Recent reviews by Obi

This game got me back into gaming again. A neck injury made it extremely uncomfortable for me to sit at the computer for a couple years. I had to pretty much stop all my computer hobbies. It was pretty depressing at the time to be honest. Even after things healed up enough to be tolerable, it was hard to get the momentum to try stuff again. But I loved Divinity Original Sin. And I had just started playing DnD with some friends, so I had some hype over that. I figured, let’s give it a shot.

Wow, I'm glad that I did! This game has been great. All the characters are very memorable, and the voice acting is excellent. Even party members I didn't think I would like turned out to be layered and interesting. Most of the side quests were worth doing just for the story. I was surprised how some of the side quest NPCs evolved over the course of the game. They have their own stories that parallel yours. It really keeps you invested, and helps you feel like your choices are important.

I do have to say that the game is pretty horny though. Nearly every single party member wanted to do it, and also some NPCs. I don't mind that it's there. But, that's just not my thing, ya know. I do really enjoy the romancing scenes though. Some of them are very sweet. Wyll in particular is just adorable. For asexual peeps, I recommend turning nudity off in the settings. Sex "happens" but it just instantly fades to black. But you still get to experience the romance parts.

As far as gameplay goes, I enjoyed it. I would have liked some better tutorials though. Since I'm new to DnD systems, I had to break out my PHB to look up things quite a lot at first. The encounters are all pre-designed, so they are interesting. Sometimes they can be pretty hard though, to the point that they feel more like a puzzle to solve. For example, there are often ambushes where my 'face' character will just get destroyed. So I have to reload and reposition my characters, or make sure I have certain counter spells equipped. It's very fun, but I don't know how you are expected to win some of these without reloading.

Overall, I really really liked this game. It's one of my favorites in years. Not that that's saying much. Hehe. I look forward to replaying it several more times. Give it a shot if you're at all into roleplaying stuff. You can always refund. Just don't spend an hour in character creation like I did.

Monster Hunter World has a lot of the downsides of MMOs. You have to put in a bunch of work to stay at the same rank as your friends if you wanna have fun together. And the gameplay is a repetitive loop of grinding the same monster over and over to get mats. With side quests that are literally kill X monsters or collect x berries. At the same time it is missing the upsides of MMOs like a living world filled with an online community. Or interesting story based quests.

The world is very pretty though! Just looking around gives me a sense of wonder. It's so atmosphereic. And the monster designs are amazing with great animation! The way they act during combat was lifelike enough that I was really feeling bad killing them. The way they interact with you and other monsters leads to really epic moments that can happen during some fights, it almost feels hand crafted.

Unfortunately CAPCOM really let down all this amazing design with a lackluster buggy port. Performance is terrible. Their antialiasing solution actively hurts the game, somehow leaving everything jaggy and blurry at the same time. Anisotropic filtering straight up doesn't work correctly. (Disable it ingame and force it in your video card drivers for proper filtering). A broken mip-maping solution leaves the game with worse textures than the console version. And if you can finally nag a friend enough to get them to play with you, the game is riddled with constant disconnection issues.

That last one is really the biggest hurt out of all of them. The game is by far the most fun when you are playing with friends. It feels like you are going on an adventure together! There's the teamwork of the hunt, watching each other do epic moves, or just goofing around. It's some of the most fun I've had in a game this year. And helped me see why Monster Hunter is so popular. But then, when you cant do that anymore, you are just left with the singleplayer. Which is grinding, repetitive gameplay. And a dull story that I wanna skip through as quick as possible.

The only way I can really reccomend this game right now is if you have friend or two willing to play with you through all the disconnects and performance problems. And if you have the time to put in to keep up with each other's ranks. It can be a great bit of fun with a little jolly co-operation! But if you dont feel like chasing those great moments, there are so many better single player games.

Most people describe this game as a metroidvania. It's one of the more popular tags for it and the main reason I bought it. Ghost 1.0 really isn't a metroidvania game though. It's more like a linear level based platformer. Sure all the areas are connected, but besides teleporting back to shops there's no real reason to return. The typical game loop goes:

1. unlock area
   
2. collect 5 keys to unlock the next area
   
3. fight boss
   
4. repeat

There are some movement upgrades you can unlock in your skill tree, but they dont really allow access to any new areas or items, and aren't necessary to progress. Most weapons and upgrades are bought in shops.

There are secrets in Ghost, quite a lot actually, almost every room has one. The process to make each secret appear is pretty random though, and there's never environment hints on what to do. Some of the kinds of things you have to do are:

• Jump in a certain spot
  
• Possess a specific enemy
  
• Kill all enemies
  
• Open and close the menu
  
• Shoot a random spot on the wall
  
• Hover in a random spot in ghost mode

It gets pretty tedious doing this for every room. And the rewards are usually only some money or a weak healing item.

So Ghost 1.0 doesn't really check the metroidvania boxes for me. How is it as a platformer? For the most part pretty good! The movement is precise. The boss fights are fun. There's lots of different weapons you can buy, so there should be something that fits your playstyle. Although they are kinda expensive to buy and upgrade, so it's likely you wont wanna give up your earlier fully upgraded weapons.

The story is good, if a little predictable. The graphics are nice, and they have fun little 90's style cut scenes. This fits really well with the cheesy(but enjoyable) voice acting.

So why dont I recommend this game? Two reasons:

One, the developers like to troll the player. Some boxes drop bombs instead of money. Deaths are often used as a way to teach a concept or just for "fun". One particularly annoying example A boss that dive bombs and kills the player after it's defeated. Every time you die you lose ALL your money (and items depending on difficulty). This is so frustrating because a lot of your upgrades have to be bought in shops. Try and spend your cash early and often, but some things are expensive so you have to save for them.

Two, The lab area. About halfway through the game your fun shooty-jumpy game is replaced with a puzzle section requiring super precise timing and movements. BTW make any mistakes you die! Start over from the beginning! Most times you can possess other robots, but some of the puzzles you have to do yourself. So you die, lose all your money, have to walk aaaaaaallll the way back from the last save room. I almost quit when this was reintroduced near the end of the game. Fortunately that section has an option to completely skip from the game menu. (So they knew it was bad enough that there is a skip option, but still left it in the game?)

If you're a platformer-shooter fan you might like this game. But if you're looking for a metroidvania, I recommend something like Axiom Verge instead.

A fun experience with a pretty great sense of humor. It hit some parts of my brain that games haven't tickled in awhile. It's short, but I don't know that I wish it was too much longer. There was just enough here so that it ended before it got overdone. Really, I just wish more games like this were made.

Overall I got a very nice evening out of The Stanley Parable. If you think that's worth the current price, then give it shot!!!