Recent reviews by BOBOUDA

A very short Half Life 2 mod.

• Around 1h of playtime, maybe a tiny bit more if you're trying to get all achievements ;
  
• A nice physics mechanic that makes it a bit different from typical HL gameplay. (If you've always dreamed to be a TF2 soldier in a HL game this is for you) ;
  
• A gloomy atmosphere that somehow feels very comforting ;
  
• I didn't really look into the (very short) intrigue but there's a tiny bit of story in it ;
  
• 2 very nice fights ;
  
• Typical Half Life like achievements to unlock. Involves 2 gnomes, which is obviously better than one.
  

Still cute, still funny, still nerdy.
The gameplay stays globally the same as our boy's tax evasion days but they did a great job changing the structure of the game and how it's played over time.
The game also offers to play on a higher difficulty, which is cool, I actually died once or twice this time.
It's not as short as the first one, which is a big plus. Trying to complete it 100% will take a bit of searching around, but it's always fun in this absurd little veggie universe.
There's I believe even more hats than the previous one also.
It can be cool to play the OG first if you haven't, as the game structure is slightly more straightforward and you'll get some references made to it in this Ocean's Eleven tier bank robbing story. But then again they're tiny elementary indie games and they'll be funny and fun to play no matter what.

TL;DR : I played this game in VR through a mod (UEVR), it was a great experience and felt like the game was made for it considering how contemplative and visually focused it is. It's world is left to your interpretation, there’s not a single spoken word in the whole game and no real cut scene. It's great only if you know what you're getting into, I know it was disappointing to some. It's not very long and apparently falls short compared to what was planned and advertised.


Gameplay in VR : I used UEVR to be able to "inject" (as it calls it) the game in the headset. You can find here the guide I followed https://youtu.be/4ccaX8Hr1JU?si=-mJiFSlZ4D1NkJTs
It took a bit of tweaking but after a bit of trial and error it became easy to follow the steps. You might need to disable your antivirus as one of the files you unzip keeps getting deleted by Windows.

The impressive, goric and dark world of Scorn is perfect for VR, you're often left looking around in awe at the size and weirdness of the place. There's two moments during the game that are probably the most jaw-dropping I've seen in VR.

Performance wasn't the best, I'm using the first Oculus headset that was released, and a 980ti which is getting a bit old now. The world clearly was less detailed than on a flat screen but the immersion was still totally worth the experience.

The gameplay itself being very basic it was fine in VR. Only issue was the combat, aiming wasn't easy at all. It's not like in HL:ALyx where you're free to physically move your hands to aim, you need to use joysticks like on a controller, which is even harder to do with the headset on. Maybe I could have tweaked the game a bit more with the tools though, once I managed to set up the camera right I went along with it. I avoided enemies as much as I could, and one specific fight had me reverting to my normal monitor to be able to aim better.


Gameplay in general

The game is maybe 40% walking, 50% puzzles and 10% combat.

If the world isn't of interest to you there's not really a point, rushing the game simply to reach the next puzzle without contemplating your surrounding would make it a pretty boring experience.

The puzzles can be level sized, in a Tomb Raider fashion, or more simple ones that you need to solve like a rubiks cube or something. I found the difficulty perfect, not too hard, not too easy. The very first one is maybe the hardest and it was a weird choice to have it this early in the game.

Once again, combat is really secondary and it's not the best fps you'll find. The best aspect of it is actually the design of the enemies and the weapons themselves more than how they all behave. You can also easily avoid 75% of the enemies by waiting a bit, which was helpful with in VR.


Atmosphere, theme

This is where the real value of the game lies, its world, its civilization, its beings, its technology... etc. It's gore, but not really scary, I don't think there has been a single jumpscare in the whole game. I've been terrorized at times but not by direct violence, it's much more psychological.

The influence of H.R. Giger is obvious and most people who are familiar with Alien will notice the resemblance with the Xenomorph and it's home world.
On top of the unsettling depictions of all of this weird bio-technology, where you don't know where the machine ends and the biological starts, many aspects are directly inspired or referencing the setting of LV426 (the eggs, the facehugger... etc).

I also learned about Beksiński while learning more about the game and you can really see the game as a mix of his depressing style and Giger's art. It's also how I would picture civilizations of older or more advanced species in Lovecraftian story.

The fact that it lacks a narration makes you wonder about the meaning behind everything. There's themes of birth, sexuality, exploitation, spirituality, civilization...

First of all, I see this world as humanity's doing. It doesn't look like it's a humanoid alien race, but actual humans, who built this place. Maybe on Earth, maybe not. It's probably too metaphorical to really matter, but it's still interesting to imagine the lore behind all of it.

It feels futuristic, but it's mechanical technology contrasts with how we tend to picture a dystopic digital future. It's some kind of mechanical cyberpunk dystopia.

You encounter many different species, some born from the collapse of this civilization and humanity, some exploited or bio-engineered by us. Suffering and exploitation are an integral part of everything, even while the civilization was thriving. It is built on horror. Everything is made in the image of the human body, of which you find hints in everything around you, it's hard to wrap your head around this world that seems to worship the body's physicality while also disrespect it so much in it's real biological form.

The game's name to me refers to humanity's relationship with itself, with life as a whole, seen as a means to a technological end. Our world has been built on the exploitation of a workforce as long as we've had social classes, from slavery to serfdom to today's proletariat. That's not even considering the catastrophic toll "humanity", or really, the way it organizes production and exploitation, has on life on Earth as a whole. Factory farming also isn't really that far from what we see depicted in this hell world.

I don't see this place as hell, it's very physical, concrete. It would seem meaningless if it wasn't for the very ending. All of the elements of this last place and it's puzzle makes you understand what the protagonist was chasing all along. It's a mystical spiritual place you try to reach after a lot of struggle, like in the movies Stalker or Annihilation.

Everything leads up to this weird climatic (and anti-climatic) place, where pain reaches it's apex but also allows you to reach a spiritual goal by joining a collective consciousness or mind, and entering a place that you've been chasing all along.
Maybe it's about the ♥♥♥♥ some can go through to reach a religious heaven, which in the end doesn't show up even show up, as the events unfolding in the game show. You're only left with the pain just as you thought you could finally reach nirvana.
The relationship between suffering and a spiritual goal also reminded me of the movie Martyrs, one of the rare ones I've seen where the story had a real meaning and impact to me.
Or it's just pure nihilism about how life is suffering, we try to give it meaning, and in the end you die.

There's a lot of lore that is shown in the artbook and I may get things wrong in my interpretation. It is such a rich universe, I wish more could have been shown.


As I understand it, the game was very divisive among the community expecting it. Some criticize it as a walking simulator, but it's also the fact that it was apparently supposed to be bigger than it ended up being, that it was over hyped and over-sold...

The steam page at the time said "Scorn takes place in an open-ended world with different interconnected regions." and it's very clearly not what we got.

It seems like it was rushed, a lot of content and playability cut, but the end result by itself was a very good experience to me.

The false advertising would have been my only criticism, but luckily I only purchased and played it a while after everybody.

TL;DR : A weak often repetitive RPG that is also one of the best experiences they could have done as a massive modern game to get back into the Harry Potter universe. It’s bad at being a RPG, mixed in it’s gameplay, but great at gathering everything cool about Harry Potter books, films, and often past games while creating a game with a good atmosphere, music and nostalgia.

Gameplay : I’ve even read some debates about whether it’s even a RPG. I think that it is, it has most of the characteristics of a RPG, they’re just all very weak.

There’s “caves” or “dungeons” but that are usually repetitive and are only a bit more interesting when tied to the main story. Inventory system isn't incredible and you're flooded with too many pointless items that are just good to go sell almost right away considering your inventory space (But then again I feel like it’s pretty common among other games). You’re never really hyped by what you find. At times you see the item has a little green arrow implying it’ll raise your stats a bit but that’s it. Items are upgradable which is cool. There’s no class system. The skills tree isn’t very interesting. There’s no morality system or ways to shape your character’s identity and personality beside having the choice to give an answer or another during dialogues and that have no impact on the story.

But I don’t think they could really have done a great intricate RPG, something to rival Skyrim or the Witcher. It’s a game that’s targeted to a lot of people who are going to play for the lore, the story and the nostalgia, including kids. So while I was a bit disappointed in some of these aspects, I’m not sure if they could have done better to make it accessible to everyone who wanted to have a cool Harry Potter universe experience.

Now as an overall action game, it does the job well. Especially when you consider the combat system, which is pretty much one of my favorite combat systems ever. It's super fun, non-stop action, you can get rid of enemies in a lot of different ways, through the use of a wide range of spells with which you can find a lot of cool synergies. The “shield” systems work great whether it’s for your character or as an added challenge with the enemies. I loved every single time I came into combat. It was often too easy but I believe I could have upped the difficulty.

I played most of the game with a mod, “Mouse gesture to spell” that made it much more fun and makes you feel like you’re actually moving a wand. I really really recommend it. Before it it was a bit annoying to circle through the different spell.

Exploration is a mixed bag. Trying to find everything on the map can be a chore. There's too much, and too much of the same thing. When you come across one of these "puzzles" or "caves" you often can't be bothered to do the same thing for the 67th time. I wanted to complete he game so I went through with it but it wasn't fun on that aspect. There could have been easily 3 times less caves and Merlin Trials. Some of these puzzles, secrets or challenges scattered around the map are more fun and less numerous than others though which is cool.

The difference is night and day when you compare Hogwarts itself to the rest of the map. Exploring Hogwarts is one of the best part of the game, it gave me strong Harry Potter 3 nostalgia where you could also try to find a lot of secrets and puzzles hidden in the castle. It’s HP3 times a hundred. It can be challenging to find everything but it's fun to take the time to find how to open every single door, reach all the chests and field guide pages. The puzzles are often not too complicated, but as explained above, they had to go for a very accessible experience and despite the easiness it was very fun to find most of the secrets. Actually one or two were very challenging now that I think about it. What they did with the room of requirement is perfect : customization, herbology, magic creatures… etc. It was the best possible use of this important part of the castle as a personal room to centralize almost all the crafting and personalisation.

Most of the more challenging steam achievements were cool to get, although it would have been nice to be able to track your progress through it. Just a bit ridiculous to have 3 of them only reachable by playing the whole game again as another wizard house, considering how little this “class” aspect impacts the game. It basically requires you to play through a few hours of the game 3 times without any novelty each time. Can’t be bothered.

Story / atmosphere : The story is OK. Some themes and elements are great and engaging, others cliche and more boring. I read a lot of negativity about it, but it’s really not that bad.

They also tried to be inclusive in the characters identities without forcing it and assuming you can fix racism or transphobia by simply adding the right pixels to a video game without getting rid of class society as a whole which is the root cause of oppressions and how our institutions function which is cool. Maybe I’m getting a bit off the subject. There’s just that African student, that transgender character (who is a good addition considering the whole JK Rowling thing. I don’t get why she’s portrayed as a literal nazi by everybody when her positions aren’t that extreme really, even though I disagree with them), and it’s perfectly normal and mundane, it didn’t make me feel like they were trying to make a game just to put that in.

I just really hoped I could have participated in something like the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare a hundred years before it’s time but there was no clear way to liberate them from the slave work they’re subjected to.

The references to Harry Potter whether it’s in the dialogues, story, exploration, are cool. I’ve had a lot of moments where a mission reminded me of another in the first Harry Potter game, some story in a parchment of something in books, or a puzzle from the movies.

The overall vibe and music really get you back to the best aspects of the movies, which is clearly the biggest selling point of the game, nostalgia. That with the beauty and richness of the castle of Hogwarts make the game a real success. Some aspects are just a bit too simple or wholesome compared to the universe we’re used to. Walking through Hogwarts at night for example isn’t a problem, whereas if you’re used to the books or the movies you know it’s supposed to be scary and forbidden. There’s no real “mean” teacher or Slytherin kids which is disappointing too. The worst I’ve seen from a teacher is the Headmaster cancelling Quidditch because the developers didn’t have the time or means to add it to the game.

Performance : pretty bad in the beginning. I tried playing around with the settings to find a sweet spot of quality / performance but it was never really satisfying. My system is getting a bit old (i5 4690 / 980ti) so can't complain too much. Over time it improved. I tried various mods or patches when it came out that helped a bit, not sure if they're still useful. The game looks good overall while not trying to be hyper realistic.
There was some buggy parts, I fell under the map once (managed miraculously to get back up by using my broom and flying back up) and some broken "skeleton physics" forced me to restart the game once or twice.

A pretty funny and cute little classic Zelda inspired indie game. The humour is the best aspect, both absurd and full of references to internet / nerd culture.

The gameplay is pretty simple which is normal for that type of game, but some cool mechanics inspired by another game can make it a bit more interesting than "avoid enemy then attack".

Controls are a bit weird at first, although they are modifiable so no big deal.

One problem is that it's a bit short :( I wish there was more lore and context about this weird vegetable universe, more enemies and usage for the mecanics. At the end of the game a game mode makes it replayable for a while which is cool, but even in this context everything repeats itself and just increases in difficulty.

Visually speaking its a typical pixelalted style game, but with pretty animations for the dialogues.

Music is very cute and groovy at times.

Ah and there's many hats which is what is usually lacking to any game that isn't TF2.

8/10 would rip official documents again.

TL;DR : Basically the best depiction of a transhumanist dystopia I've seen. Great story, great themes. Still looks good but the updated version "System Redux" looks incredible.

A strongly established class system, a tyrannical omnipresent all-powerful corporation, unregulated human technological augmentations, a world where even your memories aren't within your privacy. Basically a very hard to beat dystopia. Strong, obvious Blade Runner vibes and references as well (on top of the obvious presence of the actor), really a great sci-fi world altogether.

It's quite easy to follow along, but some "dream" or "memory" sequences can have their share of more complicated moments where you need some time to understand what to do. They really went hard with these sequences and had the liberty of creating very oppressive moments, mixes of both emotional memories and digital hell. Basically a glitching nightmare simulator. If that isn't psychological horror I don't know what is. The story itself is a good investigation based in a small area you quickly get familiar with.

Nothing incredible about the game mechanics but then again its really about the world and atmosphere. I read it classified as a "walking simulator", so I guess if you can't connect enough brain cells to follow along a dialogue or read a short email on an in-game computer screen it's not for you.

The game had a few stuttering problems here and there but it was manageable, and it still holds up graphically to this day.

Truly one of my favorite single player games.

Amazing mod, exactly the difficulty I wanted in a Portal game. Hard enough to get stuck for quite some time but always managing to make it in the end. The story and humor try to be very similar to Portal 2, maybe a bit too much, but people play that kind of games for the gameplay anyway and here it's Portal 2 and it's mechanics perfected to an ideal difficulty. It does add a bit to the story of what happens at Aperture, although I assume non of it is canon.
I've often read it would be the closest thing we got to a "Portal 3", I'd call it more a Portal 2 : Episode 1.
Good review of the game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ovEGOr40M

Actually a pretty informational, educative, and funny game when it's not cringy childish humor and visuals, which it is still pretty often. The dialogues can go from interesting historical discussions to a pornographic one in a matter of seconds. You just don't know what the next text line is going to be. The cool parts are definitely the dialogues, the end cutscenes are usually the cringy parts although some are fun too.

I got it on sale and I have to say it was worth it's very low price. I think people who ♥♥♥♥♥ about it being a symbol of how anything is accepted on steam these days haven't played it, it's not that great but I'm still glad it exists and I got a few laughs out of it.

I think it's pretty badly optimised as my GPU usage was very high and it got very hot despite there being just a model of a fat dicactor in the game.

A pretty short, fun, very meta game. Very Stanley Parable-esque. Well worth the 20 minutes.

TL;DR : A pretty good and original game that feels like Apocalypse now set in Dubai. The gameplay is fun but has quite some flaws. Runs well and still looks good.

Story / Setting
Probably the best aspect of this game, very original setting and the story itself was pretty good. It really feels like it could be a movie.
There's a strong Vietnam war feel to it. The rock music (great choices by the way, Mogwai and Deep Purple being some of my favorite bands), the helicopters, the "white phosphorus" that really feels like agent orange, and some characters going insane make you feel like you're watching apocalypse in another part of the world.
A big part of the game is also the ethical player choices you will have to make, and that was very well made. Maybe the best game I've played on that side of things, as the game doesn't explicitly tell you the different options you have, you can do something that you would personally do even when it doesn't seem like it's an option at first sight.
Some parts can be a bit cliché. At the beginning of the game there has to be 5 times when you hide right next to a bad guy just has he has an important discussion with someone.

Gameplay
Pretty typical 3rd person shooter. Take cover, shoot, move further, take cover... etc. Ammo management is a big deal in this game, there's many times when it's wiser to get a fully loaded weapon when there's a much more powerful one nearby with half the ammo.
The difficulty I chose (Suicide Mission, the 3rd out of 4) was a bit too hard for me, I had to restart some moments many many times, but I still enjoyed the challenge. There's some parts of the game where you really need to die once so that you can expect what is going to happen in your next try, as you just can't know where the enemies are gonna spawn and you die very fast. Also some missions you need to restart force you to watch a little cinematic every time, which is quite annoying when you have to restart numerous times.
The FOV is a bit too zoomed in, and there was no way to change it in the settings.
Many controls aren't that great, the game forces you to use the keys for different actions in the game. For example, jumping over something, melee attack, and sprinting are the same. And sometimes when things get tense its hard to do precisely what you meant to do.
Took me 7 hours to complete, knowing I restarted some parts quite a lot.

I tried one game of multiplayer, which was kinda fun. I don't think it's really worth playing as some shooters have much better gameplay mechanics.

Performance
Runs very well at 60 fps on max settings (i5 4690 / R9 390).

Style / Graphics
Still looks good for today's standards, it could just need some extra anti aliasing.