Recent reviews by Durandal

If you've ever played Project Zomboid and wished it was a little less hardcore and gave you more opportunities to simply run and gun zombies, while still being forced to grapple with aspects of looting and supply management, TLSA is just what you're looking for. And I mean that comparison as very high praise.

After the initial slow-ish burn of getting yourself familiar with the mechanics and investing into the meta-progression system, it becomes a very easy game to pick up and play - be it for 10 minutes or several hours. Your game saves between levels (please take notes, Risk of Rain) so if you only have a tiny bit of time, you can just blaze through a level picking up the bare minimum and then moving on. Or if you have more time, run around, loot the whole place, and spend several minutes debating what to make at the crafting table.

The only thing holding it back as far as I'm concerned is the lack of polish in places. This is especially true when it comes to level geometry - loot containers will spawn in inaccessible places, enemies can be impossible to shoot due to being above or below you (and there being no way to change vertical aim other than crouching), and worst of all in some cases you can softlock yourself by getting stuck in certain places. Luckily the last one can be fixed by simply quitting to menu and resuming, which will put you right back at the start of the level, but it's frustrating nonetheless. Unfortunately the developer has stopped working on the game so what you see is what you get.

Overall - fun time waster. Gets the adrenaline pumping when I want zombie action without the stress or time commitment of Zomboid.

One of my favourite poems of all time is "The Tiger" by a 6-year-old boy named Nael. It has a visceral, energetic joy that almost no other poetry can replicate:

"The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out"

Now what the hell does this have to do with Ape Out?

You are a gorilla. You destroyed your cage. And now you are out.

It's a game where you shoot aliens in space, but also so much more. The story can be very easily ignored but somehow the writing, conceptual depth, and just sheer interconnectedness of it all beats 99% of games developed with 777 times the budget

I've based my entire personality around this boomer shooter from 1994 and I don't regret a single minute.

I'm not eloquent enough to do Signalis justice, and that's why it took me forever to finally decide to do this review, but I will try to explain what it means to me:

There are three games that haunt me and will stick with me forever. The first of them (as you can see by my avatar) is Marathon. The second is SOMA.

Now, I've found the third. Signalis has sunk its red, avian claws into my brain and I have a feeling it will not let go for a very long time.

This game is truly a weird cookie, but I say that with a lot of love and fascination.

The fundamental gameplay of containing and fighting an infection is unique and engaging; whether you're an RTS micro god or want a more relaxed, almost roleplay-like experience, once you get some basic concepts down and fiddle with the settings the game gives you a lot of freedom to mess around and play as you'd like. There's a challenging and cathartic progression in each playthrough: you start out with one helicopter full of soldiers and are locked in a desperate race against time to prevent the zombie virus from spreading too far. Once you've established preliminary containment, your defenses will be tested endlessly by ever stronger zombies and mutants; as you kill them you research the means to kill them more efficiently; and eventually you become strong enough to bite back and claw back the city, block by block, from the undead. The replayability isn't quite there yet beyond a couple of maps and a couple of modes, but at this stage I think it's important to just get the basic systems down and functioning.

The fundamental gameplay being this good is really important, because beyond that the game is rough around the edges. There's barely any tutorial and the wiki is wildly outdated, so even figuring out basic mechanics is an uphill fight; strange and buggy behaviour from units (e.g. pathfinding issues, units failing to shoot, etc.) is a fact of life; the UI can be byzantine or outright broken. (On a subjective note, pay attention to the system requirements - I'm running a 1060 3GB and the game is playable but at pretty low framerates when zoomed out. I've seen plenty of gameplay videos that run smoothly, so I acknowledge this is probably more a fault of my dinosaur graphics card than missing optimisation, but just something to be aware of before buying.)

Here's the thing though - I've been burned by spending money on Early Access games before so I think it's important to have some realistic ideas about who is making the game. From what I can tell, this ridiculously ambitious game is being developed by five people who collaborate over Discord. I was initially suspicious about buying Cepheus Protocol because I could find basically zero information on who the developers were or what experience they have. But having played through the game a few hours and lurked through their discord, I can feel the genuine passion and will-to-succeed oozing through. Updates are constant, occasionally minor iterations, occasionally major overhauls.

This game might end up in a Zomboid situation where only my grandkids ever get to play the finished-finished product, but even in this rough early state Cepheus Protocol is an experience unlike any other, and I find a certain joy in knowing that a few people can go balls to the wall making what is obviously their dream game. Considering how many AAA games are just as frustrating and issue-laden, but lack any creative soul and cost three times as much, I think this is a fair value proposition for 20 Euros. Consider it an investment into a game that will be better tomorrow than it is today.

TL;DR This is like a meal made by your grandmother in an economic recession. There's not a lot of meat on the bones, but what there is is delicious and made with love. You just have to accept biting into a bit of cartilage occasionally.

TL;DR it's the original Risk of Rain with a new coat of paint and some fresh touches to improve the experience.

+ If you're totally new to the series, the game is really easy to get into but offers a lot of replayability. Great for whiling away several hours on or playing in short bursts (if you don't mind quitting runs partway - see my last negative point)
+ If you enjoyed RoR1, the gameplay experience as a whole is very faithful to the original but with some very welcome additions and quality-of-life improvements, such as the ability for all characters to shoot while moving, and removing the need to kill all enemies before teleporting to the next stage. If you really miss old RoR1 mechanics there's even a setting to turn off some or all of the new features.
+ Additions from RoR2, such as unlockable alternate abilities, new items, and character skins are well integrated
+ RoR1 enemies always felt a bit too spongy so you spent a lot of time running away without achieving much, while RoR2 enemies were relatively weaker in health but could one shot you very easily. RoRR feels like a healthy balance.
+ New sliders, independent of the difficulty settings, to customise how much damage you deal to enemies and how much they deal to you. More customisability is always a plus!
+ The soundtrack is as great as it was in RoR1, though to be perfectly honest with you I can't hear any difference between the remastered and original tracks. The brand new tracks in the RoRR album are very nice but I've yet to see if they appear ingame anywhere.

I do have some relatively minor bones to pick, though:

- Both the in-game and menu UIs are really small even at the highest setting (2x). It's not unplayable but a bit annoying, especially since RoR1 had a better range of UI scaling options available.
- The feature to shoot while moving is sometimes a bit finicky; there can be some weirdness when switching directions.
- Third game in the series, still no save feature! This is especially annoying because it feels like RoRR would be a perfect game to play for half an hour on a lunch break, except you still have to commit to the full length of a run unless you want to quit in the middle (frustrating). Feels like a missed opportunity for an easy quality of life feature.

All in all for 15 euros I think it's a solid experience and outright better than RoR1. I will update this review as new thoughts develop, especially on the multiplayer experience.

On it's own, the game is alright. But coming straight from Dead Space 2 it was a huge disappointment. I genuinely can't think of anything I prefer in this game compared to its predecessors.

The characters are flat and boring. The story is often nonsensical. The visual design of the world, characters, and UI step away from the unique qualities of previous entries and into more generic sci-fi fare that's supremely boring. Worst of all, core systems of the previous games' combat loop are gone: no more ammo management, no more picking between situational weapons, now you have universal ammo and a custom weapon system that feels both tedious to interact with and completely throws the balance of the game out of whack.

And as a final subjective point, the game is just not scary at all, and I consider that a downside. I didn't find Dead Space 1 particularly scary, but Dead Space 2 was masterful in its use of tension and anxiety, with enough action set pieces to shake things up but not to completely dissolve that sense of unease. 3 just leans completely into the action and lets you dissolve any residual terror by building a stasis chain gun that trivialises all combat.

If you're like me and just want to finish the story to have it done with, it might be worth suffering through. Otherwise, you can very safely skip it.

Firewatch is, I think, less a video game in the traditional sense and more an interactive movie. It's a journey you take for a few hours (4 in my case) and then walk away satisfied, probably never to return - but definitely to remember.. Sure, your actual *choices* are limited beyond mostly cosmetic dialogue changes; but Firewatch brings with it an incredible amount of production value, gorgeous graphics, and hands down the best voice acting I have ever heard in a video game.

The highlight, though, is definitely the story, which is much deeper and more emotionally charged than I expected. Go in as blind as possible, and I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

I think the best way to describe DOTO is as the Rogue One of the Dishonored series: a standalone entry that basically obliges you to have already played the other games to fully appreciate, but one that brings its own unique quirks to the series and is generally a whale of a time. As such, I'm gonna primarily compare this DLC to Dishonored 2 itself:

Gameplay-wise, there are a number of simplifications: there are no more potions to restore ability energy, but it regenerates on its own at a very generous rate. Billie has a smaller roster of abilities than either Corvo or Emily did, and those abilities generally don't bring anything super new, but they feel very well balanced and fun to use. If you're really itching for Domino to come back, there's a small consolation: once you beat the campaign once, in Original Game+ you can play with the original void powers from DH2.

One key change, which may be a positive or a negative depending on your outlook, is the near-total removal of the chaos system from the game; you can murder and maim with absolute impunity, and as far as I'm aware the only impact it has is that more guards will appear in missions. There are only two endings, based on very clearly signposted choices you make in the final stretch of the game. While this removes some of the mystery from seeing how your actions affect the world around you, it also frees you up to play the game as brutally as you want without fear of a bad ending or even more difficult gameplay.

The story is relatively straightforward, to the point of being quite predictable, but still very enjoyable; Billie Lurk is my favourite of all the Dishonored protagonists we've had so far, striking a perfect balance between gruff professionalism and haunted remorse. I found it much easier to get emotionally invested in her as a character and her story as a whole, and her relationship with Daud is a high point in the game's writing.

All in all, DOTO was a really fun experience, and hopefully not the last one we get of the Dishonored series. It's a bit too expensive at full price, imo, but absolutely pick it up on sale.

Other reviews will tell you more about what Ground Branch is, but I want to tell you what it feels like to play Ground Branch.

Ground Branch scratches a very unique itch - one for a slow, methodical, tactical shooter that at the same time feels... oddly relaxing. Let me explain:

A lot of games that emphasize realism also feel like big commitments. When you play a game of, say, Squad or ARMA, you're not just playing a fun game - you're also learning lots of complicated mechanics and killing a lot of downtime between the exciting and tense engagements. This can be really fun and rewarding, but it undeniably takes up a lot of time; in a single game of Squad you might only get into half a dozen real engagements in the space of a 90 minute round. And you may not always feel like waiting that long for the good stuff.

What Ground Branch does so well is distilling the essence of what makes realistic games like that fun, and compressing it into little bite-sized chunks of action. There's no faffing around with travel, logistics, or waiting around at firebases; rounds can theoretically take up to an hour but will usually last no more than fifteen minutes. There are some very engaging "realism" mechanics to play around with, such as weapon stances, weapon customization, gear customization, and so on, but all of it is incredibly intuitive and easy to learn and there isn't a particularly steep metagame, so no spending hours looking over guides trying to git gud. If you die (which will happen a lot), respawns are quick and you'll be back in action within minutes. All this builds up to a game that feels tense, because it's difficult and dangerous, but not stressful, because the stakes are pretty low and you don't have to be laser focused to play well.

With that kind of design, you can treat the game as seriously or casually as you want - you could choose to spend 6 hours crafting optimal loadouts for every possible engagement you might get into, or you can put three laser sights and a 6x scope on an MP7 and go wild.

From what experience I have of the multiplayer, the community definitely adds to this effect. I initially expected that servers would be full of really dedicated milsimmers, but people are, by and large, really chill and willing to accommodate new players. Nobody's gonna yell at you about your radio callouts being in bad syntax, or how your camo looks totally unrealistic; everyone' just there for a good time, and it's truly beautiful to watch a bunch of perfect strangers coordinate to clear a map with good communication and coordination.

In short? If you want a game that plays like a milsim but lets you unwind a little, pick up Ground Branch. You won't be disappointed.