Recent reviews by ɠųąཞɖıąŋ ąŋɠɛƖ!

(mini-review).

Serviceable graphics combine with half-way decent shooting play to produce a game that can entertain for short periods of time. The game has very low system requirements, is reasonably stable and has an interesting carrot (your collection) that impels you to constantly hunt new dinosaurs in new environments. The problems? Animation, pathing and AI issues abound. Dinosaurs vacillate between psychic Kreskins and obtuse boxes of rocks, while jerking around awkwardly. Oh and if you want to hunt carnivorous dinosaurs, get ready for a serious grind as you have to play dozens of hours to earn the necessary currency before you get a chance. No thanks.

A tranquil, oddly-relaxing shooter with potential. Ultimately too much of a budget title to transcend its shortcomings. I suppose you could pick it up for under 5 USD.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

5/10.

(mini-review).

A lavish survival horror game, Resident Evil 7 is remarkably well-assembled. The game has stylish, amazingly well-realized graphics (nigh-photorealistic at times), coupled with superb voice acting and great sound design. Despite the phenomenal aesthetics, the game runs well, even on budget systems and is quite stable, rarely crashing or glitching (I'm looking at you PubG/Dead by Daylight!). The plot is convoluted nonsense but the occasional scares, tongue-in-cheek humor and fantastic atmosphere more than make up for it. While the game can be completed in six to eight hours, the demo (Beginning Hour) and free DLC (Not a Hero) should add one to two hours more. The game has limited replayability, despite branching paths in the gameplay and there is no multiplayer.

Still, the game can be had on sale for about 20 USD. The ten to twelve hours of frightful entertainment that RE 7 produces are more than worth the asking price.

Recommended.

8.5/10.

Metro 2033 Last Light is a solid FPS that is inspired in many respects but ultimately fails to hit the mark as a truly great title. Possessed of an inspired setting, great theme and fantastic survival horror components, Metro 2033 Last Light can both impel the player to explore his/her surroundings while truly dread turning each corner. The world is rich and varied, with a fleshed out backstory and gunplay is *excellent*. Weapons are customizeable and a have great punch. The game lacks replayability or multiplayer/coop but the superior singleplayer experience more than makes up for it.

Unfortunately, despite running well and having smooth, lag-free movement/gunplay, the game has its share of issues that detract from its lasting legacy. For starters, the game often feels like a clone of its predecessor and while some towns and explorable areas do much to embellish the Metro universe, Metro 2033 Last Light often can't help but feel like a heavily detailed piece of DLC. Secondly, some fights, especially on higher difficulties, are brutally unfair, consisting of multidirectional meatgrinders or melee slugfests that mandate level replay. Finally, in my case, a known glitch struck me during the shrimp boss level, causing all the filters to vanish. Because I had 0 air and was unable to outpace the boss, I was unable to proceed in the game without replaying an entire level.

That level save point was corrupted and I was required to replay two entire levels (chapters). That soured the experience dramatically.

Ultimately, Metro is an inspired, attractive shooter with plenty of scares to go around. Limited by its similarity to its predecessor and show-stopping bugs however, Metro 2033 Last Light is prevented from being anything more than a good FPS alternative.

Worth a look.

7/10.

I spent thousands of hours on Quake 3 Arena, both on Windows & Mac. I enjoyed the game so much, in fact, that I purchased it on both Windows and Mac - at full price. I loved the game, including the silky-smooth shooting play, as well as the bleak, yet zen aesthetic design. I was an avid modder working on Q3A mapmaking as well. When Quake 4 arrived, I enjoyed that title as well, even if it wasn't a perfect reproduction of its online predecessor. I was very eager to play Quake Champions. The game has been a disappointment.

The game will become free to play, rendering early purchaser investment wholly moot, but due to an unaturally quiet and long early release testing phase, the game has already withered on the vine. As of today, January 4th, 2018, only 452 players were online when I played for the last time. Finding a match was relatively quick but the matchmaking was poor, regularly stacking twice the number of levels on one team, as on the other. The game is smooth, well optimized and it runs well on weaker systems but aesthetically, the game lacks the same feel that Q3A originally had. Additionally, the weapons are hardly balanced for the maps and the classes skew competitiveness as well.

The aesthetic gifts you gain from lootboxes are simply insufficient to maintain any form of motivation to play the game and it shows.

In short, this isn't Q3A in 2018. It feels like a shadow. A feeble copy. Perhaps the time for Q3A is gone entirely. I'm quite upset that I can't refund 30 USD for this game. iD did a great job with Doom but dropped the ball spectacularly with this.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

6/10.

Cradle is the closest thing I've ever played to true art. The concept behind the game is dense and immense, as well as complex and uplifting. The exquisite graphics, novel art design, and truly soulful soundtrack all contribute to a masterclass assembly of art house video gaming. The game is short, has limited replyability, lacking multiplayer or co-op. Branching paths are non-existent. The story is a parable of spiritual metaphysics and the impact of humanistic love hard-wiring our ability to manifest the destiny of our species and reality. The game basically addresses concepts of parapsychological neurology, social empathy and quantum mechanics in a cohesive system that prognosticates a flexible, dynamic and hopeful future for humanity. That about sums up all I can say about the game's plot without giving it away.

The game also challenges principles of empiricism in the determination of true, iconic beauty and requires careful investigation of surroundings to promote awareness. Basically, don't play this game if you lack patience or don't want to be challenged intellectually. Part of this game's charm is ruminating about the various conflicting concepts and attempting to generate a sensical synergy that is both reasonable and enjoyable. The game, aside from an opaque plotline and limited content, also suffers from poor performance (due to their unigine choice), where the game often demonstrates lagged controls. The game crashed to desktop for me. The cube-based minigames can often grate on a player. I also suffered a problem with my achievements not showing up.

However, as a whole, for 5-7 USD, Cradle is a thoughtful, beautiful and peaceful foray into what it means to be human and how our own humanity can impact reality in profound ways.

Worth a look.

7/10.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a conundrum of conflicting dualities.

On the one hand, it's potentially one of the most lavish, sumptuously slick and polished adventure games ever released. From art, to animation to sound and production, Rise of the Tomb Raider absolutely shines and proves that Crystal Dynamics is unequivocably a AAA developer of the first order. Visually, the game has greatly realized models, with fantastically natural animations and movement. Climbing is fun and rewarding at first and the game almost magically predicts what you're trying to do, providing you with ample freedom and forgiveness. Textures are mostly rich and well-realized. Voice acting is *excellent* and the musical score is appropriate and skillfully produced.

The gameplay doesn't falter either. Apart from movement and climbing, Rise of the Tomb Raider showcases excellent melee/shooting combat, with a variety of firearms and a parade of potential upgrades that are sure to satisfy a myriad of gamers. Combat styles can be diverse too, with stealth, trapping and frontal assaults all being viable and effective. A variety of puzzles abound, some of which require some thought and feel rewarding upon completion. In this way, Rise of the Tomb Raider often reinvigorates itself and keeps the gameplay fresh. Coupled with numerous hidden crypts, tombs and secrets that are beautifully crafted, this constant puzzling does much to diminish the staleness that begins to creep in, half way through the game.

Despite all its positives and successes, Rise of the Tomb Raider suffers from numerous, devastating problems that dilute its ability to be recognized as a true classic. First notable issue, stems from the sheer amount of content the game has. While it's great to have value in a game, playing similar areas and pointless puzzles over and over and over, hardly fulfills a value-conscious gamer's desires. By the end of the game, I was relieved that the game had ended because it truly felt over 20 hours too long. Puzzles are fine but it seemed that every door, every gate and every opening required some death-defying trapeze act, where a simple door knob would have sufficed.

It's that sheer, staggering length of pointless coin cache searches (which are often cruelly hidden), relics and detour-like crypts/tombs that make the game feel like a blur after a while. Puzzles stop being clever at times and simply feel like contrived, ridiculous filler that keep you from progressing through other more rewarding game elements. It also underscores how truly foolish Lara's superhuman vaulting and climbing is during the course of the game, which brings us to the game's second glaring fault. Some death-defying climbing is exciting and it adds tension. However, by the 43rd time you jump off a sliding platform, dodging traps, while simultaneously avoiding a hail of gunfire, only to swing on a beam and vault off a burrowed broad head arrow as a means of reaching a climbing ice wall, you begin to realize that Lara is more like Superman than Indiana Jones.

And that's a shame. It obliterates tension and it also makes such events far less special when they *do* happen.

Those occurrences also scream "paquete", which is Spanish slang for hooey/baloney because Lara feels like a demigod, counteracting Crystal Dynamic's attempt to make the universe more realistic since the reboot. While the game itself has plenty of content, the game truly has limited replay value once you do finish it, short of Expedition mode, where you employ a variety of cards to alter elements of the game. I suppose you could hunt down every last hidden item but I have better things to do than find that last gold cup that gives Lara a measly 25 XP. Beyond completionism however, Rise of the Tomb Raider really leaves all its cards on the table once you finish the campaign for the first time.

And that brings us to the game's third and most devastating weakness: its plot. While thematically and directorially, the game is lavish and masterfully artistic, the plot was composed by what I could only surmise to be a group of middle schoolers. The plot is literally predicatble within the first five minutes. Lara finds some secret legend of ever-living life hooey. She posits that it would be beneficial to share that with humanity, despite mankinds penchant for destruction. I'm honestly surprised how Lara's always portrayed as a clever individual and yet she demonstrates such poor reasoning and wisdom in the pursuit of such a potentially calamitous item.

Turns out her deceased dad was being shadowed by a secret organization called Trinity. It's around this point that the story becomes exceptionally condescending and insulting. Look, folks, I get it. Not everyone is a Christian or Catholic. Yes, some people may be atheists but taking such a contentious and insulting tone with your audience concerning religion is something that many customers don't appreciate after purchasing your title for over *60 dollars*. Just keep your own thoughts about that topic to yourself Crystal Dynamics.

Except they don't. Trinity is a religious organization lead by a stigmata-afflicted villain (religious bad guys? shocker! never saw that coming!) that have no compunctions about murdering everyone in sight. Of course, when they do it, it's called evil but when Lara does it, it's perfectly ok and called righteousness. That level of hypocrisy wends its way through the entirety of the game. Lara routinely muders dozens of people, never once feeling bad about it. A shadowy figure called the Prophet, with direct metaphorical overtones to Jesus Christ flees to the Russian mountains since he holds the secret of ever-lasting life. The game does its best to paint his immortality as in conflict with God's grace and , as such, not only is Trinity the villain but in a way, the unversal Creator is as well.

Of course you meet the leader of the defenders of the village that protect the source of immortality and the Prophet's legacy and he seems impossibly wise, clever, resourceful and durable. You can guess what that means. It's not very hard. What's interesting is that the source doesn't prove to be divinely powered at all and after reading several letters and manuscripts you realize how poorly Crystal Dynamics regard ignorant faith believers. They're painted in foolish broad strokes while preaching the importance of reason and archaeological awareness. Except Lara isn't an archaeologist, she's a tomb pillager.

The game doesn't worry about understanding cultures, it simply worries about magical powers and monsters and murdering lots of masked bad guys. The ultimate expression of Crystal Dynamic's hypocrisy becomes clear when the game spends its entire 40+ hour duration debunking the existence of God (because believing in God isn't cool and it's dumb, amirite) but Lara then has to fight immortal supernatural greek monsters clad in armor, replete with glowing blue eyes. Tomb Raider also had a mystical princess that could control the weather and undead samurai grotesques. It seems the height of hypocrisy and pointlessly argumentative writing to attempt to undermine the belief in a higher power, only to spend most of the game seeped in absurd mysticism and the occult.

It's ok not to believe in God. Just don't spend your game being preachy to people that do. But even with its condescending undertones, its the lack of actual plot twists or tonal depth that are most damning. Jacob is exactly what you think he is. The monsters are exactly what you think they are. The villains meet their fate in exactly the way you think they will. The game ends exactly the way you think it will. In short, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a maddening vacillation between master-class game creation and a lack of competent direction. The game is fun but ultimately, forgettable.

A worthy game on sale for $20 but not a classic.

Recommended.

8/10.

I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this but I think people are playing this game because there are so few multiplayer games with this much momentum and not because PU:B is so inherently good. It's not. If Blizzard or Valve released a comparable game built properly for 30 dollars or less, PU:B would die a quick death. The game has one good concept at its core that deals with a large, pervasive world with lots of options for mayhem. In that respect, sure, fun can be had from the game. The idea is a good one, if albeit not exactly revolutionary or new.

However, the game's faults are legion. For starters, it looks bad. The game is legitiamately ugly. The character models are pretty good but the weapon models and animations are attrociously bad. We're talking medicore mod-level bad. Check out some of my screens if you're sitting on the fence and want to grab a quick peek. Vehicles, foliage, houses, textures...nothing in this game screams AAA, or even BBB-level quality/polish. I've seen Doom 3 mods with far better textures and art assets than this game. I've seen Unity games that have better store-bought assets than this title. I'm not kidding.

This in itself could be forgiveable if the game ran well but it doesn't. It runs horrendously badly for the graphics that it pushes on the screen. I can run Battlefield 1 at 45 fps, high settings at 1440p. The game is stunning at those settings. Infinite Warfare, Doom, Destiny 2...every single game looks 10x better than this one and *runs* better to boot. No, the issue isn't with the Unreal 4 engine as I have several Unreal 4 engine games (like the Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch) that not only run well and look great on PC but will even run on a *smartphone*. The problem is with Pu:B...it's just horridly optimized. At medium settings, 1080p, I was getting 60 fps without vsync and heavy tearing. That's right, heavy tearing *without* vysnc. (Tearing usually happens WITH vysnc.)

Sounds and effects are mediocre. Shooting play is also mediocre. Unlike, say Doom, which feels silky smooth at 30 fps, this game's shooting play feels janky at twice the framerate. It honestly feels like a free-to-play Nexon FPS or some CS-clone Unity game. But don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself. Unlike other games with silky smooth gameplay, you regularly struggle to wrangle your crosshairs over a target. Movement feels heavy without actually being so and I've never experienced a game that had me wrestle with door-opening/closing so much in my entire life. Vehicle physics are absurdly distorted, no doubt for the laughs but since the rest of the game physics are not, the disparity seems out of place.

The game isn't incredibly stable either. During one and a half hours of gameplay, I crashed to desktop once. I often found it impossible to cancel a matchmaking initiation, even if I tried to cancel it immediately after I hit the button. Why put "cancel" if it can't be used? While I understand that the map requires certain skill to navigate/exploit, I also think that the game lacks inherent guidance/controls. It's basically all the worst elements of Battlefield. (Lots of open spaces, getting shot in the back by a lucky camper or getting lucky yourself as some person stumbled into your crosshairs as he rushed into a shanty you were searching). The game seems like it needs more.

PU:B isn't a horrible game. And at 30 bucks USD, it may certainly be worth your time but I found it to be unpolished, amateurish and limited. Your mileage, of course, may vary. The game has a massive population and tons of momentum but a large segment of the playerbase is from asian countries. ( I routinely heard chinese players on NA servers at 3-4 AM EST). I didn't see any signs of hacking and that's good I guess although my sample size is small. I would love if Valve released a similar title at a similar price, wrapped in a higher-polished exterior. As it stands, if you own GTA 5, you're probably getting similar gameplay online at a far higher quality level.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

6/10.

(mini-review)

I can't stress enough how disappointed I was with this game. While I'm sure my issues may not be shared by all players of this game, the fact that I ran into the sad, cavalcade of bugs means at least some others probably did as well. While the game is lavishly illustrated, directed and choreographed, the game, at its core is simply a turbo-charged Guess Who? where you keep track of up to a dozen targets and log their illegal consumption of apples (yes, you can get people arrested for eating apples...apples). This kind of simplicity detracts from the morality of the game and when coupled with the game bugs that I experienced, make the game impossible to recommend. One bug I encountered caused my first mission target to not present himself until the quest timer ended and the attempt failed. This bug occurred 4/5 games, despite following the identical process each time. Additionally, my reward for the first mission should have been 250 currency but instead, I received 50 and was forced to abandon the game save.

All in all, I'd avoid this game. It seems like a great game but between the game-crushing bugs and the memorization-intensive face-tile matching gameplay (which honestly feels like work at times), I believe this game style is better represented by other options.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

5/10.

What is Vanquish? Vanquish is a Gears of War and Devil May Cry (DmC) lovechild with a healthy helping of japanime exaggeration. Does that sound appealing? If so, then you'll like Vanquish. As far as the game goes, however, don't expect overwhelming value or playable sustainability. As such Vanquish (great name) is a mixed bag of contradictions. The game is possessed of solid graphics (for 2010-11) and often visually-interesting character/weapon/map design. The characters animate fluidly and dynamically. Weapon play is fantastic and the actual combat is by far the greatest element in Vanquish. It is, in fact, the combat and visceral animations that carry an otherwise mediocre (at best) game.

The game packs a variety of weapons and many feel really good and are justified by their varying effects. Melee is also competently executed and the game's primary slide movement adds a speed and impetus that few games can hope to match. In a way, this game feels like Mass Effect 2 on fast forward xx4. The game runs well and is well composed, rarely exhibiting slow downs and never crashing. However, the game is fraught with an avalanche of flaws that would bury any normal title. Platinum's impeccable work on combat keep the title from becoming a putrid mess.

The game lacks any multiplayer and, instead, encourages logevity by replaying chapters to find limited easter eggs and to best your previous performance. However, many maps are very samey both in appearance and in objective and while the combat feels great, replaying the same maps over and over can quickly feel staid, unless you are an avid gamer completionist. Therefore, one quick, 6 hour play through Vanquish will display 85% of what the game offers and value becomes a tough sell for the title. While the game runs well, it is not super optimized for PC, despite mouse and keyboard gunplay being mostly superior to a gamepad/controller. Twenty USD is a comparatively big price to demand for a game that is almost a decade old and that only fashions about 4-8 hours of play value for most gamers.

The music in the game is forgettable at best and obnoxiously laughable at worst, bad textures abound and the maps are extremely linear. The game has only marginally more exploration than something like House of the Dead. Even Gears of War had multiple routes you could occasionally take. Some weapons are significantly weaker/less useful than others and the AI as a whole is as dumb as a box of rocks. Don't expect intelligent response from enemies and look forward to increasing waves of often cheap mobs that shoot almost a dozen missiles/rockets/grenades/bullets/lasers et al at you at any given time. The game is rife with quicktime events which showcase some very cool cinematic events. However, those same cinematic events come at the expense of gameplay as players often don't have a choice in how to proceed during a fight.

Those same quicktime events will, of course, lead to several deaths. And those events, when coupled with some admittedly cheesy bosses that fire half a dozen wide-range AoE weapons at you at once, will require you to play certain battles over and over. And over. And over. Especially at harder difficulties. Again, if this is something that you like and you derive satisfaction and achievement from such difficult gameplay executions, you'll probably enjoy it. However, if you are like me, and just want to enjoy the game's best elements: the combat, without constantly replaying areas and you have better things to do both online and in real life, the game can become obnoxious quickly.

No critique of Vanquish can exist without a short detail of how attrociously juvenile and flat-out dumb the plot is. As an action game, Vanquish shouldn't be expected to ponder weighty concepts. The gameplay doesn't have to be remarkably deep either. However, characters in this game are an insult to "cardboard cutouts" and they act with volatile inconsistency, attempting to kill each other one minute and *literally* protecting each other the next. The hero protagonist is charged with saving a space colony from destruction and yet the game's end hardly gives you a feeling of success or accomplishment. The story is hackneyed and, created by a predominantly Japanese developer, is very anti-American in both its context and writing. There are probably only 6 truly unique characters all game and, therefore, Vanquish feels more like a carnival shooting gallery than a living, breathing world.

In short, after playing hundreds of games on a variety of platforms over the last few decades, I can clearly profess that Vanquish has perhaps one of the top five *worst* plots I've ever encountered. We're talking Transmorphers/Sharknado/Piranha II plotting bad. Like, laughably bad. Ridiculously bad. And yes...insultingly bad. The game lacks even a proper ending and instead gives you a chopped, deformed cliffhanger ending. When considering the music, the shallow gameplay mechanics and horrendous plot, it is almost easy to bash Vanquish. However, the combat, coupled with the visceral graphics keep pulling the player through the game and it's hard not to fall in love with a shooting gallery that feels this good. I purchased the game for 20 USD and I feel that it was a bit pricey for what I got.

If, however, you can find this title on sale for 10-15 USD, I recommend you pick it up. It's a solid game that does twitch gallery shooting as well as any other title out there.

Recommended.

7.5/10.

Little Nightmares is a very short, polished foray into allegorical storytelling. The game is aesthetically gorgeous but a tough value sell due to its short length. The game itself can be finished within 4 hours, moving at a reasonably slow pace. I myself replayed several areas, listened to the music for a bit and was AFK having lunch for a few hours. The game's graphics, courtesy of Unreal Engine 4, are absolutely stunning, with lighting, reflective and texture assets showcasing a vibrant, yet creepy world motif. The character designs, animations and personalities all convey extreme amounts of charisma. As odd as it is to affirm, Little Nightmares is probably one of the top 20 best-looking games on Steam both technically and by design. The game's plot is an ambiguous, yet disturbingly unsettling tale with no real closure. Voice acting is non-existent. Sound effects and music are absolutely fantastic, however, and most puzzles are reasonably easy but satisfying.

While the game is gorgeous, wonderfully orchestrated, atmospheric as all get-out and genuinely tense at times, Little Nightmares is not without some key flaws. While the story of abandoned Six is dark and compelling, it is ulimately weak due to the staggering lack of clarification concerning the game's ending. I myself have some theories and have included them after the spoiler symbols below. Additionally, while the side-scrolling mechanics are often clever and sometimes well-realized, the controls are sufficiently lacking that death can result from an imprecise or a poorly-translated key press. In fact, expect a good 30% of your playthrough to be comprised of trial-and-error replays as you struggle with the often unintuitive control scheme to execute the correct action that you already figured out...four deaths ago. The game lacks co-op and multiplayer, and can be buggy at times, as the game crashed to desktop twice for me.

Still, as a whole, the art design, technical prowess and amazing atmosphere in Little Nightmares, as well as some truly vicious plot twists are sure to justify a steam sale purchase. The game can still be picked up for 15 dollars and that price may be viable for many. The game is definitely worth a price of 10 dollars and you should absolutely pick it up then. It is, after all, a truly tense, creepy and enjoyable experience.

Recommended.

8/10.




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It is my belief that the Maw is a representation of a resort for satisfactions and pleasures of the flesh. As such, it's possible that the Maw is in fact a brothel. The Lady, Six' archenemy and patron of the Maw, is actually Six' mother, who abandoned and cast her daughter out for a variety of reasons. Six, cast out after the apparent suicide of her father (the hanging man in chapter one of Little Nightmares), threatened both The Lady's inherent vanity, since she is the only thin and beautifully-framed adult in Little Nightmares, as well as reminding the mother of her of her own sinful preoccupations. The brothel-like Maw offers visitors a never-ending source of gluttony and lust, represented in the form of cannibalistic consumption and, in turn, the patronage by the visitors fed The Lady's inherent need for "life force" which can be construed as money, wealth, status, security and 'eternal vitality' (attractiveness).

The gnomes and, indeed the children theselves throughout the ship, were subject to the predations of the Visitors. It is therefore, possible to interpret the gnomes as the empty, broken vessels of indentured children that were trapped within the Maw. Six' own metamorphosis into a monster of vicious vindication represents wrath at her mother's sinfulness and desire to escape the Maw at any cost. Her final slaying of the Maw 's inhabitants, as well as The Lady promoted the idea that the brothel was ultimately destroyed by Six' unwillingness to die or capitulate to the predations of the visitors. As such, she becomes every bit the monster that her mother is and, ultimately, the game does not represent a series of nightmarish vignettes but, instead, Six' transformation *INTO* the "Little Nightmare".

At least that's the way I interpreted it. Ymmv.


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