Recent reviews by RAYMOND

Signalis is a game about being trapped in a world with nothing but 7-foot-tall German anime cyborg lesbians and one relative manlet that won’t stop simping over his giant of a girl-boss manager.

This somehow winds up being the backdrop for the grimmest, most soul crushing mind ♥♥♥♥ of a psychological horror story.

Gameplay is RE1-esque with unforgiving resources and puzzles. You will definitely struggle initially. Do not let the horror tag put you off, there's no jump scares, it’s purely atmospheric.

I cannot recommend this game enough. 10/10.

I went in REALLY wanting to love this game, but honestly, it’s hard to place this on the recommend/not recommend scale. I’m barely marking as recommended with a very very heavy wait for sale warning and also you might despise it before it gets fun. Its not really that the game is mid, its more that its one of extremes. The good bits are extremely good, but it’s marred by bad bits that made me want to uninstall on multiple occasions.

Art Style/Design:
This game looks incredible, both in graphics and brutalist art deco. Each area feels distinctly handcrafted, the world is vast, and it does a great job of hiding secrets within each of these spaces. If there’s an instance where you think “I wonder if I can fly up to that balcony 10 floors up”, chances are you can.

Which is a shame because you’ll be utterly lost. Despite how vertical the area is, they decided to go with a barebones top-down map that makes it impossible to distinguish which floor an exit is on and whether or not the route you’re taking is blocked off. This is exacerbated by some really bad fast travel placement. Just figuring out where to go became so infuriating that I had to Youtube directions to the next quest multiple times and would still wind up lost in the final hours of the game for areas I had been through multiple times. This game needed a layered 3D map in the menu.

Gameplay:
The combat loop starts out shaky until you start to get extra gun forms and especially the main abilities. Once you have these things improve enormously as you go from relying on cover to sheer agility and mixing up your abilities. Now, take this excellent baseline, then add some of the most nonsensical design adjustments imaginable.

Imagine you’re playing Half Life, you can carry all weapons and cycle through them. Control is like that, except you can only hotkey between 2 weapons. You have like 5, they could be mapped to the number keys to switch on the fly like Half Life, but instead you have to go into your inventory in combat and select which 2 you want to switch between. It’s such a stupid design choice, and I just found out there’s actually a mod that adds precisely this option into the game I wish I’d seen before.

Add to that an RPG style weapon & character mods system that is probably my least favourite part of the game. Almost every enemy drops a mod of some form. Most are useless, e.g. “+5% damage”, “get energy from being hit”, so on so forth scaling up over time but very rarely giving actual decent stuff. You will spend an absurd amount of time doing inventory management because you can only carry ~20 at once and will get ~5 per fight, when this stuff could have been a weapon tree upgrade at checkpoints.

Oh, also just to note, I’ve completed the entire game & DLC’s, and have not once used shield. It is the most useless ability in the whole game despite being one of the first few you get.

Story/Lore:
The game starts out pretty ominous, but honestly, I feel like the lore and story gave way to aesthetic. The main quest is pretty dull for most of the game, there’s not much in the way of character engagement, and then when you get into the later stages of the main story things all of a sudden ramp up in quality, and just as you’re getting engaged for it to build to the final act it just suddenly ends in an anti-climax. Honestly thinking back on it very little actually happens the whole game.

Maybe I’m unfairly comparing to SCP, but the lore feels incredibly shallow by comparison. None of the items are as interesting as those of SCP, the overwhelming majority of them are just random object + random effect and that’s it. There's none like SCP-7122 that make you go “holy ♥♥♥♥ that’s so well thought out but so messed up”, its all just kind of samey.

The DLC is equally as mid, nothing really outstanding about either of them. Oh, and side quests range from forgettable to utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful, like seriously some of the worst I’ve ever played.

Don’t bother with Expeditions. You unlock them mid-game, but even the easiest one is borderline impossible without maxing out all stats, getting some of the rarest mods, and selecting really specific builds. Its probably great for people that like the gameplay but by the time I got to the point I could feasibly do these I was pretty much burned out with the other crap in this game.

TL;DR:
Best art style and world space in a game for ages, core combat loop is insanely fun after early game, but both are undermined by terrible map directions and RPG mechanics. Story is mid, lore is inferior SCP universe.

If they make a sequel that trims out all the fat though, it will probably be excellent.

STEAM - You hover your mouse over the "Add to Cart" option of the store page

1. [Cost: 8.74] Purchase the heavily discounted game
2. [Leave for Now]

STEAM - The game now sits in your Steam Library, eagerly waiting to be binged to completion

VOLITION [Challenging: Failure] - Do not spend 40 hours playing this game.

CONCEPTUALISATION [Medium: Success] - Even if it is a work of visual art.

DRAMA [Medium: Success] - With excellent characters.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - And pseudo-historical political commentary.

SHIVERS [Medium: Success] - Topped off by an impending sense of dread.

HORRIFIC NECKTIE - JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME! QUIT YOUR JOB. STOP CLEANING THE HOUSE. THOSE ARE ALL *RESPONSIBILITIES*. YOU DON'T LIKE THOSE.

PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Failure] - Just play the game you poverty stricken ♥♥♥♥.

Since this game is such a mixed bag, i'm going to summarise everything in bullet points.

Storyline/characters:
+If you want a long, engaging main storyline, this is pretty solid
+Brilliant cast of supporting characters and antagonists
+The Maurice burner phone side quest (seriously, do these)
+Gang hideouts and certain criminal convoy missions (the ones where you can kill)

-A rock's emotions > Aiden's emotions
-Too many repetive fixer and crime profiler side quests (there are 40 fixer side quests -.-)
-Theres an atrocious difficulty spike during the very final mission of the game, especially if your trying to keep karma
-The serial killer side quest has a great buildup, but an anti-climatic ending
-Theres almost no story benefit to finding the brief cases, weapon shipments, QR codes etc. They all end in a short phone call then thats it, no cutscene or anything really rewarding
-Such sequel bait

Gameplay:
+Excellent shooting and cover mechanics, seriously cannot flaw this part
+Enemy AI is BRILLIANT, they shoot where they THINK you are rather then laser beaming you
+Hacking is good for the most part, steam pipes, bridge raising, blackouts and detonating grenades is satisfying
+Stealth is good, and mixing this with hacking cameras for recon can be quite satisfying
+Unlock the burst-fire revolver. DO IT. NAOW.

-Although the key mechanics of hacking are great, it really really needs expanding upon with more options and variation
-Sweet jesus the driving is painful, car damage works very weirdly, and for some reason when you use slow motion if you held down a key, say to turn left, then when you deactivate it seems to overcompensate and keep turning left even if your fingers not on the key, its really weird. Also you can't shoot out of cars, which i wouldn't mind if we had more oppertunities to hack other drivers.
-The single most annoying thing by far, that had me nearly smashing my PC, is the inability to look directly up. Heli's float DIRECTLY ABOVE YOU, you can only disable them by looking DIRECTLY UP WHEN STOOD COMPLETELY STILL WITH THE PROFILER OUT. This becomes especially painful when it starts casually layering sniper bullets into you with pinpoint accuracy and you can't do a thing.
-Using your phone by moving the mouse is a pain
-Open seas are 2spooky4police

Graphics:
-Do i really need to mention this part? No they're not anywhere near as good as E3, and it can be pretty unstable when everythings on high or very high. I never had a crash and solid frame rate by keeping things on medium-high setting with motion blur off, but compared to shadow of mordor the PC port ain't great.

Conclusion:
Despite all the controversy, its definately worth a try if you can get it on sale. Make no mistake, its not the game we were promised, and it underperforms massively, but its still a good buy. It feels a bit like ubisoft has tried out a new formula, and whilst it needs refining, they're definately onto something good (no doubt a sequel is in order).

7/10 its good, but it feels incomplete