kavreb
2020
I like riding on the flying drone and sightseeing its vision of a slightly-futuristic gleaning London (it was especially fun to then visit actual London for the first time in a few months after playing the game), but the writing and its vision of a resistance movement is so juvenile and silly that it is impossible to take anything they do and say seriously. If they wanted to make it a goofy cartoon, fine, but there's just not enough juice in the characterless and empty story or bite in their social "criticism" (if there even is anything to take seriously) to keep one's interest going once the gameplay has exhausted itself, which will happen sooner rather than later with its 18+h gametime (according to HowLongToBeat). I might return to play a bit more just cause I like open-world games, but if I'm being quite honest with myself, chances are it's staying abandoned. Such a disappointment after loving Clint Hocking's Far Cry 2 to absolute bits (not that I blame him personally, game development is complicated).
2019
I really-really love this game, even if I feel I can't rate it that highly. That's mainly because while the game touches on some emotionally affecting things, and has even a storyline of dealing with a depressed friend, it ultimately is afraid to really go for it and ends up hitting the lowest hanging clichés.
For one (and this paragraph is going to be spoilery), the wife should have stayed dead. Not that I didn't like her, on the contrary - I thought the characters they built in the flashbacks and their relationship were really sweet, but it was exactly because of that, and how it felt important that by what felt like the end of this storyline Deacon had come to an acceptance of her death. It felt like a true story of grief and moving on. And then she returns, and in an unbelievably important role as well, emphasising the clichéd nature of the story where everybody that matters to the protagonist matters to the world. Oh, and if you’re going to have a character sacrifice themself in the end, how about respecting that? Even if that sacrifice made absolutely no sense at all.
And yet I really enjoyed traveling this world on a bike and dealing with its post-apocalyptic dangers while getting to know Deacon and the other characters. It can get repetitive, but I didn’t mind much, only when the game continued after it should have already ended. But it’s the feeling of the world that mattered to me the most. I think it was aided by the fact I played the game on a higher difficulty that removed some UI stuff and made it more “survivalist” or whatever. Meaning the action also didn’t feel button smashy or easy and you had to actually be careful in order to not die (including sometimes running the hell away).
I wish the story had the guts to honour the seriousness with which it took itself, and the game should have been shorter, but I value the time I spent with it very highly, both messing about in the world and many of the story beats (the acceptance of grief really touched me, before the game lost its guts). An imperfect gem is still a gem.
For one (and this paragraph is going to be spoilery), the wife should have stayed dead. Not that I didn't like her, on the contrary - I thought the characters they built in the flashbacks and their relationship were really sweet, but it was exactly because of that, and how it felt important that by what felt like the end of this storyline Deacon had come to an acceptance of her death. It felt like a true story of grief and moving on. And then she returns, and in an unbelievably important role as well, emphasising the clichéd nature of the story where everybody that matters to the protagonist matters to the world. Oh, and if you’re going to have a character sacrifice themself in the end, how about respecting that? Even if that sacrifice made absolutely no sense at all.
And yet I really enjoyed traveling this world on a bike and dealing with its post-apocalyptic dangers while getting to know Deacon and the other characters. It can get repetitive, but I didn’t mind much, only when the game continued after it should have already ended. But it’s the feeling of the world that mattered to me the most. I think it was aided by the fact I played the game on a higher difficulty that removed some UI stuff and made it more “survivalist” or whatever. Meaning the action also didn’t feel button smashy or easy and you had to actually be careful in order to not die (including sometimes running the hell away).
I wish the story had the guts to honour the seriousness with which it took itself, and the game should have been shorter, but I value the time I spent with it very highly, both messing about in the world and many of the story beats (the acceptance of grief really touched me, before the game lost its guts). An imperfect gem is still a gem.
2020
Coming from the previous game to Space Marshals 3, a few changes are obvious. First of all, the game looks gorgeous. There's more detail and there are certain electrical and water effects that would feel at home on a bigger game. It might come at the expense of performance, but at least for me it wasn't that noticeable a hit and was definitely worth it, even if it did almost burn a hole in my phone.
Unfortunately, some of the other changes fare less well. The new upgrade system is especially problematic as getting better weapons is directly tied to one’s ability to complete the missions to near-perfection - something that should be reserved for those looking for an extra challenge, not as a requirement for progress. It’s also difficult to understand what weapon is worth choosing over another so you can end up digging yourself deeper into a hole with sub-par weapons and missions you can’t finish well enough.
Add to it that now the game likes to throw random ultra-difficult encounters your way and enjoyment can be very difficult indeed. It was especially infuriating when I discovered in the middle of a mission that I had taken the wrong weapons - e.g. taking stealth weapons against a finale where you have to fight a powerful flamethrower in small quarters and going from 0 deaths (and perfect score) to 15 (and no rewards) within a minute.
And when you do start getting those better weapons and items, there’s another limit on the gear forcing you to avoid using them in order to still be able to unlock the best reward for a successful mission - available only if you did it perfectly.
But once I had gotten some good weapons and stopped caring about unlocking new weapons and just equipped what I wanted and played how I wanted, with no care in the world how many times I might have to respawn, I really started enjoying this game. It’s no coincidence that the third chapter had most of my favourite maps, and I might have had even more pure fun doing the bonus action missions with my favourite weapons after the main game.
This series truly has surprised me with how much fun they can offer. The stealth is improved in this one, even if it sometimes flat-out refuses to let you use it. And the action can be very fun, once you get some cool weapons and learn to work with its slightly-sluggish aiming and chaotic violence and inputs (how many times I accidentally chose the wrong weapon for the job …). The map design also tends to be good and they're often a joy to explore. The writing is silly and doesn't take itself seriously at all, but there were still some laugh-out-loud moments. And whoever decided to put in that reference to 'Allo 'Allo!, a British sitcom about WW2 from the 80s, a childhood favourite (that for the most part held up pretty well in my 20s), thank you - you made my day. :D
I might have spent more time annoyed with the game than I’d like, especially in chapter 2 (where I even considered quitting the game), but in the end, I still found plenty to enjoy in it (and am glad I got to chapter 3). I still might not play it on anything but the phone, but eh, this wasn't released on anything else anyway :P
Unfortunately, some of the other changes fare less well. The new upgrade system is especially problematic as getting better weapons is directly tied to one’s ability to complete the missions to near-perfection - something that should be reserved for those looking for an extra challenge, not as a requirement for progress. It’s also difficult to understand what weapon is worth choosing over another so you can end up digging yourself deeper into a hole with sub-par weapons and missions you can’t finish well enough.
Add to it that now the game likes to throw random ultra-difficult encounters your way and enjoyment can be very difficult indeed. It was especially infuriating when I discovered in the middle of a mission that I had taken the wrong weapons - e.g. taking stealth weapons against a finale where you have to fight a powerful flamethrower in small quarters and going from 0 deaths (and perfect score) to 15 (and no rewards) within a minute.
And when you do start getting those better weapons and items, there’s another limit on the gear forcing you to avoid using them in order to still be able to unlock the best reward for a successful mission - available only if you did it perfectly.
But once I had gotten some good weapons and stopped caring about unlocking new weapons and just equipped what I wanted and played how I wanted, with no care in the world how many times I might have to respawn, I really started enjoying this game. It’s no coincidence that the third chapter had most of my favourite maps, and I might have had even more pure fun doing the bonus action missions with my favourite weapons after the main game.
This series truly has surprised me with how much fun they can offer. The stealth is improved in this one, even if it sometimes flat-out refuses to let you use it. And the action can be very fun, once you get some cool weapons and learn to work with its slightly-sluggish aiming and chaotic violence and inputs (how many times I accidentally chose the wrong weapon for the job …). The map design also tends to be good and they're often a joy to explore. The writing is silly and doesn't take itself seriously at all, but there were still some laugh-out-loud moments. And whoever decided to put in that reference to 'Allo 'Allo!, a British sitcom about WW2 from the 80s, a childhood favourite (that for the most part held up pretty well in my 20s), thank you - you made my day. :D
I might have spent more time annoyed with the game than I’d like, especially in chapter 2 (where I even considered quitting the game), but in the end, I still found plenty to enjoy in it (and am glad I got to chapter 3). I still might not play it on anything but the phone, but eh, this wasn't released on anything else anyway :P
2017
A soothingly beautiful audio-visual experience that is lighter than it thinks.
The sound especially is very important to the experience. I played the first game approaching it like a puzzle game on buses and such without sound, but that’s a mistake - it’s more an experience than a puzzle game, especially considering the puzzles tend to be rather easy (which is good for a dumbass like me) and sometimes not even puzzles at all, just walk here and tap that.
More often than not, the puzzle you’re staring at is actually more impressive for the geometric trick they’ve come up with. Some moments made me go “how do they come up with this?”; and once I understood that I could decide myself the final symbol for the level, it became a small enjoyable thing I looked forward to (especially to see how the animation played with it then).
With its gorgeous visuals and calming music, it really is more noteworthy as an chill experience, especially as many of the puzzles aren’t intellectually involving.
It tells its story in short bursts of enigmatic fortune teller quotes which add to the ephemeral magical atmosphere, but little to anything else. As a parent, I was touched by the interaction between the parent and the child and the need to let go, but with its bonkers story in the other part it felt in service of little relevant and the game’s ambiguous finale obscures the potential emotional effect of the new meeting between the parent and child. It was surprisingly touching to see the old friend though.
Ultimately, it doesn’t have enough emotional or metaphorical resonance to really stick, and with puzzles that often left me bored, it falls just short of greatness. But I did use a screenshot I took from the game as the background for my phone, so there’s that.
The sound especially is very important to the experience. I played the first game approaching it like a puzzle game on buses and such without sound, but that’s a mistake - it’s more an experience than a puzzle game, especially considering the puzzles tend to be rather easy (which is good for a dumbass like me) and sometimes not even puzzles at all, just walk here and tap that.
More often than not, the puzzle you’re staring at is actually more impressive for the geometric trick they’ve come up with. Some moments made me go “how do they come up with this?”; and once I understood that I could decide myself the final symbol for the level, it became a small enjoyable thing I looked forward to (especially to see how the animation played with it then).
With its gorgeous visuals and calming music, it really is more noteworthy as an chill experience, especially as many of the puzzles aren’t intellectually involving.
It tells its story in short bursts of enigmatic fortune teller quotes which add to the ephemeral magical atmosphere, but little to anything else. As a parent, I was touched by the interaction between the parent and the child and the need to let go, but with its bonkers story in the other part it felt in service of little relevant and the game’s ambiguous finale obscures the potential emotional effect of the new meeting between the parent and child. It was surprisingly touching to see the old friend though.
Ultimately, it doesn’t have enough emotional or metaphorical resonance to really stick, and with puzzles that often left me bored, it falls just short of greatness. But I did use a screenshot I took from the game as the background for my phone, so there’s that.
2018
Plagued by unnatural dreams and supported by a small inheritance that I received from an eerie old man who died in the hospital where I used to work as a janitor, I set myself to pulling back the veil that protects our reality from the abnormalities beneath it, searching for answers, direction, and something more, something I couldn't yet put to words. Slowly, I collected a few followers and established a fledgling cult with little to our name besides ambition and a crazy idea, and a mission that would put us on the map. I kept telling my followers to just wait, we'll soon take on that big mission while sending my most trusted believer seeking opportunities in the streets in the hope of alleviating our sudden financial troubles as the inheritance ran out and I was busy working myself into another sickbed. Finally, having no vitality left to fight another bout of illness, I croaked, leaving behind a lost believer and two hangers-on who returned to their regular life with nothing to show for it. As for the believer, I hope they'll forgive me in time or, at the very least, raise me from the dead.
I tried again.
This time I was the inspector who, following a lead, had happened on the trail of the wannabe cultist leader. The leader might have died, but his right hand was alive. But as I got closer and closer to her, the new-found madness in my dreams started to envelop me and just as I was ready to nail her with damning evidence, dread devoured me and I was lost.
I tried again. And again. And again, the cycle furiously repeating into another early death.
You get the point. It's a complicated game to get into with little direction and no hand-holding, the realities of a cult simulation quickly beating the novice into the ground just to start again with the same story from a selection that becomes increasingly limited walking down the familiar streets into another unexpected and seemingly unavoidable death. You might learn something from your every last loss, but there are so many other losses waiting.
Slowly a sense of meaningless creeps in as I tap through the same actions I've done before, stumbling into the same problems I faced before, with too little knowledge to still deal with them. I feel more comfortable with its fiddly interface that is constantly threatening to become just way too much, especially on the small cellphone screen, and there’s still a desire to dive deeper into this weird world that so successfully seems to evoke the feeling of being called by the secret whispers from another side to become the person that you usually take on in some horror game as the mid- or late-game boss, depending on whether it's going to send you against the demon itself in the end or not.
But it’s a game that encourages experimentation and exploration in its intro but punishes you severely for not knowing how to play the game properly. It’s as if to really enjoy it, you must read a guide beforehand; but I’d prefer a game to convince me there’s value to reading a guide for it before I actually do that.
In another playthrough, thinking myself ready, I took on the big mission, but it soon proved to be much more demanding of our resources than I had thought, and as my closest believer succumbed to the wounds suffered, we returned with nothing to show for it, back to our withered home. Our cult was done and I returned to my normal everyday life that could never be the same again, now aware of the precarious balance between our worlds, but impotent to do anything about it. I hope my believer behind the veil will find it in themself to forgive me; I will not be raising them again. My Google Play subscription is through and I’m not renewing it for this game.
I tried again.
This time I was the inspector who, following a lead, had happened on the trail of the wannabe cultist leader. The leader might have died, but his right hand was alive. But as I got closer and closer to her, the new-found madness in my dreams started to envelop me and just as I was ready to nail her with damning evidence, dread devoured me and I was lost.
I tried again. And again. And again, the cycle furiously repeating into another early death.
You get the point. It's a complicated game to get into with little direction and no hand-holding, the realities of a cult simulation quickly beating the novice into the ground just to start again with the same story from a selection that becomes increasingly limited walking down the familiar streets into another unexpected and seemingly unavoidable death. You might learn something from your every last loss, but there are so many other losses waiting.
Slowly a sense of meaningless creeps in as I tap through the same actions I've done before, stumbling into the same problems I faced before, with too little knowledge to still deal with them. I feel more comfortable with its fiddly interface that is constantly threatening to become just way too much, especially on the small cellphone screen, and there’s still a desire to dive deeper into this weird world that so successfully seems to evoke the feeling of being called by the secret whispers from another side to become the person that you usually take on in some horror game as the mid- or late-game boss, depending on whether it's going to send you against the demon itself in the end or not.
But it’s a game that encourages experimentation and exploration in its intro but punishes you severely for not knowing how to play the game properly. It’s as if to really enjoy it, you must read a guide beforehand; but I’d prefer a game to convince me there’s value to reading a guide for it before I actually do that.
In another playthrough, thinking myself ready, I took on the big mission, but it soon proved to be much more demanding of our resources than I had thought, and as my closest believer succumbed to the wounds suffered, we returned with nothing to show for it, back to our withered home. Our cult was done and I returned to my normal everyday life that could never be the same again, now aware of the precarious balance between our worlds, but impotent to do anything about it. I hope my believer behind the veil will find it in themself to forgive me; I will not be raising them again. My Google Play subscription is through and I’m not renewing it for this game.
2017
Less consistently scary, but more fun, both in its stealth and shooting.
Yet I found myself missing the highs of fear from the first one or the constant dread I felt walking down the unpredictable villages, city streets, and hospitals of the first game.
The story manages to somehow be even hammier than the first one, but I can’t deny that as a parent the start of the game really worked for me - running into a burning building, knowing I’d die trying to save her, I thought, if it was my kid yelling for her daddy to help, I would to it instantly, fuck all my chances of survival. And while the finale of the game felt mechanically lackluster (especially the shooting gallery parts), as a parent and married, I found it touching and my love for Sebastian, the protagonist, was higher than ever before seeing the way he carried his daughter. And to think I actually missed the moody serious Sebastian from the previous game at first.
Some of the story stuff about overcoming grief and understanding that you are not at fault for things that you didn’t have any power over is also pretty good. And this time it also didn't take 6 hours for the game to finally start explaining something or giving you a proper goal.
Everything with the administrator is whacked though (and what is it with his animations? What is he doing with his hands all the time? Why? Nobody gesticulates like that). And I kinda low-key hated where the story went with most of the side-characters, thinking “fucking bullshit” more than once.
But I did like Union the city, even though I think it doesn’t do enough to stand out as a memorable video game place. There were some moments though where I had the same kind of nostalgic-for-stereotypical-life-from-the-movies feeling that so heavily pervaded my experience of Control (even though covid isolation has long since ended in my country), but the downside of the stealth and open maps is that the rules governing the enemy AI become more clear and the game itself through that feels safer. A horror game is less effective with its horror when it’s approached as just a set of mechanics and rules meant to create an experience. You’re supposed to fear the monsters, not think how juking them in unrealistic ways can allow you to backstab the whole gang without wasting any ammo.
Ultimately it’s this gaminess that proved to undermine the game for me. As the end was approaching, I was ready to be done with it, so facing another small area with a new enemy filled me with dread not for the monsters, but the boredom. There’s not enough ammunition to really enjoy it as an action game (at least not on Nightmare) so you’re forced to mess around with the AI in silly ways to succeed.
Crafting is another part of the game where I appreciate them trying something new, but with it is also gone the precise balance of ammunition from the first game where you always had too little to feel good but enough to survive that made it feel so great and added to the constant dread. Here there are times when I had to scavenge around before I could do sidequests because I just didn’t have enough ammunition to survive them; and bosses take so long that they have to magically keep refilling ammo drops for you to be able to survive.
I still enjoyed the game and coupled with the first Evil Within (which is in many ways a very different game, in some ways worse and in others better) I quite like this series. I’m both sad that there’s no third Evil Within, but also glad that poor Sebastian didn’t have to return to this hell again.
Yet I found myself missing the highs of fear from the first one or the constant dread I felt walking down the unpredictable villages, city streets, and hospitals of the first game.
The story manages to somehow be even hammier than the first one, but I can’t deny that as a parent the start of the game really worked for me - running into a burning building, knowing I’d die trying to save her, I thought, if it was my kid yelling for her daddy to help, I would to it instantly, fuck all my chances of survival. And while the finale of the game felt mechanically lackluster (especially the shooting gallery parts), as a parent and married, I found it touching and my love for Sebastian, the protagonist, was higher than ever before seeing the way he carried his daughter. And to think I actually missed the moody serious Sebastian from the previous game at first.
Some of the story stuff about overcoming grief and understanding that you are not at fault for things that you didn’t have any power over is also pretty good. And this time it also didn't take 6 hours for the game to finally start explaining something or giving you a proper goal.
Everything with the administrator is whacked though (and what is it with his animations? What is he doing with his hands all the time? Why? Nobody gesticulates like that). And I kinda low-key hated where the story went with most of the side-characters, thinking “fucking bullshit” more than once.
But I did like Union the city, even though I think it doesn’t do enough to stand out as a memorable video game place. There were some moments though where I had the same kind of nostalgic-for-stereotypical-life-from-the-movies feeling that so heavily pervaded my experience of Control (even though covid isolation has long since ended in my country), but the downside of the stealth and open maps is that the rules governing the enemy AI become more clear and the game itself through that feels safer. A horror game is less effective with its horror when it’s approached as just a set of mechanics and rules meant to create an experience. You’re supposed to fear the monsters, not think how juking them in unrealistic ways can allow you to backstab the whole gang without wasting any ammo.
Ultimately it’s this gaminess that proved to undermine the game for me. As the end was approaching, I was ready to be done with it, so facing another small area with a new enemy filled me with dread not for the monsters, but the boredom. There’s not enough ammunition to really enjoy it as an action game (at least not on Nightmare) so you’re forced to mess around with the AI in silly ways to succeed.
Crafting is another part of the game where I appreciate them trying something new, but with it is also gone the precise balance of ammunition from the first game where you always had too little to feel good but enough to survive that made it feel so great and added to the constant dread. Here there are times when I had to scavenge around before I could do sidequests because I just didn’t have enough ammunition to survive them; and bosses take so long that they have to magically keep refilling ammo drops for you to be able to survive.
I still enjoyed the game and coupled with the first Evil Within (which is in many ways a very different game, in some ways worse and in others better) I quite like this series. I’m both sad that there’s no third Evil Within, but also glad that poor Sebastian didn’t have to return to this hell again.
2017
Quite a fun and good-looking strategy game on a phone, but the lack of information (e.g. damage numbers) and fiddliness (perhaps an inevitability with any non-turn-based strategy game on a cellphone) makes it an occasionally difficult game to play.
Too many times I had troops run into death because I was having difficulty selecting them; or because I had selected both melee and ranged (whether by accident or not) and they ran into melee range with ranged first. The last one kept happening because the ranged units don't stop to shoot at an enemy when in range but instead run into where you directed them and only then start shooting, forcing you to micro them around or just let them take free fire (there might have been an option somewhere to change this, but I don't remember, nor why I didn't use it if there was).
I still enjoyed it, even though not enough to hurry with finishing it before my Play subscription ran out; I also wasn't in the mood to renew it for just this (and another game) that I wasn't that enthused about. However, I might still one day return to this one at least.
Too many times I had troops run into death because I was having difficulty selecting them; or because I had selected both melee and ranged (whether by accident or not) and they ran into melee range with ranged first. The last one kept happening because the ranged units don't stop to shoot at an enemy when in range but instead run into where you directed them and only then start shooting, forcing you to micro them around or just let them take free fire (there might have been an option somewhere to change this, but I don't remember, nor why I didn't use it if there was).
I still enjoyed it, even though not enough to hurry with finishing it before my Play subscription ran out; I also wasn't in the mood to renew it for just this (and another game) that I wasn't that enthused about. However, I might still one day return to this one at least.
A story of a society gone mad - Ryan wanted to build a utopia of ultimate freedom, but without any proper restraints it fell prey to amoral capitalists, ideological cult leaders, deepening paranoia and inequality, and the worst of human impulses, given free reign.
I cannot say what is the perfect form of government; democracy certainly isn’t it, but neither is anything the great hypocrite Ayn Rand suggested, nor what Ryan accomplished. The original Bioshock stories are deeply critical of the ideas of objectivism by portraying the logical apocalyptic conclusion of human selfishness run rampant.
But it’s also weirdly centrist. Bioshock games offer no alternatives to their broken societies. Bioshock Infinite famously equated the horrors of slavery and the revolt of the slaves, the most disgusting Bioshock has been, but even in Bioshock 2 your main opponent is the only person in Rapture talking about cooperation between the disenfranchised, social welfare to take care of the less lucky, and countering the power of the elite who are shown very willing to abuse it while breaking their own rules of freedom. That she also turns out to be mad and selfish is just what videogame villains are wont to do, whether they want it or not.
It’s a weird experience though, playing a game like that - you walk through the decaying walls of a failed idea, fighting some socialist-cultists, and following the lead of an unknown girl calling you father and the words of an extreme capitalist who in his previous life exploited and abused without regret and who even still encourages you to kill children for a small boost in power; that his story arc is supposed to be the one to make you cry is asking a lot (and I have to give it to the actor that he almost convinced me, despite my utter despise of this character).
Yet that’s also what makes the (better) Bioshock games more interesting than your usual run and gun. They might not be as smart as they think they are, but they are trying to grapple with some serious ideas. That they don’t offer any answers (besides “it’s all fucked”), might not even be as big a problem as I make it out to be, as long as they offer some motivation for thought.
Oh, and just playing it, the shooting and plasming and so on, is really quite fun. Playing on the hardest difficulty does sometimes feel like you’re trying to undermine your own experience of a fun run’n’gun, but it’s never challenging enough to be annoying and the game offers you such a variety of fun and interesting tools to tackle its challenges that it takes a long time for the enthusiasm for the mechanics to run its course.
I was however done with the game earlier than it ended. The last few levels I was ignoring most of the world and exploring little, just going where I was supposed to in order to move the story towards the end. It’s not a long game, but I felt it exhausted its mechanics some considerable time before the ending. For the last part, I was even running around with only the drill, having little interest left in the shooting that I had already been doing for such a long time.
The world itself is deliciously evocative, and I especially appreciated the occasional horror vibe. Rapture is a cool place to explore, much cooler imo than whatever the place in Bioshock Infinite is called (and I don’t even like games with water).
If it had been a bit shorter, and if the ending hadn’t been quite as meh, I would have probably considered it my favourite Bioshock game. As it is now, that’s probably Minerva’s Den. But hey, this one’s pretty good too.
I cannot say what is the perfect form of government; democracy certainly isn’t it, but neither is anything the great hypocrite Ayn Rand suggested, nor what Ryan accomplished. The original Bioshock stories are deeply critical of the ideas of objectivism by portraying the logical apocalyptic conclusion of human selfishness run rampant.
But it’s also weirdly centrist. Bioshock games offer no alternatives to their broken societies. Bioshock Infinite famously equated the horrors of slavery and the revolt of the slaves, the most disgusting Bioshock has been, but even in Bioshock 2 your main opponent is the only person in Rapture talking about cooperation between the disenfranchised, social welfare to take care of the less lucky, and countering the power of the elite who are shown very willing to abuse it while breaking their own rules of freedom. That she also turns out to be mad and selfish is just what videogame villains are wont to do, whether they want it or not.
It’s a weird experience though, playing a game like that - you walk through the decaying walls of a failed idea, fighting some socialist-cultists, and following the lead of an unknown girl calling you father and the words of an extreme capitalist who in his previous life exploited and abused without regret and who even still encourages you to kill children for a small boost in power; that his story arc is supposed to be the one to make you cry is asking a lot (and I have to give it to the actor that he almost convinced me, despite my utter despise of this character).
Yet that’s also what makes the (better) Bioshock games more interesting than your usual run and gun. They might not be as smart as they think they are, but they are trying to grapple with some serious ideas. That they don’t offer any answers (besides “it’s all fucked”), might not even be as big a problem as I make it out to be, as long as they offer some motivation for thought.
Oh, and just playing it, the shooting and plasming and so on, is really quite fun. Playing on the hardest difficulty does sometimes feel like you’re trying to undermine your own experience of a fun run’n’gun, but it’s never challenging enough to be annoying and the game offers you such a variety of fun and interesting tools to tackle its challenges that it takes a long time for the enthusiasm for the mechanics to run its course.
I was however done with the game earlier than it ended. The last few levels I was ignoring most of the world and exploring little, just going where I was supposed to in order to move the story towards the end. It’s not a long game, but I felt it exhausted its mechanics some considerable time before the ending. For the last part, I was even running around with only the drill, having little interest left in the shooting that I had already been doing for such a long time.
The world itself is deliciously evocative, and I especially appreciated the occasional horror vibe. Rapture is a cool place to explore, much cooler imo than whatever the place in Bioshock Infinite is called (and I don’t even like games with water).
If it had been a bit shorter, and if the ending hadn’t been quite as meh, I would have probably considered it my favourite Bioshock game. As it is now, that’s probably Minerva’s Den. But hey, this one’s pretty good too.
2015
A hilarious comedy game with too much repetition.
There are too many endings that force you to replay huge chunks of the story in order to get more jokes from the other path, turning the game from a fun choose-your-own-adventure to a poorly working Skinner machine. Though it must be said it did get better once I found the skip buttons.
I would still have liked there to be better checkpointing, e.g. before every choice so that if you instantly die (which you often do, in very funny ways, so they're annoyingly worth searching out), you can instantly return to it after seeing the art for the ending.
The writing is great though, and following the "actual" Hamlet's story as Shakespeare wrote it (especially if you start with Ophelia) is one of the funniest things I've ever read in my whole life. I’ll probably return to this game from time to time to search out lines that I’ve missed, just because it’s so funny, but I still can’t get over the repetition (if you couldn’t tell from the fact it was the thing I spent most of the review complaining about).
There are too many endings that force you to replay huge chunks of the story in order to get more jokes from the other path, turning the game from a fun choose-your-own-adventure to a poorly working Skinner machine. Though it must be said it did get better once I found the skip buttons.
I would still have liked there to be better checkpointing, e.g. before every choice so that if you instantly die (which you often do, in very funny ways, so they're annoyingly worth searching out), you can instantly return to it after seeing the art for the ending.
The writing is great though, and following the "actual" Hamlet's story as Shakespeare wrote it (especially if you start with Ophelia) is one of the funniest things I've ever read in my whole life. I’ll probably return to this game from time to time to search out lines that I’ve missed, just because it’s so funny, but I still can’t get over the repetition (if you couldn’t tell from the fact it was the thing I spent most of the review complaining about).
At first it seemed unbeatable. Then I found a character I clicked with and beat it twice in a row. And then I got bored.
A nifty little thing with very short legs, I thought. After beating it twice I didn't feel much pull back, nor any interest in trying out the higher difficulty. I felt like there weren't enough interesting decisions to make during play; before deciding to shelve the game, I did think that I had tipped my toe in too little, but eh, life is short.
That’s what I thought after a few hours with the game - and then spent the next few weeks of occasional play to 99% the game.
And I came so damn close to a 100%.
It's just that finding those last items is a bit too much trouble than I care for. But oh boy, slowly moving from failing every run to completing every run to balancing somewhere between them, with dips towards one or the other side depending on the character, difficulty (and luck), and finally arriving at a place where I'm playing with some truly bonkers strategies, this game managed to slip near my heart and make itself home there (for a while).
The simple and seemingly luck-based gameplay slowly gave way to a more nuanced understanding of the game and its characters. I still can't tell you what a good strategy would be or what I do differently now from when I started the game (and got whooped every run), but I sure am doing something differently, enough to even tackle some expert courses. The random dial can still sometimes swing so cruelly that there truly is no way of coming back, but you can prepare for it (to a degree) and the game does offer moments of sweet calculation as you’re trying to figure out the best course of action considering your limited choices (and oh how sweet it is to then come out on top). Though perhaps the sweetest thing might still be a clean run of few enemies and shields all the way. Arriving at the final boss with 99 shield and a big sword is a moment of delicious OP; even more delicious is killing him before he can even touch you (or running through the game with 999 stealth, cackling madly at the fools incapable of doing anything - and it wasn’t even nearly my wildest run).
So, at first a disappointment, blossomed into a game I spent more time with than I could have imagined (and definitely is worth more money than the game costs). Delicious.
(Played on Android, actually, but there's no choice for that ...)
A nifty little thing with very short legs, I thought. After beating it twice I didn't feel much pull back, nor any interest in trying out the higher difficulty. I felt like there weren't enough interesting decisions to make during play; before deciding to shelve the game, I did think that I had tipped my toe in too little, but eh, life is short.
That’s what I thought after a few hours with the game - and then spent the next few weeks of occasional play to 99% the game.
And I came so damn close to a 100%.
It's just that finding those last items is a bit too much trouble than I care for. But oh boy, slowly moving from failing every run to completing every run to balancing somewhere between them, with dips towards one or the other side depending on the character, difficulty (and luck), and finally arriving at a place where I'm playing with some truly bonkers strategies, this game managed to slip near my heart and make itself home there (for a while).
The simple and seemingly luck-based gameplay slowly gave way to a more nuanced understanding of the game and its characters. I still can't tell you what a good strategy would be or what I do differently now from when I started the game (and got whooped every run), but I sure am doing something differently, enough to even tackle some expert courses. The random dial can still sometimes swing so cruelly that there truly is no way of coming back, but you can prepare for it (to a degree) and the game does offer moments of sweet calculation as you’re trying to figure out the best course of action considering your limited choices (and oh how sweet it is to then come out on top). Though perhaps the sweetest thing might still be a clean run of few enemies and shields all the way. Arriving at the final boss with 99 shield and a big sword is a moment of delicious OP; even more delicious is killing him before he can even touch you (or running through the game with 999 stealth, cackling madly at the fools incapable of doing anything - and it wasn’t even nearly my wildest run).
So, at first a disappointment, blossomed into a game I spent more time with than I could have imagined (and definitely is worth more money than the game costs). Delicious.
(Played on Android, actually, but there's no choice for that ...)
2022
What a weird game.
Last year when I got a new phone and with it a new enough Android to run video games, this was one of the first ones that I tried out having heard so much good about it, and for a while, I lost my life to this and Marvel Snap. I even got pretty good at it, though not great, unlocking the secret characters only through cheats after deciding the work needed for them wasn't worth the (personally) precious hours of my life. And then, after a brief but intense love affair, I stopped playing it and soon deleted it full-scale, thinking that that would serve my life better. I didn't regret it.
Seeing my best friend discover it a few weeks ago (now more than two months ago from writing this review …), I was caught up with the bug again, and having witnessed them playing it and feeling the itch, I reinstalled it as well.
My first disappointment was that it had kept none of the saves, despite being on the same phone; it was worse than tears in the rain as it's much less time-consuming to cry than to fully upgrade and unlock everything in this damn game.
But my biggest disappointment was that despite all my knowledge of the game and accumulated skill, I was incapable of surviving much longer than my novice friend. The character just doesn't accumulate enough XP or damage output or health to be able to survive the onslaught past a certain point. It was only after I got a few upgrades, with Amount (giving another projectile) the most important of them (especially with my favourite character, Gennaro, who boasts another extra projectile) that I managed to go far beyond the 15-minute mark and almost hit 30.
Almost.
And that's the thing - how much is doing well at the game really about one's ability and how much is it just upgrades and luck in drops (which can be modified by further upgrades)? There's no denying that skill matters some (I was capable of doing some real daredevil stuff that my friend is still learning to dare, allowing me to progress faster), but if it's virtually impossible to finish a run without upgrades, and the moment you get some good ones you get almost to the end, what is the value of all this accumulated knowledge and reflexes really?
Well, none, of course, it's a silly videogame, after all. But I feel more disappointed now than I did before.
But hey, I still enjoyed my revisit and watching the numbers go up and coasting at the very edge of survivability knowing that's mostly my knowledge of how the game functions, and my daring. Even if I'm unlikely to ever return to the game again.
But hey, I already returned once to this endlessly addicting weird little thing, so who the hell knows?
Even if I haven't picked it up once between writing this review two months ago and posting it now. Go figure.
Last year when I got a new phone and with it a new enough Android to run video games, this was one of the first ones that I tried out having heard so much good about it, and for a while, I lost my life to this and Marvel Snap. I even got pretty good at it, though not great, unlocking the secret characters only through cheats after deciding the work needed for them wasn't worth the (personally) precious hours of my life. And then, after a brief but intense love affair, I stopped playing it and soon deleted it full-scale, thinking that that would serve my life better. I didn't regret it.
Seeing my best friend discover it a few weeks ago (now more than two months ago from writing this review …), I was caught up with the bug again, and having witnessed them playing it and feeling the itch, I reinstalled it as well.
My first disappointment was that it had kept none of the saves, despite being on the same phone; it was worse than tears in the rain as it's much less time-consuming to cry than to fully upgrade and unlock everything in this damn game.
But my biggest disappointment was that despite all my knowledge of the game and accumulated skill, I was incapable of surviving much longer than my novice friend. The character just doesn't accumulate enough XP or damage output or health to be able to survive the onslaught past a certain point. It was only after I got a few upgrades, with Amount (giving another projectile) the most important of them (especially with my favourite character, Gennaro, who boasts another extra projectile) that I managed to go far beyond the 15-minute mark and almost hit 30.
Almost.
And that's the thing - how much is doing well at the game really about one's ability and how much is it just upgrades and luck in drops (which can be modified by further upgrades)? There's no denying that skill matters some (I was capable of doing some real daredevil stuff that my friend is still learning to dare, allowing me to progress faster), but if it's virtually impossible to finish a run without upgrades, and the moment you get some good ones you get almost to the end, what is the value of all this accumulated knowledge and reflexes really?
Well, none, of course, it's a silly videogame, after all. But I feel more disappointed now than I did before.
But hey, I still enjoyed my revisit and watching the numbers go up and coasting at the very edge of survivability knowing that's mostly my knowledge of how the game functions, and my daring. Even if I'm unlikely to ever return to the game again.
But hey, I already returned once to this endlessly addicting weird little thing, so who the hell knows?
Even if I haven't picked it up once between writing this review two months ago and posting it now. Go figure.
2022
I just don't like its style.
I played the first game, enjoyed it somewhat, but never fell in love with it in the same way I did with for example Dead Cells. The artistic style was just too cold and glistening, and the silliness not of the type I enjoyed much (also the characters looked weirdly bulky and a bit chibi to me - neither something I enjoy). The second game doesn't really change any of that so it was going to be an uphill battle anyway.
It doesn't help that in trying to improve the game, it makes some user-unfriendly choices that I really didn't appreciate, like not showing the player what they're choosing between before they've actually made the choice. It makes the choice pointless and the game a grind before having explored enough of it to have the information to actually make meaningful choices.
The action also feels clunky, especially in how you have to position your character; though that might be unfair as positioning can be a challenge in other such games as well, e.g. Dead Cells. I just never enjoyed it here or felt that I had enough alternatives to overcome it successfully enough.
The story offers some interest with its mystery, but not enough to drag me through it. Writing this review a month or two after last playing it I can't even really tell you what it's all about, some guy going crazy? It also wants to be too funny for its own good, undermining the seriousness with constant silliness.
I also found its bullet hell difficult to handle already in the intro level, and I found little enjoyment in completing most levels (excluding the challenge levels; those were pretty fun). I did appreciate the opportunity to fiddle around with the difficulty settings and I did enjoy the game more once I had turned some stuff lower or off, but after 5 or more hours I'm pretty sure this series just isn't for me.
I played the first game, enjoyed it somewhat, but never fell in love with it in the same way I did with for example Dead Cells. The artistic style was just too cold and glistening, and the silliness not of the type I enjoyed much (also the characters looked weirdly bulky and a bit chibi to me - neither something I enjoy). The second game doesn't really change any of that so it was going to be an uphill battle anyway.
It doesn't help that in trying to improve the game, it makes some user-unfriendly choices that I really didn't appreciate, like not showing the player what they're choosing between before they've actually made the choice. It makes the choice pointless and the game a grind before having explored enough of it to have the information to actually make meaningful choices.
The action also feels clunky, especially in how you have to position your character; though that might be unfair as positioning can be a challenge in other such games as well, e.g. Dead Cells. I just never enjoyed it here or felt that I had enough alternatives to overcome it successfully enough.
The story offers some interest with its mystery, but not enough to drag me through it. Writing this review a month or two after last playing it I can't even really tell you what it's all about, some guy going crazy? It also wants to be too funny for its own good, undermining the seriousness with constant silliness.
I also found its bullet hell difficult to handle already in the intro level, and I found little enjoyment in completing most levels (excluding the challenge levels; those were pretty fun). I did appreciate the opportunity to fiddle around with the difficulty settings and I did enjoy the game more once I had turned some stuff lower or off, but after 5 or more hours I'm pretty sure this series just isn't for me.
2023
I don't quite see the point of this game.
Besides a time waster and a somewhat-functioning Skinner machine, of course.
But in my (granted, limited) time with the game I didn't make a single interesting decision, be it during a battle or in any of the menus, upgrading items or choosing a weapon. What's more, none of the simple battles offer any challenge at all - the creatures have barely enough time to react to you before you've tapped them to death with a few hits. The bigger monster might require a few rolls or blocks before you down them, but even with them I've reached a point with my upgrades where they melt. I'm sure they'll get more challenging soon enough once the numbers climb higher again, but even then the fights are mechanically too undemanding. That's fine if that's what you want, but I prefer more involving, or at the very least more challenging, fight for one's life.
But perhaps the biggest sin the game commits is that there's no real reason to get off your sofa and go hunt some monsters because you can clean up your surroundings, put the phone away, pick it up again when you remember, and there you are - replenished. Not even once did I go out of my way to hunt somebody, instead just shrugging my shoulders when I ran out of stuff to do in my vicinity, and opening up another app. Not that there's anything to motivate it either - I could see stuff outside my vicinity, but felt no desire for anything, seeing no value in any of the pickups nor any interest in chasing down any of the monsters. You might want to do it, if you're actually trying to do the quests, but looking at the quest list I felt another instance of "what's the point of it all?"
It doesn't help that the game looks awful - bland GPS maps mixing with the occasional generic textures. The closest I game to a pleasant surprise was seeing low-pixel images of familiar places as backgrounds to some mineable rocks. Seeing a Google maps version of my street with some monsters on it doesn't really do it for me alone.
The best moment was joining a friend's game and having a laugh at the silliness of the game. I do appreciate it for affording me such a relatively simple and easy way to have a bit of a coop, but that's the best I can say for it.
So, all the complexity seems empty, the battles lacklustre, and the motivation for moving around in real life non-existent; perhaps I'm being unfair towards a game that requires more attention and more time investment, but throughout my time with it, it just couldn't convince me in why I should bother more. I don't usually play games like this and perhaps that's the reason for my distaste, but if it couldn't impress me with an experience that I've never had before, what could it wow me with then?
Certainly not with anything this game has so far.
And yea, I've read that the game gets more engaging as you go along, with combos, different weapons, and hunting specific monsters for quests and crafting, but the lacklustre presentation and repetitive gameplay loop isn't really incentivising me to explore further - you only have a few pages to convince your readers that you're worth it, and if you can't, well, there's always somebody else who will. Monster Hunter Now just didn't convince me.
Besides a time waster and a somewhat-functioning Skinner machine, of course.
But in my (granted, limited) time with the game I didn't make a single interesting decision, be it during a battle or in any of the menus, upgrading items or choosing a weapon. What's more, none of the simple battles offer any challenge at all - the creatures have barely enough time to react to you before you've tapped them to death with a few hits. The bigger monster might require a few rolls or blocks before you down them, but even with them I've reached a point with my upgrades where they melt. I'm sure they'll get more challenging soon enough once the numbers climb higher again, but even then the fights are mechanically too undemanding. That's fine if that's what you want, but I prefer more involving, or at the very least more challenging, fight for one's life.
But perhaps the biggest sin the game commits is that there's no real reason to get off your sofa and go hunt some monsters because you can clean up your surroundings, put the phone away, pick it up again when you remember, and there you are - replenished. Not even once did I go out of my way to hunt somebody, instead just shrugging my shoulders when I ran out of stuff to do in my vicinity, and opening up another app. Not that there's anything to motivate it either - I could see stuff outside my vicinity, but felt no desire for anything, seeing no value in any of the pickups nor any interest in chasing down any of the monsters. You might want to do it, if you're actually trying to do the quests, but looking at the quest list I felt another instance of "what's the point of it all?"
It doesn't help that the game looks awful - bland GPS maps mixing with the occasional generic textures. The closest I game to a pleasant surprise was seeing low-pixel images of familiar places as backgrounds to some mineable rocks. Seeing a Google maps version of my street with some monsters on it doesn't really do it for me alone.
The best moment was joining a friend's game and having a laugh at the silliness of the game. I do appreciate it for affording me such a relatively simple and easy way to have a bit of a coop, but that's the best I can say for it.
So, all the complexity seems empty, the battles lacklustre, and the motivation for moving around in real life non-existent; perhaps I'm being unfair towards a game that requires more attention and more time investment, but throughout my time with it, it just couldn't convince me in why I should bother more. I don't usually play games like this and perhaps that's the reason for my distaste, but if it couldn't impress me with an experience that I've never had before, what could it wow me with then?
Certainly not with anything this game has so far.
And yea, I've read that the game gets more engaging as you go along, with combos, different weapons, and hunting specific monsters for quests and crafting, but the lacklustre presentation and repetitive gameplay loop isn't really incentivising me to explore further - you only have a few pages to convince your readers that you're worth it, and if you can't, well, there's always somebody else who will. Monster Hunter Now just didn't convince me.
2022
The fear of death
Is what this game is so good at invoking
Even when you know it will not happen
Cause the game is much kinder than it seems.
The writing is throughout envisioning a cold world encompassed in darkness with the few specks of light giving you hope while at every periphery the potential for absolute collapse lies in wait.
But the game believes in you, and in humanity, and from the space-punk drenched corridors it carves you a life.
Citizen Sleeper is a cavalcade of space opera and cyberpunk weaved together, with a healthy injection of humanism (and some nice diversity). There are many ways this story can end, and you can see them all with a bit of reloading. As the game goes on, it becomes easier to survive as you learn the place, create connections, gather resources, and overall carve out your own little place in this world floating through space where you can feel relatively safe, the panicked survival of the first part of the game giving ground to a more relaxed just-getting-by (though it does feel like you've broken the game). You can even feed a cat.
The knowledge is always there, that you're not quite part of them; but the heart of the game is firmly in a kind of multicultural amalgam of poor people trying to live beneath the larger political and economic forces that occasionally break through, and usually not in a helpful capacity. The free DLC trilogy deals fully with such bigger forces, but the predominant themes still concern the lives of those that are othered and the people who can accept them.
For a game where the main visual is an nondescript space station and the only colours the occasional (very cool) character portraits and the gameplay basically scrolling up and down the station, clicking on points of interest and choosing dialogue options, it's a wonder how riveting and exciting this game can be, and how atmospheric, the writing pitch-perfectly evoking the feeling of living on a capitalist space station (with all the nostalgic strength of a childhood spent in sci-fi novels), and how touching, with moments that will remain (it's the kid and the dad for me - for, amongst others, deeply personal reasons …), right up to the gorgeous ending of the last free DLC.
Almost like a good book - only there you won't feel you're one bad choice away from dying of an illness that you don't have the money to cure.
Oh damn, it was "living under later-than-late stage capitalism" sim after all.
Is what this game is so good at invoking
Even when you know it will not happen
Cause the game is much kinder than it seems.
The writing is throughout envisioning a cold world encompassed in darkness with the few specks of light giving you hope while at every periphery the potential for absolute collapse lies in wait.
But the game believes in you, and in humanity, and from the space-punk drenched corridors it carves you a life.
Citizen Sleeper is a cavalcade of space opera and cyberpunk weaved together, with a healthy injection of humanism (and some nice diversity). There are many ways this story can end, and you can see them all with a bit of reloading. As the game goes on, it becomes easier to survive as you learn the place, create connections, gather resources, and overall carve out your own little place in this world floating through space where you can feel relatively safe, the panicked survival of the first part of the game giving ground to a more relaxed just-getting-by (though it does feel like you've broken the game). You can even feed a cat.
The knowledge is always there, that you're not quite part of them; but the heart of the game is firmly in a kind of multicultural amalgam of poor people trying to live beneath the larger political and economic forces that occasionally break through, and usually not in a helpful capacity. The free DLC trilogy deals fully with such bigger forces, but the predominant themes still concern the lives of those that are othered and the people who can accept them.
For a game where the main visual is an nondescript space station and the only colours the occasional (very cool) character portraits and the gameplay basically scrolling up and down the station, clicking on points of interest and choosing dialogue options, it's a wonder how riveting and exciting this game can be, and how atmospheric, the writing pitch-perfectly evoking the feeling of living on a capitalist space station (with all the nostalgic strength of a childhood spent in sci-fi novels), and how touching, with moments that will remain (it's the kid and the dad for me - for, amongst others, deeply personal reasons …), right up to the gorgeous ending of the last free DLC.
Almost like a good book - only there you won't feel you're one bad choice away from dying of an illness that you don't have the money to cure.
Oh damn, it was "living under later-than-late stage capitalism" sim after all.
2021
The grade is all for the story, which I found mildly intriguing. The game is also often quite gorgeous-looking in a dark, horrorish way. But when it comes to gameplay, it's rubbish, with most of the game having almost nothing for you to do but push forward, and yet the game isn't even brave enough to be a walking sim, instead breaking up the cutscenes and endless shuffling (can't even call it running, especially when they disable the "sprint" button yet again) with meaningless "push a button to continue the story" type of interactions.
The mechanically most involving moments of the game are when you're let loose in a small area and forced to solve some rather easy puzzles in order to proceed, with the one in the Red House being my favourite. It's the only time I felt any intellectual stimulation during the game, even if that too wasn't all that much.
But what's worse is when the game decides to amp up the actions and throw you into some escape sequences with insta-deaths and bad checkpointing. Considering how mediocre I found this game, those were the moments where I asked myself most seriously "why don't I just watch the cutscenes on YouTube?"
So it all falls on the writing, storytelling and acting, to prop up this nothing of a game. To a degree, it succeeds - at least enough that I saw the game through (though not enough to make me want to avoid gameplay videos on YouTube whenever I got stuck). The first half an hour where you're saying goodbye to your step-father was appropriately dramatic and even touching, enough to get me excited what delicious darkness and writing would be waiting for me.
And I did love the dark atmosphere of the game and its old broken-down Soviet hotel setting (even though it's funny hearing everybody talk and write in English in Poland), and I was for the most part legitimately interested in the story, and there were moments and themes where it shocked me and had some nice surprises (though some of the choices are questionable, to say the least, especially in a game that does nothing with them). Part of me even enjoyed playing through this world myself, instead of just watching it on YouTube.
It's just that there were too many moments where I was wondering why I'm even playing it or where I got angry at another aggravating one-hit-death or a meaningless blockade (if I have to cut through another goddamn skin …)
And then, as if the lacklustre mechanics weren't enough, once you arrive at the very ending, the game doesn't have the guts to even end properly, instead going for an ambiguous ending that means absolutely nothing in a game so concentrated on plot and narrative - and I say that as a person who routinely defends ambiguous endings by saying that the story so far has given us the tools to understand what is important to understand about it, that to go on would have actually been meaningless because we already got enough of the story to finish what matters in our heads.
Not here though. But I guess a shocking sound effect on a fade to black makes the game seem more meaningful. Goodness knows this bloody thing needs every support it can get.
Oh, and I wasn't scared even once. Just like in a proper horror game.
The mechanically most involving moments of the game are when you're let loose in a small area and forced to solve some rather easy puzzles in order to proceed, with the one in the Red House being my favourite. It's the only time I felt any intellectual stimulation during the game, even if that too wasn't all that much.
But what's worse is when the game decides to amp up the actions and throw you into some escape sequences with insta-deaths and bad checkpointing. Considering how mediocre I found this game, those were the moments where I asked myself most seriously "why don't I just watch the cutscenes on YouTube?"
So it all falls on the writing, storytelling and acting, to prop up this nothing of a game. To a degree, it succeeds - at least enough that I saw the game through (though not enough to make me want to avoid gameplay videos on YouTube whenever I got stuck). The first half an hour where you're saying goodbye to your step-father was appropriately dramatic and even touching, enough to get me excited what delicious darkness and writing would be waiting for me.
And I did love the dark atmosphere of the game and its old broken-down Soviet hotel setting (even though it's funny hearing everybody talk and write in English in Poland), and I was for the most part legitimately interested in the story, and there were moments and themes where it shocked me and had some nice surprises (though some of the choices are questionable, to say the least, especially in a game that does nothing with them). Part of me even enjoyed playing through this world myself, instead of just watching it on YouTube.
It's just that there were too many moments where I was wondering why I'm even playing it or where I got angry at another aggravating one-hit-death or a meaningless blockade (if I have to cut through another goddamn skin …)
And then, as if the lacklustre mechanics weren't enough, once you arrive at the very ending, the game doesn't have the guts to even end properly, instead going for an ambiguous ending that means absolutely nothing in a game so concentrated on plot and narrative - and I say that as a person who routinely defends ambiguous endings by saying that the story so far has given us the tools to understand what is important to understand about it, that to go on would have actually been meaningless because we already got enough of the story to finish what matters in our heads.
Not here though. But I guess a shocking sound effect on a fade to black makes the game seem more meaningful. Goodness knows this bloody thing needs every support it can get.
Oh, and I wasn't scared even once. Just like in a proper horror game.