Recent reviews by Astro

Very fun, frantic, and positively maddening. For $3 this is a real gem. This is so much fun to play with randos. I love the variety of unlockable chess-piece & board cosmetics alike, and Pon is so adorable. The only thing I could really ask for is private lobbies, board & piece cosmetics, and maybe even new outfits for Pon :D

Steam workshop support would also go dummy hard in general

Miku on my desktop is very cute. I like shrinking her down to about a 1/8th of my screen size and sitting her in the lower-right corner while I play a game (as long as it's in a window anyway, she'll overlay on top of the game). I'm a little disappointed she doesn't occasionally hum a quiet tune or something though. So an asking price of $15 feels a bit steep.

Desktop Mate could be pretty huge with Steam Workshop support though, that or tons of third-party support collabs.

I think having models that feature (toggleable) sound as reactions or on a random timer would be a great addition though.

A wonderful survival horror game that isn't too long and isn't too easy. With a lot of heavy lifting from the visual style and the soundtrack, the atmosphere remains wonderfully dark and dingy. The puzzles & gun-play were both pretty great too. The main story was also quite serviceable. I really appreciate the smaller interactions Mara sometimes has the environment and her comments; she's kind of funny.

My first run of this game only took about eight hours and I netted an A-Rank; I was taking my time, avoiding looking up hints as much as possible, and exploring everything at my own pace. Then, in my second run, it only took around 3 hours (+ getting all the Crystal Crows) and being SUPER paranoid about using heals, netting me that fantastic S+ Rank. Time isn't a factor in your rank, thankfully, just how often you use the in-game hint system and how often you heal. Still, even if it was a factor, I don't think i'd be much of a problem.

I adored my time with this game, and it has still remained in the back of my mind since I finished it, begging for another replay. A replay that'll likely happen sooner rather than later, no doubt.

I've never played King's Field or Shadow Tower before, but I LOVE this game. I had such a great time exploring these different areas with an amazing soundtrack and visual style backing it all up. It was really fun cautiously fighting enemies and hunting around for secrets. Some areas are really nice and pretty and others are downright terrifying. The gameplay is very fun without being too complicated or too easy.

It's just damned splendid.

An utterly joyful game to play. It's so nice exploring around this ruined castle and the areas around/under it. Top-notch atmosphere with super crisp & cool player control and platforming. No map may be a minus for a lot of people, but it wasn't too big of an issue for me. An utter blast to play and only takes about 5 hours to clear. I would love so much to see extra costumes and an extra area or two get added in a later update; hell, I'd even pay for it.

nostalgia brought me back, and after a 6 hours trip, I never want to play again
quite a few aspects of this have not aged well...

I had started to forget this is still a Doom 2 mod. It's nothing short of superb. The enemies & locations are grotesque and horrific, and your arsenal is equally so. The sound design is great and had me genuinely kind of spooked at a few points. There's also some particular maps with their own fun/interesting mechanics, and they serve well to break up the constant rootin'-tootin'-void-bastard-shootin' chunks of the game.

I've beaten Bioshock 2 numerous times. First few play-throughs were on Xbox 360, and then another few on PC a few years ago. Sometime after the removal of GFWL and before the release of the Bioshock Remasters, this port was pretty flawless. But now? This current version of the PC port really, really sucks.

There's audio level issues and cut-offs all-around, sometimes a keybinding or two will randomly reset itself to its default, sometimes the difficulty will randomly change itself to Hard (which is mitigated by just playing on Hard from the start). But the absolute worst of all is the random crashes.

The fix for the audio levels worked fine in the base game, but not at all for Minerva's Den. The fix for the random crashing did not seem to help at all either, sadly. The only reason I was even able to complete this play-through was thanks to quick-saving. Quick-saving (quite literally) every 5-10 minutes is the only thing that made this playable. If this game did not support quick-save, I would've given up on it after the first hour, refunded it, and dusted off my Xbox 360 instead. I can't pinpoint when or what patch it was exactly that started ruining what used to be a very nice port, but they royally screwed it up, and I hate to see it. Bioshock 2 is one of my all-time favorite videogames, and playing it in this state was kind of depressing at times.

TL;DR
This port is in quite a sorry state as it is now, but it USED to be pretty nice.
I'm glad I bought this on sale and not at full-price, but I do *NOT* recommend buying the Steam version of Bioshock 2 (or Bioshock 2 Remastered for that matter) until they fix these issues.

A pretty fun game still overall. Combat is a bit clunky, but it isn't a bother. It's certainly not as scary as I remember, but the horror elements are still done well I think. As for this Remastered version of the game, I had no real issues with it besides Alt+Tabbing crashing the game for some reason.

Allow me to preface this by saying that I *only* played the Main Campaign, I did not bother with Survivor Mode challenges, nor did I buy any DLC extras. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

Presentation:
The game's visuals are pretty dang good. The design of Sevastopol and its run-down state is quite believable. The Xenomorphs look as horrifying as always, and the Working Joes are spooky as well. Quite a few segments of the game are quite dark, with just small flames or electrical sparks that flicker or flash to show a brief glimpse of what's around you. Of course, the best way to go is to hold your flamethrower or a molotov cocktail (not quite as good) to illuminate what's just ahead of you. As good as the flashlight is, it should not be relied on too heavily as enemies can spot the light. As far as the cutscenes go, the chunky compression is a bit jarring when they cut in suddenly, because they don't look as nice as the game itself nor are they 60FPS. This is fairly minor gripe though, considering these cutscenes do not occur often. Now, the sound design is absolutely top-notch, it had me on the edge of my seat for the majority of the time. Hiding under a desk or in a locker, listening so intently for the sound of footsteps to recede, for the voices of humans to trail off, or for the loud clambering of a Xenomorph scurrying back into a vent; listening is very important in this game. This game would not be half as scary as it is if the sound design wasn't so spectacular.

Gameplay:
One thing I appreciate about this game is the control scheme. While most of it is pretty normal PC game stuff, I really like that you have to press or hold R to use certain items, which kept me from accidentally using them a few times, and the left-mouse clicking is used mostly for shooting or throwing instead. In addition to this, you can lean left or right while hiding behind something to peek around the corner by holding CTRL and pressing A or D. There are also different levers, generators, and other machinery you interact with that requires different combinations of button & mouse presses, each one is a bit different and it adds to the immersion pretty well. As far as actually playing, you'll be doing a lot of scavenging, as well as sneaking and hiding. You definitely want to stay out of the light, because enemies will spot you immediately, so moving in the dark or hiding in vents and lockers is important. One thing to note is that while crouching makes you more difficult to see, the sound of your footsteps while crouched or standing is the same. Running is noisy and is almost guaranteed to spell your death except in a few instances. If the Xenomorph spots you, running is useless, so you better have a flamethrower, pipe bomb, or molotov ready to repel it. The Working Joes are quite slow however, and your walking pace is faster than theirs, so you can easily give them the slip, they also can't insta-kill you unless your health is already quite low. The way the guns handle are all pretty satisfying. I really appreciate this game's shotgun especially.

Bugs / Glitches / Crashes:
During my 22 hours, I experienced *one* crash; it happened just after I had saved, so it wasn't a setback. I don't know what caused it, but it never happened again. I've encountered two visual bugs as well:
1) While hiding in a locker, the Xenomorph came up to the door and its head clipped through a little; this only happened once.
2) After a loading transition from an elevator, the weapon model of the Bolt Gun was floating in the elevator after exiting it, and it remained there, non-interactable, no collision, just the image floating.
Those aside, I had a perfectly smooth, steady 60FPS the entire time on highest settings (except motion blur was turned off, because motion blur SUCKS).

TL;DR
Alien: Isolation is an ABSOLUTELY fantastic horror game and the PC version runs excellently. If you enjoy horror to any capacity, you owe it to yourself to play this game.