Recent reviews by The Vodka Sniper

This game is amazing, and it pains me that I cannot recommend it! You have to link your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ epic games account to even access SINGLEPLAYER! You CANNOT play this game unless you sign up for epics piece of ♥♥♥♥ software! Truly a Sony level anti consumer move! ♥♥♥♥ this game, and ♥♥♥♥ Epic!

The PVE is fun. This game is amazing for satisfying that inner loot goblin! However, the PVP saps ANY and ALL fun out of the game! The amount of skill you need to have in this game is absolutely insane if you even want to win 1/10 of your fights! This is like being the new character on season 25 of a show. For that reason, its SO hard to try and learn how to PVP in this game because starting with zero skill and going against battle hardened vets teaches you NOTHING. You die in 1 to 2 moves, and there isnt even any reflection on what you could've done better. You just get dunked on, and lose all your ♥♥♥♥. For that reason, I would say this game is unfair.

If you are a better than average gamer, you're bottom teir in this game. For that reason, you can't even play with your friends that arent hardcore, drop everything in life to learn a single game, type gamers. They go down like a sack of potatoes and you're left in a 1vx, and if you're outnumbered there isnt a damn thing you can do.

Gear. Your character barely gets stronger if at all. Everything is dependent on the score rating of your gear. The different between gear score 100 and 200 is the lower one might as well just drop all their items and return to the homescreen because they are NOT winning that fight unless they've invested streamer hours into this game alone. This wouldnt be such a problem if there was a system in place to ensure someone with a gearscore of 45 doesnt meat someone with a gearscore of 500. The cutoff is 25. Eveyone under 25 is put in a lobby with other people that are under 25. Which is fine, yes, thats how it should be. However, once you go over 25, its a ♥♥♥♥ show. Its anyone and everyone that shows up no matter their gear. THIS HAS A SIMPLE FIX! instance everyone based on incremental gear scores! Its so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ simple but the devs refuse to do it for some reason! I get they want an unforgiving experience, but the gear dif in this game quickly drags it to being unfair!

Want to make this a much better experience? do the following:
-Add a PVE only mode. (so you can play with your friends that are bad at games, and not lose everything when getting rofl stomped by another team!)
-Add progressive gear scored lobbies

Do those two things, and this review will be changed! I, nor you, the devs, can do anything about skill dif, but at least give me a fighting chance with gear!

This game man... ho-ly. I absolutely love the writing, and the horrifying moments! I love how the protagonists go about these awful situations while sticking to their personalities. For me, this made some scenes go over my head for horror factor until I stopped for a moment and really thought about what they were doing, and then it all hit which is exactly why I love these types of games!

I really like where the game is in its storytelling. You get bits by deciphering the characters motivations, interactions, internal monologue etc, and then the dreams confirm or refute the theories you build. the overall dream segments are somewhat simplistic, but then I dont have to think too too hard about the overarching themes. However, I love all the super small touches to the dreams. for example, in chapter 2 when you place the green stuffie between the purple and the yellow one, obviously supposed to be Andrew and his friends, the flowers bloom. If you place the pink stuffie on it though, representing Ashley, the flowers die. I almost missed that detail, but it blew me away when I saw it! Its storytelling like that, that I love: obvious, but easy to miss unless you're paying attention.

Chapter 1 feels simplistic and liner, but I consider it more of a prologue at this point. Chapter 2 is really where I feel the story starts to become amazing. Super excited for chapter 3 and possible more! I love where the game is at for chapter 2, but devs, if you're reading this, take all the time you need to make chapter 3+ just as good or mayhaps even better than the last! I'll happily wait for quality!

I want you to think about the literal meaning of the word, "Awesome." It is to inspire extreme impressiveness, admiration, apprehension, and fear. This game is awesome in the literal sense! You will find no better gaming experience from this genre anywhere else on the market! I cannot give this game enough endorsement, please, for the love of god, buy it!

Also, side not for the devs, thank you for listening to the community and reversing your decision to mandate PSN linkage. I promised you a fair glowing review in exchange for that, and here it is.

Diggy Diggy Hole! Digging a hole!

The realism on this game is absolutely amazing! If you like brutal tactical shooters, you're gonna love this game! Whether you're trying to go for that perfect rating, being a murder hobo, or having a great time with friends, this game has something for everyone!

As promised here is my glowing review now that the servers are back online. Dark souls 3, one of the most heart palpitation inducing amazing time one can ever experience! If you want to know if you should buy the answer is 100% absolutely! If you are a fan of difficult yet fair and rewarding game play this is absolutely the game for you! This game will break you down to your core, and if your will is strong enough, rebuild you into a monster fit to claim the first flame as your own!

People often complain that Dark Souls is too hard, yet that has not been my experience. The skills required to be proficient in this game are just different, and when you start seeing the fruits of your labor with your skills increasing is by far the best feeling a video game has ever given me. However, once you master PVE things settle down and you no longer get the same rushes you once got for defeating a boss you were stuck on for 3 hours. This is the fork in the road where you can either start doing challenge runs chasing that high, or you can dive headfirst into PVP.

PVP - people are quick to complain PVP is too hard, or unfair. Let a souls pvp veteran tell you of my first days of pvp. I used to panic whenever I got invaded. I cowered behind summons and called my friends to come to my aid at the first sight of PVP. After mastering PVE though there was nothing left to do. PVP in this game is exactly like PVE in the sense you need to get your teeth kicked in a couple of times. Getting your teeth kicked in - not very fun. But killing an invader, or invading and winning a 1vx is the closest you will ever come to to regain the high of your first playthrough. PVP is dynamic, and fluid, Unlike PVE which is challenging, yet also static. Of course this was not possible for the first half of 2022, however with the servers restored I must personally thank Bandi Namco for not abandoning my beloved series.

Dear reader, you may also fall into the trap of thinking Dark Souls has no story. The hell is up with all the npcs laughing? Where are the cutscenes after each boss with long monologues of exposition? Nay, you shall not get that here. The story of dark souls is told in item descriptions and scenery. After a few playthroughs you will notice things you haven't seen, like the night of Lothric being Red and Blue, why is this? Or perhaps who is this guy called "Soul of Cinder" and why is his music so sad? My advise for this is to play through once, go watch youtube lore videos for 10 hours, and then play again to experience things you missed before.

If you have the attention span of a caffeinated goldfish I will make a TLDR section here, and elucidate further in my review.
This game is basically Dark Souls 4 in every aspect except nomenclature. If you're expecting a continuation from the masterpiece that is DS III however, like I was, you're going to have a bad time. From soft's unity between the souls series and bloodborne produced fantastic results, but the incorporation of Sekiro mechanics feels akward, clunky, and quite frankly half assed. They also changed the timings of bosses from DS III, which fair enough, but the timings of bosses no longer feel natural, even from outside the lens of a souls veteran. Finally, the game runs abuot as well as a terminally obese individual. Constant performance issues plague this game, so if a stable 60 FPS is non negotiable for you dont bother. From Soft's ports to PC have historically been pretty lame, but this is a whole new level of neglect, and quite frankly I'm sick of companies ignoring the largest market of gamers.

Alright, so for those more interested in a detailed account of my frustrations, are you ready for a rant?

1) Boss timings: They purposeful changed the timings from DS III which wouldn't be a problem if the animations didn't suffer because of it. For example, the only in air boss slowdown in DS III was Gael and that's so you could pick up your jaw as he peppered you with arrows. In Elden ring, boss that go airborne hang in the air for an unnatural amount of time just for the sake of hanging in the air and baiting rolls. It doesn't look cool and it looks very weird in my opinion because things don't float in air for 4 seconds before coming down.

2) Ground AOE attacks do an insane amount of damage (mostly from bosses). This wouldn't be a problem if you could reliably I-frame through the attacks but you cant because the ground AOE lingers and hits you. You can argue : Jump, but their weapons have very good tracking and still have hitboxes so sometimes its just "lmao your 50/50 failed, prepare to get one shot"

3) I personally don't like open world dark souls because there's too many options for areas to explore. I like DS III's semi linear system because it gives you just enough room for exploration while also making it obvious where the path of progression is. Not only is it hard to navigate unless your wonderlust is high, but it also just feels empty. You'll run across a new tower you see in the distance only to realize its a copy and paste of the 5 other towers you've already found. Dungeons are cool at first until you come across the 15th five-room liner progression filled with the same textures and same mobs as the last. Some have cool gimmicks like the chariot, but even this gets old after the 3rd time around. A lot has been left to desire once you get passed the initial discovery, and this really gets bad around 1/2 through the game.

PVP

1) obvious meta builds are the absolute only things you run into on PVP. Every single person is running a moonviel, rivers of blood, or some other various of bleed. These builds can often one shot and are damn near braindead to use. I play PVP to get good duels with people that have mastery over movement and spacing but Elden Ring is just "lmao magic spam" or "lmao moonviel spam" or "lmao bleed spam" In DS III I can face 5 general builds with 20 different weapons in an hour, but Elden ring is 2 builds comprised of 3 weapons spamming their weapon arts. It really seems like all the skill has been leeched out of PVP and all that remains is looking up a stat guide and nabbing the meta weapons before invading and winning.

Update: I've killed well over 1000 people in PVP and can say without a doubt it is still ♥♥♥♥. From level 2 to 200 you still see the same things over and over and over again. If you want skilled pvp go download community servers for DS III because this dumpster fire of a failed product doesn't get any better. Here is a summary of all you will face save for the spare DS III Refugee you may have the fortune of encountering:
Rivers of Blood spammer- Will one shot you with physical damage and bleed if you make even a single mistake. Do nothing but run and weapon art.
Powerstancers - Level as much endurance as they can so they can hide behind a massive shield and poke you with no chance of you breaking their guard. This is infuriating because even though RoB can at least be fought against, you literally cant do anything against this.
Moonveil spammers - Think the Frayed Blade from DS III that Halflight uses, but it can 1 shot you, and can be spammed just as fast and has a good amount of reach
Double bleed Spear/Lance/Curved sword build- Literally all they do is running attack you and the bleed builds up even if you dodge the attacks Likely death in 1-2 rolls
Carian Retaliation glitch abuse- an ash of war thats supposed to punish spellcasters but you can proc it by using an item. These will 1 shot 99 vig people if built correctly. Even on my non mage build during testing did well over 2K damage

Performance

1) Looks beautiful, runs like ♥♥♥♥. I have an i7-9700k running at 3.6 with 4 Ghz overclock and I'm still maxing out on the CPU on the least settings which leads to massive frame drops during random intervals. I have a GPU thats only 4 Gb of VRam but I checked my hardware monitoring system and its barely being stressed leading to CPU unoptimization. Really this is my biggest issue with the game. I could maybe tolerate everything else if this issue wasn't as bad as it is. I gave the company a grace period to fix this, but considering this has been a huge issue ever since launch, this should have been fixed by now.

2) Servers are unstable as a psychotic girlfriend. Random disconnects of anyone attempting top play with you. Very annoying after resummoning your friend for the 15th time

So, whether you're a dark souls veteran looking for more, or a complete noob to the series, do yourself a favor, go pick up DS III instead and enjoy a still rocky pc port, but far more polished experience than Elden Ring

PVP sucks, PVE is okay. still wouldnt bother even if it was free. Go play a game thats actually worth a damn

I used to enjoy this game immensely, however, I strictly play this game in VR, and the devs have clearly abandoned support for VR for this game. It makes me extremely sad to see. My gripes are thus:

1) the game runs like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in VR. Most maps are tolerable, but the main menu is damn near unplayable. Like, 10 FPS in the lobby when it used to run buttery smooth. Please, please x100 devs, please optimize this game for VR!

2) Hands in VR feel TERRIBLE! the controls used to be very snappy, very responsive, but now they're sluggish and unresponsive. The most egregious example of this is the positioning of the radio/book on the shoulders. I remember upon release I'd be able to reliably grab radio/book with 100% accuracy, but now a days its a 50/50 if you can get it out without trouble. If you're moving you can completely forget about trying to grab anything off your body/belt. When the game doesnt respond in the manner you want it to when your money is on the line it sucks all the fun out of the game.

3) The font on the book is extremely small and VERY hard to read in VR. This combined with the aforementioned performance issues make this game damn near unplayable. combine this with the poor hand controls and this game has one of the worst VR experiences I've ever played.

Its extremely depressing to see this game slide from a very good VR experience to absolutely awful. I want to see this game flourish, I want to come back to this game, but I cant, not with these issues.

I'm going to leave my previous review so you know what the game was prior.
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The ONLY game I've ever bought where I feel like I've not only gotten the full value of the game, but even more! This game NAILS atmosphere, and perfects terror to a new degree! I would happily pay $25 for this game! Granted, I've only experienced this game in VR, so I dont quite know how this holds up in desktop, but the vr experience is unlike anything I've ever seen! If you've seen this online and are skeptical about it due to popularity, I highly suggest putting that to the side and picking it up for yourself!

my only gripe with the game is the controls are really jank, like REALLY jank. The hands dont quite line up with your irl ones, and theres no finger tracking, plus the grabbing system needs a lot of work, However, once you get used to the jank controlers, they're easy to work around.

Update:
1) This is really only applicable to the VR version of the game, but they redid the holding animations of one of the flashlights to a reverse grip. This is fine in desktop but in VR its very disorienting considering if you reverse gripped it the light beam goes behind you, and there isnt a way to adjust your grip ingame.
3) The book used to research ghosts types got an update, and while it looks fantastic, it is VERY hard to read and use while in VR. The small text make it almost impossible to read. I liked the old book more, at very least please make the text bigger.

To the devs:

I loved your game when it first came out, but for all the points listed above I haven't been able to enjoy the game as much as I once had. Moving forward please keep the VR community in mind. We are a minority at this point, but we are still here. I don't care about new ghosts or new maps, so long as the experience is polished.