Recent reviews by s4turn [270]

absolute cringe

Well, in general, I was on the verge of not recommending this game, and I still think it's on a borderline of love and hate, but in the end, the 100% completion made me satisfied with the game. It wasn't as pleasing as the first part, mostly due to difficulty of levels, but completing such a challenge feels more worthy and, dare I say, noble.

In contrast to previous part, Hotline Miami 2 made a few vital improvements to the game:
- the assault rifles now are able to kill enemies in one bullet, instead of "spray and pray" type of shooting;
- a little bit longer shift view;
- lore expansion, obviously;
- introducing new weapons, such as AK having more bullets but not shooting as rapid as M-16, Nailgun, pistols etc.;
- new game mechanics such as roll dodge, double wielding (for a limited amount of time, unfortunately) and melee only gameplay.

It's all good and fun during the normal walkthrough, but ♥♥♥♥ gets serious after you unlock hard mode. I wouldn't say that all the levels were impossible to complete, but some of them made me rage a bit over abundance of windows.

Storywise, it's a great and tragic ending, a nihilistic and realistic approach to portray how violence brings nothing but destruction to human kind in all of its traits: from physical form of existing to insignificance of human life, human soul, how dirty and gory one becomes, just like a true, numb animal.

6/10

What can be worse than playing poker with bots that know your hand? What's the point of it at all? WHO RAISES BEFORE FLOP? Go play online poker and you'll understand how rigged the game is when you're in +.

Rated AA for absolutely atrocious.

Very fun game and definitely enjoyed the time spent on grinding to 100% completion, despite many, many bugs and glitches. The open world gameplay is great and somewhat refreshing to have, definitely better than playing the same level for 5 times in order to beat the clock or take a look at beta level. The bonus level is probably the best bonus level among other LEGO games, because for the encore that's exactly what everyone wants - smash stuff and enjoy yourself. The map works great, though the markers tick themselves off when you accidentally start a fight with an enemy character, so it disorientates itself. Another bittersweet moment is character selection in both open world and free play - an amazing concept, but yet, super annoying when it switches the other character just because the game thinks that there should be only one tall character or one small. Saving the game on a certain level area? GIGA BRAIN IDEA, saved so much time on levels where you had to run and try to collect chest minikits.

At this point, having played multiple LEGO games, I think it's a tradition for this type of games to have bugs, and it's certainly annoying, but not rage-enducing. However, I'm going to point out the flaws:
- no treasure detector is a missed opportunity, and an essential extra to have;
- Legolas-oriented jumps in open world are going to give me PTSD;
- so many secret rooms made me replay level million times and I could barely see them;
- the shooting is a bit awkward, but I guess it's not so easy to program projectiles and time their travel distance;
- not a huge fan of original movie voice over, still done great with slips of silent lego humor, but it's always better without it.

Overall, a great game with an innovative approach, compared to it's predecessors.

Great storyline and lore in general, challenging gameplay, cool collectibles and achievements, fun to play - amazing.

Great game with easy-to-learn mechanics. Yet again, not a huge fan of playing swipe simulators on gaming computers, so it was my first and last experience with this sort of genre.

If you want to complete this game on 100% - almost impossible, and even if it is - you have to waste a large amount of time in order to do so. Terrible controls, terrible glitches and map bugs. Atleast I payed pennies for this.

I think the time has come to form my opinion on this game. I've been playing this game since 2013, and at this time, in 2021, I can say that the game is dead. After latest developers' attempt to release the community of players from utterly annoying bots, they failed, and I can clearly see that few people behind the table aren't going to carry things out, and I doubt Valve will ever dare to think about changing the current situation.

This was the first game that amazed me by believable, live, charismatic characters that attract me with a magnetic beam, and I loved grinding and mindlessly racking up my kill count on strange weapons, or putting cosmetics that I prefer for my aesthetic satisfaction. Time passed, many new games were released, and I was one of those that didn't bought into Overwatch, but I wanted to check it out.

However, the decisive year of 2020, when bot infestation became unbearable - I decided to quit forever, and I think I did for good, because I moved on to Overwatch, which has a perfect hero balance and active developers' team - it was a blessing. Sometimes I would turn on TF2 just to play sniper in pubs and listen to my music playlist, and it's a great relaxing method. Lately, I've noticed how many obnoxious and hypocritical kids play this game, how they cheat knowing that there won't be any repercussions for their malicious actions, because Valve doesn't care at all. Bots are still trouble, and I say that it's still a problem even when players manage to kick them instantly - it's absurd, it's stupid that the VAC system completely ignores them and puts to shame all of the developers' prowess. I hate all of these people. I hate how they all massacred the good and just want to spread the bad around. I say ♥♥♥♥ you to everyone who made this game worse.

So long.

One of those games that made me feel refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated after exhausting routine of FPS shooters (and some real life events). I might give an upper hand and say that this game is amazing masterpiece, but I've been in this place before and I can surely say that this gives me hard "Life is Strange" vibes, due to how I got attached to characters, but the recent example was executed well better. This was totally not an accident, as both "The Game Bakers" and "Dontnod" are developers from France, and, apparently, putting "X" on teenage girls' (and lonely coomers, like me) hearts is a trend. And what do you know, in both games the choices that you make DON'T MATTER because there are only two endings to the story. I mean, Haven never implied to have the "all choices matter" system, which is good! I'm not putting it as a flaw towards Havens' production, but rather how the latter game learned from it's predecessor of "nots" of game build. However, a lot of hard skeptics might tear this game to pieces due to how soy-ish and soft everything is, but honestly - there are as many opinions as there are people, so I don't care.

Now about the actual flaws. The markers on the map were rather useless - I expected some sort of cursor to show up while I'm not looking at the map. Certain dialogues gave some HEAVY and CRINGEWORTHY Life is Strange vibes (bLoOt, BoRoN). After all, it's a romance game - it is something I had to see coming. Last: leaving out southern islets (the pollen-filled, yellow landscapes) was actually a disappointment because there wasn't much main story action going on in there and I visited them ONLY after completing the main story.

The characters are basic, not going to lie, these "love swings" and drama is nothing new to me, but I can say that they're believable, as during the gameplay I reminisced about my previous relationship experience and realized how tough it is to keep such connection to each other for a long time and how sweet is to love and be loved. I mean, it's a game and it's not real so otherwise yes they would eat each other after being together on isolated planet for, like, F O R E V E R.

Another hit in my heart was that the game concept and gameplay reminded me somewhat of Crash of the Titans and Ratchet and Clank series, which I hold dear to me because of childhood memories, as my love to free-roaming separate regions (levels), hitting stuff and enemies and just collecting items is endless and I'm glad it got revisited in this game as well.

The gameplay, of course, gets boring with time, and it reminds of Pokemon series, like it was made for nintendo switch or something lol xDDDDD (It was, actually...), but I say it's perfect for it's price - I'm willing to pay a little over 10$ to enjoy quality content for under 20 hours to complete the game to 100%. Short story, no difficulty-based achievements, good learning curve left me totally satisfied with the game, 8/10 for sure going to play this game with my future anime-furry-waifu-pervy-hentai-uwu-nerd wife.

Maybe I'm biased because I really like the source engine games in general, but still this is the perfect balance between 1.6 and Global Offensive, while the first I consider to be really old and quite inaccurate during gameplay and the latter being way too flashy, and just another release of the franchise, giving away the Call of Duty vibes.