Recent reviews by GhostFalcon

Would I recommend it? Tough question honestly. I will make this short and blunt:

Atmosphere good, rest bad. I respect the game, but I do not like it.

Not even remotely as good as Limbo.

Now for some more explanations: Yes the creepy, horror vibe atmosphere is well done. It even manages to produce some very eerie moments of tension or jump scares and it does that quite effectively. The whole experience is more unsetteling than one may expect and that is good.
I was kinda wondering about the whole "how can you like Six (the protagonist) after playing" meme. That I understand. I even marvel at the balls of this choice, but not giving the player any agency in it felt really ♥♥♥♥.
Do not spoil yourself, this is possibly the most shocking twist of the game!
I did not want to eat the gnome aka the kid from the DLC. I literally reloaded the checkpoint cause I thaught that I had aimed poorly past the sausage. This sucks very much.
I do understand the artistic vision behind it, but it really didnt endear me to the protagonist or make me want to keep playing whatsoever. After havin a sneak peak at some of the stuff from Little Nightmares 2 I have decided that I may as well skip that one. It is such a down beat kind of story, you really need to be up for that and I am not. I would love to overcome some hardship, but not at the cost of my humanity basically.

Now, in terms of gameplay this is quite poor. The puzzles range between obvious to the extreme and completely obscure without much in the middle. Often one knows quickly what needs to be done, but the execution is made difficult by the pathetically bad controls. I did not get used to those during the entire playthrough despite them being very simple. Everything feels wonkly, sticky and overall unresponsive to the degree that it made playing a chore.
Some puzzles will only be solved due to the very limited room that you have to maneuver so eventually you stumble over the completely non obvious way that the puzzles works with stuff behaving in a way that it simply did not behave before or possibilities of interaction that were not possible before.

The pseudo 3D works well for the atmosphere, but makes navigation a pain. Add to this the unwilling camera and you have a recipe for frustration.

Overall the gameplay is very poor. I forced myself through it, because I was curious in terms of the story and where it might lead, but I was certainly not rooting for anyone anymore and detached myself emotionally early on. Lucky me when you consider the ending of the DLC which admittedly is balsy and a fantastic sucker punch. I can respect that, but I do not like it.

The first game was great, so was this one.

I strongly recommend playing it! It may even tug at your heart strings if you are not made of stone.
The visuals are a little overwhelming this time and some stuff blends into the background a little too much, but the style and art direction are absolutely stunning.
The audio contributes a lot to building the atmosphere of the game.
It may be more challenging than one may expect initially. In the first game I was quite amazed how much stuff one can still get out of a 2d metroidvania platformer...and they did it again. The skills are interesting and bring a lot of variation.

A gem of a game that should be on everyone's list!

Alright, I am late to the party, noone really cares and everyone seemingly praises this game.

I will keep it short. These games are not made for me. Outlast has rudamentary gameplay at best and even the very limited controls are finicky to the extreme.
The atmosphere is fairly well done and I was pretty invested at first, but that quickly dwindled down to a slightly rising heart rate in chase sequences and towards the end not even that. I just took the jump scares with another meh, that happened. It simply is very difficult to stay on the edge of the seat when one has such little control over everything. I felt very much like on a really old railshooter, just providing minor inputs to keep the story going.
That story was not as strong as I was hoping either. Some villain monologues before the typical miracle save, right before the protagonist would snuff it.

All in all this may as well be watched as a Let's Play and that alone should tell you everything you need to know in my opinion. If a game is not worth playing and experiencing first hand it may not be worth your time at all. As far as walkign simulators go it porbably could be rated decent.

I hardly enjoyed it and was glad to have it done in the end. My OCD just pushed me to complete it. Also I looked into walkthroughs how much longer I would have to go and seeing that it was not so far anymore compelled me to complete it.

To those that enjoyed it: I will not take anything away from your experience, glad you did enjoy it, but please accept that this does not deserve the broad praise that it recieved at least from the reviewcircle that I follow.

Oh one last thing that I would like to add: I played Amnesia quite a while back. I enjoyed that tremendously. It is very difficult to put my finger on why Amnesia managed to scare me so irrationally, but it definitely starts with the mystery. The fact alone that you carry arround the camera and can zoom in, study the lunatics alone takes away much of the mystery and threat they should impose.

Assassin's Creed done right? Worthwhile DLCs!

I am not sure about this. If you did not like the direction that the AC games took, you will probably not like this one, they are very similar in a lot of ways. Being quite the fan of the lord of the rings I did like the aesthetique though.

I played this game with a lot of quite long breaks in between, less out of disinterest, but rather I simply did not have the time to continue. This probably improved my experience a lot. Everything is smoother all around than in the first game, but I have to say, somehow I enjoyed combat more in the first one.

The combat in particular offers so many options, but a lot of them feel quite cheesy or too easy to use. If you crank up the difficulty enough that it feels right you will however have more than a few deaths that feel quite unfair.

Navigation also is too easy. Fast travel here, fast travel there, leap of faith and you are already at the destination. Cheese the bosses that you can, batter the rest into the ground slowly, rinse, repeat.

Now, this may sound very negative, but in the end that is what the game provides and if you are okay with that style or even just want to unwind while doing that, it is actually quite fun. There are some nice characters, the story is not half bad, it is just enough to keep you going.

However the whole nemesis system is totally overhyped. Honestly, I do not want to hear another of those repetitive orc boss lines over and over again. Unskippable, too. That is what really makes you hate these suckers.

I am leaving on a high note, though, because I played the two expansions in the end. The Baranor one in particular I found extremely enjoyable. A smaller world, that can be fully explored and has some worthwhile secrets hidden, a character that is not so blatantly op. The gameplay forces you to genuinely traverse the land, not just quicktravel and speed your way through. Combat is much more straight forward and challenging in a good way, especially if you are going for the achievement in the end. All in all that was pretty fun.

The 100% are much easier this time around by the way. I checked when I was through and when I saw that I was only missing a few obscure ones that was done pretty quickly. If you are that kind of completionist (like me) go for it!

All in all I would recommend it, but I am not devastated that is done now. Talion can rest in my "completed" folder, I doubt we will meet again. If you do get it, get the expansions, too!

Let me preface this mini review by saying: Yes, I am a metro fan. I played the previous games, I read the books after playing the first game. I replayed the previous entries, partly just for fun and partly to get all the achievments. And I absolutely love Stalker which kinda hits a very similar tone. So it is safe to say that I am under a heavy positive bias here.

And I still think that this is a must play for every shooter fan. We get so few story driven, atmospheric shooters, every well made one is a true treasure nowadays.

The graphics are fantastic. I cannot wait to get myself a raytracing capable machine and replaying the game again in the future. The story is a logical continuation of the previous titles with less morally ambiguous undertones this time. It is quite engaging and even manages to preserve a good pacing throughout the open world segments.

Overall the pacing is very good for the semi open world approach. Nothing breaks immersion harder than the typical Far Cry style: Hey, there is this urgent thing you must do, go there! And then on the way you get sidetracked for 10 hours doing other stuff and when you come back to the main mission it pretends as if you did a gas stop on the way at most.

Metro on the other hand never was spectacular in terms of gunhandling and controls. Everything feels somewhat sluggish and cumbersome. It actually adds to the immersion here, you think what to use, when to use it, there is a kind of survival aspect to it, especially in the open world segments. There is no minimap, no markers, you do everything in the context of a rather real worldly application. Of course the devs make ammends to the fact that this is a game after all. The map that you unfold to check where you are has an automatically adjusting little marker to where you are and is pulled up quickly and perfectly in any situation for example, but I like it in that way. Make stuff too realistic and it gets tedious, the way it is done here is just spot on!

Weapon degradation on the other hand is something that does not belong in any game imo and annoys me since Far Cry 2. That could have been cut out.

A few words regarding the open world: This is spot on again. The areas are distinctly separate and not too huge. There are no explicit rewards for exploring, but usually you find something that will make it worth your time. The world is dynamic to a certain extend, you will find a few moral choices to make, but the main draw is the exploration. The day night cycle is absolutely fantastic and the optics really add to the whole atmosphere. That is why I mentioned Stalker above, it feels a lot like Stalker did back in the day. What I would not give for a modernized Stalker with these graphics and a little better handling!

Then there are the linear levels which actually feel a little weaker. It is difficult to pinpoint why, but the 2 Colonels DLC for example was way too linear for my tasting. I felt like a passenger during an admittedly very interesting film sequence.

The calm beats between levels where the story is told on the train were actually quite immersive and did not overstay their welcome. Usually I get tired of this very quickly, but even though there were no achievements for it (that I know off) or anything of that nature, I just kinda sat back and enjoyed the atmopshere. This is where the true strength of the Metro series lies.

All in all I highly recommend Metro. It is a story driven experience with fantastic visuals and atmosphere, serviceable handling and great immersion. A kind of game that is very rare nowadays and a benchmark on how to create a world that feels like it is from one mold. Do not skip this!

Edit: In regards to the DLCs...well honestly they could probably be skipped. The 2 colonels was interesting but did not deliver very well on the story it aimed to deliver. Gameplay even with the flamethrower was bland.
Sam's story...well read the reviews on the store page. They are not wrong, but one should be used to the heavy russian accent and weird hoorah patriotism by now. If you are not prepared...this could be a little cringy at times. Gameplay was okay though, much more action oriented than the main game and I did enjoy that for a change of pace!
If you decide to play them, do so after the main game!

I will keep this short, since I played this by now rather old game in 2021: This is how games used to be, and in the good way.

Story rich single player experience, great atmosphere, graphics somewhat dated by now, but serviceable. It has quite neat stealth gameplay. The mainstory I played non lethal, slowly, methodically, basically the way it is meant to be played if I am being honest. The DLCs I went full chaos, killing everyone I felt like killing, which were most. The stealthy forgiving route was more pleasurable in a way, it forces analysis of the situation, you cannot shoot your way out of screw ups and subsequently you get to know a lot more of the background story due to you inadvertendly listening in on many conversations.

At first I was completely blown away, but the gameplay does get stretched a little thin if you really go only non lethal. In the end the story completely made up for it though. Very imaginative world, partly disgusting (the poor whales) and very intriguing.

Absolutely recommended if you want to experience an oldschool story driven experience. This was like a breath of fresh air after all our polished games as service bull**** nowadays.

DLCs: Yeah, just go get the full edition. The Knife of Dunwall and the Birgmore Witches actually add nicely to the overall story.

Enjoy!

I do not have that much to say about Black Flag. Honestly? I expected more. It ranks top of many "best AC games" lists, but for me it did not live up to the expectations.

Let us not talk about graphics. This is an old game and playing it in 2020/21 I have seen much better, but it is serviceable and the art design is good.

Story
Okay. What do so many people find so appealing about Kenway? I do not quite understand. At least he undergoes change and develops into a better man, but for the most part he is a bland, egoistic pirate. The overall cast and characters are quite strong though and the whole background meta story I found to be quite entertaining. All in all much better than AC3, that is for sure, but it cannot light a candle to AC2 and Ezio.

Setting
Intriguing. We have too few games set in this time and place. I really enjoyed it and this was what made me spend 70 hours here. This and the lockdown.

Mechanics
Typical AC really. The parcour was better than in AC3 which was one of my biggest gripes about the previous title, especially compared to traversing the fantastic cities set in the italian renaissance period. Still the parcour and controls itself were absolutely terrible. I dont know if I just have nostalgic memories of the old AC games, but man, making Kenway go where I want him to go was a chore, almost all the time. Yes I played with controler, it was still annoying how he tends to climb stuff when I just wanna run past something. Just try runing over a bridge without the character randomly chosing to jump and climb one of the pillars on the side. This happens way too often, the controls for parcour are finicky beyond belief.
The fighting would be my biggest gripe this time. It is absolutely laughably easy. Maybe I am the wrong target audience and I do not expect Dark Souls, but this was even more easy than AC3 where you could kill enemies until the system froze due to overload. One needs at least to be challenged remotely to have a sense of accomplishement and I had absolutely 0.
The last game that I played through was Ori and I was very surprised how difficult some of the later segments of this wonderful little platformer got. Never as brutal or punishing as the original dark souls, but challenging and making me feel like having achieved something after completing it.
AC lacks this completely and thus I only saw fighting as a chore. In the end I avoided fights where I could because it simply allowed me to progress faster.

The ship mechanics are the biggest achievement of Black Flag by far. So enjoyable, even challenging to a degree. Of course they can be cheesed, but there really is huge potential to make a fully fledged game out of this.

I collected everything, just because I am that kind of ocd victim, but it was not really as tedious as previous AC games or Far Cry games. Probably because I enjoyed sailing around. Btw, I did not collect everything in Freedom Cry, the DLC.

A few words about the DLC
Adewale was a surprisingly sympathetic character and I kinda enjoyed the little story. Why the story progress was locked behind grinding I will never understand, but I avoided it where possible. Oka at a discount, but far from a must play. It did not even trigger my ocd to leave some collectables on the ground this time. Feels like I am done with Black Flag.

All in all I can recommend it, but for me it cannot even remotely challenge the Ezio trilogy as the quintessential Assassins game. What it really needs is some finetuning of the combat mechanics, the parcour needs to be cleaned up greatly and we need some challenge. not that it matters, the AC games have changed a great deal and I will check that out when I find the time.

What can I add to this chorus of positive voices that has not been said? This game is just as good as everyone says it is. Go play it!

If you have finished it and look for more like it though: Try Aquaria. Very similar in terms of atmosphere and soundtrack, not so much platforming, but also 2D Metroidvania with a lovely atmosphere, think the underwater sections of Ori. Much longer, a little more complex, a little less polished, go try that, too.

I guess after such a good game I have to go buy Ori and the Will of the Whisps now, too and play it right away!

Now that sounds harsh, especially for a game that I enjoyed quite a bit. I have played all the Far Cry games before this one and Far Cry 5 is the cleanest experience of all of these.

The graphics
Absolutely fantastic and the game runs smooth af. There has been some serious optimization done to this game!
The controls
For the first time ever I did not have to dig into my mouse drivers to achieve mouse controls without acceleration that a low sense player can enjoy! Kudos Ubisoft you did it.
The world
Well rounded, believable, lots of variation. You pick up sidequest by talking to people that you might just have rescued, it just integrates seemlessly. No more towers with a subsequent flood of icons.
The companions
Just great. Funny (sometimes not so funny), dynamic and useful. That is how it should be. Usually engaging missions to introduce them,

The world
Wait, didn't I just say it was good? Yes. It also isn't in some ways, some of which are felt more than others. When you start out it reminded me a lot of Far Cry 2 and the checkpoints. I could literally not get 100 meters from where I dropped into the world due to a constant barage of random enemies. Yes, you could ignore them, but when a region starts out fresh there simply is an overabundance.
At the same time the overabundance of vehicles, fast travel and general ease of traversal makes this point almost mute. Hear me out here, I think one should start out experiencing this new world on foot, having to travel from one location to the next to get a sense of scale and immersion. Far Cry 5 makes this way too easy. Maybe I was unlucky but I found the chopperlady within 15 minutes of playing and never had trouble reaching any location on the map ever.
I never grew to like Montana either. And usually I would absolutely love this environment, I just could not get into it. It was background noise at best.
The atmosphere that Far Cry 2,3,4 did so well for me was simply missing and I find it very difficult to put my finger on why exactly.
The missions were very good. But not spectacular. They completely lacked those moments like the mission where you could burn the drug fields in Far Cry 4 and while I could really see them trying to emulate those successes they never quite hit the homerun.
The underlying mechanics quickly became very obvious to me and while not being spelled out and quantified as in previous games this pretend dynamic nature just annoyed me (like the capture squads that you could possibly avoid if you just try hard enough until you realize that you are supposed to be taken again).
The story and the villains are just another bunch of soft spoken, mad psychopaths. Yes Ubisoft, Vaas is one of the all time greatest. How about you find a new archetype for an enemy now?
Suspending disbelief never was harder than in this titel. Kyrat is far away and different. The random island in Far Cry 3, same story. How in the world has the entire military might of the US of A not descended on Hope County? No plane got out? No radio call...whatever, I just cannot buy it this time, sorry. The drugs + zombies do not make things better. The story + the ending was poop. You probably know about it by now with the sequel being a big fat spoiler by purely existing, but it was simply not earned, setup or explored properly. Quite disappointing.

Remember the awesome Rakshasa sequences in Far Cry 4? Full of mystery, metaphors, a distinct gameplay experience and fantastic atmosphere due to wonderful art design. Yeah, the new ones cannot hold up. At all. I cannot even decide if they fit at all.

A rather personal gripe of mine were the guns this time around. For whatever reason the whole arsenal felt a lot worse than before. The gunplay was simply not as on point as in previous far crys. I may be mistaken here since everyone else seems to enjoy it. Weirdly enough it feels really good in the arcade mode. maybe it is just me though.

Same for the outposts. The felt so similar this time, very easy, even if I chose to challenge myself. They lacked variety except for the mountain region and hardly ever required a tactical approach of any kind. Especially Far Cry 4 did that a lot better.

Those were a lot of negative points, but keep in mind all these negatives were rather subjective or small nuisances. All in all this is the way open world sandbox far cry should be. Except it needs atmosphere and I could recommend it without any hesitation whatsoever. It is the smoothest and most polished experience so far, but I found it to be far less engaging than previous entries.


Are they worth it? At a discout or bundled I would say yes. The vietnam one was okay, the mars one better than was to be expected from the reviews (which overly focus on some negative aspects) and the zombie one was good for a shuckle at best

I really feel torn on this one. It is so very well made, fantastic craftmanship. It just did not grip me the way I would have wished and 55 hours of gameplay should indicate.

If there are real life sport shooters among you I would compare this game to a Sig Sauer: It is just so really well made, polished, objectively good with a good weight and sturdiness.
But it lacks the character and feel and just unbeatable trigger of the titan of handguns, the 1911. That one may be rough around the edges, but the form feels good in the hands and shooting it is simply intuitive for me.

Okay, honestly? A little overrated. Especially the controls are just quite awkward, especially if you prefer lower mouse sensitivity.
It had blazing reviews, it is an AAA production, of course it has high production value, an okay story, a likeable protagonist. Then again, there was a huge disconnect between the vulnerable, sensible Lara from the cutscenes and the boogeyman killer Lara that we play.
I just had trouble to really get into it. It is a good game, but it is not stellar like so many people want to make you believe. It is worth playing and it does not overstay its welcome at roughly 10 hours if you do not go scavenging for every little collectible which I did.