Recent reviews by Revenant

Undertale, the fandom that spawned a million offshoots of pure cringe.

The game itself is pretty good, allowing you to play it in various different ways, I originally bought this for my at the time girlfriend, someone who was deeply immersed in the nerdy anime subculture that this game really caters to, but I found the battles challenging in the few playthroughs I did in order to review this fairly.

The soundtrack is top-tier, make no mistake. I've even heard Megalovania played live by a full orchestra.

It's not the sort of game I would usually play, so if you're coming here for the sort of high-intensity swordfights and magical casting you usually get in RPGs, you've come to the wrong place.

If you can get over how toxic this game's fandom is however, even if you don't like the gameplay, you'll find yourself humming the tunes when you least expect it.

Tower Unite is the continuation of the very popular GMod Tower gamemode, complete with minigames, whole entire game modes, and workshop support.

But enough of reading the blurb, the game itself is very fun with the right people, unfortunately player numbers have fallen off in recent times, making the lobby area a total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ghost town.

The community has it's own problems too, let's just say, if you are a streamer, Do not enter other people's condos, a lot of the players here have an uncontrollable need to fill their suites with pornographic material, if you do see me in game though, either decorating one of my condos, or just hanging around in the lobby or casino, feel free to say hi.

You can enter my condos without worrying about the aforementioned pornography, as I don't do that in my condos, I have put a lot of effort into them and it goes somewhat unsung because everyone else is too busy jacking off.

I was overjoyed when they finally, properly ported this franchise to PC.

I have many memories of staying at my cousin's playing the campaigns co-op with a beer on the coffee table and a controller in my hand.

I have however, always been a PC Gamer, and so to be able to play these games on a high-resolution monitor with a keyboard and mouse infront of me has been a true joy.

The games have been ported over magnificently, and while the whole franchise isn't playable cross-platform just yet, what I have been able to play with my cousin has been a true nostalgia trip to the heady days when we settled any disputes in blast-cratered fields of Blood Gulch.

Being able to switch between the classic graphics and the updated ones has been great, as there are some odd design choices in the new visuals, though that is to say the updated graphics aren't a welcome change.

The new coat of paint really does magic for breathing new life into what are ostensibly twenty year old titles at this point, making them much more accessible to people who are new to this franchise, having been PC players their whole life, I understand how difficult it is to go back to the dated graphics of 2001 for some people, and if they're not being bombarded with shader effects and high-polycounts, they tend to lose interest.

I'd highly recommend picking this one up, and experiencing the trials and tribulations of the Master Chief yourself, you don't know what you're missing.

[Full disclosure, I have become friends with one of the developers over the years this game has been in development hell]

I'm giving a tentative thumbs up to this, because the game is in a very unfinished state, and has not been worked on in a while, it's taken some serious time to get the IP out of the hands of the guy that cut and ran with the money, leaving Delko to face the angry mob, but now everything is in order, perhaps we shall see where it goes from here.

I have made several skins in the workshop for various vehicles, and the tools given are great for that, however I've not been able to make any use of the track editor.

I do recommend the game to other people, but you're going to be disappointed if you expect a complete product at the time of writing.

I don't get how Journos can't play a game all the way through before ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their opinion of it onto the internet.

The Darkness 2 was free on Humble Bundle recently.

I finished it, completely blind as to what to expect, in one sitting, in just over five hours on Normal.

Normal difficulty is the exact minimum I'd personally expect anyone to play a game on, and naturally, I breezed through it, It'd have taken me 6-7 hours to complete if I were doing it on Hard.

I can only imagine the utter slaughter I'd have visited had I played on Easy.

Now, if I could say anything about the Darkness 2, I liked the way it looked, it's visual style was very reminiscent of XIII, a game from my childhood that passed me by, and I never got round to playing anything other than a demo that came in a box of breakfast cerial.

I had to download a patch to remove the XBOX controller prompts, so I could figure out what key I should be pressing to interact with other characters, because for some reason E, which has become as natural as WASD for interacting with the environment was not the same button used to talk with a character, which I found perplexing, but once I adjusted to that, it became second nature.

One of the other things I didn't like too much either was the way the slash attack worked, while you were holding the button, your mouselook was locked, and the way you were moving the mouse determined which direction the tendril would slice, be it horizontally, or vertically.

I would have preferred that to have been a tap for horizontal, and hold for vertical as it would've interfered less with combat

Speaking of which, when you dual wield a weapon, you find yourself left-clicking to fire the pistol on the right, and vice versa, I found myself trying to fire an empty gun numerous times, when the left pistol was fully loaded.

I'm not entirely sure if that's an option you can change, but it's small gripes like that that marr an otherwise decent enough game.

There are also moments where you get flashbacks, and while these are nice, you can find them just after a small skirmish in a warehouse area, and before you've even had chance to come down from the combat, you're forced into an unskippable cutscene which you sit through, completely breaking the flow of gameplay.

You've just come from an incredibly violent confrontation, and now you're slow dancing with a girl in some diner.

These juxtapositions are jarring, and while it's clear it's an artistic choice, showing a protagonist losing his grip on reality, the fact they can come directly after a shootout, without warning, feels like driving at high speed, suddenly followed by being stuck behind Gordon McGyver the Sunday Driver, who's decided today he's going to do 20 in a 40 zone.

If I have to give the game a score out of 10, I'd put my score at a respectable 7/10.

It doesn't set the world on fire with it's mechanics, and the story is a bit lacklustre in areas, but if you can get a hold of a copy, it's more than worth an afternoon.

{{{FULL DISCLOSURE: I have strong ties with a member of the Dev Team, I was given a copy and my voice is featured in the game. I'm one of the Brit soldiers, if you must know which}}}

I have played very little of the game, given that my voice is in it, it would feel weird to hear my own voice yelling at me for being insignificant and weak, but the very little time I have spent in it, I found a fairly well made game, with realistically modelled weapons.

The weapon models have had a lot of attention to detail lavished on them, and given that I've had a behind the scenes look at some of it (I can't say much as I'm under an NDA), I've seen the almost autistic level of attention to detail the team puts into their work in this regard, though having said...

...Where the maps are concerned, I feel there could be more detail put into the ground itself, more debris, pebbles, heck even partially buried helmets etc, the trench entrances themselves for instance could do with looking more dug out than smoothed off.

Another area I think could be improved is in the sound department, I feel the gunfire should be somewhat louder, and a the audio a lot punchier, from what I played there didn't seem to be many echoes, and given you're in the trenches, and open fields of Verdun, Flanders and The Somme, you'd expect to hear more echoes than you do.

All in all, I do have to recommend this game if you're looking for something a bit more grounded in realism, but take my fairly meager review with a pinch of salt, as I said, I'm likely to be highly biased, given my ties to this game and the devs that made it.

So, Black Mesa then...

Well, since I followed the development of this one from the early days, I felt 20 Euros (fifteen pounds) was a small price for the workmanship present here.

I haven't yet played the Multiplayer, as it's basically a TDM game, hopefully we'll get a classic free-for-all and co-op mode in the future, as it's something they promised early on, and a working multiplayer mode goes a long way to get a working co-operative game working.

From what I can see, the new animations are a lot nicer than the rather stiff ones previously found, and I like how the very first time you equip a weapon now plays a small animation, that's a nice touch, as for the combat anims themselves, they're also a lot nicer, with the Gauss Rifle actually shaking violently as you overcharge it.

The Deathmatch maps also look as I expected they would, without much deviation from the formula, which is nice, but there's no Datacore... yet.

If you're looking for a faithful remake of HL1 from the ground up, then you've found it.

If you're looking for something to whinge about, download the free version and be an entitled prick in the community section, either way, I enjoyed it, and I felt no shame in supporting the team for their decade of sweat and toil.

Okay, first impressions...

It looks pretty damn good, and I like what they've done with the concept of slaughtering zeds by the thousands, there's only a handful of characters this time, and three maps on release, but I imagine this will change eventually.

The lack of weapons is also a bit sad, but again, early days, KF1 didn't have a great deal of weapons at first,

The characters thesmelves all have unique voices, which is a step up from the two voices most of the characters shared.

The new boss, without ruining it is a pain in the ass to kill, he's considerably more difficult than the Patriarch, and my team soon realises that ambushes would not work, again this is early days, ambushes may become a viable strategy when more weapons are added.

The game has a dsitinct lack of explosive weapons too, but it's clear these are to be added, as there is a category for them in the trader menu.

As for the trader, it's been replaced with what is ostensibly a 3D printer, pity, I kinda liked the black woman who spoke in fluent innuendos, but that's just a small gripe.

Overall 8/10, this is likely to change as the game gets added to though.

So, in a previous iteration of this review, I recommended this game wholeheartedly.

I can no longer do that, as this new DLC while it has made a lot of QoL improvements, has removed around 200 vehicles, most of which are the cheaper, entry level supercars, making it difficult for newer players to acquire some of the faster cars.

At the time of writing, I am Rank 778, with $520 Million in-game, so I am not in a position where I am beholden to Rockstar's predatory microtransactions, but I can see the exact reasoning for this change... It's to make sure you buy those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shark cards.

And do you get what you pay for? No. Not really, if you're a new guy, you're going to get merked by everyone, and I mean everyone... And there's nothing you can do about is as the game has NO anti-cheat whatsoever, if you piss some script-kiddie ten year old off, he's going to use a mod menu to crash your game.

I will still play this game, as I can find my own enjoyment in private lobbies, as I've fostered a group of friends over the years I can play with in an invite only session, and if you're planning on buying this, do the smart thing and just play FiveM on a server with some actual ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moderation.

Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?

There are three kinds of gamer, Those who haven't played System Shock 2, those who didn't complete System Shock 2, and those who did manage to perform the damn near impossible.

I am in that latter category, and I deserve a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ prize, because I pulled it off back in 2002, and it's not gotten any easier.

System Shock 2 is set forty-two years after the events of the original, and is a shining example of FPS-RPG done correctly, and valid candidate for the greatest game sequel of all time.

The game is if you hadn't figured, incredibly difficult, and if you plan to breeze through it, you're going to dealt the bloodiest nose you've ever had.

Three years ago, you decided to enlist in the UNN, In either the Navy, the Marines, or the O.S.A, This is your fourth year, and you were assigned to the UNN Rickenbacker, a ship piggybacking with the Von Braun, mankind's first FTL ship on it's maiden voyage.

A few months into this journey, for reasons unknown to yourself, you wake up in a cryo-tube, with the foul smell of death in the air, feeling like you've got the worst hangover of all time, with all kinds of technology lodged into your brain, it doesn't take long for you to realise that something has gone very wrong indeed.

That's enough foreshadowing, let's talk functionality.

The graphics have the 90s problem of early 3D, everything looks like a polygon with textures thrown onto it, this can be fixed with mods, and I may write a guide with my own recommendations, but that's for another time.

Right from the get-go there are problems with the controls, and a lot of problems at that, because rebinding the controls can break other things, so you might want to look up a guide before playing, that's the issue with rushed games, you can blame Electronic Arts for that.

If you're still here after all that, I do recommend the game, It's pretty damn good, if not a bit broken.