บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย SaturdayMonk

I kinda can't believe how people made a big deal about the mangled baby resulting from a freaky threesome between CoD, Half Life and Halo back in the day. Cry Engine was and is still impressive to look at yes, but without decent boss and level design all you end up with is some semi-enjoyable moments in a sandbox-ish island at the first half and just unprecedented and almost completely un-enjoyable chaotic warfare at the latter half of the game. Like, I couldn't even enjoy the supersuit abilities because of weirdly unresponsive controls. Additionally, couldn't even use most of the cool abilities because the game does a rather terrible job of explaining them anyways and sometimes they outright don't work for some reason, albeit excluding some very basic ones. Then I also think the game fails to deliver the whole supersuit aspect as well since you frequently go from feeling like you are the single most feeble being on earth at one moment to feeling like the indestructable super soldier the next, depending on what the game decides at any given moment. While I inititally thought there would be certain upgrades that could fix that uneven dynamic at the early stages of the game, it turned out that that wasn't the case unfortunately. So yeah, I am still surprised about how this (or at least the original) is considered a "must play" according to many people and critics alike because I think it is way too scuffed be put on any all-timers lists.

To summerize, when I decided to play this the main thing that worried me was the optimization but the game was supposed to be a grade-a classic so it'd worth the hassle in theory, yet after some minor tweakings to get the game running smoothly on my medium level system I just ended up getting frustrated with the game itself instead. I did encounter some glitches here and there but nothing game breaking; catching some dude t-posing out of the corner of my eye was the worst it got honestly and sadly I learned to tolerate stuff like that thanks to the state of modern gaming. At the end of the day even though I don't really recommend it, I know there can be certain people who can overlook its issues and enjoy it and with that I'll just say that while you won't lose anything particular by passing on it, if you got it as a part of the Remastered Trilogy bundle as I did, you can safely give it a chance.

This had me at the first half not gonna lie.

For example, FMV parts were directed decently enough. The story, while seeming a bit cliché was slightly interesting. Combat had some potential. I mean it was very clunky yes, but finishers were cinematic and bonkers fun. Even just beating up some dudes felt alright. Then graphics seemed (especially on a surface level) okay with facial animations being the crown jewel, even with all the characters having that "dead eye syndrome" some games have, especially the low budget ones. The effort they put in to have minimal UI elements on the screen seemed formidable too; no markers, no health bar, no combo meter, basically nothing while still being able to communicate stuff like where to go (with heartbeats), how much health the character has and something in the lines of a combo meter (with on screen effects), so basically keeping the game admirably immersive. Even the pause menu was stylistic and cute, having all the controls laid out at the center from the get go with almost no text to explain but instead showing what each button does with "pictures" which was quite a nice touch in the name of accesibility. Only the weirdly the semi-fixed camera and generally janky combat and controls really bugged me until the halfway point but nothing unbearable. With all this combined, even whilst having a decent amount of knowledge about the game's notoriety beforehand, I dared to ask: "If this is the worst it offers, how bad can it be at the end?"

Well, plenty. Plenty friggin' bad actually.

Firstly the camera went from being a nuisance to being absolutely infuriating to deal with. You only have a fixed camera angle unique to each area you enter and even if you can use the right stick to look around only a smidge more, it does not help at all. I don't know if that was a decision to keep everything a bit more cinematic but getting ambushed left and right by an enemy or enemies off-screen really was rage inducing. Not only that but designing a boss battle which involves you needing to see your enemy at all times in order to dodge them with that type of camera is almost sadistic. Then of course there is the combat which (even after beating the game twice) I'm still clueless when it comes to its innerworkings. Though I can confidently say that it is badly designed and balanced as you can get hit during mid-animation, while in this "Focus Mode" and most annoyingly, when the game decides to go in slo-mo while showing some flashback "stills" because you know, this is a "stylistic game" after all. Like all of that wouldn't be enough, dodging and evading happens relative to the direction your character faces which with the messed up camera (and how annoying it can get to control the character), ends up with you jumping into the enemies oftenly. Even without these problems however, boss battles were also horribly designed. I still only understood how to damage one of them properly and dealt with the remaining ones with a mix of button mashing and dumb luck. Also can't forget about the level design, or more about the-lack-there-of. Every single area is just a different boring variation of the same cramped room with the only saving grace of each being varied enviromental finishing possibilities (think of Sleeping Dogs only much less creative). But even then most areas were either identical or you happen to come back to the same area because of story reasons. So, boring and repetitive unfortunately.

With both the camera and the combat covered, let me get the story out of the way as well, which completely misses the mark as it goes on by the way. What starts as an all too familiar but still a bit promising crime/drama thriller takes ridiculous turn after ridiculous turn, destroying any and all weight it previously had and ends up being pretty pretentiously pseudo-arthouse. The idea of playing the same story two times, firstly without and then with sound, with each version painting a slightly different narrative is neat on paper but the execution can't match up to that since both versions had various inconsistencies of their own. Adding how the overall story barely making sense into that mix (and even with everything making sense, it can be summarized as one big, weird and sometimes questionably perverted coincidence, therefore weak storytelling) it all just falls apart at the end.

I wish that was all but, can't go without mentioning the surprising lack of accessibility options. Don't get me wrong, just because a game features a disabled protagonist doesn't mean it needs to include said kind of options up the wazoo but I think it'd at least be a nice addition. Not being able to rebind keys, customize subtitles or even just change the game's language because apparently it's a good idea for a game to auto detect your system's language and block you from changing it afterwards, are just weird choices. When you add how they decided to abundantly use blinding and flashing effects that fill the entire screen, blocking you from seeing what's happening, so directly counter-acting their efforts of having minimal UI elements on screen, the good choices they otherwise made in the name of accessibility just collapse as a concept.

After all, I gave all the benefit of the doubt in the world to this one but, nope. It indeed is as terrible as many other people have said or written about in the past couple of years. I myself have no problem investing my time into wasting my time with supposedly terrible games but if you happen to be a more reasonable type of person, don't let your curiosity get you and stay away as far as possible from this awful little experience.

Bought and played this solely to reminisce about that short period of time Funhaus played it as I enjoyed the sh*t out of that whole series. Hope I get to a point in life where I can just kick back, relax and enjoy a nice cold can of God Beer™. One can only hope.

If you are somehow curious about the game itself, I think it’s rather like the game your granny gets you thinking it was that one “Hitman” game you want more than “Hitman at home” (and yes, there are slight differences between those two nuances). It copies the presentation of Max Payne 3 and the atmosphere of Hitman: Absolution with levels that are heavily “inspired” from both Absolution and Blood Money but you can put “dollar store equivalent of” before each of those aspects. Voice acting is as terrible as you can expect from a game of this stature, the story is uninspired and cliché filled, animations are extremely stiff, both mission and level design is boring and lacks variety with only the last mission being somewhat of an exception but not wholly and while it seemingly is a copy of Blood Money’s, the UI design is unintuitive. For some reason you have all this space for extra guns but not only you are not given any apart from your trusty handgun, you can’t find different ones anywhere either, so no sniper rifles, etc. which also kills the whole planning part of this supposedly “stealth” game. I gotta give it to the dev(s) though, they kinda get the humor aspect of Hitman games (especially considering the older ones), even if just on a surface level. Nevertheless, it is a really poorly made game and hence why my review is negative but if you happen to be in the same boat as me in terms of nostalgia, there aren’t that many games out there that can tap into the same sort of feelings. Just for that alone you can change that pesky red thumbs down into a blue thumbs up.

Remember this getting dunked on back in the day, and I can almost hundred percent agree. While the concept might’ve been slightly original for its time, the execution is as bad as your run-of-the-mill CW teenage “dramedy” series. Most of the characters are almost unbearable, detective aspects are really handhold-y and so linear that it hurts, story lacks any and all subtlety and almost plain out dumb, anything in the name of gameplay is just plainly annoying and uninspired but I have to say it at least looks decent. A little inconsistent at certain parts but still, decent. Oh, and I can’t really forget that enabling Vsync caps fps at 30. I didn’t care about it too much both because I was already aware of how “mediocre at best” the game was so didn’t feel the need to fix it no matter how simple it might’ve been and at the end it’s a glorified walking simulator anyways, it doesn’t exactly need to run at solid 144 fps or something. But it is an issue for sure so be aware. To summarize, unless the game’s premise and setting makes you go coo-coo crazy, there is almost nothing else in the game to redeem it. While it’s not terrible, it definitely is teetering at the edge in certain aspects. However, even at the risk of going into spoiler territory (that was your final warning), I really want to talk about some of the weird decisions I think this game has, shortly.

For a story focused game, most of the story is delivered through text. I could do without any of the more “gameplay” focused segments if that would’ve meant the story would get more exposure (chiefly because most of those segments are some horrible “stealth” levels). I mean, they decided to add narration and some kind of visuals at minimum into the side content (as a sorry excuse for some kind of “presentation”) but the main stuff, the stuff that can do a lot in the way of making you care a little about the characters and fleshing them out, is flavorless and boring. Then, when I mentioned that I could do without any kind of gameplay in this one, I meant it. It must’ve been an executive level decision to add at the very least some gameplay because I can almost feel the resentment and carelessness of a developer who had no intentions to add anything of sorts, if not forced into it. It’s either that or genuine incompetence. And to be honest, it might be a mix of both because even something so trivial as a scene transition is the equivalent of a flashbang. Don’t care how much of a “stylistic choice” such a thing is, since I don’t think I’d be able to care too much if I’m on the ground twitching, bubbling at the mouth, even without suffering from epilepsy myself. Additionally, a game where you play as a detective (even as a terrible one) you don’t really do any detective work yourself since you can’t fail, you don’t need to think or observe or come to conclusions. You just point to the right “evidence” even if it doesn’t even make a lick of sense. Even Heavy Rain, or hell, even one of the ancient Sherlock Holmes games let you come up with your own theory but no sir, not in this game. Such a shame. When you add things like interactions being clunky to initiate, a just as clunky teleporting mechanic, graphics taking a nosedive at the end, how the game fails to accentuate even basic gameplay mechanics and an almost stupid and abrupt ending to the mix, the whole thing just ends up being a big mess. I’m happy I played it though, but only because I crossed it out from my backlog for eternity and now can happily join a “dunking session” if such an occasion arises, as a bonus.

(Scroll down for TL;DR)

The only word that comes to my mind which can summarize this game is overwhelming. Because I can’t think of any other word that would describe the sheer amount of content it has. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but when almost none of that said content manages to stick with me in any special way, I’m just left… Exhausted.

Timed challenge modes with a card based modifier system that relies on combo based gameplay challenges, a detailed and unforgiving standalone roguelike survival mode that’s also based on the same card based system with a concern for realism at its core, a story based anniversary DLC which serves as a prologue that slightly enriches the main story and predictably, the main course that is the cinematic story mode coming with a huge semi open world divided into really big areas filled to the brim with collectibles, varied challenges, side missions (coupled with an additional DLC one with its own storyline), upgrades and most importantly very well designed tombs. So, how’s all of this can even remotely perceived as “bad”? Or exhausting or overwhelming for that matter?

Well, the whole story for beginners, was nothing special for me. Not even an expertly written and voiced Lara can make this cliché filled, hollywood blockbuster wannabe story meaningful for me. I tried my best to get invested with its characters and twists but failed at the end, I can only remember the main story beats but any of the characters’ names other than Lara escapes my mind. It’s been only a month or so since I’ve beaten the game too. The setting is great, don’t get me wrong, and the same goes for the overall “lore” aspects as well but there were only a handful of times I actually cared for what was coming next and those times came before I stopped trying to get excited about it all. Whilst having so many similarities with the 2013’s story only with a way broadened horizon, it’s almost unbelievable how safe they played it, only with a presumably bigger budget. I remember criticizing the 2013 entry for not fleshing out the side characters that were seemingly important at the beginning enough, but after seeing what they did here I’d gladly take an issue like that compared to what I got. It was not insultingly bad per se but just painfully dull and uninteresting. No amount of crazy action sequences or visually impressive action cutscenes could make up for it.

Nevertheless, I think the biggest issue with the story comes rather more from how it’s fed to the players rather than its presentation or intrinsic value. There is so much to do in each and every area, so the story can only progress in between the rare times that you are done with things to do within those said areas and it doesn’t really help that the story keeps pausing often too. To not end up underpowered in story missions you need to indulge in hunting, discovering secrets, searching for some rare materials, side missions and obviously “raiding tombs”. While the majority of those activities are actually fun, the lesser fun parts sometimes really sour the rest. I can understand the emphasis on survival, therefore resource gathering, however it’s definitely not my favorite recent gaming trend. Not all of the upgrades I do the side activities for are critical at all, but having to endure unfulfilling activities to play the game in a way I want was certainly a bit annoying. I wish only hunting and finding tombs would be enough for ample progression. Or at least for the story to be something really special so all of the above whining would simply be trivial. But even then I’m not sure I’d be able to remember what happened during the last story mission I’ve done in the olden, ancient times. A decent momentum would’ve saved this story and made it harder to focus on the negatives as they would’ve just passed by.

But there are some formidable aspects that almost make anything mentioned in the above paragraph easily excusable. Lara’s portrayal for example, also like I mentioned above, was a delight. So, it’ll suffice to say that the game succeeds in portraying “the swagger of a reckless, adventurous, curious white British woman who has a metric f*ckload of father’s money” in flying colors. Even if it was nothing more than a button press without any minigame whatsoever, I really enjoyed leveling up her “language skills”, looking at 3D models of ancient artifacts so she can marvel at them and make nerdy remarks and perhaps most importantly exploring tombs so she can speculate what everything she sees come from which specific era of history, excitedly. And oh boy those tombs were designed delightfully. I loved every single physics puzzle in those tombs (with maybe one or two exceptions) so, well friggin' done to devs on that part. They expertly refined them compared to the previous game and anything more would mean spoilers but I can talk about how greatly designed each and every tomb is for hours. Then, there is the gameplay and it feels just enough tinkered around so it makes the traversal and combat all the more refined compared to the 2013 one. So (apart from some minor small areas) climbing mountains, brutally sticking some arrows into petty thugs’ skulls or absolutely destroying them in close quarters with the now iconic climbing axe or just even running around, etc. was immensely fun each on their own. Graphics on the other hand, are also incredibly impressive even for the current year. Environments look just breath-takingly gorgeous, mo-cap is near perfect, character models are insanely detailed, animations and animation blending is out-of-this-world smooth. Small details like Lara scraping her hand on a surface whilst running by just makes all the more difference when it comes to solidifying immersion… All of these alone make a stellar Tomb Raider game, hell just a solid game in general when combined, yet for everything great, there comes up some little nuisance that takes the overall experience down a peg.

Tracking down animals and hunting at its core is fun but not detailed or balanced enough since when you realize you can simply shotgun a previously very scary bear or a tiger instead of using poison arrows as instructed at the beginning, it kinda falls apart and becomes meaningless. Additional and varied extra gameplay modes are neat to have but I’d much rather have the manpower and time invested in them to craft a much better story instead, enriching the story with DLCs is great but why not use all of that to form a better opening as that would’ve served as a better motivation for Lara rather then throwing us into it without anything to go off of? Even though it may warrant a completely different paragraph, the graphics are gorgeous but the game suffers from weird performance issues, l mean I’ve waited to upgrade my system to not be forced to play it on low settings but the only thing that made the difference was to change one seemingly insignificant setting even when my system should be more than capable to run the game on my preferred settings (mostly highs)? And everyone suffers from different kinds of performance related issues with different, odd solutions? I'm already overwhelmed and exhausted typing all this up.

I'm not saying the game’s not actually a solid fun time overall. It really is. But it could’ve been significantly better if the efforts to make it a one-stop-hub for every single type of player (seemingly even for the bunch that couldn’t have cared less about Lara, her story, and her adventures) were directed at making a better and more unified single player experience, it perhaps might’ve turned out as the best Tomb Raider game to ever come out. Maybe Shadow’s actually all that but I don’t know that for now. Anyways, give me that clown emoji for making a big deal out of a game having “too much content” and point out how you “won’t read allat” in the comments too if you like that kind of stuff. Regardless, thanks for reading.

I'm heavily infatuated with horror games on Nintendo consoles, mostly anything other than Luigi's Mansion, so 3rd party horror titles basically. There's just something wickedly entertaining about experiencing blood, guts and gore, even sometimes deep psychological-horror stuff on systems that proudly and almost exclusively feature family friendly and all encompassing games. Right from the start in fact, with Resident Evil: Gaiden on GBC. Later on, there came Madworld, that one Grudge game, Fatal Frame series, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii exclusively; alongside the amazing port of 4 which initially was a Gamecube exclusive before the console's demise, coupled with RE: Code Veronica and the amazing remake of the first Resident Evil. Even the ever-so-modest DS and its successor 3DS had their respective fair share of horror titles like the Japan exclusive Nameless Game series, the really impressive and then exclusive Resident Evil: Revelations and -finally- the Dementium series. While I can't really talk about the first one (since it never got a PC version), there's something I can bring up which -in my opinion- goes for both Revelations and Dementium 2: I think Nintendo fans tend to overhype and "over-appreciate" Nintendo exclusives and especially on the rare occasions that those exclusives happen to be horror games. Because this one's a doozy, to put it lightly.

While Revelations was -like mentioned- at least was graphically impressive for a 3DS game, an aspect the remaster made even more apparent by the way, I think it is a badly designed and repetitive game which also has some annoying gimmick-y gameplay remnants of being a 3DS game but at least it had something going on for it. Can't say the same thing about Dementium 2, however. There are good things here and there, so let me get them out of the way very quickly, for example the surprisingly good soundtrack. But even then that only goes for the music, since the rest of the sound effects are very cheesy and low quality in general, so not very "HD". Still, the soundtrack does the job of conveying an eerie atmosphere, making up for the poor graphics at certain times. And lastly, some of the cartoonish yet weirdly satisfying animations give combat the illusion of actually well designed and fun. Even to my surprise- this is all I positively say about the game. So, let's hop onto the many negatives.

For starters, movement feels floaty, unresponsive and even strangely delayed and those same things go exactly for the combat as well, with the addition of being clunky. Camera wobble is pretty annoying and nauseating which makes just walking or running around a hassle on its own. On top of that, it's very rare that you'll find yourself landing a melee hit when and where you want or dodge enemy attacks in the same manner. Everything above makes Dementium already a miserable experience but unfortunately, there's a lot more.

Enemy designs for one, they are awful. I don't know who thought fighting almost uninteractable "mist monsters" that move slightly faster than the character but I wish they hadn't have. Boss battles are kinda similar as each were uncomprehensively broken and glitched to the brim. During one, I fell off of the map for some reason, right after the boss that was supposed to be chasing me suddenly disappeared, forcing me to restart the entire encounter. I don't even want to begin with the final boss, as it might be the worse one I've ever experienced, in any game ever. It's so awful that one would think an entirely different and much less competent team of developers came in to design it (if a thing like that was even possible anyways), and they knew nothing about how the combat works, so they just blurted some chaotic and annoying final boss for the sake of finishing this mess of a game. But, how can I even begin to talk about the end boss without bringing the insultingly long and repetitive final segment that leads to it? Fighting same enemies in uninspiringly designed levels with tight spaces over and over again for perhaps some good half an hour long, was for sure a pretty boring and almost unendurable experience to say the least.

Furthermore, none of the weapons in the game are fun to use anyways so the combat completely falls apart wherever you look at it from. The only time I sort of enjoyed the combat was whenever I hit a certain enemy type with a sledgehammer because when I accidentally land a good hit, they bend and spring back up like their whole spine was one long metal spring like a cartoon characters' which completely destroyed any sense of dread and turned the game into a sick game of whack-a-mole instead. Saving is another issue as well because save points are placed very far apart and sometimes it barely works anyways, saving the game for that matter. On a completely unrelated note, sound mixing is just horrible and inconsistent. While one sound effect can barely be heard, another one can be ear piercingly loud and for no reason at all. And -this time a little more related- voice acting is so corny it's laughable. Couldn't take any of the antagonists even a little serious. You'd think such a thing must be deliberate choice but it's not the case as the rest of the game couldn't have been more different.

Game's just broken at the core anyways as whenever you save and exit, it's not sure that you can load back to the said save file when you fire the game back up as there is a very good chance any and all of your saves might be missing. In addition, before the whole save situation, after you fire up the game to continue playing, you need to adjust the resolution. Every single time indeed. Wild.

Nevertheless, none of these were surprising as when I sat down to play Dementium 2 for the first time, the first ever interaction in the game, the one that is necessary for the game to start, simply glitched out. I was stuck, left wondering what I was supposed to do. Even more painfully so, it turned out that it is a very common bug, in the sea of many others. Game did its best to warn me beforehand but I still persisted with it, so I guess the blame falls on me at the end...

So, why? Why did I even buy or put up with this game? Reviews are mixed at best on here, the "HD" in the title is like a sick joke because the game looks and sounds the exact same as it was on the DS which is right on the trailer or in any media about the game out there, not even the gaming media liked it (37 on Metacritic). I guess being so infatuated with horrible games and all that stuff I mentionned up above about my feelings towards games on Nintendo platforms, is my burning cross to bear. So, if you are nowhere close to me on those terms and don't have any cash to splash around despite the game's relatively cheap price, trust the reviews and stay away at all costs. And as a bonus, here's the amazing combat gameplay clip I've recorded, in case you are morbidly curious: https://youtu.be/FvrY38uknYQ?si=rDvidlShzlY6nm63

Sure 2K (or Take Two, don't know or care which one) keep churning out more Borderlands' and then even gajillion more DLCs for 'em, then turn a couple of those DLCs into full games with barely any additions and even actually sell them at ridicilous prices, abandon Bioshock but when there is an opportunity for profit clumsily remaster them and as a result they perform horrendously, crashing and whatnot and then do the same to Mafia, leave the series' future in the hands of developers who barely even know what to do with it, so it's a far cry from what it was once...

And now de-list a game which was arguably one of the most impactful experiences of the last couple years apparently because of licensing issues regarding its soundtrack, an issue you won't do jacksh*t about since it must be more profitable to outright pull the game off of stores than to either pay for the licenses or to perhaps remove specific tracks from it, replacing them with new ones because you would've done it already.

Won't be surprised if there will be news about a remaster of this starting development in a couple or months or so, which I'm almost sure will be riddled with technical issues all over when or if it ever comes out.

First played this game in an internet cafe about 8 years-or-so ago and ever since it was one of my favorites, a special one in my heart. Feel ever so bitterly glad now that I picked up a copy of it for PS3 recently at a secondhand gaming store, it was only a handful of PS3 games left in there, alongside with -funnily enough- Mafia 2.

Keep spitting at the face of your consumer base like this and see where that takes ya. Scr*w you lot.

Servicable enough for an evening's worth of silly scares since it's free but nothing special. To really really summarize it, think of one of those "TOTALLY TRUE Scary Reddit Stories" type videos that use stock images with poor editing and just add a coat of really bland PS1/low poly graphics each and every indie horror game developer seemingly defaults to these days, then remove the cringy voiceover from the equation and you'll end up with this game. Sound design was okay but that's almost the only thing the game has for its name really. Never really got the hype for this series of games and even after playing one I'm still kinda clueless. Within a genre that's already heavily saturated with many other games like this one, the only thing that makes it stand out amongst them is the fact that it's free. If it wasn't the case, don't think I'd recommend it.

I don't think I can talk about the game without going into spoilers so if you want to avoid them, just read any of the negative reviews and they've probably touched upon all the issues I'll mention down here. Trust them as well because this game has glaring issues that'll probably not going to amount as a great time with your own playthrough too.

Anyways, Daymare is a game with fundamental problems. Basic movement, gunplay, hitboxes, animations, enemy feedback/their reactions to your attacks, just simply interacting with objects/doors even, everything is clunky and buggy. Sometimes you shoot an enemy and it's registered weirdly late. You try to switch from a weapon to another and nothing happens, forcing you to try again and then the game decides to oblige. You try to run and it's not fast enough, sprinting is available but it's an unintuitive two-button combo which feels awkward and hard to utilize it fast enough. Ammo types? Well, their names are just what they are probably called in real life, and telling them apart becomes hard in combat, let alone determening which type goes into which gun turns into an issue on its own, like I'm supposed to know beforehand like a real army operative or something. Is it at least scary? When one of the supposedly scarier and harder-to-take-down enemy type is charging at you with open arms like it's going to give you a big embracing hug, looking like a free asset shop design it's hard to take it seriously let alone getting into the mood. I know criticising a game without Capcom/EA's Resident Evil/Dead Space amounts of budget for a thing like that but the end product leaves me no room, and frankly they could've been more creative about it. Okay, how about the UI? Unfortunately just as unintuitive as everything else. The interface you use -which is a tiny screen on your wristband- is oddly small so comfortably navigating through the map is out of the window, the inventory/status/documents screens are devided into tabs but switching between them becomes a chore both because of controls and unpractical visual design. And on top of all, when bringing that screen up takes a long time with an unnecessary animation to boot, I honestly didn't bother. So much so that running around like a headless chicken seemed like a better choice. Hell, just trying to interact with any kind of object, door, collectible, puzzles (more on that later) becomes a struggle against the game. There is no inbetween; either you see every interactible throughout the map displayed on the screen at the same time because of what I can discern as the result of a bug or you need to find just the right angle to pick something up even if you're standing not more than milimeters away from it. These are all the issues I couldn't gloss over, yet other considerably less crucial ones I could tolerate better, aren't just minor inconveniences either.

Like the puzzles! They are abundant, intricate and challenging albeit flawed in their execution. I like the first aspect because I'd love to see more puzzles getting added back into survival-horror games as "puzzles" like "matching shadows" aren't that fulfilling to me. However when most of the puzzles involve gathering information outside of the game, or lack the basic design sense to lay every aspect of it in a meaningful sense instead of trying "throw you off with false clues" or even fail to make sense at a ground level as even after I looked up the solution for it I still didn't understand the first puzzle I've encountered, everything just falls apart. Given the fact that the puzzles that frustrated me weren't the majority of them, this shouldn't be that big of an issue but the ones that did really soured the entirety of my experience with the game significantly. I don't have a problem with puzzles I couldn't grasp because of my smooth brain but the other ones with abovementioned issues are things I just couldn't let slide.

On the other hand there is the story and as a whole, it actually isn't all that bad but the way it was conveyed creates the actual problem. Introducing characters on a whim, with their tragedies happening just as fast without establishing them whatsoever and then using them in long cutscenes all come together to make it really hard to care for them or about the general story at times. With hardly a handful of the voice cast capable of giving decent performances (three in my opinion actually) with the rest of them sounding hardly intelligible and painfully amateurish most of the times I found myself dozing off during the cutscenes and writing doesn't really help either with weirdly structered sentences or mostly missing one liners. Once again, I can't fault the lack of voice talent because of possible budgetary issues and tried my best to not take too much issue with it overall but, it is what it is. But here's the thing, at the very end of the game like after the credits, thanks to a HUGE lore-dump most of the things make sense, yet there is the problem: they couldn't find a way to convey this information throughout the game and that only works to highlight the problem. Maybe some crucial information were revealed in certain documents that refer you a site (yes, you need to alt-tab out of the game to go to an outside site to actually read some of the documents in the game) hinting at the conclusion, sorry I couldn't bother to halt my gameplay therefore ruining the immersion and atmosphere, just to read some texts. Especially when the site barely works as it is... Other documents or texts aren't anything to write home about too as sometimes they span over 10 pages with less than servicable writing, such a shame because the heavily Resident Evil "inspired" smalltown conspiracy story was right up my alley.

I'd love to go into some positives at this point but sadly enough, with every positive, comes a caveat and for example, graphics. Game mostly looks good but sometimes more like "good from afar" kinda good, some textures look a bit wonky when looked at from close range, facial animations are pretty non-existent and a lot of the characters suffer from "dead-eyes" syndrome but again budget needs to be taken into account in this case as well. Most levels are detailed and consist of rather large areas which is both good and bad somehow because firstly, those details are almost exclusively references to other works and that's nothing bad in itself yet after a point almost every aspect becomes a reference and the game loses much of its substance and originality as a result. There should be a limit for these types of things especially since this is a game which takes itself seriously, most of those references stick out as a sore thumb rather then being endearing. Then secondly, levels are actually way too big which results in lots of walking or running around and doing not much else and that of course effects the overall pacing. On another note though, soundtrack is great but I think sometimes a couple of tracks were used at wrong times; either way too epic or way too tame. And even worse, sometimes there were none, which wasn't something intentional I think. I'd like to finish with the gunplay and despite inadequate animations to support it, most guns felt nice and it feels really great to finally get consistent and satisfying headshots in this genre, to hell with realism honestly! I'd like my shotguns or deagles to be as deadly as possible. Although I hate to repeat myself this much, once again, that part isn't perfect as the handgun feels like I'm using a "peashooter" and not fun whatsoever, just unbalanced.

To conclude, Daymare is just a big, nasty example of ambitions getting ahead of actual capabilities and the result is unfortunately a heavily flawed end product that fails -sometimes hilariously- to meet its goals and I'm not even finished talking about it... Just check the comments if you're interested.

I don't know what kinda criticism I can bring up that nobody else haven't already voiced beforehand but here goes nothing, I guess. So, because my experience wasn't all too great with the main game, I thought I can just get the seemingly short side game -which was originally released for the handheld consoles- out of the way to close the book on everything Arkham: Origins, thinking "How bad can it be anyways?" but oh boy... Despite not actually taking that much of a time to beat, so many little nuisances accumulate into a really cumbersome time in Blackgate.

My main gripe is that the game doesn't hold back on wasting the hell out of your time, intentionally or not with unskippable in-game cutscenes, having to push a button even for the simplest of actions and then having to wait extra unnecessary second for the animation to play out, bosses with many phases but no checkpoints in between that require you to play in really limiting ways and you have to execute said ways perfectly to actually beat them, having to halt completely to "scan" places with Detective Vision in order to continue which has its own "loading bar" that plays each time you use it even if the thing/place you scan is as obvious as a wall you can break like you do it for the first time ever... All of these aspects could've been optimized to take the least amount of time possible and I wouldn't be here complaning but I guess to perhaps pad up the playtime at the end, devs might've deliberately designed some of them to take just a bit more time but I don't know, that's just me pettily speculating. What I know for sure is though, with all these things I felt like, once again, my time was getting wasted.

I wish I could have better things to say about gameplay for it to be the game's saving grace but I can't. Batman's movements are sluggish and trying to make him do exactly what you want becomes annoying while navigating through the 2.5D setting and I think it's inherently broken anyways since at specific places some animations play out right after a completely different one even if I do everything right, "blending in" sorta (which is another thing that just takes additional time unfortunately). Combat on the other hand, is also very clunky and sometimes doesn't even work. Devs seemingly tried their best to translate the series' signature combat style into in the abovementioned 2.5D setting, utilizing a side-scrolling beat'em up style where you are supposed to take enemies that come at you in "lanes" but both because the depth of field can be a bit tricky to manage and enemies' movements sometimes can be too erratic, even when you think you did the right thing, your flow and combo stops because either your input wasn't registered or you caught an enemy in the middle of them changing those mentioned "lanes". The off chance when it works, the combat can be fun but honestly that's more of a testament to Rocksteady more than Armature since they were the ones who laid down the foundation for it after all. That also affects the stealth segments though, as it was not fun in the slightest, inconsistent at best. When forced into it, I can go as far as to say that those segments felt like where stealth goes to die.

However, there are elements that are handled significantly better. For example the exploration and the world design are well done. While the completely useless and sometimes almost totally incomprehensible map -which may even be among the worst designed ones I've ever seen- and weirdly slow moving camera don't help in the slightest, trying to locate hidden upgrade or costume parts can be fun no matter how much the clunky movement takes the process down, I guess the more "metroidvania-experienced" parties within Armature tried their best on that. Then, the overall story is entertaining enough as well, there is ample chemistry and tension between the characters -despite the less-than-stellar writing- and the latter end of the game blends most of the great aspects together, amps up the tension and ends both in a way that's satisfying in itself and achieve to balance out setting up some other story while not shoving it too much to your face and decently stylized cutscenes were also a treat. On the other hand, graphics are definitelly servicable and art design is just as good and reflects the atmophere well enough, yet too much background detailing seldomly made trying to understand where to go next a challenge, not that big a deal but still. Finally -limiting as they may be- with some of the boss battles Armature tried to bring some creativity in and not all of them fail, puzzle based boss battles might actually be a great avenue to explore for both themselves and in other similar games.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day I'll remember Blackgate with its mostly frustrating boss battles, clunky movement, combat and controls, problematic pacing and sometimes cringe-inducing writing rather than anything else it does considerably better. Just for the narrative's sake I can recomend it since beating it also means getting rid off the trainwreck that was Arkham: Origins, its DLCs and everything these prequel tales offer story-wise to finally leave them behind you, I sure feel as such. If you couldn't have cared less about stuff like that, there is no reason to pick it up on its own.