Recent reviews by THE EX-PRESIDENT

For those who come after.

RE7 is a great example of a survival horror done right. With appealing grafic and great atmosphere it is a great comeback to the franchises roots of survival horror genre.

The game takes place at an old family estate in Louisiana which is in swamp area. The game shows the estate as abandoned, rundown that is full of bugs. This estetic of the old estate will be present through the whole game while bugs flooded areas will still exist there that replace them in some areas (equally as disgusting ;) ) to keep the game immersion of a complete rundown. The areas are designed in a way that there are 3 areas connected with a hub (in this case yard). In order to get to another area you need to get a key item to open doors or you need to solve various puzzles in order to progress from one area to another. There is a bit of backtracking (most notable being getting 2 keycards) but its mostly fine since it adds a twist to it and is not overused. My only complaint about the map design is a boat section because of how confusing it is at first and the amount of backtracking in it is a bit overdone. Overall the atomsphere does good job at keeping you immersed, while I would not say that the game is scary, it caught me off guard a few times what I do like.

Gamplay and combat are heavily focused on avoiding enemy attacks and conserving ammo (especially on Madhouse difficulty) in addition to searching areas for all resources you can find because resources are limited. Aiming for the crit spots is a key. You can also melle your enemies with a pocket knife (but i did not find it to be necessary at any point during any of my playtroughs because resources are not that limited). In addition to resources there are notes, upgrades, 18 antique coints and collectables hidden trough game. Antique coints serve as currency to buy upgrades in hub area and magnum (Upgrades to more max hp and faster reloading and weapon handling). Puzzles are interesting and can be tricky at first but overall they are rather simple, which is also a shame, and one of my complaints about the game, because I would like some bigger variety of puzzles outside of Projector shadow ones. Only notable puzzle is Lucas escape room. The majority of the game you fight bosses in which each fight is unique (most notable one being Margaret) with several "normal" enemies that are called The Molded. Molded are black creatures created out of E-type virus mold. There are several types of Molded to keep gameplay and combat diverse, most common and the easiest to avoid and kill being Normal molded. They have 2 attacks and both can be dodged or blocked (if you block you still do take damage which is reduced) with relatives ease. The 4 legged ones should just be killed asap (1 pistol headshot and they are dead) and for fat ones you use all that you have to kill them before you get cornered by them (grenade laucher, shotgun combo do the trick). While Molded are not bad addition as an obstacles you ecnounter in order to progress through the game, the boat section of the game where you fight only them is pretty meh overall. That is because you lose all your saved resources saved through the game by this point and cannont acces them until a later point in the game. Also becasue you fight a lot of enemies in sections that you have already been through, in addition this sections hallways are narrow so it forces you to fight enemies which can become a slog and not even Madhouses fixes this area repetitive nature. Salt mine doesnt have this issues as bad as boat considering that in salt mines you are constantyl going forward widout backtracking. Also the last boss of the game really does suck when compared to the ones you fought before, actually I legit think the whole fight is scripted so even if you dont shoot a single bullet until you get Albert with anti bioweapon rounds that you wont die.

Managing your invetory plays a key part in this game considering that at beginign its very limited and only way to upgrade it is to progress through game. Thankfully, there is a stash in safe areas which lets you depoist items that you dont need in it. You can also always return to area where you forgot to pick up something or had to leave it because your invenotry is full. Crafting system is simple and fine, and also helps you manage your resources better. There are 2 types of pistol (3 if you beated game once) which has 2 types of bullets (1 is stronger then other), 2 shotguns, home made flamehtrower, grenade launcher with 2 greande types, SMG and the Magnum (if you collect enough antique coints to buy it). While different Shotguns and pistols have some diffrences in stats (for example, startign pistol has bigger mag then Colt, but does less dmg, while Albert has higest dmg per shot it only has 3 bullets in mag and slow rate of fire which makes it less appealing for bosses). Idea of each weapon having some advantage over other there is very clear destinction of which weapon is supperior to its counterpart (Double barreled shotgun is in every situation better then pump-action one, flamethrower is uselles on Molds because it takes too much ammo to kill them etc.). Now to talk a bit about game performance and bugs, overall in my 3 main game playthroughts I did not run in any performance issues (was on max settings outside of shadow quality) outside of 1 bug that i manage to find fix on forums that your FPS gets capped and 13 for some reason. During the game itself only bug I encountered is double damage bug which sometimes occurs if you play the game on above 30 FPS (basically you get attacked once but it counts as you were attacked twice). Overall bugs did not ruin my overall experience of the game since they were easily fixable but they were kinda annoying. To wrap up this section Ill talk about replayability and how game encourages it. Basically once you beat the game on any difficulty for the first time you unlock several items to help you on your next playtrough. You also unlock specific item for your next playtrough if you find all hidden collectables and then there is also one if you finish game under 4h. All those items are permanent unlocks that you can get for finishing game and use them on any playthrough (only thing you must be able to do is survie until 1st stash in game). They will also help you greatly in your Madhouse playthrought (if you finish game on Madhouse you unlock infinite ammo).

In this section I will specifically focus on Madhouse difficulty changes compared to normal game (which are not simply just you take more dmg and enemies and bosses have more hp). Firstly, most obovious change is that you need cassette tapes to save the games which are limited (also you get only few auto saves). Secondly, you have 33 Antique coints and none of them shares a place with 18 from normal mode. Also you can now buy 6 items with coints instead of 3. You also can not buy all items. Furthermore, in order to progress the game at all from 1st area (Bakers house) you need to find at least 3 coints. Furthermore, enemie placements are different (so you cant just speed through the game). Lastly, most weapons, repair kits and objective items are hidden at different places so you cant just go take them at the place from previous playthrough. For example I managed to save a huge stockpile of ammo for Margaret and thinking I was well off with my resources only to end up killing her with 20 normal pistol bullets left. Jack is also much faster now (if he spots you, unless you hide, he will catch you because you can not outrun him. Overall, Madhouse was very enjoyable experience for me and the game felt fresh despite it being my 3rd playthrough.


To wrap things up I absolutely recomment this game to anyone who likes horror games and peopel who enjoy a good challenge.

Tomb raider (2013) is and adventure game that is mostly about exploring and following story. It was also my first game of this type and I found it rather enjoyable from my usual list of games taht are mostly co-op experiences.

While I will not go into details I will give you general summarised verzion of it widout major spoilers. Lara and her friends end up on a abandoned island in middle of nowhere. As they are stuck on it they realised that the island is not abandoned and there is bunch of crazy cultists taht are tryign to kill you and your friends becasue reasons (they are later expalined in game) so Lara has to rescue them and fight off the cultists in order to survive.

That is really the best, spoiler free summary I can give and I will tell that story is... certainlly not the best since there are quiet of few instances that will make you go what. Luckly, the missions, combat sections, world exploration etc. make up for the decent (not subpar but just not great) story.

The gameplay consist of variety of combat, stelth, quick time events, puzzles and exploration of the island in search for resources taht you use for crafting. What this game does right is that it combines well those aspects to not make them a chore and make them interesting trough whole playtrough. Gameplay mostly consist of exploring the Island for resources and collectables. You will also hunt animals to get materials for upgrades and xp. Probably my favourite parts of game was exploring the hiden tombs to find hidden treasure which reward you with weapon upgrades that you can now craft and xp. Combat and stelth sections were also interestign and majority was well designed and you knew where you needed to go, altought I will admiit some of those sections are very linear. The combat and exploring has dedicated skills which you can unlock by leveling and spending them at camps which make gameplay more diverse, in additiion you will unlcok new tools while you progress trought the game. My biggest issue with gameplay would be how upgrades for weapons all cost is too high (I was pretty much looting everything and I did not manage to get enough salvage for all upgrades), how for upgrades you only need salvages and no any other material. Anothere annoying thing is there are are essencially no any enemies left once you beat the game to fight in free roam. In adddition the enemy AI is kinda predictable and not the best. And sadly, the endgame or reason to replay a game does not really exist (except for missable achievement).

Good thing about this game is that it tries to make each area stand out as different from the previous ones you encountered, tho I will admit it does not always succeed. The visuals are nice (for 2013) and game runs smooth (at least it was for me unlike Rise of Tomb Raider) so game can feel immersive most of the times. And now lets talk about how this game likes to make Lara survive over the top situations that will make you go "How the ♥♥♥♥ is she alive after this?" and trust me when I say taht there is A LOT of these quick time events and cutscenes where Lara is getting hurt. But it sure is entertaing someitems to see that or Lara die after you fail in unique way.

If there is soemthign bad I can say bout this game taht is trully awful it sure is its Multipalyer gamemodes (that are dead). I will not even bother to say why multipalyer is bad in details but I will give one example. In multipallyer you can choose between 2 team: Cultists and Survivors. Cultists and Survivors do not have access to same weapons. Cultists have 1 pistol that 1 taps you on headshot and 2 taps you on body. Survivors dont have any weapon that has weapon taht can do taht that fast on any range.

I really did enjoy overall my time with this game despite me not usually playing games of this type. As I said before, the best part of the game for me was exploring and doing Tombs becasue they felt unique and different from rest of the game. I very much recommend people to try this game and if they like it to then try the next instalment in the franchise.

The Bozak Horde DLC adds a challenge type of arena (similar to prison heist and hellraid). While all of them are rather different from eachoter the concept is the same: complete the arena as fast as possible for better reward. However I would dare to say that Bozak Horde is by far the best desinged one and the most interesting one to play for the reasons I will describe in rest of the review.
The Bozak Horde is probably the most challengy of all of this arena type challegnes in dying ligh because you are forced to rely on weapons that you are given by the arena (you can not bring your gold tier full upgraded 3X King sloted weapon) and skill points you spended (and Bozak bow if you completed Bozak in specific time). In adittion, you have a timer to complete each objective and if you dont complete it in timer you die. The challegnes are mixture of combat and parkour and there is 20 of them, each one of them being different from previous ones. Nothing to write about those chalenges sicne they are pretty straightforward except that bombs that you need to defuse are always at the same spots so learning their locations will help by a lot and parkour chekpoints are exactly the same as parkour feavers.

There are total of 3 arenas that you will do challenges in (3 map sections), 1st one is in garage, 2nd one in stadion section and 3rd on at the stadion itself. All of these maps are well designed for the challenges you will do. It also is well designed for co-op

I ENJOYED Bozak horde as a challenge since it asks of you to learn its spawns and rewards you further you progress the challegnes (You are given Bozak dockets which can be exchanged for Gold tier weapons, and you get several of them per run if you fully complete it). Also Bozak Horde DLC has the best Bow in the game which is ONLY weapon you can bring in Bozak horde from your usual inventory. You get it if you complete bozak under specified time. In addition to bow, there are several extra objectives that reward you with specific arrow types for bow (such as explosive arrows).

And that concludes my review of The Bozak Horde. Overall I would absolutely recommend this DLC (if you already dont own it from buying enhanced edition of DL) for anyone who enjoyed the game and is looking for additional challlenge from the game.

Dying Light is an interesting game that mixes the elements of parkour with melee combat and some additional gameplay mechanics.

In dying light your primary weapon for killing zombies is melee since in early game you dont get guns (or more correct, you need to know how or where to get them). Primary melee cobmat is pretty simple, you have light attack (swing), charged attack (heavy attack that needs to charge) and both of them cost you stamina, in addition you have a kick which cost no stamina and is spammable (but does little to no dmg and on higher difficulty it struggles to knock down zombies widout light or heavy attack following with a kick) and you have dodge. Headshot hits do increased dmg (applies for all weapons) and there are 2 handed and 1 handed melee weapons. Most of the game you will fight zombies which have multiple attacks (such as grab attack and if they sneak behind you and punch you they knock you down and do increased damage) and there are multiple types of zombies but will get to that later. Altenative way to kill zombies is to push them on spikes which insta kills every zombie, this is where kick and some skill tree parkour moves are very usefull. The melle weapon animations feal great overall and game gives you good feedback if you hit them. Combat expands with leveling and acquiring skills which unlock special parkour moves, special attacks, reduce incoming dmg taken, increase damage etc. One of attack you can acquier is to throw your melee weapon at zombie, or abilitiy to ram throug zombies etc. You can also acquire skill to camouflage in zombie guts and stealthly kill zombies, take a note that they can still hit you and depending from which type of zombie you camouflage from (for example, Blue Volatile will always figure out your camouflage unless you camouflaged from Blue Volatile corpse).

While DL nails zombie combat and their AI, human enemies are nothing worth of a praise. Fighting them is boring because only way to kill them is with guns, bows or melee, becasue they will block trownable and dodge every type of parkour move. They also tend to block or dodge your melee every now and then so it makes them even more annoying to kill while you cant block their attacks unless you use shield. Human AI can also have guns what sucks because they have aimbot and will shoot you from very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spots. Good news are that you will mostly fight zombies so this sections are not such a big chore.

What also kinda feels off in combat are trownable weapons, they dont do too much damage comapre to guns, bow and crossbow and good trownable is far harder to get. Shield also, outside of pvp, has no use becasue of how it works; you need to parry attack from zombie to knock it down, makes sence on paper. Now in practice try imagining 5 zombies hitting you at same time with tiny delay each. Some peopel might ask but isnt the point of it to block attack? Yes it is, but sicne you can not attack while you are shielding blocking will only get you killed because shield will break or youll get zombies behind your back get you. On top of that not all parkour moves you get trough leveling are that usefull or good (such as ground slam). Traps are cool idea but their usefulness is arguable since they are not shown on map unless you are close to them and not all types of traps are equaly usefull for every situation.

While there will be plenty of zombie fighting, you will mostly run from zombies, especially during night. Running sorts mostly of climbing on high buildings to hide from zombies (sicne only Virals and Volatiles can climb) or to reach objective/area. There are special parkour moves that help you climb easier and later on you will get grappling hook which makes escaping from zombies quickly fairly easy. Nothing special to write about parkour except that its good and has skillgap.

Only thing worth mentioning are Parkour Feavers. Parkour Feaver is a parkour challenge to run trough all objective marked area inside given time. As you level up those become easier (however easier ones are doable as soon as you beat tutorial) but you are not allowed to use grappling hook or challenge is instanly failed. The challenges are very well made and extremely fun and they are most efficient way to level up your parkour skill tree.

There is a variety of different zombies in this game to spice up the gameplay which makes game more intrestign during daytime.

But there is also the most interesting infected in this game, Volatile. Volatiles are special type of infected that appear only during night (because sunlight is burning them due to UV). Just as Virals, they can run and climb, but unlike virals they climb far faster, can insta kill player if he doesnt shake them from him when they jump on him, do far more damage, are faster from player , can spit on player if he is unrechable and they chase you as long as there is detection right next to minimap. Sicne they are sensitive to UV light only way to stun them temporarily is to use UV flasligh (which can interrupt their jump on player attack) or to scare them off with flares. While fighting them is an option you should avoid it sicne they do not stop coming as long as there is detection. They really spice up the game since they are primary concern during night (and everything you do during night gives you doble XP) and the longer you run from them once you succesfully escape you get xp for surviving the chase.

DL has some sort of crafting system where you need specific resource to craft specific item, similar to WoW I guess. You can get resourches from looting houses, chests etc. What is worth mentioning is that you can upgrade weapons which have multiple rarity (grey, white, green, blue, purple, orange and yellow/golden) to add on them specific element such as fire, electricity, bolter poison or ice (DLC only) which have a chacne of having specific effect on succeful hit (such as hiting zombie with modified melee sets him on fire) and there are also weapon mods which boosts weapons durabiliy, impact and handling. There are multiple rarities (similar to weapons). And there are boosters, which do exactly what you expect.

There is lockpick minigame which is good, but essencially there to piss you off becuase who would in right mind lockpick a truck in middle of zombie apocalypse to get some loot? Wait, did you just say loot?

Skill tree has 3 trees: Agility, Survival and Combat which level up separately and level up uniquely (agility by running, climbing and Parkour Feaver, Combat by fighting and combat challenges, and survival by pretty much everything) what was a good game design decision.

I will instantly say that story is nothing to write home about (only parts worth mentioning are The pit and final mission) and if you are looking for a game with a good story then this aint it.

While main story is pretty boring and forgettable, its side content is quiet enjoyable. Combat challenges and side missions are mostly fun, clearing safehouses feals rewarding, quarantine zones are fun to clear, parkour fevers are challengy enough.



To wrap this up I will say that DL is extremly good and fun game (maybe even best zombie FPS ever made). Its story is pretty blank and characters forgettable the gameplay is just soo fun that you dont care. This game was clearly made with co-op intetnion since you get extra xp if you play with more people, but you cna still more then comfortably play this game solo and complete it 100% widout too much trouble. If you are fan of zombies games then you MUST play this game and if not I still reccoment this game sicne its quiet differetn from other zombies type games because of parkour implementation.

I play this game way too much.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is an excellent example how to make a horror game scary and interesting. There are also a bunch of custom maps if you want to see something interesting or weird (or something that you will probably regret).

Pros

-Amazing and beautiful atmosphere for the time this game came out (2010)
-Interesting lore and story (which sort of have a "deeper" meaning)
-good soundtrack
-multiple endings
-memorable monsters (Grunts ;)
-can get pretty difficult on Insane mod and add aditional fun to it (in my opinion that is)

Cons
-Very linear, not as linear as Machine for pigs but still linear
-Minimal gameplay might not be everyones cup of tea
-Have a lot of scripted events that cannot be avoided

*SPOILER WARNING*

Story in short

In Amnesia: The Dark Descent you play as Daniel. A guy that lost all his memories due to drinking from Amnesia potion because he couldn`t live remembering the horrible things he had done to innocent people in order to "save" himself. You start game with a little cutscene where Daniel is walking down the halls of a castle trying to remember some basic things before he passes out due to Amnesia potion effect. When you wake up you start the game (or quit because of NOPE achievement or because you are too scared ;) and start looking for clues where you are and who you are by picking up notes (optional but some notes have až an actual voiceactor that reads them for you and those basically carry the important part of the story). One note tells you that you must run because The Darkness (the red slime you see around the walls) is chasing you and is trying to destroy the castle because Daniel had taken The Orb from the chamber back when he was in Egypt. The note also said that you have to kill Alexander (the owner of the castle) before he escapes. And so that`s what you do (it was hard to convince yourself to do that really). The whole game is basically Daniel trying to find the way to the Inner Sanctum (where Alexander is located) but to do so you must avoid some obstacles or find a way to remove them while slowly getting flashbacks of things that happened. There are technically 4 "Hub" areas which connect few diferent rooms/areas (you can backtrack to all areas in your current Hub for missing collectables or resources (note, tinderbox, lantern oil or Laudanadum). Fast foward towards the end becasue if you want to know the rest of the lore/story play the game by yourself, you will encounter in the final "Hub" you will find a guy named Agrippa that will tell you a little bit about Alexander and himself, you can choose to take him with you (which will grant you the 3rd ending of this game) if you manage to find all the ingredients for a potion formula.

Gameplay
The gameplay of the game is minimal, don`t get me wrong it doesn`t mean bad, it is extremely basic and straight foward more than anything else. At the start of game you find a lantern which is used for lighting up dark areas (oboviously) but also to keep your sanity at place (if you stand in the dark too long you lose sanity). Also keep in mind that you don`t have unlimited lantern oil, when you run out of it you have to fill the lantern up with it or if you really don`t have any oil in your inventory left, then you must find it or use tinderboxes as an alternative. Tinderboxes exist as collectables and are used to light up torches, candles etc. in order to save lantern oil, they are useful sometimes and can be rather helpful but they can also make you more vulnerable because monsters are less likely to see you in dark than in a lighted up area. Something I forgot to mention is that you can pretty much pick up any object in the game (objective ones and resources are glowing so you can separate them) and throw it to distract monsters or to build up a little hiding area with them. It can work with various levels of success. Now the monsters, there are 3 types of them: Water monster that you`ll encoutner in area after Refinery in quick chase sequence. Those monsters are only in water and they are also invisible, the only way to see them is by echoes that they make in the water while chasing you. You can distract them by trowign object in water like body parts (they`ll start eating them giving you time to go in the water unnoticed), or hide from them by jumping on the objects floating in the water. Next are Grunts, the pinnacle of this game. They are the first monster you ever see in the game and are well recognizable by their roaming sound or broken jaw. They react to sound and to what they see so be careful not to make too much noise. And the last but not least we have the Brutes. They can be easily recognised by their scream when they spawn or visualy by having a rather ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up head and instead of 1 arm they have a blade. Brutes are far more dangerous than Grunts because they are faster than them and they do more damage from them (if you`re not on 100% hp they 1 shot you). They will be first encountered in The Morgue and you`ll have to hide quickly becasue a brute 2 shots all doors unlike a grunt that needs 3 shots to destroy them. And the last aspect of gameplay that should be mentioned is Sanity system. Its an intresting system that can make you hallucinate monsters that are not necessarily there (what you don`t know unless you let them attack you, if they are hallucination your sanity will drop even further or if they are real you`ll die) but I would argue that it`s not too well executed because of 2 reasons: the 1st one is that you can easily lose sanity )especially in hard mod) because almost everything drains it (looking at a monster, staying in the dark too long, scripted unavoidable events, staring at some objects for too long, picking up some notes, opening some closets etc.) and the only way to regain sanity is by reaching certain scripted events that increase your sanity (and trust me there is not a lot of them) and the 2nd one is that there are health stats and potions (Laudanadum) that are almost completely useless since you lose sanity much easier than health and you are more likely if you get chased to drop on the floor because your sanity is at 0 and then get killed by a monster or on hard mod you die because your sanity reached 0 which makes health potions almost completely useless (hell at the time I beat the game on hard mod I think I had 18 of them left in my inventory unused).

Hard mode
Hard mod deserves a special mention in this review because I think it adds enough of gameplay mechanic to make the game a little bit better and more challenging. The main diference between Hard and normal mod is that dying actually matters in hard mod because you lose progress (unlike normal mode where you just die despawn a monster permanetly or temporarily and no progress is lost) and makes you learn game mechanics better. The other diference is there is no autosave and each save cost 4 tinderboxes (in normal mode you just autosave each time you enter another area or once you save and quit+ in hard mode there are 151 tinderboxes total through the whole game, on hard mod however I found only 19). Another diference is that there are much fewer resources to be found (as I mentioned before I found only 19 tinderboxes and I pretty much checked all spawns), they are randomly generated to the normal mod spawns (basicaly none Hard mod resources spawns have to be the same) but they are at one of normal mod spawns of resources (they aren`t just randomly droped at map like you enter 1 room and find 15 tinderboxes and 20 oils, no instead if you enter some room with for example 3 tinderbox spawn and 2 oil spawns on a normal mod there can be maximum of 3 tinderboxes and 2 oils in that room on a hard mod too (even tho it will probably be 1 oil and maybe 1 tinderbox or none). And last gameplay mechanic that is changed is that sanity reaching 0=death what makes avoiding line of sight with monsters and some scripted events that reduce your sanity further very important.

This game looks promising at the begining, until you play Act 2 for 30 min that is. This game is a very good example of wasted potential and it is just so obvious that its just painful.

PROS
-decent graphics
-very good soundtrack
-sometimes good atmosphere
-tries to tell a somewhat original story (I`ll write later why I think it didnt work out that well)

CONS
-gets boring and repetitive after 30 mins
-does a very poor job explaining how to navigate (it took me 40 min to realise where the ♥♥♥♥ I was going)
-features no real gameplay (the game is essentially just a walking simulator from point A to point B)
-poorly optimised (I had it running on mid settings stable 60 fps through the majority of this game but some parts of it are just unoptimised)
-game is extremely short (I "speedran" it while doing Survivalist Achievement in 45 min)
-has no replayability other than doing all achs (which can be done in your first playthrough)
-bad checkpoint system


To me it is rather a mystery why this game has Very possitive on Steam. The game lacks a lot of things that make a difference between a good and a mediocre game. The game is essentially a Slendermen clone (comparing it to Slenderman is generous): you must pick up 8 papers in various locations (+ some optional as collectables if you want to) and then come back at the beginning of ACT II. What makes this game different from slenderman is that its not scary at all, the Anomaly (the enemy that chases you) can spawn only in certain areas (like 3 of them out of 9 not counting small 2 side paths because he can`t spawn there) and will kill you usually because it will spawn next to you or because you`ll be trapped in a corner and will not have anywhere to run. The game atmosphere is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ most of the time with a few exeptions.

The game also doesn`t explain anything about navigation. For example, you have a compass with Russian insignia on North South needle which you can`t understand unless you know Russian or check online. Next, when you look at the map you can see in the left upper corner some coordinates which represent locations of papers that you need to pick up. The problem with this mechanic is that you can never tell at which coordinates you are right now unless you find some of collectables, reach one of the camps or find one of the papers that you need to finish the game since finding any of those gets marked on map. Sometimes on some stone you see some coordinates which should help you to find collectables but i already explained why it`s pointless in the previous sentence. You are better off just increasing your volume and listening to paper rustling.

What is nice about the game is that each of "main game" paper locations is sort of unique (it can be located at a bunker, old church area, cave, burned forest, "Bone trone", hunting cottage area etc.) even though some of those areas are just BAD or will get you dying from things you couldn`t know or predict (for example ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BOOBY TRAPS IN HUNTING COTTAGE AREA), I`ll give game credit for doing something right even though the game sountrack helps here a lot.

*STORY SPOILERS AHEAD*

The game story is not good to say the least. It is based on a real accident of (was it 9?) Russian students on a trip through part of Russia during winter time. Even though this game adds a lot of things that are not true into that story (if you want to know whole story better here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RigxxiilI this video does a good job covering it). Don`t get fooled by game achievements that there is a"real ending". To get it you just need to collect all the collectables and then at the end of ACT III you`ll see a black screen with a few extra words (and that is the "real ending" for you). The only good thing about the story I can say is that it might interest you to watch the vid I linked.


Overall a very mediocre game not worth the full price. I did not buy it I got it from humble giveaway and I would not pay for it certainly. For the same price (or less) you can get a much better game in the same or a different genre. This game could have been something very good but instead is just Walk, sprint, wait for stamina to recover, avoid Anomaly a few times, pick up paper, repeat.

You will get raped by RNG Gods. Prepare yourself for huge mental instability and a lot of rage.

Anothere game that had intresting idea of gameplay but devs placed low effort in making this game good and balanced. Overalll game was very average and definetly not worth price it stands for (i got it for free and honestly to i didnt got it for free now i know that i would never buy it (doenst matter how cheap it would be). Game have bad story (thats just my opinion) and towards ending it just get worst and can confuze you. Gameplay mechanic is intended to be tactical witch is quiet obovious and on begining of game it will give you fake impression it is tactical but when you progres trough game youll start realizing more and more how generic game is and how small amounth of tactics it really requiers. AI of bots is very bad and they will suecide a lot. Weapons are very unbalanced and strongest weapons are (not including "rocket launchers") plasma heavy pistol and lazer rifel. Majority of "backpacks" are uselles and makes 0 sence sometiems to exist (cause of their bad buff balance). Your character movement comands are wacky and buggy sometimes. This game would pass much better to it dont have XCOM name in it and would get much less hate but well they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.