Recent reviews by Former Sigma

To preface this review, I am a dedicated Dead by Daylight player who, over the years, has sunk thousands of hours into the game. I am passionate about its gameplay and its lore. This is why I was extremely excited to play this game.

Let's start with the story. The Casting of Frank Stone takes place in the world of Dead by Daylight and features a completely new cast of characters in a completely new setting. Despite the lack of familiarity, I have managed to connect with these characters and this world quite quickly.
The first chapter starts you off as Sam Green, a police officer who is investigating the disappearance of an infant which, in combination with similar missing person cases, have shook the local town. You arrive at a local mill intending to see whether or not it holds any clues relevant to your case. The incompetent security guard who guards the entire area while under the influence of alcohol doesn't give you enough confidence to not dig deeper. After a short round of exploring the place, you run into the remains of someone and a bit of searching later, you find the culprit, Frank Stone. You manage to save the missing child by killing Frank and leaving him to burn in the furnace of the mill.

The game ramps up in story telling quite quickly after that, introducing 2 new casts of characters. The first one, the 1980 crew is made up of 3 teenagers, Linda, Jaime and Chris. They are looking to film a horror movie in the mill and they run into trouble after Sam Green (the officer from the first chapter), prohibits them from going into the mill again citing their safety as the reason. The officer's son later joins the crew as well out of his passion for horror films. The same also goes for Jaime's sister who secretly follows them and reveals herself at a later point.
The chapters that feature them are great, with lots of choices to make. The dialogue felt balanced and natural without too much of the "cartoony" feel I sometimes noticed with the second crew. It also features a few classic teenage troupes because of Jaime and Chris' relationship and the new person who joins the group that one of them vibes with. These are, of course, on top of the basic horror movie cast elements you would come to expect in a setting like this.

The second crew, dubbed by me as "the 2024 crew", is made up of 3 adults, Linda, Madison and Stan. They are all invited by Augustine, the main villain of the game, to her mansion located in a dark forest so she can purchase parts of an old horror film from them.
The vibe of the mansion and the lack of previous inter-character relationships creates a classical horror situation that works really well with this cast. Couple that with the amazing graphical presentation and maze-like design and the chapters that followed this set of characters have been a joy to behold.

The years in the crew names come from the fact that this game makes use of Dead by Daylight's multi-universe system. You may have noticed that both crews have a Linda in them. It is the same person, but at a different point in time in another universe.

Without spoiling the story, I think it's amazing. In order to see all of the endings of the game you are going to have to replay a lot of chapters, which for me is a plus.

Pros:
- The choices are deep and have an extremely big impact on the story.
- The characters are well written and easy to connect with.
- The multiple timeline conundrum is surprisingly easy to understand and doesn't affect the flow of the plot at all. I would go as far to say that its one of plot's main pillars.
- The Locations the chapters take place in as extremely detailed and filled with charm.
- There are lots of journals and clues you can find scattered throughout the environments that enrich Frank.

Cons:
-Short story (6-8 hours of playtime).
- The main villain (Augustine) can come off as too "cartoony" and has a few lines which can only be best described by the word "cringe".
- Madeline can also suffer from a similar issue, but is much less of a problem than Augustine.
- Certain choices you may make that refer strictly to the tone you take with a character often feel meaningless.
- The relationship system is pretty basic and doesn't hold as much power as you may think it does.

Moving on to the gameplay. This game features a dialogue based choice system mixed in with exploring rich environments for parts and clues. There are elements from Dead by Daylight sprinkled in as well, such as skill checks. The game features loads of collectibles present in virtually every place of interest so there is some reason to dig deeper into an area you may not be familiar with.

This section isn't as deep because it's a simple gameplay style that works well with this type of game and I personally wouldn't change anything about it. It may not be your cup of tea if you are looking for a full on action game. I believe most players will find the gameplay more than serviceable.



The presentation, atmosphere and the graphics are incredible.
Every single part of the mill, every single room or corridor of the mansion, every location you enter looks amazing. There are lots of details and objects scattered everywhere.
All of these things make the levels look real. This in turn makes the events have a much bigger impact on you. This feeling is only boosted by the smooth and well made animations the characters feature.
Atmosphere is another one of this game's strong points. The background sounds and the red herrings you hear while exploring the locations both elevate the experience to another level. The visuals hold up here and through top notch graphics and good artistic design, the atmosphere created deeply immerses you into the game.


Ray Tracing and upping the settings both have a big impact on this and I believe they are worth it. I personally believe 30 fps with maxed out settings is fine as long as you hook up a controller so the input delay is not as noticeable.


A few extra notes before the conclusion:
- This games is packed full of references to Dead by Daylight which include sound effects and collectibles that are just puppet versions of killers from dead by daylight and their add-ons.
- The director's cut mode is great and makes the game extremely replayable.
- Performance was great for me, I ran the game at 4k ultra RT with a 4 year old mid level card at 1080p internal resolution which was then upscaled to 4k using DLSS (performance preset).
- This game makes great use of HDR so make sure to enable it if your monitor is compatible.
- SteamVR opens when you launch the game, which is most likely just a bug caused by them messing up the manifest file steam uses to download and install the game.

Conclusion and TLDR:

Overall, I greatly enjoyed my time with The Casting of Frank Stone and I would recommend this game to anyone who wishes to experience a short but extremely modular and replayable story. The visual presentation is best in class and the same can be said about its audio. While there isn't much to say about the gameplay, it's similar to other "cinematic" games and it's serviceable.

I have put in a refund request.
I would like to state the fact that there were lots of talented hard working people who contributed to this game over almost a decade and a lot of their work is great, however a lot of it also deserves criticism.

With that being said however, let's start with the gameplay of Concord.
The base game is fun, as is basically any other arena shooter. The gun play is good, hit registration seemed fine and the levels felt well designed. The hero abilities are fine as well with some actually unique ones that do spice up the gameplay a bit. It does rely a bit on teamwork and while that does make sense, expecting randoms to cooperate with you is like expecting Sony to make good financial decisions. There are a few modes, but don't expect to play all of them because of the lack of players.
While the basics are good and it's a pretty fun game, I don't see why anyone would pay 40$ when they can get this experience, likely more fully fledged, by playing something else. It's a fun but generic game. OK is the word that best describes it, maybe in a slight apathetic tone. It doesn't expand on anything, nothing here feels brand new, just generic fine hero shooter pvp with a Guardians of The Galaxy theme slapped on it (focus on the word "slapped" as it feels like a copy but more on that a bit later). There are variants and lots of little things that impact the gameplay that feel like slightly more fleshed out elements from other games but ultimately I was not interested enough to dive deep into them since the basic gameplay would still be basic even with a small bonus.

Hero design is up next. This is obviously subjective but I am quite mixed to say the least on them.
I liked a few of the characters such as it-Z, Lennox, Roka and Kyps but even some of these ones feel generic and look like assets bought off the market place with a coat of paint added on top. Lennox is literally alien humanoid with revolver, Roka looks like a mobile game astrounaut and Kyps is a Chat GPT prompt that reads "mannequin saul goodman cyberpunk" with the personality of my smart washing machine.
The rest are deplorable.
- A literal trashcan that made me burst out laughing everytime I saw it on the battlefield (and trashcan is putting it lightly that thing is bigger than some houses).
- A discord moderator with ski glasses and cleaning gloves
- A hazard suit cleaning lady.
- A Mukbang youtuber in military grade armor that looks like an alien turtle from afar.
- A basic soldier with nothing special. Soldier 7 because he is not special enough to get more than that.
And the rest that I am not mentioning because reviews have character limits.

Live service is ironically something this game doesn't fail at (In theory). It costs 40$ but you can progress and get lots of stuff for free, there is not fortnite battle pass, no fomo, no daily log in mobile game engagement tactics. It is actually very refreshing. Props for that, but sadly it's not working out at all. The playercount is lower than my shoesize at launchday and I don't expect a huge resurgence unless it goes free to play and even then, hopium is all there is. Chasing a trend and delivering said product based on that trend 8 whole years later doesn't work, surprise surprise.

Overall, while the graphics looks good, the artstyle is fine and the basic gameplay is generically fun, the game fails to deliver anything unique to convince people to spend single player money for something that is free everywhere else. The heroes, with a few exceptions, are simply boring or ridicolous (seriously that trashcan is just funny at this point).

Not recommended unless there are major reworks to the designs with a new monetization model with something fresh. I did not even mention the story in this review as I found it to be the most generic disney rated 3+ story in history and did not bother with it (shame because they spent a lot of time and money on full on CGI cutscenes every week or something like that).
If somehow they go F2P and convince more people to hop on, I would give it another try since the gameplay was fun. Generic fun, but still fun.

So good that this is a positive review despite the mandatory EA launcher.

Good game.

Would you look at that, everyone in this game is a villain.
Far Cry 4 is one of, if not the best game in the series. The gameplay is fun, similar to previous games, however it's story, while different than 3, takes a different path of choosing the lesser evil, the one you believe is better, after which it's revealed all of them are villains.
I disagree with the common take that FC4 is FC3 but with a shiny new coat of paint. The game is so much more than that. Check it out for yourself.

I stayed determined and was very happy in the end :0

Good on Blizzard for bringing back a beloved skin while helping a good cause.

Great story, great artstyle, great gameplay.
Game is great.

"I say we bust in there and find the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ evidence"

I teleported bread in a revolutionary way