Recent reviews by Swift

Destiny is a fantastic space video game where you play as a boy with a huge metal suit. The bank man is eating a wasp. Please drink a cup full of bees without ice. Goblet of destiny Vespa. Spaceship video game. Space bees are not cold. Bees from space.

vary good yas

It kind of sucks to me that F.E.A.R. is like a lost masterpiece to the modern gaming generation.

For a 2005 game, it has surprisingly amazing dynamic shaders & shadows. The game's stylized feeling and its graphics engine are just right enough to put you on edge in dimly lit rooms.
The game itself was developed with influence from eastern, specifically Asian horror, and its antagonists are mostly non-cliche. The way its horror is designed industrially and in an urban setting, always fighting in dimly-lit buildings and walkways, maintenance shafts and other miscellaneous locations. There are subtle mental cues that put you on edge. Its horror was designed in a specific way, leaving the player to their own thoughts and devices. There is little to no music in the game at all, leaving you to walk in silence in its industrial complexes, only the quiet, eerie ambience of its buildings enough to keep you sane. It leaves the player emotionally exhausted. The jumpscares are few and far between, but they are present. Most of the "jumpscares" you'll encounter in this game are solely sudden; no screaming noises.. just an omnipresent piece of terror. I'll give you one hint: LADDERS.

As put in a quote from one of its creative directors, "Sure, in all these games, you have nothing, you gotta hide from it all. But when a little girl takes out an entire squad of professionally trained Delta guys, what then?"

Its shooter aspect is so amazing compared to modern games I still can't get over it. It has a full-blown melee system with martial arts and other sick moves for when you get up close to your enemy, almost like a first-person fighting game. Melee is not redundant in this game; it is a beautiful addition. The guns feel beefy and meaty, with heavy recoil but satisfying pay-off when you land a blow on a Replica. Its weapon variety is massive, including the 10mm HV Penetrator, essentially a weaponized nail gun, instead firing large metal stakes straight into your opponents, which of course dynamically paints the walls with their blood and pins their limp corpses to said walls. Firefights are majestically done, your character having a supernatural ability that activates bullet time for a managed amount of time. It is surprisingly not overpowered and you will find yourself using it a lot in fights inside the game. When bullets fly through the room, dust clouds it, particles and sparks flying off of drywall and metal objects respectively. Its grenades are terrifying in the greatest way, each detonation making the lights in the room flicker as paper scraps and dust particles fog the room, the entirety of it shaking with shockwave from the blast.

And on to its artificial intelligence.. it is still the best AI in any first person shooter to date that I have seen. Its entirely badass Replicas, the clone soldiers under Paxton Fettel's psychic command, are a serious threat to you and your health. They will pull off their own martial arts in close quarters if you are to try and get close to them, leading you to counter their atttacks with your own melee abilities. Their AI is constantly aware, searching for the player vehemently as you hear them communicating with eachother (dynamically, in engine, may I add!), about your whereabouts and their positions. As you enter a firefight, they react quickly, tossing down things like tables and other various furniture and environmental aids for cover. Screaming your position in their comms, they notice you jump over their hastily arranged fortification, reacting with a loud "♥♥♥♥!!" as you blast them to pieces mid-bullet time with your shotgun. The other replicas react quickly as well, tossing grenades in your direction and communicating your combat effectiveness to their allies. As you near a fire extinguisher, one of them takes note and screams "BY THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER!!" as he takes a precision shot at it, dazing you as it explodes in a puff of white powder. As they rush you, you head for cover, only to toss a grenade into their general direction as the room shakes from the blast, the only remains of the Replicas now a limp ragdoll and various bloody pieces.. that is, until the door busts down and you see a Heavy Replica with that 10mm Stake-gun.. uh oh.

All in all, F.E.A.R. is a wonderfully crafted masterpiece for the ages, taking place as one of my few favorite games from my childhood. With spendid AI mechanics, that match almost no games to date, an amazing and beefy shooter mechanic with eerie, edge-of-your-seat horror, the segments in this game will leave you both craving more and feeling exhausted, emotionally.

Well, here I am at 6 AM writing this review on my first game ever played.
This game series was sort of a joyride for the first few Unreal Engines - all the way up to UT2K4.
I'll always miss this game and the fun I had with it. So many servers are still active to this day despite coming out in 1999, being the main competitor of Quake at the time. This game stuck in my head for so many years and I still listen to its amazing soundtracks. I first got it back sometime when I was really young, and despite not knowing what I was doing then, I played the crap out of this game nonetheless. If you get the game (which I heavily recommend you do on all levels) I'd try out Monsterhunt as a gamemode eventually but don't forget to try offline with bots. With all the mutators and modifications you can make to your private games it is endless joy. There is also an offline vs bots Tournament (hence the name) where you can climb the ladders of different gamemodes to fight the final boss who I will not spoil for you, but is also my favorite UT character.

Enjoy!

For $25, this game gives you alot. Like, by alot, I mean alot.

Let's start by reviewing 3 things.

1. The Gameplay
The gameplay is mostly divers and sharks swimming around trying to either get treasure under the sea and getting mauled in the process. Very fun to play with friends + you can upgrade your weapons.
There are 3 basic modes in the game.
Megalodon Hunt
Blood and Gold
and one other game-mode I forget

The two modes are both equally entertaining as well as the other one I'm assuming. Also the feeling of getting hunted by sharks is both terrifying and exciting.

2. The Visuals
The graphics in this game are very pretty, and beautiful. Shiny sheens and different water colors + good rust on ships and things under the sea are very nice and come together to make a very good atmosphere. Everything in this game is beautiful.

As a humble Killing Floor franchise fan, I have not logged many hours on the two games - however I have put in enough time and research to realize how great of a series it is. From the gritty, dark feeling of KF1 with Crawlers creeping up your every corner, KF2 really makes you feel like you're in the ashes of an essentially crippled European Union completely in disarray. You're a team hired by Horzine to destroy the very monstrosity they created. Plus, you get to shoot guys with chainsaws or get mauled by chainsaws. Or both at the same time.