Recent reviews by aean

They changed the anti-cheat to be incompatible with Proton.

Really fun.

Really, really fun with friends.

Satire is so well-done that it is post-ironically awesome.

It does the one thing I want it to: Bring back taskbar labels.

I'm truly sorry you had your little hype bubble burst, but we can see how many hours you sunk into Cyberpunk when you decided to write that review about "lack of content."

With that out of the way, here's the meat-and-potatoes, the short-and-sweet, the deets:

Imagine Deus Ex Human Revolution (2011) if it was completely open world, thrice as beautiful, but had the mechanics and combat of the first Deus Ex (2000), and required the patience of a Skyrim installation with 300 mods. If you're like me and you've played the aforementioned three extensively, you are going to LOVE this game as I did.

The bugs will be ironed out in the next few months, but the fundamentals of the gameplay systems are archaic and unimaginative. Playable, but unlikely to be significantly reinvented post-release. Games such as Dishonored and Deus Ex HR refined these aspects nearly a decade prior.

This is all easily overlooked by the game's strongpoint-- its worldbuilding and storytelling. Buy it for that and expect nothing else, and you will be very happy (or very sad depending on which ending you get). The game's plot is a total rollercoaster and it gives you a very effective illusion of agency in its outcome.

As for performance, a few pointers:
1. DLSS & dynamic resolution smooths FPS dips greatly.
2. I played on medium @ 1080p on an i5 6600k + Vega 56. Pretty old stuff, still got average 55 fps.
3. This game ran like trash over Steam Link until I switched to the Steam Beta client.

My friend and I had an absolute ball playing this from the couch. This is the pinnacle of couch co-op. Splitscreen works for all games thankfully, since I was initially bummed at the standalone HD games not supporting it. Good thing I discovered Fusion! At first I thought it was just a beta client for SS3BFE or something, but no- any Serious Sam game you buy gets added to Fusion like DLC. It's just a unified client and engine to run any Serious Sam game.

After 16 years, I will finish this fight.

What is this?

Please help?

It's really refreshing to see a polished shooter not directed by a marketing team.

I could compare this to every other contender in a flooded market, but it would be more accurate to just say this: It's solid, it's competitive, and it occupies unique territory in the genre without relying on any crazy gimmicks to stand out as do others in the genre.

There's really not much "clunk" in this game that usually comes with indie teams. At time of writing, the netcode has some spaztic rubber banding at high pings, and the ledge-vault doesn't always work fluidly in my observation, but other than that, no real complaints. It's a proper progression of the last two Insurgency projects.

Suffice it to say, it's worth every penny.

Short review: WORTH FULL PRICE. Buy it if you like immersion, exploration, and freedom, and like to wander your own path. Mechanics and physics are solid and predictable. Story is impeccable. Good luck.

Long review: No spoilers ahead, feel free to read on.

System Shock 3 is really a great game- really. Talos I has so much life (and death) breathed into it that you really lose yourself in immersion. There is so much detail- I can't describe. Every time you have to backtrack, something has changed significantly to that part of the station. Even though virtually everybody is dead, you're inspired to care about them and learn more. The backstory never becomes mandatory and drags you down, but it's absolutely wonderful to explore. I made incremental saves, but never went back on a decision made. The ending is bit unified, but everything you do still matters

I chose to play on Hard or Nightmare- I can't remember and it doesn't tell you. The urgency of the gameplay increases linearly as you play introducing regularly more enemies and different scenarios for you to figure your way out of. I found myself dying a lot, but only once or twice per new scenario. It's always trial and error until you figure out which tool in your belt to use. Believe me, the game difficulty will make you use all of them. Resource balancing forces you to rely on brute force less in the later stages, which was frustrating at first because I often enjoyed clearing out an area completely so as to explore it completely unhindered.

Speaking of which, the stress of being constantly hunted is low and jumpscares are minimal. You can create your own temporary safezones throughout the station. You can't expect it to remain that way, but there are certain security measures that if set properly, can make it an easy cleanup when you return. This alone is a giant relief as the game progresses.

Meh stuff:

-Mandatory gay love story: **Actually enjoyed this arc** It was well written, but the principle is that of all the ghost-love stories in the game you can explore, this one is the only one that is fleshed out and highly incentivised to complete. Just a stupid reminder that I'm not on Talos I but actually in a computer chair in the year 2017 where everybody is pushing their agenda or following another's.
-Flying around the exterior of the station was mildly aggrivating because the quest and airlock markers are not descriptive, and there's no way to tell if you're flying to the right door.
-The wife will ♥♥♥♥♥ at you for taking so long to finish the game. I took 7 days off and finished it on the very last day.

WORTH FULL PRICE. BUY IT. Good luck.

>die
>resurrect
>find corpse
>loot decapitated head
>consume head of own corpse

GOTY