Neue Rezensionen von Tinefol

I need to wash my dirty hands after playing this.

Very disturbing, provoking and intriguing. Lots of afterthought. Definitely do not want this to be the future and pretty sure governments just dream of it.

One of the better walking sims out there. Basically the title that got me into this genre for good. Game is short, but is decently paced and manages to present a compelling theatrical story along with pleasant visuals, voiceovers and great music. Gameplay itself is very lightweight, as you might expect.

Solid recommend if you're into walking sims or are willing to explore the genre.

This one is not for me.

Positive reviews generally praise this game for its atmosphere, story, writing and bash on its harsh survival system and general lack of meaningful gameplay (its all about walking and looting garbage).

Developers said that Pathologic is supposed to be almost unbearable.... and for me it was. And not because game tries to make you care about feeding some arbitrary sliders that supposedly keep you alive. It failed to make me care about the so called atmosphere, writing and story: all that you really get is a ton of boring, bland, uninspiring and just generally bizarre (in a bad way) dialogue. Failed to immerse me. Couldn't empathize with any of the characters, not even protagonist. In a sense, clicking through dialog options was even more of a tedious task than all of the feeding, drinking, and waste dump collection you have to do to survive.

Then, guess developers succeeded in their goal of humiliation? Or am I just not into some overly pretentious weirdo mysticism plots?

Spawn in a tiny room. Kill a wave of enemies. Kill a wave of enemies. Rinse, repeat. Repeat a dozen more times to have a door open to another tiny room. Repeat through ten alike rooms. You've killed nearly a literal thousand enemies now: congrats, you can go on to the next level. Repeat this process for as many levels as there are. I salute: you've mastered Painkiller Redemption.

Or who I am kidding? Don't repeat my mistake and try to finish even one level in a futile attempt to find out if second level offers any kind of difference to gameplay. Nope it won't.

In fact, just don't ever.

Hard pass on this buggy trash.

Coming after numerous glitches, level 4 just ended my playthough with an infinite fall bug and literally nothing helped (I've tried every solution I could find after extensive search).

Not worth it for whatever price.

A little nostalgia gem revived straight from childhood. Never even knew there were three episodes. Still as awesome, albeit ep3 gets a bit too difficult.

Mindblowing, in every sense of the word.

A better Penumbra game than original Penumbra series ever were! Lets try to break down how a fanmade mod outgrew something it was inspired on:

* Way better visuals. A total nobrainer, as its based on Amnesia engine which, being released later in pipeline, is more mature. Still, you can't deny that simple fact.
* Solid, streamlined gameplay that was lacking in original games: they were essentailly an experiment, as Frictional were going through in the dark and didn't really knew what would tick, trying different things. By Amnesia, they of course figured out, but so did developers of this mod.
* Greater length of the game. Of course it reuses parts of original games, but there's way more original content as well.

Sincerely recommended. Eagerly expecting next installment in series, this time being a SOMA total conversion mod.

Preamble: the biggest boon of steam reviews is that there are many of them. No matter how aware are you of the game you would find a review that suits you: from reviews explaining the very basics from ground up, up to reviews that focus on intricacies. Want to know about technical stuff? You'd likely find those ones as well. I'll save you from basic chaff, so this one assumes that you know what LiS is and moreover played first game in the series and liked it.

Let's start with a somewhat rhetorical question: do you base a review on sequel game on its predecessor or try to judge it as standalone instance? The latter seems to be a less biased way, yet number 2 in a game's name isn't just there for nothing: you can't help it but will again and again refer to how it is different from previos installment in the series, what was improved, what became worse and so on. I'm a mere human so I will, too.

Mind you, this is a negative review. So did my experience of original LiS game affect the ultimate choice of 'Did you recommend this game' verdict? Not totally sure, but probably. Did it really change my perception of the game in question? Unlikely: I would still critisize whatever I'm not satisfied with, I would still praise whatever I feel is done right. What is for sure is that It'd be less clear for me, where the game failed me and how it could have been done better. Yes, for me: LiS2 isn't a universally 'bad' game, just that I found it to be worse than LiS in aspects I liked in first game and thus had been disappointed. Your mileage may vary though, so perhaps you'd also extract a different conclusion from whatever I present further.

What I really liked in original LiS (also Before the Storm sequal) is that its so theatrical: all episodes feel like acts of a drama, mostly happen in same places, there's a ton of character development, its not just your protagonist but also everyone who's around: you get to know them better and better, you interact with them, your perception of them changes, your relationship with them develops and so on. LiS2 goes for a bigger scale, throwing all of it out: the game is no longer a drama, more of a meditative road movie centered on two characters with a everything else being something that comes and goes. Not a bad thing per se, there are many fans of road movies, just that I'm not one of them.

But I was craving for more! Why are you so vile, Dontnod? I totally want to know more about Lyla and Sean's friends, his father and mother, his Grandparents how's he's living in Seattle, how he goes to school, etc. I want to know more about Chris, Finn, Cassidy and so on. What you're giving me? Only a minor slice of what I was given in LIS. There are 'The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit' which were truely awesome and are sadly more of LiS than LiS2 is... You meet the characters, you start learning things about them, you start liking or hating them and then BAM, another episode happens and you have to start all over again with another set of characters. Its painful, believe me.

It just feels like you're less in control than you were in LiS. In it it felt like you were advancing the story, in LiS2 it feels like story is advancing by itself with you just being an observer and following along. There's less of exploration than in original game where you interact with different things and protagonist thinks about them. There's way too much of unskippable talking! Not that there wasn't a lot of dialogue in original LiS, but when most if isn't even initiated by you and just happens it gets boring and choices feel bland. One would say its a feature of interactive drama genre game, but there's less of drama and kinda less of game in it.

Didn't particularly like/care about political problems touched by LiS2, unlike themes that were emphasized in first game, but its really subjective, so you may disregard that.

Connection to first game was totally unnecessary and looked plain wrong. Was it really worth ruining character of David Madsen to look nothing like himself?

And here we are, with a sequel that feels more like a different game, a game I happened to like less.

For all the problems original game had, there was one thing it excelled at: being immersive.

* Nameless hero turned into blabbermouth? Sure, but its me who's supposed to be blabbering (or not): essentially you're forcing it on me, thus breaking immersion.
* 'Locked in' (no free move!) combat system based upon reacting at onscreen markers? Once again, you're breaking immersion.

See the trend here? Don't go that route! Just try to to preserve whatever made original game decent.

I could go on and on on how I liked or didn't like controls, sounds, visuals or animations, it all doesn't matter. Original game wasn't all that good in many aspects, don't have to do all of it right to succeed anyway.

Could have thrown us a bigger bone at least by hiring Diego/Xardas actors to do voice overs, if that's possible and they didn't pass away (yeah, that'd certainly bring more nostalgia), but whatever.

Hope they continue the development and listen to feedback. Don't limit our freedom of choice. Don't hamper roleplaying elements. Have it the old way. Please.