Recent reviews by lethal_guitar

A charming little feel-good game. Mark clearly put a lot of love and care into it: The overall experience is quite polished, the game runs well, looks and sounds great. He also went the extra mile with a good hint system, a variety of accessibility options, and even a Valve-style commentary track.

I played it together with my wife and it took us about 3 hours and a bit to reach the end. The puzzle difficulty felt about right for us: It wasn't a complete breeze, but not super hard either. We did have to consult the hint system two or three times in total, but I feel it's well designed so it gives you enough clues without stating the solution outright. We only ever needed the first hint, so I don't know if the hints get progressively more specific as you keep asking for them, or if what we saw is all there is.

In the end, it is a fairly short game, and doesn't have a lot of replay value, so that is something to consider. But personally, I really enjoyed the experience, and I think the price is perfectly reasonable. I'd happily buy it again if I could somehow make myself forget all the puzzle solutions. If you've enjoyed the demo, I would definitely recommend going for the full game.

I played It Takes Two with my wife a while ago, and we absolutely loved it. So we were curious about other games by the same developer, and this one frequently popped up as a recommendation. It started out pretty strong and we mostly had a good time, unfortunately the final part of the game (and ending) completely ruined it for us. I can see what the developers were going for, but it just completely falls flat. It's so bad that it completely soured us on the game, and we have no intention of revisiting it. It's nearly impossible to explain without going into spoilers, so the rest of this review is going to spoil most of the plot.

Ok, so the game is ostensibly about two guys - Vince and Leo - who meet in prison, discover they both have been wronged by the same bad guy, and then make a plan to escape. The first third of the game is mostly about putting the plan into action, escaping the prison and the ensuing police chase. The middle part is about tracking down the bad guy's location, getting money, stocking up on guns, and travelling to his hideout. You fight through his henchmen and then ultimately reach him and kill him, then have another escape sequence to get away from his remaining forces and reach the escape plane.

During all of this time, the two main characters are bonding with each other, collaborating, saving each other's lives multiple times. You can even have them open up about some of their personal issues, like relationship problems and childhood traumas. This is all reflected in the gameplay, where you're constantly working together as well. Similar to It Takes Two, you have a few competitive minigames too, but overall, the focus is on cooperation.

Well, all of that is the case until the plot twist hits. So they manage to escape, return to their home town, and are suddenly cornered by police. It turns out that one of the two was actually an undercover cop using the other one to get at the badguy, which the police were also after. The other character is - very understandably - absolutely shocked and royally pissed off, so he runs away and now the last part of the game turns into fighting against each other. After some chase sequences it culminates in a shootout to the death, using the same cover shooting mechanics already employed in some earlier sections of the game. Only one of the two can survive, and depending on who that is there are two separate endings.

We absolutely hated that part, we chose the game because we were looking for a co-op experience, not a PvP shootout. We didn't play the section as intended, we just decided who we wanted to see live, and then I just let myself get shot until the final cutscene played - I was playing Vince, the cop character, but I wanted Leo to win. We then played the last chapter a second time to see the other ending. We were hoping that there might be a hidden third option where both can live, but alas, there isn't.

Now, as I said I think I know what the developers were going for - they wanted to force you to do something you really don't want to do, so you can feel like the characters would presumably feel in this situation. The problem that completely ruins the whole thing is that it's absolutely nonsensical for it to go down this way. I just don't believe that after all they have gone through together, Vincent would not even consider letting Leo get away. There's so many ways he could make that happen. Hell, even at the end of the shootout, when Leo is defeated but not dead yet, Vincent could still decide to put down his gun and walk away. And yet, the only option the game gives you is to pull the trigger. It makes no sense, and the character Leo simply doesn't deserve it after the rough life he had. I have too much sympathy for him as a character to want to see it end with him dead. But the way the game is designed, the outcome is supposed to be determined by which player is better at the combat mechanics. This basically means you either reject this and don't play as intended, letting the character win who you'd like to see win - or you take it serious and play against each other, but then it only comes down to player skill. In our case, I was playing Vincent, and wanted to see Leo win, but I'm also the more experienced player especially when it comes to shooting mechanics. If we had played seriously, I very likely would've won. But I didn't want to - why would I want to fight against my co-op partner, give it my all in order to win, just to then get an outcome I would never willingly choose when given the option to choose something else? In the end, the developers have made a gameplay section that is completely unappealing and gives no incentive to play it as intended. Congratulations, great job at ruining an otherwise very promising game.

Due to this, I really can't recommend the game. You're much better off playing either Brothers: A tale of two Sons, or It Takes Two - both excellent games. Brothers has its own twist but it's executed much better, and genuinely gave us an emotional impact instead of just making us dislike the game.

I really like this game, it instantly pulled me in and each time I started playing, I found it hard to put down. There was always "just one more" room to discover, or just one more try at a challenge, etc. It's quite lovingly crafted and if you enjoy Metroidvania-style exploration-heavy games with a sci-fi setting, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Player control feels good and is very solid, precise and predictable. There's a decent amount of variety in enemy encounters, world design, mechanics etc. The world overall is highly interconnected with many shortcuts to unlock. The game doesn't exactly hold the player's hand, but I always found it easy enough to figure out where I had to go next, and I never got stuck without knowing what to do. So it does a great job at guiding you without relying on objective markers or similar.

Overall, I would say the focus is a tad more on combat than platforming, although there's a decent amount of the latter as well, especially when it comes to finding the many resources and upgrade items placed throughout the world. Enemies tend to have a fair bit of health and the player can be fragile, but on the flip side, there usually are only a few enemies to deal with at a time. So the combat is mostly about knowing the movement patterns of the different types of enemies, and being able to dodge their attacks while keeping them in your line of fire. When encountering new enemies for the first time, it can be a bit of a difficulty spike at first as you need to learn their patterns, this was especially the case for me when entering the 2nd sector (the world is divided into 7 distinct sectors) for the first time since the player character is still fairly underpowered. Later on, as you get more powerful, this becomes much less of an issue, and overall it never felt unfair - as you become more familiar with the enemies, you also get better at dealing with them. There are also a few underwater sections that feel almost a bit bullet-hell like, these are fairly rare though.

When you get low on health, it can be tricky to find enough scrap to fully heal up again, which can make it very tense if you're far away from the last checkpoint (aka save station) - it does feel a bit like in Dark Souls when you're looking for the next Bonfire in a newly discovered area. But to not give the wrong impression, this game is a lot easier and more forgiving than Dark Souls. It's just a mechanical similarity, but I wouldn't call it a "Souls Game" by any means. You do lose some scrap when dying and you can recover it by reaching the place where you died, but you can't permanently lose anything by dying multiple times in a row. There's also a bit of a runback when fighting a boss and failing, which can get a little frustrating in some cases. But again, none of the bosses are unfair or overly complex. It's all about learning their patterns and the right strategy, meaning how to evade the different attacks, knowing when you have time to safely heal, etc. Once you have that down they're very manageable.

So in conclusion, I had a really great time with this game. I think the developers did a fantastic job creating a compelling world and fun gameplay with limited resources (seems like a very small team), and I can only recommend giving it a shot if it sounds like the kind of thing you might enjoy.

Overall, I had a great time with Fort Solis, and I don't think it deserves all the negative reviews. There are absolutely things to criticize here, but it seems like many of the reviews are about the "Walking Simulator" nature of the game. Indeed, the game is very linear, story-focused, and there's not a lot of "gameplay" in the traditional sense. It's more of an "interactive movie" type of experience: You are primarily walking around, reading emails and watching video logs, sometimes you need to find keys, and occasionally there are QTEs. It's also fairly short, at about 4 hours.

Personally, I enjoy these types of games, I don't mind a shorter length (I prefer a tight and focused experience over a sprawling open world epic) and I don't think a negative review is warranted just because it's not a traditional action-focused game. So with that out of the way, let's start with what I liked about the game.

I absolutely love the atmosphere and visuals in the game - it's a wonderfully realized sci-fi world, that immediately pulled me in and felt very immersive. Exploring the station was great, and I was always curious to see what I would discover next. There's a lot of nice world building and environmental story telling, and it feels like a believable place.

Graphics, voice acting, and character models/animation are also stellar - it really does look great. And the characters are well done to, in my opinion.

The story arc overall also felt well paced, starting out slow and calm, slowly developing a feeling of unease, then ramping up the tension. The final sequence truly had me on edge, it was quite intense due to the anticipation of something bad happening but it took a while until it actually did. This "horror of not knowing" aspect was very well executed.

Overall, the game did a great job pulling me into the narrative and its world, and kept me hooked right until the end.

Unfortunately, the ending itself left me a bit disappointed - which is my main gripe with the title. It's not that the ending itself is bad - it's mostly fine. The problem is that too many mysteries/open questions in the story are left unanswered. Basically, the whole time you're expecting a big revelation at the end, but it never comes. It doesn't matter if you find all of the optional audio/video logs etc., some key questions are simply not answered. I can only assume that the intention here was to leave things vague, to get players to theorize and come up with their own interpretations. And I get that some people really enjoy that kind of thing, but personally, I prefer a bit more closure.

Without getting too much into spoilers, there is a thing in the game which is supposedly very dangerous, causing one of the characters to take extreme actions to prevent the danger. But it is never revealed what the danger actually is, not even hinted at aside from various characters talking about how "bad" it is. But they only allude to it being bad, without ever going into specifics. I really expected the actual danger to be revealed in the end, which would've put a lot of events into perspective and rounded everything out nicely. But instead, I was left wondering what it might be.

Performance-wise, the game ran ok, but not great on my machine (2080 Ti, i7 9700k). At 1440p with DLSS Quality mode and max settings otherwise, I was getting between 35 and 70 FPS depending on the scene, but most of the time it hovered somewhere between 50 and 60. Thanks to my G-Sync compatible display, the framerate fluctuation was mostly not noticeable, and it's also not the type of game that really needs super consistent performance to play well. But if you don't have a VFR display, limiting the framerate to 30 might be a better option.

What I found a lot more distracting was occasional stuttering, especially when entering a new area for the first time. I'm guessing this might be due to shader compilation, a typical issue with recent Unreal Engine games on PC. Would be nice if that could be fixed in a patch.

There were also some odd artifacts with flickering shadows, and I had a game-breaking bug at one point where an interaction prompt didn't appear. Fortunately, restarting the game and replaying from the previous checkpoints fixed that. And I didn't experience any other bugs aside from this one instance.

One final thing to mention is the QTEs. It turns out that with one exception, these have absolutely no impact on the outcome of the story, which feels like a missed opportunity. And another issue I have is you sometimes get a prompt in the middle of an otherwise non-interactive cutscene, which catches you off guard and thus is very easy to miss.

Ok, so in conclusion - despite the disappointing ending, and some other issues, I still really enjoyed everything before that point, and I would recommend the game if you like this type of experience and aren't put off by the issues mentioned above. It's clearly a very ambitious effort by a small independent team, and I'm glad they took a chance on this.

I really like the Broken Sword series overall, but this game was a massive disappointment. I couldn't bring myself to continue playing it for very long, and ended up watching a let's play instead for the story.

The game is pretty buggy, the puzzles aren't fun, and many of the environments look very bland. But the worst part is the story, dialogs, and characters. It feels like an early draft at best.

To start with, George feels totally out of character. In all the other games, he was always good natured, optimistic, and doing pretty well for himself - what with having the time and money to go on globe-spanning adventures and such. But suddenly, he's presented as down on his luck, broke, struggling, and pretty pessimistic. That didn't feel right. And some of his dialog lines are just downright cringeworthy. None of his usual attitude and humor is here.

The other characters aren't any better. None of them are relatable or memorable. They frequently act one way in one moment, and then totally different later etc. It's just not consistent. And most of the interactions just make no sense whatsoever.

For example, there is one scene in a hotel where a shady mafia guy has locked up a cleaner in a closet, and is now hanging out in the hallway. When you try to interact with the closet, the mafia guy stops you. So far, I can get behind this setup, clearly we just need to find a way to make him go away or something. Well, as it turns out, that's kind of what you do, but he only ends up going into a nearby elevator. He still has full visibility of the closet. And he still shouts at you to not mess with it. Except now you're able to slide a piece of paper through the gap below the door, and get a code for opening it (it has an electronic keypad lock). And for some reason, he doesn't stop you from doing that.

Once you open the door and free the cleaner, she gets very angry, and creepy mafia guy suddenly runs away. The scary dude who was able to force the cleaner into the closet in the first place, and who looks like he'd have no problem dealing with both of you, is suddenly scared just because you've opened the door and untied her? Not to mention the fact that he still didn't want you to mess with the closet door, but was happy to let you slide the piece of paper in there and use the keypad once you knew the correct code.

This type of nonsense happens a lot in this game. Of course, adventure game puzzles are always pretty contrived when you think about it, but I had absolutely no issues going along with it in the other games - because everything matched with the tone of the world etc. Here, it's just so blatantly nonsensical and inconsistent.

Let me give you another example. There is one scene where George needs to get into a factory (food processing). He talks to the woman at the reception for a bit, but he can't get in just like that. Then, he pretends to be a "health inspector", speaks in a weird accent, and suddenly she is happy to let him in. This absolutely makes no sense. She has just talked to him a moment ago. He still looks exactly the same. He didn't show her any identification or anything. And somehow just the fact that he talks in a funny accent makes this woman believe that this guy who was someone else just before is now suddenly a health inspector? I'm sorry, but this is too much. This might work in a more goofy/humorous game, but the game very much goes for a grimdark serious egdy tone, so it really doesn't work at all.

This is what I mean by things feeling like a rough draft. Maybe the "pretend to be a health inspector" thing could've been made to work. But I would then expect some kind of puzzle where you need to fake some sort of ID, or do something else that makes it more believable.

Finally, the story as a whole is meandering and lacks focus, which makes it uninteresting. There are too many characters involved in too many things, and so it's hard to keep track of who's who and what's going on. As a result, various "twists" that I guess were meant to be surprises just got a "uh huh, sure yeah whatever" reaction out of me.

In conclusion: No need to play this, not even as a fan of the series.

I'm a big fan of cinematic platformers, but it's not exactly a crowded market - so I'm always happy to discover new titles in the genre. Full Void is an excellent take on the formula, with gorgeous pixel art, a compelling dark sci-fi setting, solid mechanics and varied locales. My only complaint really is that it's so short. Don't get me wrong, I think the story and overall progression is well paced, and the ending is satisfying. It's not that there's anything missing as such - it's just that I'd love to spend more time in this wonderful world!

The core gameplay consists of moving around the environment navigating past all kinds of obstacles. Many of the areas are quite dangerous, with a wrong move spelling certain death. Not to mention that the protagonist has no means of defense against enemies aside from using the environment against them. Thanks to the auto-save system, you're never pushed very far back by a death though - at most, it's usually one screen away, often you're even just brought back to the beginning of the current screen.

Some areas are fairly relaxed with mostly quiet exploration & puzzle solving, some require correct timing, and some have you outrun something dangerous. It really isn't too difficult overall though, and it's very much mostly a question of figuring out what you need to do - no super human reflexes or complex sequences of movements are needed. On top of the basic movement, you also have the ability to hack various machines in the environment from time to time. And at some point, you get a robot companion which can help you get past tricky spots.

The puzzles are interesting and not too obscure, there were only two instances where I got stuck for some time. Thorough exploration is rewarded with achievements for finding certain hidden things in the environment.

Overall, I heavily recommend Full Void, both for seasoned players of the genre as well as newcomers who'd like to experience what it's all about. I'd say that it's a fair bit more accessible compared to some of the classics - which can be very difficult and obscure at times - but just as engaging.

Stray is an excellent game, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Thanks to the novelty factor of playing as a cat, it was highly anticipated ever since the first announcement. But the game is much more than just that novelty. It's a genuinely well-made puzzle-action title.

The atmosphere is excellent, the world intriguing, and it feels great to play too. I had a lot of fun exploring the world of Stray, meeting the various characters, learning more about the backstory, and solving puzzles. All of which were interesting and engaging, but not frustrating, and I didn't need to consult a walkthrough at any time.

Now, the game is relatively short and linear, but for me, that's a big plus. I really enjoyed hunting all the achievements and going through the chapters multiple times. With a longer game where I spend 30 hours ore more just on the first playthrough, I rarely go back, since I usually have enough by that point. But with Stray's short length, I was more than happy to dive in again right after finishing the story for the first time.

The one issue the game has on PC is its performance, with regular stutters even on a fairly high end system.

Emberheart Games is back with a new remake of an old Apogee classic, and this one is even better than the previous one (Crystal Caves HD)! Again, I highly recommend this game if you enjoy 2D platformers. It's a very faithful recreation of the original, but at the same time nicely enhanced and modernized. Especially the music is absolutely superb this time: A perfect fit in terms of style, paying homage to the classics of the time from composers like Bobby Prince, but also solidly standing on its own.

I was a big fan of Apogee's games back in the day, so I had to immediately get this one as soon as it came out, especially since I never got to play the registered version of Crystal Caves originally. It's a really well done remake/remaster: Improved graphics and frame rate while still staying very true to the original. It's pretty much a "looks and feels how you remember it, not how it actually was" kind of deal. So I highly recommend this to anyone who was into DOS platformers back in the day, or who would like to experience that era of gaming.

Buying this was a painful reminder to always check reviews before getting something. It's actually a ported Android game, and I guess it's fine if you want something to play on your tablet. But as a PC game, especially a Deus Ex game, it's a joke.

The UI is big and weird, and not just in the usual console port way. It's really strange and awkward to use with a mouse. (It's probably more or less the original made-for touch-screens interface)
The tutorial forces me to do very specific things, like attaching a silencer to a certain weapon. So much for player choice.
While the art style definitely looks like DX:HR, the level design is much simpler, the rooms are smaller, more blocky and your choice of non-obvious approaches usually boils down to a single alternative air-vent route.
Combat doesn't feel that great, you basically have the same cover system as in DX:HR, but it didn't work as well, can't quite say why exactly, it just isn't as satisfying. And the AI is really wonky and stupid.

I can't say much about the story, since I didn't play that much, but it certainly wasn't interesting enough to keep me playing despite of the lackluster gameplay.

Finally, my GTX 980 didn't even go above 35° C when playing, which tells you everything you need to know about this game's graphics.