Recent reviews by AL1

Superliminal is a first-person-puzzle-game in the vain of Portal or The Witness, developed by indie-dev-studio "Pillow Castle".
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this game.
I really like the setup; You're a patient in a psychiatric clinic, suffering from some sort of anxiety, self-doubt and feelings of loss of control over your life, taking part in some sort of dream therapy. Having the game be a dream is a kind of predictable but still unique way to explain reality-bending puzzles, and I really enjoy it because in my opinion way too few games explore dreams and the surreal, trippy scenarios that can come from them. The game also has a decent sense of humour despite only having 2 characters; your therapist and a GLaDOS-esque dream-therapy A.I. trying to guide you through therapy. Because of this character dynamic, parts of the game are a quite funny satire of therapists, but the game still twists the story enough in the end to keep the game from being a shallow dismissal of therapy.
The gameplay itself is the weaker part of the game. While the perspective-puzzles stay interesting until the end, some solutions repeat a few times too often which takes away from the absurd magic and element of surprise of the puzzles. To be fair, the game seems to be aware of this and plays with your built-up expecations in the latter half of the game, but it's still a shame that you can count the types of puzzles on one hand. And the game is incredibly short, too. Normally I'm not too harsh on the price of shorter games, because if a movie ticket can sell for 10 bucks, then so can any 2-hour-experience. But the default price of ~€ 17,00 for Superliminal is bold, especially since I knew the game was probably on the shorter side, which it is with 1½-2 hours of playtime. I can forgive these shortcomings because this is a developer's first game, but unless the price is permanently reduced, you should probably only get this on sale if you want to be economic about your game purchases.
In general though, if you're into games like Portal or the Stanley Parable, give this a try when it's on sale.
8/10 - Good way to spend an evening.

Postal 2 is an open-world first-person-shooter released in 2003. You play as the “Postal Dude” doing errands for your b*tch-wife, but it’s up to you how you want to do them. You can be quite creative, but since it’s a shooter, you can imagine what kind of creativity that will lead to.

The movie-adaption of Postal was called a “live-action South Park”-movie, but I feel like that comparison applies to the game as well. The 7 days of the game (including the free expansion Apocalypse Weekend which comes with the game) are basically interactive South Park episodes. Really politically incorrect, juvenile 2000s humor that is a lot funnier than it has any right to be. What’s the most shocking about Postal 2 however is how quick it can win you over. I thought this game would be kind of bland to me, but by day 2 or 3 I was running amok, pissing on a McCarthy-memorial, desecrating corpses and generally being horrible. Even on my first run I committed so much manslaughter that “Hitler would be proud”. However, compared to Postal 1 which was disturbingly dark, the entirety of Postal 2 is obviously tongue-in-cheek satire.

The only major criticism I have with this game is that the gunplay feels kinda stiff and the whole game is kinda janky. You can save at any time and the game will too, but there’s still more crashes than there should be.

9/10 – Absolutely vile, I love it.

Ion Fury is a retro-FPS developed by Voidpoint, released in 2019.

As the most recent Build-engine game to date, Ion Fury has a legacy to live up to, especially with 3D Realms as it's publisher. So, does it live up to the likes of Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood? Yeah, probably.

The level-design is top-notch, but that's to be expected in a day and age where the Build-engine is not restricted by 90s hardware anymore. For short; It looks amazing. The only real missteps are some of the settings in the middle third of the game, but even those look impressive and convey what they are pretty well. The level-design is also insane on a gameplay-level with nice level gimmicks to shake things up, and there's easily more secret-hunting than in the big 3 Build-engine games combined. It also trumps all of these games in length, except for Blood maybe.

The music is incredible. That's not to say that Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior and Blood didn't have great soundtracks, they definitely had memorable tunes, but Ion Fury blows them out of the water with the amount of quality tracks. I'm not kidding, I'm not the type of guy to listen to soundtracks a lot, but I do listen to some of Ion Fury's in my free time.

The major gripe I have with this game is something I can't even lay my finger on. If I had to guess, it's just the way the guns feel. Shelly, the main character, is kind of a glass cannon, and a lot of the guns feel like they take a few too many bullets to kill, like they're always low on ammo or like they're just a bit unrewarding. Might also have to do with some of the enemies. I'm not sure. Something just feels off at times.

Which is not to say the gunplay is bad; It's still great! And so is the game. I guess my personal taste is just used to something else. But this game is definitely worth a buy if you're into other oldschool shooters!

9/10 - Rock solid shooter.

1994's DOOM 2 is the beloved sequel to DOOM, released only 10 months after the original.

At first glance, DOOM 2 could be considered "more of the same", given that it runs on the same engine and uses a lot of the same assets as DOOM, but that isn't exactly true. DOOM 2 has it's own flavor, not just because of the new weapon and enemies, but also because DOOM 2's levels work differently compared to the original. No more largely manageable groups of demons, in DOOM 2 you're often dealing with hordes. It's not just straightforward sci-fi-bases anymore, but gimmick-levels that like to mess with you. And in the late-game, enemies that were episode-bosses in the original are just casually placed in arenas for you to deal with.

Because of these changes in gameplay, the game can be a bit unbalanced at times compared to it's predecessor, especially on Ultra-Violence. I had to run away from fights a handful of times because the game just overwhelms the player and starves them of resources. But while it's unfair at times, it offers up much more of a challenge compared to the cakewalk that is the original DOOM, so at the end of the day, I still kind of appreciate it.

All in all, if you've beaten DOOM, had fun with it and want more, you can't really go wrong with DOOM 2.

9/10 - Great sequel.

Heretic: Shadow Of The Serpent Riders is a retro-FPS from 1994 and the first entry in the Heretic/Hexen-series of games by Raven Software.

You play as an elf named Corvus, who is at war with the tyranny of the Serpent Riders, a demonic triplet that has conquered the world of Heretic. As you fight your way through the ruined elven capital, you reach Hell's Maw, and you figure that the only way to stop the demons is to seal the portal to hell from the other side.

If you think that sounds familiar, you'd be absolutely right. At the end of the day, Heretic is just the fantasy version of DOOM. That's to be expected though, since Raven Software was close with id Software and this even runs on the DOOM engine. It's just kind of a shame that at times Heretic feels more like a total conversion mod of DOOM rather than being it's own thing, down to the weapons, who except one are all based on weapons from DOOM. These similarities are something that was fixed in the successor to Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, but that game is a whole other can of worms.

In general though, especially if you decide to use GZDoom as your source port (because of course, this comes with Dosbox), Heretic is a pretty enjoyable oldschool shooter. Since gameplay is practically identical to DOOM, it's basically just as fun as that game, and the fantasy aesthetic and comparitively-detailled environments make it a fresh experience for someone who already played DOOM.

9/10 - "No one ever said being a heretic was easy!"

Metamorphosis is a first-person-platforming adventure developed by the young polish studio Ovid Works.

The game is partially based on Franz Kafka's story of the same name, Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up as a bug one morning after anxious dreams, however while Gregor, the player character, does indeed transform into a bug, much of the story is actually based on another story by Kafka called The Trial. This was to be expected as the storyline of Metamorphosis would hardly make for a good game, and The Trial is a good choice for a conflict and as Kafka's second most popular story.

Essentially, you are turned into a bug and overhear your friend Josef K. get arrested before you could draw anyone's attention to you to help you. You are now on your quest to become human again and to help your friend Josef with his trial. This duality of the story becomes interesting and important later on, however since the game is so short I don't want to give anything away.

The game itself is a first-person-platformer, and I know what that sounds like. It sounds ♥♥♥♥. But to my surprise, it largely isn't. The movement feels fun, the game is very lenient with letting you get away with jumps and even when you fail the time it takes to respawn is surprisingly short, almost instant even. The game also manages to make crawling around quite intuitive, even if some structures of clutter seem a bit ouf of place. The only problems with it are that some walls you can't climb aren't indicated properly and sometimes when crawling the camera gets a bit confusing, but that's no big deal. Levels vary, look gorgeous and don't overstay their welcome. If you ever get lost, pressing Tab gives you an overview of the level and marks points of interest. The atmosphere is great, a lot of the books and documents are (accurately to Kafka) in german as the game takes place in Vienna and the smooth orchestral soundtrack is outstanding for this type of game and also features german vocals whenever it uses vocals. The artsy 1920s style just scratches an itch for me, I guess.

The game has some shortcomings though. For one, it is literally short. 20,99€ for a 4-hour-game is a hefty price, at least for me, but then again I also didn't mind that with other games from the narrative first-person adventure genre like Gone Home or Firewatch. Just be wary wether or not that's the type of game you want to pay this much for.

But there's also shortcomings in the technical department: Voice clips that play twice in a row when they shouldn't, at times janky platforming, spelling mistakes in the german translations and kind of uncanny animations and models for humans (though that may just be to make them more grotesque). And for me at least, the game also had issues with performance, though I will have to check this once I have a more up to date PC.

You could also argue that the story only really resembles Kafka's writing on the surface level, since it's hard to express and at the same time gamify the frustration of bureacracy and hardships of life that Kafka dealt with (except that this has been done before successfully with Papers, Please).

But at the end of the day, while it wasn't as grandiose, deep and artistic as I wanted it to be, it was a fun evening and a bold and interesting idea for a game, and I'll be looking out for what comes next from Ovid Works.

7/10 - Nice way to spend an afternoon.

It is what it says on the box. It's a cut setpiece from Highway 17 and they added some fancier light graphics. I would have liked this if it was in the game since the skybox and environment looks like it could have been an interesting section, but Highway 17 was a fairly long level so I can see why they cut it.

This takes like 10 minutes to complete, 13 minutes for first-timers. It's not much, but it's a nice addition and a neat little goodie.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two is the second and last expansion to Half-Life 2, released in 2007 and awaiting a true sequel since then.

To me, Episode Two does a lot of things better than Episode One. While the moment-to-moment gameplay wasn't bad in Episode One (except for the beginning and climax) and may have even been an improvement over the main game in some ways, it lacked the unique setpieces and story that made the main game stand out so much, essentially retreating old ground for most of the episode.

Episode Two fares better in that regard, taking you out of City 17 into White Forest, and while that environment still stretches through the entirety of Episode Two, it's a breath of fresh air after being in City 17 and the Citadel for some 8 hours or so. That being said, the episode still has a bunch of interesting setpieces that keep White Forest from becoming monotonous, like the mine, the rocket silo, some of the roadside setpieces, etc..

Story-wise Episode Two also really starts to pick up again after Episode One was relatively stale, even starting to delve into the grander Half-Life storyline like the role of the G-Man, rather than just the short-term goals of the human resistance.

All in all, I was quite pleased with this entry of the Half-Life series. While I was unsure about Episode One, I can whole-heartedly recommend people play Episode Two after finishing Half-Life 2!

9/10 - Great addition to the series.

EDIT: If you're thinking about buying this for Rise Of The Triad, wait until they release the upcoming Rise Of The Triad Remaster!

Will update my review once I finished the game, but be warned: THIS RUNS ON DOSBOX.

Unfortunately there are barely any source ports for Rise Of The Triad (or Blake's Stone for that matter) and even less ones that work properly. But playing on Dosbox is not only dated and insufferable because of the authentic 90s control schemes, but also because it's DOS. So no full quality music and no high resolutions for you.

I know this is kind of unfair towards the game but I'm sick of Dosbox and I will give any developer that thinks Dosbox is an acceptable way to ship a game in 2020 a negative review.

I honestly don't know why they put this in. It's a nice gag and all, but not that funny and rather confusing to play.