Recent reviews by Valn

I don't know what devil the dev team had to sell their soul to in order to get this to run on GZDOOM, but holy crap is it technically impressive. Even completely ignoring that, it's a phenomenal game, with the gun feel, movement, and enemy AI fine tuned to a T. It plays a lot like the F.E.A.R. games, with aggressive AI that operate in squads and dish out pain if you let them get even a couple bursts on you. It's a constant game of maneuvering to fight as few of them as possible at any given moment, and in the late game they start coming in numbers that makes that challenging. The devs clearly know that fighting squads is where the best gameplay is, as every level is designed to have mostly enclosed spaces with lots of walls, doors, and other chokepoints to help you funnel and flank enemies. The few more open arenas only show up after you get the sniper rifle, which gives a fun break from the close-quarters stuff and doesn't overstay its welcome. Everything in these fights gives off major hard-boiled vibes. Particle effects and destructible props turn everything into a cacophony of meaty gun sounds, gibs, explosions, chaos, and frantic twitch moments. Did I mention this is GZDOOM? Because that's just crazy.

When not in the thick of things the game plays a lot like half-life and other linear shooters but with old-school secrets. Though the ones that have upgrades are pretty easy to find, and it's not necessary to focus on them if you prefer not to. The pacing is well done, with slow build ups and exploration before the area you're poking around in inevitable turns into a shooting gallery.

My only criticism, which is intended to be entirely constructive, is that the narrative is hard to follow. The story is primarily told through journals, which are well written but probably not something everyone will read. It's also hard to tell what your motivation is (beyond the obvious weird alien kill teams want you dead) or why you're going from point A to B. What makes the story of games like half-life memorable is having clear objectives drip fed to you on the journey. Perhaps a person in your ear rarely feeding you major objectives would give more sense of purpose to what you're doing, or if that's not appealing just give Dawn minor internal monologue about what she needs to do. I think that'd be way better then the current checklist objectives that pop up on your hud (that I found myself almost entirely ignoring). I have a suspicion the devs may know all this and are saving a more integrated story for later releases in case they want to reorder things. Not sure though.

Despite this being early access, I think it's still well worth the price. Here's hoping the next two chapters are just as good!

This was my first Ace Combat game, and I enjoyed it. If you're not familiar with the franchise, like I wasn't, it's focus is on arcadey, high-octane dog fights. It's the sort of game you can blast Danger Zone to while pulling impossibly high Gs in real (and fictitious) military aircraft with a veritable Itano Circus worth of missiles flying in all directions. At it's best, its plane-on-plane fights that have you splashing bandits at turn speeds that would make a normal person's guts come out of their unmentionable parts: a pure power fantasy for military and airplane fetishists. At its worst, you're a glorified bomber trying to blow up annoying ground troops and oil storage.

I liked almost all of the missions, but I felt the bombing oriented ones were tedious and distracted from the game's main selling point of, you know, the ace combat. Not that they're easy, in fact I'd the say bombing missions are some of of the harder ones with missions 6 and 11 in particular having large difficulty spikes. The issue is they take a long time to complete and generally require some risky low-altitude flying without checkpoints. So one slip up and you've lost 10-15 minutes worth of mission progress because you stalled 100M from the ground or crashed into that hill again. They also generally require you to use an aircraft that's focused on ground attacks, like the A-10 with dumb bombs. Those craft are not as fast or nimble as fighters, and thus generally less fun to fly. Though it is hilarious you can somewhat dog fight in an A-10, the comedy of it doesn't offset the tedium.

I don't want to be too negative. The dog fights are genuinely very fun, and a few less than stellar missions that lose sight of that aspect of gameplay don't overly sour the experience. Overall, it delivers on the title.

On the story side, it isn't phenomenal. It's passable, but a pretty standard vaguely modern conflict in a fictitious setting with a "war is hell" theme that has trouble sticking the landing because the gameplay actually makes war fun as hell. It's like different people wrote the cutscenes, which involve side characters, and the mission plots that involve the silent protagonist. There's some tonal whiplash going from the war his hell narrative to the goofy "let's give the prisoners fight jets" main plot line. This keeps the story from being remarkable, but does give it some charm in an odd way. If you've played the other games, which I understand take place in the same setting, perhaps there's more lore and geopolitics to get invested in. But from the perspective of having just played this one it feels pretty shallow. The plot doesn't really detract but also doesn't add much.

All in all very good. Would recommend.

Until it was perfect.

Having beat all the A-Sides, B-Sides, and C-Sides, I finally feel I can give a worthwhile opinion on this game.

I’ve played difficult games before and I’ll no doubt play more in the future. However, I don’t know if I’ll ever play a game that exemplifies what is so appealing about difficulty as Celeste. The whole of the game works to expose the player to difficulty and to challenge them to overcome it.

It starts with the A-sides, which offer a moderate challenge while exposing the player to the game’s main theme of overcoming anxiety and struggle. It’s not terribly subtle, either, given you’re literally climbing a mountain. The whole first portion of the game is meant to change your mind set about failure and difficulty. It’s hard, but not so soul-crushing as to turn away people unused to extreme difficulty. You gradually get accustomed to struggling, and the small bursts of triumph after difficult sections keep you going. By the time you reach the final stretch of the game you’ve become familiar with persevering through difficult sections and gotten used to dying repeatedly.

Then you’re on to the B-sides, which offer a significant jump in difficulty. They’re shorter, overall, but will take much longer due to the sheer amount of deaths. They get frustratingly difficult, but at this point you probably won’t mind. If anything, you’ll want to beat them even more. The game has taught you that the more difficult something is the more satisfying it can be to overcome.

You keep with it, and eventually you come to a new revelation. You’re enjoying the deaths. Every failure is a chance to improve something; every imperfection an opportunity to refine. The reward isn’t what keeps you going, it’s the struggle itself. That’s the mentality Celeste is so good at introducing to people unfamiliar with it, and that’s why I recommend it so strongly.

By the time you’re on the C-Sides you’ll be dying hundreds of times on a single screen, and you’ll enjoy it. The game instills a desire for perfection, and a need to work until it is achieved. Be persistent, be determined, and you’ll be in for a rewarding experience like you’ve never had.

Hello. It’s worth starting out by saying that this is a fantastic game. It's "set the bar" for the Tell-Tale style storytelling genre. As such, the main draw is the story, which is always hard to review without spoiling or sounding pretentions and vague. But, I shall do my best to inform the buyer with minimal spoilers by hopefully capturing the most important aspect of any story: the tone.

Firstly, I just want to say the game runs great. The shadows were a bit finicky for me, but nothing immersion breaking. There are a few known bugs that can pull you out of the experience, but they’re so few, far between, and unlikely that I won’t go into them in detail.
The art style is quite charming and playful, but doesn’t detract from the seriousness of the story. It’s in that golden-zone of stylized and realistic, and will likely look just as good 50 years from now as it currently does. The game relies quite heavily on visuals, so I regard this as a massive boon.

Gameplay is as you might expect from a story based game. There’s dialogue choices, branching paths, difficult decisions, and lots of walking and just looking at stuff. The main mechanic that separates this title from others in the genre is the rewind ability, which you get at the very start of the game. You get to rewind discussions and big decisions, and it encourages you to explore all the dialogue options without resorting to save scumming. Overall, it’s a fitting mechanic for the genre and only adds to the experience. However, the success of a game like this entirely depends on its story, so it’s time to stop skirting it.

I will be blunt: I was not entirely sold on the idea of playing as a young female adult in a late high school setting. I find it overdone and boring. Additionally, I wasn’t originally thrilled with the notion of time travel. Time travel plots are horrendously difficult to do well without using clichéd tropes. However, the game exhibits a healthy amount of self-awareness, and largely steers clear of overdone time travel shenanigans that cheapen both your decisions and the established story. In fact, the shenanigans that are present really add to the narrative, which largely revolves around your helplessness. The player does have the ability to affect reality for better or worse, but you learn quite quickly that – even with superpowers – you can only do so much.

If you’re concerned that you’ll just be playing an angsty teen drama with time travel, then fret not. The first episode or two sort of falls into this, but this is not a traditional coming of age story. In fact, the whole coming of age story – a crossing between innocence to maturity – is treated largely as a sham and even used antagonistically. The characters aren’t trying to “find themselves” or something of that ilk either. Everyone is written with a strong personality and as a real person, and I’d say the characters are overall quite compelling. The cast is kept fairly small to prevent the use of throwaway characters, and they all have plenty of dialogue to flesh them out. This small and consistent cast helps keep the story and tone focused.

Speaking of the tone, I’d like to start by saying that it’s rather difficult to pin down without spoilers. However, I’d say it attempts to take the ups and downs in life and really crank them up using supernatural plot devices. This gives the game a really great and pervasive bitter-sweet feeling, and forces the player to accept the fact that they can’t fix everything. They can only do their best with what’s given to them. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a great punctuation to the story and doesn’t feel like an ass-pull.

Overall, the game is aesthetically pleasing, well written, tonally focused, and interesting. The gameplay complements these strengths, and the mishmash of buddy-cop, time travel, horror mystery, and high school drama somehow works without ever conflicting. It’s a true testament to what can be accomplished when a story is written to themes and tone; not to check off plot points on a list.

This got longer than I anticipated, but hopefully it’s still useful for informing a purchase.

I laughed, I cried, and I'd do it all again. I refuse to spoil any portion of this game. Just know that it's roughly 12 to 13ish hours in length, has that "earthbound charm," and is most mechanically akin to an rpg bullet hell hybrid. That one sentence is all you're getting and it cannot do it justice. Buy it, regardless of price.

Reciever is a short game with fun gun mechanics. It was initially made in about 42 hours or so for a competition, and it shows. The environemnts are repeated heavily, the textures are bare, and it feels kinda cobbled together. That being said, the gun mechanics are its main selling point, and you're probably not thinking of buying it for its minimalistic style. So, let's address that aspect of the game.

The gun mechanics are very complex and realistic, and unique because of that. Now - to be clear - I've never owned nor fired a gun. However, I do have a pretty decent grasp on the basics of how modern ballistic weapons work, as should most people. The game portrays them accurately as far as i know, but someone that actually owns a firearm might say otherwise. Reloading the weapon is a complicated multi-step process, priming the weapon must be done for it to fire, and you even have to turn of the safety. There is also no ammo counter, you have to count shots or look at your clip for a vague idea of how many bullets you have left. You have to make sure a round is actually chambered, and cocking the gun while a bullet is in the chamber already ejects the perfectly good, unused round that you then have to pick up in embarrassment. If you're looking at buying this game for the mechanics of it, I'd say it's probably worth it.

However, if you want a game that is more than just a bare-bones proof of concept slapped together over a short amount of time and sold on steam, then you might wish to look elsewhere. While it's not expensive by any stretch of the imagination, it is - however - still 5 bucks. While I've derived a lot of enjoyment from messing around with it - as it's a rogue like - there's a distinct lack of a real story, varied enemies, guns - even through there's 3 now - and other content you'd expect from a normal game. It's good, but if you don't think the shooting mechanics are interesting enough to warrent a purchase, then you should probably think hard about whether or not it's worth it. I won't tell you that you won't end up liking it - because you might - but know that when you get into this thing it's not to reach reality A.

If you know of this game you've probably heard it refered to as a "sibling murder, incest, warmonger, and religious intolerance map simulator" or something of the like. While this is a humurous synopsis of the experience - and mostly true - it's not very helpful if you're trying to decide whether or not to dump copious amounts of cash into this thing. I mean, just look at all the DLC. It's at least 160 something odd dollars for all of it. So, is it worth it?

The short answer: maybe. I know that's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ short answer, but hear me out. This game is niche. Very, very niche. It's unique certainly, but that does not change the fact that you could very well absolutely hate it. For starters, if you're thinking of making this purchase and have not played other games like this one (Europa Universalis etc.) then go watch Arumba's guide on how to play it. Also, pay attention to the fact that it's 22 videos long of about 18 minutes each. Granted, they are very in-depth, but this does not change the fact that understanding how this game works is not easy. It's an experience, and you will have to put time and effort into this game to get any sort of rewarding feeling for playing it. However, once you reach that point it becomes something very fun. Suddenly your son dieing of small pox leaving your daughter the only one to inherit becomes a challenge, rather than a guaranteed game over. Your neighbor converting to a different religion becomes an opperunity, not a reason to cower hoping that they won't declare war. The Pope becomes your "friend" rather than the guy that excommunicates you so your neighbor can steal your ♥♥♥♥. It goes on and on.

Now, I like this game. I want that to be clear. However, this is not a game for everyone. It's not a game made for everyone either, hence the price point. This game in itself is a bit of a hobby, and while the price is stupidly high, it's about 6 or 7 expansions of decent content and a butt load of not so decent penny grabs. However, playing without all the dlc is very different from playing with all the dlc, and the game with dlc is objectively better most of the time. It's got more content, a bigger map, more events, religions, etc. As such, if your on the fence about this game, I'd suggest waiting until it goes on sale - as it does usually every so often - and pick up the whole thing for about 25~30ish dollars. At that price I'd hands down suggest this game to anyone with even a remote interest, but whether or not it's worth the full 160 is your decision, and you might regret it.

Onto what this game actually is. In essence, you play as a family, not a single character. You do play as one person at a time, but you are survived by your children or relatives. You build power through war - which is not as exciting as it sounds - and intrique - which is. This game is not about the combat. It matters, yes, but playing a warmonger is only fun for about the first 80 hours put into a dynisty before you own all of Europe and are expanding into uncivilized lands. It is - above all - a game about the sibling murder, the incest, the bribing, the corruption, the intrigue, the homosexuals, the lovers, the concubines, the children, the murdering of the children, the arranged marriages, the raiding, the power struggles, the underlings - the dirty, dirty unloyal underlings - the castle building, the character improvement, the ruling, and - above all - the characters. This game has no story, and yet the best story of any game I've ever played. Everything that happens is your legacy. You murdered the duke and stole his titles, well that's now part of your family legacy. Married into Royalty. That's there too. The whole game is about building your own alternative histories where the Scottish get invaded by the Moors and become Muslims, where Russia is formed early and fends off the mongols, where the Viking Pagan Empire stretches from Iceland to India. It's about doing whatever the hell you want, and it's glorious.

This game is fun, and half of the fun is figuring out why it's fun. But for the love of all that is watched over by Zun, don't spend 160 bucks on the thing if you're unsure it's your cup of tea. It might be the best tea you've ever had, but wait until it's on sale.

This is a puzzle game. If I could describe this puzzle game with a metaphor, it would be this one: there is a box. This box contains conrete, tangable thoughts like "it's raining," or "I see food." Thoughts that can be connected to something that obviously exists in your enviornment. Thoughts that fit within said metaphroical box will not help you much. Outside of the box there are abstract thoughts. Thoughts that have no real connection to what you see. These will not help you either. Instead, you will have to rely on thoughts and problem solving processes that take into account both your surroundings and your most abstract, imaginative ideas. To complete the metaphor, those thoughts are represented by the actual box itself rather than the space inside or outside of it.

Half-Assed metaphors aside, the only thing about the gameplay that I can really tell you is that it's loosely consistent with what you'd find in a puzzle/exploration type game. You can visit any room you'd like, and they all connect to one another in some fashion. In fact, you'll probably end up searching for new rooms inside of rooms you previously thought to be completed once you discover new mechanics. That's another big thing: discovery. Preferably you should go into this without having any idea what you're in for. Trust me, it's magical.

Unfortunately, this isn't a game that lends itself to an informative review very well. There isn't a story, most of the mechanics aren't reoccuring and the few that are would be big spoilers, and it's a game best played without knowing much about it before hand. I can say this, though, it's a game about removing preconceptions. The common theme is that things don't work as you'd expect them to.

However, from a practical standpoint, I can tell you that it's about 5-6 hours long - maybe shorter if you figure it out really fast - replaying it is kind of pointless, and there's some pretty brain-racking stuff in it. The graphics are okay, the music is ambient, and the sound effects are better than stock ones. As I said before, there's not really a story, which is honestly a good thing for this game. If what I've said so far hasn't sold you, maybe the fact that I'm trying so hard to avoid ruining the experience for you will.

Sorry for the lack of cohesion and conciseness in this review. Each paragraph is basically an isolated attempt to explain and convince you to buy this. And, as I said before, this is hard to talk about without really ruining it for you.

I'm going to start by saying that this is probably the best single player FPS game that's come out in quite a while, mostly because it's so well balanced in terms of gameplay. You can run-and-gun while dual weilding ‒ sliding around and dealing wads of dps ‒ take the usually optional stealthy route that prevents reinforcements from arriving, or simply play it like a cover based shooter. Typically you'll end up doing whichever one is most appropriate for the circumstance you find yourself in, but the option to do any of them is always there and usually always viable. The guns are freaking huge and pretty damn satisfying to shoot, the terrain that eneimes use for cover is normally completely destructible, and the stealth is rather intuitve and effective. It does all three styles well rather than just being a big brown puddle of boring and ineffective mechanics like most shooters that try to give you different gameplay options.

The story is pretty decent, with a lot of fairly memorable characters and an interesting take on a Nazi ruled planet. The dialogue and plot are what happens when you mash a gritty comicbook and an over the top action movie together. It's rather likable, but if you're looking for something with some semblance of realism then you're in the wrong place. Also, there are some pretty humorous parts of the game where the characters basically acknowledge that you're probably the most effective soldier to ever live, and the character interactions are normally not whiney or depressed in nature, they're more dynamic than that. They'll bicker, berate, tease, jest, laugh, cry, talk, complain, and do basically anything normal people would do with one another. It's definitly not 2 dimensional or anything.

In terms of fidelity it's decent but not fantastic. There are a lot of textures that just seem off, one that really bugged me was how pens and papers are actually just 2d parts of the desk textures. Speaking of textures, most of the non-cover and weapon textures are pretty poor, but to be fair they're hard to notice since you move around so much. Other than that there's not a lot to complain about, but ‒ then again ‒ there's not a lot to really praise.

Lastely, I'd just like to say that the levels and environments are really important parts of any FPS, and this game definitly has a lot of variety and good design when it comes to them. If you're worried that you'll be stuck in a brown corodor shooting faceless white guys in grey uniforms the whole time then you can relinquish those fears. You get to go to some pretty cool places and do some pretty awesome stuff. It's part of the whole ludicrous plot I was talking about earlier.

That's it. I hope that you found this at least slightly helpful. I can't tell you what you'll like, but I can at least try to give you a decent idea of what to expect. Whether or not you like what you hear is up to you, of course.