending felt rushed and was kinda underwhelming. But the pacing after chapter 3 was overall not the best and it needed more polish. After finishing the game twice, once as Emily and once as Edward I can say that there are a few different dialogues with the side characters and some level segments are slightly different but nothing too major. All in all the main story is still the same. There are also different endings which can be unlocked after collecting various collectables but sadly all of them besides the main ending are glitched and can't be obtained.
Overall I still enjoyed Alone in the Dark, especially due to the great atmosphere and the focus on puzzle rather than action. I also liked the lovecraftian vibe that the lore gave me. You should probably play it on the easiest difficulty because the fights aren't the reason why you should play this game. Emily's story was also more consistent and I would recommend you play her on your first playthrough. Alone in the Dark's focus on puzzles and story instead of action/fights was a nice change but you can notice pretty quickly that this game didn't have the biggest budget.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
Overall I still enjoyed Alone in the Dark, especially due to the great atmosphere and the focus on puzzle rather than action. I also liked the lovecraftian vibe that the lore gave me. You should probably play it on the easiest difficulty because the fights aren't the reason why you should play this game. Emily's story was also more consistent and I would recommend you play her on your first playthrough. Alone in the Dark's focus on puzzles and story instead of action/fights was a nice change but you can notice pretty quickly that this game didn't have the biggest budget.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
1992
Alone in the Dark is the grandfather of all survival horror games. As a huge fan of the genre and the Resident Evil series, playing this game was long overdue, luckily I finished it just in time for the remake. While we're at it, a remake is definitely needed. Not just because of the technical aspects like the bad resolution, awful controls, dozens of useless items which gets annoying 'cause it was combined with limited inventory and the combat is also pretty bad. Once an enemy manages to land a hit, you will be staggered and most of the time you can't do anything against it until you are dead. The steam version also has a few problems for example the window shrinking when you minimize it and the visuals are very pixelated when you maximize the game on a modern monitor. But I always had to laugh when Edward punched a zombies with the loudest SMACK sound effect. I was also pleasantly surprised by the the voice acting. I didn't expect the game have voice acting and it was very well-done. I really appreciated the voice acting because the information in the notes was often necessary to defeat certain monsters and I just hate it when I have to read so much in games. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, it has a great atmosphere, cool monster design and I see much potential for the remake. But it was really short, at max you probably need around 4-5. I'm glad I finally beat this game because of its historical value and importance to my favorite gaming genre, survival horror.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
2024
The first Tomb Raider game that I've ever played was Tomb Raider from 2013 and I enjoyed it but I have always been a bigger fan of the Uncharted franchise, especially because of Uncharted 4. This means that I've never play the first 3 Tomb Raider games. So I don't have any nostalgia which could influence my rating for this game.
What I liked about the remaster is how easily you can switch between old and new graphic. Small details like blood from a dead crocodile that paints the water red or water dripping from Lara's body made me appreciate the improved graphics. Also yes the Dinos level was indeed my favorite one but the T-Rex was kinda underwhelming simply because I was able to kill the Rex within 30 seconds after discovering it.
The new lighting can be problematic because sometimes it was way too dark or keys turn invisible. The puzzle in general are rather repetitive and mostly consist out of finding levers or jumping between platforms. This leads me the biggest problem, which are the bad camera and jump controls. If you decide to use the "modern controls" then the camera will be send into a frenzy in which the camera spins around randomly. Try to beat a level with huge amount of platforming like this. Lara also often decided to not grab a ledge in time or simply refused to jump because the jump input was not registered in time. The manual save feature makes this game a lot easier. I've died so much and that's primarily due to the bad camera and the very dated controls. The cistern level got me softlocked because I used wrong key first, it is so stupid that this is even possible. After running around for 4 hours searching for a way forward I deciced to use the level skip feature which is luckily still in the game. Also no Platinum Trophy on PS5 but PS4 what's up with that? Overall a decent remaster but you can really feel how old this game is, the bad controls and the camera that gets tossed around randomly made it hard to enjoy the remaster Tomb Raider I for someone like me that has never played the original. But I think it's a great remaster if you play it as a child.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
What I liked about the remaster is how easily you can switch between old and new graphic. Small details like blood from a dead crocodile that paints the water red or water dripping from Lara's body made me appreciate the improved graphics. Also yes the Dinos level was indeed my favorite one but the T-Rex was kinda underwhelming simply because I was able to kill the Rex within 30 seconds after discovering it.
The new lighting can be problematic because sometimes it was way too dark or keys turn invisible. The puzzle in general are rather repetitive and mostly consist out of finding levers or jumping between platforms. This leads me the biggest problem, which are the bad camera and jump controls. If you decide to use the "modern controls" then the camera will be send into a frenzy in which the camera spins around randomly. Try to beat a level with huge amount of platforming like this. Lara also often decided to not grab a ledge in time or simply refused to jump because the jump input was not registered in time. The manual save feature makes this game a lot easier. I've died so much and that's primarily due to the bad camera and the very dated controls. The cistern level got me softlocked because I used wrong key first, it is so stupid that this is even possible. After running around for 4 hours searching for a way forward I deciced to use the level skip feature which is luckily still in the game. Also no Platinum Trophy on PS5 but PS4 what's up with that? Overall a decent remaster but you can really feel how old this game is, the bad controls and the camera that gets tossed around randomly made it hard to enjoy the remaster Tomb Raider I for someone like me that has never played the original. But I think it's a great remaster if you play it as a child.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
Horay a new Silent Hill game which is obviously inspired by P.T. and it has been leaked years ago and its free but it's not. Wait what? Yes, Sony marketed this as a F2P game but decided to hide it behind a PS+ subscription paywall, at least in Germany they did. It's like saying "You can watch Stranger Things for free on Netflix" without mentioning the fact that you need a subscription for it. Or saying the stuff in the game pass is free, no it's not. 'Cause you are paying for the subscription.
I have started playing the SH games just a few years simply because you can't just buy them on Steam or PS4/5. What I liked about Silent Hill The Short Message are the set pieces which we're very beautiful and interesting. The design of the Cherry Blossom Monster from Masahiro Ito was awesome and hearing the score from Akira Yamaoka in the background was also great. Good to have them both back. But that's about it tbh. The storytelling mostly through notes which I'm not a fan of because it's the laziest way of storytelling. Dubbing in the live action scenes was also not the best and why including them in the first place ? The gameplay is pretty much none existing, you walk through a building collect notes and there is a chase sequence after every 20-30ish minutes. These chase sequences are just trial and error until you find the right order in which you have to go through the doors. Sadly the Facial expressions are pretty bad and the performance is terrible.
Overall this game did absolutely nothing for me, the storytelling is too much into your face for a SH Game and on top of that the monster was more annonying than scary not. Also how is this set in Germany? This looks nothing like Germany, it's just America but not Germany. But I can see why some people like it. I'm still really excited for SH2 Remake.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
I have started playing the SH games just a few years simply because you can't just buy them on Steam or PS4/5. What I liked about Silent Hill The Short Message are the set pieces which we're very beautiful and interesting. The design of the Cherry Blossom Monster from Masahiro Ito was awesome and hearing the score from Akira Yamaoka in the background was also great. Good to have them both back. But that's about it tbh. The storytelling mostly through notes which I'm not a fan of because it's the laziest way of storytelling. Dubbing in the live action scenes was also not the best and why including them in the first place ? The gameplay is pretty much none existing, you walk through a building collect notes and there is a chase sequence after every 20-30ish minutes. These chase sequences are just trial and error until you find the right order in which you have to go through the doors. Sadly the Facial expressions are pretty bad and the performance is terrible.
Overall this game did absolutely nothing for me, the storytelling is too much into your face for a SH Game and on top of that the monster was more annonying than scary not. Also how is this set in Germany? This looks nothing like Germany, it's just America but not Germany. But I can see why some people like it. I'm still really excited for SH2 Remake.
Games I finished in 2024 ranked
I just recently caught up on One Piece after watching it for the first time and became an absolutely die-hard fan
of One Piece and Eiichirō Oda's work. So I decided to play One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 and it was the second musou game the I played if you take Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle into consideration. The gameplay loop is very repetitive but enjoyable enough for me thanks to these iconic characters and all their different powers, which give 's you some sort of variety inn the gameplay. But only if you're not like me, who just played as Zoro for 90% of the game. I also love that they included the characteristics of the characters like Sanji's disadventage regading fighting against women, the game even gives you a warning if you choose to play as him in certain mission. The part that I liked the most is the Coop aspect of the game, it makes it so much more fun and I loved the teamwork of the Straw Hats in the dight against Big Mom. But the graphics can be bit weird since they are 3D and not 2D like in the Anime and in addition, the graphics are not the prettiest either and not very detailed.
The decision to skip large portions of the story like Skypia made Nico Robin's character development feel very rushed when you jump straight into Water 7 and Enies Lobby. You can't really understand why the Straw Hats want to save her because you've only spend a few minutes with her. The same applies for Brook and the Thriller Bark arc. I can definitely see this be a problem for people who aren't familiar with the source material. But if you are familiar with One Piece the iconic moments still hit hard and Nico Robin's "I want to live" scene gave me teary eyes again. I didn't like that they have changed so many scenes and that the Wano arc is a game original. Which means that many important characters like Yamato in Wano or Pedro in Whole Cake are missing and they add new characters which weren't present in that part of the story. There is also no Gear 5 because the whole Raid on Onigashima comes with paid dlc which isn't tbe best choice. I would have liked it more of they either created a completly new story for the game like they did with Wano or wait until you can adapt the complet story from the manga/anime. Overall a enjoyable game for fans of One Piece and it's even more fun with a friend. But sadly it only covers some major Arc's and not the entire story.
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
of One Piece and Eiichirō Oda's work. So I decided to play One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 and it was the second musou game the I played if you take Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle into consideration. The gameplay loop is very repetitive but enjoyable enough for me thanks to these iconic characters and all their different powers, which give 's you some sort of variety inn the gameplay. But only if you're not like me, who just played as Zoro for 90% of the game. I also love that they included the characteristics of the characters like Sanji's disadventage regading fighting against women, the game even gives you a warning if you choose to play as him in certain mission. The part that I liked the most is the Coop aspect of the game, it makes it so much more fun and I loved the teamwork of the Straw Hats in the dight against Big Mom. But the graphics can be bit weird since they are 3D and not 2D like in the Anime and in addition, the graphics are not the prettiest either and not very detailed.
The decision to skip large portions of the story like Skypia made Nico Robin's character development feel very rushed when you jump straight into Water 7 and Enies Lobby. You can't really understand why the Straw Hats want to save her because you've only spend a few minutes with her. The same applies for Brook and the Thriller Bark arc. I can definitely see this be a problem for people who aren't familiar with the source material. But if you are familiar with One Piece the iconic moments still hit hard and Nico Robin's "I want to live" scene gave me teary eyes again. I didn't like that they have changed so many scenes and that the Wano arc is a game original. Which means that many important characters like Yamato in Wano or Pedro in Whole Cake are missing and they add new characters which weren't present in that part of the story. There is also no Gear 5 because the whole Raid on Onigashima comes with paid dlc which isn't tbe best choice. I would have liked it more of they either created a completly new story for the game like they did with Wano or wait until you can adapt the complet story from the manga/anime. Overall a enjoyable game for fans of One Piece and it's even more fun with a friend. But sadly it only covers some major Arc's and not the entire story.
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
2022
Blood West is a stealth FPS game set in the Wild West era where weird west legends meet eldritch horror. Which is already a really unique and interesting setting and to be honest, I really like it. You have also such vast variety of enemies and different weapons, it's crazy. Each new chapter confronts you with new types of monster and each new enemy has a different behavior which means you always have to adapt and be careful whenever you encounter a new enemy. You never know what crazy stuff these enemies can do and you can easily find yourself swarmed by eldritch monsters. However, the game never forces a playing style on the player, so you can always decide how you want to play the game without any disadvantages. When you die, you will respawn at the trader and as punishment you will get a curse which gets worse when you die again. Two things that I probably adore the most are the voice acting and the art design. Both fit the tone of the game extremely well. So since Blood West is a stealth FPS game, the stealth part must be the biggest strength, right ? No not really, it felt a bit random at times and how easily the enemies can see or especially hear you can be frustrating. The monsters also can't hear gunshots, which was weird but I understand why the devs chose this route because that way you can at least use guns without big drawbacks. Overall a really fantastic game with a beautiful art style and really unique enemy design. Each new chapter will introduce you to dozens of new monsters and you must adapt to each new enemy you encounter and find the best way to defeat the monster without wasting much recourses. I can see myself easily replaying Blood West because of it's vast variety of weapons, monsters and perks. It's not an easy game, it is a challenging game but it was still a ton of fun and it's impressive what the developers have achieved.
#5 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
#5 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
Early Access Review
First off yes I'm absolutely biased towards this game and this franchise. Because I such a huge fan of Dinosaurs since I was a kid. ARK : Survival Evolved(ASE) was also the reason why I got into PC Gaming and why I bought my first PC. I'm a big fan of survival games and yes I really do have 3288 h in ARK : Survival Evolved across multiple platforms. But I agree, the orginal game has many bugs and performance issues but I just love taming Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. The building mechanics were also really great.
When it comes to this Remaster/Remake Ark: Survival Ascended(ASA) I can say one thing for certain and which is that Wildcard ( Devs) improved this game already a lot with so many QoL features like the new building system, the improved map, the way they implemented mods and made them available on console too which is sick. I really love the new building mechanics, they are a fantastic improvement upon the previous mechanics from ASE. On top of that you have the new beautiful graphic with all these stunning UE5 features and like dynamic lightning, improved water physics and much more. However, this comes with a trade-off which is the performance. You really need a high-end PC to run this game anywhere near 60 FPS. I have a pretty good PC(RTX 4070, I7 16 GB RAM all that shit) and "only" get around 30-40 FPS with Graphics settings on High. With the use of Nvidia DSSL 3 and frame generation I can improve my FPS up to 60-70 FPS.
There are still a ton of technical problems, bugs like the Dino Spawn problem in Single Player and the crashes which happen too frequent for my taste. The other big problems is the current unofficial server situation. To explaine it short, the CEO from Snail Games(The publisher and owner from Wildcard) wasted all of the money which they earned through ASE for a stupid electric car idea because he thought he is Elon Musk. Now he and Snail Games are broke and need money which is why he sold the rights to rent unoffical servers to Nitrado. Because of that contract they forced Wildcard to release ASA early than they(Wildcard) wanted. Now we have a monopoly where only one server provider exist and we have to deal with every disadvantage that such a monopoly brings with it. There are soo many reason why you should hate the publisher Snail Games and it is such a shame that they bought Wildcard. I don't want to delve into the topic now but if you want to know more about the whole situation just watch some youtube videos. I think it's important to keep this whole situation in mind while rating this game.
You can clearly see the love that Wildcard has for their games and that they genuinely care about their community. They really want to create the best game possible but are clearly held back by their greedy publisher called Snail Games. Overall a great improvement upon the original game with tons of new QoL features but also room for improvement, especially on the performaces side. I also really hope that Wildcard can free themself from Snail Games shackles and I'm excited to see what the future holds for this game even if I'm still a bit concerned.
Also, I hate you Snail Games!!!
First off yes I'm absolutely biased towards this game and this franchise. Because I such a huge fan of Dinosaurs since I was a kid. ARK : Survival Evolved(ASE) was also the reason why I got into PC Gaming and why I bought my first PC. I'm a big fan of survival games and yes I really do have 3288 h in ARK : Survival Evolved across multiple platforms. But I agree, the orginal game has many bugs and performance issues but I just love taming Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. The building mechanics were also really great.
When it comes to this Remaster/Remake Ark: Survival Ascended(ASA) I can say one thing for certain and which is that Wildcard ( Devs) improved this game already a lot with so many QoL features like the new building system, the improved map, the way they implemented mods and made them available on console too which is sick. I really love the new building mechanics, they are a fantastic improvement upon the previous mechanics from ASE. On top of that you have the new beautiful graphic with all these stunning UE5 features and like dynamic lightning, improved water physics and much more. However, this comes with a trade-off which is the performance. You really need a high-end PC to run this game anywhere near 60 FPS. I have a pretty good PC(RTX 4070, I7 16 GB RAM all that shit) and "only" get around 30-40 FPS with Graphics settings on High. With the use of Nvidia DSSL 3 and frame generation I can improve my FPS up to 60-70 FPS.
There are still a ton of technical problems, bugs like the Dino Spawn problem in Single Player and the crashes which happen too frequent for my taste. The other big problems is the current unofficial server situation. To explaine it short, the CEO from Snail Games(The publisher and owner from Wildcard) wasted all of the money which they earned through ASE for a stupid electric car idea because he thought he is Elon Musk. Now he and Snail Games are broke and need money which is why he sold the rights to rent unoffical servers to Nitrado. Because of that contract they forced Wildcard to release ASA early than they(Wildcard) wanted. Now we have a monopoly where only one server provider exist and we have to deal with every disadvantage that such a monopoly brings with it. There are soo many reason why you should hate the publisher Snail Games and it is such a shame that they bought Wildcard. I don't want to delve into the topic now but if you want to know more about the whole situation just watch some youtube videos. I think it's important to keep this whole situation in mind while rating this game.
You can clearly see the love that Wildcard has for their games and that they genuinely care about their community. They really want to create the best game possible but are clearly held back by their greedy publisher called Snail Games. Overall a great improvement upon the original game with tons of new QoL features but also room for improvement, especially on the performaces side. I also really hope that Wildcard can free themself from Snail Games shackles and I'm excited to see what the future holds for this game even if I'm still a bit concerned.
Also, I hate you Snail Games!!!
2020
After 103 hours of playtime I have finally finished my first playthrough. I played it with two of my friends @Ruffy300 and @djoni1999 and only at the weekend that also explains why it took us 3 almost 4 freaking month to beat it. All of us have never play a CRPG before and even though we always wanted to play DnD we never did. One of the reason why I didn't buy it during early access was that I was really unsure if I would like this kind of game.
But oh boy did I enjoy it. To be honest I noticed that my concerns were pretty much unfounded after the character editor. The editor already demonstrated how many choices you have and me and my friends spend over 2h creating our characters. Even your race and background influences the world around you and how they react to you. One race may has an advantage in one of the goblin camps because this race in particular is seen as strong and the other doesn't has this advantage so you will be attacked immediately. Or you may decide to pick a jewelry because you like shiny objects. But it turns out that this jewelry is dedicated to a specific god and when you talk to Shadowheart about that she will tell you that she is mad/offended because she believes in a different god. These are just small examples of many big and small choices that will influences your game and these decision really make a difference, you feel and see that in the world around you and when you interact with certain characters. But unfortunately that doesn't apply for every race or class. I noticed quickly that some get left in the dirt while other are really strong. I love that all of the NPC's have voices and I know that this is not normal in this genre because it is a lot of work and money for the developers. As someone who hates reading long texts in games, I can say enough how much I appreciate that. It does so much for the immersion but also makes the NPC's feel more real. Shadowheart, for example, is such a well-written character with a fantastic backstory and the relationship which you can develop to here feels natural. Yes I romanced her and probably will always do that in every playthrough and the other which I liked a lot was Astarion even though he was in our party. The only reason why he wasn't is because you only have 4 slots. But I do have to say that once you have finished romancing a character or just finished their quest that character gets pretty lifeless. This means that my interactions with Shadowheart went from very frequent and almost after every battle or quest to almost never. The ending in particular was kinda disappointing, you get maybe one or sentences with the character you've just spent over 100 hours with and then it's over. I know that it would be almost impossible to include so many fleshed out endings for some many characters. But I still think that there could have been a better way to conclude the story with certain characters or give the characters more dialogue options with their favorite characters once they have completed the character specific quest. The thing that I made me laugh the most were the many hilarious moments which I and my friends had with Baldur's Gate 3. Doesn't matter if it's an enemy that my friend used as a weapon, throwing children at enemies or the one barn scene in act 1 (you know which one if you have seen it) which will probably haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. There were still many more moments and overall was the CO-OP fantastic with a few exceptions and I'm glad that it exists. For example sometimes we couldn't switch between party members or it was delayed, often one of us was stuck before or after a cut scene or the fact that the performance of the game wasn't the best while playing with friends. But these were just small details that rarely affected the overall gaming experience. Gameplay mechanics that seem unimportant or small often had an even greater impact on my experience, ice melts and turns into water, armor and your whole body gets bloody after a fight. For me these small details are very important for a great game. A game can be great without them but it often elevates a great game to a masterpiece and yes Baldur's Gate 3 is a Masterpiece and a miracle that it exists like this. The enemy design is also fantastic, one example is the Apostle of Myrkul and the world design in general is very detailed and you have a lot of places to explore, many of which I will probably be explore in my next playthroughs. The fights were a lot of fun once you found out which class you want to play but there are also a few fights which got really annoying due to the fact that the enemies decided to spam certain attacks like Cloud of darkness. The third act seems like them most unfinished act, the performance is bad due to the big city and the loading time is quit long, sometimes the sound was buggy during dialogues and the characters were silent, assets wouldn't load especially in the last big fights or the game decided to place the camera in some strange angles. Even with all of these technical problems and the lack of dialogue options for characters which quest you have finished, I still think that Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterpiece of game and it deserves every praise that it gets. The characters and questlines are fantastic and incredibly well written. There are some many ways of playing the game and you can do almost anything you could think of. This is a game an anomaly, simply because how much content you get,it's just an example of a top tier RPG and one of my favorite games of recent years. I even bought the game twice now, the PC version and the PS5 Deluxe Edition and I can't wait to discover more if this game in my next playthroughs. I can't thank you enough Larian Studios, thank you for creating this game, I will go back and play Divinity: Original Sin 1-2 now. Last but not least thanks to my two friends for playing this masterpiece for over 100 hours with me. I know I was a real pain in the ass every time I pushed you off a cliff or simply hit your summons because I was too stupid to notice who is my ally. It was an honor to experience this game together, THANK YOU
Edit by future me : I do appreciate it a lot that they also added a playable Epilogues.
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
#2 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
But oh boy did I enjoy it. To be honest I noticed that my concerns were pretty much unfounded after the character editor. The editor already demonstrated how many choices you have and me and my friends spend over 2h creating our characters. Even your race and background influences the world around you and how they react to you. One race may has an advantage in one of the goblin camps because this race in particular is seen as strong and the other doesn't has this advantage so you will be attacked immediately. Or you may decide to pick a jewelry because you like shiny objects. But it turns out that this jewelry is dedicated to a specific god and when you talk to Shadowheart about that she will tell you that she is mad/offended because she believes in a different god. These are just small examples of many big and small choices that will influences your game and these decision really make a difference, you feel and see that in the world around you and when you interact with certain characters. But unfortunately that doesn't apply for every race or class. I noticed quickly that some get left in the dirt while other are really strong. I love that all of the NPC's have voices and I know that this is not normal in this genre because it is a lot of work and money for the developers. As someone who hates reading long texts in games, I can say enough how much I appreciate that. It does so much for the immersion but also makes the NPC's feel more real. Shadowheart, for example, is such a well-written character with a fantastic backstory and the relationship which you can develop to here feels natural. Yes I romanced her and probably will always do that in every playthrough and the other which I liked a lot was Astarion even though he was in our party. The only reason why he wasn't is because you only have 4 slots. But I do have to say that once you have finished romancing a character or just finished their quest that character gets pretty lifeless. This means that my interactions with Shadowheart went from very frequent and almost after every battle or quest to almost never. The ending in particular was kinda disappointing, you get maybe one or sentences with the character you've just spent over 100 hours with and then it's over. I know that it would be almost impossible to include so many fleshed out endings for some many characters. But I still think that there could have been a better way to conclude the story with certain characters or give the characters more dialogue options with their favorite characters once they have completed the character specific quest. The thing that I made me laugh the most were the many hilarious moments which I and my friends had with Baldur's Gate 3. Doesn't matter if it's an enemy that my friend used as a weapon, throwing children at enemies or the one barn scene in act 1 (you know which one if you have seen it) which will probably haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. There were still many more moments and overall was the CO-OP fantastic with a few exceptions and I'm glad that it exists. For example sometimes we couldn't switch between party members or it was delayed, often one of us was stuck before or after a cut scene or the fact that the performance of the game wasn't the best while playing with friends. But these were just small details that rarely affected the overall gaming experience. Gameplay mechanics that seem unimportant or small often had an even greater impact on my experience, ice melts and turns into water, armor and your whole body gets bloody after a fight. For me these small details are very important for a great game. A game can be great without them but it often elevates a great game to a masterpiece and yes Baldur's Gate 3 is a Masterpiece and a miracle that it exists like this. The enemy design is also fantastic, one example is the Apostle of Myrkul and the world design in general is very detailed and you have a lot of places to explore, many of which I will probably be explore in my next playthroughs. The fights were a lot of fun once you found out which class you want to play but there are also a few fights which got really annoying due to the fact that the enemies decided to spam certain attacks like Cloud of darkness. The third act seems like them most unfinished act, the performance is bad due to the big city and the loading time is quit long, sometimes the sound was buggy during dialogues and the characters were silent, assets wouldn't load especially in the last big fights or the game decided to place the camera in some strange angles. Even with all of these technical problems and the lack of dialogue options for characters which quest you have finished, I still think that Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterpiece of game and it deserves every praise that it gets. The characters and questlines are fantastic and incredibly well written. There are some many ways of playing the game and you can do almost anything you could think of. This is a game an anomaly, simply because how much content you get,it's just an example of a top tier RPG and one of my favorite games of recent years. I even bought the game twice now, the PC version and the PS5 Deluxe Edition and I can't wait to discover more if this game in my next playthroughs. I can't thank you enough Larian Studios, thank you for creating this game, I will go back and play Divinity: Original Sin 1-2 now. Last but not least thanks to my two friends for playing this masterpiece for over 100 hours with me. I know I was a real pain in the ass every time I pushed you off a cliff or simply hit your summons because I was too stupid to notice who is my ally. It was an honor to experience this game together, THANK YOU
Edit by future me : I do appreciate it a lot that they also added a playable Epilogues.
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
#2 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
2023
I've never been the biggest fan of the first game because the combat was never the strong suit of Alan Wake. So I feared that the sequel would have the same problems and sadly it did.
But first of all I really liked the way the story was told through the manuscript pages, especially Saga's. It was such a unique approach and an interesting of telling the story. Saga's part in general was really fantanstic, I enjoyed her detective gameplay and how you solve the cases through her mind palace. This was easily the best part of it even though case boar gets pretty overloaded and whenever I got a new hint I just clicked on everything until it fits. But I still loved her gameplay and story so much that I only played Saga until the game forced me to play as Alan Wake because her part of the story was done. The one problem was that I found Alan Wake's gameplay and story a lot weaker compared to Saga. I didn't like the puzzles and a lot of the time it was too much searching and not clear what you are supposed to do. One example was the chase scene in room 666 chase scene. The route made no sense and I died like 15 times before I had to go to YouTube to figure out what I should do. But I did like his We Sing chapter and how meta the story is. The other problem that I had with Alan Wake 2 was the combat as mentioned in the beginning. The combat felt really stiff which didn't work well with the Taken teleporting around in the often too dark and confusing forest, how they could spam attacks and on top of that you have the wolves which were almost too fast. During fights or boss fights in the dark forest I was often disoriented and died because of that which was frustrating. The result was that I decided to avoid the combat as much as I could. The game is also filled with jumpscares which never worked on me and they felt kinda lazy. Many other horror games decide to turn off your flashlight whenever it get's dark or the flashlight just stops working. Convenient isn't it? But Alan Wake lets you choose when you want to turn off the flashlight and when not. The game still is too dark most of the time but at least I can choose when I want to have a black screen and when not.
Overall I still enjoyed the story a lot and Saga's detective gameplay was awesome. I also liked the art design how Remedy included real life cut scenes. The soundtrack was great, let's hope Old Gods of Asgard will perfom at the Game Awards. The Atmosphere was fantastic, especially at Watery. It was so lonly and you could really feel that in the atmosphere. But the flawed combat ways heavy and I also don't know how I should feel about the fact that Alan Wake's gameplay was shit in a game about Alan Wake. So yea a decent game but not the masterpiece everyone makes it out to be and in no way of form is it a Goty contender.
Games I finished in 2023 ranked
But first of all I really liked the way the story was told through the manuscript pages, especially Saga's. It was such a unique approach and an interesting of telling the story. Saga's part in general was really fantanstic, I enjoyed her detective gameplay and how you solve the cases through her mind palace. This was easily the best part of it even though case boar gets pretty overloaded and whenever I got a new hint I just clicked on everything until it fits. But I still loved her gameplay and story so much that I only played Saga until the game forced me to play as Alan Wake because her part of the story was done. The one problem was that I found Alan Wake's gameplay and story a lot weaker compared to Saga. I didn't like the puzzles and a lot of the time it was too much searching and not clear what you are supposed to do. One example was the chase scene in room 666 chase scene. The route made no sense and I died like 15 times before I had to go to YouTube to figure out what I should do. But I did like his We Sing chapter and how meta the story is. The other problem that I had with Alan Wake 2 was the combat as mentioned in the beginning. The combat felt really stiff which didn't work well with the Taken teleporting around in the often too dark and confusing forest, how they could spam attacks and on top of that you have the wolves which were almost too fast. During fights or boss fights in the dark forest I was often disoriented and died because of that which was frustrating. The result was that I decided to avoid the combat as much as I could. The game is also filled with jumpscares which never worked on me and they felt kinda lazy. Many other horror games decide to turn off your flashlight whenever it get's dark or the flashlight just stops working. Convenient isn't it? But Alan Wake lets you choose when you want to turn off the flashlight and when not. The game still is too dark most of the time but at least I can choose when I want to have a black screen and when not.
Overall I still enjoyed the story a lot and Saga's detective gameplay was awesome. I also liked the art design how Remedy included real life cut scenes. The soundtrack was great, let's hope Old Gods of Asgard will perfom at the Game Awards. The Atmosphere was fantastic, especially at Watery. It was so lonly and you could really feel that in the atmosphere. But the flawed combat ways heavy and I also don't know how I should feel about the fact that Alan Wake's gameplay was shit in a game about Alan Wake. So yea a decent game but not the masterpiece everyone makes it out to be and in no way of form is it a Goty contender.
Games I finished in 2023 ranked
A truly amazing Spider-Man game and fantastic sequel.
The game starts with a phenomenal intro which showed how epic this will be and yes, epic is probably the best way to describe this game. Insomniac Games improved the gameplay in every way possible, the combat and traversal mechanics are among the best in the gaming industry. You can feel the impact of every punch and I like how they used the the new DualSense Controller, especially the adaptive triggers. The new abilities which Peter and Miles get are great. At the beginning I found Peter's abilities compared to Miles lighting abilities pretty boring and played as Miles all the time. Then Peter got his venom abilities so my playstyle changed and I thought damn Miles is pretty boring because it was such much so fun using Peter's new abilities. Yea you know what's coming, Peter lost his powers and I crawled back to Miles. At the end of the game Peter got his new anti venom powers and I was back at playing as Peter for the rest of the game. Sadly the whole stealth part of the game is not as fleshed out as in it's two predecessors. So much that I almost never used Miles power to turn invisible but I did like the web line system and it gives you the player many new options two defeat the enemies.
I love the attention to detail and that you can see the damage on suits while playing and how much easter eggs are in this game. From the letter that you from Wong about his and Dr. Strange's absence to Miguel O'Hara and Peter's connection to the recent Across the Spider-Verse movie. The most jaw dropping one was probably Cindy at the end which teased another Spider-Man or should I say Spider-Woman. I'm pretty sure she will be Silk, which is interesting because a live action show about her is currently in the works at Amazon. If we get a Spider-Man 3 or something like that, 3 version of Spider-Man would be pretty sick.
I do have to say that it took me a while until I got used to Peter's new face and how munch young he looks know and I didn't buy it when he was the teacher from Miles. Also finally they gave us some backstory on Peter, how long he has been Spider-Man and which villains he already has fought. It was pretty bold decision from Insomniac Games to end iconic characters like that and I like that it gave this story emotional depth. The friendship between Peter and Harry is great and I especially like their first quest, the one inside the school. Like so many other stuff in this game their friendship feels real and I believable them when they said they were best friends for years. Can't say that about many other games which were released the last few years.
But it feels like there is 1h missing at the end. when Harry got aggressive fast, this was one of the weaker parts of the story. It was that well written compared to how Peter gradually descents into aggression, jealousy and hatred. His whole story was pretty dark, Miles felt like a side character in middle of the game but this was also part of Peter's story and I enjoyed that. There were a few things that bothered me, the first bigger one was that many of the side quest are as repetitive as in the first game and that fact the I rescued the same dude wearing headphones every time I solved a crime, I mean poor guy. The little minor one is that there is a character called Hailey which is deaf and mute and they decided to give her a “siri” like voice when she used some sort of text to speech mechanic. I found this voice pretty annoying but most of the time she used sign language so it wasn't that big of a problem.
With Spider-Man 2 Insomniac Games solidifies these versions of Spider-Man as my favorite. The jaw-dropping set pieces , a fantastic traversal system and rewarding combat mechanics which makes even the most repetitive quests fun are reason why Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is one of the best games of this year.
Sony's first party games ranked
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
#3 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
The game starts with a phenomenal intro which showed how epic this will be and yes, epic is probably the best way to describe this game. Insomniac Games improved the gameplay in every way possible, the combat and traversal mechanics are among the best in the gaming industry. You can feel the impact of every punch and I like how they used the the new DualSense Controller, especially the adaptive triggers. The new abilities which Peter and Miles get are great. At the beginning I found Peter's abilities compared to Miles lighting abilities pretty boring and played as Miles all the time. Then Peter got his venom abilities so my playstyle changed and I thought damn Miles is pretty boring because it was such much so fun using Peter's new abilities. Yea you know what's coming, Peter lost his powers and I crawled back to Miles. At the end of the game Peter got his new anti venom powers and I was back at playing as Peter for the rest of the game. Sadly the whole stealth part of the game is not as fleshed out as in it's two predecessors. So much that I almost never used Miles power to turn invisible but I did like the web line system and it gives you the player many new options two defeat the enemies.
I love the attention to detail and that you can see the damage on suits while playing and how much easter eggs are in this game. From the letter that you from Wong about his and Dr. Strange's absence to Miguel O'Hara and Peter's connection to the recent Across the Spider-Verse movie. The most jaw dropping one was probably Cindy at the end which teased another Spider-Man or should I say Spider-Woman. I'm pretty sure she will be Silk, which is interesting because a live action show about her is currently in the works at Amazon. If we get a Spider-Man 3 or something like that, 3 version of Spider-Man would be pretty sick.
I do have to say that it took me a while until I got used to Peter's new face and how munch young he looks know and I didn't buy it when he was the teacher from Miles. Also finally they gave us some backstory on Peter, how long he has been Spider-Man and which villains he already has fought. It was pretty bold decision from Insomniac Games to end iconic characters like that and I like that it gave this story emotional depth. The friendship between Peter and Harry is great and I especially like their first quest, the one inside the school. Like so many other stuff in this game their friendship feels real and I believable them when they said they were best friends for years. Can't say that about many other games which were released the last few years.
But it feels like there is 1h missing at the end. when Harry got aggressive fast, this was one of the weaker parts of the story. It was that well written compared to how Peter gradually descents into aggression, jealousy and hatred. His whole story was pretty dark, Miles felt like a side character in middle of the game but this was also part of Peter's story and I enjoyed that. There were a few things that bothered me, the first bigger one was that many of the side quest are as repetitive as in the first game and that fact the I rescued the same dude wearing headphones every time I solved a crime, I mean poor guy. The little minor one is that there is a character called Hailey which is deaf and mute and they decided to give her a “siri” like voice when she used some sort of text to speech mechanic. I found this voice pretty annoying but most of the time she used sign language so it wasn't that big of a problem.
With Spider-Man 2 Insomniac Games solidifies these versions of Spider-Man as my favorite. The jaw-dropping set pieces , a fantastic traversal system and rewarding combat mechanics which makes even the most repetitive quests fun are reason why Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is one of the best games of this year.
Sony's first party games ranked
Games I finished in 2023 Ranked
#3 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023
2023
Finally peace, at last...
I was looking forward to playing the full version of this game after playing the demo. But I was worried at the same time because I didn't really like the focus on parrying and the fact the enemies don't really get staggered.
Lies of P is a fairytale-inspired souls-like game which was not developed by From Software. There are many games that tried to capture the magic and feeling playing a From Software title but not many succeeded.
Sadly I have to say that I think that NEOWIZ & Round8 Studio didn't really succeed either. There are some cool weapon designs and the assembling mechanic is really great. It gives you the option to "customize the weapon the way you want it. With one exception, which excludes special weapons like those that can be purchased with the rare Egos. But if I have to decided I think I like the more badass design from Elden Ring's weapons more than a Wrench glued on top of a Police Baton from Lies of P.
The Victorian gothic city as a setting is pretty great and it reminded me a lot of Bloodborne which I just recently finished for the first time. But Bloodborne's setting is still superior. I liked that they included some easter eggs like the old Lady at the window. One small thing which I really appreciated was the symbol which shows up and tells you where you can complete a quest. The characters are all interesting but nothing too special and the lips are asynchron but that can be forgiven because this wasn't developed by the largest developer studio. Also, you can pet the cat once you become more human.
That's pretty much everything that I liked about this game, the boss enemies sometimes doesn't fit into the chapter. The whole chapter teaches you how to use status effects because the enemies of this chapter are weak to eat just so the big boss enemy is immune to it. The boss fights are also pretty unbalanced, some are bulletsponges and some are almost one hit kills. As mentioned above I just the Wrench combined with a Police baton and the fable arts attack does a ton of damage, up to 4-5 k damage.
But most of the time the fable arts attacks are pretty much useless because you have to farm them to fill up the attack bar. So I didn't use the fable arts against the fodder enemies or mini boss enemies but also didn't use them in the boss fights because either the fable arts bar was empty or I knew that I would die anyway after using the special attack in the boss fight. I think it would have been a lot better if the fable arts bar would be refilled completely after dying so you can actually use them in the boss fights. I know there is an upgrade but this only refills one bar and it's pretty much useless. As I said in the beginning, some enemies don't get staggered or knocked back when you hit them but they stagger you. Which ruined the gameplay a lot for me, sometimes an enemy staggers you so much that you can't really do anything. The arbitrarily attack chains were also a huge problem because sometimes the combos from the boss enemies are three hits long, sometimes 4 or even more. This way it was really hard to learn the pattern of the boss because I never knew how long his attack combo will last or when he hits me due to delaying his attacks. So I tried to block his combos but I was stunned after blocking 1 or 2 attacks so this wasn't an option so I tried to dodge but dodging 4-5 attacks resulted in a depleted stamina bar, leaving me unable to move and I still had to tank a hit or two.
When I successful dodged an attack I was often too far away from the boss too land a hit because the time window between the attacks is often too small. Or I have to use a healing potion after trying to parry and failing again due to these problems. The bigger the monster is, the more damage sponge it is becomes and it feels like it doesn't matter how much I upgrade my weapon, the healthbars still gets barely smaller. The AI from the specter is also really really stupid as hell, he runs in front of the boss and tanks every attack and is dead before the fight has really started. When I downed an enemy I often couldn't hit them when they were lying on the ground which could tip the scales. Pinocchio on the other hand falls to the ground so quickly and then the enemies will continue to be attack while you're lying on the ground so I often took a hit because your are stuck in animations for way too long. I also wasn't a fan of the fact that red attacks can only be parried and dodging was not viable, so I always ran away once I saw the "red light".
Many boss enemies rely on you to parry their attacks to break their block and there was no other option to fight them besides that. The disruption status effects which kills you immediately was also annoying like many boss fights like the second fight against the black rabbit brotherhood.
That concludes my little rant and yes I chose the "bad" ending so I didn't have to fight the last boss. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this game as much as I wanted because you barely have any freedom to fight the enemies. If you were expecting something like Elden Ring, where you have dozens of ways to defeat the boss, then you should probably wait for a sale or skip this game and maybe try the new Lords of the Fallen which hopefully will be better.
Soulslike games ranked
Games finished in 2023 ranked
I was looking forward to playing the full version of this game after playing the demo. But I was worried at the same time because I didn't really like the focus on parrying and the fact the enemies don't really get staggered.
Lies of P is a fairytale-inspired souls-like game which was not developed by From Software. There are many games that tried to capture the magic and feeling playing a From Software title but not many succeeded.
Sadly I have to say that I think that NEOWIZ & Round8 Studio didn't really succeed either. There are some cool weapon designs and the assembling mechanic is really great. It gives you the option to "customize the weapon the way you want it. With one exception, which excludes special weapons like those that can be purchased with the rare Egos. But if I have to decided I think I like the more badass design from Elden Ring's weapons more than a Wrench glued on top of a Police Baton from Lies of P.
The Victorian gothic city as a setting is pretty great and it reminded me a lot of Bloodborne which I just recently finished for the first time. But Bloodborne's setting is still superior. I liked that they included some easter eggs like the old Lady at the window. One small thing which I really appreciated was the symbol which shows up and tells you where you can complete a quest. The characters are all interesting but nothing too special and the lips are asynchron but that can be forgiven because this wasn't developed by the largest developer studio. Also, you can pet the cat once you become more human.
That's pretty much everything that I liked about this game, the boss enemies sometimes doesn't fit into the chapter. The whole chapter teaches you how to use status effects because the enemies of this chapter are weak to eat just so the big boss enemy is immune to it. The boss fights are also pretty unbalanced, some are bulletsponges and some are almost one hit kills. As mentioned above I just the Wrench combined with a Police baton and the fable arts attack does a ton of damage, up to 4-5 k damage.
But most of the time the fable arts attacks are pretty much useless because you have to farm them to fill up the attack bar. So I didn't use the fable arts against the fodder enemies or mini boss enemies but also didn't use them in the boss fights because either the fable arts bar was empty or I knew that I would die anyway after using the special attack in the boss fight. I think it would have been a lot better if the fable arts bar would be refilled completely after dying so you can actually use them in the boss fights. I know there is an upgrade but this only refills one bar and it's pretty much useless. As I said in the beginning, some enemies don't get staggered or knocked back when you hit them but they stagger you. Which ruined the gameplay a lot for me, sometimes an enemy staggers you so much that you can't really do anything. The arbitrarily attack chains were also a huge problem because sometimes the combos from the boss enemies are three hits long, sometimes 4 or even more. This way it was really hard to learn the pattern of the boss because I never knew how long his attack combo will last or when he hits me due to delaying his attacks. So I tried to block his combos but I was stunned after blocking 1 or 2 attacks so this wasn't an option so I tried to dodge but dodging 4-5 attacks resulted in a depleted stamina bar, leaving me unable to move and I still had to tank a hit or two.
When I successful dodged an attack I was often too far away from the boss too land a hit because the time window between the attacks is often too small. Or I have to use a healing potion after trying to parry and failing again due to these problems. The bigger the monster is, the more damage sponge it is becomes and it feels like it doesn't matter how much I upgrade my weapon, the healthbars still gets barely smaller. The AI from the specter is also really really stupid as hell, he runs in front of the boss and tanks every attack and is dead before the fight has really started. When I downed an enemy I often couldn't hit them when they were lying on the ground which could tip the scales. Pinocchio on the other hand falls to the ground so quickly and then the enemies will continue to be attack while you're lying on the ground so I often took a hit because your are stuck in animations for way too long. I also wasn't a fan of the fact that red attacks can only be parried and dodging was not viable, so I always ran away once I saw the "red light".
Many boss enemies rely on you to parry their attacks to break their block and there was no other option to fight them besides that. The disruption status effects which kills you immediately was also annoying like many boss fights like the second fight against the black rabbit brotherhood.
That concludes my little rant and yes I chose the "bad" ending so I didn't have to fight the last boss. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this game as much as I wanted because you barely have any freedom to fight the enemies. If you were expecting something like Elden Ring, where you have dozens of ways to defeat the boss, then you should probably wait for a sale or skip this game and maybe try the new Lords of the Fallen which hopefully will be better.
Soulslike games ranked
Games finished in 2023 ranked
Now that this DLC has finally been released I can admit that I never played the original DLC. Don't ask me why, maybe because I'm not the biggest fan of the original game due to the increase in action and the lack of horror.
After thoroughly enjoying the Resident 4 Remake, I was excited to finally play Separate Ways. One of the biggest reason was Ada Wong. Because I always found her very interesting but never really knew what kind of character she is.
To cut it short, yes I really enjoyed this DLC but let's go into detail.
I already liked Luis a lot in the main game and his relationship with Ada in the DLC is great. His dance at the beginning is alone worth the 9,99€.
It was also interesting to see that Ada has a robot eye with which she can track footsteps and other stuff. I liked this gameplay mechanic even if it wasn't too extensive.
One of the reasons why the remake is one of the strongest Goty contenders of this years is how extremely detailed the game is and this DLC is no exception. For example you can see the tracking transmitter on the back from Luis. Another example is that you can hear Ashley cry while you are outside on the roof of the church.
It was interesting how they implemented Ada's infection and in one scene she says that "the Raccon City night has changed her". Many games just throw stuff like that into your face but now really show it. But you can see the consequences and how she has changed in her actions, the dialogue and in her facial expressions. Besides that Ada is freaking badass, I enjoyed the gameplay with her grapple-hook and her acrobatic abilities. Sadly the DLC was a little but too dark especially in the lab in chapter 6 and 7. I turned the brightness all the way up and sometimes I still couldn't see anything. But maybe the daylight from my window was the problem.
One of the boss enemies called "Pesanta" was a pain in the ass and I think I bought the rocket launcher after dying a few times. Wesker is also back and it was cool to see in 4k with good facial expressions. They also included content that they cut from the main game in this DLC like for example the Skilift. Saddler on the other hand was kinda underwelming but maybe that was because I fully upgraded the Crossbow all the way to max. Which is awesome btw. it was my favorite weapon alongside the Red 9. Or maybe he was so underwelming because Ada is just a side character, just like myself in real life.
Overall is Separate Ways really incredible, it's the best DLC from this year for one of, if not the best game this year. Huge recommendation and it's worth every penny.
After thoroughly enjoying the Resident 4 Remake, I was excited to finally play Separate Ways. One of the biggest reason was Ada Wong. Because I always found her very interesting but never really knew what kind of character she is.
To cut it short, yes I really enjoyed this DLC but let's go into detail.
I already liked Luis a lot in the main game and his relationship with Ada in the DLC is great. His dance at the beginning is alone worth the 9,99€.
It was also interesting to see that Ada has a robot eye with which she can track footsteps and other stuff. I liked this gameplay mechanic even if it wasn't too extensive.
One of the reasons why the remake is one of the strongest Goty contenders of this years is how extremely detailed the game is and this DLC is no exception. For example you can see the tracking transmitter on the back from Luis. Another example is that you can hear Ashley cry while you are outside on the roof of the church.
It was interesting how they implemented Ada's infection and in one scene she says that "the Raccon City night has changed her". Many games just throw stuff like that into your face but now really show it. But you can see the consequences and how she has changed in her actions, the dialogue and in her facial expressions. Besides that Ada is freaking badass, I enjoyed the gameplay with her grapple-hook and her acrobatic abilities. Sadly the DLC was a little but too dark especially in the lab in chapter 6 and 7. I turned the brightness all the way up and sometimes I still couldn't see anything. But maybe the daylight from my window was the problem.
One of the boss enemies called "Pesanta" was a pain in the ass and I think I bought the rocket launcher after dying a few times. Wesker is also back and it was cool to see in 4k with good facial expressions. They also included content that they cut from the main game in this DLC like for example the Skilift. Saddler on the other hand was kinda underwelming but maybe that was because I fully upgraded the Crossbow all the way to max. Which is awesome btw. it was my favorite weapon alongside the Red 9. Or maybe he was so underwelming because Ada is just a side character, just like myself in real life.
Overall is Separate Ways really incredible, it's the best DLC from this year for one of, if not the best game this year. Huge recommendation and it's worth every penny.
2023
Aliens: Dark Decent is the next Alien game after the masterpiece called Alien Isolation and a fun CO-OP shooter called Aliens: Fireteam Elite. But sadly it is way worse than both of them.
So yea I'm really disappointed. I think I have to warn everyone first because this game has a “feature” that made me drop the game after spending 19h playing this game. So what's this great feature? It's a death clock, which wasn't really communicated or explained at the beginning of the game. This means I played 19 hours (which I didn't enjoy, I explaine later why) just to get a "game over, please return to main menu" screen. No cutscene or anything like that which I find really lazy and cheap. So I was forced to pretty much restart a whole new game or reload an older save file and rush through the game with no guarantee that it will be enough. I a player who loves to explore every corner of a game and I like doing side missions which I realized now is not possible because the game punishes you for this in the end. The next problem is that the whole game design doesn't really work with that kind of mechanic because it often feels like you don't have much control over what is happening. The controls are really bad, inputs are not registered or way too late which lead to your death. The KI is also not great and another big problem is that you control the whole squad and you can't really control the individual Marines. I also often had to reload segments because the Marines didn't hit the target and after doing the same segment two or three times without changing my tactics they somewho hit the target. So a huge art is just trial and error which was not fun. The Marines also died like flies when you they are in close combat which makes sense but because of that it hard to fight back once 2-3 Aliens came closer. Due to the camera positioning and controls it was often even harder and too confusing because too much was happening on screen and playing this with controller doesn't help either.
It was also annyoing to hear same three voice lines over and over again and often the messages on screen said your are safe when your are not just to throw me three more Xenomorphs into my unprepared face which then killed me so I had to replay 30 min. again. I also didn't get why there was no "continue from last save" when you are killed. You always have to go back to the main menu to reload the last save file which killed the atmosphere a little bit for me. It's sad because the atmosphere is one of the strength and I also like the motion tracker, it builds up a lot of tension just like I remember from Alien Isolation.
But the face animatios are not up to date and none of the characters are really interesting. Because of that Aliens Dark Decent is overall not a great game and many game design decisions are really frustrating. Until the "game over" screen at the end I would have probably rated this 3/5 but the "death clock" feature was the final nail in the coffin for me. I think this feature would have worked as a feature for a harder difficulty or a new game plus run but not for a first run. I understand what they were trying to do and sometimes the game some satisfying moments similar to the soulslike genre. But the game mechanics doesn't work well with the death clock, controls are not very inaccurate which make this a frustrating experience. As a huge fan of the movie Alien and the game Alien Isolation it was really disappointing to witness another bad entry.
So please just give me Alien Isolation 2 and stop creating stupid shooters out of this IP, thank you.
So yea I'm really disappointed. I think I have to warn everyone first because this game has a “feature” that made me drop the game after spending 19h playing this game. So what's this great feature? It's a death clock, which wasn't really communicated or explained at the beginning of the game. This means I played 19 hours (which I didn't enjoy, I explaine later why) just to get a "game over, please return to main menu" screen. No cutscene or anything like that which I find really lazy and cheap. So I was forced to pretty much restart a whole new game or reload an older save file and rush through the game with no guarantee that it will be enough. I a player who loves to explore every corner of a game and I like doing side missions which I realized now is not possible because the game punishes you for this in the end. The next problem is that the whole game design doesn't really work with that kind of mechanic because it often feels like you don't have much control over what is happening. The controls are really bad, inputs are not registered or way too late which lead to your death. The KI is also not great and another big problem is that you control the whole squad and you can't really control the individual Marines. I also often had to reload segments because the Marines didn't hit the target and after doing the same segment two or three times without changing my tactics they somewho hit the target. So a huge art is just trial and error which was not fun. The Marines also died like flies when you they are in close combat which makes sense but because of that it hard to fight back once 2-3 Aliens came closer. Due to the camera positioning and controls it was often even harder and too confusing because too much was happening on screen and playing this with controller doesn't help either.
It was also annyoing to hear same three voice lines over and over again and often the messages on screen said your are safe when your are not just to throw me three more Xenomorphs into my unprepared face which then killed me so I had to replay 30 min. again. I also didn't get why there was no "continue from last save" when you are killed. You always have to go back to the main menu to reload the last save file which killed the atmosphere a little bit for me. It's sad because the atmosphere is one of the strength and I also like the motion tracker, it builds up a lot of tension just like I remember from Alien Isolation.
But the face animatios are not up to date and none of the characters are really interesting. Because of that Aliens Dark Decent is overall not a great game and many game design decisions are really frustrating. Until the "game over" screen at the end I would have probably rated this 3/5 but the "death clock" feature was the final nail in the coffin for me. I think this feature would have worked as a feature for a harder difficulty or a new game plus run but not for a first run. I understand what they were trying to do and sometimes the game some satisfying moments similar to the soulslike genre. But the game mechanics doesn't work well with the death clock, controls are not very inaccurate which make this a frustrating experience. As a huge fan of the movie Alien and the game Alien Isolation it was really disappointing to witness another bad entry.
So please just give me Alien Isolation 2 and stop creating stupid shooters out of this IP, thank you.