Recent reviews by MemoireStar

Subnautica is a fun, pretty and atmospheric (sometimes spooky) underwater exploration game set in an interesting world. The gameplay loop is easy to grasp and I've almost never been in a situation where I was unsure what to do next. You'll have to make choices where to explore, but in the end the need for more tools and the guidance through audiologs and other clues will lead you into new areas that will eventually get you closer to your goals.

The survival aspect is very straightforward (you manage your Health, Hunger and Thirst) and never overbearing as you don't need unreasonable amounts of materials to craft and build, and resources you need often are easy to come by. Even when you die, you only lose materials that you collected after leaving your base; your hard-earned tools are safe.
If you choose to take your time exploring, you'll get plenty of tools to help you on your journey, many of which are optional but still useful if you choose to invest the time to unlock them.

The writing is pretty good as well, and in many places lighthearted jokes are included to surprise you and its dynamic soundtrack accompanies you everywhere you go.

It's a good game, and best experienced without any direct knowledge about the content, as exploration is really important and it'll be difficult to recapture that sense of curiousity on a subsequent playthrough.

Take all the time you want and don't be afraid of the big fish. Most of the time, they'll be pretty chill.

Helldivers 2 is a great 3rd person shooter and an amazing coop game to play with friends.
Veterans from the first Galactic War will find resemblances in its core design philosophies, but the great visuals and core gameplay loop are sure to catch many new players as well – so many that the servers were basicially dead on launch day; by now things have stabilized, the servers were upgraded for more capacity and the first couple patches fixed almost all crashes that my group was experiencing.

Movement and combat is dynamic, challenging and fun, monetisation seems very fair for now (since you can earn premium currency quite easily during gameplay and the free "Warbond" also hands them over as you progress it). And while gameGuard anticheat is a negative point for some, I've never had any real issues with it.

Also, you can encourage your friends to make great sacrifices in the name of democracy. It's never friendly fire if they die for the cause and the hellbomb that you shot takes out some freedom-hating bugs at the same time (liberating them of their indoctrinated mindset).

I highly recommend playing with friends, though. Or find a squad of patriots in the official Discord.

In short: It's more Ghostrunner goodness. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one as well.

GR2 takes what we know and love and adds new fun elements to the mix. More build choice, awesome new abilities, a couple new enemies as well as better boss fights and the fast paced bike segments (for which I highly recommend using a gamepad) certainly make this a sequel worth purchasing. The Roguelike mode is a fun addition, too, but the runs are a little too short and the stages lack variety for my taste. I'd love to see a longer/endless option added in the future.

Ran into no major bugs or perfomance issues either - just one crash when I electrocuted too many enemies at once. But since the game hands out checkpoints quite generously, barely any progress was lost.

And Just like in the first game, the soundtrack slaps and the visuals are beautiful, too.

If you don't mind the pixel art and chiptune soundtrack (both are awesome if you like it), it's simply one of the best modern platformers out there. Smooth, responsive controls and intuitive gameplay with huge depth if you look into the deeper mechanics on top of accessibilty features and optional challenges, this game has everything.

Also, after finishing the main game, absolutely check out community mod projects. They add incredible value and basicially infinite content to the game with new mechanics, custom soundtracks and art as well as very creative game design.

Just reached 70.000 Deaths, 10/10, I just keep coming back.

Note: This is a very early review after two days. Consider this when reading others. Both Positive and Negative reviews tend to be a bit inaccurate at this point, and since the game subreddit is not happy about the campaign, a lot of strong words are being thrown around. I'm trying to take a more moderate position with this review.

The Good:
- Strand. A fun, creative addition that brings unique new gameplay-loop to all characters. Traversal and combat with the grapple is incredibly fun, and I believe that with a little experimentation, it is very endgame viable.
- Neomuna. The theme is not for everyone, but it's a pretty neon city with fun combat engagements and layout.
- The Soundtrack. Great Music throughout all destinations and missions, and awesome sound design for strand abilities.
- Gameplay-wise, the mod system rework streamlines a lot and creates a great foundation for future additions, but it feels a little limiting in its current state. As time goes on, I'm confident it will be an amazing system, but for now it's way more streamlined (in a good way), but also more simplified.
There are many great quality of life changes like loadouts, the reduction of required inventory management and an improved crafting economy.
- (Not Released yet, but speaking from experience) The Raid. There has not been a single raid in the history of D2 that has not had amazing production value and fun encounters and I'm confident this one will be no different.

The Bad:
Questionable Storytelling choices. Without spoiling too much, there's a lot of criticism around the campaign structure and how loosely tries to fit strand discovery in there somehow, and the overall tone does not fit the current status quo very well. A calamity is in the process of happening, and characters are worried, but not really. Bungie tried a tonal shift for the campaign, which does the advertised 'action-movie' style good justice and delivers great moments and gags throughout the campaign, but it fails to capture the gravity of the situation and thus takes some power away from the narrative climax that we will reach with the next expansion.
Contrary to many, I don't believe the writing is bad, it's just that the capable writers chose a tone for the story that could work great in a vacuum, but does not really support the climax of the story in a way that it could like the Witch Queen expansion did.

Really fun, challenging and atmospheric game!
A great variety of Melee & Ranged weapons as well as abilities (you can flip enemies with a giant frying pan. It's amazing.) and passive items make trying out builds a rewarding and flexible experience, the combat is satisfying with a perfect attack and parry mechanic that raises skill ceiling a little. Getting to know the various NPCs and crafting gifts for them is interesting, and guessing who'd prefer what gift (especially early on) is also enjoyable. Backstory is good as well, and small lore bits deliver new bits of it with a nice simplicity. Boss battles and their aesthetics are great too, with some mechanics that can be figured out by paying attention.

The only negative point would be the relatively small variety of enemies, although encounters are kept spicy with enemy placement, bonus challenges and environmental hazards. In later stages you mostly fight upgraded versions of earlier enemies. This fact did not impact me negatively personally, but I can see why some would not like it as much.

Over all, this game captures the feeling of that whacky super hero dream you may or may not have had some years ago, and combines it with important topics that impact many lives nowadays. The dialogues are nicely written and feel honest. Also, the VFX and environments are super pretty. If this looks interesting to you, no need to wait on a sale. If you like it after playing for 2 hours, chances are you'll like it 'til you're finished.

Played for roughly 20 hours thanks to family sharing, decided to finally buy the game for the DLC. Pretty sure I am not going to regret this.

A looter shooter? A MMORPG? Both? Destiny is Destiny.

New Light content

In "New Light", the free to play version of the game, you get all the content of the first year of the game for free, which means three story campaigns, three Raids, three classes of which each one has 3 sub-classes with further customization to choose from.

On top of that you will be able to visit Earth, our Moon, Titan, Nessus, Io, Mercury, Mars and more fantastic locations in our solar system like the Tangled Shore, which is a wasteland full of scavengers, and the Dreaming City, which used to be the majestic home to the Awoken, who are a differently evolved part of the human race, existing in harmony with darkness and light.

On top of that, you get select content from newer expansions, including playable Weapon Forges, the reckoning with the Taken and the Menagerie, a loot factory where you slay enemies for the amusement of the benevolent Cabal Emperor Calus.

General Setting

In service of the Traveler, a giant entity of the light that has chosen the humans as its guardians, you'll slay the servants of the Darkness:

• The Vex, which are a sentient liquid that uses robotic vessels and space-time-travel as their means of war
  
  
• The Hive, who serve higher beings of the darkness under the sword logic, which makes use of dark rituals and implies that power is taken, never given and only the strong survive
  
  
• The Cabal, a race of conquerors on the hunt for as much territory in the universe as they can get their hands on
  
  
• The Fallen, the former vessels of the Traveler, whose race has descended into chaos after it departed their system
  
  
• The Taken, who are a race created by Hive magic and contain corrupted entities of all the existing enemy races
  
  The game's timeline runs parallel to our own, so a year of in-game events is actually a year of time in our world, which makes for a world that feels very alive.
  
  
  Gameplay and Progression
  
  In general, the New Player experience is really good, but the amount of content can be a bit overwhelming at first.
  
  At first, you'll want to finish the campaigns, which have you explore the unique landscapes the game offers, and after and during this, you'll be greeted with a huge pool of legendary gear to find in the world and in different activities, of which many are out in the semi-open world, and others are matchmade with fellow guardians.
  
  The Gunplay, in my opinion, is very special. Polished Animations, high quality sound- and particle design make for an experience unlike any other shooter on the market can offer. I can only speak for myself, but I have not played another game where shooting guns was anywhere close to how satisfying it is in Destiny.
  
  The Progression happens by collecting powerful gear, it's comparable an item level system of other games. You can sacrifice powerful gear to increase the strength of a weaker piece, which means you can keep whatever gun you enjoy shooting and bring it into endgame content if you desire. There's also a Battle Pass system, which offers rewards for leveling up to both "paying" and "free to play" players, the former obviously getting a little more, mostly cosmetics though.
  There are also weapon and armor mods, which enhance certain stats, passives and abilities of your character and gear which makes for great customization
  
  
  The Endgame
  ..consists of a chase of the most Powerful Gear earned from the most challenging activities in the game.
  
  
• All legendary armor comes with random stats which enhance your mobility, health and abilities.
  
  
• All legendary weapons come with a set of possible rolls, so you can have many versions of the same weapon which play completely different.
  
  
• There are plenty of quest-lines involving both PvP, PvE and PvPvE content in order to get some very sweet gear
  
  
• You can upgrade your weapons and armor with materials until they become Masterworks which further improves them.
  
  Exotics are the highest tier of loot available in destiny.
  
  
• Armor often fundamentally changes your neutral game or the behavior of your super, allowing many different playstyles
  
  
• Weapons often break boundaries of their archetype, resulting in some crazy looks and gunplay, ranging from giant exploding lasers to a mini-gun that almost never has to stop shooting to a Bow that shoots three arrows at once and chains lighting between enemies.
  
  And Raids, oh boy. Raids are also a thing no other shooter has even come close to replicating how they play in Destiny.
  With a team of 6 players you'll tackle gigantic Bosses of all the enemy factions in a multi-stage-activity which usually take between 45 minutes and 1:30hours of time.
  With teamwork, strategy, skill and communication you and your fireteam will master its challenges which range from intense jumping puzzles, mowing down hordes of enemies while preparing the main Bosses mechanic for the DPS-phase. I could go into more detail but explaining some encounters would probably take as much space as this wall of text already does.
  
  So find a Clan on bungie.net, create a fireteam with the official LFG or just meet up with a few friends and tackle the Endgame Challenges.
  
  And if you want to check how your gear performs against other guardians, the Crucible is the place for all your PvP needs. You will get salty sometimes, but you will improve eventually as well.
  
  
  So, should you get the game?
  
  If you like shooters OR MMORPGS OR SciFi OR rich lore OR cool Guns, at least give the free version New Light a try. It's free, let the game convince you itself.
  
  Are the Expansions worth it? If you enjoy the game, very likely. The price is really low compared to the amount of playtime you can get out of the game. 25€ for Forsaken+Annual Pass? Three more raids Played for easily a thousand hours, starting September 2018 and lasting until now.
  Shadowkeep and its season pass are a bit pricier because it is new. I fully expect it to last as long as Forsaken did, so 60€ for another year of content.
  
  So, in conclusion, Destiny is a great game with aspects that can attract many different kinds of players from the developers who also created the Halo games and started to double down on transparency in the recent months. I can't quite compare it to any other game I've played, and you should definitely seize the opportunity to give the game a shot for free.

Final Fantasy XIII, an extremely underrated game in my opinion.

I have never played a Final Fantasy game before (Dissidia & Chrystal Bearers don't count, do they?) getting this game on a sale after watching some gameplay. I'm very glad I did that. Now, having finished the main story and around half of the sidequests after 75 hours of playing I can say that I would defenitely pay the full price for it.

I've never been into 'round based' games or similar stuff but I fell in love with the combat of FF13 after playing the first hour of the game. The battles feel very fluid and entertaining, the bossfights tend to be rather tough and the music of the game is brilliant.

After some chapters of linearity the game opens up and gives you a rather big place to explore & grind if wanted. Talking about grind, I never had to grind to be able to continue the story, which is a huge plus in my opinion.

The weapon upgrade system is rather strange but given that you don't really need to upgrade your gear until many hours into the game, I'm fine with that. After doing some reading, the upgrade system is easy to understand.

The Eidolons could have been fleshed out better aswell, but one shouldn't summon them too often anyways.

I also liked the story quite a bit and one really starts to like certain characters one didn't like earlier.


I don't know about hardcore-FF-fans but for starters with the 'genre' I can only recommend this awesome game. Looking forward to playing 13-2 now.