Recent reviews by okcomputing

It's real good. Mixes things up in some very fun ways. The update/event schedule is going to converge with console versions' soon, which is also great.
Performance was rocky for a little while, but it runs pretty well now under DX12.

Compared to newer immersive sims, it doesn't quite hold up. Prey and Dishonored 1/2/DotO are far better gameplay-wise I think. While the level design in DXHR makes for a lot of fun situations, the stealth and combat systems are just a bit too wonky for me to really love them. Popping out into third-person perspective for cover or takedown animations just doesn't sit well with me. First-person corner peeking a-la Dishonored is maybe not the most elegant way to go about it, but at least it's a more immersive solution that doesn't break the flow of gameplay.

In terms of atmosphere, world-building and general thematic cohesion I think DXHR is still very good and is certainly worth playing well past its release date, especially if you've already exhausted Arkane Studios' body of work. The aesthetic they went for here is certainly inspired, but it does not hold up all that well nowadays and the modding scene for this game is barren, so you get what you see.

The augmentations do surprisingly little to significantly change your character's verb set. Rather, they enhance whatever your preferred way of playing is. That's a reasonable design choice, but I can't say I didn't hope for more. You get upgrade points for augmentations incredibly quickly. About a third to halfway into the game I'd already started investing points into things I didn't much care for, just to not let points go to waste. So balancing is a bit iffy, I'd say. By that point in the game, even at the hardest difficulty setting, there's little to no challenge to the game.

The conversation system was surprisingly interesting. It's got some depth to it that you don't really see in other games. It asks you to interpret what your conversation partner is saying and weigh your responses against their personality traits. Very clever stuff that I'd love to see more of. Sometimes the conversations feel a bit of maze-like in terms of structure, but you have enough information to get out of it and feel pretty good about having organically found the solution. Because it's used to sparingly, it doesn't really get old or tedious. Any more of it would've been too much. It's very refreshing to see some restraint from a developer with mechanics like this.

Content-wise, my only major gripes are the game's length and the boss battles in the core game. While I quite enjoyed my time with DXHR:DC, I was ready for it to about halfway through. A lot of time is spent running back and forth between quest areas, merchants and generally within the two main hub areas. The map is difficult to parse, the level layouts are confusing and you just end up going through the same areas a few times too often to my liking. Aside from that, the game feels like it starts to run out of ideas about halfway in. There's little justifying the amount of content there is when it's just more and more of the same in slightly different environments. The core loop is still solid in and of itself, but I think the game would've felt a lot better if it was about a third shorter or if it had new ideas peppered into the latter half. Missing Link was a bit of a relief, especially if you approach it with the Factory Zero achievement in mind, but after that you're right back into the same old loop.

There's not a lot to say about the game's boss battles other than plainly stating that they're unfun, confusing and clash with the game's overarching design ethic. The developers took this to heart and changed some things about them in DC, but they're still just bad. Again, Missing Link takes its singular boss battle in an entirely different direction from the rest of the game, and, as a result, it's a lot more engaging than the rest of the game's.

Unfortunately, there is also this glaring technical issue where the UI doesn't scale up when you use high resolutions. It's already tiny at 1080p. Moving up to 1440p -- or god forbid 4K -- it becomes practically illegible and the scopes becomes tiny periscopes in the middle of your screen surrounded by blackness. It's a real problem that will make this game very hard to play in the future as display resolutions creep upward.

Despite my reservations, it's worth a shot even today. There's enough to like about it for the people who really get into immersive sims, and it's interesting to see how the genre has evolved over the years. Do take note of that UI scaling thing though. I can imagine this being a major turn-off for many.

I like this game a lot, and I think everyone should play it. #facts #objective

The stylings of this game are pretty bland and the social media stuff is downright obnoxious at times, but the driving is legitimately really fun. It's not a semi-sim like the old GRID but something much closer to the NFS Hot Pursuit reboot. The cars are very fun and drift prone, allowing you to take corners at impossible speeds angles. Would definitely recommend it even if you didn't like the others in this series.

This is pretty amazing. It's really nice to get some positivity about stuff that's on your mind, and it feels good to maybe help motivate someone else when their or your spirits are low. Good vibes all around. I don't think I'll ever uninstall this.

I've been following and playing Dicey Dungeons for a while now through itch. In short, it's a fantastic game. The core loop is incredibly satisfying and makes this game fun from the moment you start each new run. What I find sets brilliant turn-based games apart from the rest is the moment to moment decision-making and in particular the early game. Unlike many other games in this sub-genre, Dicey Dungeons has a way of making every turn fun, as a result of which you don't feel like you're waiting for your build to come together and the "real" game to start. From the moment you start, you're enjoying simply playing it. Most of the time when I start or continue a run in Dicey Dungeons, it doesn't even matter to me if I manage to complete it, because the fundamentals of the game are satisfying enough on their own. The rest is gravy.

There are a lot of things to take into account each turn but the mechanics are simple enough that you can easily wrap your head around them, and the interface communicates everything you need to know really clearly. Despite its simplicity, it's not an easy game either. Rather, it's manageable, intuitive, straightforward. As you get deeper into the dungeon, the enemies get more difficult and you unlock more abilities. You're given more tools to work with and so more decisions. It's a relatively smooth learning/difficulty curve and you rarely if ever feel overwhelmed with what's in front of you. You begin thinking about new things: synergies, combos you can set up, you start thinking of not only the options that are in front of you right now but also what will happen in your next turn, and so forth. It all comes pretty naturally. On top of that, there's a lot of variety from the five (+1) different characters you can play as. Each has their own unique mechanics, strengths and weaknesses, and they're all a blast to play.

So, if you're in the mood to roll with Lady Luck and make fun decisions, definitely give Dicey Dungeons a shot. It also works quite well on mobile through Steam Link I should add. Even on my phone's relatively small screen, the interface is really easy to use. Great stuff.

Ideally, I wouldn't recommend anything at all and just put my thoughts here, but ultimately "not recommending" it comes closest to my feelings toward with the game, as disappointing as that may be. Like, the basic loop of exploring and killing mobs is pretty fun, but I've not played many games with such high highs and such low lows as Bloodstained. Looking back at it with the knowledge I have now, I would've rather spent my time playing something else, but that is not necessarily true for everyone. A lot of people seem to enjoy this, so that may well be you. So here are my major issues with the game. All the good stuff you probably know. You smack around monsters, you jump, you hit walls, that sort of thing. Wholesome fun!

One of the most basic and surface level things about Bloodstained RotN is that it doesn't have as much character as Symphony of the Night and the gameplay isn't as tight either. Now, it may be unfair to compare this game to SotN, a game that many consider a classic, but, believe me, this game truly invites the comparisons.

A few years ago, I played SotN for the first time. Despite being pretty dated and kinda bloated with mechanics, it is still better than this -- as much as RotN tries to exploit your nostalgia. Not only does it constantly hit you over the head with references, it just directly copies stuff from previous Castevanias. From enemy types to weapons and even story beats. Sure, it's nice to go down memory lane, but this game takes a little too much. There's literally a spike hallway near the bell tower. Like, come on. As a result, it feels like something I've played already but not quite as well made.

Like I said, the lack of focus that marred SotN is in full force here as well. I could deal with it in that game. The superfluous-feeling mechanics were relatively light. Sure, the game wasn't as streamlined as Super Metroid, but it was still great. Here, it's a lot more egregious. The game, the bosses, the enemies are designed around the bloat. With bloat I mean the crazy number of abilities in this game. There are simply too many active and passive abilities for its own good and juggling them is e a pain. The designers must've recognized it and put in a shortcut menu so you can quickly access different builds, but it's a band aid at best. Screens absolutely full of enemies or enemies that do screen-filling AOE attacks necessitate using abilities that feel like you're cheesing the game. On top of that, grinding out shards or materials is just not fun. It's busywork when I'd rather get back to the meat and bones of exploring further. even the quests are a grind. By the end of the game, they have dozens of chests that only contain measly amounts of gold instead of weapons or armor. The items should've been in there, rather than being locked behind grind.

But more than anything else, I don't understand why they decided to double down on the amount of time you have to spend in menus rather than streamlining this. It's a choice, I guess, but not one I agree with. Imagine that all those traversal abilities in SotN like mist, bat, bat echo, and the dog were all mapped to the same button and you had to equip them every time you needed to use them for something minor -- oh, and the same button is shared by the blood sucking ability and all your other active skills. Like, what were they thinking? I can't agree with that choice. The water section is the absolute worst with this, but the nuisance of equipping different skills to traverse this one little obstacle and then going back to your usual setup is a constant factor.

The entire water section is test of patience. There are no redeeming qualities. I don't think even people who really like Bloodstained can disagree here. It should not have been designed the way it is. Moving around in the water does not feel good. The designers must've played the OG Ocarina of Time and loved the heck out of the Water Temple, because boy do you spent a lot of time equipping and unequipping abilities in the water area.

Overall, the map is not nearly as compelling as Symphony. Not just the layout but In terms of cohesion as well. The areas feel like completely different levels in a game rather than something that's supposed to be located in or around a castle. It doesn't really make sense how all these distinct areas are tied together. Maybe there's some deep lore that justifies it, but in gameplay it feels disjointed, it doesn't have a distinct sense of place. In addition to that, some areas look really good (graphically) while others either look bad or are incredibly dull. In terms of exploration, some of the later areas are truly a pain to go through. I hope you liked SotN's flea men, frogs and bats, because this game is packed with them. Packed.

Another interesting point of comparison: Bloostained Curse of the Moon. That had really fun those boss fights. I had the polar opposite experience with RotN. Mostly not fun. They've got too much health, ridiculous abilities that take off half your health bar and are super difficult to read, just generally a RNG fest when it comes to patterns. I don't know if it's better on normal, but on hard the boss fights just actively suck the fun out of the game. I dreaded each one after a while. Some of the extra abilities they get are nuts. Literally 100% to 0% stun lock combos. Challenging in none of the right ways.

On the subject of sound and music, it's cool that they got the Castlevania composer back on board, but the soundtrack is barely there. It does not have the presence of what you'd think of as a Castlevania soundtrack. Very muted, not at all ripping, strangely mixed. Again, very little character to it. The sound design in general is not fantastic. There are no soul-piercing howls like when you kill a zombie in Symphony, no satisfying sound effects as an enemy explodes into flames. Nothing really stands out. Enemies whimper out of existence.

My personal enjoyment sank low enough that I wouldn't recommend the game. Again, perhaps it's just the hard mode that's such a pain in the butt. Normal difficulty was too easy, hard mode has too much BS. Ultimately, I would not have even started playing the game if I knew what awaited me. I'd rather have played something else. It's an okay game and a lot of people will love, love, love this. But I cannot get behind a lot of the design choices this game made -- especially when there are many other great games in this genre already on Steam that I think come with less caveats (e.g. Hollow Knight, Elliot Quest, Ori and the Blind Forest). If you've played all of those already, give it a shot -- especially if you liked the GBA Castlevanias, I think. Or play it if you're not too susceptible to the things I described above. It's totally fine in that case. Maybe it's this crazy heatwave that's getting to me. I probably should not be sitting next a PC that's running pretty hot.

Still a masterpiece.

The drifting in this game is really good.

Eats up coins like nobody's business but fun nonetheless.