Quick thoughts on: SteamWorld Build

As someone who’s usually not playing strategy games of any kind, including city builder games, I wasn’t initially planning to check SteamWorld Build. Even though I do find the universe of SteamWorld adorable, I’ve never cared about any of the titles apart from the fantastic metroidvanias of SteamWorld Dig and its even better sequel. But the demo of the game got me hooked – it felt like a perfect “introduction to the genre” kind of game. As it happens, it’s not really perfect anything, but it’s kinda nice anyway.

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In love with: The Talos Principle 2

About 9 years ago Croteam surprised everyone by releasing a puzzle adventure with genuinely well written plot, instead of a mindless shooter where you kill dozens of enemies per minute. I loved the game, but by the end of the main game playthrough I got a bit tired with it and did complete the Road to Gehenna DLC. So while I was really interested in seeing Croteam revisit this idea again, I also wasn’t sure how one could make a sequel.

As it turned out, they knew exactly how to do it and it goes beyond my most optimistic expectations.

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Disapprove: Diablo IV

What’s really unpleasant with the sunk-cost fallacy is when you know you’re engaging in it but is too stupid and stubborn to stop. Anyway, Diablo IV is the most miserable time I’ve had with any action RPG in my life and I’ve still wasted 55 hours on it. I really should’ve refunded it in the first hour, but… I mean, it’s “Diablo” and I have positive things to say even about the third game, as it can be very enjoyable if shallow. But this… oh boy, this was horrible.

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Revisiting Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Despite claiming that I won’t revisit Diablo III after reviewing Diablo II: Resurrected earlier this year, I did. I’m planning to play the fourth entry in the franchise, so I’ve decided that I might as well play them all. And yes, “all”, Blizzard, I don’t play games on my phone so no other entries exist. Truth of the matter is, I don’t have much to add to what I’ve said back when I first played the game in 2015, so I’ll simply focus on the most important points of what was already written, and add a few details on what I didn’t mention at the time. With the overall impression being the same – despite the hate it got, it’s not a bad game.

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Ugly duckling: Alone in the Dark (2008)

Alone in the Dark from 2008 (also known as Alone in the Dark: Inferno on PS3) might be the last truly ambitious game of the last 20 years. That’s one hell of a statement to make, but I have good reasons to say it – what this game attempted to create is on a level that has not been attempted since. Possibly because the game didn’t turn out great and wasn’t positively received. I loved it back in 2008 even now for how frustrating a lot of the game is, I cannot help but love the effort and potential. While at the same time knowing well, that I can’t really recommend playing this game to the majority of people.

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Happy about: Ion Fury: Aftershock

Four years ago Ion Fury became the first new commercial product in about 20 years to utilize the Build engine, best known for being used in Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior. The experience of playing the game was kinda neat, but also slightly confusing as while it was truly a classic FPS down to its engine, it also felt like a somewhat pointless exercise that didn’t really enhance the experience. Though the biggest issues of the title, as I’ve felt, were somewhat uninspired enemies and weapons and its extremely long length without as much variety in terms of levels. Aftershock is a new expansion for the game that addresses some of those flaws and leads to a result that, in my opinion, is superior to the main game itself.

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In love with: Cyberpunk 2077 (2.01 with Phantom Liberty)

I suppose, Cyberpunk 2077 is the perfect example of why is it I try to avoid playing and reviewing games until they’re “complete”. Though, surprisingly, the big change that makes my old review somewhat outdated isn’t the new expansion Phantom Liberty, but rather the 2.0 patch that overhauled the game in a substantial way and all of the patches that preceded it. I loved playing the game even more than before, but this time I can also easily recommend it to others. All it took was “just” 3 extra years of development…

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Quick thoughts on: the white chamber

During the early 00s most of the game developers were just figuring out how to distribute their games over the internet. The potential was clearly there, but it wasn’t until later in that decade that we will see a true boom of digital distribution and a huge boost in indie development popularity. Possibly due to that, a lot of the smaller independent games released during that period were free and often were quite open and honest about their influences. In case of the white chamber, the game originally released in 2005 as an expansion of a university project of a small team, the biggest influence was Silent Hill. The series were quite alive and well at the time and it wasn’t too long since SH4: The Room was released. So seeing a “Silent Hill in space” as a concept was really fun. But it’s been 18 years since – does the game still hold up?

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Disapprove: Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy

Trine series are a weird beast. The original wasn’t good, but had a lot of really cool ideas. All of which got majorly improved in the sequel, which was the first genuinely enjoyable title in the series. Then Trine 3 was released in Early Access and remained unfinished, mixing lots of very bad ideas with some of the genuinely best ideas in the franchise. And then Trine 4 came along and was mostly a straight up improvement again returning to the formula of 2, but making it more fun and adding fresh ideas. First hours with Trine 5 felt like I was playing 4 again, but with some tweaks and changes. It was charming, as always, and quite fun to play. But the more I played, the less fun the game got. And almost at the end of the game I gave up fed up with horrible design.

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O tempora: Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

Now that the original trilogy is out of the way, I can talk about the Alone in the Dark game I’ve played the most – Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. The first and so far only reboot of the storyline. You see, for all the convoluted storylines, the original trilogy and the 2008 game are actually part of the same timeline. Even the horrible and rightfully forgotten spin-off Illumination was technically part of the same world. But with The New Nightmare the series attempted a fresh start headed by Darkworks, whom I recently talked about when revisiting Cold Fear. And it did many things right and a few things very wrong.

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