Recent reviews by Sanakan

Asinine balance patch simulator.

After tinkering around with 1.0:

The Good:
Essentially everything but balance.

• Friendly AI are good 95% of the time. They do what you tell them, and they do it well. Their animations and actions are logical and they act surprisingly well with only some guidance from the player. They feel like they're doing things step-by-step and methodically.
  
• Gunplay is excellent.
  
• Good amount of tools that allow for several play styles and approaches to missions.
  
• Plenty of weapons to choose from.
  
• Atmosphere and environmental storytelling is exceptional. Sometimes overdone, but it gets the message across.
  
• Sound design is likewise excellent.

The Bad:
A lot of stuff involving balance.

• Friendly AI are a little too good at putting suspects 6 feet under. You can't get them to surrender if they're dead.
  
• You have no control over the environment. There is no way to cut a building's power, or to access a building's security systems/camera feeds. You are given ZERO intelligence updates as the mission progresses.
  
• Likewise, enemy AI is INSANE. Every meth addict and gang banger in Los Sueños was trained by John Wick himself. They can see and shoot through walls, can run and shoot with near perfect accuracy, and in general feel more like special forces than lowly criminals or security guards.
  
• Enemy AI will not surrender. You can shoot them until they stagger - and they will still fight. They will continue to fight until incapacitated or killed.
  
• The only surefire way to get suspect AI to surrender is to either gas them or shoot them with a beanbag gun. Even bullet wounds don't seem to encourage them to surrender. Oftentimes surrendering AI will attempt to kill you with a hidden weapon as you walk up to arrest them. It doesn't matter if you're pointing a gun at them while doing this - they'll try it anyways.
  
• AI have nerves of titanium and won't flinch or give up no matter how much overwhelming force you use. C2 breach a door, have AI flashbang it, and use your grenade launcher to shoot a second flash bang deeper into the room? Suspect AI doesn't care and will shoot the ♥♥♥♥ out of you the second that door isn't there. Suspect AI will watch you give 3 of their buddies express tickets to Hell and will not surrender. These do not feel like criminals, they feel like religious zealots ready to die for their cause.
  
• Weapon damage against suspects is all over the place. Nothing but a shotgun seems to one-hit-kill. Shooting an unarmored suspect with .300 BLK jacketed hollow point takes 3+ hits to kill.
  
• Suspects do not seem to hide or act as unpredictability as they used to. Now they will directly confront and combat the SWAT team, reducing the diversity of encounters players can have during missions.
  
• Suspects do not seem to care if their limbs have been shot, and continue to behave as if they have taken no damage.
  
• Night vision has no real purpose. Every AI is innately blessed with the gift of perfect night vision and can see without impediment in dark environments. Equipping NVGs only serves to put you on the same playing field as the NVG-less enemies.
  
• Your flashlight has no lighting spill and only illuminates a tiny spot in front of you. Weapon lights are immensely powerful and can easily illuminate an entire room in real life. It's comical how much they suck in this game.
  
• Maps tend to be medium sized at smallest, and absolutely huge at largest. You will clear complexes that would need 20+ SWAT officers with 5 men. The proof is in the duration of missions. Many will take 20-40 minutes to complete. Combine this with a platoon's worth of John Wick AI that WILL fight you to the death and the missions quickly become a drawn out, crawling gunfight form start to finish.
  
• While there are a lot of weapons, almost every SMG is useless due to its poor armor penetration and low damage, making rifles and shotguns the only truly viable lethal classes.
  
• Attachments are lacking. Namely canted sights and more magnified options.

Jokes aside, this is my first module in DCS and, at time of writing, the only plane I've ever flown in a proper flight simulator (War Thunder doesn't count). This puts me in a unique reviewing perspective as I have zero knowledge about how planes work inside the cockpit, everything I knew prior to the JF-17 is from an outside, third person perspective. I didn't know what INS, NWS, TWS, or SPI meant until about 15 hours ago.

So, what can a total greenhorn say about this plane?

The BIGGEST benefit of the JF, HANDS DOWN, is how EXTREMELY easy it is to interact with and understand what's going on. Three massive displays occupy the entire front of the cockpit. This is the feature that pushed me towards the JF as my cherry popper for flight sims. A very modern (for DCS) aircraft with a very modern user interface.

Enter navigation, dogfight, BVR or ground attack modes and the displays will automatically change to show what you need to see. Want to see your targeting pod while in dogfight mode? Press 2-3 digitally labeled buttons and it's there. It's amazing. Most of the time, operating this plane is more like using a (somewhat finicky) retro PC program, rather than an aircraft.

Flying the JF is comfortable enough, it feels small and nimble. I can't comment too much as I haven't tried other modules. I have managed to put it in an unrecoverable flatspin only once with the fly-by-wire system on. As a whole the plane behaves itself and handles well, like a modern aircraft should. It seems particularly difficult to stall so long as you're full afterburner, at near-stall speeds it sorta just flops around like a fish out of water. That said, it loses speed pretty fast if you pull hard, and while the acceleration isn't terrible, the plane struggles to build up a high top speed.

There are only 3 things I hold against the JF so far.

1. The feeling of a low top speed, even with lighter loads - it just feels as though the JF accelerates in a snap, then stops moments later. The speed problem obviously gets worse with more weight. The plane handles surprisingly well at low speeds, even while loaded, which is great because if you have to go more than 50+ NM and back, you probably will be flying at a meager pace of ~340 knots to conserve fuel.
   
2. Plyon space is extremely limited. "Multirole, not multimission" is exactly what the JF is. You have to pick what you're going to do and commit to it, there's just not enough space on the plane to effectively do 2 missions with 1 loadout. Basically every other jet can carry multiple JFs worth of bombs and missiles.
   
3. Poor fuel capacity. This fault is closely linked with the speed problem. At the right throttle the JF's legs feel long enough, even while fully laden; so long as you brought a tank with you. But your choice is to either go slower in an already slow-feeling aircraft, or melt through gas while going faster, but still slow by comparison to your competitors. At least when my buddies whine about their F-16s burning through fuel, they're going fast! Once you have no drop tanks you have to be VERY cautious about using higher throttle settings, you will chew through your miniscule internal tanks in less than 5 minutes

End verdict:
The JF is an incredibly simple plane to understand, once you get to the point where you're interacting with the displays. It was easier for me to learn how to program, deploy, and man-in-the-loop control cruise missiles from a data link pod than it was for me to learn how to cold start the JF and use the radio. The most difficult parts of this plane for me, as a fresh sim player, are the parts that are clearly inherited from older aircraft and their operation.

The good news? Once you leave the ground, 99% of your time will be on those glorious, easy-to-use displays. I have probably less than 20 hours of time in the JF's cockpit between Steam & Standalone, and at this point the only thing I feel I haven't learned how to do is dogfight, aerial refuel & BVR. Basic operation, flying, navigation and ground/sea attack I'm all very confident in, at this point.

This plane felt exceptionally simple and easy to pick up, and I highly recommend it for that quality, in addition to being a tiny, unique little airplane nobody's really heard of when stacked against MiG-, Su-, and F- planes.

Definitely one of the better gatcha games I've played.

Music and theme are excellent. Story is (thusfar) well above average for a gatcha game. If you're a fan of Project Moon's prior works (Lobotomy Corporation and/or Library of Ruina), you'll definitely get something out of this game. Artwork for characters is great, and matches their theme.

The actual gatcha system is generous (in comparison to its competition). There is a pity system built into the game, and additionally, certain high-rarity versions of characters can be completely earned and purchased through grinding shards (though this takes quite some time). I may be mistaken, but at this time I believe every 10 pull is guaranteed to return a version of a character, though it may be a duplicate.

Some boss fights and nodes can be EXTREMELY difficult if you do not bring the proper units, or if you do not pay attention to the attacks, passive and active abilities of enemies. You WILL NOT be able to easily "unga bunga" your way through the game unless you have multiple high-level, high tier characters. You will have to have some strategy. I will argue that players do require alternative versions of characters or support units to easily clear certain portions of the game - and it can be extremely difficult to do with the provided stock characters. Fortunately, by the time you reach this portion of the game, you should have enough currency to obtain several different versions of characters to make things easier.

Limbus Company's battle pass is almost too good to be true. If you do your dailies, you are (presently) guaranteed to complete the entire battle pass. This is ignoring the weekly and seasonal missions you will complete, effectively meaning you don't even have to do your dailies every day. The rewards are worth the cost, and the ease of obtaining them applies almost no pressure to the player. Using season 2 as an example, there are 60 levels. If I complete my dailies, I obtain 1 level. Season 2 lasts 133 days. Completely excluding weekly and seasonal missions you will complete along the way, I would only have to complete TWO levels every other day to max out the battle pass.

There's a few problems with the game. The UI outside of battle looks like a mobile game, and it functions well on a phone. That changes once you get into the battle itself. The UI is, at this point, clearly scaled for a PC monitor - and is difficult to utilize and read on a smaller phone screen.

Please let players zoom out on the mission select screen. Some chapters have 50+ levels spread all over an image, and the default zoom level makes it difficult to find the mission you're looking for.

> Be Team17
> Buy a game for $50 million
> Release a broken update with an incomplete and ahistorically equipped faction (Great Britain)
> Release a worse-than-gmod quality trailer

Turns out you can't buy passion

Leaving a negative review not only for the implementation of micro-transaction emotes, but for other reasons.
Namely:

It is (currently) IMPOSSIBLE to join a friend's game through Steam. You can not do it. If you want to play Squad with your friends, you have to manually find the server they're on and join it. Even though the option to "Join Game" is present on Steam, the integration doesn't work. This makes playing with friends colossal pain in the ass compared to other "big battle" style FPS games.

Game is good. If there was a half-way between positive and negative review on Steam, I would give the game that.

For the game to run properly & not break, I had to:

• Cap my framerate to 60fps in the NVIDIA control panel. Any higher will messed with the physics, I'm talking G-Mod bodies clipping into objects & G-Mod ragdoll.
  
• Disable VSYNC in game, enable VSYNC in the NVIDIA control panel (or comparable control panel).
  
• Download mouse acceleration disable from the PCGamingWiki[www.pcgamingwiki.com]. This won't completely fix the problem, mouse acceleration will still happen in areas where you're walking on surfaces covered with that organic material. Why? No idea.
  
• Manually assign a set amount of cores to the game using Process Lasso. Assigning 4 cores to the game worked for me. This game wouldn't even start for me on a 13900k, the game just doesn't know what to do with that many cores, even though it only uses 1 or 2 anyways.
  
• Run the game in compatibility mode for Windows 7 or Windows Vista. I personally used Windows 7.
  
• Completely delete the corrupt Electronic Arts/Dead Space save folder on my C: drive

I had to tinker with ALL of this, reading through NUMEROUS guides before I could play this game. This is not acceptable, and was a colossal pain in the ass.

Once you get all of this stuff fixed, you can finally enjoy a good single-player horror game with a decent amount of replayability and challenge in the harder modes. The combat is fun and, there's enough diversity in enemies and levels. The story is pretty good for what the game's subject matter is, and the atmosphere and art design are on point.

Getting the game up and running was a struggle.

There are only a handful of games I wish I refunded instead of continuing to play, hoping that it would get better. This is one of those games.

I don't mind challenging gameplay, but frustrating gameplay turns me off. Darkest Dungeon is brutally frustrating. Not for me.

I've played for 3.8 hours, but this is enough time to write a preliminary review the game.

Valhalla is a very simple 'game.' It's a visual novel with a bar-tending backdrop. The bar-tending mechanics are extremely simple. The hardest it will get is when a patron will give you a vague description of what they want, leaving it to the player to interpret what the correct drink is. There's no timer for making the drinks. You can fail as many times as it takes to get the right drink out. There is a money mechanic where Jill has to pay rent along with purchasing items stay happy, but I haven't run into any issues making money and staying above the poverty line.

The laurels of this game rest HEAVILY on the quality of the writing and characters, which thusfar, have been good. It's of particular note to me that unlike a lot of games where you experience the story first hand, in Valhalla the 'story' happens to other characters, who then bring the world and story to you. Jill (thusfar) doesn't interact with the world where things happen, she interacts with customers who show up to Valhalla and present their stories to her.

I'll update this review as I progress farther into the story, because the quality of this game rides so heavily on the story and characters it presents. All the characters I've met thusfar have been unique and well-written enough that you could show me a picture of them, and I could give you their name and bullet points on who they are and how they behaved.

They music is varied and pretty good as well. It suits the game's atmosphere & aesthetic.

Buckle up, this is a long review.
This game earned it.

I've been looking forward to Signalis for 2 years, ever since I stumbled across the announcement trailer by pure chance.
The game delivers on everything I was expecting from the trailer.

Perfectly serviceable with a mouse & keyboard. Unfortunately, keys can not be rebound at the time of this review. Aiming feels natural, and is extremely intuitive. Movement can feel a bit bulky, but Elster's movement speed and responsiveness overall seems about right for the game's combat pace.

Signalis receives full marks here. The level of polish and thought put into the cut scenes of this game is astounding. The symbolism, composition, colors, contrast, musical notes... the fluctuation between 2D stills, low-poly 3D scenes, and moving 2D images is impressive and works ridiculously well. The graphics of the actual gameworld are a clever mix of 2D & 3D assets, which leads to a timeless 2D style but with advantages 3D objects grant: namely, more realistic lighting and dynamic lighting/shadow effects. Firing a weapon in a dark room will cast dynamic light and shadows over the super-low-res 3D objects. I was very impressed when I first noticed this.

Another set of full marks. Signalis has a beautiful soundscape, utilizing a diverse spread of classical music (along with classical music remixes and sampling), industrial horror style tracks, and a plethora of tracks handcrafted for the game's visuals and set pieces. Chopin's Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15, better known as "Raindrop Prelude," hits immensely hard: as does the track during the game's end. The music fits the gorgeous visuals, greatly amplifying their effect.

Signalis takes a bit of a hit here. The overall gameplay loop is the expected of a classical survival horror: a relatively open map with enclosed areas only accessible through completion puzzles. The puzzles themselves are fine, but the larger problem is the combat: which is decent, but not exceptional. There are very few items to ensure enemies remain dead, and they can resurrect at random (and seemingly more often as the game progresses). There's weapon diversity: but the behavior of most of the weapons isn't substantial enough to justify using a specific weapon in a specific scenario. It's more of: "what weapon do I have ammo for," rather than: "this weapon would be best for this scenario." The low inventory space doesn't help with carrying the right weapon, much less using the right weapon for the scenario.

Enemies are rather simple, the overwhelming majority of them shambling and melee-based. Occasionally the game will throw a spanner at you with some sections utilizing enemies that emit a bio-resonance field, obscuring your vision and generally causing you to lose your cool as text floods your screen & it glitches out. Alternatively, enemies with ranged weapons that are exceedingly durable, or with shields. However, the overwhelming majority (95%+) of the enemies are of the extremely basic, shambling melee type.

Bosses are generally well-designed and easily understood, which is a good thing. I never felt frustrated at a boss because I did not understand how it worked, or how to defeat it.

Inventory size immediately leaps to mind. You have 6 total slots, and items do not leave the slot when equipped. A weapon, ammo, and a puzzle item will soak up half your inventory. Add any healing item and you now have 2 free slots. Throw in the flashlight (which is a mandatory or near-mandatory item for a fair amount of the game) and you have a single free slot remaining. A sizable amount of playtime was spent running the gauntlet between the storage box to store or retrieve items due to a lack of inventory capacity. The low inventory space has a domino effect on combat, effectively preventing the player from carrying numerous weapons and using them for the right combat scenario.

As I've alluded to earlier in my review, this story is immensely well written. The story is able to pivot from horror, mystery, and to emotion in a masterful way. I walked into this game expecting survival horror, and was left emotionally blindsided by the conclusion.

The world and background story are divulged through a "lore" approach, by which a majority of the details that hold up the main story beats are found throughout the game world in the form of NPC interactions, notes, books, puzzles, etc.

Unfortunately: if you do not spent a considerable amount of time digesting the notes the game throws your way, your grasp on the story will suffer. This is especially vital as there are not multiple copies of notes spread throughout the world. Every note you find is the only one of its type. There are some notes that are absolutely crucial to forming your own opinions about the story, and it is possible to miss them if you blaze through the game. Fortunately, most of the important notes seem to be placed in close proximity to critical game-progressing events and puzzles, or immediately in the player's path towards the next objective.

As for the good news: while many games struggle with writing notes that are engaging to read, I did not find that this was the case with Signalis. The notes outline just enough of a picture of the game's world that you want to read more, but never enough that you receive the whole picture of what's happening. I was constantly seeking out notes, even cross-referencing with old notes to piece together the game's story. I do not catch myself frequently doing this in most other games with notes divulging the environment. Signalis keeping me reading every scrap of paper I could find is a notable change from my usual pattern of briefly skimming them, and never touching the material again.

As for story... I'm not even sure I want to take a crack at this. There seems to be 3 prevalent fan theories:

A) Dream theory. Pairs best with "Promise" ending. A "Leave" or "Memories" ending is effectively a 'failed' run of the dream loop. The game world takes place largely in a dreamscape induced by Araine's bioresonance. Your goal is to break free of the loop and grant Araine's wish.

B) Lovecraft theory. Pairs best with the "Artifact" or "Promise" ending. Ariane's bio-resonance abilities have triggered a cosmic horror event in the real world. Your goal is to battle through horrors and cosmic mind scrambling in order to end the spread of the nightmare. Alternatively, you succumb to the nightmare.

C) Combination theory. A mixture of Dream & Lovecraft theory. Pairs best with "Promise," "Artifact," or "Memories" ending, depending on whether you want an emphasis on the story's dream or Lovecraftian themes.

Note that these are extreme simplifications of extensive theories. They're a very brief, spark-notes style approach. All of them have strengths & weaknesses. None of them are without holes. The writers of Signalis were incredibly thorough in leaving just enough holes and irregularities in the plot to allow multiple theories to each have their own space. What actually happened? Depends on your interpretation of the events.

As per the preface: I don't frequently review games unless I feel strongly about them. Signalis earned its review, it is a fantastic game - ESPECIALLY in the art/shot composition & direction, environmental storytelling, music, world lore, and story beats. Just from a story, storytelling, atmosphere, and emotional standpoint: this game checks all my boxes.

It has rocked me to my core.
I will not emotionally recover from this game.

You should play it.