Recent reviews by Quil

Prey: A.K.A. System Shock What's that?

Jokes aside, yes, it's beyond obvious that this is a spiritual successor to the old System Shock IP. The game couldn't be any less coy unless it started with a big disclaimer at the beginning of the game that read "NO SERIOUSLY GUYS, WHAT'S A SHODAN."

We'll be breaking up the review from this point forward, so feel free to skip ahead at your leisure.


So, if you've never played System Shock 2, fire up that Intel Pentium III and take a trip back to 1999 because we're going way back, baby. SS2 is a cult-classic with such a high emphasis on cult you can actually see the air quotes. There's actually a decent amount of people who played this game, both modern players and old alike.

It's just like its predecessor, System Shock. The actual one nobody played. It's a Sci-Fi Survival Horror RPG that employs multiple level exploration with a stat progression system. You play as The Hacker aboard the UNN Rickenbacker, escorting an experimental faster-than-light ship known as the Von Braun. The Hacker progresses through the game, upgrading himself with new enhancements, not unlike the Neuromods in Prey. Only in this game you use Cybernetic Modules instead of Neuromods. Hear that? That's the sound of the writers of Prey patting themselves on the back. Another element borrowed by Bioshock is the inclusion of Audio Logs that serve as a reminder that there used to be people here. Or that we couldn't render more than 1 player character.

So, standard affair, the computer on the ship SHODAN returns from System Shock 1 to be a general villian and some guys called "The Many" show up too. In the end, the player defeats Shodan and delivers the greatest one-liner of all time. It was SO good that the boys who made Bioshock had to set the game underwater from fear of the sick burns.


Prey is a Sci-Fi Survival Horror RPG that employs multiple level exploration with a stat progression system. The game centers around Talos I, which is in orbit around the Earth's Moon. Aboard the space station, scientists, engineers, and janitors alike conduct research and development on the Typhon, an alien lifeform that uses all sorts of crazy powers like Fire, Electricity, and the ability to make mimic objects. With the inclusion of Audio Logs to find out what happened to the survivors and the obviously dead.

Talos I suffers from a bad case of "oops we played god" and the Typhon get loose. They start worming their way into every bit of Talos I and it's up to Yu to stop them. Which introduces our protagonist, Morgan Yu. As the VP director of Research, only second to his brother, Alex, Morgan is the first human to undergo modification specifically concerning the Typhon. Once the Typhon Neuromods are removed after testing, Morgan has no memory between the time of insertion to removal.

This leads to him waking up with Amnesia and a robotic copy of himself tells him that the Typhon are loose and he has to save the day. Or whatever you did. Yes, it's a game of choices matter. So, you could go around Talos being the German-Chinese Jesus to all aboard, scourage of the Typhon, or you can murder everything and everyone.


No funny titles for this one. We're jumping straight in.

In the beginning of your playthrough, you'll most likely be left with nothing but sneaking and melee. But, as time goes on, you gather more resources and the ability to fabricate useful items, ammo, and guns with said resources. As you hide from the Typhon, filling your space suit with warm urine, you can take solace that you'll eventually gather enough resources to commit genocide on those squishy bastards.

Neuromods

You collect neuromods which enhance one of 3 trees of skills based on Humans: Scientist, Engineer and Security. The Scientist tree employs the usage of Hacking as well as Medkit related skills. The Engineer Tree allows for Repairing, Dismantling, and Suit modification.As well as lifting big things, y'know, like engineers And Security is used for your overall stats, like Health, Stamina, gunplay and stealth.

The other three are based on Typhon powers: Energy, Morph and Telepathy and they are exactly what it sounds like. Everything the Typhon can do, you can do better. Or at least, mediocrely. It uses up a resource meter called Psi, the purple bar below your health. And unlike System Shock 2, you don't need a dumb catalyst to cast your lighting bolts.

Guns

Prey has the same kind of multi-gun toting inventory system as its father before it with a decent variety of ways to kill everything dead. As is tradition, your melee is a wrench. Trust me, keep this on at all times. It's a precious metal boy that will save your no-ammo ass on many occasions.

Other ballistic weapons several variations of a pistol, a shotgun, a gun that shoots snot, and some laser-y weapons. I'll let you have fun testing them out yourself.

Personally, the Shotgun was my go-to for Typhon removal and made short work of the inevitable mimic that jumps out. As for my soiled trousers, the shotgun can only remove so much.

Stealth

This is a short one. Crouching employs stealth. Neuromods enhance stealth. More means more sneaky. The Typhon can normally see and hear you, but you are a sneaky boy so they won't.

Health, Stamina, Suit and Psi

I don't think I need to tell much about Health. It's upgraded by Neuromods and if it reaches 0, Moran takes a nice nap on the floor. Stamina is expended by running and swinging your enormous willy wrench at things to make them go away. Your suit has armor that will mitigate some of the damage you take. Psi is the amount of times you can cast Fireball without needing a juice box Hypo.


My general complaints with the game comes with its lack of balance and consistency in some areas.

Loading screens are criminally long. Every time you enter a level, you have to go through not one, but TWO loading screens.

The first 1/3 of the game is spent sneaking around, building resources and generally avoiding combat because of your lack of ability. This makes for a tense, actual survival atmosphere with great rewards for taking down a tough Typhon. As the game progresses, you gather more stuff and build an arsenal, but find yourself quickly expending it on the mini-boss monsters, so you tend to be cautious, but confident if you have to defend yourself. By the end, you've got pretty much all of Talos I under your thumb, or at least, an efficient way of dealing with things.

I found the Phantom Shift ability to be the end-all Typhon power. Not only does it help you dodge things, but it leaves a decoy behind that the Typhon and security alike, cannot resist attacking. You can avoid combat entirely with this upgrade and some spare Hypos which the game showers you with. If you do end up in combat, all you need to do is place this bad boy down and then hammer away with your Shotgun.

Playing on Hard Difficulty, the game suffers from most of the mini-bosses being bullet sponges, but with some proper upgrades, that doesn't really matter.

As far as length, the game suffers from not-enough or too much. There are many, many sidequests in the game and doing them all is a daunting task, at least, for me it is. By the end, I probably only finished 2/3 of them. The problem is that doing all of sidequests would probably sour the game for me by the tedium of going through the loading screens from level to level. On the flipside, without doing at least some of the sidequests, the game would probably be sub 10 hours.

TL;DR: 7/10, give it a go. Also play SS2.

So it's been 1000 Hours and I figured I'd do a quick giblet of a review.

Warframe is a very good example of Free-to-Play model that caters to both its Penny-pinchers and Whales alike. The Whales can buy up whatever they want, unlocking things instantly. The Penny-pinchers, like most F2P games, invest their time to get what they want.


Grind, Grind, then Grind some more. This is most likely one of the grindiest free-to-play games on the market. Grind up 30 levels for every weapon, warframe, sword, and cat then Froma them because you can't fit all your precious Primed mods on because you scrounged for hours to get the dosh to actually get it to full rank.

If there was ever a massive time sink, Warframe is one of the biggest.

If I haven't turned you off yet, that's good. There is a silver lining, but you have to grind for it.

Everything and Everything is obtainable by putting your blood, sweat, and tears into working for it. If there's a Warframe that you really, really want, then you can get it with some time investment.

---------------------------------------------

I may update this later with issues on the Meta and the Grind, but as it stands I have a decent relationship with Warframe.

It's a solid 6/10 game. Being a free game, I'd call it about an 8/10.


Edit: Updating my review soon. Update.

Nothing needs to really be said about this game. It's good, you've probably played it before. Now I'm going to take off my rose-tinted glasses after beating it on Survivor with no Vita-Chambers.


The Remaster is less than desired, honestly. It doesn't feel like things got a fresh coat of paint or a graphic update. It just feels like things got glossier (which might be code for Remastered).


The Remaster is buggy. Models pop in and out of existence if you don't run the game in windowed mode. OH, and windowed mode isn't free from the bugs, no sir. Not only that, but you have to deal with the mouse jumping OUT of the window. I can't count the number of times I accidentally moved my taskbar to different corners of my desktop.

It's buggy, it's glitchy, it probably doesn't deserve the money, BUT you still get the regular trustworthy version of Bioshock 1 when you buy it. So, that's why it gets a pass.




with no Vita-Chambers.

For a 99c game, I can't get too mad, but I'm gonna. Watch out.

Also, here's a tip. Mute this game immediately if you don't like generic Dubstep because it never stops.

Pros:

> The character's name is Quilly (Instantly I empathize).
> It has trading cards (I can't possibly stomach farming them).
> It's short (So I don't have to stomach it long).

That's it

Cons:

> The game plays like someone's school project
> Unavoidable damage
> Wonky Air-strafing
> Unavoiding resorting to back-pedalling enemies that leads to falling into pits
> Platforming in first person
> Player DOES NOT FOLLOW MOVING PLATFORMS


I got the game for free as a gift from a friend solely because of my name matching the Protagonist. Next time I see him, I'll repay him the 99c because I feel just sick that this is on his credit card.

Come and sit a spell with me and I'll spin you a yarn. What's yer poison, stranger? Whiskey it is! Now where was I? Oh! It's the tale of the West's Greatest Gunslinger. He's known as Silas Greaves.

>You found a Nugget of Truth! [+2000 XP]

Silas Greaves is a fictitious character that serves as a catalyst for Call of Juarez: Gunslinger's story. His story is used to tie all the history we know of the Outlaws and the Wild West together, if not for entertainment purposes.

Silas Greaves was a hardned man who became a Bounty Hunter to track down the killer's of his brothers and get revenge. His adventures take him all across the west'rn territory, looking fer trouble with the likes o' Billy the Kid and Jesse James!

Told from an older, greyer Greave's perspective, the story can change depending on the old man's memory (and how much whiskey is in'm). Taking out hordes of his enemies, Silas was a Gunslinger, fastest in the west!

>You found a Nugget of Truth! [+2000 XP]

Silas Greaves was not real. He could not be the fastest gunslinger in the west.

Now that ye know our hero, let's hear that there gameplay! It's a first person shooter where you assume the role of Silas Greaves. With Arr Pee Gee (RPG) whatsits (elements), you can upgrade dependin' on yer preferred style of gamin'! Since yer a lawbringer, you can cheat death by avoiding bullets every so often. You can also narrow yer aim, making them outlaws easy pickins'! Whether yer wanting to be a dual-wieldin' gunslinger or a shotgunnin' trapper of the territories, with enough kills and Nugget of Truth, you can!

>You found a Nugget of Truth! [+2000 XP]

* It is a FPS
* It has RPG elements like Skill Trees
* It has several styles of gameplay
* Every 30 seconds you can dodge fatal damage
* With enough damage to enemies, you can slow time

When things are fixin' for negotiatin', you can always count on an honored duel, mono y mono, pardner!

>You found a Nugget of Truth! [+2000 XP]

You don't have to be honorable. If a duel is giving you trouble you can draw your weapon early (You miss bonus XP).

So you want truth, huh boy? Well that is the truth! Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is the best of the west!

>You found a Nugget of Truth! [+2000 XP]

It has its flaws. However, the story being told from the memory of an old man makes for an interesting way to tell the tale. With several gameplay elements, including a New Game+ where you keep your skills from previous playthroughs, it could offer more replayablility, despite being only a 3-5 hour game.

Now there's your Nugget, now git! I won't have it said I left you with, nothin'!

PROS:

- Adorable Art Design
- Mario 2 formula (Jump on enemy/pick them up)
- Indie Developer
- Unforgiving Level Design
- No lives system
- 2.5 hours to beat it

CONS:

- Mostly UNFAIR Level Design
- Uninspired Soundtrack (It's generic 8-bit blips and boops)
- Unavoidable Damage
- No Checkpoints
- Long LONG respawn time
- 2.5 hours to beat it


Okay, here's the thing. I'm ALL for having unforgiving yet rewarding level design like Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy. That's fun and it feels GOOD to finish a map knowing the ins-and-outs. These games are DEPENDENT on SOLID controls. More times than I can count, I've died because the controls borked or one of the enemies that was necessary to complete the leve wouldn't respawn.

Also, there's only ONE WAY to beat these levels. Absolutely no way around it, you have to beat them the way they're designed. This means there's no room for error, unlike Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy where you can ususally recover from an error.

2 Examples of Infuriating Levels:

1. Ice levels: Yes, we all love the slide mechanics of old Mario games. Careening into enemies at Mach 2 with nary a way of avoiding it. What do we do with this? Precision platforming, of course. Not only that, but you have to freeze projectiles, that DON'T have a pattern to form a rinky-dinky staircase to proceed up the level.

Oh, and in case you forgot, the projectiles damage you if you slip up AND you restart if you die. Have fun figuring it out.

2. Wind levels: Remember the Flying Machine in Shovel Knight? You time your jumps WITH the wind to get further along the level. Not here. The wind is ALWAYS blowing against you. It always blows in the direction you're not facing so it's constantly trying to push you back. Also, we're back to precision platforming, but this time, getting blown off means doing it ALL. OVER. AGAIN.



Finally, we're at the Final Boss. Made it this far? Good for you. It's nothing different.

Oh, except the boss has 6 PHASES:

Hope you studied because it throws EVERY ANNOYANCE AT YOU FROM THE PAST LEVELS.

YUP:

1. Precison platforming under projectile fire
2. PROJECTILE PLATFORMING
3. Restart if you die ALL FORMS AGAIN
4. Unavoidable damage
5. Long respawn + Same unskippable dialogue.


tl;dr I bought it for 99c, but I still regret it.

Better than Half Life 2.


Also, very Humerus

I am writing this now after beating level 3-11: Rusty Warrens

"tl;dr ♥♥♥♥ this game, but play it."

So this game reminds me alot of Dark Souls:
1. It's unforgiving. Once you die, you start the level over again.
2. The controls are nerely tight, but there's some trouble with hit detection (in this case, ledge detection).
3. If you are not patient, the game will make sure you become patient.
4. It'll have you saying, "I won't let this ♥♥♥♥ get the best of me" up until you die from the same stupid mistake for the 18th time.


Now, I love Dark Souls, but Bit.Trip Runner has some flaws to it. The first glaring flaw I found is that unlike Dark Souls, you CANNOT git gud at Bit.Trip Runner. You either need the clairvoyance of a psychic, the alignment of the planets, or some amazingly good luck to make it through the level on your first try. For example, Rusty Warrens (3-11) took 67 minutes to complete. That's probably the same amount of time it would take me to complete World 1. It's infuriating that you have to learn the level inside and out in order to move on. And believe me, you'll know how to do a level that's been giving you trouble. You'll know every jump, duck, and kick of it.

The other flaw might be personal, but you know that feeling when you get off a treadmill and you feel like you're still walking forward? That weird vertigo plays on your eyes for most of the longer levels. It has made me mess up a lot more than I should have, but again, this might be my own fault.

Finally, this game is definitely worth playing. Buy it cheap, or don't. Support the dev, or don't. This game has been out for a while so reading this reveiw now may be a little late as it might already be in your library.

Also, ♥♥♥♥ this game. Play it.

This game is great and there's no argument that it's a bona fide hood classic, but Valve can very easily stop giving a dang about this game in a second and the bots will be back. I'll change my review when there's consistency and communication, but I'm not holding my breath.

TF2 is the reason I got into PC gaming and the medium in which I established lifelong friendships. Fix it. It's your responsibility, Valve.

♥♥♥♥♥♥. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TellTale. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ you.


10/10 would sob again.