Recent reviews by MaxL

Blindingly brilliant, emotionally poignant, and hilariously funny through and through. Don't miss out on it.

8/10.

This is the best transcription of a movie into a video game since "Alien: Isolation". This feels very faithful to the movies, though not all of them... I'd say it's two parts Last Crusade, one part Raiders, ½ Crystal Skull, and a zest of the others.

The plot is good, the characters are fun and engaging, especially the villain.

The cutscenes are a treat to watch, but there is one very regrettable miss: they were all framed for a 21:9 ratio, and they get cropped on a 16:9 monitor. You can even pan the crop around with the right stick. The action is kept to a 16:9 safe zone, and that's fine, but that crop makes the compositions feel cramped. The thing is, you see, there's a display mode that forces 21:9 letterboxing, but that's for both cinematics AND gameplay... it's a shame there wasn't an option to have 21:9 forced on during cinematics and your monitor's native ratio the rest of the time.

The voice acting was excellent. Troy Baker's impression of Harrison Ford is really impressive. I should note that, for French players like myself, the French version features the same man who dubbed Harrison Ford in Last Crusade and later movies: Richard Darbois! Unfortunately, much like Ford, he is old, and his acting is... subdued, to say the least. He's dubbed plenty of games before, so I don't think it's an experience issue as much as it might be a voice direction issue... and his voice today does not fit the younger Jones very much... so I ended up playing in English.

The gameplay is decent. Think of it as a sort of Dishonored-lite. Emphasis on the "lite". It is a little thin and not very mechanically deep, admittedly. It works well enough for the sort of game it's trying to be, though. The level design was OK; I'd say there were only 3 or so spots where I really couldn't figure out where to go across the whole game. The final boss fight is awful and a huge break in pacing. It really needs to be reworked.

The visuals were good, but they are quite uneven in some places. The ending scenery looks downright unfinished, for example. I get the feeling "full path tracing" didn't really help and sometimes made the lighting in the distant scenery far worse. Really, the "full path tracing" was a bit lackluster and didn't bring the sort of "constantly grounded" lighting you'd have seen with Cyberpunk 2077's, for example. I also get the impression the game was made for HDR displays first and foremost — the SDR grade looks a bit burnt-yet-flat... if you have a good OLED display, this is its time to shine.

I waited until Update 4 to play — unfortunately, there are still quite a few obvious bugs... mostly voice lines very obviously triggering when they shouldn't, but on a couple occasions in the second-to-last map, there were trigger issues (your companion not following you or triggering the next stage of their scripting until you do a thing in a very specific way even though you can approach from all angles). Nothing major, but frustrating.

All in all, a good enough, fun AAA ride. I think another year in the oven would have made it surpass "Alien: Isolation"... but it's good enough, really.

Looking forwards to the DLC.

Neat tech demo, will definitely put your system through its paces

A lovely & chill game mixing light puzzling and exploration through varied environments. There are a couple of shortcomings that bother me (like the intentional lack of rolling sounds) — but overall I would recommend giving it a go.

Fairly interesting story with some very interesting directing choices. This is a narrative game first and foremost, everything else besides the narrative is, for lack of a better way to put it, "second-rate" and pretty janky. Your mileage may vary

Excellent co-op game between friends. I think some of the co-op mechanics go "far enough" that I'd advise against trying to play with complete strangers. With a squad of friends, though, it's REALLY fun.

Some mechanics take a while understanding or getting used to, but once you wrap you head around them, and get into the flow of the game, it's a total blast. Somehow, so many missions end up being won by the skin of our teeth, with miraculous last-minute recoveries, like an action movie climax. The game produces those situations very often, and they're great to play through.

The diversity of options is great too — and the developers have the right approach in trying to make every approach not only viable, but a matter of personal expression and preference. For example, you might see 3 different options that perform more or less the same task, and you might wonder what the hell the point of it is... but in practice, those 3 options play radically differently. I used to think the expendable anti-tank stratagem was worthless, but then I realized it delivers *two* of them, on a 1-minute cooldown. So in practice, you can "bank" a lot of rockets. And that works great during long fights, or objectives where you have to stay & defend a spot.

I do however think that the progression system is a tiny little bit on the stingy side (medals are definitely a huge bottleneck), and while I appreciate that you technically don't have to pay any money to unlock any of the "premium" "battle pass" reward tracks, doing so takes a LONG time, and there are some really great weapons in there (like the medium-armor-piercing revolver). I wouldn't say it's "pay2win", but it skirts uncomfortably close to that line.

100% recommend playing if you've got friends interested in going into it with you...

I felt like this often stumbled short of the potential it could have had; the pacing is severely uneven, the speed of the animations make puzzles grind any sense of momentum to a halt, a couple of the puzzles are way harder out of nowhere, a few of the story bits feel a bit too out of left field and not cohesive with the rest...

I think it's fair to say the game leans first and foremost on its strong Ghibliesque art direction, its live orchestra soundtrack, and a lot of concepts that seem striking and evocative at first... and it does draw you in! But it tends to result too much in a sort of "hold right until you see the next puzzle" syndrome sometimes. A few moments are super duper cool, but they are few and far between.

With all that being said, this remains a very sweet kind of "cinematic platformer"... if you liked "INSIDE", "LIMBO", and games like that, I think there's a strong chance you'll like "Planet of Lana".

I would love to see this team do something along these lines again, while addressing the weak points of this game. I think they'd knock it out of the park.

I liked it a lot! The art direction is superb, the writing (in French) is lovely, and the atmosphere is captivating.

The moment-to-moment gameplay has some jank to it, though, and while I did enjoy the story (even though it was all told through logs), the ending felt a little too out of left field for me, compared to everything that came before it.

I also do think the pacing was a little bit uneven, but ultimately I am a strong appreciator of smaller games that don't overstay their welcome and don't feel the pressure to pad themselves to justify a high price tag.

If it seems like it's your type of game, I would definitely recommend it. I can see how it could not be for everyone, but if you feel like it's your jam, then it almost certainly is.

This is the "B scenario" you could find in other Resident Evil games, but this time it's a standalone DLC. My reported playtime at the end was 5 hours. There's quite a few interesting twists on ideas seen in the main campaign. I think it's well worth the asking price of 10 EUR.

Haven't played the original (though I did check out some comparisons to it after the fact) and they indeed did an excellent job with this. It's a classic Resident Evil game through and through.

Maybe my one gripe with the game is that it still feels like I have to rely on the map far too often in order to know whether or not I'm missing on loot, because things you can pick up are so small (especially gunpowder) that there's a big chance you're not gonna spot it without the map.