Recent reviews by Gedatzu #<3 ♜

monkey

The Steam Awards - 2022

But honestly its a great game
Go give it a try, solo or with friends
Just keep your hands off of Leah

tl;dr
Glorified Walking-Sim with an really unlikeable main character, a bunch of plotholes and choices that DONT matter.
Not one of Daedalics gems.


Pros
• Premise of the story is actually very interesting, future of Human-Robot coexistence, Humanity+ et cetera

• Software runs really good; no crashes, FPS drops or other stuff in my 11 hours

• Worlddesign is well made and the levels are nicely decorated, everything felt appropriate and fitting

• Achievements are pretty linear and easy, eventho you need 1 ⅓ playthrough for 100%


Cons
• Incredibly unlikeable main character; hes a rude and bitter person in general, a hypocrite with double standards, a liar, and a a cheater

• Tons of plot holes in the story and a bunch of open questions at the end

• Extremely boring gameplay, its basically just a glorified walking-sim - that wouldnt be too bad but unfortunately the story makes it really difficult to enjoy

• The turn radius of your character resembles one of a tug boat which sometimes leaves you stuck on random objects in the world

• The run cylce/ running animation seems like the characters just got their fourth prosthetic hip

• Way too many unskipable camera pans and fly-bys

• Paired with sometime long cutscenes that you also cant skip, even if you watch them for the third time

• Third time you ask? Because you cant manually safe in the game - a conscious developer decision as to "dont interrupt the immersive gameplay" (same goes for unskipable cutscenes)
Albeit this isnt too bad because the game saves manually at the start of every "zone", it is still frustrating that you have to be commited and cant save manually if you need a quick break

• And the worst of them all - Your choices DONT matter, they dont matter AT ALL which makes all the dialogue options and decisions you take through the game utterly useless
If youre all about immersive gameplay and storydriven narrative why present us with fake choices, just tell the story the way you want

Overall I sadly have to say this isnt one of Daedalics masterpieces.
I cant recommend it for 20€ but for a cheap 2€ in a sale you might wanna give it a go and see for yourself.
I did warn you tho.


Played on
OS Windows 10, 64-Bit
Intel® Core™ i5-3570K, 4x 3,4 GHz

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5X)
16GB DDR3 RAM
Terra K200 & Logitech G502
Sennheiser PC 320

tl;dr
Oldschool RPG with a top-notch story and heaps of extra content but at times with awkward controls and a somewhat lacking combat system.

This was my first time playing one of the Witcher games but Im not entirely alien to the franchise. Ive read the first three novels and watched both seasons of the Netflix series, so I was already familiar with the world and some of the big players.
Tho I dont think you need previous knowledge to indulge in this wonderful game. It supplies you efficiently with infos about the world, its history and its characters through the course of the story.

Im not gonna talk much about the story here, but trust me its really good.
Along the way you must decide between three paths which ultimately influences the direction of the game. While one playthrough is enough the complete the game, this really adds to the replay value which is quite nice.
But enough about that, you should experience it for yourself.

You can also export your save file to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, directly influencing the sequel, so your choices do matter. Besides your choices also some of your equipment, items and money are transferred.
A truly magnificent feature.

While the story is definitely the games strongest point in my opinion, there are several other things I want to highlight. There are a heap of sidequests and extra tasks for you to complete, some bearing awesome rewards, some with serious consequences depending on your choices. All these side quests really add to the world and also further aid the character development of certain NPCs.
Sprinkled across the game are also some sort of minigames, from playing dice poker over fist fights to collecting numerous romance cards of certain female characters ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
While I found dice poker irritating at the beginning I really enjoyed it after a few games, fist fights were always fun and a good source of money early on and the romance cards ... lets just say you have to see for yourself ^)
Another noteworthy aspect of the game is its journal. The journal consists of your active quests, infos about certain characters, locations, monsters, formula, ingredients, a glossary and tutorials. Its basically an in-game wiki with an insane amount of (additional) information for those who are interested, you can find books & scrolls ingame wich further expand your journal too. Want to know how to beat the monsters in a certain region the best way? Read some books and consult your monster journal! Want to read up about the history of the world and the ancient races? No problem the journal got your back.
For those wondering what the formula & ingredients are all about, they are definitively another high point for me.
The game features a deep and well designed alchemy system. For those who are new to the franchise, a witcher never sets off on a contract without proper preparation. Including vast varieties of potions, food, blade coatings or even different types of bombs. While you cant directly cook food, you can harvest it from creatures all around or "borrow" it from the locals. Next to the food you can also harvest a ton of alchemical ingredients from creatures and nature alike. With these you can craft your powerful potions, coatings and bombs all by yourself, given you have the knowledge of the recipe.

Now, after my praises I want to touch on some negative aspects.

The controls are a bit awkward sometimes and the pathing weird, nothing mayor but they got me fuming a few times.
The software itself ran pretty smooth with high FPS but it crashed a few times on me. Mostly when I tried to tab out / back in or when I was using the Steam overlay. This made me appreciate and use the quick save option a lot.
There are fast travel options in the game but they are very scarce, in old school RPG manner you run around the same maps A LOT. I didn't mind it most of the time but at some points I really wished for more fast travel points or some means of faster ways of traversing the maps. Next to fast travel points, storage or rather the option to store your stuff was pretty scarce too. In one chapter there wasn't even an option to access your storage which really frustrated me.
But the biggest let down in my opinion is the combat system.
Even though
- you can carry around up to four different weapons with you
- you have to use different type of weapons and stances to beat certain enemies
- you have your five different Witcher Signs (sort of low level magic for those unaware) up your sleeve
The combat in it of itself is lackluster. You pick the weapon and style of your choice and you left click one time, thats it. Well not really, you can extend your attack chain with another left click after some time, like some sort of rhythm game. Im not joking, the combat is some sort of left click rhythm game. While you're locked in your combo on the enemy, you cant move around freely, you can evade/jump over enemies but with the awkward controls mentioned earlier that didn't always work. Half of the time Geralt evades enemy attacks on his own anyway, without you doing anything.
Soo yeah, the fights mostly consists of three timed left clicks without anything else.


Anyways, the game may be far from perfect but it is still an incredible experience for the ones willing to take a few cuts. A proper old-school RPG with an incredible story and high replayability. My one, very thoroughly playthrough, with every available side quest and extras completed, put me at 45 hours playtime.
I can really recommend it!

In the Enhanced Edition included are also a digital comic and the D'jinni Editor.
The comic was pretty neat and tells you a typical witcher story.
The editor lets you create and customize your own plot with a quest structure, dialogues, characters present in the game world, monsters, locations and so on as well as letting you inspect and edit existing content.
Pretty cool stuff to be included!


Played on
OS Windows 10, 64-Bit
Intel® Core™ i5-3570K, 4x 3,4 GHz

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5X)
16GB DDR3 RAM
Terra K200 & Logitech G502
Sennheiser PC 320

So its the year 2022.
Im gaming on OS Windows 10, 64-Bit with Intel® Core™ i5-3570K, 4x 3,4 GHz
and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5X).
Nothing too fancy but a solid setup I would say.
Nevertheless the game wont make it past the inaugral loading screen.
It always crashes after 20 - 30 seconds right off the bat at Loading_Game_60%.
And judging be some others reviews Im not the only one with that problem.
People recommending booting up an old Xbox 360 to enjoy the game while others
resort to mods for the PC ( for example ).
I dont know how much of a hassle it is to patch the game to modern systems or make it compatible but having it still in the store at this point feels wrong.
Selling a game for 10€ that wont even boot properly and cant make it past the first loading screen - Its a shame and a scam.

An insult to the franchise.
After 36 hours it finally broke me.
I wish I could highlight some of its positives here but I just dont have the energy.
You see the problem starts when games like Surgeon Simulator, Octodad or I am Bread have better controls than this game. I know its "supposed to be played with a controller hurrdurr etc..." but especially in a title like this on PC where the focus is cleary on the shooting and the bullsh*t over the top storytelling and less the classic horror survival I want my mouse.

The forced camera and escape run sequences made me go bald irl. We lost to the Chopper at the port or Haos in Chris´ campaign so many times I cant believe it. The camera screwed you over and over, pair that with clunky controls and you have a formula for great fun.
In addition the menus are the true horror of that game. You get a new menu & hud layout every campaign, once you are accustomed to one you can throw it in the garbage can again bc the new one is totally different. The menuwheel is just too bad to navigate plus the fact that you cant pause the game while in the menus makes tweaking settings or switching skill profiles midgame a real struggle.

A little cherry on top. I played through the whole mess with a buddy of mine on Professional. Or so I thought. While he hosted and played on the higher difficulty I joined and assumed I would too. But apparently not. We noticed it after we were halfway through. Sad times. So after I had ajusted my settings we played the rest of the game on Professional and tbh I didnt really felt a difference.
So we came to the last campaign, Adas. While the three before where storywise all teams (Leon & Helena / Chris & Piers / Jake & Sherry) you had no problem playing in coop through them. Now heres Ada, whos all alone. And the devs just slapped a random Soldier Bodyguard onto her. I had the pleasure of playing this Bodyguard of hers. And while I say pleasure & playing Im blatantly lying in your face. In the campaigns before it didnt really matter which character you picked. The only difference were the weapons and sometimes you had to split from your partner for 50 meters and walk on a different path. As Adas Bodyguard the only thing you can do is shoot. You cant open doors, you cant pick up quest related items or trigger cutscenes. Ada can use a grappling hook on certain portion of the map. As the bodyguard you just stand there and wait on your partner to swing and then be teleported after them. I have no idea what they were thinking or if they even playtested the coop campaign.

As I was replaying now to get all the emblems and beat the game on Professional for real I got fed up halfway into the campaign of Chris. Maybe Ill sit through this horror of a game someday. But that day is not today.

I dont really see a point why you should be playing this. If you want to know the story/synopsis go and look it up on Youtube. The game actually has a really nice timeline feature that lets you view the cutscenes in the appropriate order from the different point of views.

tl;dr Awesome singleplayer, horrendous multiplayer

This is a review about the base game of Forza Horizon 4.

Since the character limit for reviews on Steam is apparently ~8000 I had to cut out 2100.
If youre interested youll find the full review in the comments of the linked video.

Even though I now have nearly 200 hours in the game, I still have to leave a negative review. Dont get me wrong, if you're looking for a great open world singleplayer racing game the fourth installment of the Forza Horizon series is definitely for you!
Ill start off with some of the positives before it turns more towards a rant about the multiplayer.
The graphics are really insane. It comes with a huge map you can roam free about with different sceneries ranging from sandy beaches through lush forest up to rocky mountains onto long open highways into tight cornered cities.
The game comes with dynamic weather and a day & night cycle, paired with a weekly changing season. Seasonal changes make the map evermore fun, surfaces change significant in the wet or the snow.
Not only this but the map is littered with loads of challenges and collectibles next to tons of races.
To make things even more enticing there's a weekly/monthly changing festival playlist which lets you unlock all kinds of stuff from cars to cosmetics.
A quick word about the story: Good mixture between Dirt, Offroad, Street & Night races paired with a variety of side stories and neat business options you can master. I don't think anyone can complain about those. And even if the number of story races isn't enough for you don't worry. FH4 comes with the blueprint option which lets you customize not only already existent races but lets you design your very own races, challenges & events.
Within the base game are 640 unique cars from over 80 manufacturers. The cars come with great customizability livery wise, sufficient tuning and really detailed fine tuning options so everybody can get the perfect set up for themselves.
Two more things that deserve a shoutout imo are the camera feature which lets you take awesome snapshots from your car in every location. Packed with different filters and features you can get really creative with it. Plus you can upload them directly from in the game.
The other stand out feature are the radio hosts. Holy moly. The amount of unique dialogue each of the 6 hosts from the different stations has is insane. They have a comment for nearly everything that's going on.

Now that we have spread some love its time to get to the downsides of the game.
First of all an Xbox account is required to play the game and you need to link it and log in every time you wanna play.
While I've praised the radio, the season changes and the camera feature earlier I still have to add some negative aspects.
You've got 6 different radio stations to chose from but after already a few hours each of the stations with their what feels like 5 different songs gets repetitive real quick. I miss the feature which lets you add your own custom songs to the radio. Forza Horizon 3 had this in form of Groove Music, bummer they didn't add this here.
I highlighted the weekly changing season earlier as something that brings a nice mixup to the map and the driving style. That might be true the first 2-3 times. But it gets annoying to be stuck in winter for a week when all you want to do is cruise along sunny beaches. I can see the purpose of it in multiplayer but why cant we pick our own season in singleplayer :/
Another big problem I have is the fact that you cant modify liveries or tuning setups that you've downloaded from other players. If you want to change only the tiniest of things you have to wipe the entire setup and start from scratch.
You cant turn off Drivatars/Bots in singleplayer. It might makes the world feel more alive but if I just wanna cruise along without avoiding speedbumbs its troublesome. And trust me, they are annoying. Especially if youre trying to complete or set records on certain jumps or trying to get a run up for a Speedtrap.

Now onto some more serious problems.
The steam port for the game was made „by Playground Games in partnership with Sumo Nottingham“ aka Sumo Notthingham did it. Why do you need an extra port for Steam if its already on PC? And why for gods sake is there no real steering wheel support?? I've got a Logitech G920 and its just not working. It recognizes the wheel and you can press some buttons and pads but you cant control the car. Even after two fresh setups and fine tuning the controls I'm unable to get it working properly. Coming from the DiRT & Project Cars series where it was a plug and play experience to Forza where it isn't working at all is really frustrating. And trust me, I'm not the only Steam player that couldn't get his steering wheel to work.
To the release policy. The game was originally released on the 28th September 2018 for Xbox and the Microsoft store on Windows. It came to Steam on March 9th 2021. It took them 1 and a half years to made up their minds and get that joke of a port ready. I got the Ultimate Edition which costs 99,99€ without discounts. Included are only 7/15 available DLCs ... excuse meee?? I would have to pay 57,92€ more to unlock EVERYTHING eventho I already have the ULTIMATE Edition??? Men I dont know
Forza Horizon 5 was announced on June 13th and as of June 30th there's no new content for Horizon 4, all they do is recycle stuff from previous weeks for challenges. That's roughly 16 weeks / 4 month of Steam support if you want. And while they have added consistently new content in that time frame they didn't do ♥♥♥♥ concerning bugs and lags. No wheel support, the barn finds are still not showing in the garage and don't even get me started on the servers, we´ll get to them soon.
So overall I paid 100€ for an Ultimate Edition that is not Ultimate at all, for only 4 months of new content, for no real support and no bug fixes and trash servers? That all feels just like a cheap cash grab given FH5 was announced so short after the Steam release. At least FH5 will be on Steam from the beginning.

Too be honest, I could look over all the aforementioned problems and celebrate Forza Horizon 4 as the great game it should be if it wasn't for all these multiplayer issues.
Let me get it clear, the multiplayer servers are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage, EA servers are godlike compared to them.
Coming from a company like Microsoft this is inexcusable. And it wasn't like we had problem once or twice. It took us consistently 15-20 minutes, sometimes even hours to form a group, play on the same server and start an event together. Same goes for waiting times for any kind of online adventure or even ranked matches. And if you finally made it and everybody was still in the race the race itself was just a clown fiesta. Ill link a Video (click it) here showcasing some of the great multiplayer experiences Forza brought me (: It was really fun to race clean, smooth and lagfree with other players/bots. :^)
The next issue, there are apparently some people you cant mute?? I had turned on the option to mute everyone and everything yet there were still some people that had their mic active at all times. And boi oh boi do I love hearing British television over some Spanish family drama in my 15minute ranked loading screen :-).
And another BIG ISSUE are the lap times in multiplayer or rather the absence of them. In the singleplayer you see both fastest lap and total time for you and the bots at the end of the race. In multiplayer you don't. Explain to me how a online multiplayer racing game doesn't show you the laptimes of your opponents at the end of the race or who got the fastest lap. I cant believe it.

So overall its a great experience in singleplayer but if you want to play with your friends online you better pray that you have a better experience than I did. I really cant recommend the online mode of Forza Horizon 4.

Return of the Obra Dinn is brought to you by Lucas Pope, the very same man wo created Papers, Please ; a true genius. Will it meet our expectations? Let's find out


　　　　　　　　　　


Conclusion
After Papers, Please another brilliant game from Lucas Pope. Atmospheric, mysterious, tragic, even gruesome to some degree.
This puzzle-like mystery game just has it all and it will certainly fascinate & entertain you!
I purchased it for 15,05€ (~17,20$) which might seem a bit high for the short amount of time the story lasts but its without a doubt worth the price!
It completely exceeded my expectations; this is in my opinion the best indie game of the year 2018.

　　　　　　　　　　

Tested with:
Smooth Output; 1080p, 60fps
OS: Windows 8, 64-Bit

Intel® Core™ i5-3570K, 4x 3,4 GHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5X)
8GB DDR3 RAM
Terra K200 & Logitech G502
Sennheiser PC 320