Käyttäjän GhostFalcon viimeaikaiset arvostelut

As a huge Limbo fan I thought this may be worth checking out. I was wrong.

It has been said a hundred times in many reviews: The controls are bad. What exactly is so bad about them? I do not think that it is the general sluggishness of the controls that may appear to be delayed sometimes, very much like Limbo. This can be learned quickly and compensated for easily. The problem is the inconsistency of the controls. Sometimes you hit the jump, sometimes you do not, sometimes you do not get the 2nd double jump etc.

Along with this the edges of many platforms and stuff like that are modelled quite poorly, getting you stuck while jumping against them or leading you to misjudge when to jump or where to land.

The other huge issue with the controls is the aiming/shooting/telekinesis part. I do not think I spoil too much when saying that shooting is hardly ever used and the few times where you need to kill a crow attacking you are more like quick time events than actual aiming and shooting. I should add that I played with a controler, the way it is intended I think.

However if you want to pick something up with telekinesis, especially from a distance under time pressure you need to be hyperprecise to do so. Spoiler: The 2 down stream segments at the end of the game are notorious for just that. Especially the sheep that you need to kill, pick up and feed the final boss was extremely difficult to pick up reliably.

Story? What story. The few bits and pieces do not add up to anything, if you are here for a story you are wrong. There is nothing to be interpreted here either. I doubt that there will be any further episodes, but even then there is so little information that I am not intrigued, I am indifferent to say the least.

The difficulty: The game was quite easy. I liked the design of the puzzles, even if they were very obvious to me. Only the final parts of the game became insanely difficult very suddenly due to extremely diffcult sections without save points that require a long sequence of actions with very little room for error. These sections were aggravating to the point of me almost quitting. I did the less than 5 deaths run for Limbo without toomuch difficulty, I would not even dare to try it in this game. Often enough you know exactly what to do, you are capable of executing it but the inconsistency of the controls makes it very hard.

Add to this the unnecessary extreme physics on boxes that you move with telekinesis (they just do not want to sit still on the switch that you put them on whatsoever) and you produce a gaming experience that is very very annoying.

Musik and sound design are meh at most, not even close to Limbo. Graphics or rather art design is okay, but it is sometimes very hard to discern what is part of the game and what is the background.

A shame, this whole thing had potential, but it made itself difficult for all the wrong reasons.

Unepic.

Metroidvania style 2D RPG with lots of hit and miss humor.

I heard great things about Unepic before playing it and this built up hype makes it hard for a game sometimes. I found unpeic to be very enjoyable in the first 2/3rd of the game. Lots of build variety, lots to explore, the humor was okay, so was the story. The mechanics worked well for the most part and I was enjoying myself.

Then there was this one boss. You know which one I am talking about. That is not good game design. It is plain annoying, lots of trial and error and there is almost nothing to indicate what is going on beforehand. Okay, one annoying part I thought. How wrong I was. The last 2 areas of the game are rage inducing due to unfair mechanics. You better got ur build right for this part or you may put the game down for a while (like me).

I eventually decided to finish it and I am glad I did, because the final fight(s) or rather the final episode (I do not want to spoil it here) were very well done. They were quite difficult and a certain time pressure that is built up makes it even more challenging. The good kind of challenging, not like the mage tower before this.

Overall I find it difficult to recommend unepic. I played it in its final most polished state, I had little trouble from the technical side which I find to be amazing with a one person indie project. The first 2/3rd of the game were very nice (well the catacombs on hard++ already hinted at how annoying the game can be at times) and then the experience just deteriorated very very quickly.

Since I actually gave the game a second playthrough to get the remaining achievements I will say I recommend it, but be aware that you need to have a certain level of frustration tolerance when it comes to the later stages of the game.

Oh and do not worry about the endings. Those are just ♥♥♥♥ and ignoring them will be the most wholesome unepic experience that you can have.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not hate this game, however I am quite astonished by the very positive reviews that it has.


I did like the game or rather the concept initially, but the mechanics that are clunky from the start never really grew on me. Add to this the weak story, minimal art design and repetitive nature of the gameplay and by the end I only wanted to get it over with.


Why did I not like the game?

• "Innovative" shooting technique. You need to ♥♥♥♥ the hammer before every shot with the revolver that you take. Now I am a competition shooter in real life and can appreciate the idea behind this, however to me it just feels incredibly forced behind a computer screen and in my 6 hours of playtime it never became natural. It was a little better with the lever action and the shotgun. It feels a lot better with the bow. Overall still the worst flaw of the game that may be a deal breaker for many.
  
• Unresponsiveness of the entire interface. You can and have to pick up different guns from fallen enemies frequently, even if only to loot their ammo (see below), however the game is really picky about where you stand in relation to the gun you want, how hard you have to press the button (e.g. how long you have to hold the button down before something happens etc.). Theoretically you should be able to pick up a new gun for your empty one during a firefight, but that is absolutely not possible. Same with reloads that sometimes do not wanna go through (especially the shotgun is very noticeable in that regard). You have no indication as to when your gun is ready to be fired again (there IS a delay especially when dual wielding or with the shotgun before you can fire again, but the interface shows the gun is loaded. The lever action when being reloaded changes the aiming reticle to a big animation of the mag being loaded that covers everything you might have been shooting at. Terrible design.
  
• Closely tied with the point above is the ammo management. This is absolutely no problem at the start of the game with the single revolver and the more methodical gameplay. Towards the end you will face a multitude of enemies and fights will get rather hectic. Then after the fight you will be running around, holding r above every enemy to empty your current gun, pick up the new gun and reload. And you will be doing that a lot. It just kills the pacing entirely and is tedious af.
  
• Enemy AI. What can I say, I did not expect to be fighting extremely sophisticated bots, but all you will see are braindead lemmings. Some levels are over in 20 seconds, because you shot once, wait behind a corner and literally every baddie in the level will come running around that one corner one after the other. That is simply no fun. Others are obviously programmed to sit in one place and aim at a corner. In any case there is absolutely no logic as to when the enemies hit and when they miss. Maybe it is all rng, but the AI seamlessly switches between god tier sharpshooter and drunk potato. This just adds to the completely borked diffculty curve and non existant "tactical approach".
  
• Repetitive gameplay. This kinda is a result of the problems outlined above, but you have seen everything the game has to offer after 30 minutes if not sooner. Towards the end the game just throws more ♥♥♥♥ at you, artificially increasing the diffculty and thus stretching playtime.
  
• Art design/graphics. I like minimalistic graphics. There are plenty of games out there that did this very right. Spontaneously I am thinking of Limbo that did everything right in that regard. These 2 games do not even play in the same league. 12 Is Better Than 6 art design is so minimalistic that it fails to convey any sense of your surroundings. It does not work as art, it hardly works as an indicator as to what you can or cannot do in a gameplay sense (like shooting through windows, doors, entrances and distinguishing between all that). When you are outside trying to shoot into a house with a roof the game does not even blend it out properly, so there are more than a few instances where you cannot see your enemies. It looks nice on screenshots, it does not work in game, at least not for me.
  
• A thousand little nitpicks. There are a lot more small annoyances that in its sum really made me angry: When you try to fast forward the dialog for example, instead of making the entire sentence appear with a left click and then dismissing it with the next left click, you need to watch the entire text fly in slowly or skip it right away by left clicking. Or you know, just skip the entire conversation quickly by pressing your use button, you will not miss anything of importance besides a bunch of racist slurrs. Quite often you enter a map and are attacked immediately, sometimes while the camera is still flying towards your location. The maps are extremely small, but that may be a blessing when I think of the last 3 or 4 levels that were way too long. The guns do not always shoot where you aim them, especially when you try to shoot "over" a small chair and stuff like that. You get attacked from off screen way too often. The movement speed is way too high for the small frame. The enemy rushers look ridiculous when charging. I could name a bunch more, but I think you get the gist.
  
• The story. What story? Exactly. What a bunch of rubbish. And that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ anti climatic ending...wtf.

All in all I am rather disappointed. I like the setting, Call of Juarez Gunslinger is probably one of my all time favourtie shooters and got that setting so damn right. I liked the idea, I liked the screenshots. Top down shooters are a nice change of pace usually, but if this one had been any longer I would not have finished it.

There are a few positives, like the music which was alright, the fast resets upon dieing and the general idea behind the game. But it would have needed more polish, tweaked gameplay (rethink the cocking mechanic, clean up the UI and make the whole game more responsive) and above all a better AI to offer alternatives. The stealth is a joke and that is due to the lousy AI. Commandos did it so much better almost 20 years ago with hard routines for all the little soldiers in the map. That requires careful planning of course and is not as dynamic as a real AI, but it would have been able to provide smarter gameplay and a better difficulty curve. A lot of wasted potential.

When I read over what I write I realise I am bashing the game quite hard. I do not usually write "not recomended" reviews, simply because I usually only review stuff that I have finished and if a game is terrible I will not waste my time with it. However there is a reason or rather a multitde of reasons why I would suggest only getting this game on a deep sale and I elaborated on them extensively. It is not terribly bad, but it is way overrated here on Steam and got very annoying the longer I played it.

Thanks for reading.

A one-of-a-kind game that everyone should try! Great game mechanics that allow for much more creative solutions than anticipated, coupled with a very likeable art style and way of story telling.

One of my all time favourites!

Literally one of the worst games I have ever played with one redeeming value: It is mercifully short. If it did not crash or softlock so often, probably less than 1,5 hours, maybe even 1 hour.

Everything I could say has been said: Terrible controls, laughable animations with dated graphics, a camera that is actively fighting the player.

The first game was not that bad, even if it gave me a bluescreen and was dead after I saved my computer, I was only 15 minutes from finishing that. This one on the other hand is an insult to players. Trust the reviews, do not waste your time.

The second installment of Zelda for grown-ups

Alright, let me start by saying that I loved the first Darksiders game to death (pun intended).
I was not convinced by the style when I saw some preview videos way back, but I was dead wrong. In fact the aesthetics and the stringent design is what makes the Darksiders universe so great and immersive.

The graphics are not "great". Many reviews have stated that. But there are 2 sides to the visual appeal of a game and it doesn't help to have great graphics in a technical sense like the cryengine can produce, you also need artistic people to make good use of their tools. And one thing is for sure the art design in Darksiders 1 and 2 is very, very good.
Sidenote: It looks much better in motion. Keep that in mind when looking at screenshots.

The sounddesign did not blow me away this time, it is mostly fitting, the morbid music pieces in the realm of the (un)dead, the pieceful music in the maker's realm. It is okay, could be more dynamic though. I did enjoy it more on my new game+ playthrough, so it seems one has to get used to it.
The voice acting is absolutely fantastic though, nothing more to say about it. Perfect.

With that out of the way, how does the game feel (mechanics, gameplay etc.):
To make it short: If you enjoy both Zelda style puzzles/dungeons and God of War style fighting this is just right for you.
However the game as a whole had less emphasise on the puzzle aspect and was too easy/obvious for the most part, Darksiders 1 was more Zelda in that aspect.
This time the fighting is much more fluid, but personally I preferred the slower style of War from Darksiders 1, not being able to block threw me off for quite a while. Many enemies are quite unimpressed by your attacks and thus pulling off a complete combo is not easy at all as you are likely to get hit while doing so if you do not time it perfectly.
Do not be fooled, it is still quite easy for the most part, I would recommend starting on apocalyptic difficulty right away.
The boss fights fall in line with this design, more often than not they do not require a special tactic, but rather endurance, timing and patience.
Overall I have been saying from the start that Darksiders 1 was the better game, especially if you prefer to see some more difficult puzzles. However this is only partly true, the fights require more individual skill now and especially the whole crafting and equipment stuff is way more complex this time.
Darksiders 2 as a whole is very well put together, everything falls in place perfectly. It is a very good game, a very "smooth" experience I had 0 trouble with bugs or immersion breaking stuff (except for the DLCs, see below).

I highly recommend playing Darksiders 1 before you dive into Darksiders 2. Also read up on the whole crafting and equipment stuff if you want to get deeper into it or plan on playing all the way through new game+, it took me quite a while to figure out. Google is your friend.

I thoroughly enjoyed Darksiders 2 and I sure hope some capable game company picks up this epic gaming series to make Darksiders 3, it would be a shame to see it end here.

The DLCs:
There are 2 things I have to say about the DLCs: They combine the best and the worst of the game really.
Argul's tomb is a wonderful DLC that makes everything right. It is quite challenging even on a high level and it finally has some more difficult puzzles. Highly recommended.
The Lord Belial DLC was rather disappointing in my opinion. I should add that I do not enjoy "shooter sections".
Also be aware of a save game issue with the DLCs. The save game file appearantly gets too big and you will not be able to proceed without editing the save game file manually with a hex editor. A bummer after the perfectly bug free experience of the main game.
If you want to extend your game time I would recommend Argul's tomb and The Abyssal Forge and of course the Death Rides pack. The smaller dlcs are only there to ease you into the game, but overall the season pass is probably your best value per money.

Play this game, you will not regret it!

Far Cry 3

Assassin's Creed with guns

So is it good? Yes. Is it great? Well, that depends on what you want. I enjoyed the "story" or rather the awesome characters, acting and voice acting in this game A LOT. It is simply really well made, I cannot remember a "better" antagonist in any recent or even not so recent game that I have played.

The gunplay and graphics are awesome, the game feels very smooth.

But there are downsides. The beautiful landscape is not filled as well as it could be in my opinion. Sidequest and especially collectibles are repetitive and grindy to the point that they are annoying and boring.

Another part of the game - namely liberating outposts - is immense fun, while other freeroaming aspects did not quite entertain me as much. Especially hunting. Fun for a short while, but after that it is just a grind and then it is suddenly useless.

I am not a huge fan of sandbox games and unlike Assassin's Creed with the nice fighting system, there is simply a lack of challenge when shooting the mildly insane AI. What I also missed was decent music. Especially in a caribean setting like this I would like to hear some more reggae outside of missions (don't get me started on the car radios).

All in all I enjoyed this game a lot, but I would suggest focusing on the main story line and stealthily liberating outposts (for fun).

#Ghost

Anomaly 2

Anomaly 1 with more production value

So what does my one sentence review mean? Well the game is simply fun, just like Anomaly 1. It provides an awesome twist on the tower defense genre.
It is like an RTS on rails, which is actually cool, because it allows for more detailed planning than the typical open map real time strategy game, while being just as frantic at times. Naturally it is also much easier for an AI with an inherent limitation to provide a decent challenge without being unfair.
If you want a challenge, turning up the difficulty will adjust the game to your liking quite precisely.

Graphics are a lot better this time around, but I prefer the minimalistic style of Anomaly 1 better. The story and voice acting (english) has improved quite a bit. There are new units, a few new mechanics, new enemy towers, everything that you would expect from a good sequel, it is not just Anomaly 1,5.

On a side note: Possibly the best game I have had on my smartphone. Unfortunately the german voice acting is...awful. Just like the translation. Jeez, next time I'd be happy to provide my services, but in the end this game is fun because of its mechanic and not because of story or atmosphere!

If you like the TD genre have a look inside and don't be surprised how hectic it can get!

Edit: Unfortunately I did not find a multiplayer game, due to a lack of players, which is only natural given that the game has been out for quite a while now and has a focus on the single player for sure.

Aquaria

Another Indie game actually worth your time

I started out playing Aquaria without many expectations. It was a metroidvania style title and I am usually not very fond of those - thus I installed it on my smartphone first.
However Aquaria pulled me right in with its great combination of artwork and music. It was a very relaxing experience, the world intrigued me from the start, the abilities made sense and the game created a great atmosphere.
Combat might be a little too easy, the puzzles make sense most of the time, but many bosses required too little tactics for my liking.
Naturally it is not groundbreaking in the graphics department, but it doesn't need to be and the artwork just fits quite nicely with the setting and the music.

With all the freeroaming and backtracking that you will be doing (make sure you like that aspect of the game, it plays a pretty big role) the story steps into the background often enough, yet the provided narrative kept me interested enough to actually finish the story line, too.

After all I can recommend this title for whoever needs a change of pace from the usual multiplayergrind or other fast paced games.

Oh man, yet another Indie game that I underestimated.

OSMOS is beautiful, relaxing, calm, challenging, frustrating, addicting all at the same time. It starts out so easy, so relaxing, it has the ambience sound effects and sound track, one just enjoys clicking through the first few levels.

Then it gets a little more challenging and I thought, oh well there is actually some gameplay involved here. And finally the simple principle was taken to almost unfair difficulties. At first I just wanted to quickly get all the achievements, because I thought it would be easy. It took me a lot of time to really achieve all of them in the end.

The bottom line is: This is probably one of the most relaxing games you can play besides Higher (a flash game with rather similar music), but it actually has some potent game mechanic in it that will pose a challenge if you want to take it that far.

The visuals are very suitable and quite nice indeed, the soundtrack is absolutely fitting and plays a huge part in the atmosphere that the game creates. The basic principle is easy to learn and difficult to master, just how it should be.
This game can teach you patience.

On a side note: Awesome game for smartphones and I imagine perfect for tablets (I also played through it on my smarthone).