Recent reviews by jacob

Blackly comical CYOA visual novel with some vibrantly crusty MSPaint-esque artwork, rife with engaging writing, neo-noir plottings, and fun setpieces. You either find your way home, or you don't.

Video games — more than any other medium — have the capacity to really make the audience feel like they're actually there, living among the wires, the pipes, the concrete walls, the waterfalls, the mycelium, what have you. This is what we call atmosphere, and my GOD does Hypogea got atmosphere. This is a cold, desolate adventure game about a sentient automaton traversing a long forgotten megastructure seemingly inside an old mining facility, and with our trusty hooked staff handed to us by another automaton, we parkour our way through the facility — climbing, swinging, vaulting, sliding, you name it. And damn oh damn oh damn is it a blast. Smooth controls, crusty PSX low-poly visuals, gargantuan scale, and don't forget atmosphere, Hypogea is a lovely adventure game that's got it all, and while it doesn't overstay its welcome it also easily could have been 2 hours longer. If you like your structures mega and your atmosphere freezing and isolated, do yourself a favour and board the Hypogea hype train.

Out of the thirteen games in the ULTIMATE SLAVJANK COLLECTION that have been put on storefronts recently, I've played eleven of them, completed eight, and can wholeheartedly recommend only one. Can you guess which one? That's right! It's Pirate Hunter! If you can stomach jank, this is some of the best on offer. Make sure to open the config file and turn off autoaim for the true Pirate Hunter experience. Should I say more? Probably. Will I? No.

From the crew that brought you Operation Matriarchy, one of my guilty pleasures, comes Patriot: DemocratiZation, the only other FPS they ever did... and it's something! No wait, actually it's nothing! This is an absolutely nothing game. Operation Matriarchy was a beautifully disgusting Giger-esque visual experience stuck inside an awfully mediocre first-person shooter that had just enough charm and weird sicko ♥♥♥♥ going on that I felt compelled to keep going despite it's lacklustre gameplay. Patriot: DemocratiZation is a bland and ugly visual experience stuck inside a boring and monotonous first-person shooter that pissed me off with just how little it does with the medium, especially considering what the developers had previously done.

All the hallmarks of a MADia FPS are here — parts of the story/cool tidbits are disseminated through loading screens, gunplay and enemy reaction feels non-existent, you float through the air when you walk down stairs or off a ledge — and it's an absolute doozy. There's some plot here involving the US invading Russia with our beloved protagonist tasked with taking on the American Invaders to stop them from getting Russia's precious oil... I think? There are cutscenes but they're all in Russian without any subtitles so I'm stuck just guessing what these greasy 3D models are yapping about. It's Russian propaganda but hey whatever who cares?

If you run in the same circles as I do (i.e. you like to play ♥♥♥♥♥♥ FPS games from the 2000s) then you probably know that even the worst of the worst games have their defenders, but this... I don't know. It's got some positive reviews on Steam but man I really don't understand how anyone could defend this. Thankfully it took me 75 minutes to beat so it's not a huge investment. Play Operation Matriarchy first, then if you crave more of what this studio has to offer play wit ya balls or sumn.

I like to think I'm more lenient on slavjank than most, but this is quite possibly one of the worst things in existence. Thank ♥♥♥♥ it only takes like 90 minutes to beat because I couldn't stand it any longer (and I'd call myself an Orion Games apologist, Metathrone is genuinely pretty interesting and DUSK-12, despite all its glaring flaws and bugs is a fun mess of a time, but IDK what the ♥♥♥♥ happened here).

I think I hate Parallax Arts Studio? I've ranted about their first release Utopia City in the past (a game I own physically mind you!), how that game is just a hodgepodge of sci-fi tropes and abhorrent FPS design, and while I haven't completed Exodus from the Earth (and have little desire to go back to), I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy my time with it despite its derivative-ness (basically HL2 2, it even looks like it runs in the Source Engine!). Liquidator 2: Welcome to Hell is something else man. I couldn't bare this for more than 30 minutes. Any brave soul who completes this should be rewarded handsomely for their willingness to push through this (6 to 8 hour long) dreck.

It makes a pretty strong impression upon launch when you're greeted to a genuinely cool looking menu screen. Demonic sigilism, apocalyptic flashes, and deep murky reds adorn the radial menu. The opening cutscene sets the stage for some bizarre apocalypse involving demons from hell? And then from what I've been told that's basically where the story ends. The game then lets you choose between 3 levels and the tutorial — naturally I chose the tutorial — and was met with a woman over a loudspeaker telling me about the levels, the red, green and blue potions you find scattered throughout (which have effects such as health regen and... oh yeah STRAIGHT UP REDUCING YOUR HEALTH BUT YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHICH POTION DOES WHAT BECAUSE IT'S RANDOM) and a secret Liquidator wall in every level that acts as like a cache from your Liquidator team. From there I jumped into the "The Lost Town" (more like a village) and within seconds got attacked by bats that I couldn't kill with my axe. Then some skeletons electrocuted me and skull spiders crawled onto my face. I was already tired and it had barely been 3 minutes. I plunged deeper and deeper into the 'town' (also realised I actually spawned with my weapons but they did NOT make that clear) and got swarmed by more and more strange creatures like tiny orc goblin thingys that were very cute and made me feel bad blowing them up.

I didn't play nearly enough to fully grasp what I'm supposed to be doing or why or how the game even really plays, but I think Parallax Arts Studio were attempting to make a metroidvania? It seemingly plays that way as you get dropped into a large map, venture forth, get blocked off by a door that requires the right rune, then you go and find said rune down a different path and it loops all the way back there I think? I don't know. Frankly I don't wanna know. This is an insane person's idea of a good game. The gunplay feels awful. Not as dreadful as Utopia City, but at least that game looked good. This ♥♥♥♥ looks crusty as ♥♥♥♥. I don't normally care about the quality of the graphics (especially in budget titles from this time period) but it looks like someone smeared vaseline across my character's visor.

It's eclectic, I'll give them that, but it feels awful to play, looks awful, and I think I developed a migraine. Am I doing this game a disservice by not giving it a fair shake? Probably, but I'm a purveyor of jankslop, and even I can't deal with this right now. Parallax Arts Studio plague my mind.

I had played this before a couple years back but got the infamous elevator softlock made popular by YouTuber TehSnakerer and never continued after that. Now it's on Steam for a couple dollars so ♥♥♥♥ it why not finally finish it? And... whatdya kno? It's a mess! An ambitious mess, but my GOD this is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chore to play.

Don't get me wrong, there's some aspects to this that redeem the game. I love the visual aesthetic of Neuro. Dark moody cyberpunk is the only thing anymore that gets me going, and this is some delicious cyberpunk right here. And near the end when we leave the grey industrial sci-fi hallways, we get to briefly go outside and enjoy the sounds of nature. Lush greenery and fantastical birds cover the skies. For the majority of the game you've been fighting through grimdark generic space corridors, and occasionally an office or living quarters, but now you're trekking through labs and military bases on the side of mountains (and sometimes through mountains) which was a very nice change of scenery.

The psionic abilities are a neat addition that help to mix up the gameplay loop, but ultimately don't serve much use outside of the completely broken ESP. I rarely found a use for the pyrokinesis or thunder wall, and I don't even know what berserk did. Health regen came in handy especially since you can only take a few bullets before death, but these additions felt more like gimmicks than well-integrated gameplay components. The addition of these psi abilities gives me the impression that at one point this game was trying to be like Deus Ex, but along the way lost a lot of its immersive sim-ness in favour of a more linear experience. The ESP gun you get in the beginning was pretty fun at first but afterwhile it becomes too much of a hassle, taking way too long to charge up (and if the enemy leaves your crosshair it restarts the charge so good luck doing it to anyone on patrol) when you could just as easily pop around the corner and use the AR.

The level design is... uhh... LARGE. This is a 3 hour game that took me almost 5 hours because the levels are ginormous and labyrinthine. Repetitive and monotonous design stretched out because your character is tiny (everyone towers over you) and you run just slow enough to piss me off. The game also suffers from some frustrating optimisation issues, namely quicksaving taking upwards of a minute. No, not loading a quicksave, but saving in general. My quickest save took me 10 seconds, my longest about 90 seconds, and on average were about 30 seconds, further lengthening the game. I couldn't tell you what happened in the story, but I was captivated by the voice actor's tenuous grasp on the English language. The guy who voices Basil (or sometimes referred to as Ivan?) should be in everything. He was pure comic gold, unintentionally so of course. The voice acting helps to lift this dreck from the coveted 1/5 rating that I so loftily throw around.

A sluggish and unsatisfying shooter with grand ambitions and hysterical voice acting, Neuro is not one I can recommend unless you're already tapped into obscure sci-fi shooters from this time period.

Another one of those classic mid-2000s janky sci-fi FPS games from the Eastern Bloc that dared to dream big despite a general lack of budget. There are so many dystopian cyberpunk shooters from this time that all sort of blend together and all sort of suck and I'll always go out of my way to play them because if not me, then who?

Just replayed this now that it's on Steam and the English translation is hilarious. Fantastically awful writing and voice acting that turns the game into almost an intentional comedy? It's also somehow more broken than I remember but, much more surprisingly, I forgot how well this game plays. The gunplay is surprisingly good, relative to other slavjank, and I've always been a sucka for moody cyberpunk schlock set in hellish grey cityscapes.

While my complete and utter disdain for FlatOut 3 is known throughout the world, I reckon Steam Slug deserves the title of Worst Video Game Ever. Baffling design choices, broken and buggy beyond comprehension, impossibly difficult and extremely bullet spongy enemies, Steam Slug is offensive, unsatisfying, bewildering, and something I wish to remove from my brain. I love the whole steampunk mixed with a vaguely western aesthetic they've got going on, but Openoko Entertainment are clearly just ripping off Damnation (and a bit of Darkwatch too, but the gothic horror aspect isn't present here), on a budget of maybe $35. Voice acting? Hilariously bad. Gunplay? Nonexistent. Story? What story? I hate it I hate it I hate it. I'm more lenient on this type of schlock than most but when it stinks this bad, even I can't defend it. Thank God it only took me 90 minutes.

I'm a connoisseur of games that are considered "bad first-person shooters", it's been my lifeblood for the last 5 years. During the pandemic I got really into scouring the internet for FPS games that no one had ever heard of, and since then I've slowly been making my way through the list. The latest one on the chopping block is Operation: Matriarchy or Velian, its original Russian title, a game that, according to reviewers, sucks. Well I'm here to tell you that they're kinda right, but also extremely wrong. This is quite frankly one of the most ridiculous games I've ever played. A 'so bad it's good' ordeal that is sooooo bad it wraps back around to being a one-of-a-kind experience that is genuinely incredible. Let's talk about that.

What's the story here? It's the 24th century and humanity have begun their colonisation of space thanks to the Federation of Earth. Along the way they come across a planet called Velia, home to a virus that has infected the female population turning them into freakish killbots. The male population? Enslaved and experimented on! The Velians then instigate an all-out war against the Federation, because why not? The game begins amidst the war when our beloved protagonist PAUL ARMSTRONG (or John Armstrong, but best to just call him Armstrong) awakes from cryosleep to the sound of his ship being attacked. From here on out, I can't exactly say what happens, because the story is disseminated to the player through walls of texts in the loading screens that I did NOT feel like reading, and the occasional text exchange between Armstrong and (I believe) Admiral Horst at the beginning of every level. Horst's daughter is kidnapped by the Velians, and you gotta save her (and also get the ♥♥♥♥ off the ship). It's a generic sci-fi plot that is perfectly serviceable for the game but nothing to write home about. The brief snippets of lore that I read about in the loading screens (mainly detailing the different types of enemies) seemed to invite a lot more questions than answers, but that's neither here or there. You're not here for the story, you're here for everything else.

I'll get the bad out of the way. It's too easy. My health bar never dipped under 80hp. There's always plenty of ammo and it's like the enemies' bullets aren't even landing. They also love to just funnel into a corridor and beeline straight towards you. The gunplay itself also feels hollow. No real punch to the weapons, nor any feedback from the enemies. They show no resistance until death. Some of the Velians are major bullet-spongey, taking hundreds to the chest from my minigun. The structuring of the levels can be a wee bit confusing sometimes (but later on I will defend this). The mini-map marks where you need to go, but the maps, while mostly linear, can massively open up making it a trek to get where you need to go. When I say massively open up I really mean massive, especially in the final hour of the game where there's so much elevation. The mini-map marker also doesn't feel entirely accurate. It always seems to be a few metres adjacent to where you need to be. So when you're trying to find a key card or a switch on a console comprising of about 7 identical switches, it can get a little confusing.

These are all just minor complaints compared to the big one everyone brings up, the sound. There simply isn't any sound. Well that's not true, there is sound. There's SFX for your guns, doors opening, and when an enemy is wounded. It's faint, but it's there. The major thing detracting from this game is the lack of an ambient soundscape. No music, no drones, no nothing! You're on a cyborg-alien-infested spaceship, there's surely going to be a lot of noise. But noooooooope! You could justify the distinct lack of an aural atmosphere as THE atmosphere, a very cold and isolated one. Nary the whir of a machine on this here ship. The fan-made patch is vital to playing this game as it fixes some of the SFX, improves the English translation, and adds in a bunch of music ranging from techno to industrial metal to trip hop, that all having a distinctively futuristic and spaced out vibe to them, complimenting the game very well.

So what does the game do well? The aesthetic. It's the aesthetic. The reason why I'm recommending this game despite some glaring issues and generally subpar gameplay is that the visual aspect of Operation: Matriarchy is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Nuts (literally). What starts off as a generic corridor shooter on a spaceship soon morphs into something much more idiosyncratic and, dare I say it, avant-garde. The first hour, drab and lifeless (but varied) hallways with the occasional docking bay. The last two hours as you plunge deep into Velian territory? Pure H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński worship. Surreal industrial dystopian phallocentric gothicism up the wazoo. Yes, I did just say phallocentric. There are giant penis structures littered throughout Velia that seemingly serve no purpose but are absolutely striking in their design. This is the most Alien game in existence, yes I'd argue even moreso than Scorn. The creature design alone is absolutely disgusting. Cronenbergian body transmogrifications of the most delightfully disturbing and vomit-inducing variety. Half-human half-machine hybrids make up the majority of the foes fought (up to 10 enemies on screen at a time, very impressive for a budget title). Completely balls-to-the-wall artistry on display here. Everything is gooey and slimey and psychosexual. The Velian landscape is pure biomechanical heaven. The surroundings feel alive. The doors merge into nonsensical Giger-esque organic matter, the walls become fleshy and vaginal. The levels themselves become absolutely massive, giving off this vibe that they weren't made for humans to play in. And that makes sense, because this is an alien world, but wow the design of these levels are insane. There are rooms that lead to more rooms that lead to nowhere. There are ginormous areas with nothing in them but strange structures and Velian enemies. It exudes an abstract alien atmosphere that I haven't felt in any other video game before. It's like I'm really traversing some forgotten world. Some may say this is poor level design and poor direction from the devs to the player, but I'd say this is one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had in a game. Trying to wrack my brain around the absurd Velian environments makes for an unforgettable experience, and one I wish I could forget so I may relive over and over.

As a game, Operation: Matriarchy is a by-the-numbers run and gun FPS that rarely poses a challenge amidst all its broken and buggy glory. As an audiovisual experience however, this might be one of the most mind-melting surreal experiences I've ever had. Equal parts hallucinatory, hypnagogic and downright disgusting, Operation: Matriarchy is best viewed as an example of video games as art. It's not a terribly fun nor enjoyable thing to play through, but if you temper your expectations and understand that it's less of a game and more of an experience, you're bound to have one hell of a time.