Recent reviews by Flave

Funny Boat Game!

A franchise that indeed lives under the Shadow of the Tomb Raider; a bygone era of my childhood that predated this trilogy by many years. What remains in its stead is an imposter draped in many shades of mediocrity.

Admittedly, calling myself a fan of this reboot would have buckled me back when the first game stumbled onto the scene in 2013. My prior reviews are testament to the opinion of failed potential. This game, sadly, has faired no better. As always, I’ll attempt to unwrap some more precise points about various aspects of the game as *ahem* fairly as I can.

Story
• I never walk into a McDonalds expecting good food. I just want something that can temporarily sate me and is consistent with prior experiences. Lara Croft in her most recent adventure has once again succeeded in this endeavour. Its story is uninspired, but not bad. Predictable, but not clique. I was entertained, but not enamoured.
• Almost all the characters aside from Lara and Jonah are functionally glorified NPC quest givers. Perhaps I wasn’t giving these guys the chances they deserved: But I find it hard to ascribe any traits or personality to most. What is good however is the bond between Lara & Jonah and the interpersonal conflict Lara displays at key points in the story. Especially when she realises, she’s partially at fault for some bad things.
• The primary antagonist, Amaru, is one of the biggest disappointments because of the untapped potential. Clearly, the writers were trying to strike a balance between good intentions and the ends justify the means. But it just didn’t strike deep enough. If his character had been developed further (Which “The Price of Survival” DLC does a little, by the way!), I could have ended up significantly more invested in this story.

Gameplay
• Full disclosure: I am a masochist by nature. If I see a hard mode, I’m normally extremely eager to check it out. While this masochistic drive drove me to select “Deadly Obsession” for my first playthrough; No amount of hatred for oneself or desire for pain could make this crap palatable. While the combat remains easy, and the lack of constant puzzle tips from Lara is welcome, the jumping and climbing sections are unforgivable. The amount of time and patience I have lost to bugs and glitches in a platforming/climbing session to be set back by 20-60 minutes is infuriating. In unrelated news, I’m training to be a Buddhist Monk and have learnt the value in meditation.
• Aside from this, the gunplay, puzzles and platforming is alright. As with everything with this game, you’ll find it enjoyable enough but won’t be amazed. Thankfully, the tombs and puzzles in this game are quite a bit better in my opinion. A few I enjoyed. Perhaps this is a consequence of being able to stop Lara offering me the solution if I dare take longer than 2 seconds thinking about it.

Graphics
• Without doubt, a selling point of this game. It’s the extra spice, or the god-tier croutons, that can redeem a bland tomato soup. It’s beautiful. Raytracing does make it look even better in select areas (Mostly in the scenes they used in promo reels showing of the tech – Funny, that).
• The addition of a Photography mode is greatly appreciated. It was fun to dress up Lara in the many costumes available and sending them to friends. It’s enabled users to showcase many beautiful vistas and scenes across the game across the internet. Great stuff.

Summary
Attempting the desire to rattle on about this game and its flaws is a difficult task. Perhaps my discontent and disappointment is born from a want to see this game flourish in its potential. Yet, three out of three times, I’ve been left soured by my unmet expectations. At this point, I expect that this is a failure of myself rather than the game.

But – it’s alright. Its biggest failings are its story and its hardest difficulty mode. Most of you probably care more about the story and aren’t stupid enough to choose “Deadly Obsession” first time as I did. So, if you venture in, torch in hand, and give this game a go, despite my ramblings, I hope you find the investment in its characters and world that I did not. Dig deep. I explored, but perhaps I did not find the treasure.

Yeah, It is indeed bad.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus follows in the footsteps of its predecessors quite well. Do you want a crazy storyline with wacky characters, killing Nazis in the thousands with an angry American who monologues about severing Nazi limbs from their bodies? This game, like The New Order is exactly that – with some caveats… Let us delve in! 😊

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Story/Lore:
It should be no surprise that this game, at its core, is about killing Nazis. Following on from the events of the first game, William J. Blazkowicz and the rest of the Kreisau Circle continue forwards with this simple objective.

Story
There are many key moments throughout the game that are extremely memorable and leave an impact. For example, Blazkowicz’s execution or the audition for Hitler’s new movie are fantastic and entertained me greatly. My only gripe with the story was that, for the first two hours, I did not have a good “hook” to make me invested in the game. This was exacerbated by the fact that the first starting areas are quite dull.
Overall, great story. It had better moments than New Order, though I think the previous game had the better story, by a slim margin.

Characters
The characters that make up the Kreisau Circle come in different flavours. While some are very interesting and have something resembling a character arc, many do not. A lot of the characters seem to mostly serve as background noise, and sometimes do not seem to undergo significant character development even when something significant happens in their life.

For members of the original cast from New Order, I can only think of Blazkowicz, Fergus/Wyatt and maybe Set Roth that goes through anything resembling a character arc. Even then, Fergus/Wyatt’s arc seems to mostly exist to supplement cutscenes with a comedic element. Set Roth’s arc is mostly reserved for the God Key, which totally isn’t an important plot device for future games.

Amongst the new members of the Kreisau Circle, we only have Sigrun who goes through a decent arc. Everyone else does not seem to really… do anything. Even when loved ones die. I assume this is to set up the characters for the next game.

However, there are many hilarious moments and interactions between all the characters. The dialogue during cutscenes/story events and conversations you can listen to while onboard the Eva’s Hammer often had me smiling & laughing!

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Gameplay:
Gunplay
As expected, Wolfenstein II continues the trend of providing excellent “arcadey” FPS combat. The most fun part of course being able to live the empowering, testosterone-filled fantasy of being a bulky man charging down corridors wielding two shotguns (As a guy who jumps when toast pops out of the toaster, this is a feeling I don’t get often).

Weapons have a decent kick to them, the bigger/powerful ones having great animations, recoil, and audio to communicate their power and ferocity. This is achieved without confusing the player with an overload of info, or guns recoiling into the players’ vision. Great stuff – It makes the gameplay tremendously fun!

Level Design
Unfortunately, the levels in this game are inferior in some respects to The New Order. For a vast majority of the game, you are exploring nuclear wastelands or metal underground bunkers. Notable exceptions are the Courthouse (Which is mostly a dream sequence anyway), BJ’s original home in Texas, the first section in Roswell and Venus (Which turns into mostly metal corridors again anyway). Those sections I mentioned in the spoiler tag are mostly small sections that do not stick around for long. Massive shame.

There are sometimes multiple ways to traverse levels, except not really. About halfway through the game, you can choose one of three “upgrades” for your suit which will open navigation options. However, for the most part, these options always lead to the same place, and there will always be three entrances for each upgrade choice. They do however open some secret levels to explore in prior sections if you are so inclined.

Difficulty
“Can I play, Daddy” might still be one of the best difficulty names ever.

Thankfully, there are several difficulty options to chose from for all flavours of gamer (7, total!). If you just want to enjoy the story or loose yourself in a Nazi-killing frenzy until your neighbours knock on your door asking if there is a problem, you can! If you are a complete masochist whose first reaction to setting one’s genitals on fire is to smile, play “Mein Leben”! Mein Leben might be one of the most challenging, but most fun, accomplishments I have had in gaming. Hardest difficulty, and if you die, your save is deleted. Madness. Fun, but total, utter, unadulterated madness.

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Graphics/Aesthetic:
Upgrading to the id Tech 6 engine was undoubtedly one of the best decisions made at the inception of this game. As I understand it, the upgrade required an almost-complete rewrite of the game. But my god, is this game a huge improvement graphically to its predecessor. Mwah! <3

However, aesthetically, as I mentioned before, it is levels often are not super creative (wastelands and metal corridors). In the parts that are more colourful/vibrant or interesting, it looks absolutely beautiful. While the first section of Roswell was very short, it was wonderful to look at!

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Closing Notes:
Overall, I think this is a great game that is worth the investment and time if you are a big fan of either Wolfenstein or arcadey FPS games. The biggest disappointment for me is the characters, which while hilarious at many points, fail to have meaningful character arcs or development that made me feel they are “real” personalities. But the story is fun and wacky enough, and the gameplay is brilliant (especially on harder difficulties imo).

Have fun killing Nazis!

Hopefully, the above statement inspires one of the following two reactions:

• You have played the game, and you understand exactly what I mean
  
• You have not played the game, and you are sorely confused about how this quirky sci-fi game has anything to do with being a detective

If you belong to the group of people aligned more with the latter bullet point, I implore you: Stop Reading. This game is all about information discovery and building a repository of knowledge. Reading anything about this game will actively damage this experience. Last warning! 😊 I will spoiler tag a fair majority of the below, just in case…

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Outer Wild’s story is told almost exclusively via environmental storytelling & text logs scattered throughout the solar system. Every landmark you find, every building you enter and every fragment of information you discover are part of a much bigger interwoven story that connect beautifully. Everything has a place and purpose, which often provide you with vital clues or contextual information to discover the previous or next steps of the story.
Death, likewise, is an extremely useful tool in understanding the story, gameplay, and environments.
There is very little in the way of cutscenes or forced, unskippable narrative points being forced upon your eyes and ears. The game is very open… Here is a solar system. Go. Explore. Discover.
Outer Wilds introduces you to its tools and rules, then unapologetically unleashes you onto the world to discover its story. The execution of this is fundamentally why I believe this to be one of the greatest detective games ever created.

Gameplay is quite simple, all things considered. You have yourself, a jetpack, a few tools to assist discover narrative tools, and a ship. Everything is simple and serves as tools for you to navigate and explore the solar system and discover the narrative. I do not have much to say here – Just try not to travel at fatal velocities straight into the face of a planet! 😊

So you've probably come to this review sections wondering: What on earth is DEATH STRANDING? Is it simply an Amazon Delivery Courier simulator? Is it the self-indulgent, crazy acid trip with an obsession for unborn infants that the trailers would suggest? Perhaps both?
As you can see already, I have decided to recommend this game, but it is important to understand who I am recommending this to, as it is not for everyone. So here is my slightly more nuanced, heavy-spoiler free review! 😊

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Story/Lore:

• DEATH STRANDING has the kind of story you should expect the infamous Hideo Kojima (Or Genius Kojumbo, as my friend puts it) to make. It is an insanely weird and unique spin on a post-apocalyptic setting that makes it exceedingly tricky to draw parallels from other mediums of entertainment. This brilliant weirdness makes the world feel fresh and interesting - A welcome sight in an era of cookie cutter open world games.
  
• If you are familiar with Kojima’s games, the first bullet point could make you uncomfortable while your head screams: “I’ve had enough of unique and weird after Metal Gear! I won’t babysit your virtual babies, Kojumbo!”. However, let me offer some respite for the voices in your head: This game is not the weird nonsensical nonsense that is prevalent in Metal Gear. While its setting and story are certainly odd (See: Carrying a baby around in a pod), it establishes these early into the narrative. Every “weird” thing has a very strict narrative purpose that is contextualised and makes sense within the world of DEATH STRANDING. Within just a few hours, you will think its perfectly normal to be tiptoeing through rain while your baby is crying and your back breaks under 50 slowly degrading package containers. That is, until someone walks into the room, gives you a weird look, and you suddenly realise that perhaps you have deviated from normality a bit…. But I digress…
  
• What I vastly love in this game, above most things, is that gameplay and narrative are seamlessly united and compliment each other in an intuitive and satisfying way. To give an example, without going into spoiler territory: The game’s award system is based on getting “likes” for completed activities or deeds around the map, from Players and NPCs alike. What blew my mind was, at one point, a character stuck their thumbs up at me during a cutscene which gave me likes in-game – With the normal sounds & UI elements that I’ve expected to appear during normal gameplay! Such a simple thing, but I found it to be such a great example of how integrated everything is in this game… You do not get any of the usual ludonarrative dissonance evident in some games.
  
• Characters are a little hit and miss for me. Some are very interesting, but most of their character depth and intrigue is delivered through the veil of mystery rather than character depth. I will not go into detail, as it can be spoilery… But most the characters are good and interesting, I just thought they could have had more work for me to form a larger emotional connection outside of a select few.

Gameplay:

• So, let us call spade a spade: Much of your time is going to be spent delivering packages. It is a little more complex than the “Amazon Delivery Courier Simulator” idea I eluded to earlier, however. A lot of the package deliveries have different requirements for delivery, such as time requirements or temperature requirements that require premeditation and forethought to take on. If that is your kind of thing, you can spend a fair deal of time optimising delivery routes & structures to ensure the harder optional deliveries can be completed. No, I will not reveal how many hours I spent dismantling & reconstructing zip lines.
  
• Delivering packages is quite chill and relaxing. Unless you trip off a cliff.
  
• Unfortunately for some, the gameplay is not really all that difficult, even on the harder difficulties. Most of your challenge, if you are looking from it, will come from the optional premium deliveries that you can take on in the early mid-game. For most people, I recommend playing on “Hard”.
  
• There is combat in DEATH STRANDING, and it takes two forms (Outside of structured narrative moments): Fighting cells of Terrorists/Mules, and slowly taking out groups of BTs. For the former, this will be your more typical third person fighting, with stealth, guns and short-range options being available to you. The latter is more interesting, which will involve you moving much more carefully, often stealthily, to ensure you can take BTs on one-by-one.
  
• There is a nice drip-feed of craftable tools and equipment that you earn during the game, either via the narrative or by increasing your relationship with the many characters dotted about in prepper shelters on the map. A fair few of these items can significantly shift how you think about & solve problems in the world of DEATH STRANDING – Which is always welcome! 😊

Graphics/Aesthetic:

• Oh my, this game is very pretty! The landscapes are very realistic an believable, serious respect to the artists and engineers behind the Decima engine for achieving such incredible visuals.
  
• The characters and motion capture for this game are also great accomplishments! The detail present for each character in this game really allows the actors performances to shine through as it would in a show/movie.
  
• There are many “screenshot” worthy moments in this game, both during natural gameplay and narrative set pieces. It’s a feast for the eyes at several points.

Closing Notes:
You’ve made it this far? Well done! Hopefully my rambling has helped you come to a decision. But to close things off: If you are after a slower paced game with some easy to moderate difficulty and optional challenges, with a weird but thoroughly enjoyable narrative, this may be the game for you. It truly is a different experience that I think that anyone willing should dive into!

“Keep on Keeping On!“

My friend got me this and I still feel like I paid too much for it.

This is going to be a tough one. Mars: War Logs is one of those rare games that I simultaneously dislike and adore. I'll try to break my feelings down to a few key components followed by a conclusion. Please bare in mind that the rating I have given this is more nuanced than a simple thumb pointing up and down. I'll also try to avoid spoilers where possible, and mark with spoiler tags where I can't.

Story/Lore:
♦ The lore and history of this game are one of the biggest pros this game has to offer. It is set in a dyspotian, rusty and harsh sci-fi setting on mars. There are a lot of political intrigue and historical events that happened prior to this game that create a very believable and fleshed out world. If this sounds like your kinda jam - This is one of the biggest selling points!
♦ It's mature in its subject matter and setting. It doesn't stray away from things such as rape, violence, prostitution, murder etc...
♦ As for the main story, that of Roy and his fellow compatriots, is... average at best. It's a shame, because there was a lot of cool stuff you could do in this setting. However, the pacing is a bit wonky at times, characters are introduced far too quickly resulting in the player getting very little time to really get to know them via exposure. The two notable exceptions to this are Innocence and Mary.
♦ A branching story as a result of player decisions is also a prominent feature. In terms of narrative - some of these choices do have far reaching impacts for people close to Roy and otherwise. However, from the perspective of the game and gameplay, these decisions are meaningless. Expect pretty much the same experience in the third act no matter what choice you pick in act 2. I'm somewhat willing to let this slide considering the size of the development team and budget however.
♦ Romance is also an option, from 3 potential candidates. Unfortunately, 2 of these these feel unnatural and forced in as you are able to confess your love to them after one conversation. The exception is Mary, who has some build up, but not enough in my opinion.
♦ A note on the women - All of them fail the Bechdel test except Charity.
♦ The voiceacting is wild. Some of the talent here is quite good, while others (especially in the villain department) are actually terrible.

Gameplay:
♦ Without a doubt, the gameplay is reminiscent of old school RPGs, kinda like Gothic, which we don't get a lot of anymore.
♦ It is fairly challenging, you'll lose a few fights here and there. Which I consider a good thing.
♦ The combat starts off very weak, where rolling around taking pot shots off at my enemies seemed like the best strategy. Thankfully, the skill tree in this game has some very meaningful advancements that can evolve and alter how you play the game. After a while it was fun to jump between stuns, wounding opponents, getting crits from behind, evading and countering. It's not amazing, but it's alright.
♦ Stealth is a joke. It's extremely beneficial to use it, as you can pick off a few (Or even all) the guys before an encounter, but it feels incredibly unsatisfying and slow.
♦ The crafting menu is the worst thing I have ever seen. No art, just text, and every time I craft one item I'm thrown back to the previous menu. I wanted 10 healing injections, it should require 10 clicks at the most, not 30.

Graphics/Aesthetic:
♦ Considering the size and budget behind this, I'm not going to put too much stake in the overall look behind this game. In fact, it's sorta janky and imperfect approach contributes to it's old RPG style roots and made me feel a little nostalgic for the old times.
♦ Sometimes the animation is a bit "Euuggghhhh". This is mostly exclusive to the moments the game zooms in on characters faces to try and express a single characters emotions - But I still have no clue what emotion they were expressing. Shame.

Closing Notes:
Thankyou for reading this, if you got this far. Mars: War Logs may be a game thats up your alley if you are one of the following:
♦ A person who loves old school RPGs like Gothic, the earlier Witcher games or Risen.
♦ Someone who appreciates exploring dystopian sci-fi settings

This game has flaws. A lot of them, in every department. But it has a charm and uniqueness to it that has pressed itself into my mind and made an impression. Unfortunately, as Steam boils down the rating to "Do you recommend this game: Yes or No", I have to say no. It's drawbacks and flaws are too prevalent to recommend to anyone outside of the two categories I mentioned above.

I cannot, in all honesty, recommend this game or it's DLC at all. I risk swimming against the tide a bit, as many people seem to love this franchise, but here are my very brief opinions on the game:

Pros:
♦ The graphics are beautiful! The rendering tech in this game is very impressive and will be for many years to come.
♦ Mechanics are slowly drip-fed, introducing new mechanics at a nice pace throughout the game. Not a lot of this, but allows for some metroid-vania type exploration when returning back to a previously inaccessible area.
♦ Much better than the first game in the remade series.

Cons:
♦ The story is predictable and forgettable. It is very clear what the plot points are from very early on, and the characters fail to make a good enough impression to really care. This includes Lara. Which is a shame, as I can think of 4 that had at least potential in the hands of a better writer.
♦ The gameplay is... painfully mediocre. It's fine, servicable... but nothing special or exciting.
♦ The last boss is a joke. If you need to bring up tutorial prompts in the last encounter, perhaps reconsider your game design choices.
♦ What is this online crap? I have been booted from Score Attack modes because I lost connection to the Square Enix servers mid-run. Despite this being a single player mode. I cannot see any reason why this needs to be a thing.
♦ Talking about the score attack... most the DLC is either dull, uninspired or just misses the mark of being fun. The Croft Manor is perhaps one of the worst DLCs I have ever had the misfortune of spending money on. The Score Attacks are tedious and boring after a while - although some provide adequate challenge until you realise you can just stack a 400% score modifier with some trivial cards to enable "win" mode. Cold Darkness was good - but had very little replayability sadly. Baba Yaga was also a welcome side mission. The survival mode was reaching at something servicable, but got boring quickly (I can imagine that a few more mechanics strapped onto this could make it much more engaging.

Closing Notes
If you enjoy Lara Croft and her adventures, you may like this game. But between its mediocre gameplay and forgettable story, I don't think this game would suit anybody not already invested in Lara and her path to becoming the Tomb Raider.

Now that Valve and Bethesda have reviewed their opinions on paid mods, I can now safely give this game a positive review.

Its a fun, open world adventure RPG that has given me 500+ hours of enjoyment (half my time was on PS3). One of the best open world games yet made.

As a plus, there are thousands of mods that enhance and add to the experience, all for free (and thankfully, can now remain that way).