Recent reviews by Rath

This game reminds me why I've been so cynical of many modern shooters, and reaffirmed that older ones in the 90s still have elements worth keeping now.

Doom reminds me level design can still be a thing in AAA shooters, where instead of some expensive hi fidelity walkway with some cover spots and scripted sequences...you can have verticality, jump pads, portals, and multiple paths circulating around a combat arena where I weave my dance of death.

Everything in the game has this aggressive rhythm, even down to the ways you regain health and ammo are you attacking in different ways vs. cowering for some regen. What it does take smartly from modern shooters is offering a variety of progression, with character abilities, weapon attachments, and weapon upgrades drip fed to you at a continuous pace. You end up with this varied set of weapons, each with various firing modes, always accessible at any given point to use against a metric ton of different demon beasties.

Hell, it even has good boss fights, which is an FPS rarity. I haven't had this much fun with a single-player shooter in literal years. Play the game on Ultra-Violence difficulty, use a mouse/keyboard, turn up the music higher than any other audio in the game, and rip & tear until nothing is left.

Invisible Inc. was already solid in Early Access, and after catching up on the full release with the Contigency Plan DLC...I love it even more. One of the few experiences where procedural levels are fundamentally essential to the core experience. Instead of stealth in real-time where being caught just means restart and memorize the space, you're forced to explore. Peaking and hacking your way into these randomized spaces, gathering intel and using what's in your toolkit to deal with slowly mounting threats. Each decision becomes more important, tension rises, the risk for reward sits in the back of your mind, and the surprises will make you cheer or despair.

Turn-based games live and die based on whether they provide interesting choices, and Invisible Inc. has them in spades. So many stealth games now feel like I'm an action hero with a silencer, but this makes me feel like a secret agent in more ways than one.

It feels like a Halo and Far Cry baby in top-down form. I get Halo AI that is smart, viscious, but exploitable in various ways including pitting warring factions against each other. I get Far Cry for the light stealth, environment hazards to use against enemies, and just being able to choose my approach. Rogue-like elements are layered in, with nifty power-ups, procedural levels, and a kinder take on permadeath by only making you restart the current season of missions. Not all progress is lost, but enough that you get that tension rogue-likes provide.

The physics based controls are sublime, letting you feel like this absolute badass pilot...or switch to a mech, grab a meteorite, throw it into an enemy, and launch them into a giant insect's mouth. Best "pure fun" game I've played this year.

This is what happens in this game:
• I looted a haystack to find only one needle.
• I talked to a wishing well, sold a talking oyster, and got cussed out by a chicken.
• I dug up a husband’s grave, and the wife nearby noticed. Dug up another, and got incinerated
• I killed the mayor’s adopted orc daughter while he was downstairs, left, and he didn’t find out for 2 days.
• A bull read my fortune, and I killed a human quest giver only to get the same quest later from a deer.
• I stole underwear disguised as a giant moving rock inside a wooden house.
• I had to play rock paper scissors to convince a lady, whom I landed on top of in her bathtub… that it was because of an imp’s teleporter pyramid from another dimension.
• I convinced a man to keep his charmed orc sex slave (it didn’t work out).
• A tiny dog leapt to my defense during a quest involving wolves, and wrecked them.
• I got beaten to death for stealing an apple.
• I froze a large goblin mech, and teleported a pyromancer into a pool of lava for education.
• I stole all the art in a city, and sold everything back to the original owners.
• I lifted a sheep into the air, slammed it into the ground, and his sheep buddy got pissed.
• I crafted a wall of chairs to funnel enemies into a choke point, teleported a barrel of acid on top of them, set it on fire to kill half of them, and shot lighting into the blood of the dead to stun the leftover living.

something something 11/10 GOTY

Shadow of Mordor is on Batman: Arkham levels of unexpected quality from a game based off a non-game IP. The game takes place in an open world, akin to Skyrim by being a dynamic living place. Orcs constantly vie for power over another, and you need to kill your way up their hierarchy by hunting captains/warchiefs. Sounds simple, but only because it's open-ended. Do you like the idea of stealth climbing around to knife guards, ride a caragor beast in cavalry style, fire arrows from afar, teleport with said arrow to then assassinate targets, lead enemies to alcohol which you explode, or just wail on people with sword combos?

The game frames a story, but gives you the tools to craft your own journey through it, and responds in ways that surprise you. Captains are your nemesis, they will challenge you, but try to escape a fight they’re losing if necessary, and if you don’t chop off their head return wounded for revenge. They’ll grow in power and rank for killing you, and there is no game over. You simply respawn as your sort of ghostly self, time passes in the world, the hierarchy of orcs change, and you wade back in to another dynamic encounter with interesting surprises.

The game didn't leave a good impression on me early in, but I stuck through it until mission 12 hoping for it to grab me, and now I'm done with it. The game just isn't well designed, and mission 12 fully expressed that to me. The weapons you get are limited in selection throughout the level. The objectives and things you do rarely change and deviate from a formula they repeat every other level or 2. It's basically defend X, attack X, or attack turrets on X to then get to attack X afterwards.

Worse yet is on larger vehicles you're supposed to destroy you get little in terms of visual or auditory feedback that you're actually doing decent damage yourself, or if it's just your friendly ally ships. When the objectives change, the game will do a poor job explaining what you actualy need to do, and point out targets that don't remotely matter to actually finishing it.

The game just does nothing remarkeable outside your strike suite can lock on, and let you paint multiple targets to fire a large missile barrage. Fun for the first few times, but quickly becomes a tedious activity, as you'll use it a bunch to ween down health on ships with inflated HP.

Well...this game suprised me. I bought it expecting just a decent remake of an old-school shooter, but with a new coat of paint. However, what I got instead was the most pure fun I've had with an action game in a LONG time.

There were reminders of why I still love old-school shooters: no scripted set-piece events, no constant mini-cutscenes that strip control away from me, ACTUAL exploration for secrets in levels, regenerating health mixed with classic health packs, no 2-4 weapon limit, no serious grit-filled story, no waiting for AI to open doors for me, no objective arrows/pointers, killing demons and monsters instead of humans from foreign countries, and a focus on speed/dodging over just taking cover.

Then this new game decides to branch out from the original IP, taking the puny sword that does nothing like most melee weapons do in shooters...and make it BADASS. No exaggeration, I've NEVERRRR played a first-person game where a sword felt this good to use. Instead of Skyrim where you flail your sword with no impact on enemies until the HP meter goes down, this blade will literally cut people in half, or cut full limbs off...all depends on where you aim. You can do lunges, slice all around you in a 360, and charge up energy to make your slash arc out like a ranged attack. Worried how this is balanced in a game with guns? Don't be, your character is basically a lithe ninja that can dash so fast you will easily close the gap in distance, and be darting in all directions to kill your enemies.

Of course there is a full arsenal of fun guns to accompany your blade...but this is the closest I've come to a first-person Ninja Gaiden.

Do you like games that give you agency and choice in a world? Well Dishonored has delivered that more than any game I've played in the last few years! Every level is a new mini-sandbox, where you can truly define your own path, and experiment with your abilities to some crazy combinations. I've never encountered a game that has given me so many emergent moments, and is something that can provide a genuinely different experience multiple playthroughs.