Recent reviews by neoadorable

Incredible experience. Superb story and voice acting with lots of interesting and challenging puzzles that never get frustrating, plus you can always look up a guide if you're stuck - I did. The attention to detail is spectacular, and the art style is like a mix between David Lynch's Eraserhead, a Tool video from the 90's and Monolith's Condemned Criminal Origins. It's quite lo-fi, so if you want nice graphics this may not be it, plus the whole game is controlled with just the direcitonal keys. This is a bonus for people who can only play with one hand, or even just one finger, making Cat Lady very accessible.

Plus the soundtrack is great and the moral of the story is touching, though I didn't try all possible endings. Oh, and it's one of the few entries in our great hobby/community that openly and unashamedly deals with mental illness, suicide, and other related topics. And incredibly so.

A true 9/10 and glad I got it!

EDIT: what was written below was done so in a fit of somewhat inebriated anger. It doesn't change the fact Frictional should pay more attention to details like clipping through the environment and broken scripted events, but SOMA is well worth the experience for its humanity. The ending was really good and even though getting chased around by omnipotent enemies with no recourse is annoying after almost 15 hours, most of the game time is more about exploring and understanding what happened. Go play it and try not to get frustrated with the rough technical edges. Once i calmed down all I had to do was load a different save, and thankfully SOMA saves every few minutes so it was fine. 7/10 in my...mind.


Enjoyed over 13 hours of it and was close to completion. Has some great shout outs and references, good overall story, very touching moments...and while not a fan of the being chased helplessly by monsters genre, really liked SOMA. But it is shoddily made, there's no getting around that. First, new NVIDIA drivers caused the game to stop working last month, but Frictional patched it. The capper was getting close to the last location, then getting dumped by a scripted (and annoying) event into an invisible rock. Stuck, can't move, no matter what I do. Nice way to finish this game. I understand this may be a one off but i can't recommend such poor workmanship. It's not fair bigger devs and publishers catch all the flak for glitches while "indies" get a free ride. Poor effort, Frictional.

The best take on the Missile Command design that I've ever played - with a nice variety of warships. If you like big boats and fast action, this is a must, especially at the prices Steam is selling it, which is typically next to free. You can't control the ships, simply aim missiles at targets and use a cool selection of special powers like bullet time, screen bomb, etc. There's also a pretty fun upgrade path for your main ship and the escort, which is necessary to invest in as missions get progressively harder and move into bullethell territory.

The story is intentionally late 80's/early 90's coin op arcade-simple. It pokes obvious fun at the likes of Zero Wing with a ridiculous villain that spouts bravado about your impending doom only to get thrashed every time. Lots of fun, nothing too grandiose, but you'll enjoy it. 8/10.

Excellent but simple tower defense/real time strategy in space. Seemingly all you do is collect resources and then send out ships, but there's quite a few types of them and many special powers and abilities, so it's all very satisfyingly detailed but not too complex. There are three campaigns for three factions, and even though i just started it looks like you could easily get ten hours of single player time with this, not counting multiplayer. Plus the music is excellent, just don't expect a detailed story - there's no voice overs or cinematics, very simple but great enjoyment. 8/10.

While short at around 3 hours and lacking a conventional end game, this was really good - mostly to the amazing performance by Viva Seifert, who's mesmerizing. You play a maybe-detective that uses a Windows 95-like OS with a search engine that's better than anything that was actually available in the mid 90's. You use that to input key words that bring up short videos, taped in police interview rooms. Through these you're supposed to piece together a mystery, or a plot, and understand what happened. It's very complex and deep for an experience this brief, and well worth the asking price. Plus it truly has a wham ending. 8/10.

After playing this for a while can say it's my fave Lost Planet title. Feel guilty that it was largely overlooked when it came out and that developers Spark didn't survive as a team, I only got it when it was like $8 on Steam. If you prefer the wackier Japenese style of the first two games you may not like this one, as it's more of a traditional Western third person cover shooter. To me that's a good thing, as are the nice visuals, mix of on foot and mech gameplay, and superb voice acting/facial animation. Despite a rather cliched and predictable rundown future story with mega corps, LP3 manages to have an excellent sense of place with a somewhat open world environment that you come to like, and cool references to Aliens, Blade Runner, and of course Dead Space 3 - which it very much resembles. Places include your cozy home base as well as several other locations. Characters are quite interesting and compelling, especially main protag James Peyton, who is very relatable.

There's a few cool upgrades, several very nice weapons, and a mix of fighting and grappling. On normal this is a very easy game, including the boss encounters. I'm fine with that, but if you want a challenge maybe look elsewhere.

An example of an overlooked title where it's obvious people put a lot of work into it for naught. Can only blame myself as I also didn't buy it new. To sum up, this does the Lost Planet series more justice than the first two games, but that's my take on it, i know many disagree.

EDIT: recent update/patch changed AI behavior. Enemy planes are much easier to shoot down even on hard difficulty, having less HP. On the other hand, your plane also seems to be more fragile, and you get slightly stunned with a bright flash every time the baddies score a major hit. They are also much more likely to ram your plane, and your AI wingmen seem more effective. Nothing to change the basic opinion on the game, though.

Only recommended for those who played the Cinemaware original back in 1990. In that context, this is more than a remaster, it's complete recreation with simple modern graphics and sound. You're a pilot that's experiencing WWI, and there's a lot of story as the war progresses. In the original this was all text but was still very captivating. Here it's fully narrated by a very competent actor, but the voice often doesn't match the well written text. Minor issue.

Missions include dogfights, balloon busting, bombing runs, and strafing. Each is a mini game basically and they are very repetitive, as they were in the original. Almost nothing ever changes, which is why someone with no fondness for the original is very likely to get bored quick. Otherwise a nice re-telling of what was an excellent game a quarter of century ago. Can't believe I just said that. If you didn't play the original, no need to get this, and it's not worth more than $10 honestly. 6/10.

FINAL EDIT: OK, so finished it finally and actually giving NG+ a whirl. The pure garbage comment was just rude and i take it back. However, this is still not a recommended game. Anyone reading this, disregard everything below these pros and cons.

Pros:

- Nice visual style, very attractive at first glance
- Some good choices along the way that are recapped when you complete the game in a sequence that i found oddly emotional
- If you want a Souls game with a more gothic/germanic feel, this might be something to look into
- Some nice ideas like the gauntlet and magic

Cons:

- Nice graphics that hardly ever change and get boring quick: no diversity in environments, characters, effects
- Painfully slow and cumbersome combat
- Ludicrously maze-like levels that are just annoying, not interesting to explore, like someone did this on purpose to be an A-hole rather than with thought
- Really much harder than Souls games as there is no summoning others for help and most players will be lucky to have 6-7 health potions by the end of NG. This leads to lots of frustration without reward, as some of the bosses make the worst Souls bosses look like child's play
- Bad camera system and collision detection
- Iffy target lock on
- Relatively short story at around 30 hours compared to the 70-80 you get out of a similarly priced Souls game
- Tons of gear that makes little to no difference
- Leveling up also barely makes a difference beyond a very early point
- Unfairly tailored to a very specific character build that makes the game much easier. Other builds this game is a nightmare

Overall 5/10, do not get it unless it's heavily discounted and you're really craving this type of experience








EDIT: this game is pure garbage, so buyer beware. It's like the purely annoying version of Dark Souls. If you want the full review, read on, otherwise avoid. After 30 hours decided it was simply not worth it anymore. The entire game, and you can see this via YouTube videos, was designed for one build: warrior, rage spell, two handed greatsword. With that all the bosses are a cakewalk. Any other build and this ♥♥♥♥ is ten times harder than any Souls game, minus all the good parts. Avoid even if someone gives it to you as a gift.


Got this on release day, which was like ten months ago...and can't bring myself to sit down and finish it because it's borderline boring. Still manages to be somewhat compelling, but just imagine all the difficulty of a Souls game minus the intrigue, mystery, reward, fluidity, natural exploration...and pretty much every other positive aspect. This is like a soulles (pun intended) copy of a Souls game done by an AI. Mind you i haven't had any major technical issues with this game, and don't understand why people say it's easier than Souls/Bloodborne. It's actually harder, there are very few bonfires/safe places, enemies respawn endelessly, you typically can only carry very few health potions, your guy Harykn feels like he's a tank wading through maple syrup even with light gear and high agility, and the map design is just convoluted: not interesting, not challenging, not lending itself to exploration. Just random maze-like, as I said, something an AI with no imagination would design because it was told to "make it difficult and reallly not linear". Sorry Deck 13, I'd say nice try but it isn't nice, it's the very epitome of mediocre.

Why oh why....this is what you get for being a biggot. Watched American Sniper and was craving an actioner set in that kind of environment...yes, a moment of craven prejudice. Nothing about Iraq so got this for $3 or so. Even for that money this game is a joke. It's from the same geniuses that made the Rambo game later, i think. Poor controls that cannot be customized (have to use WASD, no arrows), ridiculous difficulty for no gain or satisfaction, invisible enemies that can shoot you while you can't shoot them. And this is before we get to the grammatically laughable narration and writing. I don't like being a critic, easiest job in the world, but even if someone gifts this to you do not waste your time on it. 2/10

Initially gave this a not recommended due to stability and incompatibility issues. But that's just because i'm lazy sometimes...go to steamapps, common, Rogue Trooper, executable, and in properties change it to Windows 7. May be Vista or something else in your case, just try.

Ten years after release this looks very dated indeed, but plays well enough and is a fond trip down memory lane to when stuff like this, Kill Switch and Gears was still relatively new. If you like the comic then obviously you will like this, but even if not then it's a decent third person shooter with shades of Killzone in terms of feel and mission structure (which in turn was heavily influenced by the Rogue Trooper comics).

Some features don't work properly, like controller support, but mouse/KB is generally fine for this. Even at two dollars or so this is not a great buy because it's just too dated, but it's not bad.