Recent reviews by A. A. Grimm <3

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Combat is fine, driving is boring, UI gives me a headache.

Imagine Blood Omen as an open world survival game. I'm absolutely addicted to it!

Honestly I prefer this over the original Half-Life. Half-Life is a fantastic game and I have a lot of good memories of watching my dad play it when I was a little kid, but this version just feels better to me. I love the visuals, music, sound design, and improved gameplay (all of this especially for Xen). It honestly makes it hard to go back to the original lol.

I do wish they didn't cut most of On A Rail though. I get that a lot of people don't like that chapter, but people say the same thing for Residue Processing and they kept that in. I know the mod On A Rail Uncut is a thing, but it just doesn't feel right to have an entire chunk of the game removed like that. Besides, I like seeing all the HECU soldiers fighting aliens throughout the chapter and I really don't mind riding the carts around for a bit. I think it's a nice change of pace.

Other than that this game is pretty much perfect. It's definitely worth buying!

Everyone: "NOOOOO YOU CAN'T HAVE THE FLASHLIGHT BE ITS OWN WEAPON! IT'S TOO DARK TO SHOOT WITHOUT IT!!!"

Me: "Haha flashlight go bonk"

If you liked Psychonauts you'll probably like this too. The gameplay is pretty similar, but with a new set of mechanics and abilities. Not to mention an entirely new story to experience. It's pretty good I'd say. :)

I absolutely loved it! It's just the "mindless" shooter I needed after dumping over 200 hours into Doom Eternal (a lady needs a break from the equipment juggling, you know?). A lot of people were disappointed with how the legion system turned out, but tbh I don't think the game even needed it. After playing the other main entries in the series I honestly think this is the most intense and monster-packed Serious Sam game so far. Even with the dual wielding and room-clearing gadgets I still get overwhelmed in some parts, and I was playing on normal. The enemies in the 100,000 enemies in the legion system hoard DO actually shoot at you and you can kill each other, so they're not really ghosts like some people say. It's just that you have an army yourself to help take most of that fire off of you. I'm glad thats the case too since I was worried the game was gonna be a real pain with the legion system. the thought of fighting 100,000 enemies at once by myself sounds like a real slog and not fun at all, even with the mech. Sorry but I'd take 2 armies of soldiers blasting each other over 100,000 kleers and werebulls any day.

Speaking of dual wielding, they handled having 2 different guns at once really well. You just pick what you want for each hand with the left and right mouse buttons from a single weapon wheel. It's a lot less clunky than in Wolfenstein 2 where you had two weapon wheels individually. The skill tree was pretty simple too. There's only a handful of upgrades and it's either for weapon handling or melee stuff. I opted for the weapon ones mostly since melee isn't really my style for hoard shooters like this, but there are some cool melee upgrades too if you want them. Weapon mods are kept simple too, no need to switch between two of them like in Doom Eternal, they each just get 1 useful alt-fire like the scatter bombs for the grenade launcher (my favorite).

The graphics are pretty good too, I don't get why a lot of people hate it so much. Yeah It's nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it's a lot better than Serious Sam 3 lol. And the sense of scale is really where the visuals shine the brightest imo. I'm aware that it does use some assets from The Talos Principle, but I really don't mind that they did that. It works for what they wanted to do with it and it's their assets anyway so they can do what they want with it. Lots of other games have asset flipped some too, like Portal uses some assets from Half-Life 2 but nobody complained about that. The animations are good too, except the human characters look a bit stiff since they're motion captured. They don't have good lip syncing either, but they literally animated the faces using an iPhone so I'm not surprised by that lol. The weapons and monsters are animated really well tho, which is good since they're the real stars of the show.

The characters and dialogue is about as campy as you'd expect from a Serious Sam game. Some of the cutscenes remind me of Serious Sam 2 with how goofy it gets. I never took the series seriously so I don't mind this at all, it just adds to the fun for me. The story is definitely there too, but it's not that important. It's so unimportant in fact that you can just skip all the cutscenes and still know whats basically going on: you're saving the earth from an alien invasion by mowing them down like a lawnmower on legs.

My only issue with the game is performance (especially during the cutscenes which have a noticeably slow pop in whenever the camera angle abruptly changes). I haven't had too many performance issues personally, but since a lot of other people have it worse I really think it can be optimized better overall.

In the end it's as much of a Serious Sam game as the others, but with a few bells and whistles tossed in for fun. I'd recommend checking it out sometime, tho I'd understand if you'd rather wait for some stuff to get patched first before buying. There's a couple updates out already and probably more to come, so I'm really glad they're working on it.

Oh and the music is beautiful too. Damjan Mravunac did an excellent job with it. It's nice to have some orchestral music thats actually good in a game for once lol.

Imagine a very simple little Roguelike thats like Wolfenstein 3D but with Doom 64's atmosphere. I thought it was pretty good and worth checking out.

I'm glad they did something new with Quake champions instead of just recycling the same 20 year old mechanics again. It keeps the series fresh and interesting and it's a lot of fun! The new character abilities really spices things up and makes the game much more interesting to play than previous Quake games imo.

The only issue I have is that I'm apparently in the minority with how I feel about the game. It seems like most Quake fans just want Quake 3 over and over and over again but with better graphics. Because of that hardly anyone plays it now and it takes forever to get into a match.

I know there's loot boxes and a battle pass and all that other stuff, but you can completely ignore that stuff since most of it doesn't effect the gameplay at all. The only thing that does is the Champion Pack, which unlocks all playable characters. You can unlock them all for like $20, which to me is basically just buying the game like any other. You don't even need to pay for them if you don't want to, you can just unlock them individually with the shards you earn by just playing the game. Since the game is fun to play, it never felt like a grind to me.

Quake Champions is fun and most complains I've heard about it are superficial. If you want Quake 3, go play Quake 3. If you want something new, play this. :)

Doom Eternal is smart, challenging, fast paced, and tons of fun! Weapons are fun to use, demons are fun to fight, and levels are fun to explore and the whole thing just looks gorgeous.

It's surprising how much Doom Eternal's gameplay differs from Doom 2016. Here's some important things you need to know:

1. Ammo capacity is low, but it's not necessarily a bad thing like some people say! Resource management is very important and you need to be smart with your gunplay. Every weapon has a purpose and every enemy has a weakness you can exploit. If you do run out of ammo, don't panic! The chainsaw always recharges 1 unit of fuel so you can shred through one of the fodder demons to replenish ammo.

2. The marauder is no joke! He takes a lot more effort to take down than most other demons. Try to stay at medium range to avoid his close range shotgun blast and long range axe throw. However at very long range he may charge at you with an axe swing, giving you an opportunity to get a hit or two in before his shield goes up. Otherwise his eyes flash green when vulnerable. I suggest using a super shotgun/ballista combo when striking him for maximum damage. It's possible, but difficult, to also stunlock him with that combo, but this may take a lot of practice to get the timing just right. He takes a lot of practice to master in general and it's best to clear out the other demons before confronting him.

3. Exploration is a must! There are tons of upgrades you can earn from finding various items, such as suit tokens and Sentinel crystals. The more upgrades you can get early on, the stronger you'll be sooner. You may start of a little weak, but as you upgrade your gear and practice the game's mechanics, you'll get stronger and more skilled at playing the game (an obvious statement, but very much applies here).

4. Adjust the difficulty to your liking and don't be ashamed if you prefer playing on lower settings. Difficulty scaling has been designed to give players of all skill types a comfortable experience without sacrificing combat flow. You'll learn the same skills on I'm Too Young To Die that you would on Nightmare.

5. All levels can be revisited upon completion. Sometimes you'll find cheat codes with give you special modifiers you can use while revisiting previous levels. Cheats will not stop your progression either, so you'll still be able to find missed secrets and complete challenges with them on.

I know that seems like a lot, and there's way more to the game than that, but don't worry. You'll get the hang of it after awhile. The game is a lot of fun to play so practicing shouldn't feel like a chore as it is in some other games. Just do your best and have fun with it!