Recent reviews by W4S9

meh.

Outlast Trials doesn't really accomplish anything of merit.

The graphics are competent, and the visual horror is strong but that's completely par for the course compared to the previous games.

The actual gameplay ends up mind-numbing after the first few trials - go to the place, push the cart, bring object here, run to the exit. Do this 4 times over and repeat the entire campaign with modifiers added. Get frustrated that you can't take in the world because you're too busy having to drag enemies away from points of interest.

It doesn't give off much of a strong presentation for being a narrative coop horror game. Leaving anything interesting buried in notes. No focus is given to the overarching experience of you being a Reagent. They could've gone full on Kubrick with this - fixating on the degradation of the player character. It's not a scary game - it's a shocking game. And shock value disappears very quickly.

The trials can be novel upon first glance - but it loses its luster pretty fast after running it for the 3rd or 4th time. Subtrials are just incredibly short mini missions that can be knocked out in 10 minutes - with no new objective apart from what already exists - just shuffled into a different order. It's an efficient use of resources, but the game isn't better for it.

It's nice they are not doing microtransaction hell - but the game is still a pretty big nothing-burger. The same base enemies will occupy every trial, the objectives are quirky but become dull fast, and it just doesn't go anywhere - even after being Reborn several times you just get a different cutscene.

There arent really any solid unique mechanics that are in line with the world of Outlast, nor does the game develop as you go deeper - the game suffers for it greatly since it lacks a well presented and solid narrative to overcome this. Throwaway dialog that is buried in menus doesn't count. I should be getting pulled aside into debriefs or therapy instead of asking Nurse Dorris to give me a hug.

This game appears to have been in hell behind the scenes (Datamined content from beta included a 3rd prime asset, Molotov Enemies, and a much larger variety of trials) They'll probably come in later - but this should have been completed in Early Access - not cut off to maximize the engagement quota at a later date come Halloween.

As it stands right now - I feel like this is a very incomplete game that was rushed out for console markets - not to deliver a strong new Outlast experience.

To preface, this game was intended to be launched as 'complete' on it's release date. A month before launch, this was rescinded and the game was launched into early access come release date.

Sons of The Forest introduces some cool new ideas to the formula, but doesn't quite hit the mark. Well, It doesn't really hit any marks compared to the first game. It's massively incomplete, and lacks any meaningful expansion on the roots of the first game. It raises the question of what were Endnight actually doing for the past 3 years.

The positive standouts are definitely the graphics and the addition of AI companions to assist you across your journey. The game looks REALLY good, but once you get past that you begin to realize how shallow the experience actually is.

One of the biggest parts that sold The Forest for me was the horror and the experience of traversing the island and exploring / discovering the terrible things happening in the brush. Coming across horrifying effigies, visceral blood and gore, and almost alien creatures felt fantastic in the first game. In this one it's either not there, or sparsely thrown about the forest with a good dose of replicated assets. Prepare to see the same construction dudes thrown around everywhere, the same Balaclava guys thrown on sticks clipping through their bodies, and so on. There is no real gore or body horror to spice it up either compared to the first game, making any sense of discovery rendered moot, and any horror you can derive from it non-existent. It doesn't tell any story or allow you as a player to make up your own for what happened on this island.

Missing the mark on one of the standout features of The Forest's unique identity is a massive misstep, and makes the experience feel boring and unfulfilling.

The Caves themselves present the same issue in that they are shockingly empty. In some you get these gigantic open spaces with turns and corners that give you nothing, or generally have nothing interesting to see in them at all apart from maybe throwing a couple cloths and rope at you. Contrast that to the prior game where you would go in and have gore and viscera everywhere. Corpses arranged in bizarre manners that made you go 'I sure as hell don't want to be that guy.' Things to break open, porous paths to other systems.

While features like the above may not have been complete before launch in The Forest 1. They were at the very least there and attempted. Sons of The Forest is heavily lacking in this department. It makes traversing caves a chore and implores you to rush through it rather than take it in. It's comes off like the team forgot to include it which breaks a lot of faith one could have in the game.

There are few meaningful expansions into the things you will be doing often as well. The combat is painful to engage in. Swinging your weapons lacks impact and power. It may have been acceptable back in 2013, but it needs heavy updating to feel good in 2023. It would be better if your attacks were faster and more sudden - as it goes right now, you still flail your axe around like a nonce and if you hit an enemy its as if you're hitting air. It would be better if each swing felt more like you were doing a sudden WHIP of your arm, rather than just bringing over the same / simillar animations from the first game. Just throwing guns into the loop hides the core issue, rather than fixing it.

Traversing the island is slow and tedious, even with tools like the rope gun. Once you get past the section of island where you crash land, POI's become nonexistent, and loot becomes even sparser. The island could easily be about 75% of it's current size and still feel empty.

POI's are one of the features I was really excited to see an expansion on. But what you get in this are practically insulting. Moreso for a game that was considered 'release ready' up until about a month ago. You get copypasted camps on the surface, and some repetitive underground complexes. It was really exciting to come across them at first, especially the underground hatches. But the lack of unique props and set dressing kills a lot of the enthusiasm for them. They are much too sparsely placed, small, and empty to be compelling.

Camps need to be more abundant and have more than just 2-3 crates and the ass chair in them. In fact, the game needs more objects to interact with and loot as a whole. I want to play and interact with this world, not just run through it all. It would be cool if we could actually examine things like effigies and get some kind of text narration exposing some of the player character's thoughts on things.

Underground Areas need to be less sprint through mashing E and waiting for the 3D Printer. The keycard areas look beautiful, but they're enemy dumps, and lack atmosphere, and taking your time to explore them in full is unrewarding with no real secrets to find.

The current state of the game is disappointing and lackluster. It doesn't expand on the prior game's concepts much at all apart from reworking the building, and a major graphics overhaul. It also lacks actual content. For a game that was supposed to be released in full right now. I have a lot of bad faith toward the team. It's fun at times, but painfully dull most of the time. It really feels like the team lost a lot of it's ambition from development restarts and it shows in how empty the game actually is.

I really hope that you guys take the time to really maximize the potential of this type of game and avoid the easy way out unlike the first game. I do not just want more items to collect, and buildings to build. I'd like overhauls and expansions of the systems you just copied over from the first game. If you cordon out updates like 'The Combat Update' or 'The Exploration Overhaul' a lot of faith will be restored.

You got a lot of money from this early access. Take it and invest it into this instead of running off in a year, because if you think 8 months is enough time to get this out the door and in a fantastic place you're mistaken. Unless you just plan on drip-feeding new items into the game which is easy and disappointing.

Hire on some new animators, do some deep R&D to improve the combat / general flow of the game, and take some time to really bring back the horror elements of this game.

Some of my thoughts are:

Decouple the first person / third person animations. It might have been fine years ago, but it's age is showing, and it drags down the combat / immersion factor when you interact with things in such a janky way.

Speed up crafting / interaction in general. It's slow and time consuming. It looks pretty and smooth. Make it pretty, smooth and fast. It's not enjoyable to sit there watching the same animation 6x when you are opening things like the skin pouches.

Bring in more gore. It feels incredibly restrained. It feels like the team is not comfortable showing these things which is not good for this type of game. This is not a kids game. Just because they may have access to it, doesn't mean you should restrain yourself from going far. RE7 went above and beyond with this. I'd like to see something similar.


Be more transparent. It's clear this game suffered from a lot of issues leading to early access. You need to show that you recognize the issues the game has, and have solutions in progress for it. As it stands right now, it comes off as if you're playing business as usual as the building is on fire around you. The game is offering much less than the previous one, and people are noticing. Look at your reviews and check the hours played on them. Someone preaching about this with only an hour of playtime, or a 'spoiler free' youtube review probably isn't giving you accurate feedback.

Lost Ark has taken the world by storm over the past couple of weeks. Every circle of mine has a piece of this pie, and I just don't get it. Its an """MMO""" as much as Call of Duty is an RPG. The gameplay is beyond bland, coming from someone who can tolerate long grinds (Ala WoW Classic, Blade and Soul) and the rest of the game is absolutely soulless. A constant chase of a carrot on a stick only for that carrot to double in distance every time you get closer to it. And dont expect to group up with your friends for anything except the endgame after 40-50 hours.

The quest design is absolutely abysmal. Content wise- its literally a case of kill 3 mobs, move on. examine this object, move on. talk to this person 3 times, move on, and this is absolutely at odds with the combat system which lets you wipe the floor in 2-3 hits making any semblance of achievement nonexistent in this game. If I'm so OP early on, why am I only killing 4-5 mobs at a time? Let me have fun and take out massive trains of 20+ monsters in the world areas for a quest. But this never happens. Ever. Mobs are as pointless as playing this game. Let me feel some sense of im actually doing something other than a checklist. Dont expect questing with friends. Everything is gated into solo instances with the occasional dungeon that ends up an absolute cakewalk.

The combat itself is not anything special. Its just a game of mash AOE button on CD. Watch pretty colors and everything dies. Add in having to dodge AoE in the late game because there has to be something here preventing you from falling asleep in your chair, and thats it. In a party situation playing as anything melee is a test of sanity since every caster class seems to lift everything into the air thus preventing you from hitting anything. Its just not fun, or engaging. The power fantasy is definitely there. But its entirely unearned and often pointless to even engage in due to progression in this game severely lacking any meaningful advancement.

Progression in this game is absolute misery. After hitting 50 i decided to take a look at just how much EXP is needed to hit 51 and it's over 48 million - MILLION. You can't farm mobs since they only give 2 EXP the entire game. The quest EXP changes at random. One time you could get 19k, the next is 8k, the one after is 100k. I never felt like I was in control of my leveling. Rather the game itself tries to control everything you do via timegating, 'Energy Levels' for crafting, and pushing you through the below average story with a sad helping of weekly content. I stopped having fun the moment I left the first continent. And immediately stopped once I hit 50 because I realized its impossible to care about anything in this game unless you're a Twitch Streamer. Because at least you're getting paid to deal with this crap.

The only good part of this game is the free respec system. But in a case of where the only method of finding success is consuming videos by your favorite content creator having the game already solved for you. Its rather pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Boneworks is definitively the richest physics simulation on VR systems today. Gone are the woes of immersion-breaking ghost hands, and into the world of MythOS!

I'm typically a very mixed player of most games today, many do not hold my attention for long, nor are they quite as memorable as my experiences in Boneworks, From what the developers thought to be a 4-5 hour experience, I have gotten 12 hours of gameplay out of the main campaign, and am planning on a collectable run soon.

The basic gameplay loop involves you exploring a set of quite large levels (1h30m for my first runs on average) using ammo as currency to purchase weaponry, or equipping yourself from what you can find in the level. This starts from basic junk, including cans, bins, bottles, crates, to improvised weaponry including hammers, crowbars, lead pipes, to knives, swords, handguns, and assault rifles, ending with incredibly expensive 'Developer Weapons' (gravity guns, balloon guns, and so forth)

For the most part all items serve their function well enough and encourage experimentation. You can use the blunt end or the claw end of a hammer. Break a bottle, then pick up the head and use it a stabbing weapon. However, as weapons get heavier they suffer from an obnoxious wobble effect, this makes long slashing weapons e.g. swords, much more unwieldy than they should feel, making them more stabbing weapons than anything else. The guns handle simply yet intuitively, unfortunately this makes them not very memorable compared to the array of melee weaponry. There are no Magnums, revolvers, or shotguns, to supplement the pistols, smgs, and assault rifles. A missed chance unfortunately.

The story is barebones, you infiltrate MythOS in a under-explained rivalry between companies. It is supplemented by the enviornmental story-telling of the City itself which is intriguing on it's own. However, the lack of an upfront narrative hurts the game for me more than it didn't. The levels are mostly industrial, however towards the end they take a strong fantasy turn.

The enemy variety is simple. You have the Nullmen, basic melee enemies, The Security Team, a hazmat outfitted cleanup crew that are actually holographic projections from roller balls, Crab Headsets, and Zombies that can either melee attack or shoot psionic projectiles. A missed chance is to introduce some boss enemies. A Nullman watermelon boss would have fit into the meta narrative rather well and would have helped spice up the combat some more.

To divert the experience away from combat, there are puzzles, these mostly involve the physics systems, moving objects to create a path to cross, placing weights on buttons for doors, and something that I found to be my personal favorite, climbing. You can climb nearly anything in the game. Pipes, ledges, fences, gates. It can lead to hours of experimentation just in the very main menu!

While I do have some gripes with the overall design, this is very much NOT a TECH DEMO. It is a full game with a rich feature-set including an arena mode and a sandbox mode. Hours of exploration in each level which nets you special weaponry, ammo, and a feeling of complete bad-assitude. This is all topped with a pounding soundtrack inspired by the likes of Portal. Beware of motion sickness however, there is a lot of wobbling of your camera when you climb!

A great shooter/rpg blend with an awesome story line and memorable characters.
Very underrated, Very replayable, (im on my third run through) although it does have its own share of bugs (i have not encountered many) but overall i feel this game is a Must have for RPG lovers