It’s odd. I know, from talking to Dan Pinchbeck, the founder and creative director of The Chinese Room, over 10 years ago, that they never wanted to stick to the story exploration games (or walking simulators as people often dismissively call them). Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, which I still like a lot, was supposed to be more systems driven, before cutting down on features in favor of story on recommendation from Frictional Games. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was envisioned as a simulation game where you live out the last moments before the world ends, not a game where you see echoes of these events. And while I didn’t find their first title after being purchased by Sumo Digital, that is Little Orpheus, interesting and never finished it, it was trying to be a cinematic/puzzle platformer, not a game driven by narration. Maybe with the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 they would finally be able to deliver a title that’s great not just narratively, but also in terms of gameplay. Because Still Wakes the Deep isn’t doing it. It isn’t doing much at all, sadly.
Tag: game review
Happy about: Sniper Elite 5 (Complete Edition)
As mentioned in my recent revisit of Sniper Elite V2 (this time Remastered), I’ve quite enjoyed Sniper Elite 4. It was hardly as detailed or inventive as the titles it directly pulled from, like Hitman or Metal Gear Solid V, but what it had was extremely fun and satisfying. So I was looking forward to playing a sequel, yet when Sniper Elite 5 came out I was too stressed due to living through early months of the full scale russian invasion, I was rather picky about which games I was comfortable playing. Plus, a lot of the initial user reviews on the game were surprisingly negative, commenting on its inferiority to the fourth game. Two years since its release and one year since the release of its final DLC mission, I’ve decided to give it a shot and was not disappointed.
Quick thoughts on: Sniper Elite V2 Remastered
Back when I’ve played Sniper Elite V2 about 10 years ago it was just a second entry in the budding middle budget franchise from Rebellion. A third person stealth shooter with emphasis on sniping and slow motion kills that could switch to the X-ray vision, it was somewhat novel and curious at the time, even if not particularly good. But the series evolved since then and Sniper Elite 4, while not among the best stealth action titles I’ve ever played, was an easy recommendation and an extremely satisfying game. And a year after its release, Rebellion decided to remaster V2 that originally released in 2013. In preparation for playing the latest entry in the series, I’ve decided to revisit this title and figure out for myself if there’s a point in playing this game, when you have the improved sequels.
Happy about: Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons
Have you played The Maze of Galious? I haven’t, but I did get interested in it after the original La-Mulana came out – a game that was directly influenced by the Konami classic. Not many other “metroidvania” titles in a similar vein exist even today and apart from Nigoro, only one other developer has consistently tried to replicate the magic of the game they clearly love a lot. Starting with UnEpic and now arriving at a logical conclusion of the journey with Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons. A game that serves as an unofficial sequel to The Maze of Galious.
Happy about: Dead Island 2 (with DLCs)
The original Dead Island from Techland had a somewhat difficult development, but became an odd success when it was finally released in 2011. Its often unintentionally funny coop was the secret sauce for that period of games when the cooperative titles were extremely popular. While its often mediocre quest and level design and simplistic and grindy action RPG/looter shooter mechanics were often excused. It also allowed for melee combat using the analogue sticks, had some systemic elements, ability to drive cars and its story, despite being boring, actually acknowledged all playable characters even if you were to play solo – something that Borderlands wasn’t doing yet. But despite me being somewhat positive about the game over a decade ago, I couldn’t even bother to finish its standalone expansion Riptide, let alone ever replay it.
Techland moved on to create a potentially more interesting franchise with Dying Light, but I didn’t like those either. All while Dead Island 2 went into development hell, switching developers and being remade from scratch several times. But it has been released last year and all of its previously announced DLCs are out as well, so I’ve decided to give it a go. To my surprise, it turned out to be quite entertaining, if you know what to expect.
Thoughts on: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
Of all the titles Ninja Theory have made, if there was one that never needed a sequel, it was the fantastic Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice from 2017. But there’ve been plenty of examples in games and other media, where a sequel that never really needed to exist gets created and becomes as liked as the original or even overshadows it. Well, I doubt this will happen with Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.
O tempora: FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (Collector’s Edition)
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Back in 2004 physics simulation of all kinds seemed like the coolest new thing in videogames. The biggest example, of course, was Half-Life 2, but near the end of the year a Finnish development studio Bugbear Entertainment released a racing game where the main gimmicks were extremely detailed physics and car deformation – FlatOut. Instead of going for extremely high speed street racing style how Burnout was doing at the time, the game went for the demolition derby aesthetic with most races taking place on dirt roads somewhere in forests in different weather conditions. It was really cool, but didn’t click with me personally due to feeling a bit more simulation heavy than I’d preferred.
Two years later, however, the studio followed the game up with a bigger badder sequel FlatOut 2 that added more types of cars and tracks a felt just the right amount of arcadey for me, so I played the crap out of it. This game then received an Xbox 360 port called FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage that enhanced and added a bunch of things and a bit later that same port was made available for PCs. With one huge catch – it was a Games For Windows Live title. No one liked GFWL even at the time, as despite a good concept Microsoft botched the execution of the service really hard and within several years the service was discontinued and isn’t even working properly on modern systems. So, for years FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage was very hard to get working correctly on PC. Until recently, when the “Collector’s Edition” patch updated the game to not just remove GFWL requirement, but to also update the title to work correctly on modern hardware. So I’ve decided to check if the game can suck me in once again, like it did years ago.
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Happy about: Crow Country
We seem to be in the middle of survival horror revival period, with both high profile and niche indie titles revisiting this niche subgenre of action adventure games. There have been some great titles released over the past 7 years and quite a few solid ones. But there’ve also been some stinkers and a few titles that cared more about the aesthetics of the genre, not its design. From the early previews and the demo, I expected Crow Country to land among the latter. Thankfully, the game turned out to be considerably better than that.
Thoughts on: Children of the Sun
I like simple games if they have something cool about them. Could be a nice core gameplay idea, or interesting style or story. Even before the proper rise of indie games, there were super low budget PC and console games. Series like “Simple” from D3 Publisher or the “SuperLite” from Success even gave birth to niche but popular franchises, most notable being Earth Defense Force. When I first saw Children of the Sun, I thought of such games and was hoping that it could have that “something cool”, whatever it is. But after the quite short playthrough of the title and just one day passing, I’m already struggling to remember the game.
O tempora: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
While I suck at fighting games and (to a lesser extent) beat em ups, I grew during the era when they were The Coolest Thing Ever. A local arcade, and I’m still surprised we had one after the crapshow that was Soviet Union, had cabinets with Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Streets of Rage II, Vendetta (Crime Fighters II) and, of course, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And all of the NES clones came preloaded with X games in one packages where at least one of the classic TMNT games would be included. The TMNT animated series from the 80s were also all the rage and so was the first live action movie. Heck, as a child I even liked the second one.
But it’s been decades, TMNT is no longer as popular as it used to be (though still quite liked), Konami stopped making good games and then any games (and are quite disliked). Curiously, the same year as this Cowabunga Collection released, a genuinely fun new game inspired by the titles from the collection was released – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. So, while game preservation is really important, would there be a reason for people who didn’t grow up on the titles from this collection to check it out?
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