Recent reviews by Samso

Very fun and challenging classic.

After a couple official patches and numerous hours of tinkering with community patches, the game is finally playable without major problems, and it's absolutely great! The world is intriguing and the atmosphere is spot on. All in all, it's what a Stalker game should be. You feel very immersed while exploring the Zone.

A lot of people have been modding the economy and gameplay, and I was thinking of doing that as well (Veteran difficulty), but I wanted to see what the original point was, and it ended up making a lot of sense. Anomalies and mutants will rip your gear into pieces, and repairing them will cost an arm and a leg. If you're just running around without looking where you're going, you're going to be bankrupt. You want to be upgrading your gear to make things easier, but this will also increase the cost of repairs. Doing jobs and selling items are barely worth any cash in comparison to the costs of everything. I can understand that this will make a lot of people unhappy, but this system also rewards careful gameplay, which Stalker is all about.

Most games these days have a corporate feel and touch, but this game is an uncorrupted work of art. If you're not a fan of the series and don't have the absolute state of the art computer, I recommend waiting a while for a couple more patches.

Silent Hill 2 remake is absolutely amazing; however, the original still stands triumphant due to two design changes. The music, atmosphere, cutscenes, enemies, puzzles, and sound design are all present and extremely well-executed, but some liberties were taken with how combat is approached and how the characters are portrayed. New additions are pretty neat, such as upgraded enemies and fitting new flavor text, which fleshes out minor details in the town. The new Mannequins are now one of my all time favorite enemies from any horror game.

In the original, the characters seem almost shell-shocked and disconnected from reality, with monotone speech and carefree reactions to everything. The remake takes a more realistic approach with more profound facial expressions, reactions, and dialogue, making them feel more human. Comparing any cutscene to the original shows a big difference in tone. It’s not bad by any means, but it detracts from the original's mysterious atmosphere. This change probably aims to make the game more coherent on the first playthrough.

My second critique is with the combat. It feels meaty and well-crafted, but Silent Hill isn't about combat. The original James was a frail, clumsy man who could barely swing a metal pipe. In the remake, James is doing weakspot takedowns while i-frame dodging against multiple enemies. I defeated the big half-scissor-wielding baddy on hard difficulty with almost just melee, which felt pretty wrong. There's a lot of enemies and some sections have you fighting them like it's the corridor from Oldboy. Enemies pursue you for a long time, and without loading screens when traversing through doors, running isn't much of an option. You want to be beating up nearly every enemy in order to explore. As a result, James killing monsters left and right diminishes some of the dread and the feeling of playing a really weak protagonist. The new combat system doesn’t ruin the horror, just lessens it slightly compared to the original. It’s still very creepy, and the sound design really puts you on edge at times.

That said, the game is amazing, and I highly recommend playing it. Even though I still prefer the original, I had a blast playing the remake. I had little hope for this project, but they truly did the game justice.

Give us Furi 2!

Hidden classic

Going in a better direction but still needs a lot of work

Not sure if/when they're gonna patch some slightly wonky stuff, but it's a banger game.

Amazing game, especially for classic survival horror fans. They nailed every important aspect. Unique visuals, great sound, gripping atmosphere, thoughtful gameplay, and a twister of a story that will keep you going until the end. 10/10.

I hate this genre, but the Diablo 1 style visuals and great audio made me spend that 4 euros on this. I was surprised. At least for me, this was way better than the others like it. I felt sad knowing I reached the (current) end. Great game, you won't regret buying it. I hope this game gets more levels and doesn't get dumped due to already high sales.

It's a video game, one video game in the history of all video games.