Recent reviews by Machiavelli

In short: a Remake done right! The Remake adresses all the things that did not work well in the original game whilst maintaining the key aspects that made Dead Space stand out. And even those are improved upon in the remake!

Pros:
- An extremely dense atmosphere; denser than the one of the original game for me
- An improved story with additional lore. I very much appreciate that Isaac talks now
- The addition of side missions works very well
- Amazing sound design
- Very good graphics (though not outstanding)
- Addition of exploration to an otherwise linear game
- Improved controls. The original game was a bit tedious to play for PC users as it was in essence a poor PC port
- Very much improved gameplay. The zero G sections are now way more fun to play, the Asteroid section was completely reworked. The gunplay is (almost) on par with the one of Dead Space 2
- The weapon upgrade system is, you guessed it, an improvement over the one in the OG. I'm really glad they did not re-use the Dead Space 3 trash here
- Enhanced UI
- Incredible set pieces

Cons:
- Not very optimized wrt hardware usage
- I did encounter some bugs that forced me to replay some sections
- Enemy variety is pretty much identical to the one of the OG and therefore not too great. I would have really appreciated it if the devs had included some of the necro types of Dead Space 2.
- One negative aspect about the implementation of side missions: the mission tracker indicates when a certain area is not unlocked yet through story progression. In such case you cannot track this side objective that takes place in this area. The issue is that certain areas may have already been unlocked, however some of the rooms in there can still be locked behind a security clearance. And if yours is not high enough, you cannot enter the room. This is unfortunately not indicated in the UI.

9/10

An outstanding video game that is worth every penny of its somewhat high price for a remake. I really hope Motive can continue working on this franchise; though before I wanna see a Remake of Dead Space 2, I'd be way more interested in them having a go at remastering Dead Space Extraction.

The only definitive thing about Mafia II: Definitive Edition is that the game is worse than the classic 2010 version of Mafia II.

Apart from the fact that the devs barely changed anything other than improving hair textures and giving the most Italian mobsters baby blue eyes, they managed to introduce a surprising amount of bugs to an otherwise almost bug-free original game. Some bugs are severe enough to force you to replay entire missions because a single cop decides to hide in a locked room or cant cope with opening doors, for example.
Barely anything was changed in terms of visual improvements, yet the game's optimization was worsened significantly, leading to frame drops down to 20 fps at times.
Even though some of the bugs can be quite entertaining like missing pupils, NPC pupils not focusing at all on the conversation partner or hair textures literally glitching into NPC heads, this game is a complete mess.

Mafia II is an atmosphere driven, linear single player game and even if the original game is now 10 years old, I would still recommend it to anyone in a heart beat who enjoys games of this type. Just don't expect an open world like you have in GTA for instance. So if you want to try it out, buy the classic version and stay away from this piece of crap. There are good reasons for why people don't refer to Mafia II: Definitive Edition as a "Remaster".

On a serious ending note: if H13 do not manage to pull off an at least decent game in the near future, Im guessing that 2K will shut down the studio entirely after the abdominations that were Mafia III and this disgrace of a game.

So I spend 90 hours in one week on this game... Am I mad?

Background:
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an action-adventure, open world game set in a wild west scenario. As its name suggests, the game is part of the Red Dead series and a prequel to Red Dead Redemption. You play as Arthur Morgan, an enforcer of the Dutch van der Linde gang. After a job went horribly wrong, the gang has to run and pick up the pieces to be able to leave the country for good.

Opinion on the game:
Lets get to it. This game is one of the greatest open world games ever. And I mean that literally. The world you play in is huge, the regions vary from a cold Rocky Mountain environment over the humid swamps of Florida to the arid and hot dessert wasteland of Texas. The world is so vast but yet full of life. Even in the remotest dessert areas or on the coldest mountain tops, you never get the impression that you would be alone in an empty world. Rockstar managed to put life into this game with the incredible diversity in the animal and plant fauna, the interaction with others and the map design in general. Especially the great contrast between the deadly wilderness and the life in all the small villages and towns really adds to the game's capability of immersing the player into a world as it could have been in the late 19th century in the wild west. A big contributing factor is that with exception of one character (to whom I come to later), all pro- and antagonists are credible, which is partly due the fact that they were played by real life actors.
So the game is huge, not only in terms of space (on your drive) but also in terms of how mauch playtime you can get out of it. The single player camapign alone without doing any sidequests will take you at least 15 hours.
The graphic and sound design are also incredible. There was one instance where I was in the desert during a severe storm. (You have a dynamic weather btw) The lighting and sound effects were so impressive that I was just standing in the midst of the storm for 3 minutes straight watching how the rain affected the wild life and environment around me. One of my all time favourite moments in playing video games was riding through Saint Denis at night. A post-Victorian era industralized city resembling the likes of what is now New Orleans. On the one hand, you see the ones profiting from the industrialization and just a few streets further you experience the lifes of the people that did not manage to cope with these changes. You see the snobbery and corruption, you see the poverty and you get a perfect understanding of why certain elements in the population reject the society this era produced.
The interaction with NPCs is nothing but outstanding. You can talk to practically anyone and the responses will be always somewhat different. Some will even tell you their life stories if you dont leave in time. And others may try to rob and kill you...
The protagonist(s) you play have the most important trait that I value the most in a video game character. And that is credibility. Just by playing the game, you understand why they make the decisions they make. And why they change the way they change. Rockstar has done a great job with that and this also includes the antagonists.

So in summary, the gameplay experience this game provides is amazing. I can only think of two to maybe three other games that managed to immerse me into their world in a way that RDR 2 accomplished. It really ticks all the boxes so far but is it a perfect game?

Even though I would really like to give this game a 10/10, I cant. There are two major things holding it back.
One is the character I previously mentioned. Unfortunately, this character (Sadie Adler) feels so forced into the game since she is written way too over the top and exaggerated. This is why whenever you interact with her, she manages to destory single-handedly all the immersion created by the entirety of all the other game elements. Thats a real shame, especially since she is way more present in the last chapters of the game and really soured my gaming experience towards the end. Plus, her voice is so annyoing that at some point, I just skipped all the dialoge with her.
The second aspect (and arguably or objectivley the more important one) is the fact that this game (on PC) is just a console port. Which Rockstar is not really famous for, and this is for good reason. This game is liable to crashing and freezing. Once you have to replay 30 minute story missions that basically only consist of walking and talking, you get somewhat frustrated. For a AAA title, the amount of crashing is just not acceptable. Furthermore, the menus, UI and also the interactions with objects can be clunky. This game was designed for consoles and you feel it every minute you play. Another issue is that this game is really hardware hungry/badly optimized, especially so if you want to crank up your graphics settings. Eg, I got an RTX 3070 and a Ryzen 5 5600X and I struggle to achieve 40 fps on ultra settings in full HD. Apart from that, there are also notable bugs and glitches in the game but I wont consider them in the final rating. This is because it is just ridiuclous to assume that anyone could create a world as huge and impressive as this game without having a small amount of bugs in it as well.

Summary:
In conclusion, this game is astonishing. If you have any interest in western themed scenaria, like open world games or prefer story driven games in general, get this game! You will not regret it. (Or maybe dont if you have a potato PC, otherwise the game might not even launch in the first place) Despite its shortcomings, it is easily in the top 3 games Ive ever played. There are only a few games out there, that achieve a comparable level of immersion and authenticity.
Considering everything I stated above, I give RDR 2 9.8/10. This is a Game of the Generation contender, nothing short of that. Period.

So maybe I might not be mad after all. Well, at least not completely....

Never again.

**Disclaimer: Thanks to German censorship, I cannot buy Dead Space 2 on Steam. So even though this "review" is listed as belonging to Dead Space 1, it is however meant for its successive game**

Dead Space 2

I probably could write a book about this game. Therefore I don't even bother listing the pros and cons since it would lead to an inappropriately long text that noone wants to read.
In short, there is no other game that I have played as repeatedly or deeply as this one. Dead Space 2 is an amazingly well paced survival horror/ action horror title. You play as Isaac Clarke, a regular engineer, who struggles to escape a necromorph (which are basically zombies) outbreak on his space station. During your flight you visit a variety of different locations, experience Zero-G elements, fight primarily with mining tools and you are haunted by the nightmares Isaac had been through in the first game.

Reaching from story and atmosphere to gameplay mechanics and graphic/sound design, Dead Space 2 delievers an (almost) flawless presentation. Still to this day, I haven't played a title that would even come close to what this game has achieved.
Dead Space 2 is, in my book, what one calls a masterpiece. A perfect game. 10/10

(If you decide to give this game a shot, you're best off by playing Dead Space 1 first to get the gist of what this franchise is about.)

My 2 cents on the game:

Pros:
- Very fun fps in general
- Two different approaches for most heists possible (stealth or loud)
- Skill tress and perk decks allow for a variety of different and interesting builds
- Huge variety of guns
- Guns are all customizable and satisfying to shoot
- Mod support
- Good controls
- A surprisingly low amount of trolls
- A lot of unique heists available

Negatives:
- On the technical side this game is a complete train wreck: the amount of game breaking bugs and glitches in this game has not been matched by any other game I have played so far. In addition, this game crashes on an absurdly high and consistent level. Just to get an understanding of what I am talking about: in 3 months, PAYDAY 2 has crashed 40 times for me (not using mods). Not surprisingly, optimization for this game is non existant, which means that PAYDAY 2 suffers strongly from FPS drops that vary from heist to heist (Diamond Heist is boderline unplayable for me)
You take all of that in return of graphics that would have been considered appropriate in 2008. Some say the usage of the abdomination that is called DIESEL engine is to blame for this game's pitiful technical state but I am not so sure about that. Every update the developers release, they manage to break the game in one way or the other due to simple coding errors. Most of the time it is up to the modding community to do the dev's job and fix the game for them.
- Desync is ruining stealth when playing with others
- Even though stealth can be a fun approach to certain heists, PAYDAY 2 is not a good stealth game. It lacks basic mechanics or gimmics that every stealth game should have. Nonetheless, stealthing a heist is most of the time easier than doing it on loud on the same difficulty level
- A lot of very tedious game mechanics such as transporting bags over a larger distance, pointless drill jams
- This game is a pay2win title. You can create decent builds without purchasing any DLC, however those are nowhere near as potent as builds with DLC equipment
- A lot of cheaters and hackers, which can be annyoing
- Cloakers are the most unbalanced enemy unit I've ever seen in a video game. Especially considering this game's piss poor net code, cloakers add no gameplay value and just ruin one's game
- You can block players but its very circuitous (and not linked to your steam block list)
- The host of the lobby is practically god since he/she has got the ability to kick anyone at any point and this brings me to the biggest problem I have with the game which is its playerbase:
There are a ton of straight ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out there who seemingly only play the game just to kick players for any reason:
You're worse than the host? -> Kick You're better than the host? -> Kick You help up team mates whereas the host wants to leave? -> Kick You ask a question? -> Kick You don't have the exact skill set the host wants? -> Well, take a guess what happens

This issue is in my experience more present in loud games. And if you don't get kicked, chances are pretty high that the host either rage quits or just leaves at some point, which of course leads to the heist being instantly failed. And in case people who have never played this game before read this: if you get kicked (even after putting an hour into one heist) or the host leaves, you won't get any experience or cash whatsoever, all you did was wasting time.

Conclusion: I do still recommend this game. If you're new to it, I'd advise you to start with stealthing basic or tutorial heists on a lower difficulty until you get the gist of it and then proceed to higher difficulties. In addition, a decent stealth build doesn't require as many skill points as a loud build does. Try stealthing it solo and stay away from public games since it is not gonna end well.
In terms of playing loud, if you dont't want to be kicked, play with your friends or host yourself. Otherwise you will not have a good time in this game.

After having played Left 4 Dead 2 for more than 1800 hrs I think I am in the position to write a short first-impressions of this game. Positives first:

+ FPS with very good controls
+ No cutscenes that would tell you a story you arent interested in in the first place
+ Very action heavy
+ Surprisingly fun characters
+ Besides "simple" game principle of shoot-that-zombie-in-the-face, there are actually some interesting game mechanics
+ No crappy RPG elements like forced skill trees (I am looking at you Payday 2)
+ Director makes every game a little bit special
+ Fun Coop game
+ Bill's taunts to Francis
+ Ellis's stories about his pal Keith

Now to the negatives:

- Smokers
- Director can be your worst enemy
- TONS of glitches, bugs, clipping errors
- Braindead Bot AI. Like seriously.
- Not really optimized
- Absolutely awful server situation (mods carry over to official servers, broken finales, connection issues)
- Huge amount of trolls
- Hit detection of melee weapons fundamentally broken
- Not really balanced
- No sound special infected (!!!)
- Have I mentioned Smokers suck ♥♥♥♥?


All in all Left 4 Dead 2 is a 6 / 10 in my book. If you've got as much time as me in this, you'll finally realize that the only way this game can be challenging to experienced players is by killing you with bugs like unstunnable enemies or by setting up straight unfair, cheap events. This game could have easily been an 8 / 10 if some more time had been put into refining the maps and eliminating bugs and glitches.

However, since this game is basically free at this point in time go ahead, get it and test it. Just don't start with expert right away and we won't have any problems :3

I would have given this review a thumb to the left, the one for mediocre games (you know what I mean dammit) but I can't find it for whatever reason, that's why I still give L4D2 a thumbs up.

Alien: Isolation is a superb survival horror game. It revived a niche franchise that had been neglected for many years.
In short:

+ Good graphics, with exceptional lighting effects
+ Amazing sound design (I recommend playing with a head set)
+ Great story, especially for fans of the Alien movies
+ Extremely dense atmosphere
+ Game mechanics such as the crafting gimmic allows a variety of options of how to deal with the threat
+ Unpredicatble Alien AI
+ Well paced
+ Very long singleplayer campaign

- The game gets a little repetitive in the second half of the game

Alien: Isolation is after Dead Space 2 my second favourite horror game so far. A must-have for fans of the original Alien movie.