Recent reviews by Vulture

I only recommend with Frackin Universe.

This remake was made with love and it's easy to feel that love.

There could be some performance issues on certain rigs as the game uses a LOT of layering. Like a lot a lot in order to get things like the visual fog to work well.

The game has essentially been rebuilt from the ground up and modernized in the GOOD way. It still feels like a survival horror game with exploration focus at the end of the day. The music and sound direction is spot-on and the visual work feels true to the source. My only concern is that, with most other story-driven games, replay potential might be a little lower unless you're specifically hunting for details. The gameplay has been adjusted for modern machine capabilities as well. Enemies "think" and have their own behaviors, there are different 'tells' on how to know if there is something lurking nearby. There are even various combat quirks to learn based on enemy behavior. My only concern is that due to the nature of the beast, combat has become more centric to the overall experience. I'm not a purist, but I am one of those older fans who sees Silent Hill as more of a "Horror Exploration" game rather than what Resident Evil was.

I have been a fan since I was a teenager in High School. Silent Hill 2 is what got me into the series itself. Hell, the game even has throw-backs to the original game in it's own way. This series means a lot to me. I used to spend hours just listening to the Unreleased Sound Track and browsing the symbolism behind puzzles and enemy designs as a kid. This ground-up remake won't let you down. It may let you down if you're one of the absolute Die-hard purists, but this isn't 1 or 3 so those guys generally aren't playing this.

Personally, I hope this revives Silent Hill as a Konami IP. I hope this helps Konami restore their roots and produce more of their old classics like Castlevania. I also hope that, out of all things, Silent Hill 4 gets this kind of love. If they remade 4 with this engine, with this team, and with the same love... we could see some real magic imho.

9/10
Please play it if you're a fan, it's worth the support.

It's like the first game but with more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because ♥♥♥♥ me that's why.

You can find certain things easier, but get less saves.
You can get party members easier, but some of the encounters heavily favor party members.
Combat (especially with certain characters) is more approachable, but enemies will frequently use status ailments which generally require items to cure.

I want to recommend this game but there's a lot of odd design choices that would make this excessively bizarre for metroidvania fans and souls fans alike. Small quality of life issues which feel like they should be changed or addressed as it severely hurts the gameplay.

The primary problem is that boss HP is exceptionally spongy. I'm talkin your weapon is a butterknife and you need to cut through a concrete wall sort of spongy. Even with a weapon upgraded as far as you can get it, enemy defenses and HP pools tend to increase at an exponential rate. Because you upgrade your weapons in the souls-like fashion (getting an applicable + level and stats) it can make some progression feel unnecessarily grindy. Expect to spend at least a good 5~10 minutes hacking away unless you've powerleveled yourself to some obscure peak with some sort of glitch because

Farming in this game is bullocks. You need tens of thousands of ingame currency to upgrade a single weapon and that takes a long, long time to even get. Need to respec because your gameplay philosophy isn't the same? Well expect to spend half an hour making that weapon endgame. At least respec is just paid for after acquiring a certain item.

You can't aim up, you can't crouch attack. Yet there are a plethora of enemies in the air, and enemies who's attacks you can duck under. There also isn't a slide...I'm sorry Castlevania fans...

You have at least a second of downtime for some reason before you can dodge again. I don't know why it's so long but it feels like it's on a timer that's far, far longer than it has to be.

Mobility of your character is extremely subpar for how large the map is. Wanna explore? Hope you have your evening cleared out. Unless you're using a guide it's gonna take you that long to backtrack as you watch your guy saunter-march at the speed of smell.

If you play Instinct, enjoy spending excess time leveling up firearms and buying bullets to always run out of ammo mid-fight with no way of getting more then proceed to flounder about spamming the attack button doing 1/3rd the average damage of a Dex or Str build. Even Mind build does better. Can't really main that stat because the game disagrees with it.

The game is awesome if you can ignore these or mitigate them somehow. However, I feel like the devs need to have a real sit down and decide what they actually want to do.

People who point down getting absolutely humbled means this DLC gets an automatic recommendation.


Also, it's legitimately not that bad. I did 95% of the DLC as nothing more than an assassin/rogue style character and only switched my build for the final boss because
H O L Y S H I T
literally

Revising review to recommend due to recent balance changes.

This game is currently being bogged down by the "elite" crowd of souls veterans who like to measure their anatomy by how good they can play games. I, myself, have at least a decade of souls games experience. And got beat quite hard until a few days of play.

This game is fun, for those who really (REALLY) want an challenge that whoops'em. The stereotypical "souls masochists" (such as myself) will slam our noses to the grindstone. But if you are not ready for that kind of pummeling please see the recommendation status. This game is NOT friendly to anyone who has any kind of disability or any sort of accessibility issue or even those who generally play on any form of "easy mode" in games. This game has none of those and will show you neither.

Pleasantly surprised with this game.

Good:
Factions are unique with their own playstyle based strengths and weaknesses.
-Polania: Speed and Range, utilitarian design of mechs (yet physically weaker with less overall damage)
-Rusviet: Forwardness and CQB, strong frontal power (yet weak at range with defensive shortfalls)
-Saxony: Strength and Range, armor and firepower (at the cost of expense and mobility)
-Usonia: Shock and Awe, redeployment doctrines (a bottle rocket lacking staying power as they have no units with heavy armor)
Campaign is just difficult enough to scratch the RTS itch
World Map mode to give some fun improvised campaign
Custom mini-campaign missions, lots of PvE support
Micro tactics are strong in this game, less of a spammy APM game and more of a thinking game (at least in PvE)
Asymmetric balance between mechs and infantry means you can approach combat with a few different styles and approaches
Customization options appear to be based around game achievements

The Bad
There are "universal" units which feel like they kind of deplete the purpose of the other units having such unique flavorful utilization
-The basic infantry even have differentiation between factions, yet the heavy gunners/flamers/machinegunners/medics/engineers are all essentially reskins which feels unfortunately lazy. Especially with the heavy gunners which could have had faction flair.
-Usonian update adds air vehicles which are also universal and are incredibly uninspired and don't feel like they fit into army comps; another ball dropped to add faction flair
Difficulty is 'wave' based, as in the AI in pve just sends suicide wave after suicide wave
Defensive mine structures cost supply to place and supply is a premium. When each mine is 1 supply and basic infantry are 3 supply, you have to wonder if 3 mines is equal to one squad of heavy gunners or if four mines is equal to an anti-mech vehicle
Gun emplacements feel like they lose purpose too fast
A lot of the game is based around finding and controlling chokes because you simply do not have enough supply to play like a full RTS like SupCom would; if supply was higher a focus on chokes wouldn't even be necessary as you could just have entire fields of battle (I assume this is a programmed device for hardware limitations due to Unity engine being a @#$%er)

The Ugly
Unity Engine and all it's problems
Don't touch PvP unless you're an RTS sweatlord
This game is basically an attempt at Essence Engine made with Unity Engine; does some good but is still missing a few things that made Company of Heroes the best in terms of optimization, AI and what have you
There are a few bugs; I've killed something so bad in a choke that there were units of infantry that seemed to refuse to die yet were still able to attack. Small things like this.

I'd say it's a solid 7/10 overall. Not the king of RTS games, not setting new standards, but a flavorful take on a proper RTS game of the past with good graphic style and fun gameplay overall.

Spent six hours making my emblem and still have room to add onto it.
I'll complete a couple missions then spend a few hours testing newly unlocked parts.

10/10 game, please send help

Amazing game through and through with a few problems.
More of a C+/B- game in all honestly but not worth a "no recommendation."
If you are new, DO NOT SELECT VETERAN. Learn from my mistakes. If you choose veteran on a start things will feel good up until mid-late/lategame where the 'bullet sponge' effect is sorely felt. Yes, the focus is on hitting small weakpoints, I don't need to see that the weakpoint is ALSO a sponge.
You'll also find more players on the easier difficulty for coop.

There's plenty of reasons to explore, a lot to explore. Multiple playthroughs, and multiple characters, are incentivized giving a plethora of reasons to max character slots or even do hardcore characters.

The Good:
Gameplay loop is solid
Focus on multiple runs means every new character feels fresh
Lots of ways to customize your build
CoOp is easy to get started

The Bad:
Consumables are far too expensive
Currency is kind of a bother to collect and feels oddly limited
Upgrading a weapon is a little too much of a journey
Precision-based gameplay that may not allow players with certain disabilities the ability to play

The Ugly:
There are a few boss designs that are utterly atrocious in terms of gameplay (forcing reliance on I-Frames, too many AoE's, too many attacks designed to roll-catch, HP-sponge, attacks designed to be a "dodge or get picked up," etc etc)
Sadly the final boss is guilty of every horrible boss design of this game making it more of a chore than a fun fight
This game is usually seen as a "CoOp game" but CoOp actually makes things tremendously harder unless you're with friends of equal footing: Bosses scale exponentially almost and there is virtually no reason to CoOp normally as there is no increased drop chance, no increased loot chance, and people can steal your ammo drops. It feels unintuitive.
THERE IS NO INGAME COMMUNICATION FOR COOP with a game that ABSOLUTELY DEMANDS precision making things extremely difficult with randoms and disincentivizing "Jolly Cooperation"
Some people are reporting severe optimization issues and framerate jitter

The gameplay is really there though, it is fun to play.

I want to upvote this twice but can't.

Everything is solid. Everything.

The sound direction and vocal chatter of the enemies is awesome, guttural, visceral, and downright sadistic.
The gunplay is intense, fluid, and responsive. Each gun has it's own flavor and there never feels like there's a "best gun" that outshines everything.
It is just a gameplay loop, but you want to keep playing. Each mission is just as long as it needs to be and the map design is top notch.
Details of the map explode (literally) during the gunplay, such as parts of the map breaking, papers flying, fragile items shattering.
Gameplay is like John Woo meets Fear meets John Wick with a dash of Crisis.

A desperately needed FPS in an era of tactical shooters.