Highly recommended – Page 11

Revisiting Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut

05/09/2016 28/06/2019

It’s been a while since I’ve played Deadly Premonition. Funny story – I was actually one of the seemingly few, who were waiting for the game to get released way before it was named Deadly Premonition. Originally it was announced as “Rainy Woods” in 2007, was even more Twin Peaks influenced and for me, a huge survival horror fan with soft spot for that David Lynch series, it was enough to get excited. But then the game just kinda dropped off my radar until suddenly popping up in a Destructoid review by Jim Sterling in early 2010, who loved the hell out of it. I didn’t even recognize the game back that from the start, since it has changed the title and even the looks (and name) of the main protagonist (the original name went to the next Swery’s game – D4). But when I finally did I knew – I need this game in my life. I never had an Xbox 360, but my friend did, so he grabbed the game, lent me the console for few weeks and I found a new game to put in the list of absolute favorites. But it was flawed. It needed a remaster. Is The Director’s Cut here to do the job? I’m going to spoil it right away – it isn’t in the slightest.

Thoughts on: INSIDE

09/07/2016 23/07/2022

It may be done by the team behind LIMBO. It may start like LIMBO. It might feel like LIMBO. But INSIDE is very much not LIMBO.

Thoughts on: Sylvio

17/05/2016 19/08/2024

Sylvio might look like “yet another Unity engine First Person horror adventure game”, but it’s not. It does things in a very unique and interesting way and it all boils down to the fact, that the game is all centered around the EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomena. If you were every interested in any paranormal things you might understand that no matter how unscientific and disproved this is, it can still be a thrilling theme to explore. Hence the popularity of the topic not only in classic horror movies, but in modern ones as well. Yet, surprisingly, not a single game (to my knowledge) before Sylvio has dedicated itself fully to it.

Thoughts on: Axiom Verge

13/11/2015 23/08/2024

A lot of people seem to call this game a love letter to “metroidvania”, and I can’t fault them for that. This is one person’s attempt to create a truly modern 2D Metroid-like game, using all the lessons learned from the best of the best in genre and adding new elements, that weren’t tried in the genre before. This game has exciting exploration, varied locales, fantastic soundtrack, unique visuals that mix old-school 8bit and 16bit era art with subtle modern effects, surprisingly good challenge for the most part and a very interesting atmosphere that can probably be summarized as “sci-fi adventure as if Another World/Out of This World was designed by H.R. Giger”.

In love with: SOMA

23/09/2015 22/10/2020

Time is a curious thing. 2006, the Penumbra tech demo and a completely different me. Today it all feels so far away. So many changes, so many things to happen, choices to make, emotions to feel. It’s 5 years since Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 2 since A Machine for Pigs (even though it wasn’t made by Frictional). Two more versions of me. Would all these versions of myself and me today live together? Would we understand each other? How would that work? Are we defined by our consciousness or something more than that?

Loving the: Alien: Isolation

31/08/2015 07/07/2023

Ridley Scott’s Alien is still an amazing movie. 36 years later its “future technology” has aged. Computers slowly render the information in 2 colours on a CRT monitor while their hard drives make lots of noises – this feels like it has no place in space flight of the future, even though space flight is usually planned to have cheaper more durable hardware installed. Yet, so many people grew up on the sci-fi with this technology, myself included. And the costume and set designers tried their damnedest to create something tangible, something real, something one would want to visit. If if that beautiful and outdated set is populated by a terrible alien creature which is as much a cultural icon as this type of sci-fi itself. How many games tried to do Alien. How many failed. And most aimed to be something closer to Aliens anyway, something action heavy and lighter on horror theme, not a pure chilling horror in space where no one can hear you scream. Alien: Isolation is hear to fix this unfortunate error.

Read more“Loving the: Alien: Isolation”

Revisiting Cryostasis

16/08/2015 27/02/2020

So much stuff has happened since 2008. The last, at least for now, game from Action Forms got released and since then they were in “a stasis”. The same game got to be my second ever post that can be called a review or an opinion. Three years later me and DiodorOFF interviewed Igor Karev, as per link above, about Action Forms. And every hot summer me and my best friend used to replay the game just so we can feel the chills. It never failed. Yet, since 2012 I have not played the game and since then, I’ve gotten a widescreen monitor and, very recently, a GPU from nVidia, so now I had a chance to replay the game “the way it’s meant to be played” with the really beautiful PhysX effects turned on and running (almost) well. It was as if I was playing it for the first time again. It’s a shame that the game is still not digitally sold due to conflicts with 1c…

Psyched about: Wolfenstein: The New Order

25/03/2015 23/01/2020

MachineGames – is a game developer studio founded by some of the key people from Starbreeze Studios. Who worked on Riddick and Darkness. And you can feel it in this game. Which is already a pretty high praise for the new Wolfenstein.

Metro 2033 Redux. Better in most things edition

07/09/2014 27/02/2020

4A has recently released Metro Redux – a pack of two remastered games, Metro 2033 from 2010 and Metro: Last Light from last year. Both games were moved to an updated engine with updated lighting, both games have new distinct modes of playing them – Survival (closer to 2033) or Spartan (closer to Last Light). Both games got updated voice acting, with the same voice actor for Artyom in all main languages and new localisations including the Ukrainian. I’ve already told what I think of the Metro: Last Light Redux, which was less affected by this remaster. Metro 2033, on the other hand, looks very different now, several levels were combined, some scenes and sections were redone, at times completely, the weapons were redesigned to be closer to how they work in the second game (so you modify weapons now instead of exchanging different weapons with different modifications), controls were updated as well. Most of these changes were welcome and make the game far more fun to play. Yet, there are a couple of changes that are questionable at best and outright dumb at worst.

In love with: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

22/01/2014 27/01/2025

Sometimes I feel like PlatinumGames can’t make a bad game. Something niche, sure. But that niche will worship this game forever and consider it one of the best of all time. This is the team that has an understanding of action in their blood and western developers can just scream “FUCK YOU!” with impotence. Finally, one of their titles is on PC and it feels my dark soul with liiiiiight (11!!!11). Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance… And I gotta say that Revengeance is a silly word but is actually real. And here I was hoping for a sequel called Unvengeance. I’m still hoping for a sequel, though. I mean, a PC port of Bayonetta would be great as well, but until that happens, we have MGR: Revengeance to fill that genre void on PC. And besides, the games are so wildly different despite their similarities.