Recent reviews by gk99 🏳️‍⚧

Yeah dude that was one hell of an experience

I don't even know how to describe it. Weird mix of SCORN, Resident Evil 7, the Amnesia series, Layers of Fear, and plenty of stuff that gives the game its name. It's worth noting that there are three games before this. Lust for Darkness, Lust from Beyond: Prologue, and Lust from Beyond: Scarlet, and they're all just as messed up as this, perhaps moreso given that this is the "M Edition" which is as opposed to the regular, Adult-Only version.

Absolutely not for the faint of heart, this has some ballsy subject matter. I will say I think some people may get motion sickness? There's this weird issue where if you walk onto a slope, the camera shifts without mouse movement, and there is a lot of janky collision that gets walked on. It's kinda crazy that something this severe made it through the production of four whole games, because everything else is remarkably well-done for an indie company I've otherwise never heard of.

I'm going to be deadpan honest, the intro to the game is rough. It feels like it leaves the player a bit directionless and not everything is intuitive. BUT, I found that setting myself a goal and working towards it allowed me to learn how the game worked and have a lot of fun while doing that. So with that in mind:

Movement is stupid fun. Sliding, walljumping, if you crouch and press jump you go flying through the air and can dodgeroll mid-air for extra distance, nevermind the hoverboard (with tricks!) you unlock on Venus or the recently added motorcycles they added with 1999.

Combat is very satisfying. The game is huge on the idea of weapon/character modding, and when you get a good build going it just feels like you're unstoppable. After a good amount of play with a critical chance that's well over 100%, you just start seeing these massive red crit numbers with "!!!" at the end of them to signify just how much more damage you're doing than the weapon would normally.

The story, outstanding. There's 11 years of content here so it can be a little janky at points (nevermind that some of this stuff came out years ago and looks nowhere near as pretty as, say, the 1999 content does) but it's so legitimately impactful. Certain major quests, like The Second Dream, The War Within, and The New War are just incredible with some real twists and turns. I mean, this is a sci-fi game about robot ninjas and, at time of writing, the latest update is the year 1999. How do you think we got there? It's crazy.

The music is legit. They just straight-up put out two 90s-era boyband-style songs ("Party of Your Lifetime" and "The Great Despair") as part of the fun side of 1999's story, but just walking around the mall has this ominous electric guitar ambiance to reflect the seriousness of everything else going on. The game has so much range there's actually stuff I'd listen to in my car in here, which is a very rare thing for me to say.

Monetization! The game is free to play, so they gotta make money somehow, right? Well, unlike games like Destiny, all of the story content is free. 100% of it. What about the weapons and characters? Also all free, though be informed that this is a looter shooter and most of it is based on enemy/mission drops. Are there cosmetics? Yes, but there are actually a ton of completely free ones from playing and, here's the thing, you can get the game's premium currency, platinum, by trading with other players. The game has "relics" earned from missions that can be opened for pieces of certain gear. If you don't need it, sell it off to a player who does, and bam, now you've got some change in your pocket. Keep going and yeah, you can just buy cosmetics from the store without spending a dime. There's even a Warframe Market website dedicated to this because it's a whole in-game economy. Now, a few very specific things are real-money purchases only, but they are few and far between with one exception: Tennogen. These are cosmetics made by the community and put in officially, so the purchase of them directly supports the artist, which is why it's not just in-game currency. There are a bunch of these, but they're wholly unnecessary to look good.

So, in short, I've been very surprised with the game since I started a few months ago. I came from games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Call of Duty, and it feels so nice to have a game dev that treats its playerbase politely and respectfully while simultaneously putting out (mostly) consistently awesome stuff.

Solid twin-stick shooter with great aesthetics, a worthwhile story, and a soundtrack that's at least intriguing if not exactly your cup of tea. As far as difficulty, it's very forgiving. I played on Normal, and despite not really playing twin-stick shooters that often, the lowest my combat rank dropped to at any point was a B, exactly twice in the entire playthrough. I imagine the vast, vast majority of people would be able to play through and enjoy this on Easy with no problems, as opposed to something like Hotline Miami.

It's Half-Life 2, but in VR. It's got some jank, but it's good enough that I was able to get 100% of the achievements with minimal issue. I had a softlock because the gravity gun flew out of the combine weapon-destruction field towards the end, and I hate the Half-Life Alyx reload mechanics in an action game like HL2 (who asked for half-used magazines to not send the ammo back to your reserves?), but reloading a save and switching to quick reload were easy enough workarounds that don't think they're really serious concerns.

A solid 7/10, if you can get the port to work. I had some pretty awful stuttering up until someone on the forums recommended turning off "Control Flow Guard" in Windows settings, which worked like a charm. There are some other ridiculous issues and a crash or two, but give that a try if you're having issues.

Chapters 1 through 9 were excellent, then it's an exponential drop starting at 10 and ending at 15. There's a lot of the game that's super fun and a great time, and then it becomes this huge slog of linear, railroaded missions and confusing lore dumps. I don't want to take away from the very good, very emotional ending of the game, but the "sewer level" that is Chapter 13 and unnecessarily long boss rush (I think literally six in a row?) that is the final chapter really took the fight out of me before that. I dunno if I was really just that underleveled or unprepared, but it felt way more rough than it needed to be.

I'd still definitely recommend playing it. This game really is something I consider unique despite its flaws and I'm genuinely saddened that the end of the journey marks the end of the last time we'll see this specific Final Fantasy universe.

At time of writing I have played less than an hour, but this is such a technical disaster already that I had to alt-tab and dissuade anyone from spending the full $20 on this. My build is a 2070 Super/5600X combo with 32GB RAM, and yet I'm still getting stutters at random. The absurdly long startup intros crackle and pop the whole way through, though at least those can be turned off with a launch option. After I gave up trying to enable to console so that I could pick a fun costume at will like Arkham City (because this game requires finishing the story first and the only method to enable the console to change that seems to also require paying for the DLC), I carried on into the second level, only to find out the audio was gone again! Except this time it wasn't completely cut out, because the doors and menus still make sounds, it's just nothing else does. Restarting the level didn't fix it, so I'm about to try restarting the whole game after this.

This is on top of the more minor complaints, like that the VAs are all replaced in this one, or that the multiplayer mode is shut down. The trailer has looped a few times while I was writing this, and you know, it turns out this game launched on the WiiU? To be frank, you might honestly have a better experience emulating it. Unless you're deaf and like flickering enemies.

If you want a game, get Boneworks.

If you want a modding platform, get Bonelab.

Dark Souls III is a game with countless flaws, numerous technical issues, and plenty of inane design decisions, but I'm still giving it a thumbs-up because Dark Souls is a unique experience that imitators fail to capture. It has sharp edges that the developers are willing to let players slice their fingers on, and I appreciate that in the year of our lord 2024 (time of writing).

I have a feeling that the kinds of people who enjoy these games will get over the issues, because that's the whole point of the gameplay loop anyhow. While it's easily my least favorite of the series and I feel like the developers forgot they were making Dark Souls (whole lot of Bloodborne design influence meshing poorly with classic DS gameplay), I think it's still a fine send-off for the trilogy.

This is not worth playing over the original. I can't even say it's easier for new players to get into, because the new player experience is jam-packed with baffling choices and weird bugs that outright shouldn't exist in a finished title. Team colors aren't even consistent, and the offline 1v1 mode has a timer by default for seemingly no reason so good luck practicing. The camera is worse, with the sole exception being that you can see other spectators' cameras now, which is cool. What isn't cool is that the model is super ugly and weird and makes the game look super unfinished. As a prior player, I'm going to say the experience is generally worse than the original as well, with simplified graphics that are missing features, seemingly no dismemberment by default, nonliquid blood effects that make it barely there, the visual for gripping has become a wireframe cube (which makes it actually pretty difficult to see amidst four-player fights), oh, and the cosmetics I've accumulated and used over the past 17 years (including the battlepass that is currently running in the original) are gone. I don't mean they haven't carried my inventory over (they haven't), I mean the colors just flat-out don't appear to exist anymore in the shop. If they do exist, this is some Fortnite-style FOMO shop that goes directly against the nice marketplace system that the original had.

This is basically the Minecraft Bedrock of Toribash, except I'm pretty sure it doesn't even have some sort of crossplay benefit or anything. Why was this released? I would be more forgiving if it had an Early Access label, but this is supposed to be a complete game.

I need to update review for the Steam Awards badge, so this is that.

It's got some jank to it, being that it's a remake of a 90s shooter made by fans of it for fans of it, but I still think this is probably the best way for newcomers to the series to get into Half-Life. It's pretty, reworks some of the arguably worst parts of the original, and has some fun challenge achievements to try for, like carrying a wizard hat through the entire game. It's a great experience for new or old players alike, and on sale it's a mere $4. Get it.