TheSlowKenyan
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.
2015
I've been meaning to play SOMA for a while. Years, really. My last saves, before overwriting them and starting anew yet again, were from 2017.
It came out in 2015, I'm pretty sure my first attempted playthrough would be then, too. Then, somewhere in the next two years, I'd play through it enough to earn its first achievement. From there, it'd sit idle until yesterday, where I'd then begin a new game one final time and play through the whole thing in 48 hours. Pretty wild little ride through time, which is funny, as that's also a huge chunk of what the game is all about.
I think SOMA has very nice art, some genuinely good horror, and great performances from its main cast. I think it also has very clunky gameplay and some of its "horror" winds up being just painful to sit through. SOMA is a sine wave with its highs and lows. I don't think I can really recommend the game to many people because, even though I enjoyed the ride I've just been on, I think it could have been a better game. I have 12.5 hours of play time on Steam, probably 11 or so from this last playthrough, and I can safely say most of that time was in what amounts to more-or-less a walking simulator. The parts of the game where you're hiding from monsters is pretty small, there are a few puzzles to complete but they feel more like a series of switches to flip and you already know the order.
Frictional Games shows a lot of potential in games like SOMA, potential that still has yet to be realized when you play that garbage Amnesia: Rebirth. It wasn't "garbage", of course, I'm being annoying, but it still wasn't as good as the first Amnesia (which, looking back, wasn't great either). I'd say that team seems to have some good ideas on paper that just don't find their way into the game. SOMA's story is interesting, I'm glad its twist wasn't what I thought it would be, and its Sealab 2021 world was fun to explore. Yet it's just so much filler, so many things for you to pick up and toss for no reason, so many documents to read and learn very little, so many dead bodies for you to "scan" and find out how they died with zero impact. It's good, and it's not.
It's tough to really describe without having played the game yourself, but I'd say this is one that can be largely avoided. If someone likes walking simulators with an occasional thing tossed in the mix for you to do, this is absolutely your game. If you expect a horror game, this will definitely disappoint you. Action? Don't even bother installing it. SOMA's audience is one that was small from the start, and after finally beating it, I guess I'm still on the fence on whether or not I'm even in that demographic.
Still, very happy to be done with the game and I don't think my time was wasted. I've played worse, I've played better. Here's hoping their new Amnesia game is great and also the last. They need to move on.
It came out in 2015, I'm pretty sure my first attempted playthrough would be then, too. Then, somewhere in the next two years, I'd play through it enough to earn its first achievement. From there, it'd sit idle until yesterday, where I'd then begin a new game one final time and play through the whole thing in 48 hours. Pretty wild little ride through time, which is funny, as that's also a huge chunk of what the game is all about.
I think SOMA has very nice art, some genuinely good horror, and great performances from its main cast. I think it also has very clunky gameplay and some of its "horror" winds up being just painful to sit through. SOMA is a sine wave with its highs and lows. I don't think I can really recommend the game to many people because, even though I enjoyed the ride I've just been on, I think it could have been a better game. I have 12.5 hours of play time on Steam, probably 11 or so from this last playthrough, and I can safely say most of that time was in what amounts to more-or-less a walking simulator. The parts of the game where you're hiding from monsters is pretty small, there are a few puzzles to complete but they feel more like a series of switches to flip and you already know the order.
Frictional Games shows a lot of potential in games like SOMA, potential that still has yet to be realized when you play that garbage Amnesia: Rebirth. It wasn't "garbage", of course, I'm being annoying, but it still wasn't as good as the first Amnesia (which, looking back, wasn't great either). I'd say that team seems to have some good ideas on paper that just don't find their way into the game. SOMA's story is interesting, I'm glad its twist wasn't what I thought it would be, and its Sealab 2021 world was fun to explore. Yet it's just so much filler, so many things for you to pick up and toss for no reason, so many documents to read and learn very little, so many dead bodies for you to "scan" and find out how they died with zero impact. It's good, and it's not.
It's tough to really describe without having played the game yourself, but I'd say this is one that can be largely avoided. If someone likes walking simulators with an occasional thing tossed in the mix for you to do, this is absolutely your game. If you expect a horror game, this will definitely disappoint you. Action? Don't even bother installing it. SOMA's audience is one that was small from the start, and after finally beating it, I guess I'm still on the fence on whether or not I'm even in that demographic.
Still, very happy to be done with the game and I don't think my time was wasted. I've played worse, I've played better. Here's hoping their new Amnesia game is great and also the last. They need to move on.
This one was a long time coming.
I've tried playing Space Marine several times and recently was yet another attempt where I've forgotten the last only for something to click and I remember why I stopped playing it time and time again: it's just boring. I wish there was more to it, but that's basically it.
The combat is as shallow as the case for your contacts. There is a button to shoot, a button to melee, a button to stun, a button for zooming, and a button for grenades. The melee and stun buttons can be combined in "combos" that are no more than 4 inputs, and you will only be doing these variations as opposed to just mashing melee ONLY when you are about to die and need the execution health. Depending on how you play, this can be quite rare. Space Marine lets you just sit back and Bolter everyone to death, the zoom helps you quite a bit with that. Combined with your shield, you almost never need to engage in melee combat outside of segments where your jump pack makes it comically overpowered and you become death incarnate.
It's a shame, because the game is absolutely cool. The lore and setting rule and the very first thing you do is over-the-top in classic 40K fashion. You're immediately tossed into what you believe to be the 40K game you've been waiting years for. How did you never hear about this?! Well, because once you've spent about 10 minutes doing the same pathetic "combos", as they struggle to barely meet the definition, you've seen all the game has to offer. You will get new weapons, both melee and ranged, but other than swapping to a sniper or launcher for the big baddies, you'll find the Heavy Bolter to decimate every disgusting Ork scum you come across. It carries far more ammo than the specials, so you'll save those for the guys who need 2 sniper headshots to die and use the Bolter on everyone else.
I think today, over 11 years after the game released, will be the last time I will ever play the game. It's getting a sequel, and I hope that addresses what I've read others also call some of the most monotonous gameplay I've ever near-suffered through. I even had to put in extra work to get the game running, updating my BIOS just to get it to stop doing this weird slow motion effect. It also crashed my Steam when I tried going to the store page through the DLC tab, for some reason. The game is simply adding insult to injury after I've released my computer from its grip.
Apparently, it manages to linger, and I merely pray the God Emperor Himself can obliterate this heresey-stain from my computer and mind.
I've tried playing Space Marine several times and recently was yet another attempt where I've forgotten the last only for something to click and I remember why I stopped playing it time and time again: it's just boring. I wish there was more to it, but that's basically it.
The combat is as shallow as the case for your contacts. There is a button to shoot, a button to melee, a button to stun, a button for zooming, and a button for grenades. The melee and stun buttons can be combined in "combos" that are no more than 4 inputs, and you will only be doing these variations as opposed to just mashing melee ONLY when you are about to die and need the execution health. Depending on how you play, this can be quite rare. Space Marine lets you just sit back and Bolter everyone to death, the zoom helps you quite a bit with that. Combined with your shield, you almost never need to engage in melee combat outside of segments where your jump pack makes it comically overpowered and you become death incarnate.
It's a shame, because the game is absolutely cool. The lore and setting rule and the very first thing you do is over-the-top in classic 40K fashion. You're immediately tossed into what you believe to be the 40K game you've been waiting years for. How did you never hear about this?! Well, because once you've spent about 10 minutes doing the same pathetic "combos", as they struggle to barely meet the definition, you've seen all the game has to offer. You will get new weapons, both melee and ranged, but other than swapping to a sniper or launcher for the big baddies, you'll find the Heavy Bolter to decimate every disgusting Ork scum you come across. It carries far more ammo than the specials, so you'll save those for the guys who need 2 sniper headshots to die and use the Bolter on everyone else.
I think today, over 11 years after the game released, will be the last time I will ever play the game. It's getting a sequel, and I hope that addresses what I've read others also call some of the most monotonous gameplay I've ever near-suffered through. I even had to put in extra work to get the game running, updating my BIOS just to get it to stop doing this weird slow motion effect. It also crashed my Steam when I tried going to the store page through the DLC tab, for some reason. The game is simply adding insult to injury after I've released my computer from its grip.
Apparently, it manages to linger, and I merely pray the God Emperor Himself can obliterate this heresey-stain from my computer and mind.
2022
I gave up on Evil West around 2/3 of the way into it. I just got bored and frustrated while playing it late at night (while sick and tired, literally) and uninstalled it. I didn't feel it was ever going anywhere interesting and never cared about the outcome of anything, so when the gameplay gets stale, the game's gotta go.
Stupid story, bad teenage-texting-tier dialogue, gameplay that barely changes throughout the experience aside from a few new weapons that just end up making the God of War ripoff combat more clunky than anything. Game looked nice, at least, but only in art as the design of everything felt intended to pad the game time. Lots of "walk through this crevice" or "jump this gap" type stuff that was clearly unncessary. It was obvious when you were walking into a combat scenario (which was poorly paced, sometimes far too much walking between these) as you'd see a huge circle and a gate you have to hop to enter it. As soon as you're in, enemies. It may as well have been a Horde-style game as these combat environments barely changed. No verticality or cover, just dodging in empty spaces.
I was bouncing between Hard and Normal difficulties. Some bosses on Hard were just horribly painful, one of which I took gameplay captures of. It's too long, too difficult, and there's no checkpoints in the fight even when it's clearly divided into stages where they'd fit easily. It isn't fun, it's just a painful game of trial and error or single mistakes making you furious every time you saw the game over screen and had to wait 3 agonizing seconds to hit continue (for some reason).
I do not recommend this game unless you get it for free. Evil West barely deserves your time and certainly does NOT deserve your money. Needed more baking.
Stupid story, bad teenage-texting-tier dialogue, gameplay that barely changes throughout the experience aside from a few new weapons that just end up making the God of War ripoff combat more clunky than anything. Game looked nice, at least, but only in art as the design of everything felt intended to pad the game time. Lots of "walk through this crevice" or "jump this gap" type stuff that was clearly unncessary. It was obvious when you were walking into a combat scenario (which was poorly paced, sometimes far too much walking between these) as you'd see a huge circle and a gate you have to hop to enter it. As soon as you're in, enemies. It may as well have been a Horde-style game as these combat environments barely changed. No verticality or cover, just dodging in empty spaces.
I was bouncing between Hard and Normal difficulties. Some bosses on Hard were just horribly painful, one of which I took gameplay captures of. It's too long, too difficult, and there's no checkpoints in the fight even when it's clearly divided into stages where they'd fit easily. It isn't fun, it's just a painful game of trial and error or single mistakes making you furious every time you saw the game over screen and had to wait 3 agonizing seconds to hit continue (for some reason).
I do not recommend this game unless you get it for free. Evil West barely deserves your time and certainly does NOT deserve your money. Needed more baking.
2022
It's interesting, especially with its artstyle and shapeshifting city mechanic (though I never got to see the city reshuffle, I have seen gameplay of people with pathways differing from mine), but you reach a certain point where the game simply loses you. I believe this is mostly due to pacing issues and its mechanics. For instance, for the longest time you're close to flat broke, lucky to have 5 coins on you. But when you find the wrench tool, there's a coinbox you can loot for a free coin and a consequent alarm for you to hide during as it lures the monster. Maybe it was just luck due to my city's shuffle, but I simply had to run into the school right next to the machine and hide in a closet until the alarm stopped. This wasn't a challenge, the monster never even came close, I don't think it had time to even spawn near me by the time I was hidden and therefore untouchable. Because it was mindless and it had a timer to it, this just began to feel like wasted time rather than decent gameplay. I did this until I was able to get a whopping, astonishing 10 coins, which was all I needed for the rest of my playthrough for some emergency matches.
The mines are too confusing, I think. It took me forever to find the route to Damiano's demise. I probably wasted 30 matches wandering before finding it minutes before I was going to give up and just leave on the monorail. I found it and still got an ending rank of C, which added insult upon injury.
The UI and controls are ugly, I don't think you can really argue otherwise. The plot web, which serves as all of your clues and objectives, begins to look like a schizophrenic's conspiracy wall very fast. Unique and not in a good way.
The best point in the game is when you finally have your "a-ha" moment and the layout of the city/mine just clicks in your mind (as much as they can). You not only know how to get where you're going, you know all of the hiding spots along the way. It's a good feeling but a temporary one, as it's around this point the game got "harder" by making the monster spawn around too often, sometimes right around corners. It was back to somewhat frustrating, especially during my last bit of fading patience in the mine looking for the crypt.
I was just ready to be done with the game for the last third or so of my play time, which was 7.5 hours total. As I write this I went back and for some reason Claudia, who died a bullshit death in my original C rank ending (she was trapped in the school with the monster vanishing and respawning at the ritual tower right at the only intersection out of the school. Every time I hid, he left, and I'd go back out, and he'd come back. Eventually he grabbed Claudia and murdered her in the mine), was now back. So I was able to achieve the S+ rank ending. So that was "nice".
I don't really recommend this game. It has a sense of style at times but its largely frustrating and a test of patience and will, and not in any good way. At least it was free.
The mines are too confusing, I think. It took me forever to find the route to Damiano's demise. I probably wasted 30 matches wandering before finding it minutes before I was going to give up and just leave on the monorail. I found it and still got an ending rank of C, which added insult upon injury.
The UI and controls are ugly, I don't think you can really argue otherwise. The plot web, which serves as all of your clues and objectives, begins to look like a schizophrenic's conspiracy wall very fast. Unique and not in a good way.
The best point in the game is when you finally have your "a-ha" moment and the layout of the city/mine just clicks in your mind (as much as they can). You not only know how to get where you're going, you know all of the hiding spots along the way. It's a good feeling but a temporary one, as it's around this point the game got "harder" by making the monster spawn around too often, sometimes right around corners. It was back to somewhat frustrating, especially during my last bit of fading patience in the mine looking for the crypt.
I was just ready to be done with the game for the last third or so of my play time, which was 7.5 hours total. As I write this I went back and for some reason Claudia, who died a bullshit death in my original C rank ending (she was trapped in the school with the monster vanishing and respawning at the ritual tower right at the only intersection out of the school. Every time I hid, he left, and I'd go back out, and he'd come back. Eventually he grabbed Claudia and murdered her in the mine), was now back. So I was able to achieve the S+ rank ending. So that was "nice".
I don't really recommend this game. It has a sense of style at times but its largely frustrating and a test of patience and will, and not in any good way. At least it was free.
2022
Ghost Song is an okay Metroidvania with a Soulsborne death and bonfire mechanic. The platforming is fine, the combat is shallow but serviceable, and the story is almost nonexistant.
True to Metroid, the map opens up as you collect new weapons or abilities like double jump, wall jump, rockets, etc. Your goal is to collect engine parts for a ship you won't even escape the dangerous moon on. The crew of this ship will have multiple boring conversations with you revealing the smallest fractions of a personality per person. If you work annoyingly hard, or be smarter than me and just find the quadruple jump before attempting it, you can find a secret location that changes very little of the ending. When the credits roll, you'll sigh and move on to some other game.
Ghost Song is just really forgettable. Its monotony and emptiness is intentional which makes me angry knowing they liked it feeling like a void. To make this void worse, there aren't enough fast travel locations, so if you think you forgot something (good luck with the map, where you cannot zoom in very far and no location is named unless you are currently in it) somewhere, you're in for a trek that feels needlessly arduous.
The combat is pretty easy, with very few exceptions, and the punishment for dying isn't so bad. A bit of semi-permanent damage is done, capping your health a few percents until you go to one of those rare fast travel locations and repair it for a very cheap price. Though it only happened once, I believe there is a punishment for dying before collecting your remains, and I believe that's you losing a Suit Level. I'm not certain about this, however, and I do not really care (and neither should you).
Not worth your money. Needed more time and energy.
True to Metroid, the map opens up as you collect new weapons or abilities like double jump, wall jump, rockets, etc. Your goal is to collect engine parts for a ship you won't even escape the dangerous moon on. The crew of this ship will have multiple boring conversations with you revealing the smallest fractions of a personality per person. If you work annoyingly hard, or be smarter than me and just find the quadruple jump before attempting it, you can find a secret location that changes very little of the ending. When the credits roll, you'll sigh and move on to some other game.
Ghost Song is just really forgettable. Its monotony and emptiness is intentional which makes me angry knowing they liked it feeling like a void. To make this void worse, there aren't enough fast travel locations, so if you think you forgot something (good luck with the map, where you cannot zoom in very far and no location is named unless you are currently in it) somewhere, you're in for a trek that feels needlessly arduous.
The combat is pretty easy, with very few exceptions, and the punishment for dying isn't so bad. A bit of semi-permanent damage is done, capping your health a few percents until you go to one of those rare fast travel locations and repair it for a very cheap price. Though it only happened once, I believe there is a punishment for dying before collecting your remains, and I believe that's you losing a Suit Level. I'm not certain about this, however, and I do not really care (and neither should you).
Not worth your money. Needed more time and energy.
I only played this for about an hour and find it just as lifeless and boring as the first, which I obviously also didn't care for. I was considering putting this on my backlog and coming back to it someday, but really I don't see the point. I'm only hearing bad things about its story, I think this one will stay unfinished forever.