Последние обзоры Kalli

Pillars of Eternity (PoE) is a return to form of the classic CRPG of the 2000s like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale 2. Rather than using the D&D system like its ancestors, Obsidian has developed its own ruleset for use within the game. Those familiar with Dungeons and Dragons or other table top games will recognise familiar themes used through PoE.

The Good:
+ The music is absolutely fantastic. It sets the mood perfectly for nearly every scene.
+ The companions are all well made and fleshed out in their stories.
+ A refreshingly dark and enticing narrative that doesn't hold any punches
+ The voice acting is top-notch.
+ The gameplay is genuinely fun, especially at later levels

The Bad:
- Recycled use of assets can make things repetitive and hard to orient yourself in maps
- Re-using the same voice actors for different characters
- The scenes that are voiced skips the narration so if you're following along by reading, the dialogue spoken allowed jumps all over the place
- Too many random encounters

As one plays PoE, you feel like its a game that would feel right at home being released in the same year as Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. It features the same type of combat, called Real Time With Pause (RTWP) that games of its nature did. When you engage combat, you can setup the game to auto-pause, with a very large array of criteria you can enable to have the game pause. Of course you can also manually pause the game yourself. You have your main character, a custom character of familiar races like Dwarf, Elf, Human, etc and you can play alongside a pretty large and diverse cast of characters, such as Eder the Human Fighter, Aloth the Elf Wizard, and Sagani the Dwarf Ranger (with her pet fox). All in there is 8 total companions in the base game with the White March DLCs offering 3 more.

Where the game does show its age is the AI. You have very limited selections on how you want the game to control your companions (if you want the game to control them at all since you can do it yourself with pauses). Instead you have options, such as "Healer" and "Crowd Control". You cannot customize what criteria you want your healer to use what spells; the game just chooses what to do, what resources to spend, etc.

The major flaw, in my opinion, is that with 6 total party members you either let the AI handle your secondary characters in a sub-par manner or you control all 6 and make what could potentially be 10-20 seconds of combat last upwards of 5-10 minutes through the use of aggressive pausing and issuing commands to everyone. If combat was balanced around having 4 total party members, the game would benefit. As such, there's too much tedious pausing to play a "normal" game without min-maxing your character or following an OP build to play on higher difficulties.

Where the game really bogs down as well is Act II when the player enters Defiance Bay. Every major CRPG of the time has a huge hub city with multiple zones and PoE is no exception, sporting 5 districts and 2 outer districts in the form of bridges to the outlands. Defiance Bay has always been the portion of the game I have disliked the most. The maps are overly large in scale but the size isn't properly used. Often time you have large empty spaces or assets that are littered with no use at all. The only district I'd say that doesn't suffer from this is Heritage Hill; the other 4 are vast empty husks with houses and buildings to enter on the outskirts of the maps itself.

Despite these criticisms, the game is genuinely fun to play. I've re-played the main campaign several times and tend to revisit the game once a year because I do enjoy the narrative. The narrative itself alongside with its accompanying music is the best part of the game. Within the first 30 minutes of the game you realize just how bleak things are in Gilded Vale, the first village you enter. The game asks the player very difficult moral questions about themselves and the overarching narrative throughout the playthrough. You make moral choices with no clear-cut "good" or "bad" decision. Its a decision that some will like you and some will dislike you for it. This comes from something like picking a faction to join in Defiance Boy to specific trials in which you must defend or vilify a certain practice throughout the Dyrwood. What I enjoyed the most was the smaller scenes where the game doesn't ask the player for their input on things, usually in the context of historical events being recanted. Like the conquering of foreign lands and the.. enslavement of its women for its male conquerors.. to the benefits of protectionism and tradition over open trade relations with foreign powers, to religious persecution. These aren't questionable topics asked about the player, for them to react positively or negatively to but rather events that already have happened. Events that some of your companions may even have taken part in.

One of the clear cut things I liked about the narrative was picking the faction in Defiance Bay. You have 3 choices: The Crucible Knights, a xenophobic order based heavily on tradition, The Dozens, which seeks to usurp the current government and install a "Defiance Bay First" government in its stead through the use of thug tactics and heavy handed operations, and the House Doemenel, a crime family that seeks to restore its status to its former glory through intimidation and an underground network. None of these factions have a clear cut "this is the good faction" and "this is the bad faction" - although you have some that are "more goodly" than the others. They each have their own faults, unique to them. Having these types of tough choices make the narrative enjoyable to play and re-play.

Overall this is a good game which released too late. It received countless awards and accolades and spawned a sequel, PoE 2: Deadfire, but it was overshadowed by another game that released 1 year earlier by Larian Studios called Divinity: Original Sin and the sales numbers show this. While the two are fundamentally different games (Divinity being one that's turn based rather than RTWP) they target the same or similar demographic of player.

Pillars of Eternity is a fantastic game and a wonderful throwback to classic games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, its also hampered by the same game mechanics and systems that have not aged very well in modern game design. Extremely tedious tactical combat with limited AI options if you wish to remove the tedium and big empty maps which, although beautiful, vibrant, and filled with people, ultimately feel soulless and empty dampen what could possibly be the most entertaining and player-challenging narrative in a game I've ever played before or since. While pillars is a nod to the past, other games are a look to the future.

7.5/10

I really enjoyed Craftopia. It gave hints of Breath of the Wild and Genshin Impact and Fortnite (lol). The combat was fun although very basic. I really enjoyed exploring the different worlds with a friend. Where it fails is a few technical aspects: optimization and the game just not being finished.

The game has a heavy stuttering issue on larger worlds, to the point of giving a headache during extended play. This can be fixed with performance patches but seeing as how its EA, its not something I see forthcoming until near or at release. There's a lot of mistranslations and non-translated items as well as items and functions in the game just not being done. I chalk it up again to being EA from a very small development team as well as using machine translation.

All in all, a fun game made even more so with friends. Would recommend people to play it.. when it has more content and is further developed.

Its alright.

Dead Island Definitive Edition is essentially an HD Remaster of the game using Techland's newest engine "Chrome Engine 6" which was used in their newer game Dying Light. For better or for worse, It is essentially the same game as the one found in 2011.

+ Brings a unique RPG aspect to killing zombies with levels, skill trees, random drops, treasure chests, etc
+ The environment is rendered in beautiful detail with some stunning visuals
+ 4 player drop-in coop is extremely easy to set up with friends or randoms
+ For a zombie game, the story is rather good

- Lots of visual and technical bugs from the 2011 release have made their way into the game.
- The zombies feel a bit uninspired as there's lots of enemies that feel recycles from other games
- The game throws a million sidequests to you at once and it can be overwhelming
- The area with the most polish is the first area, the Resort. The other maps just don't feel as refined
- The inventory and menu system on PC was just ported over from the console version of the game

The Dead Island series of games have a lot of history behind them. This was one of Techland's breakthrough games and it essentially put them on the map back in 2011 when they revealed their trailer for Dead Island. On the game's release there were a lot of issues with the original game, some game breaking such as bugs that would crash the game, corrupt your save or just impede your progress. While some bugs are still in this new Definitive Edition of the game those nasty ones seemed to have been ironed out as I have not been able to replicate them.

The Definitive Edition is built on using their new in-house game engine, the Chrome Engine 6. Originally used for Dying Light (another zombie game made by Techland) the engine was ported over to Dead Island to make this its own "HD Remaster" of sorts, sporting better visuals such as increased rendering distance, lighting, character detail, and much more. That being said, I played this game on Max settings and even with everything cranked up, the shadow quality is still pixelated and jaggy for environment shadows. Sure I can change that in the .ini files but I shouldn't have to.

The most fun in this game is stomping around with friends. Playing with other increases the zombies and other enemies' health and damage (and there's some increased amount of zombies but its not overly noticeable). When you have 4 diverse characters to choose from, it makes for a fun time. You have a Blunt Weapons Expert (such as hammers, maces, etc), a Sharp Weapons Expert (such as Knives, Cleavers, etc), a Firearms Expert (needs no explanation), and a Throwing Weapons Expert (sometimes the weapons thrown will automatically return to your hand) (Called Boomerang in game). Combine this with a gauge that fills when you kill various enemies using your character's preferred speciality and you can unleash devastation with your Fury skills. The Blunt Weapons expert drops all weapons and starts punching everything in sight with devastating blows, the Sharp Weapons expert unsheathes a sword that can practically 1 hit all enemies, the Firearms Expert takes out her personal side-arm and unleashes hell, and the Throwing Weapons expert uses throwing stars to hit multiple enemies at the same time. On top of the various characters, there's a robust crafting and upgrading system to enhance your weapon of choice. These range from adding elemental damage to your weapon such as Electricitiy and Fire and making your weapon inflict bleed damage on Critical Hits to the rare mods created from finding hidden skulls around the map and placing them at hidden altars.

The best games to compare this against are not other typical zombie games. If you liked the Borderlands series, the Diablo series, Torchlight, and other games where there's procedural loot and leveling, you will enjoy this game. If you like to roam around with friends and stomp on zombies with kicks and a ton of various weapons, you'll like this game. There are still a lot of warts with a game that's supposed to have a lot of refinement and polish for a remaster on a new engine and I'm not sure if that's laziness on the developer or just technical limitations on the engine itself. That being said, the game does get from me:

6 / 10.

Golf It! is not your traditional mini-putt you used to play on various flash games websites. Using the Unity Engine, its a 3D golfing and putt-putt game that ditches the traditional "Power Meter" in favor of using the mouse to control the power of the swing. The player brings the mouse back to prepare the swing and the power of the swing is determined by how strong (aka: fast) the player moves the mouse forward.

This brings a frustratingly fun aspect to the game that differentiates itself from all the other golf games on the market. Combined with a very diverse map creation kit and multiplayer it makes for great fun with friends.

For the low price point of the game, you can get tons of enjoyment playing this thing. While it is in its beta stages as of the time of writing, I expect more polish and to iron out the physics kinks as time goes on.

8.5 / 10

Zombie Army Trilogy (ZAT) is a 3rd person over-the-shoulder Zombie Shooter game using the Sniper Elite engine. With features like the bullet-cam that was introduced in the main Sniper Elite series as well as up to 4 player co-op the game will have you troucing through Nazi Germany shooting zombies to save the world.

+ Really fun and satisfying gameplay.
+ Lots of different types of primary and secondary weapon choices.
+ The dark and brooding aesthetic is visually pleasing.
+ The game sounds great.
+ Up to 4 person co-op (game can be tailored for solo players too).
+ Bullet physics such as wind and gravity affects the trajectory of your shot on the higher difficulties.

- While the aesthetic is nice to look at, it doesn't vary at all throughout the 3 chapters.
- The music and soundtrack leaves little to be desired. Play your own music.
- While the bullet-cams are really cool, it does get a bit annoying.
- Most of the secondaries feel useless except one or two.
- The score system ruins the immersion of the game.

I had never touched a Sniper Elite game before playing this; having played this for 24 hours at the time of writing I will probably pick one up when it goes on sale. I had a really fun time blasting through Nazi Germany solo and convinced some friends and family to pick it up after they tried it on my PC. It runs really well on my PC with almost 0 frame drops throughout the whole experience, even with 4 person co-op on maximum zombie spawns on max difficulty.

That being said the game does has its flaws. It gets really repetitive in its zombies. Start off a level, kill a few zombies straggling about, survive a zombie siege, move on, rinse, repeat. If you care about narrative stories then you'll be disappointed as the game doesn't really offer any. The story is told through your exploration of the environment and the very limited cutscenes before and after a level. Zombies also do not do well with stairs or elevated platforms since they tend to get bobble up and down rather than go up them smoothly making headshots a pain. Because of this a lot of levels are really flat with almost no elevation to deal with this issue.

To sum up, Zombie Army Trilogy was a lot of fun for me to play. I have cleared this game solo on Marksman difficulty with spawns set for 4 players and had a blast trying to deal with that challenge. I'm looking forward for my friends and I to clear the game on Sniper Elite difficulty when they get their hands on the title. It does have it flaws that a lot of zombie games do have, such as repetitiveness and map tropes but it doesn't deter away the fun that the player enjoys. If you like shooting zombies, you'll like this game.

7.5/10