Claiming the first post, hope to finish this challenge again!
2017:
62 games finished
2018:
74 games finished
1.
Mass Effect - 30 hours
Amazing story and atmosphere... With badly aged combat and controls. I love this game for its universe and characters, but shooting parts are terrible, guns feel like crap and the cover-based system as boring, enemies AI is braindead. Controls are very stiff, for some reason character refuses to run outside battles, and you spent a lot of time just slooowly walking to the next point of interest. Mako driving is good for creating a feeling of exploration but at the same time, it controls terribly. If you haven't played this game before and love story-driven games, definitely just pick an easy difficulty and blast your way through shitty combat, this game is absolutely worth it. But if you want to replay it just for sake of nostalgia, don't.
2.
The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian - 6 hours
This game is uninspired, badly designed trash with terrible controls and shitty combat. It has so many baffling design choices, they somehow managed to fuck up such simple concept as mindless beat'em'up with collectibles. Those horrific QTEs on every action you need to do... Hook in this game is something else, to throw it you need to mash A and D buttons, and there is no guarantee that it would reach the right spot, if you stand not in a perfect position for a throw, then your character would throw it somewhere outside the screen. Moreover, there is a glitch when instead of attack your character can start trying to throw the hook, and you can't quickly cancel this action and become completely defenseless for a few seconds. It wasn't a big problem, but then several extremely frustrating and badly designed boss battles happened, which 100% convinced me that this is one of the worst games I've ever played. Thank god this trash was removed from digital stores and no one can buy it by accident anymore.
3.
LEGOⓇ Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures - 9 hours
It's not a bad LEGO game, but it does feel outdated in some parts and there are several terrible design decisions that can sore your experience, like endless waves of enemies, sometimes even armed with instakill grenade launchers and bombs. The core gameplay loop is fine, but it depends too much on Indiana Jones legacy, if you for some reasons never watched original movies before, then you'll miss 80% of what makes this game good. There are no voiced dialogues in this game, so if you never heard about Indiana Jones (or simply watched these movies a long time ago and forgot most of the scenes from them), then you'll have a hard time following what's going on. Like, if you never watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you'll be very confused at the final boss battle and which Grail is true. So, if you really want to play this specific game, it would be wise to rewatch the original trilogy before starting to play it.
Unfortunately, there are also technical issues worth mentioning. Game occasionally glitching, and sometimes these bugs can prevent you from completing the whole level and force you to restart from the scratch, which can be very frustrating. There are no checkpoints or manual saves, game saving you progress only after completing the level or buying something at the in-game shop. Also, you can't skip cutscenes and there is no online co-op.
If you want to just play LEGO games and not interested in specifically this one, then I would suggest you try recent games from this developer instead. Considering how many of these released in recent years, it's probably the best to ignore this one, you won't miss anything important unless you are a big Indiana Jones fan.
4.
Alone in the Dark - 9 hours
This game is crushingly disappointing, so many great ideas buried under incredibly dumb design decisions. This is what happens when you give too much freedom to art and design departments while forgetting about everything else. This game is so contradictory, for example, the engine - it has an impressive amount of interactivity with physically correct fire and liquids implementation, and it also actively suggesting that player would use them to progress through the game, like burn the wooden door, or smash it to pieces with an axe. But at the same time, the PC port itself is garbage, game starts in 720p resolution and crashes when you are trying to go to display settings, fixing it requires some effort (you can read it here -
https://steamcommunity.com/app/259170/discussions/0/1733210552683758734/, god bless Steam forums, it saved me once again).
Even if you'll manage to run the game after dozens of failed SecuROM security checks, game greets you with ATROCIOUS controls - developers tried to make something new, instead of controlling the camera with the mouse, you are controlling your hands instead. Problem is, no matter how you change your settings, sensitivity is always not there, it's always clunky and feels wrong while there are not many situations where such unusual controls absolutely needed. Not to mention keyboard controls, protagonist moving like a sack of coal and there are so many actions that mapped randomly all over the keyboard and doesn't make any sense, for example, there is a separate button just to jump from the rope and it bind at 3 by default, while "quick actions" are for some reason bind to Home, End and Insert buttons. Thank god at least you can rebind actions without crashing on the desktop.
There are so many cool moments that completely ruined by stupid oversights, like that epic chase on taxi cab during the local apocalypse, you drive through streets of New York, buildings going down, everything is blowing up... And then you suddenly stuck in some corner, because car controls are as bad as your protagonist controls, and game forces you to replay the ENTIRE SEQUENCE because there are no checkpoints during this section and you need to make everything perfectly within one go. Same goes to cutscenes, most of them are well directed and at first story looks promising, but then you realize that you can't skip them, and game loves to make checkpoints right BEFORE long cutscenes, not after them like everyone with common sense would suggest.
Seriously, did anyone actually played this game before shipping it in this state? It really feels like devs haven't actually tried to play all of their cool concepts, because it's hard to believe that nobody in his right mind played through this game and didn't raise the alarm about controls or any other problem this game indeed have. Like, this game has an episodic structure and you can play most of the chapters whenever you want and even skip some scenes if you stuck, and at the beginning of every episode or after loading save game shows you "Previously in Alone in the Dark" montage that reminds you about important events in previous episodes. But despite me playing in the right order and not skipping anything, few times game showed me scenes that I never have seen in my playthrough, like they were removed from the game or it just glitched and the scripts didn't work as intended. The inventory system is interesting, to access your items you literally look at pockets in your jacket and combine them to get fire bullets and other stuff, but it's so tiny, you simply can't take much of different stuff with you and it limits your options and imagination, forcing to stick to the same ways of problems solving over and over again.
The whole game feels like a glitchy mess, beta-version of something great. The atmosphere is done right, puzzles are interesting and when everything works as intended, the game can be fun. But unfortunately, after that incredibly stupid ending (I mean, both endings, none of the choices doesn't make any sense anyway), I really can't recommend it to anyone. If you for some reasons already have this game and willing to put some effort just to run the damn thing, I still highly doubt you'll have the patience to complete more than first 2 episodes. It's a damn shame because it's obvious this game had a lot of potential, but the execution is deeply flawed and it aged badly.
5.
Insecticide Part 1 - 2 hours
A glorified paid demo for the game that was canceled and never came out. It's a shame because this weird mix of adventure and arcade 3D platforming genres clearly had potential, and artstyle with world and characters design is pretty good.
6.
Grim Legends 3: The Dark City - 4 hours
It's an okay HOG game, but since it's for some reasons in the same series, I have to compare it to original Grim Legends. GL1: The Forsaken Bride was the game that made me interested in this genre again, it was really well made and balanced HOG game with stunning graphics and engaging storyline. Well, unfortunately, I can't say that about The Dark City, it's fine on its own, but story in it not as exciting and gameplay focused too much on mostly boring minigames. I'm not sure why these games are in one series and numbered like they are direct sequels, they are not, they have different settings and characters, even art style and graphics looks completely different in each Grim Legends game. Anyway, despite my disappointment that it's not as awesome as The Forsaken Bride, Grim Legends 3: The Dark City is still a good game and worth playing if you want to play a short and simple adventure game.
7.
Flower - 3 hours
10-year old indie game, previously exclusive to playstation consoles, it aged well and still worth playing it. Though, you need to temper your expectations with this one, because now there are tons of indie games like this and competition is much higher than in 2009. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that this game is bad, it's actually really good and definitely worth the price. Graphics look great in 4K, sound design and OST are marvellous and helps a lot in creating the right atmosphere, environmental storytelling is well done here too. It's short (around 2-3 hours if you aim to get all achievements), but relaxing experience, if you are looking for the game to forget about all the crap you need to deal in real life (or simply want to play something less complex than modern AAA blockbusters), then it's 100% the game you need right now.
8.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - 85 hours
As someone who enjoyed the previous two Tomb Raider games, I have mixed feelings about this one. It's not bad, but some design decisions sure tarnished my overall experience about this game. Like at some point when game restricts you to use just one costume in the city hub or you won't be able to talk with NPCs and take sidequests. Or when they put some collectibles and challenges at points that are hard to reach and too far from campfires and required to watch through all animations and waste 10 minutes just to get them and run back to the campfire. Or skills that are mostly for special bullets and enemy finishers, but there are like 1 hour of actual shooting and action in this game?
Again, when you just play the main story and tombs as it goes, it's quite entertaining and decent game - story and writing are still far from best, but they nailed the adventure and exploration atmosphere. To 100% the game it will take something around 25-30 hours, which is a nice amount (especially if you'll get it with a major discount), just a typical AAA singleplayer junk for those who love this type of games. Those other 50 hours I spent were in photomodes, both in-game and Nvidia Ansel - to be honest, graphics in this game are very uneven and quality may differ significantly in different places, but damn, it sure fun to just fly around for an hour or so after work, trying to capture some interesting screenshot. So yeah, if you love taking screenshots, then you absolutely need to get this game, believe me, it's worth it.
9.
Sunset Overdrive - 22 hours
Honestly, I expected a lot more from this game. Considering the cult following it has, I expected some underrated masterpiece, and that probably played a role in my first impressions about this game. I should have to keep my expectations in check because it's really just another 3rd person open-world game, but with colorful style and crazy movement and guns. Outside of story missions, there's not much to do except collecting garbage around the city - and they REALLY overdid with this, because there are literally hundreds of trash that waiting for you to pick up on basically every corner, and this process is tedious as hell and distract you from going to next mission point (unless you have better self-control than me and can ignore this crap).
Shooting itself is fun because the movement is fluid and guns are really different and fun, but there are not many enemies variations either, so it becomes repetitive way too fast. There is supposedly a lot of variety in power-ups, which are called Amps and Overdrives, but honestly, when I looked at the list for the first time and tried to decided which one of them I really need, the one that has a chance to spawn explosion or the one that freezes the enemy, I just gave up quickly and pick those that were available and didn't care about them until the credits roll. It doesn't help that most of these power-ups you need to buy before trying them, so yeah, I really couldn't be arsed to try to figure out all this stuff when combat as fine as it is. It's not like I was swimming in money at the end of the game, so looks like it also requires to grind a lot in order to buy everything, and while I liked Sunset Overdrive combat, I didn't like it THAT much.
There are also those annoying tower defense missions that I hated with a passion, and every time I had to play them because of the story I was thinking only about "When this shit finally ends?!". In theory, it might be fun if you like that type of gameplay, there are a lot of traps you could place at roads where waves of enemies spawn, but again, it's just didn't click with me and I couldn't force myself to bother with this stuff. The fact that rewards for this were Amps, which I didn't care either, wasn't helping in making me care about this part of gameplay.
I know I might sound too negative, but this game functionally is not that bad, combat is fun (in small portions), the story is far from amazing, but engaging enough to keep playing, and humor and style may be too subjective, but it was fine by me and made me legitimately smile a few times. The PC port is a mixed bag as well, keyboard+mouse controls are good enough, but for some reasons they removed co-op mode that was available in the console version, and there are no proper graphical settings you can change outside resolution (and LOD in this game really could use some uplifting), not even a "real" fullscreen, game always runs in borderless fullscreen. At least performance looks more or less solid, and I didn't experience any bugs or crashes during my playthrough.
Overall, Sunset Overdrive feels like a solid "above average" game, nothing spectacular, but nothing offensively bad, too overcomplicated in some ways, and too simple in others. You may probably like it a lot though, because some of the issues I had with this game are very subjective and you may not even notice them, so get it on sale and be ready to refund it if first impressions would be bad. No harm in trying though.
10.
Dracula Origin - 4.5 hours
It's a decent adventure game, but some design decisions and puzzles in it are rather frustrating. Developers tried to add a nice variety of puzzles types but overdid a little, there is plenty of sudden difficulty spikes, like with that door lock at Cairo that only solvable by trial and error, the easiest solution for it require at least 30 very specific steps, and you can't undo wrong moves, only to reset the whole puzzle.
There is a lot of pixel-hunting, which is not that bad because you can highlight all active points on the screen by pressing spacebar, but in some cases game requires to do some weird combination of actions, so sometimes you waste your time trying to understand designers logic and figure out HOW to progress further, even when you know exactly WHAT to do. Like, there was a moment near the ending where for some reasons shield against the vampires didn't work, I looked through walkthroughs, even watched the video of that moment, yet it worked for everyone else but not me. Apparently, it didn't work because I should have watched (not even use) at some hotspot near the Dracula portrait, and only after that shield worked and I was able to progress the story.
Moments like this really disappointed me, because it looks like developers simply forgot to explain some stuff to the player - it's not just puzzles, the story has the same problem, despite "Origin" in the title, it's a direct sequel to the original book and if you forgot or simply never read it, then at first game will be very confusing with all those names and events that mentioned like you know heard about them yesterday. Game doesn't even bother to mention that you are playing as professor Van Helsing, I realized this only after I went to Cairo and one of the characters said his name.
Same as the first hours, Dracula Origin ends kinda abruptly and leaves with a pretty barebones cliffhanger that of course was never resolved. So yeah, I guess this one will be interesting only for hardcore fans of the genre - it's not bad and works fine on modern systems (except those annoying black borders because all backgrounds are rendered in 4:3), but it won't suddenly make you fall in love to adventure games.
11.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - 22 hours
This game made me realize one thing - I never liked Gwent that much. As minigame for TW3 it was fine, but as a standalone project it never really managed to catch my interest, not as a free version, nor this "side-project to side-project". I finished Thronebreaker only because of the story and atmosphere in it are really damn good, and despite all the stuff I didn't like in this game, in the end, I left it with positive impressions.
Thronebreaker consists of two parts - exploration, where you running around diverse locations in isometric view, and combat, which is a slightly modified Gwent and card puzzles. Can't say anything bad about exploration part, while locations are mostly linear, the world itself is extremely detailed and well drawn. Seriously, artists did a really great job in Thronebreaker, drawings and animations production quality are very high. Quests are great as well, most of them require making a choice, and some of them have some pretty major and unexpected consequences. The main storyline starts slowly, but eventually everything going to shit, characters doing stupid things and showing their personality, and you keep playing despite all the flaws just because you want to know what will happen next. This atmosphere of despair, where characters keep fighting even though the chances to succeed are extremely low, shown really well through quests and dialogues.
Though that's one of the game problems, it relies too much on text and barely reflects what's going on in the gameplay itself. In Thronebreaker while traveling around the map you also manage your army camp, and that's where things didn't work out as intended. To create and upgrade buildings and troops in the camp you need to spend 3 resources - gold, wood and recruits, and at first you need to carefully plan how to spend them. You can gain or lose the resources while exploring the map or after making choices in quests. But the real need in that quickly disappears after arriving at the second big location, because after creating the army cards they won't disappear after the fights, and once you found the right deck, you can easily just use it all the time until the end of the game and win most of the battles. This hurts immersion, you always need to make difficult choices in quests, but in reality, you can wander with tons of money and all those choices become a non-choice since you can not bother about wasting some resources if you want to choose the right but expensive way to react in difficult situations.
As I said above, there are 2 types of combat in Thronebreaker - regular Gwent duels (can be 3 or 1 rounds long) and cards puzzles with unique conditions. Duels really not doing much trouble even on high difficulties, there is just too many of them and they become tedious way too fast. I'm usually trying to do everything that game can offer and clearing all corners of the maps, but even I couldn't handle it and on the last big location I just gave up and started to skip most of the battles just to finally see the ending. Same with puzzles, there's a lot of them, they all have their own rules, but if you don't like card or puzzles games, I probably wouldn't want to waste your time on them. Thankfully, Thronebreaker is not requiring to complete them all, you can easily skip even story missions and just play further if you care only about the story.
So, this is one of those situations, when "a lot" is not something undoubtfully positive. Even though I was skipping a lot of unnecessary battles and puzzles, Thronebreaker still took me 22 hours to complete, and I was doing long 2-3 weeks pauses because I needed a break from this gameplay. I wish devs would have stick to the original plan and made a tight 10-15 hours experience because it really feels that the game was artificially expanded to reach 30 hours target. Maybe Gwent fans won't notice this and will complete the game on 100%, but I haven't dropped playing it after first 5-6 hours only because I liked the story that much. Yes, I still recommend this game, but if the gameplay is more important for you and you don't really like card games, then don't waste your time. If you are mostly interested in the story and the atmosphere with a decent level of freedom, than Thronebreaker can become a pleasant surprise for you.
12.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Episode 1 - Homestar Ruiner - 3 hours
I confess I wasn't familiar with the source material (btw available on official youtube -
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMkbjxvwur30YrFWw8kpSaw ) of this game until I played it. But even without it, I immediately fell in love with this game and its universe - colourful characters, stylized graphics and cynical humour feels surprisingly fresh even now, 10 years after this game release.
You play as a Strong Bad, the "coolest dude" in Free Country USA who always wears luchador mask, never miss the opportunity to mess with folks around and loves to answer on e-mails from his fans. He always has an edgy commentary for any situation, so you explore locations and click on everything just to hear what he has to say this time. The first episode is obviously more like an introduction to the game universe and characters and doesn't have an amazing storyline, but it's well paced and fun to watch.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People plays like typical pre-TWD Telltale game - it's a classic point'n'click adventure where you walk around the locations, collecting garbage and looking for adventures on your ass. Surprisingly, there is actually more stuff to do than in other Telltale games that I've played, it has 2 proper minigames and tons of in-game challenges, so there's an actual sense in continue playing this episode after finishing the main storyline. So, instead of the usual 1-2 hours max to complete the episode, it's actually can take 3-4 hours if you are aiming to complete everything it offers.
Overall, the first episode was a very nice and unexpected surprise for me, as someone who loves good comedy games, I totally recommend to play it even if you never heard about the original Homestar Ruiner series. It works without any problem on modern systems and supports up to a 4K resolution without additional fixes. Looking forward to playing the next episodes soon.
13.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Episode 2 - Strong Badia the Free - 3 hours
Strong Bad season surprisingly keeping a good pace with untypical for Telltale games amount of new and diverse content between episodes. After the first episode, which was more or less introduction to this crazy universe and its characters, the second episode already going crazy and turning everything upside down. Withing first 10 minutes of the episode Strong Bad starting a revolt against King of Town because of outrageous taxes on using e-mail services, and after his inspirational speech, everyone else also creating their own kingdoms (with flags and borders, of course). Most of the time you'll spend on trying to unite all those rebels under your own empire in order to gather an army and attack the King's castle, and all your future vassals have their own terms and requirements that you need to meet.
Gameplay hasn't changed since the first episode, but because of new rules and non-trivial storyline new episode feels like a completely new game. Set of minigames was also updated, this time you can play a parody on Streets of Rage, where instead of regular enemies you fight algebraic functions. They even made a proper turn-based strategy minigame, where you need to move your leader and armies through the tiled world map while trying to evade or distract enemies troops. Puzzles are mostly intuitive and pretty easy to solve, except that slightly annoying moment where you need to hunt for "artifacts" with a metal detector without knowing where exactly those artifacts hidden or at least knowing if there is anything left to find on the current location, that part was really boring and unnecessary.
A good amount of quality satire and unexpected plot twists really stand out this episode not just compared to other Telltale games, but to adventure games overall. It really packed with interesting events and keep surprising you until the ending, writing in this game is consistently awesome. It's hard to imagine that they'll manage to keep up the pace and remaining 3 episodes will be as great, but I'm hoping for the best and looking forward to playing them soon.
14.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - 16 hours
As much as I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, I still think this game is a huge disappointment and worst in the entire franchise. Clear Sky feels more like undercooked beta-version, with lots of ideas and features that don't work as intended. Not to mention huge amounts of bugs and glitches that weren't fixed even after all patches (of course, it's not as bad as it was back then in 2008 on release day, at least game can be completed from start to finish in its current state).
First of all, factions war is really underwhelming. It's an interesting idea, but it's not working at its full potential, squads of your faction attacking enemies points completely random, you can give any order to them, and it's impossible to completely wipe out enemies faction. When I tried to join Loners, the final goal was to capture Bandits base, but no one ever tried to actually do this, so I gave up waiting and decided to do all on my own (and it was really hard to do so). But once I left the base and walked away far enough, suddenly out of nowhere it was occupied by enemies again - and I've not even left the map! When I decided to switch my faction to Duty, few squads finally tried to attack Freedom (our enemies) base and we've managed to kill there everything that moves, but same shit happened again - with the difference that enemies squads respawned right when Duty squads were inside the main building of the base, and it was locked down once hostiles appeared on base territory so Freedom squads couldn't reach them and technically base remained occupied. But in the end, it didn't matter at all, I just pissed off Freedom faction and it only made it harder for me when I proceed through the storyline because I had to deal with them too.
With faction war connected another problem, related to the reworked Emissions system. Unlike in original, in Clear Sky deadly Emission can happen at any moment, and to survive you need to find a shelter. Great concept, but one time game suggested me to hide... At my enemy faction base, and I had no idea where else I can try to hide. Even when the game suggested non-hostile shelters, after arriving at them I was finding abandoned bases and buildings, even on factions bases, everyone including merchants and faction leaders were disappearing without a trace. And after Emission end, all missing stalkers literally popped up in front of me out of nowhere, as nothing happened - and moments like this really hurt the atmosphere and worldbuilding of the game.
Because of bugs and problems like this S.T.A.L.K.E.R. world didn't feel alive anymore in Clear Sky. Sidequests are not limited by the stupid time limit anymore, but all of them were downgraded to boring fetch quest templates, and after completing them there will be no new missions to complete and nothing to do except move forward the storyline. Artifacts become invisible and you need to look for them with detectors, but they are mostly useless now and just become a money source now, sidequests about looking for specific artifacts were removed as well. Devs added the ability to fast travel around the game world if you pay money to specific NPCs, but some places like Great Swamps remains dead ends, so once you teleport there you won't be able to come back the same way and you'll need to run again to another map and find NPC who will be able to teleport you anywhere else. Map and missions journal was improved, but for some reason, you can always see now exact locations of all mutants as well, like they have PDAs with GPS too, and because of that there is no element of surprise, you always know what to expect and where is probably not the best place to go unprepared, which again hurts the overall atmosphere of the game. It's always like that in Clear Sky, they did some things right, but then also made few steps backward and ruined the working system, that was relied on scripts before too, but it was not so obviously lifeless and artificial.
The last thing I wanted to complain about is Clear Sky story and its last hours in particular. GSC did the same mistake again and closer to the end transformed the game into a very linear popcorn FPS, only with anomalies and radiation. The more you play, the more plot losing its track and becoming nonsensically stupid, and the more game becomes annoyingly restrictive - walk right there, help those guys, jump into that anomaly, take this weapon and shut up. Everything completely turns to shit after reaching Limansk - like Pripyat in original, it's amazingly looking abandoned city, where you have nothing to do except run forward and shoot everything that moves. In next location, you have very stupid FPS cliches like a helicopter with life bar and machinegun points that you need to flank and kill with grenades. And ending, oh god that ending... It's just pure trash, one of the worst endings I've ever seen in games, it's really hard to recommend this game after that.
Honestly, Clear Sky is not THAT bad as a game, as I've said it's playable and you can finish it from start to end if you just follow the main storyline without looking much into everything else, it's good enough to play, especially if you are the fan of the series. Problem is, it's not a bad game, but it's a bad S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, more like a prototype of what could have been a great S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game. It's good looking (especially for its age) FPS in interesting decorations and a unique setting, but it feels more like empty and lifeless beta-version, that you can play once, but nothing more. I've completed original Shadow of Chernobyl 11 times at this moment, and I'll probably play it once again someday, I played Call of Pripyat 4 or 5 times as well. This is my second full playthrough of Clear Sky and I won't ever touch this game, because it's just a flashy amusement park, not a proper game from this series. So, I can only recommend it to the new fans of the series - if you played and liked Shadow of Chernobyl or Call of Pripyat and want more of the same, then go for it. But other than that, just don't bother, it's not good even as a nostalgia trip, because all I remembered is how broken this game was at the launch day in 2008 and how massively disappointing it was for me.
15.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Forge - 1 hour
As additional sidequest The Forge is okay, but as standalone DLC? It's not worth it, especially for a full price. Just 1 crypt, 1 tomb, 1 outfit, and 1 new skill, all for 1 hour of the gameplay. The storyline is nothing special and focused on the past of the new character no one cares about. The main problem of this DLC is the fact that if you finished the main game on 100% already, there is no point in getting it separately from Season Pass. It's a fine addition if you like the original game and want some more tomb raiding, but you won't return to the game only to play this DLC, there is no value in that. You won't be able to use many rewards that you get for completion of this DLC if you already finished the game, so if you just started playing SotTR and enjoying it, get the season pass as soon as possible.
16.
Yakuza Kiwami - 32 hours
Yakuza Kiwami - almost literal remake of the very game in this Japanese series, made on the same engine as Yakuza 0. I knew about this beforehand so I started playing it with realistic expectations, yet in the end, Kiwami left me with mixed impressions. Despite improved graphics, it's still the same 2005 game from PS2 at its heart and of course, it's lacking in comparison to the brilliance of released in 2015 prequel that was 6th in the series.
The story of Yakuza Kiwami starts almost after the same moment where you left in Yakuza 0 - Kiryu returned to Tojo Clan and preparing to start his own yakuza family, but everything going to shit after his sworn brother Nishiki kills his boss and Kiryu decides to save him from the prison and take all the blame for murder. After getting a release from his 10-year sentence, Kiryu finds his clan in disarray because of the disappearance of 10 billion yen and murder of their leader, chairman Sera, and also learn that Nishki started his own family and apparently lost his goddamn mind in his pursuit for power. Unlike Yakuza 0, the story in Kiwami is not that exciting and unexpected, everything more or less predictable, cutscenes and fights direction are not as mindblowing, and the main villain is kinda weak and cliche with his "I'll become a ruler of the whole Japan!". Yes, it was like that in the original game, but still, the quality drop is too noticeable and it can't be helped.
Gameplay in Kiwami is pretty typical for this series, it's a mix of 3rd person beat 'em up with RPG parts, compact but detailed open world and a huge amount of side activities like minigames and substories. It's still fun to run around the city and look for adventures on your ass, but because of not very strong storyline it became more clear that some of those activities can be really repetitive and tedious, and even story missions can go into boring "run from point A to point B and talk with someone" scheme. But overall, Yakuza formula still works as intended and you can easily forget about time and play Kiwami through the entire evening without notice. Graphics remained the same compared to Yakuza 0, even TOO same, the game looks quite decent by modern standards, but not without weak moments like some of non-important NPC models. Story cutscenes recreated on the new engine with impressive attention to details, while playing Kiwami I was also watching on Youtube walkthrough of the original Yakuza game from PS2 and I can confirm that cutscenes are almost identical.
But despite the fact that there is not much difference comparing to the original Yakuza, not all additions that were made in Kiwami improved the game. First of all, I didn't like what they've done with the fighting system, they took it from Yakuza 0 and made it more confusing. In the original game, there was 1 fight style and 3 stat bars, you could spend gained experience points and gain new abilities and improve your health after every level up. In Kiwami they tried to take 3 fight styles from Y0 and attach them to that old 3 stat bar references, but instead of making it simple they randomly put abilities from all 3 fight styles and passive effects like health and heat gauge improvements in 3 skill trees. This lead to a confusing mess we have in Kiwami, where if you want to focus only on one fight style or find some specific skill you need to spend a lot of time to go through all 3 skill trees and carefully plan what is important to get as fast as possible and what you'll probably never use. The fact is, most of those skills are way too specific and can be used on really rare occasions, but you'll still have to buy them in order to get access for stuff you really need.
Also, they decided to add another skill tree for the 4th fight style that supposed to be a mix of all 3 fight styles (again, just like in Yakuza 0), but it was decided to tie progression in this skill tree to your relations with Majima, one of the protagonists of the prequel. And here is where developers went too far because those relations can only be improved after you beat Majima ass each time he surprise attacks you at the city - and you have to fight him DOZENS of times. Yes, you can avoid those conflicts most of the time, but there is a catch - in remake there were also added "finishers" for boss fights, at some moment during the battle boss can stop fighting and start to glow with specific color, and if you won't be quick and activate finisher of relevant to color fight style, then boss will recover a lot of health. And while you can quickly unlock those finishers for 3 regular styles, in order to unlock it for the 4th style you need beat Majima for at least 100+ fights, and this is insanely tedious and time-consuming. And you won't even need this finisher except for last 2 boss battles - but developers forgot to warn about this and without having this finisher move unlocked difficulty of those boss battles unexpectedly increases. It's disappointing that instead of simply adding some depth to Majima character (he had a very limited appearance in the original game) they decided to tie him to such dull grind mechanics and turned meetings with him into the annoying obligation.
Of course, there are positives change in Kiwami as well. The best improvement compared to the original game is extended backstory of Nishiki, they added tons of flashbacks about what happened to him after Kiryu arrest and how gone mad, and it really adds depth to his character. Though without playing prequel it's still could have been hard to care about old characters like Reina or Dojima. Another positive change is (finally!) ability to save almost anywhere and the addition of autosaves. I also really like a dedicated button to hide HUD (though still no proper photomode), but it won't be useful for everyone.
Yakuza Kiwami in really unlucky position because there is such outstanding prequel nearby - no matter how you try, but it's impossible to review this game without looking at Yakuza 0. Despite being the first game in the franchise, it's really not the best starting point to start learning about Yakuza series - you simply won't understand why there is so much hype around these games and why people love them so much. But even if you played Yakuza 0 already, you also need to be careful and temper your expectations, because you can be disappointed that this remake is not as amazing as a prequel. Yakuza Kiwami feels more like big DLC to Y0, rather than a separate game, and this is how you need to approach it. It's not right to skip it completely either, because while story here is not amazing, but it still has some bright moments and important for understanding next mainline Yakuza games.
In conclusion, I want to recommend everyone who still hasn't played any Yakuza game to just stop loafing and play Yakuza 0 already. Every awesome person who already played Yakuza 0 just need to always remember that this is just a remake of the old game and you probably need to wait for a sale. For the old fans of this series who played all Yakuza games on consoles I only can say that port quality is much better than it was in case of Yakuza 0 PC release, it's not requiring top hardware to get decent performance and I haven't seen any major game-breaking glitches and bugs during my walkthrough.
17.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed - 3.5 hours
A forgotten remake of original Bionic Commando game from NES, made by people who created Payday series shortly after. This game is good but quite peculiar - gameplay is built around the protagonist's bionic arm, which is working as a hook for attaching to platforms and other surfaces. Problem is, usual for genre instincts are not working here - protagonist can't jump (and that's in a platforming game!), to move around the levels you need to swing with your arm and be very precise with angles and timings. Such unusual mechanics are very disconcerting at first and lead to a lot of dumb falls and deaths. Bionic Commando: Rearmed starting to challenge the player right from the start and prepare him to what to expect next, because it won't become any easier even when you get used to the controls.
Even if you won't give up right away, the game won't cut you any slack anyway. While the length of most of the levels (except the final one) is not very long, you'll be able to quickly run through them only on the easiest difficulty. The number of lives is limited, and if you'll die too often you'll have to start the level from scratch - and there is a lot of things that will help you in loosing as many lives as possible. Bottomless pits, armies of armed soldiers, falling platforms, various traps, and at the end of every stage - mandatory boss fight, each with their own weaknesses. You can learn about those weaknesses when you hack terminals that are hidden everywhere and contain important information that you can use against another boss. As for rewards, you can get new weapons or equipment that will help you in the fight and unlock access to the next zones.
I really like the style and music of this game, and overall I left it with mostly positive impressions. But I must admit, I have finished this game this time on the easy difficulty - I remember too well who much I suffered back in 2008 when I tried to beat it on normal difficulty.
I didn't really want to experience this suffering again even for nostalgia sake, so if you are going to test your might walkthrough of this game can take up to 5-7 hours, unlike mine 3.5 hours. Also, there is almost a hundred challenge rooms and local co-op, so if you are going to aim for 100% completion it can take even twice longer.
In conclusion, I want to say a few things about the quality of the PC port. Despite seeing a lot of criticism on Steam forums about how it's impossible to even run this game on modern rigs, Bionic Commando: Rearmed launched for me without any additional fixes after the first try, on Windows 10 with all latest updates. There is a lot of settings in menu, it supports screen resolutions up to 5K and probably even higher, you can also rebind keyboard keys. The only problem that I encountered was a bug with the hacking minigame - if you set the resolution higher than 1080p you won't see game objects on the screen area and it will break the minigame, so in order to fix this issue I had to manually switch to 1080p before accessing every terminal and then go back to 5K after hacking was complete. But other than that, Bionic Commando: Rearmed is fully playable from start to finish and should work on modern hardware without any problems. So, my final advice - if you are looking for hardcore games, wait for a sale and get this game, it has plenty of that.
18.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands - 2.5 hours
Unfortunately, Telltale didn't manage to keep up the pace they set in the previous 2 episodes. Baddest of the Bands plays like a typical Telltale game in the middle of the season - lack of new content while reusing of old assets, only under different circumstances. They even degraded the usual comic book drawing minigame to just part of the cutscene where Strong Bad is drawing all by himself, you just need to give him inspiration. There is a new NES-parody game as well, but you can play it only after finishing the episode after loading extended play autosave, and because of that the whole episode narrows down to typical Telltale adventure.
While focusing on main gameplay too much, developers somehow managed to make a lot of typical mistakes for the adventure genre. Considering that in previous 2 episodes of this season I didn't experience much trouble in solving puzzles, I was surprised to find myself stuck several times in Baddest of the Bands, so I had to look in the guide to understand what the hell am I suppose to do next. The main problem of this episode is the fact that you need to backtrack a lot, from time to time running around old locations in order to find new important items that appeared in those locations out of nowhere. Because of that, in Baddest of the Bands you can stuck not because of the difficulty of the puzzle, but because you haven't found junk that required for solving that puzzle. All this pointless backtracking ruins the pacing and without the ability to distract yourself with minigames, in its second part episode turns into a disappointing routine.
As expected, great story with a lot of unexpected moments and genuinely funny jokes saves the day. This time writers focused on the modern music industry, Strong Bad and his friends starting the Battle Royale of the Bands, which is turned out as disastrous as you may expect from anything where is Strong Bad involved. As usual with Telltale games, such quality storytelling overcomes all the flaws that game has, but considering how amazing were previous episodes, I felt a little disappointed after finishing Baddest of the Bands. Of course, if you liked previous episodes then you should play this one as well, but now I'm really starting to get worried that season will go downhill from this point.
19.
Devil May Cry 5 - 22 hours
This game is the definition of a blast from the past, these days almost nobody is doing AAA games like this. And it's the greatest strength and weakness of DMC5 at the same time - fans would absolutely love this game, but some things were better to leave in the '00s.
First of all, I want to complain about "grey" environmental design and overly simplistic storyline. Levels in DMC5 are mostly the same boring ruins and caves over and over again, the game really lacks memorable locations and places. At least nobody forces you to run through these levels backward like it was in DMC4, but still closer to ending game blends into an uninspiring grayish-reddish mess. The story suffers from lack of depth, cutscenes direction is still top-notch, but the main plot twist becomes obvious way too soon, and after that game doesn't have any surprises left. With how DMC5 ends, it will be very disappointing if Capcom won't make another DMC mainline game - you'll see credits roll right when it feels like the fun is just going to really start.
All those flaws DMC5 redeems with its old fashioned (in a good way) gameplay - it's the same old DMC, only with few precise improvements and additions. If you for some reasons never played other games from this franchise, DMC5 can be described as hypersonic stylish hack'n'slash where you switching between 3 different
memebers of some japanese boys-band characters, running around the linear levels and killing everything that moves. Sometimes you encounter especially powerful enemies with their own set of attacks and weak spots which leads to another awesome boss battle, and occasionally you can find upgrades and secret challenges in hidden places all around the levels. After completing each level game analyzes your performance and give you the grade, and depending on the score you get rewards that you can spend in a local shop to buy new abilities and upgrades for your characters and weapons. Unfortunately, MTX is available for purchase, but they are completely unnecessary, they're just paid cheats and you really don't need to use them.
The process of killing demons in DMC5 is pure joy, game controls and feels simply amazing, effects and animations look great, and different characters with their own unique style not allowing the player to get bored. OST and sound design are really damn good as well, everything in this game works well and makes you feel like the coolest badass in the world. Though there is one thing, it's obvious that for 3 characters there is not enough playtime in the main storyline, once you starting to get used to one playstyle (Dante is especially unlucky, he keeps unlocking new weapons every half-hour), game forces you to switch to something different and you end up not using anything in its full potential. For those who would like to get more out of this game, you'll have to either play Bloody Palace endless arena mode or replay the story on higher difficulties, which is honestly not much to go with.
Actually, near the end of the game, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that it had a really tight budget - Capcom tried to do the best they could, but in the end, they still had to cut a lot of the stuff. Like, Trish and Lady in this game exist only as part of fan-service, and developers admitted in the interview that they added Kyrie (Nero's girlfriend) in the game only as voice because they didn't have enough money and resources to make a proper model of her. But everything that was achieved despite lack of budget is still made on the really impressive level, and it's especially noticeable in 4K, I mean just look at this:
It's mindblowing how much work they put in just Nico model, such incredible attention to details, they even did her nails! And it's like that with every character model, not everything is perfect (I'm not a big fan of new Trish face, but it's fine), but you can't deny the amount of work developers put in this game.
Despite all the flaws, this game is really well done and fun to play. Yeah, it's mostly about running between closed arenas and killing waves of demons, but the gameplay itself is what makes this game good and helps to forget about monotonous environmental design and barely existing story. I just wish that Capcom will make DMC6 with a higher budget, or relying only on nostalgia and old fashioned gameplay might not work as well as this time.
20.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Episode 4 - Dangeresque 3 - 3 hours
This time another episode of Strong Bas series is focused on parodying action movies with all possible tropes and cliches from seasonal Hollywood blockbusters. With the difference that the whole movie is filmed in an extremely amateurish manner and all the roles are played by the main characters of the Homestar Runner universe (and of course most of them are not really good actors either). And just as expected, it filmed so badly that in the end, it turned out to be a good thing.
Parody on the parody is not the easiest genre, so at first, those overly theatrical acting and intended stupidity of the storyline doesn't look really inspiring. But once the story starting to slowly accelerate and bring more of typical for Strong Bad craziness, and it becomes no less fun than any previous episode in this series. Ridiculously amateurish scenes editing and "special effects" only adds up to the unique charm of this story, and occasional edgy jokes and one-liners are still always land right on the target.
There is one problem, because of strict linear nature of storytelling in this episode, all side-activities were reduced even more. For example, there is no comic drawing mini-game this time, even as part of the cutscene. But at least "Extended Play" was significantly improved, so be sure to load the last autosave after completing the episode to see the bonus scenes and "interviews". In short, Strong Bad keeping up as very decent comedy series, and unless developers somehow will manage to fuck up in the last episode, this will be one of the best Telltale games.
21.
Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals - 2 hours
Oldschool adventure game, with the unique atmosphere and story based on Enki Bilal graphical novel, but with tons of technical issues and frustrating gameplay. It shows that this game was made by great artists and writers, and not very good designers and coders.
Problems appear right from the start - Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals working in widescreen mode only with black borders, and any change of resolution to something that doesn't match native display resolution causing enabling of V-Sync and 60FPS cap. All terminals that you need to use in this game are flickering like crazy and can cause an epileptic fit. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, I've never seen the PC exclusive game with such terrible mouse controls. It's like you playing on the lowest difficulty with ridiculous mouse acceleration, mouse pointer always moves with different speed and it's almost impossible to point this damn thing on anything small.
Considering that Nikopol is Myst-style adventure and there is no active points highlight, with such terrible controls this game turns into literal torture. Most of the puzzles in this game are based on the blatant pixel hunting, and without the ability to highlight point of interest finding most of the items becomes a non-trivial and frustrating task on such detailed backgrounds. Moreover, even if you have all the required items to solve the riddle, it's still can be hard to deal with them because you need to use those items in VERY specific points on the screen, and it's a terrible combo with sluggish controls like in this game. There is action scenes where you need to act quickly or protagonist will be killed and you'll be forced to start all over again - and sometimes it means replaying huge chunks of the level while watching and listening again all these unskippable dialogues and cutscenes. The icing on the cake - the fact that some of the puzzles can be failed but the game will continue anyway, so you can keep wasting your time, trying to understand what to do, while the only solution is to load the last save.
Developers had on their hands an impressive source material, but they failed in making a good game out of this. Nikopol can be barely considered as a standalone product because it barely introduces players to the game's world, and without reading the original visual novel or at least watching a movie adaptation called Immortel (Ad Vitam) random player will have a hard time trying to understand what the hell is going on in this game. In short, it's better to avoid this game unless you are a huge fan of this type of games and got it with a -90% discount.
22.
Strong Bad Episode 5: 8-Bit Is Enough - 2.5 hours
Telltale went all in the Strong Bad season finale and made one of their best games ever. In the last episode, the balance between story and gameplay is almost perfect - story pacing and direction are great, puzzles are mostly perfectly logical, and gameplay keeps constantly emerging and bringing new situations and rules.
This time the whole premise is about videogames of 80'-90's, with tons of references and quotes about old PC and consoles culture. If the amounts of mini-games in previous episodes were really small, in this episode new gameplay twists and rules appear almost every 10 minutes - there is parts where you need to run around the dark hunted house and scare the ghosts with a flashlight or even portion where game literally turns into First Person Shooter. The cast is playing roles of familiar heroes from classic games and constantly saying something like "You shall not pass!" or "A winner is you!". List of parodies includes King's Quest, Donkey Kong, Wolfenstein 3D, Mega Man, and even Quake! Actually, that's where lays the main problem of this episode - without knowing all those cultural references you'll miss out on most of the jokes.
But even without taking into account all this homage pay to popular culture, this final episode is still a very strong and interesting story. The first and only Strong Bad season ends on a high note and makes you forget about all the problems in previous episodes when developers overdid a little with the craziness and overall tone. I highly recommend you to get this game while you can because it can be delisted at any moment like other Telltale games, it's an amazing and extremely underrated comedy adventure that is a rare beast on their own.
23.
Space Siege - 7.5 hours
Forgotten ARPG from Gas Powered Games released in 2008. It was removed from the sale on all digital storefronts because somehow developers managed to fuck up with mouse pointer that doesn't appear in fullscreen mode on modern systems. PC exclusive that built around using the mouse and it has an issue with the mouse controls - that's all you need to know about the late '00s in PC gaming. It's possible to fix this problem by launching the game in windowed mode, but it's still showing that even PC-only developer couldn't make a game without such technical issues.
At least game fully playable in windowed mode, though I can't say the gameplay is something special. It's a very linear game, you just run through the same corridors, listen to boring radio talk, and shoot stuff with very little variety. Through the game, you unlock new guns and abilities and also upgrade them and your stats by using loot that drops from chests and dead enemies. There is also cybernetics that you can permanently install in your body to get bonuses and use some guns, but in reality, it changes very little gameplay-wise - stats bonuses are barely noticeable, and you'll find those 2 guns that require cybernetics way too late to properly upgrade and use them. Cybernetics only slightly alter some dialogues and ending talk, and in the breaking point of the story they won't matter, the game will just ask you straight away if you want to join the baddies or not, and that's it.
The storyline in Space Siege didn't hold up for such linear game, it's full of cliches and bad acting, they even added creepy dead girl that constantly run in front of you and her dad who trying to find her on the ship for the entire game. And without an engaging story, there is not many reasons remain to play Space Siege - the game is lacking depth and once you'll finish it there won't be much point in playing it ever again. I mean, the game is not that bad, but I would have described it as "painfully mediocre" - you can have fun while playing it, but overall repetitiveness and lack of replayability are not allowing me to recommend it to anyone. Especially considering that you can't officially get it anywhere, so sadly it's really not worth the effort.
24.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Pillar - 2 hours
I started playing this DLC in June and finished it only now... Don't ask how the hell this happened, I don't know either. Probably because I got carried away again and kept trying to take more screenshots of Lara. Also, I'm too busy lately and barely have time to play games, hence finishing them, so yeah, I probably won't complete 52 challenge this year.
I honestly can't tell much about this DLC because of those huge pauses, I guess there was more fights and tomb was kinda nice, the only really bad thing was ending where Lara "destroyed" the iron shield by putting it into the fire. Who the hell wrote this crap? Anyway, that's really everything I can tell about this DLC, I recommend to get the main game with DLC bundle because all those DLC rewards are useless if you already finished the main story.
25.
Rage 2 - 30 hours
Rage 2 is one of the strangest sequels I've ever played. Honestly, I'm still not sure why this game even exists - if I was told 5 years ago that Rage will receive a sequel, I wouldn't have believed this guy even if he was Jesus Christ himself. The first Rage was a good game, but it wasn't some big seller and didn't really look like a franchise maker. Bethesda is known for their weird business decisions, but even for them Rage 2 announcement was something extraordinary and it was not clear to the end what will come out of this.
And after the game was released… It didn't become any less unclear. In reality, Rage 2 is an unofficial Mad Max sequel, only in a different universe and in first person. Almost 80% of gameplay is made by Mad Max template - open post-apocalyptic world, few settlements and dozens of points of interest are scattered around the map, there is upgradable cars and skills you can acquire… Honestly, such similarities is not something surprising, since one of the developers of Rage 2 is Avalanche Studios, the creators of Mad Max, but it's still funny to see how these games are literally the same in some aspects, there is even some landmarks that look almost identical. The remaining 20% were made by id Software, the creators of original Rage, and it includes shooting and characters.
As you may notice, that's some really uneven mix - and, unfortunately, it shows. The open-world in Rage 2 is the weakest part of this game, it's beautiful, but it's completely useless and only hurts the game. I'm one of those players who love to just wander around virtual words and take pictures of beautiful scenery, while casually clearing the map from those annoying icons somewhat in the background, but even I occasionally got bored and literally forced myself to run through the final parts of the map. Yes, Rage 2 world is undoubtedly beautiful, but it doesn't feel alive, there is a lot of weird empty areas and expect the main storyline and clearing the outposts on the map, there is not much to do. Basically, there are 2 types of side activities - you either need to clear the area or linear corridor from the enemies, or you need to find the way into a locked building, that's it. After completing the task you can waste your time and search for hidden chests and datapads, but there is not much point in that.
The repetitiveness of side activities could be not a big problem, because shooting in Rage 2 is amazing. It shows that one of the developers were the creators of DOOM, gunplay in this game is a pure joy, everything exploding and enemies are blowing up like bloody fireworks. It's ridiculous and that's why it's so fun. Not every available weapons and abilities are equally useful and fun to use, but even with the standard pistol-assault rifle-shotgun-rocket launcher set, combat never gets boring and it's the main reason to play Rage 2. I also liked the music, those electro-industrial tunes reminded me about DOOM soundtrack and it really adds to the game atmosphere.
Rage 2 could have been great, if not the open-world - it really affects the pacing and most of the fights ends way too soon. You can't jump right back to the action because you need to run around the location you just cleared in order to find missed chests and then you need to drive 5-10 minutes to the next outpost and then repeat the process. Because of that, Rage 2 always leaving a slight feeling of frustration - everything looks cool, but it's just not enough, and instead of non-stop fun you always have to be distracted with the boring checklist activities.
The good storyline could have help in improving the diversity of the gameplay, but unfortunately, there is not much to talk about as well. Rage 2 starts pretty good, but again, because of the open-world the story is getting harmed by uneven pacing, especially if you'll decide to not go directly to the right place, but also clean some outposts on your way to the target. I honestly forgot about most of the storyline before I even finished the game and remember the details only because of comics that is shown in the final credits. There is no surprises or at least some extraordinary moments, it all goes very predictable and ends with the typical boss fight. It's better than the ending of original Rage, but still very far from desirable.
I prefer singleplayer games, but in the case of Rage 2, even I would agree that it could have use a co-op mode, even if it was limited to arenas. Lack of some online component is even more weird, considering that game is positioning itself as so-called live-service with weekly events and constant updates. And, of course, there are microtransactions, but they implemented in such strange way I didn't even know they exist in this game at all until I came to the store page and saw some Rage 2 Coins available for purchase. When I entered the game and looked closely to the main menu, I finally noticed that "Store" option, but after looking at it closely, I haven't seen anything worthwhile to spend money, it's just a bunch of cosmetics-only skins, most of them are not even looking good. Well, it's not a bad thing, it's a full-priced game after all, but still, what's the point of adding this stuff at all? There is also DLCs planned to be released soon, with new missions, guns and map zones, but honestly, I had more than enough after 30 hours I spent on the base game. Not sure how profitable all this stuff, but to developers credit, at least they actually listened to the feedback and fixed some of the game issues with free updates, like the chests are now highlighted in scanning mode and you are not forced to look at experience screen each time you clear the outpost anymore which slightly improved the pacing. Another example of the fact that the best way to play most of those modern AAA live-services is one year later after the release date when all DLCs and patches were released.
So yeah, this is my final verdict - Rage 2 is a good game, but it's not worth the full price. Wait for sale and price drops and only then go for it, for that money it will be a nice fun experience for a week or two. Rage 2 is not trying to be a new next big thing, it's more like AAA fast food that some people might enjoy occasionally consume it between visits to restaurants, but you can easily skip it and won't miss anything important.
26.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Nightmare - 3 hours
Well, this DLC was better than previous DLCs for this game, but the best part was not the actual tomb, but the trial sequence at the beginning. I wish there were more moments like this in the main game... Tomb itself was kinda confusing and annoying with those perma-death spikes and traps and bad checkpoints.
27.
Crysis Warhead - 4 hours
Don't have much to say about this game, it's just painfully mediocre. They decided to change the original Crysis concept into a more standard, linear FPS game, but they stuck somewhere in between. Too many "ride through the corridor to the next checkpoint" moments and storyline is abysmally bad, it has one of the worst cutscenes in AAA games ever - they are all overly-dramatic, doesn't make any sense and going on for WAY too long.
28.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Price of Survival - 2 hours
Okay, what the hell, why this DLC is not the part of the main game? I mean, gameplay-wise it's fine, new tombs are okay, rewards are still useless for those who completed the game already. But the fact that you can play this DLC after completing the main storyline is super weird because you are learning about the main villain past and even interact with him at the end of DLC - problem is, if you completed the main game already, this story piece doesn't make any sense, because
Seriously, who planned those DLCs, why they are all ignoring the fact that most people finished the main game before they were released, why you can't even wear this DLC costume during playing this DLC tombs, because this stupid-ass outfits restrictions in Paititi are still preventing you from wearing costumes you've paid for?! Fucking hell, this is getting frustrating, it's great those DLCs are expanding the main game so new players will have more content, but for day-one players they just reminding that you should have wait for discounts and all DLCs being released instead of playing this game when it was released. Whoever planned post-launch support for this game done fucked it up.
29.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Serpent's Heart - 2 hours
So, I've finished another SotTR DLC, and... Eh? It was fine? Even somewhat decent, I guess? More or less engaging story, good tomb and combat encounters. But again, it's more of the same, again Paititi, again rebels, again those forced "tribal" outfits. I hope that the rest of the DLCs will offer something different because I'm getting tired of playing this game, and again, there's no point in playing those DLCs after you've finished the main game, because all the rewards are useless.
30.
Blair Witch - 7.5 hours
I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, but the Blair Witch E3 2019 reveal trailer instantly caught my attention - that dark atmosphere and woodland walks with your dog looked very intriguing and somewhat reminded me about Alan Wake, a game that I love with passion. Developers were surprisingly quick and released their game just a few months after it was revealed, so I decided to give it a chance. Unfortunately, despite having interesting ideas and making a few things right, Blair Witch ended up being a disappointment for me.
You know, at first, it was not that bad - the protagonist with his dog companion called Bullet is going to the forest in order to find the missing boy. Forest in Blair Witch looks absolutely amazing, I was wandering around some locations just to take screenshots of those trees and rivers. The game slowly introduces its gameplay mechanics, like giving orders to your dog or using videotapes in order to manipulate time and reality. Gameplay core is basically a Walking Simulator, in most cases you just need to walk to a specific point on the level and interact with several important objects in order to progress further. Sometimes you have to fight monsters by highlighting them with your flashlight while they are hiding behind the trees. Those moments are doing their job in adding the tension, but like most of the elements in this game, those encounters don't have much depth and variety.
Puzzles with videotapes is another thing that is done right in Blair Witch. For example, if you need to start a fire in the furnace, you have to find a tape nearby, play it on your camera and then pause it at the moment when the furnace is burning - after that fire will appear in your reality as well and allow to progress further. The main idea is always the same, but those interactions with the videotapes add greatly to the game's atmosphere and they're not getting old during the entire story.
But unfortunately, all those ideas don't save Blair Witch for one simple reason - despite a good premise, the storyline is the weakest part of this game. Protagonist is returned home from the war with PTSD issues, and he also did a lot of mistakes in the past - like, WAY too many mistakes which make the whole premise overly dramatic and unrealistic. Also, developers followed the spirit of the source material and tried to make a forest in this game as confusing as possible. Just like in the movies, at some locations that look open, you can walk in every direction but will constantly end up in the place where you've started, until you do something specific in order to break the cycle. But all those episodes are badly connected - here you walk around night forest, now you race against death on the swaps, and this time you are driving a wagon in order to move between sawmill camps. Because of constant time jumps and abrupt changes of locations, the game quickly losing the plot to the point when developers themselves forgetting about their own rules and ideas.
Blair Witch constantly adding new mechanics, but except videotapes I've mentioned before, none of those ideas are reaching their full potential. In the first chapters game actively suggest you give commands to your dog, and at first Bullet actually finding some useful stuff. But the more you play, the less you are using those commands because in most cases Bullet is not finding anything, even garbage. At the beginning of the game there's an episode where the protagonist having a panic attack because his dog left him alone - but after that, I never had to use commands to call the dog go back because he was always close anyway. And even when the protagonist ends up being alone again a few times later, he suddenly not experiencing any difficulties with that. So, what's the point in all this?
But my frustration with Blair Witch reached its highest point when I've reached the final chapter of this game, when the protagonist is getting locked down in the house from the original movie. Instead of something exciting and interesting, you just mindlessly walk in the dark for an entire hour, occasionally sneaking past the incredibly boring monster. As a reward for your suffering game will show you one of the most anticlimactic and stupid endings I've ever seen. There's also an alternative "good" ending that you can get if you will ignore some collectibles, but it's just as bad as the ending that you'll probably get during your first playthrough. All those talks about how your relations with your dog companion will affect the ending is a lie, in reality, it changes almost nothing.
Disjointed and badly paced compilation of good ideas - that's what it is. Blair Witch is not a terrible game, you can play it for its forest and atmosphere, but sadly, it's not worth the full price. There is not much to look for if you are a horror genre fan, there are a few actually terrifying moments with the witch, but every other attempt to scare the player with cheap jumpscares and creepy noises in the dark probably won't impress you much. Fans of the original movies won't be satisfied either, because, outside a few familiar elements like stick figures and that house in the ending, Blair Witch is not really connected to its source material. So it's really hard to recommend this game to anyone - unless you really like nature and forest scenery?
31.
The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dreams - 3.5 hours
Not much to say about this one, pretty average HOG with kinda short story. The only thing that makes it stand out is artstyle, which is blatantly copying original BioShock, they copied everything, even a pipe hacking puzzle. The story takes place in an underwater city were some mysterious experiment went wrong, and you occasionally meeting the masked architect of that city who is somehow connected to the protagonist... Really, really average game that will interest only those who love that kind of games. If you want to get into the HOG genre, I suggest you find a better game instead.
32.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 175 hours
I want to clarify that before I started playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I stopped playing games from this series after Black Flag. When in 2014 Ubisoft almost simultaneously released two full-fledged Assassin's Creed games, I realized that I was sick of playing the same game year after year, and decided to take a break from this series. The release of Assassin's Creed Origins looked like the right moment to return to this series - but having Assassin's Creed II as an example, I've decided to wait until Ubisoft will polish the new mechanics in the next game before jumping back in.
When Odyssey came out one year ago, it looked exactly like the game that I've been waiting all this time. The setting of Ancient Greece, ability to choose the protagonist, even bigger turn towards the RPG genre - all this sounded very intriguing. And when I started playing, I saw that my first impressions were right - Odyssey feels like a completely different game, that has almost no connections to older Assassin's Creed titles. But I can't say for certain is it a good or a bad thing. It's just... Different.
The main difference between Odyssey and previous games in the series is the fact that it's an absolutely MASSIVE game. Old Assassin's Creed games had an open-world too, but the map size in Odyssey is just insane, it took me 175 hours to visit every region and complete all available quests without installed DLCs. For a singleplayer game with a linear structure and without levels generation, this is a really impressive figure. The only singleplayer game that I've played for more was Fallout 3, and that was only thanks to amazing mods support by the community.
The different question is, was it really justified to make such a gigantic world? Well, If you love the Ancient Greek setting and enjoy the "virtual tourism" aspect, then Odyssey will give you more than enough to satisfy your passion for history and travel. There are dozens of regions with their own unique landmarks - you will not confuse Crete with Samos, and I was exploring every new area not even for quests, but simply to discover a new cool looking places and try to take beautiful screenshots. In some regions, you can also find a unique questlines that are not connected to the main story. Personally, I think that Lokris was the best in this regard - whoever made quests for this region should get a raise because they were one of my favorite moments of this game.
However, if you are not interested in the historical and "tourism" aspects of Odyssey, then not everything in this game is as good as I hoped it would be. As I said, Odyssey moved very far into the RPG genre territory - the choice of the main character, leveling up, skills, weapons and armor rarity, even the choice with consequences in dialogs, they've added everything that you could've imagined. But that's not all, Ubisoft seriously decided to surpass BioWare and added nineteen characters that available as a romantic interest for the player. And those romances not locked to your protagonist choice, so you can love all of them as much as you want without any restrictions.
But this attempt to make a full-fledged RPG game is significantly lacking in depth. The main problems are auto-leveling and lack of variety in enemy types. There is not much point in leveling up when the game's world constantly scales with you, and without interesting threats, 95% of the battles in Odyssey going by the same scenario over and over again. The combat itself is not so bad, the abilities are very useful and allow you to choose your own playstyle - but after a while, it starts to feel repetitive and fights just can't surprise you anymore. Levels and numbers are increasing, but there is no real difference in strength because everything always remains on the same level. Increasing the difficulty only artificially increase the length of the fights, so here is my advice to you - do not hesitate to adjust the difficulty and auto-leveling settings to make the game more fun to play, since there are no achievements related to difficulty levels in this game.
Odyssey also has additional features like mercenaries and war between Athens and Sparta. But those gameplay mechanics were not thought out well and instead of adding to fun they only waste your time. The mercenary system is kinda similar to the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor - there are mercenaries of different ranks and levels that are roaming around the game's world just like you. And if you start to commit crimes and attack outposts, then those mercenaries will try to kill you in order to get a bounty for your head. But developers slightly overdid with the frequency of those bounty hunters attacks and made them extremely annoying. And this forces you to play not the way you want, but to go for a full stealth walkthrough, because if you act without anyone noticing you, then a reward for your head will not be assigned and bounty hunters won't bother you.
Regions capture system sounds intriguing at first, but in fact, it doesn't make much sense in participating in these activities either, because the rewards for capturing the region are too meaningless. And it's impossible to take all the regions under the control of one faction because territories are constantly switching ownership between Athens and Sparta even without player intervention. As a result, all those gameplay mechanics are much easier to ignore, because they don't lead anywhere. And it's a shame, because if you had to actually compete with other mercenaries for contracts, or if you could have lead one of the sides in this war to complete victory, then it could have added greatly to the gameplay loop.
Not everything is good with the main storyline as well. Personally, I've chosen Kassandra, and in my opinion, she's a great protagonist, probably one of the best in the series. There are a couple of interesting secondary characters, for example, I enjoyed a lot the conversations with Sokrates and Barnabas. There are also some good moments in the main storyline, and sometimes dialog choices really have serious consequences. But Ubisoft didn't manage to properly finish the main storyline - for some reason, the main quest was divided into three branches, about finding your family, destroying the Cult of Kosmos (who are the main villains of this game) and sealing the Atlantis. In theory, family and Cult branches are connected, but in the end, after we finally deal with family matters and find out who really was the leader of the Cult... Everyone suddenly stops caring about it, and you unlock the achievement for completing the game, along with the option to start a "New Game+". And this is weird because the personality of the Cult leader should be a shocking revelation - moreover, when the protagonist enters the Cult's lair, he seems to be unaware of the leader's true identity and looks shocked, although without this knowledge it's impossible to start the last quest of this branch. And to make everything even weirder, in the end, you have a choice of how to deal with the Cult leader - you can kill him, let him go, or... Flirt with him. Although that kiss doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah, Ubisoft really tried to catch up and overtake BioWare in everything...
The last, third main quest branch about Atlantis ended up being straight-up insulting. In fact, this is the real ending of the game, because it has those rare moments when developers suddenly remember about the "modern times" storyline. Problem is that it literally just abruptly ends in the middle of the story, and to find out how it all ended, Ubisoft offers you to buy an expensive DLC. As if all these microtransactions with boosters and skins were not enough.
Speaking about microtransactions. Since I systematically cleared all regions of the map, I obviously didn't experience any problems in going through the main storyline. There were always more than enough resources for upgrades, with the only exception of the last levels of ship upgrades. But still, selling resources and XP boosters in a singleplayer game is just ridiculous. Ubisoft also sells all sorts of cosmetic things like horse skins and armor sets, and in theory, they can be obtained for free in the Oikos of the Olympians in-game store. But in reality, collecting a full set of armor through this store is almost impossible, because the list of available items is very limited and it randomly changes every week, not to mention how difficult it is to get a special currency that used to buy things in this store. And of course, you can also try your luck with lootboxes, but the chances of getting something good from them is an absolute joke. I get it, you want players to buy these skins with real money, but then do not create the illusion that they can be obtained for free in order to brush off criticism about microtransactions in a full-priced game by telling "but you can acquire them for free if you want!". I'm so sick of this shit…
As you may see, there's a lot of things that you can criticize in this game. But at the same time, I can't say that Odyssey is a bad game. The gameplay is so well balanced that even despite all of the undeniable shortcomings, this game still makes you want to come back and play it more. Ubisoft really managed to create a true fast-food of the gaming - you realize that you are doing the same thing for hours and can spend this time on better games, but this whole system just works for an entire walkthrough. Maybe it's all because I liked traveling around the game's world, and I was clearing all these goddamn question marks with outposts and chests somewhat in the background of my journey.
Developers made a lot of mistakes, but they also did a few things right. For example, I really liked the fact that the appearance of the armor can be changed at any time - not very realistic, but it solved the ancient problem of the RPG genre when instead of cool looking armor you had to wear some rags because they had better stats. I also liked that designers thought about situations when if you looted quest location before actually accepting the quest, in most cases you don't need to return to this location and can complete the quest right away. Odyssey has enormous potential, and if Ubisoft continues to refine this new gameplay concept, then the next game in the series will be something truly magnificent.
Well, as for Odyssey itself, it's a well-made journey, but not a perfect game. The unsatisfying ending, badly thought out mechanics and overall repetitiveness of the gameplay spoiled my final impression about this game. But if you like the Ancient Greek setting and traveling around a huge world in which you can disappear for hundreds of hours, then Odyssey will be an excellent choice on the next sale (and be sure to get it bundled with Season Pass so you'll get the full version of the game). I can't say anything about the quality of DLCs, because, after 175 hours in the base version of the game, I'm honestly a little burned out with Odyssey and just want to finally switch to something else, and preferably not so huge. Last advice, if you value your time, then do not try to reach 100% completion in Odyssey - remember, everything in moderation.
33.
Ion Fury - 15 hours
Ion Fury is an impressive example of what can be achieved even with such old tools as the Build engine. It's a fast-paced, old-school First Person Shooter, and it plays so damn good it doesn't feel outdated at all. Compared to most of the modern scripted shooting galleries, Ion Fury actually feels fresh, and it was fun for me to play it like it's the 90s again.
First of all, the level design in this game is just amazing, stages have interesting layouts and always full of secrets. Levels in Ion Fury are extremely fun to explore, looking for hidden places with supplies or just little easter eggs. Designers really outdid themselves in this game, they've really tried to use all available tools in creating interesting situations. Like I love what they did with mirrors in this game, you can see your character reflection in them and sometimes can even spot the enemy who's hiding behind the wall. Working mirrors is a huge problem in recent graphics-heavy games, so it's great that developers tried to use the advantages of the older tech to provide something unique compared to modern titles.
The gameplay itself is very fun and challenging, I was playing on Ultra Viscera difficulty and that's where this game really shines. Ion Fury is action-packed and not an easy game, but it never feels unfair, enemies threat is perfectly balanced with weapons that you have at your disposal. If you want to beat this game, you need to constantly strafe and play it smart - and also use quickload hotkey A LOT. Yeah, at first it can be kinda frustrating, but once you learn how to dodge projectiles and don't forget to constantly switch between weapons depending on the combat situation, Ion Fury becomes addictive and fun to play.
Despite the age of Build engine, I think Ion Fury looks great because they nailed the artstyle and it looks really charming. I loved those first stages on the streets of some futuristic city, and excellent work with audio only adds to this game's atmosphere. I can't praise enough the soundtrack for this game, it's like it's taken straight from the '90s, and those electro-industrial tunes are totally my jam.
Unfortunately, I can't say that Ion Fury is a perfect game. First of all, the storyline is seriously lacking in depth and basically doesn't exist. I'm not saying that something like retro FPS really in the need of the complex plot with twists and drama, but there's simply not enough lore about the game's world. We don't know the protagonist's backstory and what happened to this city, only that we are killing bad guys who did the bad things. All those cool looking levels are just empty decorations for arenas where you shoot enemies, and it's a shame because it feels it could have been so much more than this. The protagonist and main villain are occasionally talking to each other, but despite good voice acting, those dialogues get old pretty fast because there's literally nothing else happening in the storyline.
Maybe it could have been less of a problem if Ion Fury wasn't such a long game. It took me 15 hours to complete it, but as much as I loved the gameplay, I think it could have been much better if the game was like twice shorter than this. It was a mistake to release it in Early Access because Ion Fury suffers from uneven pacing. It's clear that developers were adding those stages as they were ready without doing full playtests because soon after the first few stages, they forgot to start adding new things to the gameplay. You unlock all of the available weapons within the first few hours, and the game barely introducing any new enemy types, so Ion Fury slowly starts to become repetitive after each new stage. The fact that later stages are moving from city levels to those boring dark undergrounds and labs only making it worse, I hated those types of levels in old games and I still hate them now.
There are also boss fights in this game, but they were all kinda underwhelming. You just need to kill the overpowered enemy by repeating the same tactic over and over again until his health drops to zero. They are not hard, it just takes way too much time to beat them, like with that Revenant boss battle - it's like his hitboxes are messed up and he simply ignores most of the damage. And during this battle, you can resupply only with chaingun ammo by picking only 10 bullets at once, and to pick more you have to stand still for a few seconds, which in this game is the equivalent of the death sentence. Last boss fight was a mess too, I honestly hoped to see something more memorable and interesting that… What we got in the end.
Well, despite the lack of proper worldbuilding and storytelling, disappointing boss fights and not enough variety in enemy types, Ion Fury is still a great game. It slightly overstays its welcome, but the gameplay and level design are so good they help to ignore repetitiveness and lack of surprises in the last stages. Yeah, it could have been better, but I still had a blast with this game, and considering its price, I definitely recommend you check it out. It has an extremely satisfying shooting, excellent sound design and hand-made levels that are fun to explore, so in my book, it is worth a shot. I just hope that the studio will listen to the criticism and next time won't go with the Early Access route because linear FPS is not a very suitable genre for that kind of development process.
34.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - The Grand Caiman - 2 hours
Well, this DLC is so far the best one from SotTR Season Pass, nice variety and pacing, good story bits and great looking tomb. It's still kinda short and feels like it was supposed to be a part of the main game, but whatever, it's a part of definitive edition now anyway.
35.
Pathologic 2 - 50 hours
Pathologic 2 is a game with a difficult fate. Initially, it was a remake of the first game in this series, which was released back in 2005. But after 5 years of development, the original concept went through a lot of drastic and even dramatic changes. While continuing to follow the spirit of the original game, Pathologic 2 has turned into something else - and personally, I'm glad that it turned out this way. I love the original Pathologic game with passion, but it was a unique and complex piece of art, which is impossible to precisely recreate again. Instead, we got a new experience, unique and special in its own way, that is definitely not for everyone, but it sure won't leave anyone indifferent.
So what IS a Pathologic 2? Well, first of all, this is an unusual mix of a survival open-world game with the roleplaying elements. And secondly, despite its name, this is not a sequel - playing through the original game is welcome, but not necessary. The main plot and the basics of the gameplay remained the same, but the devil is in the details. Something was removed, such as the impact of a number of survivors on the ending that you'll get, something was changed, such as the narrative structure and the combat system. However, despite the attempts of developers to "modernize" the gameplay of the original and make it more accessible for a wider audience, Pathologic 2 is still an extremely hard game to get into - I would even say it is hostile to the player.
The protagonist, just like some players who's familiar with the original game, returns to his hometown after a long absence. Everything around is vaguely familiar, but a lot of stuff has to be learned the hard way, with a minimum amount of hints. But there is not much time for learning, because the time is relentless - to do everything, you have only 11 in-game days, and each of them lasts for only two hours of real time. Your character needs to sleep and eat, or he will die because of fatigue and hunger. You won't have problems with finding a place to sleep, but to get food and other supplies you need to buy or find them somewhere, and at first, money is a huge problem. Not to mention that your inventory doesn't have an infinite capacity either, so you can't keep everything and need to constantly decide which items to take and what you'll have to leave behind. And the real value of those items is not as obvious as you might think at first.
If during the first days' unprepared players can more or less manage to survive, most of them will experience true desperation when the epidemic starts and shit hits the fan for real. In addition to hunger and exhaustion, now you have to think about the danger of getting infected by the plague, which is very difficult to cure during the first days. The plague covers entire districts and your immunity is slowly getting reduced when you trying to move through these areas, and touching infected objects or getting into plague clouds can cause serious problems for you. And even in the districts that are free from infection, Pathologic 2 doesn't leave the player alone, because at night the town streets became flooded with bandits that will try to kill you at first sight.
It's not surprising that judging by the achievements stats on Steam, most of the players didn't last for longer than the second day. Pathologic 2 is just ridiculously hard - the protagonist's stomach is like a bottomless pit, stamina runs out almost instantly and prevents you from running for long. The town's layout is deliberately confusing and might be annoying to navigate, there is no minimap and most of the side streets lead to a dead-end, so you can easily lose even more time while trying to find a shortcut. In melee combat, you can't just mindlessly spam attack button, or you'll run out of stamina and become defenseless for a few seconds, knives and other defensive items break almost instantly, and firearms start to jam after just a couple of shots. There are no quicksaves in this game, so after any fatal mistake, you'll have to replay a decent chunk of the game or constantly waste your time running to the nearest save point. The cherry on top in all this is the fact that after each death, the game punishes you and PERMANENTLY reduces some of the protagonist's stats, and you can't remove this penalty even after loading the previous save file. Perhaps the developers really went a little too far with all this stuff, but after receiving a lot of complaints from the players, they've updated the game and added difficulty options. So if you are interested only in the storyline, then behold, because you have an opportunity to dive into the surreal world of Pathologic 2 without all this endless suffering.
HOWEVER, despite the fact that you CAN do that, I highly advise you to NOT change anything before your first walkthrough. Because all these difficulties are not some kind of design error - in the case of Pathologic 2, the unfairness of the gameplay benefits the atmosphere and changes your perception of this game, forcing you to play it differently from what modern AAA blockbusters have taught you. I've passed the game design course myself and know firsthand that everyone is teaching how a player should be cherished and actively entertained to prevent him from giving up playing because of a difficult or boring moment. Ice-Pick Lodge refused to follow this paradigm, they are not giving any clear directions and instead offer to the player to try and figure out everything on his own. Here's the town, here's the plague, here's the time limit, now go and solve this riddle! And it works, because despite all of these struggles, you want to return to this strange and hostile world over and over again to reveal more of its secrets.
No matter how skillful as a player you are, at first, you'll have to quite often reload the last save and repeat the same parts of the game and even entire days. However, you still won't have enough time and miss a lot of important story events. And this is completely normal because Pathologic 2 is a game about the race against the time. You need to deal with the fact that you'll have to constantly make a real, difficult choice. Some other character in the opposite part of the town knows something important about the plague, but your protagonist is tired to death and hungry, so you have to give up on this opportunity and just try to survive. We got used too much that we are the kings in the singleplayer games and everything revolves around us, so for many players, at first it will be difficult to understand that a failed quest or another stupid death in Pathologic 2 is also a valid result, and not a sentence.
There is, of course, a different way - you can stubbornly refuse to accept your fate and constantly reload the old save files until everything lines up perfectly. It's very difficult to do everything in Pathologic 2, but it's possible - I've spent 50 hours playing this game on the intended difficulty, and after numerous amount of tries I've managed to save everyone, never died and didn't miss anything really important. If you know what to do, then there will be enough time for everything - yes, the timeframe is very strict, but it's a realistic goal. To achieve such a result, you'll have to plan your actions not even for two or three, but for a dozen steps forward, however Pathologic 2 will reward plentifully every player who will decide to go that far in the fight against his fate. And while I kept refusing to accept even a small defeat because of my stubbornness, I was amazed by how complex is the system that this game is built around.
Pathologic 2 is an insanely ambitious game. In the original Pathologic the gameplay and narrative were more or less straightforward - each day the player was given one "main" quest, and if he was failing to complete it before the end of the day, one of the important characters could die. This time the game is divided into 4 acts, which could last for several in-game days, and quests have been replaced by an events system. Events are connected to each other, and often those connections are becoming clear only at the very end of the act. Instead of the usual quest journal, Pathologic 2 has a thought system - by witnessing more and more events, the player can view connections between them in a "Thoughts" menu. All this remotely resembles the Deduction system from the Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares, but it's made on a significantly higher level of depth and quality. It's hard to describe that feeling of satisfaction when all these thoughts and clues on that peculiar map open piece by piece and form a complete image, and you realize how ambitious were ideas that developers had in their minds.
Behind the wall of hostile gameplay, Pathologic 2 is hiding a complex narrative and world with dozens of characters with their own thoughts and stories. This game is full of interesting situations, and even a brief mention of them in this video will be a crime on my part. And what personally amazes me is that the vast majority of players won't see even half of those scenes - an insane waste of resources by the standards of the modern gamedev industry. The atmosphere in this game is so surreal and breathtaking, you want to come back to this weird world just to feel it again. Music in Pathologic 2 is not playing often, but when it will start to play, it'll be a truly memorable moment.
The graphics are done on a decent level, but do not expect anything special in terms of textures and effects quality - after all, this game is made by an indie studio, which had less money on the whole project than some corporations spend on a single model of the protagonist in their next seasonal blockbuster. Also, be prepared that the game may have performance issues on the old hardware - when you hear about the "open-world indie game made on Unity engine", you can imagine what to expect in terms of performance.
Pathologic 2 was the first game that I've backed on Kickstarter, and for many years it remained the only project that I've ever supported financially. And for me personally, it fully met my expectations - I got a difficult, imperfect, but at the same time a unique game that was a truly memorable experience. Like in the original game, I slowly began to better navigate around the streets without the help of a map, remembered who and what preferred to trade, figured out the best ways to survive with minimal efforts, and after completing the game this strange steppe town felt like home to me. Pathologic 2 is an outstanding exploration game, and if you'll be able to overcome its difficulties, then it will reward you plentifully for your perseverance and curiosity.
It's kinda funny to see that Pathologic 2 is more or less repeated the fate of the original game. The first Pathologic was also an extremely ambitious game, which was originally supposed to have 7 playable characters and 500,000 words of dialogues. And professional critics, for the most part, didn't understand it too, because they tried to evaluate Ice-Pick Lodge's piece of art by the standards of ordinary games. But I would say that Pathologic 2 is not really a game, but more of an experience, and for each player, this experience will be unique and very personal. Therefore, I highly recommend to give it a chance, because I doubt we'll see anything like this in the near future. And remember that Pathologic 2 is a game about learning from your mistakes - so use the knowledge that you'll get while playing it and never give up. After all, that's how it works in real life.
