Recent reviews by Medican

~ Chubby Checker, Let's Twist Again (1961)

A great horror game haunted by its own ending.


Let's start with the positive stuff. The game looks pretty good and has an awesome atmosphere, music, and sound design. The characters and story are also well-written (for the most part, but we'll get to that later). Overall, I really enjoyed the many thrills and chills this game had to offer even though there were some phasing problems now and then. Some dialogue also felt pretty unnatural at times. However, it was still a pretty well-made experience and I enjoyed every monster encounter this game had to offer.
This can be largely attributed to the fact that the monster designs were solid and gave even someone like me goosebumps. I honestly wish the monsters were even more relentless in their pursuit since they were easily the highlight of the entire game for me.

Now let's talk about the bad stuff. The game suffers from quite a few bugs and glitches. There's a small chance that quick-time prompts won't react to your input which results in failure/death. Also, I had a weird glitch where my prompt didn't appear in two fight scenes so I was forced to watch a minute-long slow-motion scene.
That being said, the game also relies on jumpscares way too much. It was scary once but it got quite tedious when something jumped on you with a loud sound every two minutes.

And now we finally arrived to the ugly stuff. The third act. Before I get to the ending itself I just want to quickly say that in my opinion, it was incredibly dumb to design the final showdown segment in a way where every character who didn't face their monster alone and won was still instantly killed off. It felt extremely cheap and I felt cheated since I managed to keep everyone alive up until that point.
Now to the actual ending. Almost nothing in the game was real. The witch hunts, all of the monsters, and even your entire friend group were just a figment of your imagination and you were playing as the bus driver who was missing since the start of the game all along. Everything was born from an enormous guilt he was carrying inside of him ever since he watched his entire family brutally die during a house fire for which he was then falsely imprisoned until it was revealed that it wasn't his fault. I hated that. I hate when the big plot twist is that everything was a dream or a hallucination. I of course understand the psychological meaning behind everything, he was unable to forgive himself so all of his guilt and PTSD manifested as a horror story which he was then forced to live through to finally forgive himself.
It sounds great on paper but in reality, it made the ending feel extremely underwhelming. It never feels great when you're told everything you experienced throughout the story wasn't real. The worst part however is that they did a very similar thing a year earlier in Man of Medan where it was revealed that nothing was real as well and everyone in that game was just high on a chemical weapon that was leaking into the air and made them see horrible things.


Little Hope is a solid game that's being held back by not only its underwhelming twist ending but also overly relying on cheap jumpscares. It's a shame because if you take both of these things away, you have a truly frightening horror experience.

~ Immortal Joe, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

"It's a hidden gem!" they said, "It's an underrated masterpiece!" they said... well, after completing it I can say with certainty that while it's not a bad game, it's not exactly good either. It's just OK.


Let's start with the positives. The game looks gorgeous. It captures the beautiful, yet deadly world of Mad Max extremely well. The sound design and music are also pretty good, and the gameplay is fun. That being said, the game has one glaring issue that dragged most of my enjoyment out of it. IT'S EXTREMELY REPETITIVE .
If you take away the car chases it's honestly the most generic open-world game I've ever seen filled with nothing but repetitive boring tasks that get old after only a few hours. Every outpost, every car chase, and even almost every mission feels exactly the same. The gameplay barely evolves throughout the story.
It also doesn't help that every boss encounter in this game is the same. It's a tall buff dude with a two-handed weapon that can only do two attack types. The only unique bosses were Stank Gum Race and the final Scabrous Scrotus fight. Still, both of them were also pretty underwhelming, especially the Scrotus one.

I guess now would be a good time to talk about the combat. It's good but not amazing. The hand-to-hand combat is clearly inspired by the Batman: Arkham games but lacks the polish which sometimes makes it feel clunky.
The car combat on the other hand is great but after only a few hours it stops evolving so just like everything else in this game, it starts being extremely repetitive to the point where I didn't even want to engage with the random combat encounters.

Now, let's talk about the story. It was pretty underwhelming. It started pretty strong but sadly towards the end it felt rushed. As soon as it started to pick up, a ton of stuff happened and when I finally started enjoying it, it ended. Not only that, it ended pretty poorly. Not only that, the entire last mission was probably one of the weakest in the entire game. Now, I understand that the ending was in character for Max but that doesn't change the fact that it felt pretty anticlimactic. Almost like there were supposed to be epilogue missions that never made it to the game.


While Mad Max can be an enjoyable game at times, it's constantly dragged down by repetitiveness and a mediocre open world. I'm certain that if this game wasn't made by Avalanche Studios but instead by a hated studio like Ubisoft people would definitely not call it an "underrated hidden gem" since it's almost entirely filled with some of the most hated open-world tropes in gaming.

6/10

This game doesn't deserve a proper review yet.
The concept is there, but the gameplay is severely lacking and needs a ton of work because right now it feels like you're playing someone's test build of a video game they're currently working on.

But to be fair I need to give credit where credit is due. Making the game free was a good decision. Hopefully, the developers can take all the criticism they received from this game and make something truly wonderful in the future. Until then I simply can't recommend this game in its current state.

It was fun for a while, but devs mismanaged it which caused it to die off rather quickly. They focused on predatory microtransactions and skins instead of bug fixes and server improvements.

Then after 2 years, they made it free to play and also abandoned it in favor of a nearly identical game they just released called Home Sweet Home: Online. Now they're shutting the servers down without the game even leaving Early Access.

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2334220/Home_Sweet_Home__Online/

Extremely shady devs, I would advise you to STAY AWAY from them and their products.

I tried my hardest to be positive, but I just can't. This game is truly utter garbage. It runs poorly, crashes, and has graphical and gameplay glitches everywhere. The voice acting is also terrible and so is the story and overall gameplay.

This is honestly one of the very few games I've ever played that has no redeeming qualities.

It begins nicely and you think you are in for a smooth ride but after about 10 minutes of playing everything comes crashing down. Objectives become confusing and you find yourself mindlessly wandering around the entire map until you accidentally stumble upon the next story progress trigger or a random item. It got to the point where I just gave up and opened YouTube to see what I was supposed to do.
Little did I know that THE DEVELOPER UPLOADED FULL GAMEPLAY WALKTHROUGH OF THE ENTIRE GAME so people know what to do when they get lost! If that's not admitting the objectives in the game make no sense then I don't know what is.
I also wasn't even able to finish the game. It started crashing before the last objective and since my time is more valuable than this garbage I simply uninstalled it and watched both of the laughably terrible endings on the dev's channel.


BONUS:
The game used to cost 10€ instead of 0,79€! I wanna know what the dev was smoking to think the game is worth that much. I mean, I'm glad they significantly lowered it, but it still feels like a robbery in broad daylight.

So I tested him again after they buffed him and nah, he's still not enjoyable to play as, in my opinion. I mean he's better, of course, but his gameplay is simply not fun. Hard pass for me

~ Singularity after you disable his power for the 5th time in a row

This one really hurts.

When I saw Singularity for the first time during the PTB, it seemed like this will finally be another strong killer that's not only fun to play as but also against. Sadly, I was once again mistaken.
Now, don't get me wrong. There's no problem with the killer's power. It's good not only in a chase but also in controlling the map and generators. The problem comes from EMPs.
They're simply too overpowered right now. It's kinda mind-boggling how easily survivors can get rid of your power, especially in the middle of a chase and render all of your setup and effort pointless. I had games where I was kept from using my power for around 85% of the match because whenever I tagged someone, they had an EMP ready to get rid of it, and whenever I placed a biopod, it was already disabled when I checked on it. It's just simply not fun when you're working your ass off to get any value out of your power only to be constantly turned into a 115% killer with no power.

In conclusion, this is yet another killer that's only good against uncoordinated survivors. The second they can coordinate a bit, you're screwed.

This game doesn't even deserve a proper review yet.
Unless you have friends to play with don't even bother trying it out. Playing as a solo teen is a nightmare, same with playing as a monster.

The game is now officially shutting down. Shame, but I can't say I didn't see this coming from a mile away.

~ The Director

Where to start? Well, I enjoyed most of the game I suppose. And yet I can't recommend it. Here's why:

Prologue:

Manhunt is a stealth "horror" game full of gore, guts, and a hella lot of violence. And while all of this sounds great, sadly I found myself being frustrated rather than having fun after the first couple of hours.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

So let's start with the positives. The game started strong and I honestly really enjoyed the VHS aesthetic and overall plot. After all, there is not a lot of games where you play as a death row convict who is forced to be the main star of a Snuff Porn. Also, I must applaud the people who did the sound design and music. Hearing our heart was genuinely a genius move for a game like this and kept me on the edge of my seat for most of the time.
So now let's go to the bad and downright ugly stuff. This game just simply doesn't work. R* left it in an unplayable state for years and YEARS at this point, which is a shame. I, of course, don't expect games this age to work perfectly but there is simply no excuse to sell a product that needs fan-made patches to work at all. Seriously, the AI doesn't work and you can't even get past the first level without said patches. And even then the game suffers from a lot of performance issues and has a horrible lag at times. Also, the manual cassette tape saves didn't work for me so that was fun. However, the issues with this game run deep. Straight into the core design to be exact.
First of all, the game is repetitive. Yeah, for the first few hours I enjoyed stalking my prey from the shadows before brutally murdering them, but that just can't keep me interested for 10+ hours of playtime. So to spark things up a bit, the game introduces firearms. And oh boy, as soon as it does so, I felt all the fun leaving my body. But to be fair, when it was just about revolvers, pistols, and maybe shotguns it was still bearable, but as soon as rifles that can shred you in 2 seconds were introduced, I didn't even want to complete the game. And honestly, the last few levels were straight-up garbage for this exact reason in my opinion. It's a shame because otherwise I actually really liked the game.

Conclusion:

Manhunt is a game with beautiful aesthetics, a good story, and great sound design. Sadly it's dragged down not only by R* abandoning it but also by the latter part of the game being a real pain to get through. It's truly a shame.

› Goes for a dive to steal some resources from a mining submarine

› Fights off a shark, has a dream about cutting off his junk, beats the only surviving crew member to death with a crowbar, kills an unknown hellish creature

› ALL IN 10 MINUTES

› Refuses to elaborate

› Leaves

› Gets eaten by a shark

An absolute chad.

~ Pinhead

Ah ♥♥♥♥, here we go again.

Ok, this is just not fair at this point. This is the second time in a span of a year that you guys released a completely broken chapter. I'm in quite a shock honestly because I thought that maybe for once a character will be released without game-breaking issues.
Let's get to the problem, shall we? First of the killer was unplayable for the first 24h. The game just literally crashed at the end of almost every match if you played as them. Then we have the Pinhead lunge problem. It's broken for some reason and it can actually take a lot of hits from you. I feel like it has been broken since the PTB which was 3 weeks ago but I'm not quite sure. Then there are the sound issues which are the biggest pain so far. Sometimes the chase music disappears which can lead to you not being able to tell if a window will be blocked when chasing a survivor.
Then there is also a high chance that when stunned with a pallet while using your power you will go partially deaf, hearing only some sounds for a while.
Also the iconic lines "The box. You opened it, and I came!" and "You opened the box, and I came!" are missing which is a shame.

So yeah BHVR shame on you for releasing half-baked content for full price. Of course, I'm not expecting a perfect product but I atleast want it to work. Keep this up and I'm leaving for good.

Anyways, sad to see such an iconic character being brought into my favorite game only for them to end up being an unfinished half-baked mess with an underwhelming RNG-based power. I think it's quite clear that I just can't recommend this chapter. At least not now.


ps: When you start solving the Lament Configuration near a hole to a floor below there is a high chance Pinhead will spawn below you. Seriously BHVR?! So you can literally avoid the already small punishment for opening the box while the killer is not busy? Is this a joke
KINDA FIXED

pps: Pinhead is unable to break some pallets on the Game map. Not sure if it applies to other maps/killers. Hope it doesn't.
FIXED