Recent reviews by Orion Invictus

It's one of the greatest games I've ever played and my most played game on Steam, despite being new. It's incredible in every way.

It's a remake of one of the best horror games ever made. A true remake, rebuilt from the ground up in a different engine with additional mechanics, reworked (improved) weapons, reworked (improved) upgrade system, reworked (improved) level design, and more. The devs really put in the work, and it shows.

Game was a gift, hence why it says received for free.

It's a free management game, a remake of an older game, focusing on transporting goods and people between towns. Highly customizable companies, networks, maps, etc. It's also highly complex, and more realistic than what you'd expect. Graphics are still the same, but if you play these games for the graphics, you're doing it wrong. No data mining, no second launcher, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Even if you don't usually like this type of game, if you're curious about it, I highly recommend you try it. It's literally free, you have nothing to lose.

Let me start by saying this game is not for everyone. While that may seem obvious to anyone who's played a wide range of games, it's apparently not obvious to everyone. I also know that "not for everyone" is used to justify a lot of crappy games, so let's dive right in to the meat of the review. Keep in mind the review will have spoilers.

Death Stranding is a strange game, from concept to story. You play as a delivery man in a divided world after an event known as the "Death Stranding" occurred. Now, you'd think playing as a delivery man would be exceedingly boring, but there's a lot more to it.

Your primary goal at any point in the game is always going to be moving cargo from point A to point B, there's no escaping that. You're a delivery man, not a soldier or a spy. However, the cargo may require special care. For example, some cargo can only be carried by hand, which completely shifts the delivery process.

Before you even set out on a delivery, there are things you need to think about: your route, how much weight you're carrying, how you're transporting the cargo, just to name a few. You start out delivering on foot, but as the game progresses you'll unlock upgrades to your equipment, vehicles, and even the ability to build roads (you don't choose the road locations yourself, though). You also unlock fast travel between certain points, but you cannot bring any cargo with you.

Each terrain type is different and provides different challenges, but you'll always want to keep an eye on your stamina. If you're going over terrain that has many steep areas, you'll probably try to move more slowly to avoid falling. If the terrain is wet, you have to be careful not to slip.

I won't get into the specifics of delivering much more, lest this review turn into a guide, but you get the idea: delivering isn't as easy as going from A to B. This is not a walking simulator, despite what the trolls may claim.

Equipment can be crafted at certain locations, including one piece of equipment that's essentially a 3D printer you use to create structures. You can make bridges, generators (to recharge your vehicles and your own battery), watch towers, and more. Equipment and structures decay over time, but structures can be upgraded, to slow the rate of decay, and even repaired. Naturally, upgrading and repairing incurs a resource cost.

Structures you build are shared online among a few people, if you're playing online to begin with. This means others may use those structures, as well as upgrade and help maintain them. They can also delete your structures from their game, but only you can destroy your structures from your game. Resources donated to build roads are also shared, though the specifics of how that works seem to be a mystery.

The story is way over-the-top, with some fourth wall breaks and comedic moments, but also philosophical musings and critiques of society. In other words, typical Kojima. There are also some plot twists; some you can probably see coming, others not so much.
One of the best things about the story is that every single story thread is given a conclusion. I had questions while I played the game, but every single one was answered by the game itself. This isn't one of those pieces of media that prompts the fans to ask questions it has no answers for so it can pretend it's "deep" and spark debate among fans to see which "theory" best fits the incomplete story. This game's story is complete and was thought out from start to finish.

The main characters' names are all puns, as is common in some works, but don't let that scare you off. They have depth to them beyond what their names might indicate.

The game, like the story, is complete. No partitioning pieces to sell off as DLC, no lootboxes, no microtransactions, nothing. You buy it and you get the full experience, end of story.
Disclaimer: There were a few colors for minor items that you could only get if you'd preordered the game, but I don't consider those to be significant.

From a technical standpoint, this is a very good port. Some people are reporting issues that the devs are working to fix, but for most players the game runs perfectly, as evidenced by its score.

Now for the parts of the game that some people might have issues with.

• The game and story take a while to really open up. Even then, the game focuses primarily on getting past enemies unseen, to protect your cargo. There's a lot of action in the game, but it's in very specific areas and parts of the story.
  
• Your character barely speaks even when people ask him questions directly. Personally, I find this incredibly annoying.
  
• The soundtrack can be a bit... odd, at times.
  
• Some product placement, which some people say "breaks immersion". I don't mind it because I know it probably had to be done to secure enough funding for the game, and it's not like there's no product placement in other games.
  
• Because structures are shared online, this may reduce the difficulty of the overall game in certain areas. Although this is the point of the game, some people don't like this. To avoid this, you can play offline or just dismantle the structures and build your own.
  
• There is no NG+.
  
• There's a certain part at the end where you'll just alt+tab out for about a minute at a time because it functions as a sort of unskippable cutscene. This is my main complaint about the game, which should tell you a lot given that it only comes at the end and you only have to suffer through it once.

Bottom line, if you're someone who enjoys more slow-paced games that require you to plan for the journey ahead and can accept the negatives I pointed out above, I would recommend you get this game. If you're someone who needs a game to be full of action from start to finish, this is not for you and you will not enjoy it.

It's a cheap and good puzzle game with an active developer who's constantly patching bugs.

I'll start off with a few tidbits some people seem to think are relevant:
Out of the entire so-called "Soulborne" series, I've only played Dark Souls III and all its DLC, which I liked a lot.
I'm on NG+ in this game.
I am primarily a PvE player in all games I play.

This game is not like Dark Souls. It does not try to be, and it does not want to be. To even say that it borrows elements from Dark Souls because it's hard is like saying that Dark Souls borrows elements from World of Warcraft because they're both RPGs. However, because many people think of this as "another Souls clone", I will include comparisons to Dark Souls at the end of each pro.

Pros:

The Surge does a good job of storytelling, if you're paying attention. You can get a pretty clear picture of what's going on through audio logs, announcements, NPCs, watching some in-game propaganda videos, or, if you're feeling up to it, reading flavor text. However, the story is not given to you all at the same time, or even in a linear manner. You're going to have bits and pieces out of sequence that you need to put together, like a puzzle. This is different from most other games, but, again, if you're paying attention, you'll come to like it.
This is different from Dark Souls, in that storytelling comes primarily from cutscenes and tons of flavor text.

Level design is mostly realistic. You're stuck in a factory, so there are catwalks, deadly drops, heavy machinery, crates, elevators, and your weapons are just tools being used as weapons. Detailed maps can be found in some areas, but mostly you'll find arrows pointing you in one direction or another. If you're an immersive gamer, like me, you'll love it.
This is no different from Dark Souls, with the exception that non-boss enemies in The Surge can be primarily found in tight spaces, leaving less room for error.

The looting system is deterministic, which is great, and realistic. If you want an armor schematic, you need to cut off pieces of it from enemies who wear it.
If you want components to craft and upgrade your current armor, you need to cut off the same pieces from enemies. If you want leg upgrades, you have to cut off the legs of enemies wearing leg armor. If you want torso upgrades, same thing. Unlike trying to get schematics, you do not need to cut off parts from enemies wearing the same armor as you.
This is different from Dark Souls, in that drops are almost completely random, with few exceptions.

Combat is also realistic, to some degree. Staggering enemies is difficult with lighter weapons with high attack speeds, but at the same time, heavier weapons capable of staggering enemies are harder to hit due to their low attack speed. Furthermore, to get a successful cut, you'll need to weaken enemy body parts. You also can't just back off from an attack past a certain point, due to momentum. Blocking also takes a heavy toll on your stamina, and just holding the block will slowly deplete your stamina. You are, after all, using heavy machinery as weapons. You need to be careful about when to attack and which weapon to use against an enemy.
This is different from Dark Souls, where you can cancel just about any attack by rolling, eliminating the risk of going "all in", and shields simply slow stamina regeneration..

The implant and armor systems are realistic. Your implants need power, but your RIG also needs power to help you move around, so heavy armor will leave you unable to use many implants, while implants will force you to use light armor. That is, unless you farm scrap and level up until you can have both. However, armor still has drawbacks. Heavy armor typically increases stamina and energy consumption and may even decrease damage output.
This is different from Dark Souls, where you need to meet attribute requirements to effectively use weapons and armor, yet suffer no penalties as long as your load capacity is high enough, unless otherwise specified by your weapons and armor.

Cons:

Storytelling has some flaws, primarily in the form of NPCs. Every NPC you talk to says they don't know what's going on, which gets tedious after a while. Although it is realistic, given the situation, it's also frustrating for players due to the inclusion of a "What's going on here?" dialogue option with every single NPC you meet.

Level design can be confusing. Although the developers had the right idea by limiting the amount of maps and such, there's a lack of signs that is unrealistic in a large manufacturing complex where people are expected to move around on foot.

Combat can be frustrating at first in NG+. In NG, you start with what amounts to Mk 0 armor and weapons, and enemies (damage, HP, armor) are scaled to that. Throughout NG, you can upgrade your weapons and armor all the way to Mk V by finding upgrade items called "nano cores". However, there's a limited number of these, so you'll most likely just upgrade your armor and weapons to Mk IV. In NG+, however, the "baseline" from which enemies in the first area are scaled is now Mk VI, meaning that your Mk IV armor and weapons are effectively worse by comparison than your "Mk 0" armor and weapons from NG. This can lead to some quick, frustrating deaths in the early levels, until you upgrade everything to Mk VI.

Upgrading can also be frustrating in NG+. Because you can't farm Mk I - Mk IV components any more, you jump straight to Mk VI. However, this also incurs a massive increase in scrap costs, since you're effectively upgrading multiple times all at once. If you plan on using multiple weapons in NG+, but didn't previously upgrade them, you may spend a lot of time farming.



All in all, this is a good game, well worth the money. Just don't think it's Dark Souls, because it's not.

This game gets too much undeserved hate. It was never advertised as a space shooter, like Star Citizen or EVE Online; it was never really advertised as anything other than space Minecraft, and that's exactly what we got. A near-infinite universe with randomly generated worlds filled with randomly generated flora, fauna, resources, and natural hazards, where your goal is to gather resources, build things, fight enemies from time to time, explore, travel, and survive.

If you like exploring, traveling across a randomly generated universe, learning alien languages, helping aliens, uncovering a game's lore without it being spoonfed to you, and occasionally shooting down enemy space ships, then this game is for you. However, keep in mind that's all the game is. There is very little action, aside from trying to survive on hostile worlds and sometimes getting attacked by pirates. If that does not appeal to you, then you should not buy it, because you will be disappointed.

This is not an MMO space shooter. It's a game for exploring a universe. And I definitely recommend it, if you're into that.

07/10/2022 (version 4.0) edit: Great new update, increases inventory slots, increases tech slots, adds custom difficulty (that you can change on-the-fly), and a bunch of other QoL changes.

I have 163 hours of gameplay, and I can definitely say I recommend this game to anyone who wants an asymmetrical horror game.

This game perfectly captures the horror genre for survivors and killers. There's genuine tension when playing as a survivor, even before the killer actually shows up, and as a killer, you're almost compelled to sacrifice people any way you can.
The in-depth lore is definitely a big plus. For an asymmetrical horror game, the lore is surprisingly well written. It also ties into many game mechanics.

Despite what many salty players may say, the game is largely balanced. Win ratio for survivors and killers is roughly 50%, you can compensate for many perks and add-ons simply by being skillful, and the statistics the developers have presented show an equal percentage of sacrifices for almost every rank.

There are some bugs still present in the game, which is normal for any game this close to the release, but the developers are always working to fix them. They give us weekly updates on Twitch where they also answer our questions, five patches so far that addressed the biggest problems at the time, and even new content. Despite being a small team, they've proven their dedication to this game and its community.

The vocal community is largely unpleasant, to say the least, but the moderator team and many players are extremely helpful and willing to assist any way they can. As with any game, there are complaints from players who lost just because they lost, people who use bugs and exploits to their advantage, selfish players and so on. However, despite all this, I still recommend the game. These players don't stick around for long, and the developers are working on removing bugs and exploits anyhow, which will make for a more pleasant experience for everyone who does stick around.

All in all, taking into account the bugs, I'd give this game a 7/10, maybe even 8/10.