Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Lair (Factor 5 / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2007)

I got about halfway through this game that infamously has a reputation of being the worst PS3-exclusive game ever made and I can confirm that it lives up to that reputation. The game looks terrible at any resolution, controls miserably with any control scheme (six-axis or not), performs like a pre-alpha build (frame rate dips to 15 FPS at times even if you run the PS3 in standard definition and never reaches > 30 outside of the game menus) and even if all these problems didn't exist would still be a somewhat cheesy and slightly boring flying action game.

I decided to call it quits after it managed to hard-lock my PS3 for the second time while pushing its fans to a higher RPM than any other game I ever ran on it, because I really would like my unit to last until I can get through my small collection of games that remain PS3 exclusive to this day.

Fans of old-school epic Hollywood scoring might enjoy the original soundtrack by John Debney.


1/5

 

[The Dear Leader]

Finished: Atomic Heart (PC Game Pass) (Mundfish, 2023)

A weird sorta janky take on Bioshock mixed with Far Cry and a side helping of other Sci-Fi games of the sort, really enjoyed the combat, puzzles and progression of the abilities but really disliked the open world part of the game, wish they would have made smaller linear outdoor bits with more detail and story telling packed in, the thing that made the indoor locations so interesting. Really liked the whole experience overall.

7-8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (Ryujinx)

Not as good as the first game, don't know if I was letdown or dissapointed, but I liked the first game a lot more.

So the graphics are pretty much as good as in the first game, good sound too. Story is meh and some of the dialogue have a weird humor. The cutscenes are really good though.

The grid-based tactical combat from the first game is gone and is replaced with a combat where you can walk as far as the movement let's you, but you can also use buttons on the ground to jump that takes you further and team-jump (once per character per turn) to ge tyou further. The combat is decent fun, but I feel the grid-based combat that made the first game more like an Xcom game was far better and more fun. The main combat different here is the sparks, (like the yellow creature in the picture above). You find these creatures throughout the game and they add something to your character and you can only use it once per round, then you have to wait until you can use it again (like 2-3 turns). One spark can give your character (like Mario) the ability to use electricity in your weapons, another spark can give your weapon flames, another can send a wave of water on your enemies, another can give one of your characters a shield, another can heal your characters etc. This was at least a good gameplay addition to the game which made the combat more varied. You can have 2 sparks activated on a character, so each character can have 2 sparks each.

Other than that, each character in your roster (Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Rabbid Luigi, Rabbid Princess etc.) have different weapon and different ability (healing, shield etc.) so the combat does ge ta bit more variated, but getting rid of the grid-based combat was not a good idea.

The "overworld" consists of 5 planets. Each planet has 2 main missions you play through, each main mission gives you a crystal that basically makes the game open up the next planet, so you need both crystals to progress. The main story/missions I managed to do in 9 hours, which was a lot shorter than the first game which I think took me 15 hours or 20 hours to finish and I only did the main missions in both games, well 2 side missions in Sparks of Hope.

Each planet is somewhat of a small open world, the minimap shows you where to go for the main mission and where to go for side missions. You collect coins and other collectibles to buy helpfull items in the store which is usually right outside where you ship lands on the planet. I did 2 side missions on the first planet and they were really uninteresting and boring. There were apparently some side missions that opened up a new area in some of the planets, but didn't bother with them. Usually there are also some very simple puzzles you need to do to progress in some of the main missions and side missions.

Overall, the game is fun, but misses the heart and mind of the first game. The removal of grid-based combat made the combat more repetive and less fun. The overworld looked graphically good, but boring and uninteresting. There maybe have been some cool areas I didn't find because the side missions it takes to find them where very uninteresting. I feel the game lacked focus and some of the changes was done just for the sake of change.

Score.: 7.3/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (Ryujinx)

I was very curious about it, but ended up not liking it very much. There are 10 chapters, each chapter lasting 20m to 1 hour, so took me about 8-9 hours to finish it up. The story was decent, but the cutscenes were not particularly well made.

The impressive part of the game is the giant roster it has, so many heroes you can choose from and all heroes have their own strengths and abilities and you can have a team of 4 heroes to play with, you can switch heroes anytime and if you wanna replace certain heroes with others you need to use blue marks on the ground which comes up many times in every level, here you can also increase hp and "stamina" fully and upgrade your heroes abilities. I was also impressed with the level design, some places actually looks quite good too.

My main issue is with the combat, despite the big roster of heroes with different strengths and abilities, I found the combat to be clunky, frustrating and repetive. You usually do the same moves regardless of which hero you have and each hero's special ability is only activated when you have enough stamina/power, defeated enemies drops both hp and power/stamina. There's also a lot of "bullet sponge" enemies which really enjoys to throw you away which was very annoying.

There are also these "rifts" in each chapter that gives you access to challenges that awards you with different resources you can use to upgrade your heroes.

Overall, a fun game with a lot of combat problems and the game is basically a brawler so you walk, fight, walk, fight.

Score: 7/10

 

[Arc]

I finished Metroid Prime Remastered.

It's one of the best games of all time, but with better graphics.

That is all.

10/10.

 

[Paul]

Finished Gotham Knights


I got it in the charity turkey humble bundle and I gotta say, I enjoyed it quite a bit. No, it is not as good as rocksteady trilogy, but it kept me well engaged for some 30 hours, all of it playing as Batgirl. Combat is mechanically simpler, the loot mechanics are annoying and unnecessary, writing is not particularly great. But the main missions were all fun, with some nice atmospheric interiors, the city is also good looking, Batgirl is likeable protagonist with great booty to boot. The "main" sidemission about going after Freeze, Clayface and Harley were all fun to play through too. There is a chase sequence with Clayface that was particularly awesome.
Regarding the technical state, I had two strange framedrops from 60 to zero that required game reload to fix. Other than that, no bugs, no crashes, no framerate dips below 60. So I consider PC version to be near flawless now.

7.5/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Maquette (Graceful Decay / Annapurna Interactive, 2021)

On paper, this first person puzzle game has it all: Clever concept and main mechanic, good art direction, nice music, a story to keep things moving forward and not-too-abstract (even though the plot is, at least as far as I got, stereotypical Annapurna-style boy-meets-girl fluff, ref. Florence).

But:

• There is a fundamental technical issue with the game that essentially prevents it from running smoothly on ANY system, and the developers obviously have given up on of fixing it
• Some five hours in, I got stuck with a puzzle and when I finally resorted to consulting a walk-through, it turned out that I was in fact soft-locked due to a bug. Checking in with the reviews on Steam in detail, it then became clear that the chances of soft-locking yourself in this game are quite high.

To me, there's no point in trying to solve a game of unconventional puzzles that require outside-the-box thinking, when you can never be sure if your solutions just are not creative enough or you've been soft-locked by a bug.


(No score).


Previously reviewed in this thread here

 

[fantomena]

Finished The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Snes9x)

Overall, I enjoyed it, but I definetly felt it's age. Very basic gameplay and story, but the different items you can use gives the game more variety. Story is decent. Game could have used a remake as I linked Link's Awakening Remake and A Link Between Worlds a lot more.

The dungeons was a struggle to get through as I found them all really basic, but the game itself is really old, so they were probably amazing and innovative when the game released.

Score: 8/10

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider

This game gets somewhat of a bad rep, mostly for its story and lack of evolution from the previous games. However, parkouring and killing bad guys is still a lot of fun. Puzzles were decent, although easy. The setting is quite fascinating. Loved exploring and taking in the atmosphere.

Treat this game like an action-packed blockbuster and you might forgive its shortcomings.

4/5

 

[Durante]

Finished Returnal.

Returnal™ on Steam

BREAK THE CYCLE Fight to survive as this award-winning third-person shooter brings Selene’s story to PC. Take on roguelike challenges. Engage enemies in bullet hell-fuelled clashes. Share your journey through Returnal™ with another player.

store.steampowered.com

The moment-to-moment gameplay is great, it feels very satisfying to control (at least on mouse/kb), and the roguelike item system works well.
Graphically it looks great, especially the particle effects, and I feel like its performance is good for the fidelity on display. Audio is also great.

My only issue with it, and it's not a particularly severe one, is how overall story progression is handled. Basically a main component of story progression is on a completely independent axis from gameplay progression, and crucially, it's locked out in co-op while the entire rest of the game works perfectly in co-op (and is really fun).
As such, we actually had to do a few "story progress only" pseudo-runs of the game to complete it. Not at all a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like this could be designed better. Also, I think there's decent statistical evidence that this is not the best design choice: 25% of all people completed act 2 (which you can do with just gameplay progress), but only 5% completed act 3.

Anyway, that minor issue aside, it's a really solid game. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys third person action.

 

[Paul]

Finished Syberia: The World Before


I bought this as part of the Humble Heroine Bundle (frankly, it was the main attraction since I already had and finished Control).
I never played the previous games (I dislike point and click games - their passive gameplay puts me to sleep, without fail).
But I did watch the recap and read synopses on wiki to at least know what's up. Which was not really needed much, because World Before is a completely standalone adventure - apart from the short prologue which follows where previous game ended, this is a whole new story.

And...it was great. Melancholic-romantic-tragic in just the right amounts. Lovely graphics and overall artstyle, nice puzzles with helpful hint system that meant no need to look for walkthroughs, atmospheric soundtrack by Inon Zur.

One nitpick would be english voice acting - specifically Kate Walker, the protagonist. You see, first Syberia came out in 2002. This Syberia came out in 2022. But all four games take place from 2002 - 2005. Meaning, the voice actress is now probably in her sixties, but voices 33 year old Kate Walker. And you can hear the dissonance. Heavily. It annoyed me so badly I switched into French voice acting after few hours and never looked back. French voice acting is fantastic and Kate actually sounds like 33 year old woman.

Second nitpick would be performance - I played in 1440p maxed out, and there were places where framerate tanked to 40s for some reason, on 3080Ti and 5800X3D. In a game like this it's not gamebreaking, but still. Microids made the Unity engine look amazing in this, but optimization leaves something to be desired.

Overall though, great game. Recommended for all story-heavy game fans, especially if you like games of this type.

8/10

Kate should really, really go home to New York one of these days though.

 

[Mivey]

Your review almost makes me forgot how bad Syberia 3 was, and that I never want to touch this franchise again.

 

[LEANIJA]

Your review almost makes me forgot how bad Syberia 3 was, and that I never want to touch this franchise again.

I think I only played about half an hour of Syberia 3, it was one of those games I played for a bit and then never continued. But Syberia – The World Before was good indeed! Its performance was sorta crappy on release but they improved it somewhat later on. But yeah, otherwise I agree with everything Paul said about it

–

I finished Hogwarts Legacy yesterday, just in time to hop on over to Resident Evil 4. My opinion about this game didnt change much from the initial feeling: its great! Its obviously made with lots of love for the world, and by competent people. On Linux, I had some technical issues, it ran and looked worse than made any sense (mightve been the Nvidia drivers). So I played it mostly on Windows 10, where I had no issues on my GTX 1070 Ti.

But story, world+setting, characters, exploration, open-world stuff, combat system? all very, very good, really enjoyable game! Took me about 75 hours for all quests + a lot of the open world stuff (I'm the kind of person who goes completionist for a while and then gives up and just finishes the story).

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished The Longest Road on Earth (Brainwash Gang, TLR Games / Raw Fury, 2021)

The Longest Road on Earth is a deeply personal and meditative narrative title. It's crap. It almost feels petty and mean to tell it like it is, because the developer has made all these little social media and video features and blogs and spins so much yarn about how this game is really full of meaning and emotion and they all seem like genuinely nice and talented people, but. It's crap.

It's also a playable low-res pixelart music video for an album by studio member and singer/songwriter Beícoli. If you happen to like the music, you won't mind playing what little gameplay there is. If you're looking for a game with lots of easy achievements you can get in under two hours, you'll also like this game. If not, well ... it's crap.

2/5


Also finished Voyage (Venturous, 2021)

Also pixelart, also short, also not particularly gameplay-heavy, but still so different from the previously mentioned game. The artwork is high-res, the animations are gorgeous, the music is a soundtrack and not the main attraction, and there is optional co-op. Achievement hunters will like this game for the same reasons as TLRoE, but everybody in the market for a two hour long very light puzzle platformer that is just a joy to look at from start to finish will also get a worthwhile experience.

3.5/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun and addictive game, but got a bit repetive after a while. Really interesting story, liked the game enough to even get the "secret" ending and do the Tower of Sisyphus challenge mode. Gameplay is great, basically 3D bullet hell with lots of weapon variety and items you coem across in the environment that gives you abilities, increases your stats and so on. It's like a AAA roguelite and the game looks great and the level design is great. I however found it to lack boss variety though.

Game has like 5-6 biomes, almost all have it's end-biome boss you have to defeat. Each biome has a different environment theme like desert, snow, water which gives the game more variety. If you die you lose the vast majority of stuff, but there are certain things you can continue with after you die. The game is sorta built up in "rooms", the main rooms are open, but the side rooms where cool stuff can be that isn't required to enter to progress the gamwe often needs a key to unlock, these keys can be found in th environment or dropped by enemies. Enemies drops different items and things like health.

The game is overall very fascinating and mysterious so Im not gonna write much more otherwise I can easily spoil the story. My main negatives is the lack of boss variety and that it did get repetive after a while.

Score: 8.4/10

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Heavy Rain

I can't figure out whether this game tries to be a meme intentionally or not. Some of the voice acting is hilarious, especially the scene where Ethan calls out for his son. The controls were awkward and clunky, but that's always the case with Quantic Dream games.

As wacky as the story & characters can be, I did enjoy the ride. I'd say it's better than Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy, but worse than Detroit: Become Human. Only one David Cage game left to play, and that's Beyond: Two Souls.

3.5/5

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Fantasy General II


This game was a surprise for me, since I never heard about it but turned out to be one of the best turn-based strategy games I've played so far. You're playing with a lot of heroes and units at the same time, and the variety in attacks, upgrades, items, unit types and enemies is really great. This results in long but intense battles, with lots of strategic possibilities. The mission objectives could have been more diverse, but the superb combat kept me playing until the end.

The only thing that I didn't like is that units that are killed in battle are lost forever. This has a significant impact on your chance to win, since every unit gains experience in combat, which increases your health and attack power. I had to restart the entire campaign after almost 20 hours, because my units were to weak to beat the next mission. An option to heal slain units like XCOM does would have been a better choice imo. But despite this minor issue, this game is definitely a must play!

Score: 8.9/10



Finished Streets of Rage 4


Definitely the best beat 'm up I've played since Double Dragon Neon. The combat is easy to learn but hard to master, each of the twelve missions have unique hazards and boss fights, and there are plenty of different enemies to beat. For beginners there's a well made tutorial, and there are a few optional perks which you can activate if things become to hard for you. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.2/10

 

[Arc]

Finished Resident Evil 4 Remake (twice) AND Resident Evil 4 2005 (for probably the 20th+ time).

I thought I would go back and replay the original Resident Evil 4 after playing through the remake. I consider the original RE4 to be one of the all time greats and it still holds up, however Remake does some things that I prefer.

Firstly, Remake has much better pacing in the second half. There are sections in RE4 2005 that drag (the mines section in the castle and much of the island) that are trimmed in Remake and helps things flow better. At first I was upset about hearing that things like the U-3 boss were cut, but after replaying RE4 2005, it was probably for the best since doing that section back to back with the Krauser boss fight was mentally taxing. (Also I'm guessing some of the content cut in the main campaign will return as part of the Separate Ways DLC).

Secondly, Remake has much better characterization for Luis and Ashley. In 2005, those two characters barely do anything interesting other than die and get kidnapped. Luis is now more charismatic and Ashley is far more talkative and likable (and her banter with Leon is cute). I also like the Remake interpretation of Krauser more as he just kind of appears in 2005.

Those are the two major things I think Remake does better than 2005, but 2005 does some things better as well.

2005 has better game feel. Everything in 2005 is incredibly snappy while Leon feels more sluggish in Remake. When Leon runs in the remake and he turns to run in the opposite direction, he carries some momentum which causes the turn animation to feel delayed. Aiming in 2005 is also more responsive (although I played it on Xbox and I've read that version has issues with sluggish controls so I'll attribute that to an error that may eventually get fixed).

Ironically, most of the villains in Remake barely have any presence while they steal the show in 2005. While Krauser is improved, Salazar and Saddler don't hijack your voice comms any more so you don't get any iconic lines.

I prefer 2005's campy tone over Remake's serious tone with campiness sprinkled in, but that's a personal preference.

Basically both games are awesome, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick, I would probably go with 2005 due to better feeling controls, the campiness and nostalgia.

RE4 (2005): 9.5/10
RE4 (2023): 9/10

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Beyond: Two Souls (contains ending spoilers)

Before playing, you are given a choice to play the game in either original or remixed mode. Original jumps from timeline to timeline, whereas remixed tells the story in chronological order. It was a difficult choice to make as opinions on the subject varied heavily. After doing extensive research, I finally got the answer I was looking for. A random user suggested to play the game in its original mode because it was "David Cage's vision". After reading such a comment, everything became so clear. I knew what I had to do. It was time for me to start playing the game... in remixed mode

All kidding aside, the game is... actually not bad. The controls were not as annoying as the other Quantic Dream games I've played. What stands out the most for me is the voice acting by Willem Dafoe & Elliot Page. Both actors give incredible and believable performances that elevate the game. There is some spotty writing here and there, most notably in the end when a certain character goes off the deep end. That could have used a lot more buildup. It just didn't feel consistent character-wise. But overall, I enjoyed the ride. That's right, folks, I'm ashamed to admit I enjoyed another David Cage game. Please don't hold it against me

4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Not the best "boomer shooter" I've played, but I enjoyed it. Great graphics, great music and good sound. The gunplay and gameplay feels for the most part good, but it becomes quite uninteresting and repetive in the length. Took me 10 hours to finish the campaign and felt it was a bit too long. Game tried to be "retro" Doom Eternal, but doesn't reach that level. Guns are okay, but somewhat boring, the level design is okay, but also a bit uninteresting at times, even when trying to find the secrets in each level. You can find gold bars hidden around in all levels which you can use in the store in the game to buy other weapons, ammo and upgrade yourself (double jump, dash etc.)

Enemies however are very uninteresting, takes too much shooting to kill and feels straight out ripped out of Doom. Honestly, not very fun to kill enemies in this boomer shooter and I think that's one of my main problems with it, perhaps the biggest problem. Also, if you die, you spawn at the spawn point (called "Nexus point" and all the enemies you have killed are still dead, which was sometimes kinda boring and killed the pacing for me.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (Insomniac Games / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2003 / 2012) in the Ratchet & Clank Collection on PS3.

This one came out just one year after 2002's Ratchet & Clank, the hit debut of the series, and delivers essentially the same experience as the previous game but keeps things fresh with an all new set of wacky weapons, new levels and the addition of the first female Lombax of the series to the cast of characters.

The combination of cartoon comedy, mascot platforming and shooting with a huge variety of weapons works as well today as it did 20 years ago. Towards the end there's a bit of playtime padding by way of difficult sections with too few checkpoints, but it's a minor issue.


4/5

 

[Mivey]

I realised that I totally forgot writing a review about Dead Space (2023), which I finished just a few weeks ago.

I had a much easier time with this than the first game, which I never finished, after playing it on and off years ago. I think the main reason is that I had a copy of it on Origin, not Steam, and it's just always a bother to use other clients (aside from GOG Galaxy, last I used it). The remake feels like incredibly faithful to the original vision of the 2008, while it's also not afraid to improve things in the first game that feel pretty half-backed, like the infamous turret sections. The addition of Isaac speaking is actually pretty good, I was expecting it being too chatty, as some AAA games can be, but he is mostly quiet, and only speaks very occasionally, and often in ways that make sense and fit pretty well.

Visually the game is absolutely stunning, combined with audio, it is really much more impressive. It's clearly taking some clues from Sci-Fi thrillers like Alien, though it's of course nowhere as subtle with the way it presents the monsters, understandably. It's just hard to be scared by something that you end up killing so effectively over the course of the game, which is why I personally not think of Dead Space as a horror game, personally. Proper horror games don't put effective weapons in your hands.

As for the port, there was still some light stutters, even after having the game compile its shaders. The shipped version of DLSS has some super bad ghosting issues, which you can fix by replacing it with version 2.5.1, and the textures look bad when using DLSS is used, though Nvidia users can fix that via the profiler. So yeah, kinda middling port tech wise, but with some fixes it does look stunning and runs mostly fine.


Not much to say about the remake, except that it's a pretty good game .

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Lovely game. Perfect length (1.5-2 hours). It's a very nice and good looking game about painting with a nice story that progresses the game through 6 chapters. Great graphics and visual-novel style story telling. Somewhat of point and click gameplay.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished


A very good looking game with a cute story and nice music that fails at it's boring gameplay.

There are 24 chapters and each chapters has a duration of 2-15 min depending on how good you are at the rhythm aspect of the game. The rhythm gameplay is a circle and you have to press the corresponding key on the keyboard at the right moment, left arrow, right arrow, both arrows, if you fail, you have to start the circle over again. The problem is that's all you do with the gameplay in the game, so after a few chapters, the game becomes quite repetive and boring. Pic of the gameplay/rhythm part of the game:

The good side is the really good looking graphic style animation that is used, the story itself is rather cute/interesting and the music is great.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Didn't like it as much as Job Simulator (first game) and found it rather boring quite often. They have expanded the contept and made it bigger, but it didn't really work out. Basically there are 3 different vacation environments, beach, forest and mountain. Every environment introduces you to a bunch of smaller mini-games, many of them are sadly not that much interesting, every time you finish a minigame (most of them have difficulty grades, like beginner, intermediate, advanced) you receive a memory (collectible) that adds to your progress in the game. In order to finish the game itself you need 30 memories, but that is only around 45% actual game completion. When you have seen the credits and finished the game, you can go back and finish the rest of the minigames to collect the rest of the memories. There are different items you can use in the game like a camera in your backpack which is often required to complete certain minigames.

The graphics are nice, the environmments are nice and the characters are fun. However the minigames themselves are sadly mostly boring and I almost quit the game at some point. I found Job Simulator to be a lot more fun as it was more "focused" instead of here, a lot of small minigames to finish.

There is also a DLC I finished which is based on Job Simulator.

Score: 7/10

 

[fantomena]

Retired


Wanted to like it. Heard good things about it, mainly from PSVR1 owners, so that may have something to do with my dissapointment in this game.

The game is sort of a puzzle-escape-room-narrative Alyx-like game, but fails at being as fun and entertaining as Alyx. There is sort of like a time loop game and there is a main room that acts as your hub. The problem is that the game has awful pacing, a lot of back and forth between time periods, a lot of the game is based around boring and illogical puzzles that also comes with a lot of bugs that made the experience annoying for me.

Played it for 1 hour and then quit. Shame because the story seemed interesting. The environments and graphics are really nice though.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Never played the original game, but I guess this is what you call a true hidden game. A fantastic VR game. Took me around 3 hours to finish and it reminded me off Half-life, Portal and Prey (2017). It's apparently made by a solo developer (ex-Valve employee I've read).

Simply put, the game is great all around. Great world building, interesting story, good design, really well polished gameplay, although somewhat basic VR gameplay. It doesn't do anything new (well, it is a remaster of a 2016 game), but it does what it tries to do, really well.

Very much recommended.

Score: 8.4/10

Retired


Should have listened to the Steam reviews. Game is a bore, looked cool from the videos, but it is pretty much just another creepy "horror" game that even fails at being scary. Super basic and slow gameplay, game does also not really explain well what's going on and what you have to do. Feels like a game made for Oculus Quest owners who barely has played any "scary/creepy" games before.

A bit dissapointing coming from Fast Travel Games, liked some of their previous games (Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, Budget Cuts 2, Apex Construct).

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Beautiful game with some puzzle annoyances. This is more like a Journey-type game in VR with some added puzzles/interactivity. You use your VR motion controller to move around paper beasts and other objects. Gameplay is difficulty to describe, but it felt good. Great looking game, lots of beautiful environments and overrall great design. The game contains some "puzzles", most of them were nice, but had some annoyances with some of them. Overall a very chill VR game/experience. Took me 3 hours to finish.

There is a non-VR version too "Folded Edition", but I would recommend against playing it, VR version adds a ton of depth to the game.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished


Took me 5 hours. A decent fun, but very flawed VR platformer. The story is okay, nothing I haven't heard before, save the planet you are our only hope yaddayadda. There are 3 regions and each region has 4 levels with different environments, so the environments are quite varied. My main issues with the game is the slow pace (Ven runs slowly) and the hit detection is awful, really awful, so many times I've died due to completely awful hit detection and I kept wanting to quit the game. Some of the levels are also too long for it's own good and kept dragging. Took me 4.5 hours to finish it.

However I did found it decent fun. It reminds me off Crash with destroying boxes and collecting crystals and friendlies you found throughout the levels, most of them hidden.

A decent fun plattformer with mediocre story, lack of lore and world building, variated environments, too long levels and awful hit detection. It sometimes feels it wants to be Crash in VR, but just doesn't reach that.

Score. 6.7/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

VR version adds a ton of depth to the game

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Another hidden VR gem, based on the amount of Steam reviews. It's a homage like the previous game 1989, the concept is that you are playing a game inside a game and you control the person playing the game and the characters inside that game manages to get outside the videogame in the real world. Just like the previous game, the game is charming, suprising and the concept is really fun and works well. The game consists of 6 levels, each level has like 3 phases, 1 phase about what's happening in the real world, 2nd phase where your characters plays a game which plays like a retro metroivania, retro Castlevania and retro 3D game, they are very shallow sadly, but also short which helps, nothing innovative about those "mini games", but they are decent fun still and the 3rd phase is a boss battle that has a phase that is played both in the game that the person is playing and the real world, so the bosses crosses the game and world dimensions. Pretty cool.

Took me 3.5 hours to play though and each 2nd phase minigame has some catridges you can collect to unlock skins for the game character (like a Samus character) and you collect blue crystals in the levels that functions as health, lose all of them and you have to start from checkpoint again.

The game really needs to be experienced to understand the concept and the concept can pretty much only work in VR. This pic may give a clue what this concept is:

Despite the shallow mini-games (example is the one on the TV in game pic above) and the dialogue is kinda embarrasing at times, some of the fights can get frustrating as just one hit from an enemy make you lose all your HP and if you don't quickly grab some more crystals, you are dead, it's a really fun and cool game.

Score: 8.3/10

Finished


Just as fun and good as the first game, meaning overall a great, clever and fun VR-agent-puzzle-escape room sorta game. Good graphics with a good art style, nice music, good use of physics, interesting story and does what it tries to do, really well. There are 6 "operations", each operations lasts as long as you are able to quickly find out what to do. Every puzzle and thing you do makes sense, so that's really good and when I had to look up sometimes what to do on the Internet, the solution always made sense. There are also 6 trophies you can collect in every level, 1 is in plain sight, you just have to touch them and get it to you, the other 5 are hidden. There is no walking around, you sit in one place, but that made complete sense for what the devs are trying to do and how the game works. My main issue is still some janky physics here and there that made me stressed and the game is short, if you know what to do, each level can be completed in like 3-6 min, but it takes some time to figure things out yourself, so I finished it in around 2 hours.

Score: 8.4/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Appreciate all these VR game reviews fantomena
Haven't set my headset up for a while but i might dig it out and have a go at some of them.

................

I just finished RE4 remake


Really enjoyed it, fantastic game from start to finish. Ran flawlessly, looks amazing, tonnes of graphic/system/access options. Not much more to say that hasn't been said better by others already. Will very likely be in my top 5 goty this year, probably No1. Will take something special to top it.

9/10

 

[sulio]

Appreciate all these VR game reviews fantomena
Haven't set my headset up for a while but i might dig it out and have a go at some of them.

................

I just finished RE4 remake


Really enjoyed it, fantastic game from start to finish. Ran flawlessly, looks amazing, tonnes of graphic/system/access options. Not much more to say that hasn't been said better by others already. Will very likely be in my top 5 goty this year, probably No1. Will take something special to top it.

9/10

Did you finish it on highest difficulty level ?!

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Murder by Numbers


Well designed hybrid between Picross and a story-driven detective game. You're playing as an actress who gets involved in a real murder case, and is assisted by an AI-driven robot. You can use the robot to scan objects and environments for clues, and that's where the Picross puzzles come in.

The story is kind of boring and the culprits are losing huge amounts of objects at every crime scene - including a bullet that links one of them to a 30yo murder case (yes, seriously). But there are a few nice plot twists and the characters are very well done. And most important: the puzzles are great and have a good learning curve. Recommend.

Score: 8.0/10



Finished Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor


This game turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. At first, it looks like another Assassin Creed clone, including climbing towers and a map cluttered with colored icons. The combat is also very limited in variation, the story made no sense to me and there are way too many annoying quick-time events.

But the nemesis system and the possibility to make enemies fight for you in the 2nd half of the campaign are real game changers. Using stealth suddenly becomes very useful and it requires a decent strategy to isolate a strong enemy in order to turn him to your side. The game can also be finished within 20 hours if you ignore most of the useless optional tasks and collectables. Recommended.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


An amazing game and it cements Polyarc as not just one of the best VR game velopers out there, but one of the best indie game developers out there, imo. You control a mice named Quill who goes on a journey to save the world, sound like a cliche story, but the story is great, cute, sad and interesting. The game is Moss, but expanded. The game itself is built up by "rooms", when you enter one tunnel/door/hallway, a new "room" is entered, like levels, but I call them rooms. The game has a bunch of chapters to go through, but in oppose to the first game, the game chapters and the world itself is interconnected which was very cool.

The game is gorgeus, great looking environments and visuals in the "background". The level design is fantastic, was especially floored by the level design in the last chapter. Reminded me of that last Elden Ring story dungeon. The puzzles are logical, makes sense and very accessible. You can find at least 1 secret room in every chapter that contains a clothing for Quill and up to 9 symbols/scrolls in in chapter as collectible. A lot of fun to look after the secrets. Combat is smooth and variated due to the different enemies and weapons. The way you use the motion controllers to help Quill with different puzzles and obstacles is the same as in the first game and it's still pretty cool.

Im not gonna write more to avoid spoiling other suprises. Only negative thing is that the devs might have played it a bit too safe at times, it is a sequel through and through, so not much have changed, but the first game was still amazing. I also liked how Quill "glows" when she is hidden to show where she is. And the animations are absolutely fantastic. The small tiny details like when she falls into the water, screen goes black, she has returned and she tries to get water of her feet and ears. Can't praise the animations enough.

Score: 9/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Did you finish it on highest difficulty level ?!

Nope!

 

[Mivey]

I finished Sackboy a good while ago, and forgot to write a review about.

I played it together with my sister, and we had a lot of fun with it. In its structure, it reminds me mostly of Super Mario 3D World, with a couple distinct worlds, and levels you jump into on a big overworld. Instead of having equippable power-ups the way the Mario games do, you instead get a unique moveset for certain maps, like having jetboots that allow you to to glide for a short amount of time, or a boomerang kind of weapon and so on.

What also makes Sackboy really stand out are the music levels. It's a pretty simple idea, the devs take a couple of their favourite songs and just build a level around it, but it works.

Visually the game also looked really stunning. The upgrade you get from things like ray tracing are kinda minor, like all of these PS5 releases on PC, but it does end up looking nice. I was also impressed by the haptics you get when playing with a wired DualSense. First game to me where it really felt like it added something major, as certain actions like hanging off of objects are better communicated via haptic feedback. Can be handy in the more intense levels to better understand what's happening.

Overall a great co-op game, and I would definitely recommend this to all fans of 3D platformer fans

 

[C-Dub]

Completed Octopath Traveler II


I loved the first game. Despite all its flaws, I thought it was a charming RPG with 8 nice stories, a likeable cast and a battle system that was as fun to cheese as it was to be challenged on.

Octopath Traveler II takes all that and fixes pretty much every issue of the original while improving on the good bits in every way.

More ways to cheese the game? Yup!

An even better balance on the battle system (which you can then destroy by cheesing it)? You bet!

Better character stories and arcs? Totally.

Add that to the fact that now there’s a narrative thread bringing the 4 stories together at the end and you have a complete realisation of what I wanted the first game to be.

I think I played for about 90 hours by time the epilogue closed, and I loved every minute of it. Truly an amazing game, and possibly one of my all-time greats.

I think RPG fans shouldn’t skip this one, especially since it has a very substantial demo to get a feel for things.

10/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Liked it far more than I expected. I expected a huge bland boring open world with gameplay mechanics having a lot of flaws, I sorta got the opposite.

The story and dialogue wasn't as cringe and cliche as I expected, liked them both quite a lot. The open world was smaller than I expected, I found the vast majority ofthe game to be more linear than open, certain parts of the game is a bit more open, but maybe more like "Crysis-ish" open, not fully open world.

What impresses me the most is the great level design and design overall, a gorgeus game and the gameplay was really fun and interesting. Using the glove to loot was satifsying and the gunplay was good. The way you can use different abilities like shock and telekinesis with the environment and to kill enemies was cool. The different ways to upgrade your character, abilities and weapons gave the game a lot of variety.

The negatives are that some parts of the game could have been more explored, would have liked even more weapons and more abilities, more types of upgrades and the world could have been more open with stuff to do. Some of the linear parts of the game got a bit too long and stale at time and some of the puzzles were kind of janky, but I did like the door puzzles.

Overall a big suprise to me from a new developer studio. Great world design, good level design, gorgeus to look at (took a lot of pics), fun loot system, good gunplay and gameplay. Still, a lot of the mechanics and elements in the game, especially the world itself, could have been more explored. If the DLC is story-based and good, I will buy them.

Score: 8.5/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Enjoyable decent fun, but found the previous games to be better. This game felt more like a weird Hitman game, not a sniper game. The environments are pretty nice for the most part, especially the bech environments. The story is very uninteresting and cutscenes are quite bad. The gameplay itself is pretty much like the previous games with some new items/tools. The level design doesn't feel quite right, as previous stated, feels more like Hitman than Sniper Elite which made the game somewhat uninteresting quite often, but the gameplay still managed to make it decent fun for the most part.

Score: 7/10

 

[sprinkles]

Finished (100%) Chained Echoes. 58 hours.

What a game. Probably my favorite JRPG of all time. Story wise, it ranks among my top (Zero/Ao no Kiseki duology, Xenogears). Gameplay wise, it may have the best mechanics of the games I know in the genre (as engaging as SaGa Scarlet Grace, but less frustrating). It looks (if you are into Pixel art) and sounds gorgeous. One of those games you don't want to end. Made by one dude.





Finished (not quite 100%, damn Warmech won't spawn) Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster. 14 hours.

My slow play through the Final Fantasy back catalogue continues. Like one game a year, still many games left for me. For the first FF, it is still playable today. I like the remastered looks quite a lot, the remastered music is good (but the orinal combat theme is better still). The game is really easy though.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Not as good as Until Dawn, but still decent fun. Story is interesting, but get's quite predictable halfway through. Didn't find the scope and lore of the game to be as interesting and well told as Until Dawn and there was a lot the devs could have told and explored with the game, felt the game sorta rushed through quite a few things. Good graphics and good sound. Lacked exploration, wished there was more exploration and the parts in the woods was so dark I had to turn upthe brightness to see things.

There are some collectibles like cards and evidence you can find in the environments. The characters were decently written, but the dialogue was a lot of times quite cringe and embarrassing.

The ending was awful, too abrupt with no explanation of what really happened after. Managed to get everyone to survive though.

Score: 7.9/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished the short co-op game Blanc

It's a short game where you play as a fawn and a wolf cub that got lost from their families and have to learn to work together to survive and find their respective families again. The game's is very simple, and is not doing anything particularly innovative, but it's also not so long that it overstays its welcome and gets grating. I can recommend it to anyone who is looking for a short game to play together with a friend or loved one.

 

[Mivey]

Finished The Last of Us, Part I, including the Left Behind mini-campaign.

I think there has been enough said about the visual beauty, and the overall amazing technical achievement of the team at Naughty Dog with this game, the shitty PC port not-withstanding. It ran OK on my machine, especially when locked to 60 FPS. The fact that I needed to do that to make the game feel fluent is not a badge of technical merit, when I'm running a machine that is easily twice as powerful as the PS5, in CPU and GPU specs. But I don't want to talk about the technical side. In fact, honestly, I don't want to talk much about this game.

It's basically just misery porn. The more I ponder about the game, the less human I think most characters truly act. It's all cycle of violence, murder, hatred and revenge, which the game is very obsessed with portraying as both normal and tragic at the same time. Our characters kill dozens and dozens of marauders, who all act like mindless beasts, never showing compassion. In fact, the only ones who do show compassion and trust, are killed of, driven to suicide or portrayed as being of questionable sanity. No hope for the future, only more death and killing awaits. I fail to understand why people like this franchise, honestly. Neither Ellie nor Joe are ultimately very interesting people, nor do I feel for a second that they are "every day Joes" (presumably where the name Joel comes from), they are stone-hard survivors, willing and more than capable or killing everything in their sight for the live of their own and theirs.
Maybe in 2013, when the world didn't feel as bleak and dark, this shallow setting was seen as a form of "escapism", but in a post 2016 world, it just feels cynical, dark and just dumbing.

I personally cannot recommend this, at least not to anyone who actually engages with games they play.

 

[Paul]

It's basically just misery porn.

Oh boy, if that's what you think about the first game, I would like to read your review of the second!

 

[Mivey]

Oh boy, if that's what you think about the first game, I would like to read your review of the second!

I don't think I'll play it, honestly. Just not my cup of tea, I suppose.

 

[C-Dub]

I don't think I'll play it, honestly. Just not my cup of tea, I suppose.

I didn’t mind the first game, but thought Part II was too much. You’d hate it, so probably best you don’t bother.

 

[FunnyJay]

A bit late on reporting here, but here goes.

Finished Resident Evil 2 Remake

Played Leon 1st run, Claire 2nd run.
What a great game!
This is the first time I experience the whole Resident Evil 2 game, having only played the RE2 demo back in the day (but man did I play that demo over and over)!
The game was tense, exciting, and appropriately long. I saw someone categorize RE2 as a metroidvania, and I got to say, this is the first time I've thought of it like that, and what a good metroidvania it is! (well, the police-station part at least).

Both Leon and Claire were really good protagonists, and Mr X was terrifying (but definitely manageable). The inventory management never spiraled out of control, especially once you started increasing the inventory size.

If I were to complain about one part of the game, it would be the sewers. They felt a bit uninspired, and were a bit labyrinthine.

The 2nd run felt like a speedrun of the 1st run, which was totally OK in my book. It felt kind of cool how you knew a lot more about the layout and where you could find certain items.

This is a solid recommend from me!


Also, finished Resident Evil 3 Remake.

Jill was AWESOME in this game. Her characterization was definitely on point!

This was definitely shorter than the RE2 Remake, and there wasn't much of that metroidvania goodness that RE2 Remake had.
The implementation of Nemesis felt like a real step down when compared to Mr X.
Mr X was manageable when you knew the layout of the police station, and you could easily get a way from him and run circles around the station to get back to where you needed to be.

With Nemesis, he relentlessly pursued you, could jump in front of you, and had multiple ranged attacks, that made traversal a pain in the short city part where he stalked you.

And as I mentioned above regarding the metroidvania aspect, I apparently totally failed to solve the crystal puzzle in the first city section, but that didn't really matter when it came to progress. I however, first realized this when I had left that city section and moved on with the story.

This game was good, but a bit harder to recommend compared to the excellent RE2 Remake. This one feels more like a recommendation if you are a deep fan of the RE series, and want to play all of the games.

 

[C-Dub]

Wholly agree with those writeups FunnyJay.

RE2 is definitely a classic. RE3 is still fine, but I think if you had your fill with RE2 or aren’t interested in a (slightly worse) remix of RE2’s gameplay then you can give it a miss.

 

[Mivey]

I found RE3 to be very much "fine". It wasn't as amazing as RE2, but it's also nice for shorter games to exist that don't require 20 or more hours of your time and still have some nice story bits. I think RE2 stole this game's thunder, since Mr. X in the original wasn't this presence that was always on your mind. That was originally RE3's idea and selling point.
I need to catch up on the Resi games, I still haven't gotten to Village, which I hear good things about too.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Hey I'm playing RE3 now. Had it a while but only played an hour or so first time and so after the excellent RE4 decided to give it another shot. I'll do my full rating once done but so far yeah, its fun but not as good as 2 or 4.

 

[LEANIJA]

I liked RE3R a lot. I know they cut a bunch of content, but having not played the original game, I cant compare it to that, so I am not missing anything I expected to be there. I mainly compared it to RE2R and it was very similar, so that was completely fine by me. I ended up playing RE3R a lot and getting all the achivements (which is something I rarely do or care for).

_

Im still playing RE4R -- on my 3rd playthrough right now, trying to do the S+ rank (requiring a fresh game, no NG+) for the second highest difficulty. This will reward me the chicken hat (a damage-reducing item) so I can then attempt doing that whole thing again on the highest difficulty. I dont think I could survive it otherwise, its absolutely brutal.


And Im also probably ~80% done with TLOU, but having already played through that game years ago, Im in no rush there.

But then again, Im hardly ever in a rush finishing games



edit: i just realised this isnt the "what are you currently playing" thread