game review – Page 6

Happy about: Dead Island 2 (with DLCs)

07/06/2024 07/06/2024

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

26/05/2024 26/05/2024

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)

20/05/2024 20/05/2024

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.

Happy about: Crow Country

13/05/2024 13/05/2024

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.

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Thoughts on: Children of the Sun

07/05/2024 07/05/2024

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

29/04/2024 29/04/2024

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?

In love with: Chants of Sennaar

28/04/2024 28/04/2024

Something about the games where the “puzzle” involves translating languages fascinates me. Maybe it’s my own background as a Ukrainian interpreter, someone who had to juggle several languages in his mind since early childhood. Or maybe it’s the curiosity of how such a complex idea could get “gamified”. But it feels like something finally “clicked” for the developers when the fantastic Return of the Obra Dinn got released, as its central idea of assigning assumptions to concepts and then having the game confirm or refute those assumptions in bulk became the basis for now two language-focused puzzle adventure games: Heaven’s Vault and Chants of Sennaar. Games that are similar in many ways, but also extremely different in where their focus lies.

In love with: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake

16/04/2024 16/04/2024

Back in 2013 Starbreeze Studios was in a weird position. They had lost several key team members in the years prior and in 2012 released Syndicate, a game that wasn’t well received. Releasing a small downloadable only cinematic platformer title was not something people expected of them at the time, but Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was a success that made people trust the studio once again. Pitched and directed by Josef Fares, who has since worked on purely cooperative titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, it was a very curious attempt to create a “single-player coop” kind of game. That used its simple yet inventive controls to tell a wonderful fairy tale (in the classic dark but hopeful way) story that evoked emotions through basic interactions.

The game has been re-released and ported numerous times since then and now, over 10 years since release, it got an almost shot for shot remake of the game, similarly to Like a Dragon: Ishin! from last year. This remake aims to be a new definitive version of the game and while it doesn’t quite succeed to be that at the moment, the game at the core remains amazing.

O tempora: Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster

10/04/2024 10/04/2024

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’ve played every other entry in the Jedi Knight series of games, the very first entry has eluded me for years. No one I knew talked much about it in the 90s, as prior to the sequel we didn’t hear about it and after the sequel was out we were more interested in it and the expansion that followed. While in the 00s, after Jedi Outcast was out, I got interested in revisiting the earlier games, but they were very hard to launch on the hardware I had at that time. When Dark Forces was re-released on GOG in a playable state, I… didn’t care, to be honest. And only recently, when the fantastic fan made Force Engine was made available decided to give it a go, before abandoning it about half-way through.

Now that an official Remaster is out, made by NightDive who rarely disappoint, I decided to give it another chance. And I almost wish I didn’t. As for how important this game is in terms of historic value, it’s also one of the most frustrating classic FPS titles I’ve played in years.

Thoughts on: Hollow Cocoon

05/04/2024 05/04/2024

There has been a lot of attempts at creating horror themed adventures that focus on a stalker-type enemy ever since the 90s. Clock Tower series are possibly the best known example, but one can think of plenty of other examples, starting from something simple like the werewolf in Ecstatica, to the more recent and complex xenomorph in Alien: Isolation. Hollow Cocoon is a very respectable attempt at creating a horror themed stealth action adventure with a persistent stalker from a small studio. I’m very happy it exists and I really admire it. But it’s also not a game that I could recommend to most players.

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