Recent reviews by SaturdayMonk

Within general old-school survival horror standards it's a pretty solid game but for a mostly single developer project it's an excellent one. I couldn't find the depth I was looking forward to from its combat, backtracking could've been made more intuitive and engaging and lastly I would much more prefer a traditional and useful kind of map but everything else was immensely fun.

Atmosphere is top notch thanks to the Blade Runner / Silent Hill-esque mashup of visuals, with the addition of a droning and brooding soundtrack. The world, having been established in Headware's previous game Chasing Static, proves to be more and more interesting and with what's been added on top of it throughout this one, geniunely can't wait how the next game / project will carry it forward given that it potentialy stays in the same dark and twisted tone. Story on the other hand is fine, enough to drive the game forward but without the world building pulling the heavy-weight, it could've been pretty much forgettable but not a big issue since what you get out of it can come down to personal preference at the end of the day. For example, even though I'm not that impressed with it overall, would really like to see the protagonist returning in a possible next installment, simply because I'm curious about their fate and backstory since both of those concepts were only so slightly touched upon. To summarize, there is a lot to love about all departments here, even without everything living up to their full potential.

The thing is however, Headware takes great care of their game. Since the game's release there have been a barrage of patches that add all sorts of stuff ranging from general bug and performance fixes, very welcome and asked about quality of life improvements, gameplay settings that have the potential to change how the entire thing feels, tweaks to the game's difficulty (mainly making it more challenging) and many secrets and story additions waiting to be found for your eventual next playthtough with seemingly no stopping in terms of future ones to come. I personally can't wait to try out the first person mode or (as of me typing this out) freshly added third person mode for my next crack at the game despite already having 100%'ed it. All of this just truly cements the game as a passion project that's well worth your time and its asking price. With the off chance of you having an issue with the game, one message to the forums or under the patch notes will most likely be heard, even personally answered by Headware and will most likely be fixed in a very short time. Truly commendable behaviour from them.

So, it's a glowing recommendation from me. Between Silent Hill 2 remake's technical hiccups making it unplayeble for me as well as many others and Capcom trying their best to revamp and make sense of the world and story of Resident Evil with many fumblings here and there, Hollowbody's been a breath of fresh air for me both in terms of its performance and overall world building and story. Definitely quenched my thirst for a new and enjoyable survival horror game for this year, even went above and beyond that in some regards as well. I very much urge you to get it if you are a survival horror fan, it's also a decent entry point for the genre in my opinion with how much it is user friendly compared to some of its genre brethren, something to consider.

Just a little better than the first Crysis Remastered, it's not just a glorified tech demo this time around at least.

Once again, your super suit abilities are not used to their best potential. Can target enemies in tactical vision but once you're out of it they don't stay highlighted, and whilst in it you can't use your weapons therefore rendering the ability almost completely useless. Suit upgrades are finally a thing but you can't get stronger and stronger and instead you get to choose only one passive upgrade per branch leaving no power fantasy to be had. Most level design falls awkwardly between semi-open world and generic fps corridor levels without any proper level design sensibilities for you to use your super suit abilities in any meaningful way even with the new "tactical options" thing as those only end up being stuff like relatively useful detours or simply reminders like "Look there is a sniper spot and a weapon here, go get it champ!" and most guns are pretty boring and generic except a couple you get to use for a very short time at the latter end of the game. Also can't forget about the pacing issues as there are constant cutscenes that take control away from you every so often and they take just long enough to finish for you to feel like they overstay their welcome, not adding much to the overall experience. The story also doesn't present anything interesting. Just a bland hollywood alien invasion plot, devoid of ample creativity.

Despite everything though, there is enough fun to be had in Crysis 2. The sense of scale is done right, which really helps with the overall atmosphere. You really feel like you are in the middle of the most popular "concrete jungle" in the world, you feel truly miniscule amongst the humongous skyscrapers of New York City. Then, some levels actually ditch the vast open areas for more concise and curated ones, created specifically for you to either use or experiment with your suit abilities that I enjoyed immensely. The clearly Halo inspired alien race you fight throughout the game, even with their generic visual design, at least bring about enough enemy variety to the game and generally are fun to fight against (except one part at the very end, and genuinely f*ck who designed that segment). Although they are less in quantity compared to the more generic ones, some of the weapons were fun to use as well. Finally -likewise Halo inspired- vehicle segments were nice enough distractions, not perfect and especially frustrating in one particular part but still nice enough for me to not consider 'em as nuisances.

Positives I mentioned up above take around 40% of the game and the negatives around 60, hence the blue thumbs up, meaning that at the end of my playthrough that 40% justified for me to lightly recommend the game and since I don't think many people have bought or looking to buy this one seperately from the bundle, I say don't skip it and give it a try. The off chance you're looking the get it on it's own however, just don't expect anything special as it's overall just a generic sci-fi shooter that looks way too good for its own good.

A safe way to practice the masculine urge of throwing your entire life away via alcohol addiction then running away from all your guilt to a remote island to become a recluse, have a spiritual journey and eventually die. Ten outta ten experience.

Maybe if I shake the rat enough times, Sunscorched will finally release Negative Atmosphere...

Another Bloober optimization travesty but this time with added Unreal Engine shenanigans, but it's Silent Hill and I had to get it. If you are not a fan and especially have a medium to lower end PC, don't even think about it. Hell, even if your setup hits the mark at recommended settings think twice, speaking from experience. If there ever will be new remakes, whichever team makes them needs to ditch UE5, there is a reason why everyone and their mother is gushing about RE Engine.

A Resident Evil title which came out during the era when Co-op focused 3rd and 1st person shooters like Gears of War and Halo respectively were selling like hot cakes and also when Call of Duty was the face of the entire industry with its balls-to-the-walls cinematic action as the crown jewel with a Capcom that caved in and decided to follow suit. So it has a campaign which was designed almost solely around Co-op play, an insane and incoherent story adorned with bonkers cutscenes that -when stitched together- can pass as a Wakaliwood feature film with some signature corny Resident Evil weirdness and horniness sprinkled throughout. But it's fun, so much dumb fun and that's in spite of the poorly aged control scheme and the overall insanity the game entails.

Just note that the Co-op tag, which rightfully is the first one, is not a suggestion but rather a warning. I presume it isn't impossible to beat this in single player but I can't imagine it's worth the hassle. I finished it on another platform with a friend and played as much as I did here for some card drops and to type down a review till I nope'd at a certain point since I didn't want to torture myself with a particular boss fight considering the level of AI the game offers for your partner.

Also justice for Sheva, as she is the most genuinely likable character throughout the series so far for me but since her AI in single player mode isn't the brightest, she has an undeservedly terrible reputation amongst the fans. She manages to shine throughout in a game which just treats her as the eye-candy. Like, the first time we see of her is her ass covering about 2/3rds of the screen because the cutscene director had a clear as day agenda (which the dudebro in me salutes and respects, that person is like the textbook definition of dedication) and despite all that, after the game ends I only find myself wishing I got to learn more about her but sadly the writers couldn't really be arsed to. Hope in the inevitable remake we'll get more of her.

TL;DR It's ridiculous, it's uneven but it's fun and well designed for Co-op play. On your own it's not a notch over bearable, which I don't recommend in the slightest.

Long story short, it's okay. If you want to "play" a decent episode of Twilight Zone or Beyond Belief with substantial production quality with a couple QTEs here and there this is your game. Since it's about 4 years old as of now, won't be too much to handle for a modern mid-level system but will still look great nonetheless. If you want the long story however, just keep reading and expect minor spoilers.

Let me start with the "Lethal" difficulty which I don't think is designed the best. More than half of it is fine; correct button pressing, button mashing and the stealth "rythm" sections all work. They can get plenty challenging, and that's what I expected and wanted out of the difficulty. But the "aiming" parts where you have to drag a reticule to a certain point on the screen are almost always bullsh*t I have to say. On other difficulties, where you need to aim is highlighted by a circle; with Lethal you only get the reticule and when you aim correctly it turns red. So far so good but when the correct spot to aim doesn't make any common sense, you feel you get ripped off. I mean I have a sledgehammer and I'm expected to hit a monster's hand of all things when its head is even closer to me? To me that's just nonsense. The whole thing just makes me feel like Lethal mode was designed just as a mode to be played when you compelete the game on easier difficulties, with prior knowledge of the QTEs you need to execute. I just would like that to be disclosed in some way on the menus. Don't get me wrong either since I'm not salty or anything because I couldn't save a character (I'm actually completely content with the ending I got), I just think this difficulty and this specific QTE could've been designed better with little context clues to ever so slightly help on the dot rather than having nothing and making it completely nonsensical guesswork because almost every time, that's what decides if a character lives or dies.

And then comes the overall gameplay of the game, which ends up consisting of walking in a very slow speed, interacting with certain objects and trying to make the character you control pointing their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flashlight or light source to where you actually want them towards. I don't get why anyone would hold their flashlight in pure darkness at the side of their body to only illuminate anywhere but where they are headed towards. Don't know for sure if that was an issue with gamepad controls but it sure was weird. Camera was also odd might I add, it just felt it was way too far back from the character that it made looking around a chore sometimes; just one movement of it and a tree branch obscures your view or even another character standing somewhere. And when you add the non-existent level design on top of it all -which turns most of the game into one long corridor where you walk in a painfully slow speed, trying to wrestle with the controls- I was shocked to see my entire playtime was somewhere around 5 to 6 hours, because I swear just walking from point A to B at any given time alone felt like it took hours to me. I would even just take the characters to not have the agility of a fridge at that point and have everything else stay the same, because screw "realism" and give me a character that can at the very least "stroll" dang it!

It's a crying shame too, because I really liked the overall premise and much more than I expected I have to add. The whole "Curator" aspect was pulled off excellently; not too cheesy nor too serious, it just hits that sweet spot, almost to the point that I couldn't even wait to see him again. So props to both mocap, voice acting and writing for that. On the other hand, while not incredibly satisfying, the story is also decent as well. I just think writers play their cards too early with little subtlety to boot and that takes away the mystique of the whole situation away too quickly. If you are even a little observant, you understand where the story is going towards rather early on. But even with all these combined, I don't hate the game, however- I simply couldn't go without mentioning all its issues. Without those, I would play this many more times to see every ending, every secret and detail but as things stand that's not gonna happen anytime soon. It's almost the perfect embodiment of a "6/10" game even though I'm not too fond of that scaling system.

Thanks for reading this entire, unnecessarily long rant.

Abandoned by the devs and refuses to work on modern systems, they didn't even bother to give any of the F.E.A.R. games banner images/logos, which is a miniscule detail I know but it says how much they care about the series. I don't want to be forced to run this game through Windows XP compatibility mode or to look for fixes through countless discussions or guides here that do nothing but refer to shady sites and just as unsafe github links (that'll most likely infect my PC with countless viruses if I was dumb enough to install anything from those sites/links) just to play this one, no matter how much of a classic it is. Hell, it doesn't even "support" certain resolutions like basic 720p or 1080p as you can see while going through the options, such a shame. One simple patch could solve many of these issues, or maybe a "BFG Edition" type treatment but nope, WB doesn't care and I assume Monolith doesn't really have much say on it at this point and instead they restrict the only possible way to get this to a ridiculously overpriced bundle, such a disgrace. At least I was lucky enough to purchase it way before any of that was happening.

So no, definitely don't even think about paying FIFTY FIVE FRIGGIN' DOLLARS for this god awful rotting version and maybe do as others say and get the GOG one. You can just get the rest of the series on here and complete your collection that way if you really want to, and actually save yourself an entire TEN bucks while actually -possibly- being able to play the damn game. Disgusting practice from WB.

Having played it once more on another platform now (and actually finishing it this time), I gotta say; don't skip this one in favor of diving straight into City. It's not the "perfect superhero game" I remember it as from 10 years ago but it's still a solid game. Maybe it's rough-er around the edges compared to more recent titles on certain aspects but it's still worth your time. Has no business looking this good, has great physics and animations, voice acting is excellent, this is the game that introduced the free flow combat system (or whatever it's called) so it goes without saying that the combat is amazingly enjoyable, has a lot of content both on the story front and challenges wise, so it's one great package which I guarantee that it won't disappoint you. Even if certain levels are designed way too cramped for the camera to work properly and I gotta admit the game can feel a bit repetitive at times but those moments are very few and far between and since the pacing is pretty okay, you might not even realize the latter. Getting it with a bundle or not, give this a chance.

Just don't bother. Of course unless you really enjoy letting go of some good 4-5 hours of yours (and plus 20 friggin' bucks to go with it) down the drain since the game refuses to save your progress, an issue that was present even back in '17 and it's highly unlikely that it's gonna get fixed anytime soon. Finished it just because I don't like dropping games at the halfway point but it's not even that good anyways. Can't even access bonus content because of the saving issue, which might even be worse than locking content behind a paywall in a sense.

Note: Just go an replay Bioshock instead actually, or finally check out the Remastered version which has been collecting dust in the depths of your library maybe. This one just badly wants to be "Bioshock for Kids" so go enjoy a classic again (or even better, for the first time) and keep your 20 dollars in your wallet, times are tough buckaroo.