Recent reviews by Halcyon

A prologue for a game that will probably never exist, this feels more like a brief tech demo than anything else. The new visuals were decent but I wasn't a huge fan of the barrage of enemies it throws at you. The pacing just didn't feel... I don't know... "Half-Life". The sound effects were weird also. Anyway, this might be the most negative "Positive" review I've ever written, but it's more as a way to deliver constructive feedback than to berate. It's also an effort to graduate this game from "profile features limited" status so I can actually get credit for the achievements. Overall, it was a decent little experience that shows a lot of promise.

Well, that was...
something.

This appears to be this studio's first effort and it really shows. While this title is overflowing with love and enthusiasm, the lack of experience by this dev team really shows itself with the gameplay. For a game that requires 30+ hours to complete (all achievements), there is very little to see and even less to do. Most of your time is spent criss-crossing the map, waiting (im)patiently while you sail across empty expanses of ocean or between one quest giver NPC and another. The quests are all "go here and get this thing" or "take this recipe and make this thing for me" or "bring this thing to that person" and literally nothing else. There are no enemies, no mini games, no variation, no collectibles and very little reason to explore the world. It looks like it was made for kids but its WAY too long and dull to hold their attention for the full play time and it's way too simplistic and "cute" to be of much interest to most adults, so I'm kind of confused about who this was intended for. Regardless, I see that this studio has been chugging away since then and the scores for their games has improved, so I'm betting that they took the failures from this freshman effort to heart and improved their product and I wish them nothing but the best, but purely on it's own merits, this game is an overlong, dismal slog.

Put over 200 hours into this game when my save file was suddenly overwritten, wiping all of my progress. The discussions are filled with similar stories from other players and as far as I can tell, the dev is completely ignoring the issue. I gave him months since my complaint to respond and he has made no effort to do so.

A great shooter that can be played any way you want. The maps are more linear than the original but I barely noticed the difference as huge, exciting setpiece moments raged all around me. The challenge level was perfectly balanced (Hard Mode), allowing me to feel both deadly yet vulnerable at the same time. Highly recommended.

Call of Cthulhu is a tough one to fairly review with just a thumbs up or down. On one hand, the story of a down-and-out war veteran detective scouring a backwater island for a mysterious woman and quickly getting wrapped up in something sinister is extremely cliche. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the game's emphasis on thoroughly exploring each area for clues and objects. There are some light RPG elements and crucial decisions that give the feel of an actual investigation and that change the game just enough to make a second playthrough tolerable. And you will be playing through at least twice, unless you decide to cling tightly to a step-by-step guide. Altogether, the game actually feels like an actual missing persons case interspersed with moments of delerium and terror. Unfortunately, the games good visuals are marred by some janky animations, bad lip-synching and occasional glitches. The dialogue swings from superbly written to embarrassingly bad throughout the game. The stealth and shooter sequences feel underbaked. But overall, it is just competent, creepy and entertaining enough to recommend. Marginal thumbs up.

Black Mesa is a lovingly crafted remake and expansion of one of the most highly-regarded games of all time. As such, it had very big shoes to fill and for the most part it fills them quite nicely. It manages to be faithful to the original when it should and expands upon the original in a respectful and logical manner (again, mostly). It looks great, sounds great and feels great. However, it DOES overstay it's welcome, with too much time spent in Xen for my liking. The "carry an object through nearly the entire game" achievement tradition is also expanded upon, this time requiring you to carry TWO items through about 1 1/2 playthroughs if you wish to 100% the game. I found that to be unnecessarily frustrating and cruel. But those are fairly small complaints directed at an otherwise excellent fan-made remake. Well done!

Great shooter

Oracle is a somewhat tedious open-world walking sim that feels like it was thrown together using Unity assets with marginal competence. The graphics are full of glitches, with textures constantly popping into existence right in front of you. The narration is the biggest head-scratcher, sounding like it was written (or translated) by a non-English speaker and then read by another non-English speaker who doesn't understand what he is reading. The piano piece that plays is lovely but is on such a tight loop that even THAT gets aggravating before the game is over. Gotta go with "no" here.

An excellent HD remake of the classic kid-friendly shooter.