Recent reviews by Pip-Boy

For Halloween I've wanted to try some lesser known indie psychological horror games. And was lucky enough to stumble upon this little title, that to my surprise is over a decade old and yet I have never heard about it. Thanks to the Halloween sale, I bought the game for only a laughable dollar, and now, after finishing this game I feel like I just robbed the creators.

The Cat Lady is certainly not a game for everyone. And the warning this game gives you right from the start paints a pretty clear image. This game touches on many topics and themes that many may find disturbing and distressing. Topics of death, suicide, depression, animal cruelty, physical and emotional violince, sexual violince, but also relationship and family struggles, with visuals of gore, dismemberment, blood, torture and all sorts of this kind of fuss. While this game is really dark and triggerring, for a person such as me who has struggled with depression amongst other things, this game gave me an odd sense of familiarity, closure and guidance.

We take on a role of Susan, she recently lost her fight with depression, swallowed bunch of sleeping pills in hopes of falling asleep and never waking up again. But she is given a second chance. A chance to make things right, to lend a helping hand and make a difference, but most importantly find a reason to strive forward for an another day.

The world is dim, dark, under dark rains or fogs, feels like everyone around you has something to hide and you are never sure who to trust. Even the people who are assigned there to help you, are either fragile, selfish or downright maniacs. You can't trust noone, even yourself.

The gameplay is... simple, one may say. It's a narrative and puzzle driven adventure, where all you need is WASD, Enter and ESC. In matter the progress, you need to pay attention to your surroundings and interact with it, use the tools you find along the way to your advantage. Sometimes you look for clues, sometimes for keys, sometimes you just walk around trying to trigger anything. Not gonna lie, sometimes it got frustrating for me, and sometimes I gave up on it and followed a guide to learn it was either something really specific or something easy to overlook. I would strongly advice that you quicksave a lot, or at least whenever you remember. I forgot that some games just don't have the autosave option and I had to replay the first 2 chapters all over again. I also had some difficulty with crashes at first, but changing your graphic driver in the settings seems to fix the issue and you're good to go.

I got a little thrown back when I saw how the game looks like, but its graphics actually complete the game's narrative well and the black and white color pallete paints a clear image of how this cold and hopeless world feels. Actually makes up for some visually stunning moments when the game catches up on some color.

In the game's bitter-sweet beauty I surely can't ignore the soundtrack. The ambience is... meh. You genuiely get a handful of ambience music in the background, changing depeding on the scene, but in the scenes where it matters the most, we get unique beautifully written, played and even sang songs and I found myself vibin hard.

While the story of Susan and her companion Mitzi is what makes this game shine. One thing I kept asking myself is what exactly is this game trying to do with itself? Is it a psychological horror, or is it a detective-esque adventure? Both, I suppose. It follows its psychological themes while keeping us busy with drama-filled thriller investigation.

By the very end, I would like to say that I recommend this game to everyone who listens. Sure, if you are easily disturbed or topics like those mention above trigger your emotions, that I would perhaps advice you to pass on and maybe explore this story in written or retold form. I believe it is an important story worth telling.

I loved this game and completed in almost one sitting. Not sure if I will give it another go in the future, but I am certain I will remember it for upcoming years. It is a shame this game doesn't get the recognition it might deserve, but I am just glad I got to find it and spread the word.

Mouthwashing is one of the best story-driven indie games I've ever played.

It takes only uder 3 hours to complete the story, however, every second of it is worth it. It's a unique take on psychological horror, with themes of body horror, loneliness, existantionalism, nihilism and isolation amongst many more. With its early-PS2 kind of era graphics it builds this eerie old-schooil asthetic while delivering some visually stunning moments with its art direction. Many may claim that this indie horror adventure game is a walking simulator, and while I can't deny that, I would certainly argue that it is more than that. Interactivity is limited, but not to the point where you would feel trapped or guided by hand. And while the tasks are mostly fairly simple, the few enemy encounters put you in unease. While all of them are very similiar in their core, each of them feels unique and terrifying on their own. These encounters are also the moments where the audio design shines the brightest. In pretty much all of them you have to listen to your surroundings.

Of course, the very best of this game is its narrative. There's a shipping voyage in the cosmos, and on its board, a group of five people. Its Captain, his co-pilot, a nurse, a mechanic and his young errand boy. Each of them unique in their personalities, believes and goals. And you are the one trying to take control and steer order in this chaos, as the group struggles to survive, trapped on a spaceship aimlessly flying through outer space. It is your responsibility.

For me at least, it is hard to find such a brilliantly written and interpreted story that takes on psychological, philosophical, existantional and social topics and delivers such a well cooked product.

I have nothing to reproach. It's a solid and unique horror indie game, worth the price and it won't even waste much of your time.

I can't put into words the excitement and joy this game brings me.

The OG Silent Hill 2 was always the best horror game to me. Inspired me immensely, inspired me to pursue the art and story-telling of horror. The OG game is older than me, I sadly haven't got hands on the copy as a kid when we still had PS2, but I finally got to play the OG thanks to the Enhanced Edition on PC a couple of years ago. It would be an understatement to say that I just enjoyed it. Played through it many times, got all the endings, tried to speedrun it too. Then I moved to other Silent Hill games and games all together, however, Silent Hill 2 always held a very special place in my heart, a place so precious I never even questioned its place.

So first when came the rumors about a remake by Blooper Team, I was skeptical,, surprised but also horrified that this property is in hands of a studio that didn't really score a big game in the psychological horror genre and their games are mediocre at best. Then the reveal trailer dropped and I was watching it live on the Silent Hill Transmission Konami stream and I just couldn't believe my eyes. The rumours were true. It felt like a dream. The series of Silent Hill that was persumed dead, forgotten or in hands of those that don't even know what Silent Hill made so great back then, suddenly risen from the seemingly never-lasting slumber and dropped a full on AAA-level remake. I have to admit. I was still very doubtful. Some of the game's trailers made me worried. However, by this review I want to apologize to Blooper Team. They cooked, and cooked BIG TIME. This remake is nothing but a passion project by those that were obviously inspired by the very OG game, and wanted nothing but the remake to be as good as it could be.

I have never played a horror game this unsettling, the closest I can compare it to is the first Amnesia game. The original design of enemies and bosses were already amazing in the OG, but the remake expanded upon them. The enemies are more frightening, the bosses are more intimidating and their arenas are bigger, while still mantaining the claustrophobic authenticity. The sound design is absolutely amazing. If you don't play this game with headphones, don't play it at all, that stuff is mindblowing. I had literal chills and grew paranoid over the course of the game. The graphics are next-gen, beautiful while still maintaing the look of the original, while being surprisingly very well optimized. When I saw how the game looks like, I was 100% certain my old GTX 1650 will be crying for mercy, but the game ran on stable 60 FPS while on lower settings and TSR 1 - Balanced, still looking hot and sharp.

Blooper Team understood the goal and did the best they could to give their beloved game that inspired them a fully faithful remake, and delivered a modern day horror game masterpiece.

I can't stress enough how thankful I am for this remake. I sweared to myself that I am never going to buy a game for over 60 dollars. I bought this game for 80 on 7th October just to be able to play it a day earlier for 2 hours and I regret nothing. This game is absolutely perfect in my eyes.

We Silent Hill fans have been waiting for seemingly nothing for YEARS, especially when the entries since Silent Hill 4 where mediocre and disappoiting to most. This remake marks a beginning of a new era for this beloved series and I can't wait for more that is to come.

Masterpiece and a mark of a new era. Hopefully we will see more remakes of the original SH games, and in this quality.

A breathtaking visual masterpiece with epic narrative and unforgettable characters, and as of now, way better optimized despite the disastrous launch of this port. Since the game was obviously made for consoles, the controls on keyboard are really hard to get into and to master so I would highly advice to use a controller. I had personally no problem running this game on my PC of older generations by now (i5 10400 + GTX 1650), no crashes or technical difficulties, with only a few occasional bugs that haven't really taken me out of the immersion anyway. If you hesitate, don't, buy it.

Elden Ring absolutely blew me away, like no other game I've ever played throughout my years of gaming.

Think of any other open world game you've played and the way you played it. Right off the bat, you're shown how the game is played, some games go even further and force you to try every single one of their mechanics for you to see how they work. And after clicking your way out, you're thrown into their world with either a radar or a minimap full of markers showing you the exact path you should take to progress, showing you each place of interest, a chest, a side quest, some of them having a ridiculously long journal entries about every single thing in their worlds. Going onto your journey of following a checkmark to checkmark only gets addictive for few hours but gets more tedious and less memorable. And Elden Ring, I ain't gonna lie, does this too, but in significantly more engaging and rewarding manner by simply lowering down on the checkmarks, tutorials and actually lets you play your way. Go and explore. Wherever your curiousity brings you, my dear. I mean, you still got a map, that is blank until you find the map of the area that is the only thing marked on this blank map, with additional drawn points of interest that you might have the idea to explore, but other than that, whatever hides within is only for you to discover. You still got fast travel unlike to Dark Souls for example, but that at least makes the game less frustrating for masses. It was so wierd for me the first couple of hours. I was like "Ok, now what? I see no markers, no quest log, no nothing. Guess I'll go then." and god dang, it was so refreshing. You got this enormous world and it's entirely up to you where you'll go first or next. Playing other open world games, especially Ubisoft ones, totally makes them less interesting in comparison.

Moving on to other things. Elden Ring is challenging and unforgiving. That's just what you have to accept. But that's the entire point of the game. That's why, as someone who never played any FromSoft game prior, totally don't understand how people want easy mode. What kind of rewarding feeling is it when you have to lower the difficulty to easy to get past a boss? The fact that you beat the boss eventually, by either going elsewhere to level and gear up or by continuous attempts when you learn the attacks and how to avoid them, is singlehandedly the best feeling you can have while playing these games. You feel stronger and you feel the courage and confidence to continue further. The game's hard difficulty is the very cause you want to play more.

The amount of content, man. There's so much. At the time of writing, I have spent only 40 hours playing. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface. Games like God of War 2018 or Cyberpunk 77 that I absolutely love too, have lost my interest by this same amount of time. Both being 50-60 dollar triple A games that can entertain you for only 40 hours, if even that. But Elden Ring, oh boy. There's SO much. I can see this game having another few houndreds of hours worth of content. That, just to remind you, aren't marked for you unlike in other open world games.

Just to make it swift now, the soundtrack is elden-tier. This game is all about ambition, and the soundtrack speaks just that. Perfect.

Some wierd pack of people criticize the graphics. Like "Have we played the same game even??". Like okay, God of War and Horizon games for example, are breathtaking in their visuals, but that kind of ends there if rest of the world doesn't really have that much to offer. Elden Ring's graphics are mainly beautiful due to its art desing with vast world with jaw-dropping amount of content.

Well, Elden Ring deserves its Game of the Year title, no doubt. It revolutionized concept of open world games and it's the perfect anti-ubisoft example. Together with beautiful world, more content that we deserve, ambitious and memorable lore and story and it's bittersweet difficulty and desing, makes it one of the best games of the last years, if not of all time.

10/10. Now awaken, Tarnished. Thy throne of the Elden Lord awaits.

Good.

Now give us Ragnarok.

I rather die standing on my feet than live on my knees. - Johnny Silverhand

So after two years of kinda pushing this game away because of its controversy and what not, after the Egderunners came out I right away jumped on the hype train and watched it in one sitting. And after that crazy beautiful emotional roller coaster I thought maybe I treated the world of Cyberpunk 2077 too harshly. Eventually I bought the game and sat down to play it. I finished it and now I can finally say that I loved it. More than that, actually.

Sure. After many years of hyped-up expectations and promises that were never fulfilled, CD Project Red didn't deliver us the game we were promised. It didn't change the gaming industry and no, it really didn't overthrow GTA. However, after two years of updates, patches and continuous efforts of CDPR, I believe the least we can do is give them and the world they created a second chance.

Still, the game isn’t what we were promised. It still has its problems and unfortunately will never reach its full potential. But putting that aside, the Night City and its tales and adventures are what this game is all about. The world is vast and full of opportunities, its full of life and it has so much to offer and for us to explore. The only problem is the bugs. At one point, you’re walking through a mesmerizing futuristic metropolis with crowds of people crawling around like army of insects, a city full of color and breathtaking visuals, and at another you’re driving through a ghost town. Sometimes you’re fully engaged in the world and the stories it beholds, fully connecting with the characters and the stories they make, until they are T-posing and flying towards you. It’s easy to get consumed by the city and feel yourself inside your V’s flesh, but it’s also just as easy to get thrown out of this simply because a car spawns right in front of you or that the entirety of the city’s society vanishes within seconds. It’s a damn shame. In fact, it didn’t even take me an hour of playtime to stumble upon my first bugs and game-crashing problems.

But hear me out. Even through this, once you get into the story, all this doesn’t matter no more. Or you simply accept it. Because after all, it has become a part of Cyberpunk’s identity. The true beauty stands in its visuals and story. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous. There’s probably no need to say more. But the story? Oh boy.

It has been quite some time since I played through a story without feeling disengaged or bored, or even skipped a dialogue. Even in some of my most beloved games there were times when I thought “yknow what, I don’t care.”. But in Cyberpunk I was eating up every single damn word that came out of their mouths. It was AWESOME. I won’t spoil anything. But I will say CDPR wrote an amazing story that perfectly fits and captures what their world is all about. I fell in love with the characters and followed the story like there was no tomorrow. Until there was. Oops. After finishing it, I am left with a lot on my mind and a bittersweet taste on my tongue. Oh, and the soundtrack? Top notch.

All n’ all. There’s no doubt in my mind that through its flaws, Cyberpunk 2077 is an awesome game and that it’s a game worth seconds chances. 8/10 from me.

Hollow Knight is a challenging and unforgiving triumph. It's one of the best games I've ever played and I hate it dearly.
10/10

"Have I been a terrible fool, Arthur?"
“I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it. One thing I do know, there ain’t no shame in looking for better world.”

You know. I like to say about any great game that „it’s one of the best games I ever played. “, often not comparing it to other ones or without giving it a second thought. But saying the same thing about Red Dead Redemption 2 would be a f*cking understatement. Shall I say, giving it more than a second thought, RDR2 is surely THE best game I ever played.
It’s got everything you want in a game. Immersive and engaging story, amazingly written and unforgettable characters, breathtaking graphics, vast, majestic and living world, great mechanics, beautiful soundtrack, and you don’t even need some NASA’s spare rocket engine to run it.

The world is f*cking amazing. Aside from the mesmerizing imagery and beautiful graphics (the 500 screenshots I took so far talk for themselves), it feels like an actual world, shaping itself as the time goes on. The nature is vast and majestic, the civilization is hectic and dynamic, and you never know what you’ll run into. You might encounter a poor fella in need of assistance, gang members trying to make a quick buck, you can run into a random house up in the hills and either clear it out or deal with what comes in your way. And guess what. Your choice matters even in these small events! I’m currently playing my second playthrough, and yes, I encountered the same people, but I also found out so many new things I completely missed. And I’m sure more things would pop up on my third playthrough. You never know what’s coming your way.

But truly, the aspect that makes this game so special to me is the story and its characters. Pretty sure this game wouldn’t be as good without it. It takes place before the events of the first game, and you are not playing as our boy John Marston, but his fellow friend he grew up with, Arthur Morgan. I’ll be straight on this one. I F*CKING LOVE ARTHUR. I DON’T WANT TO PLAY AS ANYONE ELSE EVER AGAIN! Arthur is special. He is portrayed as uneducated, he is an outlaw, criminal, and he’s been raised by ones. But he is also playful and has a great sense of humor. Not only that, besides his poor intellect, he's emotionally intelligent. Throughout the course of the story, he learns, he understands, he moves from an arrogant criminal, killing anyone and for nothing, into a wise and good man who wants only the best for the people he cares about, but also for those he affected by his foolishness. To be completely honest with you, I might be exaggerating too. The story of Arthur kind of saved me. I was at a pretty bad place emotionally, and existentially. I felt like a fool of how I treated others and myself. And in this seemingly endless cycle of self-loathing, I played RDR2. I saw a man, living with burden of his wrongdoings in an unforgiving world, showing me that you can’t changed what’s done, but you can always do the right thing.

I found this part of Youtube lately of edits about RDR2 and mainly Arthur and his journey. Sure, some may say they are trying too hard to be poetic, but I found them inspiring. There’s so many of them, compared to other pieces of media, movies, videogames. And they receive up to millions of views. Really makes me wonder, how touching the story is and how many people it connected with. Really puts my story into perspective. Arthur Morgan might be the greatest protagonist by Rockstar, and of all games in general. And puts Red Dead Redemption 2 as the very best pieces of gaming entertainment.

I just want to make a statement to Rockstar. Screw you, Rockstar! I love you. I grew up on your games. They shaped me into a person I am now and made my childhood a little brighter. And eventually inspired me to better of a person by the story of Arthur Morgan. But the dungfest that Rockstar is doing nowadays is saddening. I’m not even mad. I’m just deeply disappointed. Your games inspired all of us. Are you really going to throw these 20 years of growth and reputation for a money you already clearly have?
Alright, at the very least take down the god-awful Rockstar launcher. Out of the blue, it just refused to launch my game and advised to reinstall the entire game. I just reinstalled the launcher and restarted my computer for it to work. Did you really wanted me to reinstall 120gbs of game, just because your launcher sucks ass and you don’t even know why? Not the mention that the first hour of my playtime was literally just trying to sign in. You type your login in, do the same captcha 5 times, and it can say the login is wrong AFTER that. So, you can do the thing again. And why do I even need to login and need internet connection to play a singleplayer game. There isn’t even any chat, friendlist or achievement features.

Aside from Rockstar’s poor treatment of its own reputation and its costumers, I love this game by every cell of my body. And I don’t regret all that time I spent on it, one bit. I advise every single one of you to play this game. I believe we all can find ourselves within the Arthur’s story.
Straight up 10/10, boAH!

GRIS is a spectacular gem I don't regret wasting few bucks and few hours on.

It's difficult to say something that wasn't already said. GRIS is a visually stunning art piece. It has a brilliant soundtrack, unique forms of story-telling and gut-wrenching narrative. It does lack engaging gameplay, or at the very least until 3th chapter where things start to get heated up, and might be considered a walking simulator by those that actually never played one themselves. It's less of a mindless walking around the world, but more of a journey through one's memories. Truly a masterpiece.

My only problem is the full price. I recommend waiting for a sale.

9.5/10 Flawless, a little bit