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Указује нам се, рекло би се, очит (и безбедан) начин да протумачимо "Scorn" - овде тада имамо представу нечег туђинског, нечег апсолутно Другог на начин упоредив са изворним "Туђином" Ридлија Скота. Тамо имамо сусрет са нечим путпуно, несводљиво хетерогеним, вирулентним, нечиме што нема своје Зашто, што се силује у свет посаде Нострома - свет утилитарне рутине - у који не може бити интегрисано, што тај свет разара. Овде је ипак одржана раздаљина између гледаоца и онога приказаног, предуслов за онај пријатан, припитомљен страх.
Но шта ако, напротив, "Scorn", стреми да искаже нешто најближе нам, чему је допуштено да дође у екстремитет своје истине?
Одговорни ономе што исказују, ствараоци му допуштају да дође у своје. У сусрету са пуноћом онога исказаног, чувши по први пута шта страна реч уистину говори и тако је знајући за страну, и ми би, ако смо пријемчиви, могли да дођемо себи. Оно као реализам прихваћено се показује у својој разголишености, бива Разоткривено за перверзни идеализам, тако се отвара пут ослобођењу од њега. У присуству онога овде у пуноћи исказаног, Одсуство нам се обраћа.
Ово би било образовање, не у смислу дидактичког намета - једином схватљивом из суштине онога овде исказаног - него у оном изворном и здравом смислу.

Madly entertaining trek thru fittingly anachronistic Arthurian Albion. Across the game’s three sizable, thematically distinct episodes, one will journey thru gloomy swamps, abandoned villages, misty castles, cemeteries, frozen caverns and so on, employing the sizable array of distinct weapons and spells to cut, behead, dismember, poison, burn, freeze (mind you, the game is recognizing and duly counting all these different ways of disposing of your enemies) a variety of knights, warlocks, undead, beasts, demons and an occasional rabbit that is no ordinary rabbit. And if one’s urge for some gratuitous, creative violence isn’t satisfied by the core campaign’s three episodes – and the combat is so crunchy and enjoyable, the toys so varied, that it likely won’t be – then there the game’s variant of New Game + as well as two additional game modes.
The maps themselves are lovingly detailed and are a joy to explore, showing that the game is made by someone with considerable prior experience. The sprites of humanoid enemies are based on the photos of costumed actors, something that is very faithful to this game’s inspirations as well as something that, at least to my knowledge, no other neo-retro first person action game, of which there is a fair number by now, did.
All in all, in quality or quantity of content, this is a steal. I dare say this might actually most fun I’ve had with any title from this particular stream of retro revivals.

(I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention the purely technical issues, of which there are quite a few. While the game absolutely looks and feels like a Build engine title at the first glance, it isn’t. The game is running on some obscure engine with its peculiar quirks, causing issues on some higher resolution as well as suffering from some inexplicable frame drops. I’ve encountered nothing game breaking – and perversely, the framerate might make it seem as if you’re indeed playing a lost late Build title via DOSbox – but the issues are undoubtedly there and are noticeable. The dev is, however, actively patching the game and appears to be committed indeed, so here’s hoping the things will improve)

A blind man sits beneath a tree, writing. Nearby, a raven (a raven, not a crow!) is perched on a branch. It is said of Odin, he who sacrificed an eye in pursuit of knowledge, that he hang himself on the great tree Yggdrasil - sacrificing "himself to himself" - which ordeal granted him the knowledge of runes. Of Writing.
This man, he says how he "writes to forget". In Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus" there is briefly recounted Egyptian legend in which the god Toth presents the gift of writing to king Thamus. Writing is supposed to enhance men's memory by allowing them to record it. Thamus, however, recognizes the ambiguity of the gift: men's memory and wisdom will decrease for they shall rely on this external crutch, this Supplement, rather than having to remember by themselves. Here we've got the logic of the supplement. Banal example: consider how in Dark Souls you can grind and seek superior equipment rather than, and forgive me for this, "gitting gud". The supplement that both extends and weakens, makes dependant on. Ambiguous, like the Greek word "pharmakon", a cure and a poison. (Related word: pharmakos. Scapegoat, exile, impure, excised.)
And the raven? Do we not see them as the feeders on the dead, on the energy of others. They who disperse others.
To write to forget. To lose oneself in the endless surface-play of signs. Signs, by themselves, leading only to signs. Signified becoming signifier, depth becoming surface. Text pointing to another text. Could one not hide in this endless play, drown therein? (Can one not quote and regurgitate the words of others rather than think oneself?) But what if the story is really very simple, if the Real is so very simple. But one would rather disperse, for the real is painful. Yet, as one more than usually devilish Frenchman said, the real is like the chewing gum that attaches itself to one's shoe. Not too easy to rid oneself of it.

The story of this game really is simple. This was a distraction. But it really is about distractions too.

Anyway, the relevant stuff: this is an excellent adventure game, with superb artwork and music. You really should play it. It also contains giant, loquacious cicadas discoursing on Lacan.

Comparisons with Quake, with which HROT’s user reviews apparently abound, are somewhat unfortunate. Outside its surface level visual similarities, or some of its weapons or enemies that evoke their analogues from Quake, this is a somewhat different sort of FPS. One certainly won’t find Quake’s movement or verticality here. Rather, HROT is closer to Chasm: The Rift if latter offered more variations in height within maps. Take away Chasm’s dismemberments and sprinkle the maps with some cute Buildesque interactivity, and you’ll have some image of what HROT is as a game. And as the sort of FPS it is trying to be, it is very good indeed: weapons are satisfying in their functionality and visual feedback (audio leaves something to be desired but this is something the dev is actively working on improving), and most of them play useful roles rather than being gimmicks or feeling obsolete after one finds shinier piece latter on. Enemies are varied in their looks and behaviour, and none of them are bullet-spongey. Maps are well designed, with character, with semi Build-style realistic-locales as opposed to Quake’s abstractions.
All this is set in this gray concrete nightmare, the world of Soviet brutalist tenements and industrial spaces, of smoke-covered skies, of deformed life. The world wherefrom everything natural and beautiful is exiled. Such environment is violence on its own so that explosions of orgiastic violence of which game such as this consists can feel only fitting.

MDK is the sort thing that isn’t well captured in words. One can describe it in such terms as would make it appear entertaining if ultimately unexceptional. Perhaps the best description would be something like 3D Contra, with Contra’s mixture of platforming and non-stop movement and action, only without the variety of power-ups and such. Instead you get a variety of expendable items and, as perhaps more befits its fully 3D environment, some sort of sniper riffle with several types of ammo. There’s even the constant spawning of enemies at some points, and some stages end with imposing bosses. The game is far easier than Contra would be, indeed it is hardly challenging by any stretch of imagination. It is also over all too soon.
What this can hardly communicate to you is just how good it feels to actually play this thing, how satisfying every aspect of it is. How well designed and paced each stage is, how distinct they are, how there is almost always something new happening in every portion of every stage. And what is downright impossible to communicate is the game’s art direction and its overall feel. This is something else, alright, and it really could’ve been made only at this point in time, by this particular developer. Think some sort of collaboration between Looney Tunes and H.R. Giger. Or a particularly gonzo comic from the pages of Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant magazine. This doesn’t help much, of course, but really nothing can.
One thing that ought be mentioned is that this Steam release is as lazy as one expects from Interplay’s animated corpse. There is however an all-in-one patch for the steam version that includes both all that is needed for running it on modern PCs and all the inexplicably excised content, so there’s that.

This minimalistic dungeon crawler's appeal is conciously limited - it feels almost like some lost niche PSX or Saturn title that was never officially released outside Japan. Much like its direct predecessor, it is tightly focused and devoid of anything not essential.
One might've reasonably expected some changes from the previous game to result in lower difficulty - mainly, that one can now freely save the game as many times as one desires - but these changes rather gave the freedom to the dev to increase the difficulty and depth.

The game itself might appear simplistic at the begining, especially to those not familiar with its predecessor - single 'character', no customisation or control over the improvement of your abilities - it is, however, anything but. Rather, once again, this means that what the game is actually focused on - mainly, the combat - is extremely well thought out and balanced with almost surgical precision. All that is placed before you must be mastered. Be mindful of the layout, know which weapon is best for what enemy, which firing mode and combat stance to select and, perhaps most importantly, when to run away. One is always outnumbered, and the enemies keep coming. There is only so much ammo around, and each repair lowers your mech's overall durability which can be restored only through sparse pickups. On top of that, there is even the health of the mech's pilot to take care of, which is restored thru separate item. Further, while your pilot's abilities will improve thru combat, improvements are ever so minor and the price of each engagement potentially so high that grind is by no stretch of imagination feasible. So there are no crutches, no easy way out. Every single shot counts, every single failure hurts. This means that even the exploration involves balancing between risk and potential reward. Maybe, just maybe, one will discover some precious ammo, or even an upgrade for one of one's weapons, but even then the cost might be too high so it might be wiser to focus on getting thru the current floor as speedily as possible with minimal losses.
So play slowly, save often and be prepared to restart each floor if you feel you spent too much getting trough it.

Gruelling, neverending cthonic nightmare featuring what must be one of the most unwelcoming, visually and aurally unsettling, gameworlds I've encountered as of late, with that typically Eastern European brand of relentlessly bleak storytelling.
To be played on a sunny spring day, for one will be in sore need of some respite from this game's melange of fungi, dampness, nails and gloom.

Laser-focused, ultra-minimalistic dungeon crawler. Think id's mid-to-late 00s mobile RPGs (Orcs & Elves, Doom RPG, Wolfenstein RPG) their slim frame further stripped down of tissue so that the mere bone of combat, resource management and exploration remains. There are no crutches here, nothing placed at one's disposal is superfluous or optional - one really must master what mechanics there are. Tutorial mustn't be skipped.
The presentation is just as spartan yet equally put to just the desired use, minimal wireframe visuals supported by excellent soundtrack conveying this desolate, claustrophobic feeling.
The game is, perhaps, on the short side by its genre's standards. I'd argue that the length is just right given the game's self-imposed limitations, just the lenght it can support without sliding into repetition.

Systematically unpleasant and hostile piece of work, yet one that it is nigh impossible to put down. What it does, at the most basic mechanical level, is to amplify those mundane aspects which, being detrimental to escapism, most games neuter to the point of invisibility. These are time and one’s bodily needs, both of which are here made hyperreal.
How it works: anyone must have played some older title wherein trading was major focus. One must carefully plan one’s route thru the gameworld, one must recall what items are best found and best sold/exchanged, one is mindful of the state of one’s vehicle (be that vehicle a sailing ship, a spaceship…) and of the necessary resources, of fuel, one is prepared for unexpected encounters and some plain old bad luck…
Now transpose this to first person, exchange oceans or vastness of space for one labyrinthine town whose idiosyncratic layout is actively working against one, exchange your vehicle for your own feeble, needful body… And the clock is ever ticking, and the time is ever speeding up, and resources ever scarcer, and threats ever mounting, and the request and leads ever more overwhelming… And one cannot possibly cover it all in the space of any single day, so that every move gain increasing weight, so that time is both one’s most precious treasure and one’s greatest enemy. Not even the disease which eats at flesh and cloth and stone, not the ever more numerous and desperate bandits, not the characters whom one can never fully know or trust. No, it is the Time that is one is made painfully aware of. One finds oneself reloading the game due to making one wrong turn and running into a blind alley, for even those few moments are more than one is willing to lose. And all the while one is bombarded with the sights of dense miasma, of fungus-covered homes, of sick and dying, with sounds of laments and crying babes drilling, chewing, cutting into one’s ear.
So why does one endure all of that? Because of the writing, which is some of the best I’ve experienced in the recent years. Basically, on top of what I’ve described above, one finds this giant, endlessly branching textual adventure. That game’s labyrinthine mysteries have you hooked right away, one finds oneself caring for its often threatening and always threatened cast of characters – they can be lost at any moment, and have entire portions of the story lost with them, partly dragging with them the story-lines of other characters with whom they are umbilically connected. And the world-building is fantastic. One is never bombarded with exposition – the town’s history, social structure, spiritual undercurrents are slowly fed to one in the background and the world thus disclosed feels believable, organic, bigger and richer than what one sees. One finds combating worldviews here, but the game never devolves into anything like didacticism, neither primitivism nor social reform are whitewashed and idealized in a way they would be by any North American or Western European team. It is impossible for me not to take sides of course – I cannot sympathize with those prometheans who, living in abstractions, would impose reforms from above on that which organically grew thru centuries of man’s dwelling in the world, caring not for the loss of those immediately living – but one need not believe that the writers wished for one to react so and only so.

Superb, highly polished adventure thru a dying dark fantasy world. Whereas many of these throwback platformers either exude irony or are too rooted in modern design sensibilities, Odallus both looks and plays like a lost early 90s game. Even the manner in which its gameworld is structured evokes a cross between Zelda and Castlevania 2 rather than post SotN ‘vanias.
Each level presents a distinct environment – ranging from more familiar fantasy locales to more grotesque and alien ones - with a number of unique enemies, unique obstacles, puzzles and gimmicks. These last are never too annoying and never outstay their welcome, so that if say the ride on a cast with instakill pitfalls frustrates one at first, you can be sure that it won’t go for too long and that you won’t encounter many such sequences in the rest of the game. This is also helped by the sole more modern touch to the game, that is it being a bit more forgiving than such a title would be back in the day. Failing in a segment with instakill pitfalls will cost you one heart rather than whole life, and even losing all lives will simply reset your progress on the current level rather than resulting in proper game over.
Bosses are just as varied, ranging from duels with agile opponents of your own size to screen filling abominations redolent of Contra.
Exploration is highly rewarding, both in that secrets often require more work and experimentation than breaking some suspicious looking walls or say utilizing your newly acquired double jump, and in that power ups can be more than usually valuable. New armor or sword can make a HUGE difference.
I could go on and on but, really, this is just an all around great little piece of game design. If this game looks anything like your cup of tea, just go for it.