Recent reviews by Fant

The game's missions feel a little disjointed and I gave up on following the story two missions in. The gameplay is fastpaced and enjoyable though. Enemies can be a little hard to detect in the always-dark environments and kill animations often take too long, leaving you in a repetitive 5 second invincible animation while enemies pool around you. It all feels like a wonky version of modern Doom, but I still enjoyed it for the 6 or so hours it takes to rush through the story while skipping the cutscenes and dialogue. On normal difficulty the game never really gets hard and I generally mostly died through platforming. Upgrades are fun and with limited money you really have to pick your build. Inventory management is a clunky mess though. All in all Hired gun is a very mixed bag that ends up on júst the right side of mediocre.

This game is very janky but is saved by its undeniable charm. The story is decent and the noir detective atmosphere is on point. Gameplay is very much telltale.

The issue with the choices is that many of them end in game over screens, often leaving just one right option. This means choice is often an illusion in blacksad. The following issue with this is that it's often very questionable which option is the right one. Redoing often sets you back quite a while with unskippable dialogue and scenes. Worst parts are when these issues are combined with a time limit.

Luckily, this doesn't happen too often. Most of the time you're interrogating people and looking for clues. The interrogation is fun and dialogue is decently written overall. Voice acting is okay but lip sync is all over the place which can definitely break immersion.

The investigation parts are very clunky. Despite being a cat, blacksad controls more like a hippo on a unicycle. Clue activation is very specific as to where you're standing which is frustrating paired with the clunky movement. Sometimes you have to use your cat senses, which suffers from the same issue of very small activation zones and clunky controls. Clue deductions are a fun mechanic which usually work well, but at times the combinations of clues seem very far fetched and require lots of trial and error.

All in all Blacksad is a troubled game which I still thoroughly enjoyed. The atmosphere and the well thought out mystery make it worth a play if you're into either detective stories or telltale type games.

Should you get it for full price? Most definitely not. Wait for at least a 75% sale. The game took me around 9 hours to finish and replay value is very low due to the illusion of choice and the unskippable dialogue.

Main character's voice acting is a little съеживаться, but I enjoyed the story and other characters, the game world, the boats and the overall atmosphere. Definitely worth a play just for more Metro gameplay alone.

Firewatch is a beautiful experience, but like many people have said it goes in a direction that it doesn't seem to have the motivation to finish. It starts out stunning with great characters and amazing dialogue by brilliant voice actors. The relationship you develop with these characters is pretty unique for a videogame and it is that part that I will remember this game for, not it's story.

Halfway through the story starts to get interesting before coming to a complete dead end dull ending not much later. There are some leads that aren't ever followed up which makes it almost feel like the developers had another ending in mind but later decided to go for the current one. Firewatch is still a memorable experience. It's a walking sim, so be prepared for... Well, walking. But the characters and dialogue and the stunning world will stick with you. Just get it on sale and be prepared to be disappointed by it's ending.

I neglect cleaning my house to sweep dust in virtual train stations. Would recommend.

For real though, very relaxing game. Has it's issues for sure but overall it's an enjoyable very zen experience. The soundtrack consists of around three songs that sound very much like the first three Google results for "royalty free background music" so turn that off and put on a playlist and go to town on some graffiti.

Some stations tell a little story and have their own atmosphere which is nice, others are a bit too generic. The cleaning bit is very enjoyable if you enjoy that sort of thing. Seeing the stations get nicer and nicer with each little thing you do is just unexplainably satisfying.

I wasn't a big fan of the sims-style decorating bits though. The game forcing you to put 28 trash bins and 93 clocks in a tiny office room felt a bit overkill. After the first few stations I got tired of perfectly aligning toilets mainly decorated them by putting 20 urinals near the ceiling and the game was totally okay with that, kind of making the entire mechanic useless.

I played it during a stressful period. Put on some lo-fi playlist and the hours just ticked by (I didn't actually play for 37 hours, I left it on overnight by accident). My mind was occupied by virtual sponging while ignoring real-life issues and good times were had.

I misjudged The Crew 2. I played the beta a long time ago and cast it aside but decided to give it another shot in the recent sale. I looked up the Steam reviews and saw very much a mixed bag of bad and good reviews. After sinking 24 hours into the game in a matter of days, I can say that I'm slightly addicted.

Now let me start off by saying that the driving in The Crew 2 is mediocre at best. At first I hated it, but a few hours in and with a few upgrades on my cars, I started to appreciate it at least a little more. It is véry arcady, with most regular cars having basically endless grip in corners. I say cars, but there's quite a lot more than just cars in this game. The variety is insane. Street cars, drift cars, hypercars, track cars, motorcycles, two types of boats, two types of airplanes, monster trucks, demolition derby cars, helicopters and even hovercrafts. This adds tremendous variety to the game, especially with the quick swap that lets you transform into a plane, boat or car on the fly. Realism is completely out the window in TC2 and I love it. It's pure unadulterated fun. TC2 rarely tries to be more than it is: just an over-the-top arcade vehicle funfest.

Handling isn't so much based on the vehicle's power, weight and tires but more on it's class. A hypercar always has crazy grip whereas a driftcar will slide even at 5 miles an hour. It's quite fitting for TC2's almost RPG-like game design.

This RPG style isn't always a good thing. Upgrades for cars are really tedious because they're in loot format. You get loot for every race you win, but that loot is only for that specific class. There's green, blue, yellow and pink loot all with different stats. It doesn't feel fitting for a racing game at all and I would've loved to just get a nice garage to upgrade your vehicles similar to a Forza game. Visual modifications are quite diverse, at least on cars, but the mechanics behind them feel really outdated as they are unchanged since The Crew 1. This means you get to scroll through 50 bumpers all with slightly different headlights instead of just getting a seperate headlight and bumper selection.

It's easy to compare TC2 to it's rivals like Forza Horizon 4 and Need for Speed Heat... So I will! Handling doesn't even come close to Horizon, which has absolutely mastered the arcade handling. However, as much as I love Horizon, it has some major flaws, mostly in it's game world. Horizon has tiny maps and refuses to give players what they've been begging for for years: proper mountain roads with bends to touge and drift on. Sure, there's a few, but they're done within 20 seconds. Whenever you go cruising in Horizon for an hour, you'll definitely see the same spot three times. The entire game actually brought back memories of Test Drive Unlimited more than it did of it's modern rivals. The big gameworld, the way you can walk around and arrange cars in your house, the way you meet actual other racers in the world, the way you buy cars and even the handling feel similar.

The Crew's game world is immense. Driving from one side to the other takes over 40 minutes in a fast car. And that's just the fastest route. There are thousands of little roads in between, including some absolutely amazing touge and drift roads. Endless hairpins and fast corners combined that really get you in a proper driving flow. I rarely had more fun than when I drove my Pagani Zonda through the Grand Canyon, blasting a good playlist while perfectly linking the corners, enjoying the amazing sound design and the brilliant cockpit view. It definitely makes you forgive the mediocre car handling.

Despite being much much larger, TC2's world actually feels more alive than Horizon's or NfS' game worlds. Not only because of the brilliant map design, but also very much due to the addition of pedestrians in cities, animals in the wild and decent traffic density. Cities feel like they're actually populated. Obviously you're not gonna get real LA traffic in LA, but at least it's not a wasteland like NfS:Heat's city. While driving through the forests, you see deer crossing the road, moose running alongside it, birds flying over and even alligators running for the water as you pass. It's amazing how much these little details make the world come alive. As for other players, the balance feels just right. In Horizon there were more hypercars flying past than regular traffic. In TC2, you meet another player every now and then but it never feels like a weird fantasy world where there's more Ferraris than VWs. The community so far has been amazing and I have had lots of fun joining random people while free roaming, just roaming the map together.

So far the sound design seems decent. Cars sound good for the most part and backfires and exhaust crackle is nice and exaggerated as it should be in an arcade racer. The music is okay, but it suffers from the usual lack of tracks making it repetitive quickly so I recommend switching the radio off and booting up Spotify. As for content, there's plenty. Dozens and dozens of races in all classes, lots of small little events in the world and my favorite: the long hypercar races that can take over 30 minutes to complete. Mostly though, I spent time in free roam,picking a nice road on the map and taking a long drive over there just to repeat it over and over.

Now let's move to the bad news: TC2's economy is f'ed and the worst thing about this is that is is deliberate. Most events pay around 15k 'bucks' and cars usually go for several hundred thousand if not millions. This means you'll be grinding and grinding just to get that one car you want. Oooor you could buy 'Crew Credits', Ubisoft's premium currency. Yes, there's microtransactions and Ubisoft loves reminding you. It's obvious they made the economy deliberately grindy just to get you to buy these credits. TC2 also suffers from major problems with it's difficulty. It's all over the place. I'm quite decent at racing games, so in most races I took the lead within seconds and stayed there easily, sometimes with more than a minute lead, but other were randomly impossible to beat. These races had insane rubber banding, sometimes shamelessly respawning opponents behind me and making them corner at impossible speeds. There seems to be no sense in which races get this rubber banding and which don't. Some classes are also a lot harder than others and the suggest vehicle level is not always right, making it a frustrating experience at times.

TC2's design and UI is honestly pretty amazing. The menus and game design all look absolutely stunning, but sometimes they can be a bit confusing. There's a lot going in and tons to do, and some of it is hard to find and isn't explained well. I keep discovering new stuff randomly and I'm 24 hours in. Probably not the way it should be. Races start in a weird way where you're forced to drive to the start line slowly while some really mediocre, empty dialogue is forced before the gates open. It's unnecessary and ruins the pace at times. The game tries to tell a story, sort of, but does it really really messily. You never know which events advance this sort-of story and it's very incoherent. It would've been better off without it, honestly.

All in all, TC2 is an amazing open world racing experience. No other game lets you drive through this massive world, switching to a plane on the fly(ha), doing some crazy stunts before transforming into a boat and tearing up the seas. Once you're used to it's very arcade handling and the odd game design choices here and there, TC2 is sure to give you tons of enjoyment. I know I'll be playing it for years to come, probably until the inevitable server closure.

Lightmatter is a first person puzzle game all about light and how it matters. Shadows kill you, and that's basically all the gameplay mechanics there is! You get exactly two tools to fight these shadows: a spotlight and a sort of beam that connects to other beams and forms a path of light. They are intuitive to use, but the beam comes in quite late, giving you only one tool to use for most of the game.

Lightmatter feels slightly repetitive because of this, but also because the game world is quite dull. The graphics style is certainly unique, but the world itself doesn't feel alive. It's the same environments over and over, nothing moves and you barely see any signs of life in the world. The story is driven by two characters only. The player is silent and gets constant intercom traffic from this crazy scientist/CEO. The voice acting is amazing, but the comedy feels like it tries for a Portal and Stanley Parable mix. Unfortunately, it misses the sweet spot those games hit. It feels a little forced and I get the feeling the writers couldn't decide if he had to be menacing or funny so he ended up being neither. It would've worked better if they focused on the mental side instead of the condescending sarcasm. There's a few audiologs throughout the game but they're forgettable.

As for difficulty, Lightmatter is just right for most of the game. It makes your brain work hard enough but without melting it, except for one or two puzzles. Expect between 3 and 5 hours of playtime depending on how good you are at puzzles. What I found disappointing is that in the last ten minutes, the game introduces some really well done first person platforming. This never appeared in the hours leading up to that point, even though it could have really mixed up the slightly repetitive puzzles if it had been sprinkled throughout the game instead of getting it all at once in the ending sequence.

All in all, Lightmatter is a fun little puzzle game. For it's full price, I can't recommend it because it's short and the story is a bit more miss than hit, but at a 50% or more discount you definitely get your money's worth in puzzles.

I loved DOOM2016 but varied reviews kept me from getting Eternal on launch. After getting it on sale, I can only say that I made the right choice waiting for a price drop. Eternal is very different from 2016. The story, atmosphere and weapons are quite similar but the gameplay is very different.

First of all, this is a very platform heavy FPS. You will spend a large portion of the game jumping around. You got a double jump and a double dash which makes you very flexible. I mostly enjoyed the platforming, but at times it could be very hard to get where you need to go. I sometimes spent minutes looking around before noticing a tiny climb-wall in the very distance. Besides that there are many 'puzzles' in the game that have you looking for switches and draining water from pits and such. It's frankly very dull and it can definitely hurt the pacing of the game. It doesn't have to be 100% action but the puzzles felt boring and forced instead of actually fun.

Most Enemies in Eternal have a certain weakness and this is very pronounced this time. You can still kill most of them just by pumping their body weight in lead into them, but it's not the best stategy. This does mean that the game can get a little chaotic. You're running around with a crazy amount of enemies attacking you from all sides and you're constantly switching weapons and trying to take out weak spots.

Ammo is very very scarce especially in the beginning of the game before upgrades. You have to chainsaw demons to get ammo but sometimes the game doesn't spawn enough fodder. There were plenty of times where I was just dashing around with literally zero ammo in all my guns waiting for more chainsaw-fodder to spawn. I understand the idea behind the ammo scarcity, but I feel like they overdid it slightly. It's not that much fun, honestly.

The weapons are great. They all have good punch and good sounds and most of them have fun alternative fire modes. You can upgrade them in different ways. You can also upgrade your suit and find ruins, which are basically perks. It was surprisingly easy to upgrade everything fully, especially since you can replay missions with cheats on and get everything easily.

I found upgrading everything very much needed for the last two missions which are ridiculous with the amount of enemies. I played on normal ("Hurt me Plenty") and usually had no trouble dying but I rushed through all my 13 extra lives in the second to last mission. Overall level design is amazing but some parts are too cramped for the amount of enemies that spawns, getting you stunlocked in a corner eating through your lives.

Most enemies are fun to fight but I hated the marauder. This guy was fine as a boss but afterwards the game keeps throwing it at you combined with dozens of other enemies and it's just not fun as it requires constant focus. The re-use of bosses gets old quickly and I found myself annoyed instead of excited each time they spawned. The final boss was decent. The game is decently lengthy and worth the sales price for sure (I spent 15 hours but I replayed most levels to get secrets. Base game is probably around 8 to 10).

Overall I very much enjoyed Eternal but I must say I still prefer DOOM2016. It's way less in-depth, but honestly I liked that. I will definitely be playing through Eternal again with the cheat codes on, enjoying infinite ammo and just having mindless fun again instead of the regular gameplay which can get quite stressful at times.

One of the first games I ever played as a kid was Need for Speed II. It is one of the reasons I became a petrolhead and I still have many fond memories of playing that game with my brother for countless hours. Need for Speed will always have a special place in my heart because of this alone, but it has lost it's touch many times over the years.

I'm glad to say that NfS: Heat at the very least sets a step in the right direction again. Is it Most Wanted 2005 great? Nah. Is it NfS2015 bad? Most definitely not! We're somewhere in between. It's just a lot of fun.

There is a story, but there might as well haven't been one. It's the cliché bad cop, good racers storyline. At least it's done kinda decently, and most missions are fun. It's very short, but that's okay. You're not here for the story. You're here for either the driving or the customizing.

Driving feels okay. I see a lot of people comparing this game to Forza Horizon 4, but NfS is way more arcade. I really needed some time to get used to the NfS handling, especially after my countless hours of Horizon, but once I got used to it and tuned my car the right way, driving became very enjoyable. Drifting in this game is more something you can trigger at any time than something that just happens when you lose traction, which feels weird sometimes. You can basically drift every corner without slowing down in a properly tuned car, which makes it a really fun, fast arcade racer. Literally everything can be demolished, from trees to billboards. You can get a really nice flow going once you get used to the handling, drifting through corners and smashing everything up. It's just really really fun to be honest. Only problem I had is that during the day, you basically only have circuit races. I always prefer sprint races, but they only appear at night.

At night, the cops show up. Doesn't mean you can't start cop chases during the day, you just won't earn any reputation. At night, events are often visited by cops and turn into chases. The cop chases are pretty great. The cops have insane rubber banding and can go from 0 to 180 in two seconds if you fly past them, but apart from that they're just right in terms of agression. The units are fun (crown vics, chargers, vettes, ramming vans and helicopters) and feel balanced most of the time. The difficulty can get a little insane after heat level 3 sometimes. Your car actually has health this time, and can easily be taken out. It makes sense, but it means there's none of the endless chases you could have in Most Wanted for example. I found myself downloading a trainer and disabling the health sometimes, going on hour long police chases again, just for old times sake. It's one thing where NfS will always be way above any competition.

The world itself is decent. It doesn't feel small and it has some amazing sections in it that are incredible to drive and drift. The traffic density is a little low, but not so low that it really bothered me.

Cars in this game are really great. There's about 120 of them and the diversity is very good. JDM classics, big SUVs, oldtimers, hypercars. There's a little bit of everything! Customization is my favorite part and is done really well. I love the adjustability of things like stance and exhaust sound. Engine swaps are a great addition and made it easy for me to finish the game in a visual replica of my old Miata. There's not stupid garage limit this time, making car collection probably the most fun part of the entire game.

Performance sucks out of the box. Google the CPU trick, apply it and it'll run very well. At least it did on my 1060, which really isn't a powerhouse. Got decent 60fps at all times without dips or stutters and the game looked very nice.

All in all, I really enjoyed Heat. It's definitely going back to the NfS roots and it does more things right than wrong. Get it on sale and finally get to enjoy proper car customization and cop chases once again!

I remember the days I first got my hands on the Postal 2 demo. It was on a demo disc that came with a paper magazine, it was thát long ago. I was around 10, I suppose, and I had no clue what I was installing. I became quite a fan that day. To my young self, Postal was a glorious bit of edginess that I loved at that age. Good thing I never grew up. I have been playing postal 2 ever since, including all the expansions and various mods. It hadn't aged especially well, but there was just nothing else on the market that came close to what Postal offered. A sandbox to just mess around in with all these crazy weapons and the lovely lack of realism in everything. Postal was usually my go-to game when I needed to vent some frustration. I don't know if that makes me a psychopath. Maybe it does.

And now, finally, there is a proper sequel. Or at least, a janky alpha build of one. And trust me, it is janky! After a few updates, it's finally playable for me without crashing, but the performance is still very bad for a game that looks like this. Still, it is such a joy to play a modern reincarnation of what has been a favorite of mine since childhood. No Regerts is a perfect modernization of Postal 2 if you ask me. It feels like Postal while adding modern touches that were very needed. Of course, there's the graphics. It's not a pretty game by any standards, but compared to Postal 2, it's godlike. But I don't think any Postal fan cares about that.

What I do care about, is the open world without loading screens. It is a pretty big world, too. A lot of buildings are empty, but that's obviously gonna be filled in eventually. Apart from traversing it by foot, you can also use mobility scooters. Running people over with them will probably never get old. Another modern touch is weapon reloading, which was very much needed if not only for the increased coolness. There is no aim down sight so far. Weapons are a combination of classics (pistol, shotgun, AK) and the well known Postal craziness. Classic guns got a decent feel and sound, and a new powerup lets you dual wield every one of them, which is just great. Melee weapons feel just like in Postal 2, but the improved gore makes them absolutely brutal. Cutting someone in half with the machete boomerang is an awesome over-the-top gorefest. In terms of crazy weapons I've found so far, we got a pigeon bomb and a supersoaker you can fill with water, gasoline or... Other liquids. Let's just keep it at that. All done from the new inventory management system. Another brilliant addition is the ability to grab severed limbs and beat people with them. Beating someone to death with a severed hand or head is just so over-the-top that it's nothing short of hilarious. Postal has always been a cause of controversy, but it's just too silly to ever be harmful. It's just harmless fun, B-movie style.

The jobs so far are very fun to do, although I haven't tried them all yet. The original voice actor for the Postal Dude apparently wasn't available, and while that does take away from the nostalgia, the new one does a good job. The game definitely needs a lot of work still. What you're buying is exactly what they're advertising: a janky alpha build. You're paying for the game's development without a lame Crowdfunding campaign that costs a ton of money itself. You pay, you get to play a very fun alpha and the guys at RWS use your money to improve it. It's exactly what Early Access should be used for. So far, updates have been consistent and substantial and we know RWS isn't gonna do an exit scam. They supported Postal 2 for 16 years.

So yeah, go buy it as long as you know what you're buying. Be aware of the many issues and crashes. It doesn't even run for some people, but constant updates will probably fix the issues soon. Look at it more as a crowdfunding pledge than buying a game. If the janky Alpha is this much fun already, it'll definitely be worth your money.