Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον MrMuffinz

After starting up the game countless times, learning Level 1 and 2 like the back of my hand, and then dropping the game out of feeling overwhelmed time and time again over the years, I have finally beaten the game and can give my actual thoughts on it.

This game is hella good.

I never would have thought to describe this game as fun, or even nearly as good as System Shock 2, which I love dearly and play at least twice a year, but that has changed. This game is an absolute classic.

Story
The story is incredible.
If you're someone who enjoys Prey, BioShock, System Shock 2, etc. then you know what you're in for.
Shodan is an excellent villain, and feels almost like and eldritch horror deity. She is constantly 5 steps ahead of you, while experimenting with the deceased crew members; turning them into bio-mechanical horrors.

What really surprised me is how she made System Shock 2 Shodan look like Diet Shodan, or Great Value Shodan. I really liked her performance in SS2, but in this, she is actually the star of the show. A relentless AI that is just constantly talking about how she is going to peel the skin off your bones slowly while her robotic minions feast upon your still living body.

Gameplay
The gameplay admittedly isn't super great, at least in the beginning.
The first few weapons like the pipe, the dart gun, laser blaster, and basic pistol are all very underwhelming feeling, and the enemies themselves seem more like nuisances. As you get further into the game, you get more and more weapons to play with, abilities, and much more overwhelming foes.
This, coupled with the fact that you are slowly learning how to efficiently play the game makes for some high octane fun that became straight addicting.

By the last level, I had mastered the guns and health/energy management, and was quite sad when the ending credits hit, as the game had become incredibly fun, with me now able to fly around corners and blast mutant cyborgs in the face with a rail gun at mach speed. This kind of shares a spot with SS2 as well, as the gameplay also picks up about half-way through that game too.

If you find yourself not loving the gameplay, seriously keep pushing.
Once I did, it became worth it.
What I think really helped it shine is the new Source Port that is now default for the Enhanced Edition. The game plays so smooth, looks super sharp, and the controls were remapped to actually play like an FPS game, with a few oddities here and there. I absolutely do NOT recommend playing the classic version first for "authenticity". It controls terribly, and does not run very smooth.

If you absolutely MUST play the classic OG version, go find the old version of the Enhanced Edition, or play System Shock Portable. Anything that has mouse look, because even with mouse look on Normal difficulty, this game can tear you a new one.

Sound/ Music
The sounds of this game are deeply embedded into my brain.
They're all super crunchy late-90's stock sound effects that range from sounding pretty good, to crumpled up paper. That goes for both enemies and guns.
The UI effects all sound pretty good, with some high tech plinking when you click something, and some nice sounds when you get an email or a new voice log.

The music in this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slaps though.
It's all midi through Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth (unless you use a SC-55 plugin), but it just bops, and still manages to sound awesome. It's like some weird kind of cyber jazz, and once again gets really slammin' once you get to the further levels like Engineering and Executive.

Final Thoughts
I didn't go super in-depth with this interview, as I'm just writing this immediately after beating it, but if you want some deeper thoughts, just look through the reviews.

Otherwise, this game was stellar, and I can definitely see myself replaying this one at least once a year, or at least maybe when I do my bi-annual System Shock 2 playthroughs. The story is wild, the gameplay gets super thrilling, and the music slaps.

What else could you want?
For a score, I'd give this a 9.1/10.

I owned this game twice during it's Early Access

I refunded it both times, on EA release, and after the Maidenholm update.
The world felt dead, the proc. gen. made the towns feel too large and empty, and lifeless.
The combat was ok, the survival mechanics were horribly balanced, and it just had that... open world RPG stink about it.
There was almost no story either (and this was the intention initially), which made the game feel even more dead, and had me question what I was supposed to be doing.

In the release version, I can say most of that has been fixed.
People keep talking about the proceedural generation, even now, but I'm convinced that what we have now, besides events and location of enemies/ items, it totally hand crafted.
The newest iteration of the garden district is beautiful.
It has landmarks, the buildings feel properly destroyed, they don't feel... too far apart (lifeless?), and there's bits of little details everywhere, scribblings on the walls, etc.
It really feels like an town obliterated by war.
I'm 2 hours in at the moment so I can't speak the same about the rest of the game, but appearantly the reason for the game's delay was to bring this specific section of the game up to par with the rest, so I have high hopes.

As for everything else, the combat has a very nice weight/punch to it, even if you aren't doing a lot of damage (for instance your fists), the survival mechanics on Normal are immensely more managable (I haven't gone hungry or thirsty at all since I started, and I was just randomly eating and drinking when I found stuff), and the crafting is simple enough that you don't need to worry too much about anything as long as you at least casually search containers and bodies.

One thing I noticed is during the first real mission, when you're wandering through an enemy base, is that the game feels like Thief/Dishonored. I was met by a room with 2 guards working their rotations and chatting. I started sneaking along, throwing bottles to distract them, etc. Then after entering a room I looked up and noticed pipes I could climb on that led through the entire room and would have saved me the trouble of timing my sneaking and bottle throws, and so far that's the kind of stuff you are met with in this game. I had the same thing happen an hour later in another mission, noticing that instead of running in and fighting these wastrels one by one, I could just jump on top of a building and sneak through some rafters.
Various alternate paths that can be less confrontational are litered throughout, and it's just one of those games that feels very rewarding when you find something like that.

Story-wise, the game is really good.
You really get a good glance into Arthur's backstory, with optional "masks" in key areas that show some of Arthur and Percy's past, and gives insight to what happened before Wellington Wells became what it was.
Other than that, there's a quite a few cutscenes with very well written dialogue, and very good voice actors.
If you only care about a good story coupled with some light gameplay, then you'll be right at home here.

Final score pending, but based off what I have now (considering the RPG gameplay), i'd give it an 8/10.
It's a very fun and original experience when you take out what makes it unoriginal.

What is it?
Rogue-lite PREY DLC campaign that randomly generates enemies, items, and obstacles per each "run".

How does it work?
After some small story bits you are taken to a menu where you can select one of five characters.
At the beginning you only get one, and have to unlock the others by doing objectives.
As soon as you pick your first character, you create what is called a run/simulation, which is a unique persistent moon setup across all of the characters that randomizes stuff as said above (it does not randomize the levels). It is persistent in the fact that everything remains the same, which means that if you take a really good, or important item and escape with it on one character, it will be gone when the next character runs through, so some thought and management is required. As you explore the moonbase, there is a sense of urgency. You have what is called Typhon Corruption, an escalation system where the longer you are in the simulation (in total, across the characters), the more corrupt it becomes. This works much like Risk of Rain. You start off with Level 1 and have weak enemies and sparse spawning. As time goes by you slowly gain level and more and more enemies pop-up, while also getting stronger. When you hit Level 5 there is a skull icon. I can only assume it means death, but it might just mean it gets really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard. You can find these very rare items though that seem to lower your escalation progression by like 1/3rd, but I haven't gotten far enough to see how many spawn, or if a set amount more than one per run spawns.

The goal is to escape with all 5 characters in a single run/ simulation, however the simulation can be reset of course. If you fail to escape with all characters such as someone dying, or maybe not having unlocked the rest of the characters and escaping, everything will be reset and the item and enemy placement will randomize again.
What does carry over into a new run is the characters you unlocked, upgrade chipsets, enemy scans, and the currency you receive.

There is an in-game scoring system in this game. For everything you do, such as finding a dead crew member, killing an enemy, or finding upgraded chipsets/weapons, you receive a certain currency that can be used in the character selection menu to buy items for your character to start with in their loadout. The only catch is you have to find the items to unlock them in the store. This means you can buy a ♥♥♥♥ ton of neuromods, or start with a gun, etc.
Maybe you just want to run through with an inventory full of recycler charges.

Story
Regardless of what the description says, the story is a bit light. You start the game in a Kasma Corp. satelite orbiting the moon where you receive an operator a mole sent to you while under the guise of TranStar. You are told by an unknown person that you are contractually obligated, and you must fulfill certain requirements before you can go home.
You hook the operator up and sit down in a chair that lets you relive the memories of 5 people trying to escape. Your goal is to complete a series of objectives (beyond just escaping with the 5 in one run) that can be done in any order and doesn't need to be done in a single run.

There is the typical Shock-like sidestory content you can find scattered around, where you learn about what happened to people, find voice logs, and even sometimes get talked to through radio transmissions, but it feels much more light compared to the original campaign, which leads me to my topic of review.

Sound
The sound in this is... meh. More often than not, or at least in the few areas open to you on your VERY first character run (it blocks you from all but the hub on your first run), there seems to be absolutely no ambience. You are on the surface of the moon, but you are inside a giant dome, I would expect some reverb or maybe the hissing of ventillation and pipes, or machinery, but no, it's dead quiet. Even when you get to the inside shuttle area, dead silent. Not even added reverb or echo. However once you unlock the large areas, they all seem to have your typical air moving, lights humming, pipe racket, etc. that you would expect, and even sometimes a small bit of music.
Overall it just feels kind of dead.

As for voice acting, it feels a bit sub-par. I think in the original campaign they had some kind of filter, or at least produced the voices a bit, because these voice files sound kind of raw and in your face. It's especially a stark constrast hearing a loud man in my ear while everything else is silent. Also I believe they didn't use the same voice actor for Alex Yu. He sounds kind of different, and had a bit of a thicker accent. Could be like I said, they just didn't produce the voices as well.

The New Stuff
So what's new besides the story and the mechanics?
Well, the setting is a large moonbase hub with 3 large areas that connect to eachother in some way (usually just a tram/shuttle), and retains the "choose your path" open style of level design where you have options in how you get somewhere.
There are new enemy types, though I've only seen two so far, I think more come out when you gain escalation levels.
One is kind of like the Hydra from the Half-Life 2 beta, and the other is a Moonshark, a very large typhon that burrows in the ground and finds you with movement ala Tremors.
Along with new enemies, there's new toys and weapons to play with. I haven't touched them yet, but there's Gloo Bombs, Typhon Tentacle Grenades, and a Psi-melee weapon. I'm sure there's more, but I haven't explored deep enough yet.

What I Think
Despite the few problems I had with the sound design and the short focus on story, I think it is a very good DLC and well worth the $20 if you love PREY and like Rogue-lite games. The game manages to emulate the early-game feel of games such as BioShock and System Shock (and even PREY's campaign) where you scrounge around for materials just to survive. You don't end up feeling like a god, but you have enough to make ends meet.

Can I see myself playing it once I beat all of the objectives and escape with the 5 characters?
Yeah, the replayability seems great. There's also a bunch of items from the survival mode in it, so I'm curious to see if beating it unlocks a harder version.

Rating: 8.5/10
Worth.

I've waited, and waited, and WAITED, since the release of the Closed Beta for the game to finally be in a state where I could recommend it.

Now is that time.
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For many months from the closed beta to Early Access (and even probably until earlier this year), this game has suffered everything from poor networking, bad balancing, mechanics not functioning properly (tele-rockets to name one), and even for a while framerate being tied to the amount of bandwidth you can send the server (resulting in rubberbanding I haven't seen anywhere else in my life).

Now I think the game is finally in a state where balance is fairly good, framerate is really good(on a RX 480/Ryzen 1600/16gb PC), and the networking is at least decent. I have, however, suffered from being connected to servers that are further away than I would like, resulting in ~120 ping, which can really ruin a game.

The Game:
The game itself is your typical Quake Arena/ Deathmatch shooter. Tightly flowing maps, bunny-hopping, weapon drops, and various item/power-up pickups. If you've played any Quake game, especially 3/Live, then you've played this.

What makes this one different, however is the addition of character abilities.
Included in the game are a line-up of characters from iD/Bethesda properties, characters created from those universes, and just all-new character period, each with their own lore/ backstory.
With this characters are their own unique abilities, kind of in the vein of a hero shooter like Overwatch, Paladins, etc.
These abilities don't act like Ults(Ultimates), however, but as one-of-a-kind weapon each character gets, with a fairly fast cooldown to help distinguish it further from an Ult.

This can range anywhere from B.J. Blazco's ability to Dual-Wield for a short time, to Doom Slayer's ability to activate "Berserk" mode and get powerful, fast melee, to even Sorlaag's ability to vomit poison.

So far the game only has a handful of modes such as Deathmatch, TDM, Sacrifice (pickup dead body items to score), and Insta-gib, along with a ranked 2v2 mode, and a ranked 1v1. There are also custom games too.
You might have noticed I did not mention bots.
That's because this game doesn't have any, and I've not done any research to figure out if it's planned or not.

The Free-2-Play Model:
When this game comes out of EA it will be comepletely free to play. The catch is, that you only get one character, and one character only, only to get more unless you pay for their in-game currency (which is NOT earnable), buy the champion pack to get all characters present and future ($30, not that bad), or to earn "Favor" (the earnable currency) in order to purchase a 24-hour trial of the character of your choosing, which costs around 5000.

Having only BJ and Ranger (BJ from a Humble Bundle), I can say this really isn't that bad. The characters aren't too different enough that if you don't have one, your play is going to suffer. Even Ranger and BJ are incredibly powerful, and I've wrecked up a storm in the 3 hours I've done so far on Steam.

The Favor to rent new character is stupidly easy to get too. Each match gets you ~700+ favor, so you're looking at maybe 7 matches to get a character IF YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. Leveling up garners you ~2,000 favor and there's loads of things that help to get more. If you actually like the game (as in, enough to play at least an hour or two a day) then you can easily make all of that in no time.

There are also lootboxes in this game, which might be where you want to spend your favor instead if you don't care as much about characters. The lootboxes in this game are all strictly cosmetic; each character has about 3-4 seperate outfits they can wear (with unlockable accessories), on top of colored skins, and unlockable weapon models for each weapon type (for example, Quake 1 rocket launcher, DOOM 2 Super-shotgun, Quake 3 Plasma Rifle (for nailgun)).
If you're worried about feeling like a noob with just Ranger (or if you buy one of the $5 character packs they sometimes come out with), just trick him out. Almost all of the cosmetics in this game are super badass.

I think one I hit about 10 hours I'll probably sell-out and get the character pack if the game still holds me.
It's super fun and so easy to get into; I recommend just trying the $5 pack if you're kind of on the edge with whether to get it, or to the very least waiting anywhere between the next 6 months-1 year for the game to finally release as Free-2-Play.

Extra:
Level-design is pretty damn good, the art is awesome (lovecraftian Quake 1 style with dynamic set pieces in the map), the sounds are very high quality, sound DESIGN is really good (as it's very important in a Quake game), and killing is very fun and chunky.

All-in-all, I'd say I like it more than Quake 3 as far as Quake MP goes.
Here's hoping we eventually get a singleplayer Quake reboot.

This game allows me to live out my dream of being a foot and a half shorter than everyone else, having a giant beard, and swinging an axe twice my size at hordes of filthy impure monsters all at the same time. I already meet two of those quotas, so this game is perfect.

Most of my games so far have consisted of me joining a game, immediately asking everyone to call me "little short bearded man" (usually they choose to call me "Gimli" instead), yelling "THANKS DWARI" for every good thing they do for me, and cracking dwarf and beard jokes at opportune times. In turn I have been met with teams who basically carry me around and support me like I'm the little funny cripple of the group, always giving me their health when they're low and following me around to make sure I don't get hurt as I charge first into hordes of rats and chaos warriors twice my size with a little hammer and wooden shield.

10/10 I'm everyone's favorite support dwarf in this game.

Game of my childhood and the first PC FPS I had ever played, dating back to when I was just 5 years old.
My Dad would let us boot up the computer sometimes to play a video game and this is the first one my brothers had let me play, I can just recount countless times of creating Instant Action versus matches, creating a base and an army and leading an assault on the Scion menace.

Battlezone (II) Combat Commander is a FPS Vehicle Combat/RTS hybrid, one of the first of it's kind (besides BZ98) and was a game that perfected it. It brought intense vehicle/tank combat and blended it with the likes of StarCraft and Command and Conquer style RTS gameplay, being able to shift from helping your troops on the frontline, or controlling them from the safety of your fortress. Hell, you can even leave your vehicle and commence on-foot battle, though it's ill-advised without a jetpack or sniper rifle.

This remaster is nearly everything I could ask of a Battlezone CC re-release. The graphics are shiny, sleek, and clean looking, with very good looking models and shader effects. The engine runs well, is very flexible, supports FoV scaling, pretty much any resolution, and runs on DirectX 11. Bugs are fixed, combat feels better (thanks to better hit-detection), the art design looks much better, and it's just the old game I remember much better.

I'm glad they decided to go for this one after BZ98 Redux. The campaign is amazing and the gameplay is so much more in-depth. You did a good thing here Rebellion/ Big Boat Interactive, thanks for bringing my childhood back.

If I could describe it anyway, it would be as a "FPS CRPG crammed into and oblivion-like RPG, set in a believable medieval setting." Kingdom Come Deliverance offers choices upon choices with the difficulty to back it up, and the cruel consequences that come of failure that CRPGs are well known for.

Story-wise, the plot is deep and makes you really feel for the main character and does really well to establish and build the characters around you into likeable, believeable, and diverse people. I am as invested in this story as I could with another good narrative game, and that's awesome for something "historically accurate" and a "simulation RPG".

Combat is awesome and deep, really gives you the feeling of being dirt at the start of the game, which is something I have always wanted out of an RPG. I want start weak and from scratch, learn from getting my ass kicked and after hard work turn around and kick their asses in return.

So far I'm an hour past the intro sequence and the game is just astounding. I fully recommend if you like simulation games, rpgs, crpgs, and definitely all 3.

I waited until I finished the game for the first time to make a review, so here goes:

By far my favorite modern ARPG.
Diablo 3 had that honor until this game, because until this point I really liked a casual ARPG like D3.
No huge focus on specific builds, the art style was awesome, and the lore had been otherwise pretty built up.
It all came together for me, but this game is just miles ahead in everything except engine.

I'm suprised it took so long for my friend to convince to get this game for $7; it's worth way more than that.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is your standard ARPG, like any other out there. You have your starting class, you have your skill trees (called Masteries), and you have your progression trees (called Devotions). You level up, put points into stuff you want to use, you left click everything, and you use abilities to kill as well as you can. Grim Dawn has a spin though.

At about level 10 you can select your Dual Mastery, meaning you can pick a second class to use throughout the game. Want to be a Necromancer Arcanist who can spawn skeletons and shoot death rays? Want to be a plague Occultist Warrior literally possessed by an evil god? All of these and more are possible, and the build replayability is astoundingly large. This is the first ARPG I've beaten and actually want to keep playing.

Difficulty-wise, basic Normal mode is nothing to write home about. It is about casual ARPG difficulty, perhaps easier than D3 normal at points, so it's recommended to play on Veteran mode for your first playthrough. This buffs enemies, increases EXP reward, spawns higher quality loot, and spawns much more unique bosses and rare enemy packs. Even then however, if you are a seasoned ARPG player, the bosses, even the end boss can be trivial. I played through my first playthrough with two of my friends, all the way to the final boss and it was an absolute joke for us, even though the game is supposed to be harder for more players. I have heard however that the higher difficulties are no laughing matter and cannot wait to move on to a harder mode.

Graphics:
Graphically the game is fairly OK looking, when you're zoomed out at least. The game has an incredibly pleasing gritty dark eldtritch-esque atmosphere that immediately reminded me of the likes of Bloodborne. It's the kind of artstyle that just hits a certain coziness to cool ratio that feels like it fits perfectly. Abilities are always cool looking and manage to be very colorful and badass. Lighting is decent at points, as it has dynamic lighting, but the whole game otherwise screams "we made this on an updated Titan Quest engine" which really shows.

The engine of this game is a marvel, and also a bit of a joke. It supports dozens upon dozens of enemies on screen at once, full 3D rotation for countless different perspectives, and massive detailed and intertwined levels, and manages to run like mud and crash more than a teenage driver. It's not even a matter of the type of PC you have, I own a more than capable PC and so do my friends; it's just an old engine they tried to stuff DirectX 11 into, but the DirectX 11 render they used manages to cut your FPS in half compared to DX9. Especially in the expansion. If the FPS wasn't slogging, it would be multiplayer bugs such as freezing/slowdown while someone is joining, random crashes upon entering a new room, or a character just plain frozen in place serverside while clientside they are still right next to us invisble and still able to do damage and progress. The engine has it's quirks for sure, but it still definitely has a nice feel to it.

Sound:
Sound design-wise it's actually really good. Weapons are sound meaty, attacks have the right punch, abilities sound cool, and you can hear enemies scuttle all around you in a decently high quality. The ambience is actually pretty top notch and sometimes pretty creepy; every area sounds unique and can sometimes catch you by suprise with distant whispering in one of your ears.

Music in this game is just awesome. It's the kind of nice warm dark tavern music you'd expect to hear from Diablo 2, and it all sounds pretty unique. The music in the base game does tend to repeat a lot across some areas, so there's no much diversity in the tracks, but they are all generally really well done and memorable. The expansion areas expand the music quite a lot though, and there it's also very high quality.

Length
At the end of day, after many side-quests, returning to town to vendor trash, and even min-maxing my gear and redoing my build, the base game (4 Acts) ran me about 30 hours on Veteran Normal mode. I didn't rush, I found as many Devotion shrines as I could, and we generally tried to completely discover and play through the entirety of every level we came across.

This game has an amazing amount of content, huge replayability, and is just a ton of fun to grind through.
On a scale, it sits somewhere between Diablo 3 and PoE. Harder than D3, and not as complex as PoE, it hits a perfect happy medium.

I'm gonna give this game a solid 9/10, subtracting a point for engine quirks and some disappointing end of Act boss fights on Normal.

Pick this game up on sale or buy it for full price, you wont be disappointed, and the expac alone adds about 50% more content.

It's a sequel to Shadow of Mordor, so that should tell you everything.
The combat is the same Batman-style combo hack-n-slash with QoL tweaks made to it, smoother animations, and new skills.
Graphics are very much almost the exact same as SoM on Ultra (which if you can remember is still impressive) at High settings. I don't think I can run the HD texture pack with only 4gb of VRAM, but i'm sure that makes things (especially character facial textures) much nicer looking just like Mordor.

Overall the game feels really good, the story seems to be MUCH more interesting, especially with the new ring of power, and so far it plays like a very large standalone Shadow of Mordor expansion which is really good because I loved that game. Even better there's a Siege system in which you can launch assaults on fortresses, but that's later in the game.

Because "lootbox michaeltrainsections in a single-player game" is this season's outrage in gaming, I would like to point out that I'm two hours in to the STORY (I have done like only one sidemission) and have seen not a single damned trace of michaeltrainsections at all. I would not have known they were even in this game had it not been reported on for months.

The "Market" I suppose it's called is just a minor option in the pause menu. Skill, Quests, Inventory are larger than it; it's not shoved in your face at all. Other than that, I've been picking up currency from Orcs and locations that the game hasn't even bothered to tell me what they do yet. I suppose all of this might come later when you can do the whole Siege thing, but it's certainly not in your face like any other idiot bashing their head on their keyboard about how anti-consumer this game is, says it is. Hell, I saw a negative review on here talking about how the EULA is some kind of agreement that you will get microtransactions shoved in your face. But it's literally the EULA. That most games have.
And you can't play online unless you agree to it.

It's a living,