Lurker > Simoun

2022 Retrospective

2021 has been harsh on me. Dad died before the year was over, I got the terrible COVID variant, and my future was uncertain as I went into what was going to be my first year of unemployment. Gaming that time was like a drug that both kept me in check and sent me to the wayside if I didn't regulate myself; composed of either long elaborate games that I could just zone out in or really short ones as I used them mainly to distract myself before focusing on my certs and things. I don't recall actually wanting to play something because I wanted to.

2022 follows this pattern but I'm a bit more settled in my new job. Gaming was mostly focused on finishing up old stuff I couldn't before 2020 but nothing so heavy like an RPG except probably at the start of the year when I was more free. This year saw the end of several FPS' and Adventure Games---games that are lighter to swallow and get into. I'm dying for some heavy stuff but I don't know if I have the capacity for them yet. It's getting there though as I fill in the gaps of my games beaten with Deep Rock Galactic or Voxiom.io

I don't know if 2023 will have me branching out into more "daring" attempts to beat something. Perhaps. I've been slowly moving into solo pen and paper journalling stuff so maybe my count will also significantly lessen. We'll see.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (PC)

I think this game set out to do what it was meant to do, which was to give tribute to a franchise that has wowed us 90s kids for decades. Is it a perfect beatemup? No. I would say its about 7.5 over 10 especially if you're considering that this is the state they want to leave it in without any planned DLC, patches, or future content. But was it a very enjoyable romp through nostalgia? Hell yeah.

Sure, challenge yourself in Arcade mode all you want I guess if that's your thing but I think the heart of this game lies in playing it with 5 other people regardless of the mode. You just don't see games like this anymore. Or do you---I don't know, I haven't been looking at the beatemup indie scene lately.

What I really love about this is the amount of nostalgia put into it. There are things in the background in the setpieces that make me scream out oh wow yeah I remember that. Wow they put that in the game, cool. I really loved it that they decided to put Tempestra into this game but man. If you're going to put an obscure character in the game as a boss, at least don't do them dirty like that. So for context if anyone cares Tempestra was a one shot villain in the classic 90s show. Yes, she was a villain in an arcade machine, but she was basically a weather wizarding bitch who gave Leonardo (the only turtle present in that episode) a hard time in her only appearance. But to make her the Summoner for 2 other nostalgic baddies is a shame in itself. Wasted potential.

The game is not well-polished when you stop thinking about the nostalgia for a sec. I'm not a hardcore beatemup expert but there are some really obvious things like the animation frames, the hitboxes, the difficulty level of boss fights---sometimes its too easy and sometimes its too hard. And all this time they still couldn't get attacking aerial enemies right. Not to mention the 2.5 vehicle sections were a pain most of the time. This game could use a couple of patches and some DLC. Sorely needs it.

If this game's goal was to emulate the style of the old games; a love letter so to speak then yeah max points for me. But if this is a game meant to continue an existing set of games and also bringing it to the modern stage, then yeah it fails a bit. My opinion is, if you're a big fan then you'll get it no matter what. If you got a nephew or a brother who is a fan then yeah of course. But if you're looking for a "great" beatemup its not here in my opinion.

Quake: Enhanced (PC)

Probably my last major game of the year, we'll see. Quake was something of a mystery to me. My childhood was based on Quake 2 and so I didn't really know anything about this game. I wouldn't call it amazing, just "important" I guess. I play this and all I can think about is Quake 2 honestly.

This version of Quake includes every single expansion and DLC and I have to say while they were all decent I really hate fighting the monsters in this game. They're all annoying AF and I had to retrain my brain to realize that this game is just not easy at all never holding your hand. But I can appreciate "where it all began" and what these other retro shooter revivalists have been influenced by. And I can also see how the Serious Sam games took the shallowest elements of these games and turned them into an arcadey fuckfest.

While I appreciate the imagery and the level design, I probably shouldn't have played all these levels straight as with every succeeding expansion I felt more and more frustrated. And then the final expansion came which was the only one made fairly recently and of any seriously official note. This bastard of an expansion might as well have been its own game; it showcased quite a bit of what this old engine can do and the setpieces were a perfect blend of gothic horror and violent bloodshed. If I didn't know anything about Quake, I probably would have just wanted this final episode as it easily trumps the rest.

I don't think I'm coming back to this game in a long long time but I will keep it on for when I will have to eventually play tons of its mods. I hear they're completely different; it seems the community made maps in Quake are more akin to DOOM's own with over 200 enemies being very common and probably if released back then machines wouldn't have been able to handle so many polygons moving at once.

Nobody Saves the World (PC)

Quirky action dungeoncrawler that I think someone else here mentioned beating at the start of this year. I like the premise and the mechanics and it was refreshing to see (story spoilers) that loser character actually coming into his own in the end. It was very endearing.. But I felt like in the pursuit of customizability and replayability, the game ironically felt padded and restrained and thus fell short for me. It seems obvious from how pitiful the final boss was that the true game lies in New Game+ where it crosses into roguelike territory somewhat. But the road to it is pretty grindy with more than 10 characters each with their own somewhat random but similar variation of quests and goals. I didn't even stick around to unlock the final form nay the two penultimate forms by the endgame because I was so focused on grinding every other character I just lost all steam. Anyways, glad its over.

Cultic: Chapter 1 (PC)

Hey I'm not going to question why a game that's suppose to be in Early Access decided ah fuck it, it's ready and Part 2 can be DLC. Cultic is fun, frantic and frankly I think I'm enjoying it just a little bit better thanks to just getting out of Hands of Necromancy. It is for all intents Blood 2.0. I very much enjoyed it although it is not without its flaws. Large enemies tend to get stuck on textures. Climbing stairs for some reason is ridiculously clunky. Aaaaand I think that's it.

One of the main things this game's got going for is Options. The game offers you all these ways to customize your arsenal, all these avenues to the same location, and all these ways to utilize attacks. The dynamite itself has 4 kinds of attacks and one of them is combining it with molotovs, a move I have never seen anywhere and should be a no brainer honestly.

The voxelized filter thankfully can be turned off but I kept it on anyway as it grew on me. You know a game is designed well if you can despite the game looking pixelized as hell, still spot cultist snipers a mile away and nick them with such accuracy. Also, EXPLOSIONS. This game does explosions really well. I am so glad I'm no longer a Necromancer with sluggish spells. Hello hitscanners hello franticness. Actually that last part isn't really true; the cultists are great at aiming but all the bullets fly and do not actually hitscan so you can and must be able to dodge them effectively.

Hands of Necromancy (PC)

I think this is the best "retraux FPS" shooter I've played this year. That said, I really hate this game. Its Hexen basically, with the backtracking and the key hunting and such. I suggest you read a guide on the most optimal path to avert this. That said, I've never wanted to continue playing something so annoying in awhile.

The main reason for that is the gameplay which is reverse-Hedon. You'll want to take your time in this game instead of rushing in spamming items and guns blazing. Since you're a mage, your arsenal is essentially all spellcasting save for your default magic sword which still has quite the wind up time. You do get a pistol and grenades but ammo for those are few and far in between until the last few stages. The grenades which happen to be the only weapon with Splash Damage, does not harm you but poisons you...which makes them all the more situational and risky to use, which is great.

In addition to casting animation, each spell has its own velocity and effect. However, none of these spells are hitscanners or RPGs---no splash damage. As a result, majority of the game is spent on trying to be as accurate as possible. And it is how you choose your spells that determine how accurate you want to be. The fireball staff has infinite range and can stunlock basic enemies but is essentially a weak peashooter. The Tornado spell pushes back enemies while dealing consistent damage but is slow to cast and has half the ammo. The Ice ring goes through enemies but is very slow to travel and not at all ideal at long range when the frickin enemies pace slowly like any DOOM game.

I played this on normal and for the first time found myself often scarce with ammo for the entire game and because no spell is better than another in terms of damage, you really need to make those shots count. And because damage is often mostly similar between arsenals, it really doesn't matter what kind of enemies you face. Even the most basic enemy can fuck you up in the right situation. By the way, I'm also playing with the "Classic" version of this game. That is, the weapons have no alt fire and you're just stuck with whatever basic spell you have.

I think what I appreciate about the combat in this game is that it never tries to set you up in the traditional FPS sense. For example, if there's a lone item in an empty room that looks like there's an ambush, nobody actually shows up. No hidden walls or monster closets. No setpieces where the enemies are soooo far away sniping you in all sorts of directions. No huge sprawling rooms that just pipes in waves and waves of enemies. What you see coming before you in every level is fair for the most part and if you die you just weren't accurate enough. They would eventually start tricking you in Episode 3 but even then the trickery is restrained: just the one asshole knight or a pair of mages perched in some pillar accompanied by ghosts. The game does a great job of making use of the tiny roster of enemies; I never once felt bored by the lack of variation.

All 3 end-episode bosses are brutal. This game doesn't pull punches. I will say though that I wish they didn't have to exist because their Serious Sam-esque circle strafing BS feels counterintuitive to the 7 levels that came before that. I also do not like the patented GZDOOM slip and slide movement, as well as one particular level that lasts for over an hour and is quite vertical and unfair, with invulnerable cultists constantly taking potshots at you from miles away.

Other than that, amazing excellent environments on par with Hedon but it has its own distinct style. The music which got repetitive after Episode 1, was never boring. I am using some of this shit in my dnd campaign definitely. The story is nonsense but not really the focus of games like this. I would recommend it to anyone looking for some retro FPS fun. DareIsay I would put this game above Blood. And speaking of which, CULTIC is next on my list. So we'll see if this can dethrone Hands of Necromancy for me.

Its hard for me to recommend Hob to people but I really enjoyed it. Not alot of games give you that "reviving an empire" vibe. I think the closest actually was this year's TUNIC

Cruelty Squad (PC)

I got 2 of the 3 endings. I'm not even going to attempt the final final level as I am not nearly as good enough for that shit. This was fun in some ways but I really wish you could cheat some of the parts if only for me to see all the secrets this game has to offer.

Kenri posted...

Unfortunately the game's technical aspects are dogshit. I probably had around 10-15 full on "would you like to submit an error report?" level crashes, and that's not including all the times I fell through the world or whatever. Sometimes the map just doesn't load, too! But don't worry, you have bigger issues because that means the game will be crashing soon. Sometimes the game will crash during cutscenes. Sometimes it will decide to absolutely chug because too much stuff is on screen, until it decides to just crash anyway. It crashed during the final cutscene for me, which was after I beat the final boss at about 3 frames per second. This isn't even touching on the smaller bugs like invisible walls, graphical glitches, enemies attacking you during cutscenes, or the time an enemy's death cry just never stopped. Or the stiff controls. I'm willing to give a little benefit of the doubt and say maybe this was running poorly because I was playing it on Steam Deck, but it really doesn't feel like a good excuse!

This was frustrating for me as well, but even more sad was this is how I found out Runic Games had filed for bankruptcy----they literally could not patch the game because they no longer existed.

Yomawari: Midnight Shadows

Finally got this bad boy out of my PC. It remained to be one of the longest lingering games aside from Metro Exodus which I beat last year I think? Two years ago, I finished the first game and it was quite stellar. I do believe I started playing this series because of a thread here where I was saying that there weren't any good horror games left and someone corrected me by mentioning this series. So after beating Night Alone, I went straight for this game and

completely forgot about it for two years.

I would tell myself man it's probably because the game is so scary but playing it now I really don't know what the hold up was. Only reason why I picked it up recently was because of that 3rd game that just came out a month ago and I felt so silly that it was on my radar again.

Anyways, game's decent. Whatever steam I was gaining with when I played Night Alone, its completely lost here. Yeah, it was better with now checkpoints that allowed you to teleport and gave the ability to save anywhere. But it was also cheap at times; still relying on getting absolutely close just to detect ghosts, still dying from less impactful one hit KOs, still relying on the same old cues to add padding to the game. Impressive jumpscares though, I will give it to you. It had some soul-shattering stuff and one particularly 4th wall breaking one or two the latter being a minor event in the post-game that wasn't even easy to trigger.

I still got it to 100% completion at least, something I didn't do previously if only because I admired the Pokemon Gold and Silver nature of this game where you spend roughly a third of the game in its post-game, exploring the town from the first game where none of its spirits change and as a result still act unfair towards you by comparison.

The Tarnishing of Juxtia (PC)

A C- Soulsclone. Warning this post will be a semi rant on how shit it is. Just to get this out of the way, if you found yourself playing this game it was probably because of how it looks. It looks amazing. Not Hollow Knight amazing, but you can tell its got its own distinct style going on and the story/plot felt right when you figured it all out. I think my favorite part of the lore is that there is a 3rd seemingly unrelated faction (though necessary for the Golden Ending but uhh more on that later) and that the eponymous Tarnishing is a wildcard 4th faction instead of the usual adversary that you have to defeat. Moreover, the world isn't really dead so much as severely damaged because of an ongoing war before the Tarnishing started. I really like what the game was going for if you just sit down and think about it.

But the praise stops there.

This game is barely playable. I would rather play Death's Gambit (which I still haven't beat due to that game having its own problems) than sit through this willingly. I won't bore you guys with the technicalities of it but basically the game boasts options in the vein of Skul. But because the enemies move way faster than you do (and the fact that you are slow af even for a dark souls clone with the stamina and everything), there is really only one build that actually works: the speedy tank.

Heavy Weapons are not useful at all and do not catch up with the daggers and the fist weapons. Other options include Magic. Boss Relics (every boss you beat gives you a neat special/super ala Ender Lilies). Passive Gifts which are minor relics that you can mix and match. The offers you all that, but none of them scale particularly well and you can't even upgrade them so your goto relics will always be the one that gives you Invincibility and the one that Summons Minions. That's it.

Okay time to shit on the stuff I praised about previously. Yeah the game looks great...for the first 3 zones. Then you're treated to a bunch of empty maps. Long hallway-like zones with no personality and wouldn't look out of place in Symphony of the Night. Like remember those corridors that encourage you to just grind for hearts and rare items? Thats 90% of the game.

And the story? Yeah okay still great. However there are only 2 conclusions you can attain and they're both shit. Like literally when you beat the respective Final Boss and True Final Boss, the game just goes to credits. Especially the latter. It's a waste of time and I only kept playing because it was short and it allowed me to be cheesy once I figured out how to play the cheese game.

What else. One more thing I guess is there is a weapons upgrade system but you can only truly upgrade ONE weapon in the whole game---you won't be able to find the resources you need to upgrade more. Finding only 3 final-tier upgrade mats implies though that the game wanted you to grind for the small mats in order to only be able to fully upgrade 3 of them. Which is fine. If I knew that ahead of time because the game even in its final stages kept dumping weapons on you such that it was virtually impossible to theorycraft unless you knew what was coming.

Alright thats it I'm done ranting about this shit. 4/10 souls clone.

KCF0107 posted...

To make matters worse, at various points in the game, I had a eureka moment but needed a reminder about a previous fate. Unfortunately, because you have to go through a series of fates before regaining access to ones you have come across, they make it very difficult to act on moments such as that as your only option is to look at the book and hope that either the death image or the transcript is good enough, assuming you know and/or can find the exact page that eureka moment involved.

This is exactly what I mean by terrible design and artificial padding. I honestly don't mind the 3 guess mechanic however I will admit it is more of a stopgap to prevent mindless guessing instead of actually solving that problem. The entire idea that you have to skim into the exact page/memory just to get your story straight feels like the game attempting to make things more difficult when it was really just more annoying.

Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)

There are 2 kinds of Puzzle games. One is a game that was made to make you feel clever that you beat it. The other is the opposite---it makes you feel stupid by never holding your hand and forcing you to challenge it. Obra Dinn is in the latter camp and it is a badly designed one at that. It disguises itself as intentionally hard by being badly designed. This mire of challenges only adds to my frustration. I literally just finished Voyage, a game that showcases ambiguity as a strength, rather than adding artificial difficulty to things.

I came into this thinking it was going to be some god tier puzzle adventure. But it's not even a good adventure. Like for one the payoff is totally not worth it and takes the cowardly explanation of "It's all ambiguous, you figure it out." in an attempt to be avante-garde but I did not just sit through hours of deliberate pacing just for the conclusion to fall flat. Did I have fun with this? I guess, yeah (once I figured how the game wanted me to assume things). Could it have done things better? Definitely.

Design decisions hold this game back: the lack of an ingame note taking feature, the inability to quickly swap between memories from anywhere and anytime, the deliberately monochrome aesthetic which while adds some mystique to it, makes for observing things intentionally difficult. So, I ended up not noticing a clue not because I couldn't make sense of it, but because I couldn't fucking see it at all even as I was staring into it.

The way the game is paced expects that you somehow memorize key events (some hidden within other events) and to be able to backtrack all around the ship to find the exact moment you're looking for. And I know I could just physically write things down but that's not the point. The point is the game is designed that it doesn't want you to do this. Playing it as intended and you'll get frustrated by how the game is and not the game itself.

There are better games like this: The Painscreek Killings, Kona, Quern: Undying Thoughts, Ether One---these are games that were designed to make you feel stupid, but they were legit challenges. Enjoyed the sea shanties though. And some of the character's deaths was worth watching like that asshole 2nd mate. But yeah, waste of my time honestly.

KCF0107 posted...

Return of the Obra Dinn (XB1)

Amazing art, sound, and one of the better simple stories in a video game. I can't help but feel like my expectations weren't meant because its linear progression, somewhat cumbersome menu navigation, and forcing the player to have to follow the specific line of pixie dust from one corpse to another as well as having to walk back to a corpse in order to view their fate again definitely hindered my enjoyment of the game.

The first one really surprised me because there's other than the beginning chapter, there's no narrative merit to how they structured the game. There's a superior version of this game where it is an open-ended investigation with magic compass adding one more magic trick in being able to view fates at will wherever you were.

Ugh I'm actually considering just spoiling myself and being done with this game's entire bullshit. My expectations to finish this have been disappointing as yeah I have to piece together Every Single Crew Member like seriously? I haven't felt this dumb since playing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective but at least in that game you were deemed dumb as efficiently as possible.

Voyage: Journey to the Moon (PC)

Another game by Kheops. I really love this studio's use of 360 and their very specific UI when it comes to puzzle solving adventure. I believe this is the 5th game from them that I've played. Anyways, this game is great; it doesn't hold your hand and gives you this enormous task of attempting to escape the moon and you actually start from literally attempting to understand their language which took more than a simple minigame. You had an IQ score that was being tracked the more cool things you did. You had to understand the moon people's use of iconography and math in order to progress far. I've honestly not felt this kind of brain burn since playing Quern; it's got that Myst feeling but with storytelling so everything makes sense in context.

If you don't know, Kheops likes making games based on literary works and in this one you play as Michel Ardan from the Jules Verne novels. Idk I just find it funny that the game ends on a cliffhanger where he teams up with another Verne character Captain Nemo with hints that they're going back to the moon somehow.

Zombotron (PC)

Revisited. This time to get all the secrets.

The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles (PC)

Prequel to the first game; a spin-off of sorts. This one is about the latter 2 of the characters introduced in the first game and explores more of their shenanigans which was honestly needed. Their presence in the third act felt so weird to the narrative of the story. Thought it feels like this spin-off was originally part of the game in some way but taken out to remove the already bloated mess of the original.

It is slightly better than the first game but only slightly. It's still lame in its attempts at humor, has even more obtuse puzzling and pixel hunting, buuuuuut it's only half as long as the previous and it has a more sensible (not so serious) plot that's just right for a guybrush clone like Nathaniel Bonnet. It also doesn't outstay its welcome with its references and dialog taking forever.

Hard Reset Redux (PC)

This was great and should've been what Prodeus was. I didn't realize the people who made this were basically the successors to the devs behind Painkiller so I basically played another Painkiller game again. I never would've played this back then because of the shortness of the game but to be honest it was decent. The DLC stuff seamlessly added to this version of the game was weird---its suppose to be a cyberpunk game so the DLC taking place outside of it made the game feel like a generic shooter. Moreover by the time you unlock the necessary gear you need you wont bother looking for the rest unless you're a completionist. A flawed but nice game but only just so.

I forgot to add this in my writeup for Kingpin: Life of Crime (PC) but the most ridiculous thing about this game was that the entire OST for this was just 3 tracks from Cypress Hill. Like, technically it was 6 tracks because there were 3 non-lyrical versions of those tracks that played normally and then for some reason one level had all 3 actual versions of those songs. Like I get how they wanted to market Cypress Hill but seriously just 3 tracks???

Legend of Grimrock 2 (PC)

This was a strange experience. This is the first time in a long time that I've wanted to badly replay something I've actually posted in a Post Each. Usually I just one and done everything and find little reason to come back. I think honestly it was the mainly disappointing amount of clones that while are good, do not have that flavor I'm looking for although to be fair I never really looked into the M&M series to get my fix. After finding out the devs of this game have actually changed studios and worked on other things, I decided to relive this piece of nostalgia once again.

But I was hit with the nostalgia bug, strangely. Strangely, this was not the game I remember at all. I don't know if it's because I'm losing my edge or what but this game got significantly harder. I don't even remember if it was patched recently but suddenly I had to focus and theorycraft better and I was so stressed over quickloading all the time. Anyways, the game is still great; I just wish I didn't come back to it because it had nothing for me but a reality check (which I guess was needed).

Needless to say, I intend to come back to this yet again in the future but not for the game. I'm talking about custom content and in the years following this game there have been some pretty devious ones. But now I know I'll have to come back with a better mind than thinking this game was easy because now it's going to be difficult on purpose just like that Blood Fan Expansion I played a few months back.

I also love the score which I never noticed. Title and Credits because the game itself has no music.

Kingpin: Life of Crime (PC)

This is a weird game that uses the Quake 2 engine that is apparently a cult classic but it was really just a headache. It straddles the line between oldschool and modern shooter and it had some great ideas going for it. For one, I really love the allies ability to keep up with you for a game made at this time. In addition, enemy pathfinding was precise and they weren't dumb; they will actually run back and forth to try and bait you and won't act dumb most of the time. Its the hitscanning that's ridiculous though.

Necronomicon - The Dawning of Darkness (PC)

Another game from Microids. I just can't get enough of that old school 360 point clicking. Much like Dracula, you play as an Investigator putting a stop to the Mythos. Its by the numbers at this point but back then it was probably revolutionary in the storytelling---I was so sure the people you were working with were cultists using you for their own ends especially after you literally kill your best friend who was possessed by the villain of the game about two-thirds into it (with the rest of the game just finding the Ancient Cities and destroying them). But no, they really were your colleagues and there was no double cross. You stop Yoggie, hurray!

Contemporary of the games in this era, the flow was mostly talking to people which kinda bored me halfway in but got intriguing when the "game" finally let me explore and it started turning into Myst especially in the last part with the abstraction and the mazes in first person. Mercifully that part was short and a nice puzzle for a finale.

Ender LilIes - Quietus of the Knights (PC)

I thought for sure this game was released ages ago. Anyways, it was nice. Everytime I play one of these Soulslikes my heart is wrenched by the story of everyone dead. Not much to say about this one; I guess it was just really hard. There's this criticism about the bosses and spirits being boring but it was fine by me. Reminds me alot of Salt and Sanctuary and they even copied one boss in particular so yeah.

NORCO (PC)

The fuck did I just play? I thought this was a Cyberpunk story set in Louisiana. It turned out to be a gothic horror game with cyberpunk elements. The religious subtext took me by surprise and right as that third act rolled around I just knew this was one of those games where the ending is just going to be ambiguous as hell and I was right. So much so did the fans of this game have questions for alot of unresolved plots (mentioned by the devs as being cut for time) that the devs went and made a lore app on their itch io to resolve them. But like, why do that when you could've just worked on your game a bit longer...? This game sorely needs a Director's Cut.

Anyways, the game was great. Certainly unique in its premise, setting, and devices---lots of minigames and interesting mechanics that unfortunately only get used in the segments that they are introduced in. At times the text felt too flowery and overwrought but the research that went into this was proper and from some of the comments made the locations were true and or inspired amazingly.

Islets (PC)

Mellow metroidvania hack-n-slash in the vein of Hollow Knight but much more relaxed in tone. Even though the things you fight are gruesome and its implied there's something sinister going on, the flow doesn't go beyond becoming a hero and saving the titular islets. It's really more of a hero's journey than anything. The boss fights are fine and I'm sort of glad this one actually has 3 difficulty modes like when have you ever seen that lately in a 2022 game? Not everything has to be a Dark Souls clone, thank god.

What its got going for it is a rather unique take on the map system; you have to unlock each island's capability to merge with the rest of the islands unlocking more content. Upgrades are a roulette but all passive and you can collect up to 60 making for a very broken character if you so wish it. My only complaint I guess is the rather floaty movement. This game emphasizes Hollow Knight combat but more Ori when it comes to movement as seen in the upgrades you acquire. Backtracking is never a hassle because of the fluid motion from screen to screen as well as the ability to teleport around save statues later on. Also probably should mention that 4 of the 17 boss fights are shmups so get ready for some unexpected bullet hell gameplay.

Theres also a bit of artificial difficulty from Hit Thresholds. No matter how much you max your attack, you will still only deal X damage to an enemy or a boss.

Tormented Souls (PC)

A nice Silent Hill/Resident Evil throwback if you can ignore the jankiness of it. It does a good job of hiding its limited assets and setting the scene. I even went into this with tank controls. Everything I love about this game is attributed to what I like about classic RE and SH. The puzzles, the characters (or rather the minimalism thereof---there's only 2 for the most of it), the usage of the Inventory to reload your ammo, and even the plot appears to combine both games without making it sound contrived.

It really makes me want to play SH2 which I never honestly beat. I got to the hotel and I gave up. I know right?

Arti posted...

well, I did warn you

If I don't play even the bad ones, how can I develop a spectrum for the truly bad ones? It wasn't worth it, but I'd do it again knowing.

I believe in you

Prodeus (PC)

Closest I can think of is retro DOOM 2016. But. It's got the same problems I think as that Postal shooter in that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It has amazing setpieces if not uneven in some parts (the penultimate level is something out of Quake while the rest feel more modern and bizarre in style...and it was actually better than those levels), but it doesn't encourage the run and gun franticness that modern Doom wants. Instead it deals more on variability and bloodshed. You can easily paint the walls red and blue with any of the 21 different weapons (however 4 are not in the "main campaign" and would require someone to include them in a created map or level editor). Annoyingly there are collectible Ores that give you passive skills like double jump and dash as well as increase your arsenal, but such a mechanic requires you to backtrack and you can't exit mid level when you do so.

Now to address the elephant in the room. Prodeus has one glaring flaw: Its checkpoint system. There is none. Prodeus' levels for 100% completion require that you do not die finishing a stage. However, the checkpoints in this game are called a Nexus and all they do is teleport you back here whenever you die AND refill your health. It doesn't turn back time either; enemies are already dead and you have to spend 10 seconds getting back to where you were. This is a feature that the devs stuck to their guns with all the way from development to deploy and it seems their aim is to make things more arcadey. But it doesn't inspire confidence in the hardcore FPS gamers who feel like you're basically playing on god mode. Moreover, some levels take upwards of 20-30 minutes, more if you're secret hunting (which is also required for 100%). Dying in the 25 minute mark is just unfair and taxing on your part.

Now I've played this on Medium and it was fair and I've only died once. I think Hard or the difficulty above it is what's actually suppose to be for us gamers. The devs actually give you the ability to change difficulties on the fly as well as teleport to a Nexus anytime even if you dont die. So theoretically you can cheese Prodeus by exploiting these 2 settings. It's just a dumb design decision.

Finally, for what it is, it is a solid retro shooter. However, it was a bit dragging and that's fine but the game gives you 26 levels but stops giving you monster variety around map 15, only adding 1 more in certain intervals. And they weren't even in every map. So you'll be gunning down mooks ALOT. As I mentioned, it has the same symptoms as that Postal game but unlike that game, I don't think placement and tweaking can save it from being mundane. This game is in serious need of monsters and honestly, the ending was lackluster as well and unlike other shooters this one doesn't have episodes. That was it. I have a feeling the devs just don't want to invest in a new episode and is putting all their resources on the mapmaking community which is their biggest strength. Same goes for the music. Great heavy stuff; but then it starts getting repetitive later on.

As it is, I give it a 6 out of 10.

Soldier of Fortune: Platinum Edition (PC)

Decided to take a trip back to memory lane and finish one of the first FPS' in my life. Its a shame Raven has been reduced to making COD and Activition killed their franchise. This game has aged alot and playing it now I do find it an odd mix between a modern shooter and a quake-like. You still had some mobility and the enemies were all hitscanners and just plain unfair. Also, I just a simpler time when the biggest threat to the world was a huge ass missile.

Corpse Party: Blood Drive (PC)

That was not worth it. I'm sorry. This game is kind of a mess and is a frankenstein of several things jumbled together into this "ultimate story". I feel like they made this game just to bring some kind of closure to the series or at least this saga. When it works it works; the horror is still good I guess but not as good as the first one. Like most horror movies, the sequels kind of remove any sense of shock in an attempt to be twice as better and what better what to ramp things up than to turn the ghost story into a cosmic horror story. Not to mention that the original cast are still back and now play a more important role (allegedly) and so they have plot armor now, making the Bad End system kind of fruitless and uninspiring. Bad Ends worked in the first game because you really didn't know who was gonna live or die and there were genuinely scary moments and alternate universes that could've occurred with each wrong choice. The Bad Ends in this game were mostly oh no you picked the wrong thing or didn't choose fast enough, guess this guy mauls you now.

If it was by the numbers I wouldn't have minded probably. But then you got these VN sequences that just appear in the middle of things just to either flesh out a one off character in the game or in a previous game, or just padding essentially. Then you're back in the game and like wtf was that really necessary? In addition certain characters just appear out of nowhere that requires you to have played the spin-off as well as read some of the non-game stuff to get their context which is bs and I was trying to avoid it but here we are.

As a survival game, it was also kind of a tedious effort especially if you're aiming for all collectibles. I understand they needed to up the stakes by having actual pursuers but the layout of a school (hallways with dead end rooms separated by 3 floors) was not a good fit not to mention broken stealth mechanics, cheap obstacles that encourage you to move slower, and an infuriating stamina system. Like the first game had no pursuers save for certain moments and that was fine because of the school's mystique. But here everytime you are pursued you will most likely suffer for it annoyingly. I had to use a guide to acquire those one-shot talismans and thank god they permanently defeated the ghosts instead of just stunning them.

There wasn't alot of puzzling (even though it had more puzzles than the first game) and they surprisingly only came in the last 2 chapters mostly. But they were also fiendish and it took me out of the game for awhile as I had to actually look up how to proceed. Recalling one serious case of pixel hunting and two mind boggling event-driven scenarios.

I was still glad to play the first 2 games before this one which is absolutely necessary if you're investing in this game. While I enjoyed the bigger picture the game attempted to explain, I just kind of didn't like how they essentially shafted most of the original main cast in favor of one and I get it those guys' stories are over but then why use all of them again? In one of the extras, one of the VAs even mention that after he thought he was the hero but he wasn't even a significant character, but a character who "escorted the heroes" and I just feel so sorry for the guy who was already vanilla in his appeal.

That said, this new focus character. She is. soooo dumb. Like, when it was revealed she caused everything and made the situation worse I just rolled my eyes of course you dumb bitch. Everyone told you to stfu and mind your own business and you still followed the beats of a horror game final girl.

Least I'm done for now. Corpse Party 2 is next but I probably won't be doing that for a long time. And its unrelated to this game anyway so no need to worry.

Begrudgingly making this game my worst played this year so far and no I don't wanna count those crappy Painkiller games because I chose to do those knowing they were bad.

Corpse Party: Book of Shadows (PSP)

Okay so. I have a confession: I was out of whack with the order in which this game was played. Originally I thought Blood Drive was the first game to play and instead I ended up spoiling myself the final chapter of Book of Shadows which appeared in the prologue to this game.

That's when I started beating the first game early this year.

Finishing Book of Shadows today is a continuation of that. I am really not fond of VNs but this plot has me hooked it seems. That said, I am not really into the whole Bad End repetitive nature of the series. I think the idea is that the plot of Corpse Party takes place in some kind of freaky time loop where any and all possible paths are happening at the same time, but its just too much. Did I like BoS? Probably the parts that "mattered" which was just 10% of the game and that's probably why it took me a long time to beat it as well.

What really irks me is why bait the chapter that matters behind a wall that requires all the Bad Ends unlocked? If I didnt have the original Corpse Party save, I probably would've lost it. It was nice hearing the bonus stuff though; the character voice actor commentary. Anyways I'm done with this and I can finally resume Blood Drive which has sat in my desktop this whole time preventing me from proceeding properly.

Strangeland (PC)

This game only has one game to compare it to: Sanitarium. If I didn't play that game, maybe I would've appreciated this one a bit more. Even Sanitarium's worst parts--the non-horror parts---are in my opinion better than this. Sanitarium knows how to set the tone on the bizarre and the surreal without being pretentious, overwrought, and too on the nose with the symbolism which was what Strangeland is. Like in that final chapter the twist was like this one big exposition on how yes the carnival is apparently how the protagonist thinks his life is a game which makes the message of the story trite and shallow. Whereas Sanitarium just puts a circus in the game for absolutely no reason other than because the human mind is incomprehensible and you're having a breakdown.

Anyways, when the game isn't trying to shove poetic drivel down your throat, its decent. Puzzles are fine and not basic. But its the characters that really charm me. Even though they're just "You", they have their own facets to them that make them endearing. And I don't want to say much about the second half of the game but essentially you get to do the first part again but this time everything's dead and this part felt more rushed than the first. It would've been really interesting as a redo but the pretentiousness just had to get in the way.

Its meh really and I'm glad to have gotten it out of the way. Twist is nothing special. I saw it a mile away and can I just say that I am starting to get real tired with these family-related "psychological horror" games like you just *know* that it's always your fault your wife/child/sibling died. It's always you no exceptions. Like I wish there was a game where you're just being fucked around in the head even though your family is fine or you have nothing to do with anything.

Fashion Police Squad (PC)

This game is hilarious. Lots of references and lots of jokes about fashion and just the entire nature of this game where you basically shoot people and make them fashionable using paint guns and gnome grenades surely doesn't take itself seriously. The boss fights are very interesting in that they aren't just beatable by running in a circle because of their weapon weaknesses and phase fights. Each enemy/boss has a distinct weapon weakness that is required to take it down. And because there's infinite ammo the entire challenge of this game is based entirely on memory of which weapon to use in a fight. It's great, but sometimes there are spaces that just make fights unfair; enemies that home in on you in areas that require some platforming or a tight area where they can combo you if you're not careful. I can't outright say they were proper of the level design but I can't complain at least they didn't make it like Serious Sam where every fight was in a wide open space.

My only complaint is that the game seems to want to incorporate slippery platforming and swinging around. Mercifully these segments don't have enemies in them too but sometimes they go on for way too long. It's like the game doesn't know if it wants to be a DOOM clone or Mirror's Edge. But yeah exciting finale and I really love the plot for this game it makes so much sense.

Tomb Raider: Legend (PC)

I've never beat this game but I also don't remember playing this game. I remember playing it on the PS2 but I thought I only managed the first 2 levels or something. Everytime a level loads I'm like hold on have I been here before? Anyways, it's just nice playing this. Lots of memories; I know maybe the original TR was always the better TR but for me this was a precursor to games like Uncharted, mechanically speaking. The new TR while nice was just too Uncharted ironically. I have plans to finish this 2nd era trilogy dunno if I will continue it currently.

PowerSlave Exhumed (PC)

Finally finished this one. I hate that its hard but I guess that's what its known to be. I got every collectible too. My heart is hungry for these retro FPS shooters both old and new. I wish they could come out faster instead of all at once (I don't like playing something still in Early Access).

I don't know if there are any fans of this game, but I detest the fact that your hurtbox is so huge and that all your weapons have a mana system which would be fine if your weapon switching wasn't clunky slow.

You'll never guess what's been keeping me up these past 2 weeks. Fuckin Powerwash Simulator (PC) which I initially started as a joke because I don't have friends to play on with this thing. Then it got interesting. Then boring. And I don't know I just couldn't play anything else but this soul sucking madness.

One thing to say is that this game had no right having a story but they did it anyway because why not. And it wasn't slapdash either. They incorporated some deep lore and hidden twists into the background behind why you do what you do. Still stupid though.

Dink Smallwood HD (PC)

I beat the main game which is "beatened" but I probably won't consider this out of my life as there are a bunch of custom games on this bad boy right here. Honestly surprises me that the community is still active somewhat.

Dink Smallwood was one of the first demo/sharewares I've encountered in my gaming life and I always wondered about it. It's short and simple and the battle system leaves much to be desired but it has a place in my heart, one where I can finally considered finished. It's a good thing there's an overlay debug mode for the HD version too as I never knew how grindy this game actually was. I never would've finished it back then so now here we are. I also dig alot of the crude and raunchy humor which I guess was a thing back then.

The Blackwell Epiphany (PC)

Wow. This game was a rush. Idk what was up with the art shift in Deception but Epiphany brought it back to the usual and it looks better. This was more of the same but so much more complicated; the puzzles and conversations were always interesting to me and its clear the writer loves his ghost stories.

But that third act came out of nowhere and frankly did not answer every question. I found the ending rather cop-out despite the plot tying itself into a neat little bow. I can't believe there's only 5 games ever and it ends here. I thought they could probably do with 2 more. Ben Jordan did 8.

This is a very connected series I'd say. You need to appreciate this in order, to be able to ride this saga well. Excellent writing and production from one guy. And with this, my quest to knock the Wadget Eye games continue. I still have to go through Gonzalo's stuff as well as Unavowed.

The Blackwell Deception (PC)

This is my first time playing the 4th game; I'm in entirely new Blackwell lore. The flow is more of the same; you talk to people to get clues that you connect dots with and you keep talking to more people. But it looks better. And the tech has improved in-universe; Rosa now uses her phone to google stuff so you don't have to keep going back home to search for shit. It's also got a better villain that's more personal and isn't just some rando we can outsmart. It feels like its all ramping up to something but I was too curious and I found that this cliffhanger we are left with will not be resolved in the final game. So yeah.

Still, it is not without its merits. The first 3 games had a connection that required you to play them in order. This was more of a standalone title that felt right sort of like a DLC in itself. I guess it's just one more game and I can finally put this saga to rest.

Sinking Island (PC)

I thought it humorous to say that this is only the second game I've played that has 'Sinking' in its title that also happens to be a mystery set in a place that's constantly raining. So only I only knew the genre of this going in. When I started the game I saw that the game was made by Benoit Sokal----oh ffs. Syberia mechanics rear its ugly head: "Useless" scenic screens, animations that take time, pixel hunts, backtracking, triggers dependent on scenes that encourage said backtracking, and dialogue that can't be skipped. That last one being the most egregious.

You see, the Inspector asks questions to all 10 suspects and all 10 have their unique things to say (well 9 seeing as one of them is mute) which is frankly great at the very least it wasn't just dry reading a script and the effort to have 9 different takes on a certain topic was admirable and the non-answers were not just "No I don't know that." replies. That said, even though 99% of them only give the reply in a single take, the Inspector has to ask EVERY question over and over. Like we get it alright, we know the questions already. Literally, the game's length could've been cut in half by removing the Inspector's questions. And while I'm at it, his tone is all over the place; he's a schizophrenic good cop bad cop rolled into one.

I like the concept of the Sinking Island. You can choose to play this "in real time" in which the island you're on is literally sinking, preventing you from gathering vital clues at the right time. But this is pt-click adventuring so f that. Points for concept though seeing as this is one of Sokal's earliest games I think. There's also this weird anachronism in the tech involved. Nothing as outlandish as Syberia, but working well with the motif to provide an easy forensic experience. I'm talking about how you have oldschool celphones to communicate with...in a violent hurricane/storm, but also a handy dandy pda that loads all your convinient evidence and testimony in a very nice UI honestly. In addition, the mandate system kind of guides you on what you need to accomplish. I would say the interface and the game flow is rather similar to Phoenix Wright but not so much railroading. Honestly would've preferred if this was a visual novel because then we'd solve the backtracking issue.

The mystery itself is....normal. It's nothing we haven't seen before. Classic Agatha Christie. But the way you get there is nice I suppose. If you're a mystery nut like me, then this is just fine that is if you ignore all the Syberia-like nuances this game offers. I would say the setting is phenomenal and did not overstay its welcome. I think this was based Sokal before he decided to dream farther and farther into the fantastically exaggerated. It is also not an easy task developing 10 distinct characters who do not get killed off one by one so as to make individual responses and reactions for everything throughout the game.

I just found out Benoit Sokal is no longer with us as of 2021. Rest in peace. Now I'm fully compelled to play the last 2 Syberia games eventually.

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation (PC)

Well there you have it. Series is finally done. I actually beat it ages ago; the game is quite easy and should be played on Hard for Normal classic Painkiller experience. That said, the reason why it was done so fast is because the game is using deceptive practices. The main game is only 10 or so levels not including bosses. In order to achieve the "ultimate" experience, one would need to shell out for every DLC except for 1 which was a topdown diablo ripoff that wasn't good at all and had the gall to include two levels from the fangamey Painkiller.

But is it good? Well, I came from the classic PK experience. So yeah, it was. Improved I guess. Secrets requiring bunnyhopping were replaced with easier ones. Hallways that made no sense were patched with easier obstacles. But would I play this over Classic well its hard to say. For the price point, classic is better since you get everything. I can only love this game because I've been through everything else but my wallet suffered for it.

There was also a new weapon kinda cool I guess. And I don't understand how the game brought to life some but not every enemy and level in the game even with DLCs. Disappointing at best.

Painkiller: Recurring Evil (PC)

Is it weird that I couldn't wait to get off work to finish this game. I just had to see it. And now I'm convinced, just like Puritas Cordas probably, Redemption was an attempt to stall for this game. This game actually had original maps. It still had ridiculous monster spawns but at least it wasn't boring. I can't put my finger on it but the spawning had a bit more sense to it. That said it was still terrible. Do not play these 3 games. Maybe the first of them if you've never heard of Serious Sam 4. I think these fangames had the wrong idea on what a retro modern shooter was. And with the onset of retro FPS these days, there's absolutely no reason to other than for an obsessive-compulsive desire to post on an internet forum for video games.

Mercifully this was only five levels. It's time to dive in to the real treat: the remake/remaster.

Painkiller: Redemption (PC)

So I like to preface this by saying that I actually "acquired" this one (and the one before) and the one after this because there's no way I'm paying for trash. That said, I would rather play this than Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis but that's only because you can make your own fun with this game. I mean you'll have to if you actually wanna beat it.

Also I played this on the easiest difficulty. The one that regenerates your health and didn't require you to pick up souls to go demon mode because lmao this game actually had the gall to disable cheats. I can't ever imagine anyone being sane enough to beat this on Trauma. It's just fucking impossible.

Also. I never actually "beat" it. I mean I killed a boss at the end of chapter 1 (of 2...which only has 2 levels) and suddenly the Single Core Processor this game was made for started crapping out and slowing down on me. The game wouldn't register the level beat because I had to wait millennia for the ragdoll of the boss to come to a complete stop. So I thought this was a great stopping point and call it a day.

If Painkiller Resurrection was slurping the black sludge of Painkiller's body and spirit, this game is if you took a sledgehammer to the blender itself containing said sludge and ate everything, glass and machine parts included. This is bottom of the barrel Painkiller and it makes me actually love Overdose if only for awhile.

No thought into anything. Just rooms and monsters. But unlike Overdose it is Just. Rooms. And. Monsters. M-O-N-S-T-E-R-S. There are so many of them, its like a kid whipped out the level editor and decided he was gonna make "the bes gaym evar" by spamming the spawner because I dont know how to do scripting or music or any sort of originality that's going to give my game a twist. Mercifully, this kid also did not know anything about hitscanners and you only really encounter them in one level. Most of the game is just ALOT of monsters attempting to whack you.

There's no rhyme or reason as to why the guy who made this (different team from the last one) thought he could pass it off as a real "official" Painkiller game other than to scam you. It is bone-grindingly dull and if anything I felt like I was truly in purgatory with this one.

Also I haven't been mentioning this but both in this game and the last, you are also expected to find level *secrets* and fulfill tarot conditions. Ridiculous.

Shit. Now I'm gonna have to play the last fangame Recurring Evil just to see how terrible it is in comparison.

Painkiller: Resurrection (PC)

Here we go. The first of three crappy fan-sequels released in some official capacity.

Okay I gotta give it credit. One thing this one does well is half the levels were made with an open-world feel. Reminds me of that crossing the countryside level in Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem but made in 2009 so in some ways it was ahead of its time. You crossed between biomes like a mountain, a sawmill, a fortress, each with their own enemies and nuances. And all from just one big load (which was probably a bitch to load in 2009 honestly but not currently). Having only 6 maps, monsters are now as many as 600+ and you could honestly just skip them and bunnyhop to the finish.

That said, everything else about it sucks. Completely forgoing everything that made Painkiller great. If Overdose sucked the soul out of the original, this one crushed the body and spirit in a blender and drank the blackened sludge resulting in it. Monster placement is "random" and abysmal. Often just spamming alot to keep you busy but at the same time just utterly cheap as you are bombarded by suicide bombers and hitscanners. Only reason why I even finished the game is I was just hop skipping through everything.

Story is nonsense, just ignore it. The fact that they went through the effort of making voiced cutscenes is an effort in itself.

This is the real shitshow folks and I am now so curious about the other 2 games because theyre actually not original maps but spliced multiplayer maps and a ton of enemies tossed in.

I would just like to preface that I will now be using cheats in the next 2 games. There really is no point for me other than morbid curiosity. And if I give up on them you'll know because I won't be posting them here lol. All the comments I'm reading about them is that its just rooms of nonstop waves. I wonder if I can bunnyhop my way out as I had done here.

This game is lukewarm but not nearly enough to piss me off.

Painkiller: Overdose (PC)

Well whaddya know. It sucks. Well it was drained of whatever original spirit the first one had. It's certainly better than Battle Out of Hell though. Basically this game is like the Serious Sam 2 of the franchise except from here it doesn't get any better and the remake is just the same game in HD (gated by holding half of its stages behind DLC).

So first off, I guess they just saw Painkiller and were like "oh we can do this too. just rooms and monsters." And that's it. They didn't even care for balance---some rooms are simply huge courtyards but the enemy placement would've been better in a smaller room and vice versa. At least they didn't do that cheap thing where they put hitscanners in a pillar a mile away. Mostly.

One change I liked was the weapons which were honestly just reskins but they were interesting with subtle improvements. For example the bolt sniper/stake gun was now a faster crossbow that shoots 3 at once and easily became my favorite weapon. The shotgun though looking more badass than before was made even more pathetic and became a situational weapon for its one-shot freeze alt fire. I know its annoying but I like how they made Belial shout AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH whenever youre firing the machine gun for long periods of time.

And if its one thing this team did with the Painkiller formula that works its having unique setpieces and monsters to go with those set pieces. They didn't even recycle for the most part and when they did it fit 90% of the time. That said, they were just following rooms and monsters' formula and so a cool setting such as a Nuclear Plant was really just empty industrial lots full of parked cars, empty shelves, pillars, walkways, and electrical tesla coils you know the usual OSHA breaking policy architechture. And in order to even get here you'd have to stomach the rather crappy first chapter as it rehashes tired themes. Hit or miss mostly. Maps I remember are for their themes and not level design: Mt Vesuvius' eruption, the American Civil War, a fractured fairy tale setting, airships in WW2, Animal Farm.

This game also added a whole lot of trap hallways which isn't really made for a game like this but at least they weren't one hit kill and they affected enemies too so whatever.

The Tarot conditions are insane. No thought into them unless that thought was We're Dicks. You basically have to be a Painkiller Veteran to even attempt them. Even the early ones. They often have crazy conditions like do not grab a single soul in a map that isnt huge mostly and there are 300 enemies. Or grab at least 160 souls and there are only 161 enemies. I've never played PK without cheats till recently so now I recognize how fitting each tarot condition is for a level and I can tell you that the ones here are absolute bullshit. Even moreso the cards themselves 90% suck. The prize for maintaining your HP above a certain point is...a card that gives you +50 HP. What.

As soon as I saw how ridiculous Tarot was, I just breezed through the game forgetting them. Mostly with the main weapon because ammo is ridiculously scarce in this one. I guess they wanted to make things harder and challenging so crank up the horde but dont give the player anything.

Finally I know the story is BS and I never actually played any Painkiller after the original so I was kinda happy to see that the final boss of this game was the karma houdini in the first one. There isn't even a cutscene but I was still very satisfied taking this guy out.

Well that's it. Now I'm thinking do I play the crappy ones or just skip to the remake.

Painkiller: Black Edition (PC)

I may have beat this thing before but it was so long ago and this time actually looking for all the secrets and trying not to cheat. Having had my time with Serious Sam games previously and looking beyond the fact that it was a horde shooter, I started noticing the nuances of design and enemy placement. I always thought that Painkiller was mindless as well but now I see how great it is. For the most of it, the game was actually solid. It dips in quality around the halfway point with all the goddamn hitscanners.

It's not without its flaws though: Gating the non canon good ending behind an entire difficulty that required initially beating it to unlock (I used a script that unlocked all the levels gated by difficulty). I also tried my best getting the tarot cards this time and succeeded 90% leaving the impossible BS ones out. Secrets were also pretty BS. I never noticed them before because the levels were so simple but having to look them all up now, its ridiculous that you actually need a PHD in bunnyhopping to get to most of them. There is no sprint or crouch button and so the game expects you to play one way only to not when secret hunting. And almost all of them are located in the most asinine location. Even Quake wasn't this ridiculous.

What I also found out was this game still has a strong fanbase, mostly Russian. Because the game was proudly scripted in Lua, modding scene has been easygoing including an unofficial patch that restores basic things like the main menu music. Still flawed and bugged, game crashed and froze on me more times than I can count. I prefer Serious Sam but I can see the charm this original game brought. I also loathe that 10-level expansion pack with clearly "beta" content.

I'm thinking of playing the other PK games now. I hear it gets lukewarm then just a whole lot of worse then the original levels get remade. Might be quite the journey.

KCF0107 posted...

Assassin's Creed Unity (XB1)

Having not played a game in the series since 2016 and having four or so games in the backlog, I decided to finally go through another. It was definitely better than I expected, though I know its poor reputation mostly stemmed from a disatrous launch that was clearly patched up quite a bit.

The main assassination missions were definitely the highlight, mixing in the open-endedness of stealth series pioneers like Hitman and Thief. I really liked France from an aesthetic point, and it was interesting putting this during the French Revolution, but arguably the biggest draw to these games for me is scaling incredible archiecture, and 18th century France has nothing on the Italian and Middle Eastern settings of previous games.

Hopefully I don't take six years to start Syndicate.

Honestly Unity was peak AC for me. They wouldn't ever try being this ambitious again with the world design. But it suffered from a buggy first release and everyone just feeling like Arno is Ezio 2.0. I wish Ubi still had the sense to stop making AC games every year and explored this guy's lore a bit more. It could've been its own trilogy entirely.

Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC)

No reason just felt like it. I see that my FPS skills havent changed (i still suck). But also, I had no idea you could pirate players to your team in advanced without having to unlock them normally by winning the ladder matches. This significantly helped the already dumb AI sometimes and would explain why you gain ALOT of money in this game but barely use it.

Kenri posted...

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com (PC)

Oof, this game is... rough. I love the aesthetic (sign me up for anything Halloween-themed - love horror that isn't actually scary) but the game is clunky and the bosses are difficult. They have challenging attack patterns, which is good, and loads and loads of HP, which is less good. Overall I just wish the game was a smoother and had a bit more in the way of character progression to level out the difficulty spikes a bit.

ugh tell me about it. I gave up on this one pretty early