TheSlowKenyan
2024
Pacific Drive: An interesting world and a monotonous gameplay loop makes for wasted potential you can steer clear of.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).
I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying, too, as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.
The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.
I do not recommend this bore of a game. Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).
I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying, too, as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.
The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.
I do not recommend this bore of a game. Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations.
The Callisto Protocol: A video game designed to teach people the concept of “hurry up and wait”. It's very flashy with excellent textures and lighting effects, but it's a hollow and boring game experience barely worth it even while heavily discounted.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
2022
Dave the Diver: Cute, colorful and charming, but Dave sure knows how to overstay his welcome. Variety becomes “too much of a good thing”, and eventually you're bogged down in so much managerial work that Dave the Diver can feel like a series of chores that will, interestingly enough, have you opt out of the diving portion most often.
If you know this game, you know you dive for fish by day and manage a sushi restaurant by night. “Cool,” you're thinking, “I loved Moonlighter!” Well, Dave is comically ambitious, as he chooses to moonlight as many different things: waiter, bartender, busboy, and photographer; he'll farm eggs, vegetables, fish, and underwater crops; occasionally hunt terrorists and ancient leviathans. Really, Dave does it all while managing to hang onto his curvaceous figure much like Hurley from “Lost”.
So there's lots going on, but that's good, right? You just gotta trust me: this game goes on far too long and is crammed with too much stuff. Dave the Diver is very good until it isn't, probably around the one third or halfway mark is where there's too much you "have" to do.
The diving part of Dave the Diver becomes almost an afterthought; you'll be overflowing with fish from your farms at a certain point so that when you do finally dive, it's to grab something specific that of course you'll then have trouble finding. You just saw a cookiecutter shark last time, where are the bastards, now?!
Despite looking like a game that your grandma might play, Dave the Diver is surprisingly cruel to you, too. When you die diving, you can only bring back one thing and the rest is wasted time. This is far too brutal, when your weight is high enough you may have dozens of things you were hoping to bring back (this is of course before your farms are self-sustaining).
The decision to tie your health to your oxygen was probably a poor one, as you may look over at your O2 and say “90? Plenty of time!” but then a narwhal only has to bump into you for an instant death, losing all the rare minerals you'd just grabbed that run. Bringing back a single item is almost worse than nothing at all as you're forced to go through your entire inventory and see exactly what you won't be bringing back home.
Dave is far too sluggish in the water for this lousy combat system. He can barely dodge (if you even equip the right necklace, that is) and his aiming is terrible, he can't aim up or down. Are his weapons good? Well, you'd be a fool to bring anything other than the dart gun or net launcher, as those get you the three star fish with the added chance of eggs for your farms. So even though there are sniper rifles and grenade launchers, you'll very likely not even upgrade them, cause why bother? Maybe you'll bring a rifle if you know you're headed for a boss fight, but that's about it.
My favorite part of this game was the sushi restaurant managing. I liked enhancing my food options before choosing the menu then kicking things off, watching my freshly-upgraded staff help me sling expensive dishes and clean up messes to make room for the next sucker I could rip off. It's good, but it's only a fraction of the game. Everything becomes a small fraction and you can't really skip much of anything if you want to make money and get Bancho his five star ratings each night. You can let your Tamagotchi die, but you won't miss out on vegetables and fish, those are big bucks.
I had a good deal of fun with the restaurant, but the other main reason for giving it the high(er) rating despite not loving too much of the game is the incredible pixel art. The cutscenes are phenomenal and even the “simple” pixelated models of characters look great against their 3D backdrops. The sounds are lacking, especially compared to the visuals; I don't think a single musical track is worth listening to and none of the sound effects are particularly good. The journalist's “voice”, god, was that painful to hear over and over.
You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck with Dave the Diver, but I doubt many people will enjoy new minigame after new minigame. If you were hoping to just dive and serve food, you might hate how convoluted this game becomes. I just got sick of it eventually.
I wouldn't really recommend the game.
If you know this game, you know you dive for fish by day and manage a sushi restaurant by night. “Cool,” you're thinking, “I loved Moonlighter!” Well, Dave is comically ambitious, as he chooses to moonlight as many different things: waiter, bartender, busboy, and photographer; he'll farm eggs, vegetables, fish, and underwater crops; occasionally hunt terrorists and ancient leviathans. Really, Dave does it all while managing to hang onto his curvaceous figure much like Hurley from “Lost”.
So there's lots going on, but that's good, right? You just gotta trust me: this game goes on far too long and is crammed with too much stuff. Dave the Diver is very good until it isn't, probably around the one third or halfway mark is where there's too much you "have" to do.
The diving part of Dave the Diver becomes almost an afterthought; you'll be overflowing with fish from your farms at a certain point so that when you do finally dive, it's to grab something specific that of course you'll then have trouble finding. You just saw a cookiecutter shark last time, where are the bastards, now?!
Despite looking like a game that your grandma might play, Dave the Diver is surprisingly cruel to you, too. When you die diving, you can only bring back one thing and the rest is wasted time. This is far too brutal, when your weight is high enough you may have dozens of things you were hoping to bring back (this is of course before your farms are self-sustaining).
The decision to tie your health to your oxygen was probably a poor one, as you may look over at your O2 and say “90? Plenty of time!” but then a narwhal only has to bump into you for an instant death, losing all the rare minerals you'd just grabbed that run. Bringing back a single item is almost worse than nothing at all as you're forced to go through your entire inventory and see exactly what you won't be bringing back home.
Dave is far too sluggish in the water for this lousy combat system. He can barely dodge (if you even equip the right necklace, that is) and his aiming is terrible, he can't aim up or down. Are his weapons good? Well, you'd be a fool to bring anything other than the dart gun or net launcher, as those get you the three star fish with the added chance of eggs for your farms. So even though there are sniper rifles and grenade launchers, you'll very likely not even upgrade them, cause why bother? Maybe you'll bring a rifle if you know you're headed for a boss fight, but that's about it.
My favorite part of this game was the sushi restaurant managing. I liked enhancing my food options before choosing the menu then kicking things off, watching my freshly-upgraded staff help me sling expensive dishes and clean up messes to make room for the next sucker I could rip off. It's good, but it's only a fraction of the game. Everything becomes a small fraction and you can't really skip much of anything if you want to make money and get Bancho his five star ratings each night. You can let your Tamagotchi die, but you won't miss out on vegetables and fish, those are big bucks.
I had a good deal of fun with the restaurant, but the other main reason for giving it the high(er) rating despite not loving too much of the game is the incredible pixel art. The cutscenes are phenomenal and even the “simple” pixelated models of characters look great against their 3D backdrops. The sounds are lacking, especially compared to the visuals; I don't think a single musical track is worth listening to and none of the sound effects are particularly good. The journalist's “voice”, god, was that painful to hear over and over.
You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck with Dave the Diver, but I doubt many people will enjoy new minigame after new minigame. If you were hoping to just dive and serve food, you might hate how convoluted this game becomes. I just got sick of it eventually.
I wouldn't really recommend the game.
2018
Dusk: Dusk was pretty loudly recommended to me by Steam frequently for years since its Early Access release and I finally gave it a go after seeing a nice discount and news of an HD upgrade. It's a good game, but ultimately I wasn't all too impressed.
I think my favorite thing about Dusk was that, from a level design perspective, it certainly tries to keep you guessing. You'll pass through a variety of sights, starting with the swamps and foundries and ending up in Escher-inspired labs and Hellish atria. There are the classic Doom-like levels with a couple colored key cards, some hallways and some rooms/areas clearly designed for shootouts, and then there are “narrative” levels that'll remind you of a faster paced Max Payne nightmare sequence: pretty on rails and maybe too much voice over work in the background, but it is never enough to really annoy you.
Problem is I don't think it's enough to ever really excite you, either. The intro is cool, with you just starting in a basement while three chainsaw-wielding psychos try to murder you and you fight back with dual sickles; an interesting melee weapon choice. But after this intro? It's pretty stock stuff.
Don't expect to learn anything about a plot except for two text dumps between the next chapters. I don't need a plot in a game which is focused on the gameplay, but that just means the gameplay has to be tighter than my uncle's grip in the garage that one summer, and I don't think it was. It never hit the highs of any good Doom game and isn't really all that clever, either.
Maybe it's partially the weapons, they're just not that good. The sword is overpowered, especially with its charge attack when you have 100+ health; the dual pistols quickly become completely worthless; the akimbo shotguns and super shotgun can burn through ammo very fast and have a low ammo cap (though the akimbo shotties were very fun); the machine gun is boring and so close to sounding punchy enough but not quite; the hunting rifle is fun, but like the shotguns has a low ammo capacity and not very practical in most of the close quarters areas; the crossbow is the hunting rifle but weaker/faster; and finally the riveter and mortar are very strong but almost identical to one another and probably should just be combined into one explosive weapon, or just lose the mortar entirely.
It has all the staples you'd expect with secret areas inside secrets areas, rooms that turn into enemy-spawning ambushes when you pick up a key, and lame bosses who don't know when to die. Fortunately, there's only one area in the game where you're stuck and deal with wave after wave of enemies, having you kill about 230 of them. A worse developer would have thrown in one of these per chapter, I'm happy restraint was shown because I was done after the one time.
So the gameplay is the game. Is it good? It's fine. I don't think you'll see anything in Dusk you haven't seen elsewhere, but that's not necessarily the worst thing as long as it's done well (see: Lies of P). Unfortunately, I don't think this is done that well. I'm certainly happy I got it on discount, especially since the HD upgrade looks terrible and its saves don't work with the original game, which I ended up sticking with. The worse graphics are better, who woulda thought.
I can see myself coming back to Dusk some day for a little bit o' murder, but no day soon.
I sorta recommend Dusk, but never at full price.
I think my favorite thing about Dusk was that, from a level design perspective, it certainly tries to keep you guessing. You'll pass through a variety of sights, starting with the swamps and foundries and ending up in Escher-inspired labs and Hellish atria. There are the classic Doom-like levels with a couple colored key cards, some hallways and some rooms/areas clearly designed for shootouts, and then there are “narrative” levels that'll remind you of a faster paced Max Payne nightmare sequence: pretty on rails and maybe too much voice over work in the background, but it is never enough to really annoy you.
Problem is I don't think it's enough to ever really excite you, either. The intro is cool, with you just starting in a basement while three chainsaw-wielding psychos try to murder you and you fight back with dual sickles; an interesting melee weapon choice. But after this intro? It's pretty stock stuff.
Don't expect to learn anything about a plot except for two text dumps between the next chapters. I don't need a plot in a game which is focused on the gameplay, but that just means the gameplay has to be tighter than my uncle's grip in the garage that one summer, and I don't think it was. It never hit the highs of any good Doom game and isn't really all that clever, either.
Maybe it's partially the weapons, they're just not that good. The sword is overpowered, especially with its charge attack when you have 100+ health; the dual pistols quickly become completely worthless; the akimbo shotguns and super shotgun can burn through ammo very fast and have a low ammo cap (though the akimbo shotties were very fun); the machine gun is boring and so close to sounding punchy enough but not quite; the hunting rifle is fun, but like the shotguns has a low ammo capacity and not very practical in most of the close quarters areas; the crossbow is the hunting rifle but weaker/faster; and finally the riveter and mortar are very strong but almost identical to one another and probably should just be combined into one explosive weapon, or just lose the mortar entirely.
It has all the staples you'd expect with secret areas inside secrets areas, rooms that turn into enemy-spawning ambushes when you pick up a key, and lame bosses who don't know when to die. Fortunately, there's only one area in the game where you're stuck and deal with wave after wave of enemies, having you kill about 230 of them. A worse developer would have thrown in one of these per chapter, I'm happy restraint was shown because I was done after the one time.
So the gameplay is the game. Is it good? It's fine. I don't think you'll see anything in Dusk you haven't seen elsewhere, but that's not necessarily the worst thing as long as it's done well (see: Lies of P). Unfortunately, I don't think this is done that well. I'm certainly happy I got it on discount, especially since the HD upgrade looks terrible and its saves don't work with the original game, which I ended up sticking with. The worse graphics are better, who woulda thought.
I can see myself coming back to Dusk some day for a little bit o' murder, but no day soon.
I sorta recommend Dusk, but never at full price.
Shadows of Rose: One buying the Winters' Expansion is almost assuredly buying it for this brief campaign. The third person mode for Village was something I had mistakenly thought was merely given away as an update; but no, it's tied to this campaign's purchase (ridiculous). I only had it on for my rerun of Village for a few minutes before Ethan's rapid, jerking motions when running bothered me enough to go back to first person. So that's a dud.
New Mercenaries characters? I am not a fan of the scoring shooter gameplay, so I personally don't see the value in it. Maybe one day, but I doubt it.
For me, the $20 asking price is basically for this: Shadows of Rose. Is it worth it? No, not really. But the optimist in me will admit there is some value here, especially if you were a big fan of Village.
When we meet grown-up Rose in the end of Village, she only gets two minutes of screen time to develop a character. All we really get to see is that, like her father, she has a drive and will gladly fight her own battles. She's adequately admirable in that brief time, but not really enough to make me ask for her own DLC... but that's fine, as long as it's good?
Just like Ethan was in Village, Rose is done dirty here. If when you hear your character is going to be interacting with the “memories” of something and you immediately say to yourself, “Sounds like incoming reused assets to me,” then congratulations: we're equally prophetic. Rose only gets to explore Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento, and a bit of the Village. So we, the player, won't get any new sights through Rose. Pretty disappointing.
Her journey is a personal one where she learns about her father. It's not the most interesting thing in the world, and really the biggest highlight for me was Capcom continuing their running gag of doing whatever they can to make sure you never see Ethan's face.
Rose's powers are the only new thing you'll be doing gameplay-wise (from Village), and all she really has is a stun. It's nice to use in the first chunk of the DLC, the only chunk that really reminded me of “classic” Resident Evil in that you're not given much ammo and need to make the on-the-fly call of whether you're running past this enemy or burning your ammo killing them. While it's a retread of Castle Dimitrescu, which was already a retread of the Baker house, I enjoyed this portion the most.
The second chunk is House Beneviento again and, like the first time around, this offers the scariest moments in the DLC. I really enjoyed the “Let's play with dolls” segment, it was spooky and clever and ramped up in difficulty well.
It ends with yet another retread, this time of Village's Call of Duty-esque shootout ending, just thankfully not as insane and now toned down. The final boss fight is the exact same final boss fight from Village, only now you can actually dodge and counter. Rose gets a special power attack for just this fight and you'll use it three or four times. That was... alright. Might be better if I hadn't just played through Village, though.
It's over in two and a half hours (give or take, I really explored and wasted time) and like Ethan's mold-infested body, it isn't very fresh.
I don't know if Capcom plans to make RE9 with Rose as the main character, but if this DLC was supposed to hype me up for that prospect, it failed. I don't hate Rose or anything, but this largely felt uninspired and unnecessary. I wish Rose got something proper and this certainly isn't it.
I don't recommend Shadows of Rose. It's too expensive for an experience you've largely already had. It's not total junk, but is simply another disappointment when it comes to Resident Evil Village.
New Mercenaries characters? I am not a fan of the scoring shooter gameplay, so I personally don't see the value in it. Maybe one day, but I doubt it.
For me, the $20 asking price is basically for this: Shadows of Rose. Is it worth it? No, not really. But the optimist in me will admit there is some value here, especially if you were a big fan of Village.
When we meet grown-up Rose in the end of Village, she only gets two minutes of screen time to develop a character. All we really get to see is that, like her father, she has a drive and will gladly fight her own battles. She's adequately admirable in that brief time, but not really enough to make me ask for her own DLC... but that's fine, as long as it's good?
Just like Ethan was in Village, Rose is done dirty here. If when you hear your character is going to be interacting with the “memories” of something and you immediately say to yourself, “Sounds like incoming reused assets to me,” then congratulations: we're equally prophetic. Rose only gets to explore Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento, and a bit of the Village. So we, the player, won't get any new sights through Rose. Pretty disappointing.
Her journey is a personal one where she learns about her father. It's not the most interesting thing in the world, and really the biggest highlight for me was Capcom continuing their running gag of doing whatever they can to make sure you never see Ethan's face.
Rose's powers are the only new thing you'll be doing gameplay-wise (from Village), and all she really has is a stun. It's nice to use in the first chunk of the DLC, the only chunk that really reminded me of “classic” Resident Evil in that you're not given much ammo and need to make the on-the-fly call of whether you're running past this enemy or burning your ammo killing them. While it's a retread of Castle Dimitrescu, which was already a retread of the Baker house, I enjoyed this portion the most.
The second chunk is House Beneviento again and, like the first time around, this offers the scariest moments in the DLC. I really enjoyed the “Let's play with dolls” segment, it was spooky and clever and ramped up in difficulty well.
It ends with yet another retread, this time of Village's Call of Duty-esque shootout ending, just thankfully not as insane and now toned down. The final boss fight is the exact same final boss fight from Village, only now you can actually dodge and counter. Rose gets a special power attack for just this fight and you'll use it three or four times. That was... alright. Might be better if I hadn't just played through Village, though.
It's over in two and a half hours (give or take, I really explored and wasted time) and like Ethan's mold-infested body, it isn't very fresh.
I don't know if Capcom plans to make RE9 with Rose as the main character, but if this DLC was supposed to hype me up for that prospect, it failed. I don't hate Rose or anything, but this largely felt uninspired and unnecessary. I wish Rose got something proper and this certainly isn't it.
I don't recommend Shadows of Rose. It's too expensive for an experience you've largely already had. It's not total junk, but is simply another disappointment when it comes to Resident Evil Village.
2023
I think the best way to sum up Bethesda's effort with Starfield (other than just calling it “Fallout 4 in space”, which it is, but that's far from original at this point and I need to ramble) is to just look at the Red Mile quest.
In a space bar that's too dim yet hurts your eyes no matter where you look, a woman named Mei promises you certain death in “The Red Mile”; some challenge you won't remotely begin to fear because even at a measly level 12, you're slaughtering anything stupid enough to fight you. You follow her to the hype platform (which looks like the galaxy's cheapest VIP section), each step taking you closer to the annoying, looping music's source. It gets louder and louder and when Mei finally speaks into the microphone, she's almost fully drowned out by the shitty tune.
The gathering to see you off on this edge of your seat adventure is... four NPCs. When Mei is done riling up this “crowd” - who could fit in a Mini Cooper - three of them clap soundlessly. You can't even bet on yourself because that's just obviously free money. One patron goes to longingly gaze out the window, but it only reflects the room's interior. The reflection is missing almost all of the assets that should be there, including you and the would-be gazer himself. He doesn't seem to care.
The Red Mile itself is infested with the worst bulletsponge enemies you've seen yet and they'll concuss you with insta-explosion, toxic shit-bombs. They'll give a tease of experience per ammo-wasting kill. And you can get stunned really easily now! That was a smart choice for combat flow.
When I completed the “impossible” task of flipping a switch then running away from this horrid mess, Mei met with me in the world of blistering snow and no atmosphere to congratulate me while she wore no spacesuit. None of this surprises me, but people thinking highly of this absolutely blows my mind. The “I built a computer/bought a Series X for Starfield!” crowd almost disgusts me. Maybe Todd Howard is right, though, and all of this is my fault for not having a 4090 because I'm a dirt-coated peasant.
Bethesda knows how to make a video game, and you know this because they've made that same video game like four times now, and yet people still seem to clamor for more of the stale, sloppy mess. If this was your first ever Bethesda game, I could see someone enjoying this played out, buggy ride. I have friends who fall into this category, they'll get many hours out of Starfield. If you're familiar with Bethesda's work, though, you may say Starfield feels like one step forward and several steps back.
Is Starfield a bad game? Kind of, but I've played much worse. I wish I hadn't ever played Fallout 4 and had played this instead, but I can't go back and undo the hours which lead to the feeling of repetition. It is, beyond a doubt, comically sterile. “Space” doesn't really feel like space when it's just broken up into rooms, same as the Capital Wasteland or Skyrim. Whiterun was just a room and so is Mars, it's just a slightly nicer looking one. The trade for this visual upgrade is traveling anywhere is a bigger pain than ever before. “Space” is just a series of loading screens and animations you'll get sick of seeing immediately (thank god for mods).
The fact that you can see out of your ship's window is impressive to me, considering what they're working with. Just like I was “impressed” by Fallout 4 having real-time elevators (no longer in Starfield, and actually a good call as this saves you time). Modders, of course, swooped in immediately to fix stuff Bethesda should have already dealt with. How low is the bar for the multi-billion dollar company? The Ryujin "stealth" missions feel a college student's experiment, not "one of the most important RPGs ever made." (Xbox made this claim, not me.)
The best thing about Starfield is the return of the Adoring Fan. I cannot believe I just said that, but he rules and I'll stand by that forever. He has gifted me a plushie and a coffee mug and they're perfect. His voice actor still has it 100% down, each line brings me back to the fever-dream theater of Oblivion. If I can't have any innovation, I may as well at least get nostalgia. “My respect for you grows by the kilogram!” – This game's saving grace.
I do not recommend Starfield.
In a space bar that's too dim yet hurts your eyes no matter where you look, a woman named Mei promises you certain death in “The Red Mile”; some challenge you won't remotely begin to fear because even at a measly level 12, you're slaughtering anything stupid enough to fight you. You follow her to the hype platform (which looks like the galaxy's cheapest VIP section), each step taking you closer to the annoying, looping music's source. It gets louder and louder and when Mei finally speaks into the microphone, she's almost fully drowned out by the shitty tune.
The gathering to see you off on this edge of your seat adventure is... four NPCs. When Mei is done riling up this “crowd” - who could fit in a Mini Cooper - three of them clap soundlessly. You can't even bet on yourself because that's just obviously free money. One patron goes to longingly gaze out the window, but it only reflects the room's interior. The reflection is missing almost all of the assets that should be there, including you and the would-be gazer himself. He doesn't seem to care.
The Red Mile itself is infested with the worst bulletsponge enemies you've seen yet and they'll concuss you with insta-explosion, toxic shit-bombs. They'll give a tease of experience per ammo-wasting kill. And you can get stunned really easily now! That was a smart choice for combat flow.
When I completed the “impossible” task of flipping a switch then running away from this horrid mess, Mei met with me in the world of blistering snow and no atmosphere to congratulate me while she wore no spacesuit. None of this surprises me, but people thinking highly of this absolutely blows my mind. The “I built a computer/bought a Series X for Starfield!” crowd almost disgusts me. Maybe Todd Howard is right, though, and all of this is my fault for not having a 4090 because I'm a dirt-coated peasant.
Bethesda knows how to make a video game, and you know this because they've made that same video game like four times now, and yet people still seem to clamor for more of the stale, sloppy mess. If this was your first ever Bethesda game, I could see someone enjoying this played out, buggy ride. I have friends who fall into this category, they'll get many hours out of Starfield. If you're familiar with Bethesda's work, though, you may say Starfield feels like one step forward and several steps back.
Is Starfield a bad game? Kind of, but I've played much worse. I wish I hadn't ever played Fallout 4 and had played this instead, but I can't go back and undo the hours which lead to the feeling of repetition. It is, beyond a doubt, comically sterile. “Space” doesn't really feel like space when it's just broken up into rooms, same as the Capital Wasteland or Skyrim. Whiterun was just a room and so is Mars, it's just a slightly nicer looking one. The trade for this visual upgrade is traveling anywhere is a bigger pain than ever before. “Space” is just a series of loading screens and animations you'll get sick of seeing immediately (thank god for mods).
The fact that you can see out of your ship's window is impressive to me, considering what they're working with. Just like I was “impressed” by Fallout 4 having real-time elevators (no longer in Starfield, and actually a good call as this saves you time). Modders, of course, swooped in immediately to fix stuff Bethesda should have already dealt with. How low is the bar for the multi-billion dollar company? The Ryujin "stealth" missions feel a college student's experiment, not "one of the most important RPGs ever made." (Xbox made this claim, not me.)
The best thing about Starfield is the return of the Adoring Fan. I cannot believe I just said that, but he rules and I'll stand by that forever. He has gifted me a plushie and a coffee mug and they're perfect. His voice actor still has it 100% down, each line brings me back to the fever-dream theater of Oblivion. If I can't have any innovation, I may as well at least get nostalgia. “My respect for you grows by the kilogram!” – This game's saving grace.
I do not recommend Starfield.
2022
Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but at 29 years old and gaming for almost every one of them, I think it's safe to say there aren't many "firsts" left for me. Today, I found the first game that actually sickened me in a way I've never felt before. I've played bad games, far too many to count. The kind that put you in something like a trance while you just go through the motions, muscle memory getting you through level after level until game is over and your time sufficiently wasted. But today I played High on Life and even though I uninstalled it over ten minutes ago, I still feel nauseated from my time with it.
After typing that paragraph, I went to the bathroom to get acetaminophin. I don't know if it'll even help this type of brain pain, it is very reminiscent of a hangover headache. The kind of burrowed anguish and mental fog that only goes away after a deep, REM-heavy sleep.
I played High on Life for about three hours. Halfway into that journey, I had to look up a way to change the FOV, as playing the game felt like I had binoculars fitted to my skull and over my eyes constantly. I had to use Flawless Widescreen and change the FOV from there, as it isn't an option in the game's settings (bad sign). Though the tweak "worked", all it seemed to do was flip the binoculars around: now I saw more but I still felt like something was very wrong. Maybe it was the oversaturated world, everything a hideous and piercing neon color. Maybe it was the squeaky-voiced characters -- who I had altered to speak less frequently, mind you -- shouting at me almost non-stop. One character's entire joke is that he will follow you and blabber. You cannot shoot him, you cannot trap him in a room, he will follow you until he is done and every time you TRY to speed this process up by popping off a shot at this flying asshole, his timer merely extends as he chastises your aim before beginning his interrupted sentence anew. His whole bit is he sucks. Great stuff.
Your gun is Justin Roiland doing an almost-Morty voice. That kind of whiny, slightly crying voice. This quickly gets old. You ever put Rick and Morty on for multiple hours straight? Of course not, you're not 11 years old, you can only tolerate dumb shit in brief sessions like a normal person. Well this game is that, only the color of your television is warped beyond repair and someone has seemingly wrapped the damn thing around your skull. It's an assault on your senses and you will not enjoy your time with it.
This is a game absolutely no one should play. Children, whose minds are still malleable and can survive the nonstop coup and contrecoup injuries, will only learn how to be incessant, misery-spreading viruses. Adults will be violated in more ways than they thought a game possibly could. I hated my experience with High on Life and I am quite positive anyone else would, too.
After typing that paragraph, I went to the bathroom to get acetaminophin. I don't know if it'll even help this type of brain pain, it is very reminiscent of a hangover headache. The kind of burrowed anguish and mental fog that only goes away after a deep, REM-heavy sleep.
I played High on Life for about three hours. Halfway into that journey, I had to look up a way to change the FOV, as playing the game felt like I had binoculars fitted to my skull and over my eyes constantly. I had to use Flawless Widescreen and change the FOV from there, as it isn't an option in the game's settings (bad sign). Though the tweak "worked", all it seemed to do was flip the binoculars around: now I saw more but I still felt like something was very wrong. Maybe it was the oversaturated world, everything a hideous and piercing neon color. Maybe it was the squeaky-voiced characters -- who I had altered to speak less frequently, mind you -- shouting at me almost non-stop. One character's entire joke is that he will follow you and blabber. You cannot shoot him, you cannot trap him in a room, he will follow you until he is done and every time you TRY to speed this process up by popping off a shot at this flying asshole, his timer merely extends as he chastises your aim before beginning his interrupted sentence anew. His whole bit is he sucks. Great stuff.
Your gun is Justin Roiland doing an almost-Morty voice. That kind of whiny, slightly crying voice. This quickly gets old. You ever put Rick and Morty on for multiple hours straight? Of course not, you're not 11 years old, you can only tolerate dumb shit in brief sessions like a normal person. Well this game is that, only the color of your television is warped beyond repair and someone has seemingly wrapped the damn thing around your skull. It's an assault on your senses and you will not enjoy your time with it.
This is a game absolutely no one should play. Children, whose minds are still malleable and can survive the nonstop coup and contrecoup injuries, will only learn how to be incessant, misery-spreading viruses. Adults will be violated in more ways than they thought a game possibly could. I hated my experience with High on Life and I am quite positive anyone else would, too.
To be honest, and I have the feeling I'll be crucified for this: I don't understand the love Diablo 2 has garnered over the years. The Diablo series managed to co-opt and narrow the term “ARPG” to mean an isometric, point-and-click game through its sheer popularity, and over twenty years later Diablo 2 is still considered the ARPG among many gamers. Blizzard gave Diablo 2 quite the tune up with Diablo II: Resurrected, but is the game still a “masterpiece” with a new paint job? TL;DR at end.
I got D2:R because I played Diablo IV's beta as a necromancer and enjoyed that a good bit. Necromancers are rarely offered as an option, so it felt fresh summoning an army out of recently-slain corpses. I figured D4's launch would suck (nailed it, though you don't have to be Nostradamus to know Blizzard has a failure streak to maintain) and I didn't want to pay $70 to wait for a game to be good. So I got D2:R (and 3, on sale as a combo) as I figured, “When people say “Diablo”, they mean Diablo 2. It's gotta be good.”
So, is it?
To sum up my thoughts: kind of, not really. Many games are important, defining moments of the medium and easily cement their place in history; the harder part is still remaining good – or even playable – years later. With the press of the 'G' key, the game immediately shifts over to the original audio/visuals and good lord, have things improved. More remasters need to offer this, if for nothing other than the five seconds you'll spend in the old graphics to know you were wise to buy the remaster.
I'd say Blizzard was able to breathe a lot of life into Diablo 2 thanks to hard work on the visuals, but it still plays like a very old game and I fail to see why this is considered one of the greats when most of it is a bland and repetitive snore. I'm pretty sure the only reason I had fun at all was because I played with a friend, but every game is improved with friends, so that's hardly a "pro" to me. Alone, D2:R is almost dreadful.
The story has excellently rendered cutscenes accompanying each of its five Acts, but you'll never care about what's going on. Diablo was an asshole but someone killed him, oh wait he's coming back to life, kill him again. That's the game. The world is a few varied landscapes depending on the Act but there's nothing to learn about it except through maybe “gossip” dialogue options of NPCs. That's fine for me: I don't need to know more, they already lost me and they're sure to lose you, too.
The visuals all look good with great textures and the animations clearly kept the “jerking” look of yore intentionally; all very solid. Again, you can go back and look at the old textures and sounds with one button press, then right back to the Resurrected look when you realize how awful that was.
The UI is pretty terrible and probably my least favorite part of the game's experience. Only two buttons are shown, your left and right mouse clicks, and you can look through a clunky menu or use the F-row of keys to swap between abilities. 'W' can be pressed to switch weapons instantly to a second set, which can have its own presets. I don't think there's any denying that this feels bizarrely limited and stiff to navigate. For some reason, the controller support is quite good, where they bump that number from two visible inputs to five, and you can hold a trigger down to see five more! This is huge!... but since I prefer playing on a mouse and keyboard, I'm stuck with the clunky shit, memorizing what each key from F1 through F8 does and whether its assigned to M1 or M2. Very disappointing. At least key remapping works well?
ARPGs, as now-defined by Diablo, never interested me much. I think they're pretty boring. Your abilities rarely change and while boss fights may be exciting changes of pace, the game is almost always going to be a grind. By design you're supposed to walk into a room and, through basically muscle memory, wipe the whole place out, probably without opening your eyes. You will then do this several hundred times with little to no variety. Because your inputs are so miserable, having to actually swap between abilities on the fly is a nuisance and the developers seem to know this, so it's walk in, slaughter, move on.
To overly simplify, as I see it, there's really only two styles of gameplay: direct and summoners. Barbarians, Amazons, etc. are direct: they'll attack each enemy directly with their melee or ranged weapon and aside from maybe your slave-- I mean “hired help”, you're doing all the damage on your own. Necromancers and druids are summoners: they spawn an army to do their bidding for them and are largely managerial, making sure their wolves or their skeletons are full in number. Occasionally, they chip in with melee or ranged attacks, too, but their power comes from their numbers.
Summoners are insanely strong. I played as a necromancer while my buddy played as a druid, and together we just ran through most of this game while our combined armies tore shit up. This made the game pretty boring, honestly. Only Diablo and his brother, Baal, forced us to actually try and play differently. Two boss fights across god knows how many hours, that's it. Most of this game played itself for us.
Direct fighters are laborious. I've played a few hours as an Amazon, and while it's nice to actually have a direct role in the death of my enemies, now it's all on me. Everything has slowed way down, and since I've beaten the game as a necromancer, I know exactly how much more I have to go and it seems like quite the painful endeavor without someone else there acting as a summoner. It's less “boring”, I suppose, but not in a very good way. I doubt I'll finish as my Amazon.
You ever have a friend recommend you a TV show with the addendum, “Oh, the first season sucks, you gotta get through it because the second is where it gets good!”? You're probably not watching that show, right? People do that with games, too, of course: “Final Fantasy XIII gets good twenty/thirty hours in.” Diablo 2 is the first time I've ever seen a game really start to get good only after you've beaten the entire thing and can go through again on Nightmare difficulty.
Once beaten, you can just start the whole thing over again immediately as your same character. You keep all your gear and whatever is in your storage box. In the starting zone for the second time, my buddy and I finally started getting good loot. Maybe it was because we didn't play as Ladder characters, but we rarely ever saw yellow gear on Normal, it was now on Nightmare that we finally got a bit more of a challenge (as summoners, mind you) and loot to accompany the added trouble.
I have the ball rolling on that slightly better Nightmare playthrough, but I'm not sure I'll finish. I feel comfortable reviewing the game here. Finishing that Amazon's playthrough is even less likely. How can I possibly recommend a game to someone when it takes an entire playthrough to start feeling something from it? Most of my first playthrough felt like I was atrophying and the game ran on autopilot.
Maybe the real Diablo was the sheer number of times we had to teleport back to base to sell all of our junk along the way.
TL;DR This game isn't very fun to me, regardless of your class's play style. I like the variety offered (necromancers, hell yeah), but really it boils down to just two styles and they both have issues. As far as “classics you need to try” go, this isn't one of them.
Also, it has been two years and yet if you don't cap your frame rate in the settings, D2:R will try to set your computer on fire. Why hasn't Blizzard patched this? Other than attempting to melt your hardware, this is a pretty good remaster of a boring game.
I got D2:R because I played Diablo IV's beta as a necromancer and enjoyed that a good bit. Necromancers are rarely offered as an option, so it felt fresh summoning an army out of recently-slain corpses. I figured D4's launch would suck (nailed it, though you don't have to be Nostradamus to know Blizzard has a failure streak to maintain) and I didn't want to pay $70 to wait for a game to be good. So I got D2:R (and 3, on sale as a combo) as I figured, “When people say “Diablo”, they mean Diablo 2. It's gotta be good.”
So, is it?
To sum up my thoughts: kind of, not really. Many games are important, defining moments of the medium and easily cement their place in history; the harder part is still remaining good – or even playable – years later. With the press of the 'G' key, the game immediately shifts over to the original audio/visuals and good lord, have things improved. More remasters need to offer this, if for nothing other than the five seconds you'll spend in the old graphics to know you were wise to buy the remaster.
I'd say Blizzard was able to breathe a lot of life into Diablo 2 thanks to hard work on the visuals, but it still plays like a very old game and I fail to see why this is considered one of the greats when most of it is a bland and repetitive snore. I'm pretty sure the only reason I had fun at all was because I played with a friend, but every game is improved with friends, so that's hardly a "pro" to me. Alone, D2:R is almost dreadful.
The story has excellently rendered cutscenes accompanying each of its five Acts, but you'll never care about what's going on. Diablo was an asshole but someone killed him, oh wait he's coming back to life, kill him again. That's the game. The world is a few varied landscapes depending on the Act but there's nothing to learn about it except through maybe “gossip” dialogue options of NPCs. That's fine for me: I don't need to know more, they already lost me and they're sure to lose you, too.
The visuals all look good with great textures and the animations clearly kept the “jerking” look of yore intentionally; all very solid. Again, you can go back and look at the old textures and sounds with one button press, then right back to the Resurrected look when you realize how awful that was.
The UI is pretty terrible and probably my least favorite part of the game's experience. Only two buttons are shown, your left and right mouse clicks, and you can look through a clunky menu or use the F-row of keys to swap between abilities. 'W' can be pressed to switch weapons instantly to a second set, which can have its own presets. I don't think there's any denying that this feels bizarrely limited and stiff to navigate. For some reason, the controller support is quite good, where they bump that number from two visible inputs to five, and you can hold a trigger down to see five more! This is huge!... but since I prefer playing on a mouse and keyboard, I'm stuck with the clunky shit, memorizing what each key from F1 through F8 does and whether its assigned to M1 or M2. Very disappointing. At least key remapping works well?
ARPGs, as now-defined by Diablo, never interested me much. I think they're pretty boring. Your abilities rarely change and while boss fights may be exciting changes of pace, the game is almost always going to be a grind. By design you're supposed to walk into a room and, through basically muscle memory, wipe the whole place out, probably without opening your eyes. You will then do this several hundred times with little to no variety. Because your inputs are so miserable, having to actually swap between abilities on the fly is a nuisance and the developers seem to know this, so it's walk in, slaughter, move on.
To overly simplify, as I see it, there's really only two styles of gameplay: direct and summoners. Barbarians, Amazons, etc. are direct: they'll attack each enemy directly with their melee or ranged weapon and aside from maybe your slave-- I mean “hired help”, you're doing all the damage on your own. Necromancers and druids are summoners: they spawn an army to do their bidding for them and are largely managerial, making sure their wolves or their skeletons are full in number. Occasionally, they chip in with melee or ranged attacks, too, but their power comes from their numbers.
Summoners are insanely strong. I played as a necromancer while my buddy played as a druid, and together we just ran through most of this game while our combined armies tore shit up. This made the game pretty boring, honestly. Only Diablo and his brother, Baal, forced us to actually try and play differently. Two boss fights across god knows how many hours, that's it. Most of this game played itself for us.
Direct fighters are laborious. I've played a few hours as an Amazon, and while it's nice to actually have a direct role in the death of my enemies, now it's all on me. Everything has slowed way down, and since I've beaten the game as a necromancer, I know exactly how much more I have to go and it seems like quite the painful endeavor without someone else there acting as a summoner. It's less “boring”, I suppose, but not in a very good way. I doubt I'll finish as my Amazon.
You ever have a friend recommend you a TV show with the addendum, “Oh, the first season sucks, you gotta get through it because the second is where it gets good!”? You're probably not watching that show, right? People do that with games, too, of course: “Final Fantasy XIII gets good twenty/thirty hours in.” Diablo 2 is the first time I've ever seen a game really start to get good only after you've beaten the entire thing and can go through again on Nightmare difficulty.
Once beaten, you can just start the whole thing over again immediately as your same character. You keep all your gear and whatever is in your storage box. In the starting zone for the second time, my buddy and I finally started getting good loot. Maybe it was because we didn't play as Ladder characters, but we rarely ever saw yellow gear on Normal, it was now on Nightmare that we finally got a bit more of a challenge (as summoners, mind you) and loot to accompany the added trouble.
I have the ball rolling on that slightly better Nightmare playthrough, but I'm not sure I'll finish. I feel comfortable reviewing the game here. Finishing that Amazon's playthrough is even less likely. How can I possibly recommend a game to someone when it takes an entire playthrough to start feeling something from it? Most of my first playthrough felt like I was atrophying and the game ran on autopilot.
Maybe the real Diablo was the sheer number of times we had to teleport back to base to sell all of our junk along the way.
TL;DR This game isn't very fun to me, regardless of your class's play style. I like the variety offered (necromancers, hell yeah), but really it boils down to just two styles and they both have issues. As far as “classics you need to try” go, this isn't one of them.
Also, it has been two years and yet if you don't cap your frame rate in the settings, D2:R will try to set your computer on fire. Why hasn't Blizzard patched this? Other than attempting to melt your hardware, this is a pretty good remaster of a boring game.
Sadly, this game is better remembered than replayed. It Ain't Me intensifies
The Call of Duty with a lot of cool concepts, but is unfortunately still a Call of Duty. I'm glad Cold War brought this world and style back to the series and, I'd say, actually improved on what was established here in Black Ops.
There are few things more frustrating in life than when an idiotic enemy runs past your blind teammates and mag-dumps into you point blank. Even when they maintain a distance, the second they shoot you, Mason's aim goes from “special ops” to “special ed”. Your hip-fire is comically worthless for a guy sent to assassinate Castro.
There are levels tossed in here with no payoff other than explosions; Michael Bay should never be your inspiration.
Quite the Hollywood ensemble, here, Sam Worthington and Ed Harris do a great job. They hired Emmanuelle Chriqui and didn't even use her beautiful likeness? She got paid just to read numbers in a monotone voice, I'm very jealous of that paycheck.
Also, the character of Hudson (Ed Harris) is probably doing more beneficial work for the C.I.A.'s PR image than anything they've ever done before. He's a spook, but he seems like a good person?? Clearly a fictional tale.
Honestly, one of my favorite things about this game is the main menu: it's great for atmosphere to see you're strapped to a chair while a mysterious voice chastises you and demands answers. And should you struggle enough, you'll get up from that chair. Saunter around and play Zork, why don't you. I can't believe I enjoy this as much as I do, but there you have it.
For Call of Duty, this is interesting, but still pretty lousy. You play through an action movie, a somewhat enjoyable one, but not a very good one. And it is still, 13 years later, listed at $40 with $60 of DLC? Thanks for the laugh, Activision!
The Call of Duty with a lot of cool concepts, but is unfortunately still a Call of Duty. I'm glad Cold War brought this world and style back to the series and, I'd say, actually improved on what was established here in Black Ops.
There are few things more frustrating in life than when an idiotic enemy runs past your blind teammates and mag-dumps into you point blank. Even when they maintain a distance, the second they shoot you, Mason's aim goes from “special ops” to “special ed”. Your hip-fire is comically worthless for a guy sent to assassinate Castro.
There are levels tossed in here with no payoff other than explosions; Michael Bay should never be your inspiration.
Quite the Hollywood ensemble, here, Sam Worthington and Ed Harris do a great job. They hired Emmanuelle Chriqui and didn't even use her beautiful likeness? She got paid just to read numbers in a monotone voice, I'm very jealous of that paycheck.
Also, the character of Hudson (Ed Harris) is probably doing more beneficial work for the C.I.A.'s PR image than anything they've ever done before. He's a spook, but he seems like a good person?? Clearly a fictional tale.
Honestly, one of my favorite things about this game is the main menu: it's great for atmosphere to see you're strapped to a chair while a mysterious voice chastises you and demands answers. And should you struggle enough, you'll get up from that chair. Saunter around and play Zork, why don't you. I can't believe I enjoy this as much as I do, but there you have it.
For Call of Duty, this is interesting, but still pretty lousy. You play through an action movie, a somewhat enjoyable one, but not a very good one. And it is still, 13 years later, listed at $40 with $60 of DLC? Thanks for the laugh, Activision!
2023
Dredge: A great sense of atmosphere and near-barren gameplay creates a world you're happy to be in, but wish there was more to do.
In Dredge, it'll live up to its name as you dredge up fish, wreckage, and hidden treasures out of the accursed sea. The world has been drowned in a nightly fog determined to drive you insane and feed you to the grotesque, abominable variations of oceanic creatures that're becoming more and more frequent. Something is very wrong with this area and you're waking up in it as a fresh amnesiac. Who are you? What caused your memory lapse? What's happening to this place?
You'll zip around a small world in a boat whose hardware and storage space you incrementally upgrade. Take in the wild sights, fish up new freaks of nature, and help a strange man collect mysterious artifacts. That's Dredge.
In terms of just gameplay, I'd say this is pretty lousy most of the time. The fishing mechanics are extremely shallow: press 'F' at the right time to catch the fish... or hell, don't press anything! You'll still get it, just not as fast. You do have to actually “try” when dredging for upgrade components or catching a prized fish.
Outside of then selling the fish and upgrading the boat, this is all you'll really be “doing”. Don't expect very much there.
What Dredge does best is create a world, no doubt about it. It's so painfully gloomy and hopeless everywhere you go, but you're The Little Engine That Could, and you better believe you plan on giving the people at least something to hold out hope for. Despite looking so simple and almost childlike, you'll still get a sinking feeling in your gut when you get to a new location, wondering just what this horrible place has in store for you. The art of the “normal” fishes looks good, but it really shines when you see the abnormal stuff: skeletal swimmers, xenomorph-mouthed anglers, and fish whose eyes are light-swallowing voids. It's quite neat.
Considering all you can “do” is fish, I think the devs kind of squeezed everything they possibly could out of it, which unfortunately wasn't very much (but hey: good effort). They'll have you hide from monsters while you fish sometimes, and each monster has a different look and gimmick, but I think the first one is a very low “best” and it's slightly downhill from there.
I do want to applaud the devs for their patches, they listened to feedback and added much-needed improvements, such as the ability to set map markers and giving you more research points so you can actually get all the equipment before the game ends, etc. In my opinion, it's mostly a list of no-brainers that should have been there from launch, but better late than never. In 2023, I think the response to fans from a bigger developer likely would have been “Get bent.”
The Blackstone Key DLC is horrid, though. It adds two items for five dollars: one is the worst engine in the game, the other is something to make abnormal fish more frequent so you can get rich quicker or see 100% of fish sooner. Money is easy to get in Dredge, I had 13k just sitting around by the end and it only existed as insurance should I crash my zippy boat (and it's $30 per crash). These should be free items you find on unmarked islands, not purchasable gear.
I see people in the Steam comments saying they basically only bought the DLC and “recommend it” as a tip to the developers. It's bad DLC. Do not be this person.
I liked Dredge's world but I'm not too sure I liked playing in it. The game is fine, but only because the setting is doing so much of the heavy lifting. It's a tough score and I'd have liked to have gone higher, but it just needs more. Get it on sale.
In Dredge, it'll live up to its name as you dredge up fish, wreckage, and hidden treasures out of the accursed sea. The world has been drowned in a nightly fog determined to drive you insane and feed you to the grotesque, abominable variations of oceanic creatures that're becoming more and more frequent. Something is very wrong with this area and you're waking up in it as a fresh amnesiac. Who are you? What caused your memory lapse? What's happening to this place?
You'll zip around a small world in a boat whose hardware and storage space you incrementally upgrade. Take in the wild sights, fish up new freaks of nature, and help a strange man collect mysterious artifacts. That's Dredge.
In terms of just gameplay, I'd say this is pretty lousy most of the time. The fishing mechanics are extremely shallow: press 'F' at the right time to catch the fish... or hell, don't press anything! You'll still get it, just not as fast. You do have to actually “try” when dredging for upgrade components or catching a prized fish.
Outside of then selling the fish and upgrading the boat, this is all you'll really be “doing”. Don't expect very much there.
What Dredge does best is create a world, no doubt about it. It's so painfully gloomy and hopeless everywhere you go, but you're The Little Engine That Could, and you better believe you plan on giving the people at least something to hold out hope for. Despite looking so simple and almost childlike, you'll still get a sinking feeling in your gut when you get to a new location, wondering just what this horrible place has in store for you. The art of the “normal” fishes looks good, but it really shines when you see the abnormal stuff: skeletal swimmers, xenomorph-mouthed anglers, and fish whose eyes are light-swallowing voids. It's quite neat.
Considering all you can “do” is fish, I think the devs kind of squeezed everything they possibly could out of it, which unfortunately wasn't very much (but hey: good effort). They'll have you hide from monsters while you fish sometimes, and each monster has a different look and gimmick, but I think the first one is a very low “best” and it's slightly downhill from there.
I do want to applaud the devs for their patches, they listened to feedback and added much-needed improvements, such as the ability to set map markers and giving you more research points so you can actually get all the equipment before the game ends, etc. In my opinion, it's mostly a list of no-brainers that should have been there from launch, but better late than never. In 2023, I think the response to fans from a bigger developer likely would have been “Get bent.”
The Blackstone Key DLC is horrid, though. It adds two items for five dollars: one is the worst engine in the game, the other is something to make abnormal fish more frequent so you can get rich quicker or see 100% of fish sooner. Money is easy to get in Dredge, I had 13k just sitting around by the end and it only existed as insurance should I crash my zippy boat (and it's $30 per crash). These should be free items you find on unmarked islands, not purchasable gear.
I see people in the Steam comments saying they basically only bought the DLC and “recommend it” as a tip to the developers. It's bad DLC. Do not be this person.
I liked Dredge's world but I'm not too sure I liked playing in it. The game is fine, but only because the setting is doing so much of the heavy lifting. It's a tough score and I'd have liked to have gone higher, but it just needs more. Get it on sale.
2012
Syndicate: A pretty run-of-the-mill shooter that's quite flashy and frenetic, but too brief and predictable. The explosive start had me wanting to sign up for Jeff Bezos' Tier One Operator Force so I could massacre his corporate foes, shouting “Your death brought to you by Amazon Prime,” and while I stood amongst the corpses, radio in “Alexa, order 47 coffins, same day delivery.” Unfortunately, the energy subsides and it ends without much flair.
In Syndicate, you are Kilo: so void of personality, he may as well just be a submachine gun in a leather trench coat. Kilo won't be speaking and seemingly makes no choices of his own, even dressing like Neo is just Eurocorp regulation. Kilo does as he is told. He's outfitted with Eurocorp's latest OS chip that essentially gives him the internet, a dedicated waifu AI, and hacking 'apps' that are a bit naughtier than Flappy Bird as they force enemies to commit suicide or fight for Kilo... before committing suicide. Kilo has some problems.
I actually think the flow of combat is pretty good in this game. You have a F.E.A.R.-like slowmo button that provides an enemy-marking overlay and boosts your damage. Killing enemies recharges your apps, with the two most powerful ones sensibly taking the longest time to recharge. 'Backfire' is the one you'll likely use most as it recharges rapidly: it'll knock your foes down and briefly increase the damage they take.
The combat slows down massively to a slog for its few boss battles. You're unable to use any apps on bosses, relying purely on your slowmo ability for these bullet sponges. One boss has you lose your weapons and “hack” his missiles, redirecting them towards him. Sometimes, he hacks your hacked missiles back, so you must crack his hack (a retract), to enact a hack attack. Blackjack. I guess I liked the attempt at variety, but it's still not great, making him king of the lame bosses.
There's 20 missions, but this game could easily be played in its entirety in one sitting, maybe two if you have a life. A couple missions are only a few minutes long. I also can't believe I'm old enough to hear dubstep and enjoy it like it's a classic throwback.
It's pretty obvious where the plot is going to go, I just wish this game had the balls to let you be a brainless, branded, wage-slaving murder machine. The beginning stuff, the “corporate espionage” that's actually just blatant terrorism, is undoubtedly the most fun here. A mindless pawn who just kills and destroys, all in the name of some company who's never seen producing anything of merit? That's what I'd like to see, how far does the rabbit hole go? Instead, I got a tease.
I had wanted to play this game since its release but didn't until years later, where I purchased and tried playing the game pretty hammered. I kept running into a bug where the game would crash before I was even done with the tutorial. Too lost in the sauce to figure out what to do, I gave up on it until now, where of course I no longer experienced this constant crashing. Though I did have to uninstall the now-dead Origin for the exact same thing, the EA app, just to play it. What a joy.
Unfortunately, in my delay, I just barely (relatively) missed out on the opportunity to try the coop campaign. The servers for it shut down in June 2023, I was only a few weeks late. I read a lot of good things about it online with many people saying it's the strongest component of the game. I would have really enjoyed trying it out and perhaps it would have boosted my rating, but then of course I'd have the challenge of finding three people who want to play Syndicate.
I never played the original Syndicate games, but from what I understand this game is a massive simplification of what once was and fans of those titles seem to hate this. I can't share that rage.
I enjoyed Syndicate and for a while I was going to call the game "underrated", but after beating it, I think its middling scores are appropriate. Though somewhat average, I still don't think it deserves to be totally forgotten, as it seemingly has been. You can't buy it anymore digitally, which I think is bullshit.
If you find a way to play coop now that the servers are done, hit me up for a gunner.
In Syndicate, you are Kilo: so void of personality, he may as well just be a submachine gun in a leather trench coat. Kilo won't be speaking and seemingly makes no choices of his own, even dressing like Neo is just Eurocorp regulation. Kilo does as he is told. He's outfitted with Eurocorp's latest OS chip that essentially gives him the internet, a dedicated waifu AI, and hacking 'apps' that are a bit naughtier than Flappy Bird as they force enemies to commit suicide or fight for Kilo... before committing suicide. Kilo has some problems.
I actually think the flow of combat is pretty good in this game. You have a F.E.A.R.-like slowmo button that provides an enemy-marking overlay and boosts your damage. Killing enemies recharges your apps, with the two most powerful ones sensibly taking the longest time to recharge. 'Backfire' is the one you'll likely use most as it recharges rapidly: it'll knock your foes down and briefly increase the damage they take.
The combat slows down massively to a slog for its few boss battles. You're unable to use any apps on bosses, relying purely on your slowmo ability for these bullet sponges. One boss has you lose your weapons and “hack” his missiles, redirecting them towards him. Sometimes, he hacks your hacked missiles back, so you must crack his hack (a retract), to enact a hack attack. Blackjack. I guess I liked the attempt at variety, but it's still not great, making him king of the lame bosses.
There's 20 missions, but this game could easily be played in its entirety in one sitting, maybe two if you have a life. A couple missions are only a few minutes long. I also can't believe I'm old enough to hear dubstep and enjoy it like it's a classic throwback.
It's pretty obvious where the plot is going to go, I just wish this game had the balls to let you be a brainless, branded, wage-slaving murder machine. The beginning stuff, the “corporate espionage” that's actually just blatant terrorism, is undoubtedly the most fun here. A mindless pawn who just kills and destroys, all in the name of some company who's never seen producing anything of merit? That's what I'd like to see, how far does the rabbit hole go? Instead, I got a tease.
I had wanted to play this game since its release but didn't until years later, where I purchased and tried playing the game pretty hammered. I kept running into a bug where the game would crash before I was even done with the tutorial. Too lost in the sauce to figure out what to do, I gave up on it until now, where of course I no longer experienced this constant crashing. Though I did have to uninstall the now-dead Origin for the exact same thing, the EA app, just to play it. What a joy.
Unfortunately, in my delay, I just barely (relatively) missed out on the opportunity to try the coop campaign. The servers for it shut down in June 2023, I was only a few weeks late. I read a lot of good things about it online with many people saying it's the strongest component of the game. I would have really enjoyed trying it out and perhaps it would have boosted my rating, but then of course I'd have the challenge of finding three people who want to play Syndicate.
I never played the original Syndicate games, but from what I understand this game is a massive simplification of what once was and fans of those titles seem to hate this. I can't share that rage.
I enjoyed Syndicate and for a while I was going to call the game "underrated", but after beating it, I think its middling scores are appropriate. Though somewhat average, I still don't think it deserves to be totally forgotten, as it seemingly has been. You can't buy it anymore digitally, which I think is bullshit.
If you find a way to play coop now that the servers are done, hit me up for a gunner.
2024
Helldivers 2: I'd wager I'm like most of this game's players in that I did not play the first. Judging that entire video game based on two screenshots -- something I'm sure the developers would love for me to do -- I'd say the original looks like a mobile game that can safely be ignored. You can just 'dive' right into this one and ignore the previous entry.
Want a plot? Watch "Starship Troopers". The devs saved a pretty penny by just taking that movie's world almost wholesale, which is kinda funny timing considering there's a Starship Troopers game in Early Access right now alongside Helldivers 2. Apparently that game's in a weird spot, meanwhile Helldivers is flourishing like mad.
It's good. If you've been seeing your Steam friends list lit up with this and are wondering why, the reason is simply because "It's good". Great atmosphere, audio/visuals, enemy variety, world variety, weapon variety, it's live service but seemingly in the least possible predatory way, etc. You will feel great dropping an Eagle Airstrike on bug holes, closing up a few and obliterating those who'd spawned outside of them. When you and a teammate open a bunker and as the doors slowly roll you press 'B' to fist bump them and they bump back before you two collect the free premium currency inside? You're gonna mutter "Hell yeah."
It's not perfect: there are many 'bugs' that need working on immediately. Characters get locked into poses that affect gameplay, bile spewers will miss yet somehow hit and kill you immediately, joining another team's mission can be horrid as it never connects; and when the devs toss out a patch to address some of these issues? They can make your game randomly crash when your teammate uses a certain weapon type. It has happened to me, of course while walking to the extraction area after completing a map, and it's very infuriating.
For $40, I think Helldivers 2 is a no-brainer. It's best with friends, but I found myself able to play with randoms just fine, which is always a pleasant surprise. You can easily communicate through pings and emotes, and with everybody sharing everything and a total team victory being the best possible outcome, there's not really an incentive to be an asshole. You may still find a few, but that's just the internet for ya.
I recommend Helldivers 2. I'm sure it'll get patched up in time (and it needs it), but it's definitely playable now.
Want a plot? Watch "Starship Troopers". The devs saved a pretty penny by just taking that movie's world almost wholesale, which is kinda funny timing considering there's a Starship Troopers game in Early Access right now alongside Helldivers 2. Apparently that game's in a weird spot, meanwhile Helldivers is flourishing like mad.
It's good. If you've been seeing your Steam friends list lit up with this and are wondering why, the reason is simply because "It's good". Great atmosphere, audio/visuals, enemy variety, world variety, weapon variety, it's live service but seemingly in the least possible predatory way, etc. You will feel great dropping an Eagle Airstrike on bug holes, closing up a few and obliterating those who'd spawned outside of them. When you and a teammate open a bunker and as the doors slowly roll you press 'B' to fist bump them and they bump back before you two collect the free premium currency inside? You're gonna mutter "Hell yeah."
It's not perfect: there are many 'bugs' that need working on immediately. Characters get locked into poses that affect gameplay, bile spewers will miss yet somehow hit and kill you immediately, joining another team's mission can be horrid as it never connects; and when the devs toss out a patch to address some of these issues? They can make your game randomly crash when your teammate uses a certain weapon type. It has happened to me, of course while walking to the extraction area after completing a map, and it's very infuriating.
For $40, I think Helldivers 2 is a no-brainer. It's best with friends, but I found myself able to play with randoms just fine, which is always a pleasant surprise. You can easily communicate through pings and emotes, and with everybody sharing everything and a total team victory being the best possible outcome, there's not really an incentive to be an asshole. You may still find a few, but that's just the internet for ya.
I recommend Helldivers 2. I'm sure it'll get patched up in time (and it needs it), but it's definitely playable now.
2023
The Exit 8 will take you only a couple minutes to beat, though you're encouraged to go back and see the other anomalies you missed on your first go at it. It's "Spot the difference" where if things look good, you go ahead. They don't? Turn around.
There's like 30 anomalies to see, some are creative and spooky, others are just lame. I got four of the best ones on my first playthrough, so going for more loops had me pretty disappointed.
Is it worth buying? I don't think so. There's a nine minute YouTube video that'll show you every anomaly including "dying" to them, so literally the entire game. Admittedly, it's less scary watching someone else go through it, but it's also free. Even at $4, I'd say this is just kind of neat but totally skippable.
I do not recommend The Exit 8.
There's like 30 anomalies to see, some are creative and spooky, others are just lame. I got four of the best ones on my first playthrough, so going for more loops had me pretty disappointed.
Is it worth buying? I don't think so. There's a nine minute YouTube video that'll show you every anomaly including "dying" to them, so literally the entire game. Admittedly, it's less scary watching someone else go through it, but it's also free. Even at $4, I'd say this is just kind of neat but totally skippable.
I do not recommend The Exit 8.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Irredeemable garbage that should bring deep shame to every single person in the credits. I will live a worse life having experienced and beaten this. It shouldn't be for sale. Anyone giving this a thumbs up in the Steam reviews needs to be banned from the platform before seeking mental help.
The first Revelations game felt like the IP of Resident Evil farted onto a disc: it burned your nostrils but despite being faint, the spirit of the series still lingered there.
Honestly, the Resident Evil franchise really knows how to make you go back and think that last game you did not like wasn't that bad after all. I was lukewarm on Resident Evil 5. After 6, I thought 5 was a masterpiece, comparatively. After Revelations I thought “At least 6 could be fun in a co-op Michael-Bay-movies-while-hammered kind of way?” and after Revelations 2, I wish I played the Raid mode of Revelations more instead.
Are there more bad Resident Evils than good at this point?
What's good, here? Moira's voice actress is good. Her lines are shit, but she still gives it her all and sometimes it bleeds through the awful writing. She said “Fucking statue!” at one point and I actually thought “Damn, girl, what's your name?”
The main menu has a startling jumpscare that I like. It's not great, but I like the look of it.
One time I said out loud “Turn on your fucking flashlight, Barry,” and he did. That made me laugh.
It looks better than the first game (mind you: that was a 3DS port).
The only reason I gave it 1 star instead of 0.5: the dedicated dodge button was a good choice considering the speed of everything.
That's it.
Quite simply, this is not a Resident Evil game outside of a couple names that don't have any impact on you. They can say “Claire Redfield” all they want – I don't care, it's not her. The “zombies” are more like tweakers than living dead, except for the ones who are way too dead as they look like skeletons in clothes and are no challenge to kill.
This feels like cheap junk that you'd find in your Steam library on accident, not realizing it was part of a Humble Bundle you bought several years ago. Why was this made?
It follows the duo style of play except you control both partners. Each duo has an “Eye” and a “Muscle”: Moira and Claire, Natalia and Barry, respectively. The Eye's duty is to find secret gems, ammo, and hidden enemies. The Muscle shoots anything moving that isn't their Eye. It's not too exciting: you will play mainly as the Eye, looking around in corners for shiny points that you then focus on to make an item materialize or perhaps for the hidden symbols that earn you point multipliers at the end of levels. When baddies emerge, you press Tab and swap over to the person who has guns and kill them all. That's it, over and over again. It's a boring loop.
There are puzzles that Homer Simpson wouldn't even need to think about to solve.
The plot is half-assed gibberish. You're on an island, you want off, figure it out. There's a second Wesker named Alex and she's orchestrating some evil nonsense. I don't think you even figure out what, exactly, just that's she's wiping people out to make a virus... probably. She's trying to turn into a bug because she read some Kafka, maybe? I don't know, but don't worry: she's dead, now.
I got the bad ending because I was too quick at pressing the F key during a certain segment. I was supposed to just push Tab, but I didn't even see it because I'm simply too good at video games. What's weird is apparently the whole journey was so Moira could overcome her fear of guns. She shot her sister when she was young and, understandably, doesn't want to touch another one. I would have thought making her use a gun would be the bad ending, then, but apparently I'm an asshole for thinking so; guns are always good and everyone should want to use them all the time to solve every problem, and they're mindbroken and in need of forced-fixing if they think otherwise. Alright, Capcom.
I was going to play the DLCs but I raged out of The Struggle (feels appropriate) and didn't even try the other one or Raid mode. The game is off my computer and back in the nether where it belongs. This piece of shit crashed on me twice when I alt-tabbed, too, very frustrating.
The episodic content was a shitty idea and apparently Capcom added DRM to this thing recently, several years after it came out (as they did the first Revelations). Why? I wouldn't even recommend torrenting this game, it's THAT bad.
Like the first game, I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations 2, except I strongly recommend you avoid this one. Some games are just bad for you.
The first Revelations game felt like the IP of Resident Evil farted onto a disc: it burned your nostrils but despite being faint, the spirit of the series still lingered there.
Honestly, the Resident Evil franchise really knows how to make you go back and think that last game you did not like wasn't that bad after all. I was lukewarm on Resident Evil 5. After 6, I thought 5 was a masterpiece, comparatively. After Revelations I thought “At least 6 could be fun in a co-op Michael-Bay-movies-while-hammered kind of way?” and after Revelations 2, I wish I played the Raid mode of Revelations more instead.
Are there more bad Resident Evils than good at this point?
What's good, here? Moira's voice actress is good. Her lines are shit, but she still gives it her all and sometimes it bleeds through the awful writing. She said “Fucking statue!” at one point and I actually thought “Damn, girl, what's your name?”
The main menu has a startling jumpscare that I like. It's not great, but I like the look of it.
One time I said out loud “Turn on your fucking flashlight, Barry,” and he did. That made me laugh.
It looks better than the first game (mind you: that was a 3DS port).
The only reason I gave it 1 star instead of 0.5: the dedicated dodge button was a good choice considering the speed of everything.
That's it.
Quite simply, this is not a Resident Evil game outside of a couple names that don't have any impact on you. They can say “Claire Redfield” all they want – I don't care, it's not her. The “zombies” are more like tweakers than living dead, except for the ones who are way too dead as they look like skeletons in clothes and are no challenge to kill.
This feels like cheap junk that you'd find in your Steam library on accident, not realizing it was part of a Humble Bundle you bought several years ago. Why was this made?
It follows the duo style of play except you control both partners. Each duo has an “Eye” and a “Muscle”: Moira and Claire, Natalia and Barry, respectively. The Eye's duty is to find secret gems, ammo, and hidden enemies. The Muscle shoots anything moving that isn't their Eye. It's not too exciting: you will play mainly as the Eye, looking around in corners for shiny points that you then focus on to make an item materialize or perhaps for the hidden symbols that earn you point multipliers at the end of levels. When baddies emerge, you press Tab and swap over to the person who has guns and kill them all. That's it, over and over again. It's a boring loop.
There are puzzles that Homer Simpson wouldn't even need to think about to solve.
The plot is half-assed gibberish. You're on an island, you want off, figure it out. There's a second Wesker named Alex and she's orchestrating some evil nonsense. I don't think you even figure out what, exactly, just that's she's wiping people out to make a virus... probably. She's trying to turn into a bug because she read some Kafka, maybe? I don't know, but don't worry: she's dead, now.
I got the bad ending because I was too quick at pressing the F key during a certain segment. I was supposed to just push Tab, but I didn't even see it because I'm simply too good at video games. What's weird is apparently the whole journey was so Moira could overcome her fear of guns. She shot her sister when she was young and, understandably, doesn't want to touch another one. I would have thought making her use a gun would be the bad ending, then, but apparently I'm an asshole for thinking so; guns are always good and everyone should want to use them all the time to solve every problem, and they're mindbroken and in need of forced-fixing if they think otherwise. Alright, Capcom.
I was going to play the DLCs but I raged out of The Struggle (feels appropriate) and didn't even try the other one or Raid mode. The game is off my computer and back in the nether where it belongs. This piece of shit crashed on me twice when I alt-tabbed, too, very frustrating.
The episodic content was a shitty idea and apparently Capcom added DRM to this thing recently, several years after it came out (as they did the first Revelations). Why? I wouldn't even recommend torrenting this game, it's THAT bad.
Like the first game, I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations 2, except I strongly recommend you avoid this one. Some games are just bad for you.
2023
If you're here, you already know this isn't just a house.
Playing through this blind is undoubtedly the best way to experience My House. Don't watch one of the rapidly-emerging, multi-hour video essays on YouTube about it: just get the link to the forum, download the .zip, and get exploring. If you're not too experienced with this stuff (like I wasn't), you want to drag-n-drop myhouse.pk3 onto GZDoom (NOT myhouse.wad). Obviously, "the end" is not the end nor your real goal: look around a bit and you'll be rewarded for it. Is that space a bit bigger than it should be?
I recommend getting to a point where you can't explore any further, and I won't explain what I mean by that, before reading something like this guide/wiki. You'll likely reach the same ending point I did, as my biggest problem with this map/level/experiment/tribute is that some of the items required to "complete" it requires some pretty arcane knowledge and skills, and at a certain point, against-better-judgement decisions. You won't be reaching the "best" outcome on your own, you can bet on that, but I think that's worth pursuing after your blind run as it leads to a lot more 'game'.
My House is good fun. Very different, spooky, and wildly creative. It wears its seemingly-biggest inspiration, "House of Leaves", proudly on its sleeve. The "closet" is a pretty big hint, but seeing the name "Navidson" is a dead giveaway. I love the book and highly recommend it, and it was pretty cool to see it (somewhat) in a game. Try out My House, it's a great adventure I recommend!
Playing through this blind is undoubtedly the best way to experience My House. Don't watch one of the rapidly-emerging, multi-hour video essays on YouTube about it: just get the link to the forum, download the .zip, and get exploring. If you're not too experienced with this stuff (like I wasn't), you want to drag-n-drop myhouse.pk3 onto GZDoom (NOT myhouse.wad). Obviously, "the end" is not the end nor your real goal: look around a bit and you'll be rewarded for it. Is that space a bit bigger than it should be?
I recommend getting to a point where you can't explore any further, and I won't explain what I mean by that, before reading something like this guide/wiki. You'll likely reach the same ending point I did, as my biggest problem with this map/level/experiment/tribute is that some of the items required to "complete" it requires some pretty arcane knowledge and skills, and at a certain point, against-better-judgement decisions. You won't be reaching the "best" outcome on your own, you can bet on that, but I think that's worth pursuing after your blind run as it leads to a lot more 'game'.
My House is good fun. Very different, spooky, and wildly creative. It wears its seemingly-biggest inspiration, "House of Leaves", proudly on its sleeve. The "closet" is a pretty big hint, but seeing the name "Navidson" is a dead giveaway. I love the book and highly recommend it, and it was pretty cool to see it (somewhat) in a game. Try out My House, it's a great adventure I recommend!