Recent reviews by COMRADE KIWI

No Man's Sky has had a long and oftentimes confusing journey, but it's somehow managed to stick the landing at long last - relaxing, immersive, and just a good zen game to zone out with.

Whilst it's not a game for everyone, it does make me incredibly happy to say that, if you like this style of game, you will love it.

An incredibly relaxing game, one sorely needed for a year like this. Love it!

Umurangi Generation is one those unique games that stands tallest, even amidst industry giants - at once perfectly accessible, heartfelt and engaging, this is a title that should be on everyone's list of games to try.

It is refreshing to have a game that asks you to care and observe your surroundings, taking in the sights, framing the shot, and absorbing the story - with this title having released within the context of Covid-19, rampant inequality, despotic and apathetic governments, and the ever looming climate crisis, Umurangi Generation feels like an emotional outlet.
The game does a superb job of handing over total creative expression to the player, drip-feeding tools and techniques as they progress - one level might see you getting to grips with a standard kit lens, before handing you another lens or editing function in the next. It feels perfectly paced and in harmony with the confidence and ability of the player.

Although one might be able to beat the game within a few hours, it feels as if it could be endlessly replayable, especially with the new tools the player unlocks throughout - as the credits rolled, I felt ready to jump back in, to capture new sights and imagery, and to let more story details wash over me.

In these times, I feel this game should be an essential pick - creative expression within a safe space, a sense of camaraderie, and a critique of those who have collectively failed us. This game serves not only as an outlet for its creators, but potentially for all of us.

(Note that, as of writing (6/12/16), this mod is in Beta. It should be made clear that much of what I bring up in my review could be fixed. Please bear that in mind)


As a mod, it is hard to ignore the level of quality, effort and care that went into designing various parts of this mod. While I commend the developers for such an ambitious title, it is let down by too many issues which detract from this ambition. Despite this, for all it's faults, the mod bears a huge amount of potential and I am sure the clearly very talented development team will continue to refine this mod.


For the sake of easy reading and formatting, I'll be breaking this down into a list (SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW):

• Level Design
  
  The levels rely heavily on tighlty knit corridors, occasionally requiring you to find alternative means to bypass a locked door before looping back on itself. While this is sounds good on paper, it's execution leads a lot to be desired. Rather than an engaging side-objective which would allow you to become more knowledgable of the area, it comes across as busy work, bringing the game to a halt as you find the very clearly sign-posted routes around said obstacles. In a few instances, these obstacles should not have logically halted my progress, instead using invisible walls to ensure I could not jump over a table or crouch through a window. It's not helped by the fact that, up until the last portion of the currently avaliable build, everything looks very similar. While it tries to introduce some visual variety, by including offices and a large sewer-like facility, it ends up doubling back on the drab, metallic corridor look. The level of clutter found in these levels is certainly impressive, trying to attribute any logic to as to how much of it got there begins to dissamble the narrative potential of the scenes. It's unfortunate that, as well designed as the levels were on a technical level, they did not come across as convincing places either, further not being helped by the speedy pacing; rushing you past potentially interesting changes in the environment, having barely scrapped the gameplay potential from each, brings down the experience.
  
  The levels also rely highly on 'Gotcha' moments; enemies spawning when our backs our turned or after a certain action without any clear signposting lead to what felt like very unfair moments where I lost a considerable amount of health. These moments happen at an exceedingly high frequency, with barely any down time between them. A lot of these, like the invisible walls mentioned earlier, defy logic. While certain Xenian creatures can teleport in, others just appear out of thin air, such as a Bullsquid positioned around the corner of some stairs and a Zombie at the top of a ladder near the start of the mod. A large problem arises when HECU units are brought into the mix. While two encounters work very well with the level design, one in partiuclar suffers from being in a narrow corridor, a door that closes far too quickly and no cover for the player. Being surrounded by 6 enemies that are all hitscan, can throw grenades AND do a high damage output results in a lot of running back and forth, wildly spraying with low-damage weapons and then ducking back into cover before I get a grenade thrown my way.
  
  
• AI
  
  The AI functions well, but it's clear some serious tweaking will need to be done. As it stands, the Xenian enemies require the most tweaking, as 2 mostly function, 2 have some noticable flaws and the other might as well just be broken. The Bullsquid and Vortigaunt work the best, so I won't be covering their flaws in this section. What does need mentioning is the Houndeye's lack of respect for walls and how it's attack can cause high damage through solid walls at a very large distance. Coupled with this, the Houndeye has a larger healthpool than expected, which can cause some frantic clicking as you realise that, yes, it did just take a shotgun blast point-blank and shrugged it off. The controller, from a glance, looks like it could have just come out of early development. It skids around at high speeds, with complete disregard for friction. Unfinished or unchanged particle effects further bring down the quality of the model and animations used.
  
  
• Pacing
  
  The current release contains about an hour of gameplay, depending on difficulty. During this time, you will experience:
  
  Starting the day at home (a cool moment that goes underutilised, I feel), the commute to work (an overly long, non-interactive introduction sequence that jerks along due to the way the car is programmed), walking around work before something happens (gives you a good chance to marvel at the recycled Citizen faces and voicelines from HL2), the Resonance Cascade (and by that I mean you walk into a room and it goes boom, before being abruptly and incoherently teleported to Xen), the very sudden introduction of the HECU forces, reaching the surface before then heading back into an elevator to finish the mod.
  
  Phew. So, a lot clearly happens. Forget quiet time, foreshadowing or any amount of build-up to any of these events, they come quick and fast. The introduction of the HECU, for example, caught me by complete surprise, as I had barely even started playing! Compared to the first Half-Life, while it means getting to the action quicker, the overall experience suffers due to this fast pacing.

While those are the major issues, many smaller problems are present as well:

• Weapons in general lack any punch or recoil. The shotgun, for example, despite it's chunky sound effects, has low damage output coupled with no recoil, making it very underwhelming.
  
• Vortigaunts are insanely accurate, even sometimes picking up targets through objects and walls. This may be an issue with the original HL2 AI, but it's worth noting nonetheless.
  
• HECU grunts do not take advantage of open spaces, refusing to flank or take cover. Again, most likely an issue that comes from having adopted Combine Soldier AI from HL2
  
• Zombies seem to be placed in abundance in very bizarre locations. How did 3 of them get under the floorboards exactly?
  
• The use of default faces, animations and AI from HL2 bring the quality of the mod down.
  
• Alien Grunts have a very low fire-rate and health pool.
  
• Animations across the board could do with some refinement.

I hope that, to anyone reading, these give an idea of the problems that the mod has. While I would not currently recommend it, the segment of the mod that is avaliable is so short that it might be worth downloading and playing regardless. If anything, this mod is a highly impressive attempt to create a unique take on the events in HL1. While it fails to hit the mark, the developers should be commended for their work and their obvious talents and I hope that they continue to develop this mod to a higher level of quality.

(I won't be touching on the poor performance or the dodgy port in this review. At time of writing, several new patches have come out, hopefully rectifying the most egregious of issues)

Dishonoured 2 is a fantastic follow-up, improving on almost everything the original game did. It does this by refining the mechanics, introducing new abilities, making the AI more responsive and aware and having the most well thought out levels in a game since, I dare say, the original Thief games.

No spoilers, but trust me when I say this game is worth every penny.

Only bad thing about it is that it ends

Yet to finish the game, but what I played was fantastic.

Pleasing aesthetics, powerful imagery, an incredibly soundtrack and an interesting story (so far!) to boot.

Certainly worth your time if you can afford it.

This game lied to me. This isn't a religious rowing simulator at all