Disapprove: Resonance of Fate 4K/HD EDITION

Many years ago I had a chance to check out a few hours of Resonance of Fate (also known as End of Eternity) on my friend’s PS3. I didn’t get too far but told myself that I must return to that game someday, simply due to how amazing the combat system in it was. Well, now I have. It wasn’t as pleasant of an experience as I’ve hoped for.

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Thoughts on: Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

It’s (sadly) rare to see a mid-budget release in this day and age, but Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, based on the newest variation of the Swedish tabletop franchise Mutant called “Mutant – År Noll”, is exactly that. It’s a game made by a rather small studio with the support of Funcom on Unreal Engine, that tries to do a lot, while also clearly trying to be very smart with budget planning for every little thing. It’s also a curious mix of a turn-based action RPG with tactical combat similar to the XCOM reboot, a stealth game and light survival elements in regards to very tight resource planning. And it succeeds more often than it fails.

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In love with: killer7 (on PC)

Writing about something like killer7 new PC port is a bit weird. On one hand, this is very much a revisit of a game from 2005, originally on GameCube and PlayStation 2, that I have played (though never finished) back in the day. Making this a bit of a retrospective post, like my O tempora series. Yet at the same time, this new PC port of the game, despite not bringing big changes, can play so much differently, that it’s hard not to approach it as if it was a new game entirely. So I will try to look at the game from both perspectives – as a replay of a cult classic game from 14 years ago, and as a completely new title you might’ve never heard before and might want to check out. May the lord smile and the devil have mercy.

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Quick thoughts on: Late Shift

I remember when the idea of an “interactive movie” sounded like something absolutely amazing. What we got instead were barely interactive and rather poor in quality adventure games with questionable Dragon Lair-ish design. After a while, even rather well put together proper adventure games built on live action scenes stopped happening and after the late 90s there were almost no games based around the idea of using FMVs as a basis. That is, until several years ago when “FMV games” started popping up again here and there. They were mostly traditional FMV adventure games, like the return of Tex Murphy or Contradiction, and as such it wasn’t surprising to see them learn on the mistakes of older titles of the similar sort. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Late Shift is very much that “interactive movie” idea that you’d see with Dragon Lair and dread to remember. And that it somehow works this time.

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Happy about: The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky “Trilogy”

Ever since I’ve started playing games from Nihon Falcom, I’ve heard the Trails in the Sky subseries of their The Legend of Heroes franchise brought up a lot as an example of a truly amazing story-driven game with amazing character development, deep world lore and really good narrative. And since the official international PC re-release of the first game 5 years ago the talks about these games grew even harder to ignore. So I’ve finally decided to give all of the 3 games a go.

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Disapprove: State of Mind

Since Daedalic Entertainment are usually better known for their more comedic 2D point and click adventure titles, I suppose a lot of people might be caught off guard with a serious cyberpunk adventure game with Dreamfall-like interface made in Unreal Engine. It tries to be an interesting cinematic adventure with a solid plot and a cool visual style. If only it could keep that throughout the entire game…

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Late thoughts on: Titanfall 2 as singleplayer

I’ve heard a lot of positive things about Titanfall 2 singleplayer campaign back when it was released over 2 years ago, but somehow couldn’t really be bothered to play it until now. Recent release of a (yet another) battle royale title, Apex Legends set in the same universe, reminded me that I need to check how good that campaign actually was. So I did. And… it’s fine.

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Thoughts on: >observer_

I got around to playing the previous horror project of the developer, Layers of Fear, about a year and a half late, so I guess it’s only fair the same happened with >observer_. I was somewhat curious about this one, however, since I’ve not seen many horror titles of any genre in cyberpunk setting before, and since the developers somehow managed to get Rutger Hauer voice the main character of the game. Did they manage to make an actually good game this time around, or is it still all about cool visuals?

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