sitting at the top of a hill littered with 2010s western independent charmers with hamfisted attempts at satire, post-modernism, genre critique, societal reflection and subversive storytelling is this crown jewel; the crème de la crème example of the self-serving haughty pretentiousness of an entire generation of would-be internet geniuses scrolling through tv tropes page by page in hopes to form contrarian opinions on popular media based on the talking points and consensuses of other people. if you're of a certain age demographic, you know this person - the one who parrots the opinions of your nostalgic critics and mr. enters as if the information they siphoned by lazing about youtube in search of a personality might be enough to make someone go, 'geez, this guy KNOWS his stuff' without having to go through the effort of formulating their own thoughts, or even worse, having to experience the media they're responding to the response of firsthand.

doki doki literature club stands as an indulgence of saturated moe-era anime tropes under the guise of a critique of the wikipedia plot summaries of KEY, ryukishi07 and type-moon games without having the slightest bit of humility or self-awareness in its execution. it, its creator, and its audience herald itself as some massive deconstruction of the visual novel form, when in actuality it's about in line with the actuality of what it's criticizing as yiik is with jrpgs. there is no metatextual subversion to be had. doki doki is a children's birthday magician - a couple of flashy tricks capable of fooling someone who doesn't know how ren'py works, but beyond its cheap parlor tricks which might give the astute horror mastery of, say, happy tree friends a run for its money, the title lacks substance, it lacks any form of personality, and it lacks the competence to warrant these mistakes in the face of a greater picture or experience.

i won't even dip into the implications the creator has made about how this game is apparently a very real and serious approach to topics such as self-harm and abuse - as a survivor of both i find these claims bordering on insanity - but i will offer the benefit of a doubt and suggest that maybe this is a product of genuine, ineffable incompetence and misjudgment... rather than one of deep-rooted pretention and narcissism. you could get the exact same experience intersplicing five nights at freddy's jumpscare reaction videos, one of the upteenth saw sequels, and nyan neko sugar girls as one would have playing doki doki literature club, but at the least, the former is shocking, entertaining and funny when it intends to be. do your wallet a favor and pass on this one - and yes, i know it's free.

Probably one of the best games to come out in the past decade and it's a total remake of an already fantastic game, go figure. I played this years ago when it was a free-to-play mod and I remember being blown away by it then, and I still am now.

The number one thing I love about the Half-Life series as a whole is that, despite being set in a fictional, futuristic world, the events that take place feel completely within the realm of possibility. The original Half-Life had superb world building and atmosphere already, but Black Mesa massively improves on it. It just feels so real and grounded in reality, as if it's based on real events, as if out there in the desert there really is a huge secret underground facility with scientists researching god knows what, who are just one mistake away from screwing over the rest of us. This remake, or "reimagining", does an amazing job at making Black Mesa feel like a real place that has real people working there, and it manages to do this without effecting the gameplay at all or making the level design feel too "video gamey", which is something that a lot of games still struggle with today. To be fair though, this is mostly because Half-Life already had great level design to begin with and for the most part, Black Mesa doesn't deviate much from that blueprint and when it does it's for the better. For example, Blast Pit is almost identical while On a Rail has been cut down and flows a lot better now.

I feel like a kid in a candy store playing this because there's just so much attention to detail and environmental storytelling and I love it, like how they added several EAS broadcasts and more HECU radio chatter. Speaking of HECU, the marines have been humanized along with all the other NPCs. While they did sound badass and their dialogue was technically impressive for the time in the original, it felt more like you were fighting robots than actual humans. That's no longer the case and I think it's for the better, because it helps drive home the fact that you're forced to kill other humans during an alien invasion, the ones trying to keep it under control at that, and in my case, once I got to Surface Tension I started to actually feel bad for them. The same guy who did the voice lines for Insurgency did the marine voices in this and he did a great job as usual. Scientists and guards react to your presence in a much more natural way now and even guards who didn't say anything new in the original game are given new, interesting dialogue. They even added Vance and Kleiner to better connect the story to Half-Life 2. All these things really help you connect with the place and feel bad about the events going on.

The music in Black Mesa is really good, even if it's personally not your thing I think it's hard to call it "bad". The valid complaint I can understand about the soundtrack however is whether or not it actually fits the game. Personally I like it a lot and I think it fits pretty well with the exception of two songs; the one that plays when you first get the HEV suit, and the one that plays during the lobby fight in Questionable Ethics. It's obvious they were going for a more grim and somber feeling with the soundtrack but it also picks up the pace during the more action packed sequences, and those end up being some of the best tracks. Xen's soundtrack is on a whole different level though and sounds completely different from the songs in the rest of the game, which may have been intended. It has this sort of Hans Zimmer feeling to it and is more ethereal sounding to better fit an alien world. I feel like there's a noticeable quality difference between the new songs added with Xen and the old songs, but considering there's like 10 years worth of time between them this shouldn't be a surprise.

There's some things I've seen people complain about, the biggest one being about Interloper and how long it is. Some people think Xen is too long in general and they may be right, I feel like the devs might have tried a little too hard to make Xen more interesting than it was originally, but this doesn't really bother me since it's still fun. Another thing, the Gonarch fight has been drastically altered from the original which may be a pro or a con depending on the person. I find it to be a bit more interesting than just having a straight "shoot it until it dies" fight and it's very reminiscent of the antlion guard fight in Episode 2, perhaps even better. I have also seen people complain about the HECU marines and how they're annoying to fight now which I don't really understand? Besides the slight aim punch they added I didn't have any problems fighting them and I'm pretty sure the marines use the same if not a modified version of the Combine soldier ai, you can tell in their movement and tactics.

I don't like throwing the word "masterpiece" around so I'll just say this: I'm having a really, really hard time finding things I would critique or complain about. Any critique I could possibly come up with just wouldn't be big enough for me to give it a lower score, so it gets a perfect score from me. If you haven't played this, I thoroughly recommend it, it's such a great time and you can really tell there's a lot of passion put into it. Of course, I suggest playing the original Half-Life first if you haven't so you can really appreciate the changes and improvements they made.

I cannot explain the feelings I felt playing Signalis. this game is a simply a masterpiece to me. The moment my eyes witnessed the trailer for this game I instantly knew this game was going to become something special to me and something special it became. Everything from the graphics, character designs, story , gameplay and world surrounding this game there is not a single thing I dislike about this game past a few nitpicks.

This plays like a true old school survival horror game so if you are into the genre this is a MUST play if you are into stuff like RE1R. The puzzles were honestly very easy and I didn't find myself stuck on any past a few but you will be fine as long as you explore everything and read all the files you find there will be no issues with the puzzles this game has.

Now I won't get into the story for spoilers sakes and just for the simple fact this game is very enriched and deep in its lore and I simply have not really gathered a grasp on its plot and lore but I have a base idea but am continuing to do more research on what it all meant it really has been fun reading other peoples theories and guesses. But to give a very quick run down you play as Elster who wakes up from a long sleep and is now in search of her partner and her dreams where you will explore a government facility set in a dystopian future to find the answers you seek and answers you will find (well you will probably be very confused like me)

This game is oozing with love and care and you can tell how much went into making this masterpiece. This game has risen to my top 3 indie games of all time if not my fav indie game of all time now.

I will play anything Rose-engine has to offer and I cannot wait for their next title you have earned yourself a new huge fan !!


I will end the review with this.

THIS GAME IS A MASTERPIECE

funny to see so many people who aren't even the main demographic for this game in the comment sections giving it a 0.5 (although the game will try to appeal to you vanilia folks at some points? it's not a good attempt in most places)

also funny to see delusional people give it a five out of five star rating when there's clearly areas of the game that are just dogwater (rika and natsuki's route, certain plot twists, and the sex scenes will just last too fucking long sometimes)

all i'm saying is, it's fine for what it is. at the most it's a decent, middle of the road, h-game visual novel with some entertaining scenes and dialogue, and (eventually) good development of characters if it's outside of rika and natsuki's routes. plus, you gotta appreciate the damn good voice acting while you're at it, they really give it their all for this vn.

that's all i have to say on this vn, reader! you should read this too! atleast it's not the horrid hentai adaptation which focuses more on the sex and ryona and totally doesn't cut out parts of the story in exchange to ham fistrape it all into twenty minutes, right? RIGHT?

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A phenomenal follow up to a very unique first game. I wasn't sure what to expect when I headed into the sequel but I was greeted with an IMMENSE leap in quality from literally every single aspect of the game. This is simply a fantastic game with amazing dialogue, Art, OST and everything else. I will put a trigger warning as once again this game deals with a lot of depression subjects so be aware if you don't think you will be able to handle such subjects. Past that this is simply a must play for all VN fans.

This is what you call a sequel.