Recent reviews by jaekeau

Review based on 100% completion of the game and having played the originals.

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Summary
NBFH is a HD rework of the two NFH games of the early 2000's combined. For those that have played this game in the past and want to relive those memories or just check it out again, this is a good way of going down that nostalgia trip. For those that are new, I wouldn't discourage you from buying this classic gem, but know that it suffers from the same problems of games of its time. That being lackluster in depth and having repetitive audio and gameplay by today's standards, although that point can be argued within the context of the repetitive gameplay loops that exist within modern gaming. Althogether it's a decent game that I would say is above average. It's not a bad game, but you probably won't be blown away. If you're into achievement hunting, this is an easy 100%.

Plot
Neighbours Back From Hell (NBFH) doesn't have much of a plot. You play as "Woody", the protagonist who is hell-bent on taking revenge on his neighbour "Rottweiler", who is making life miserable for our protagonist. Woody does this by pranking his neighbour without the neighbour realising he's being pranked.

Gameplay
As Woody, you secretely intrude into Rottweiler's home, laying traps for his evil neighbour. The process is quite simple; Rottweiler has scripted loops of events he goes through as he traverses the maps. As Woody, you have to find objects that you can use to sabotage the objects your neighbour interacts with during these loops, and by placing slippery traps on the path between interactions. There's a wide variety of different traps you go through, throughout the game, however each level has its own set of traps possible. It's not necessary to succeed or find every trap to finish a level, but for 100% achievement completion you will have to complete all trap objectives per level. Some traps become a bit predictable and repetitive, but there's enough here to keep the player entertained in slapstick humor. It's not a very deep gameplay loop, although occasionally there would be an objective I would miss and couldn't figure out unless looking at a walkthrough.

Graphics & Art Style
The cartoony style benefits the aging process, giving it a bit of a timeless feel to it. NBFH has an authentic feel to its style, befitting the early 2000's. The game itself has gotten a nice HD rework as well. Nothing ground-breaking here. It's just decent and gets a pass. Audio The audio in this game is a bit bland, there's plenty of audio cues in the game, but do get repetitive as with some of them you constantly get to hear these on repeat. The music department is a bit stale as well, there's just a couple of tracks in the game and they're alright as background music, but again; it gets repetitive relatively quickly.

Achievements
For the achievement hunters; this game's achievements are acquired through playing and finishing all the levels, and as long as you complete all the objectives, which are (in theory) unmissable, you should have 100% at the end of your playthrough.

Closing Statement
I enjoyed reliving this blast from the past. I remember as a young teen having fun with these games. For nostalgic value, it was worth my time. Thanks to the developers for neatly wrapping the two old games in one HD package.

Review based on 100% completion of the game.

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This game was a hell of a lot of fun even years after it came out. The game is typically easy to learn, hard to master. You have a couple of classes of medieval fighters to choose from, with outfits you can customize to your liking. Each class comes with their strengths and weaknesses related to armor and stamina and besides some shared weapons, they have unique weapons for the most part. Each weapon is unique and has 3 different stats, i.e. length, speed and damage. There are a couple of different swing techniques that each have different animations and wind-up times.

The game becomes hard to master once you realize that the veterans of the game understand that you can manipulate where in the swing of your weapon you actually force the hit registration. By swiping your mouse you can hit at the start, middle or end of your swing, and with certain longer weapons you can actually curve around the defense of an unsuspecting defender. Coupled with ping differences and long windups and the amount of stamina that you have to carefully manage, it quickly becomes evident that to understand the depths of this game, you have to understand the swing times and lengths of each weapon to really stand a chance in a fight against a veteran of the game. The game also has a multitude of voicelines which make for some hilarious situations when other players reciprocate.

The remaining community is fun and for the most part very helpful and that's a nice segue into the population of the game. This game is pretty much dead, you'll see a lot of the same people playing this game at this point and if you are new you are in for a rough time. Another problem I have with this game, albeit minor in comparison to the dwindling community still playing, is that due to ping differences, this game can feel clunky, or janky at times. Combat and especially the archer class can feel sluggish and not fluid.

Overall, I had fun playing and 100%-ing this game and for that I'll give it a thumbs up and 7/10, meaning it's a good game and well above average, but I wouldn't recommend new players to buy this game at this point.

Review based on 100% completion of the game.

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Everything I wrote about the first game are true for the sequal. However, when the bar is set so high, how do you equal or surpass that in a sequal? There are some QoL improvements that I'll touch upon in a sec, but first off; the first time you experience the world of Rapture you'll never forget. Bioshock 2 can't give you that same feeling again, but it extends the world quite well. There's not many new plasmids and tonics to choose from sadly, and most of the items/props in the first game make their appearance again in this game. The setting of the US in the 50's but underwater is obviously the same. It feels familiar which is a good thing, but it also means there's not that many new mechanics.

A lot of the world building in Bioshock was done through audio tapes, and whereas in the first game almost all of them would help build the lore of the main storyline, I felt like in this game a lot of the audiotapes were there for the worldbuilding around the main narrative as opposed to directly supporting it.

Speaking of narrative, my only negative critique towards this game is that the dialogue from the game's main antagonist towards the end became very repetitive and stale in its overall message to the point where I noticed myself sigh from the cheesy cringe. It was a little bit distracting from my immersion into the story. I also would've like that (without spoiling anything) I as the player would've been given a choice in the ending (there is indeed an ending where you do have to make a choice, however it doesn't pertain to the main antagonist's fate). All in all, story-wise, I feel like there is a lot of good writing here. However, although it has a lot of lore through the audio tapes, the story is quite straightforward. In my opinion, despite having perhaps a more expansive narrative, the story of Bioshock 1 feels slightly better written. I should mention though, that the first game is simply quite gritty, whereas the second game tries to considerably pull your heartstrings and the writing reflects that, which I'm simply not a big fan of. But if you are a sucker for emotional writing, you'll probably enjoy this story better than the first.

With all of the negative pointers behind, let's talk about the improvements. There's more enemies, new weapons, a new mechanic where you are defending little sisters whilst they gather adam which I really liked, as you get to set up a perimeter and test out different combinations of weapons as you prepare for an assault of splicers. In terms of QoL improvements, researching enemies has become less tedious and incentivizes creativity in tackling enemies which I really like. The levels, although completely lineair in order of which you go through them (meaning you can't backpaddle once you've completed a level), are much more open for you to explore compared to the first game. The hacking experience has been greatly improved upon and is much more rewarding than the first game. Lastly, the fights in this game feel more fluid and satisfying than the first.

So, what does all of this mean? In my opinion, it's a sequal the way a sequal is supposed to be. A very solid continuation/expansion of the initial experience. But by definition, a sequal typically can't blow you away like the first game did, unless the first game was pure trash. Considering how great the experience of the first game is, and the bar it undeniably sets, this game does really really well at providing an experience that feels almost like playing Bioshock 1 for the first time again, it just doesn't quite reach it. On its own it might've been a 9/10, but as a sequal I can't look at the game in isolation and have to review it within the context of Bioshock 1. Nonetheless, this game gets an 8/10 from me, an absolutely great title that deserves your attention and should be a no-brainer if you enjoyed the first game.

Absolutely give it a try and go play the predecessor if you haven't already, or check out my (short) review on that game!

Review based on 100% completion of the game.

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Absolutely stunning game. The graphics might not hold up to today's standards, but it gets a pass because the level of detail and love put into this game is of the highest order of magnitude. Apart from the fun and solid gameplay, the artstyle and story pull you in for a ride through the underwater city of Rapture that never breaks the immersion. Easily one of the best games I ever played and I highly, HIGHLY recommend you give this game a shot if you haven't already.

Developers are constantly adding features and listening more and more to the community, however it seems like their quest for balance is taking away from the old atmosphere this game once had. It's a game that constantly changes and transforms over time, that requires tons of additional finetuning after every update.

'24 steam awards edit: game has had some ups and downs this past year.
Killers added: Chucky 5/10, Unknown 7/10, Lich 7/10, Dracula 4/10, Dog mommy 7/10.
Survivors added: Alan Wake 6/10, Sable Ward 10/10, Aestri Yazar 7/10, Lara Croft 7/10, Trevor Belmont 6/10
Notable killer changes: Billy has become viable, fun and strong again. Blight rework. Onryo rework. Skull Merchant rework. 8/10.
Maps have been reduced in size and all feel tiny, even if they are more balanced. Often times you can see all edges of the map whereas back in the day with the fog you felt part of the realm; not locked up in a jail cell, 6/10 map changes.
We got an FOV slider, great change, 9/10.
The problem of last year's 3-genning has been all but erased this year. Introduction of a gen-kick limit has removed the troublesome strategy, although it was occasionally fun to play a war of attrition between survivors and killer. Great change overall, 9/10.
Store changes I don't care about and look kinda bad: 4/10.
Character info and customization UI is atrocious, 2/10.
2v8 modifier was great this year, but needs killer queue time fix, 7/10.
Fun but overpowered builds have been heavily nerfed. Good for balance, bad for fun. 4/10.
Lots of changes this year, I give this year a solid 6,5/10; above average (not in reference to previous years, just as an industry standard) changes that have substantially changed DBD compared to a year ago and most changes have been pretty good.

The Quintessential tactical fps, simply one of the best games ever made. Simple formula with almost endless depth in skill. Like any real sport, this game can act as a simple form of entertainment, it can also teach you or help you grow in certain aspects of your life such as teamplay or win-lose mentality, for some people it can become their life but for most of us, it is just very addicting.

2k Edit: Valve is still not adapting to what the players have been asking for for a long time.

A golden oldie, but is Far Cry 2 still worth buying in 2019?

Let's have a look at the gameplay; honestly I would recommend installing the realism mod right off the bat. It makes gunfights feel intense, realistic and fun. You will die a few times, but in my opinion that is better than being a bullet sponge. Of course this also goes for enemies, they die with one or two good shots to the chest or head. The AI is programmed very well for such an old game, they will communicate, try to surround you, and help their buddies get to cover when they are wounded, this gives an extry dynamic to gunfights. Speaking of gunfights; you'll be in them A LOT, so much so, that the game will feel repetitive rather quickly. The game doesn't have the base system of Far Cry 3, so you'll have to fight over every checkpoint time and time again when you will cross it. Or you can speed-drive through. Stealth in this game is a bit quirky, it's okay, but not Metro: Last Light quality. You'll need to use the ammo and health stashes at enemy checkpoints to refill, weapons break after wearing down and you'll need to attend your wounds when you get shot to not bleed out and die. There's cars, boats and gliders you can use as means of travel.

Then the story. Euhm yeah, I can't really tell you the bigger story here. There's two paramilitary factions fighting for power in, I believe South Africa. The Jackal is your target, an arms dealer that trades weapons to both sides. You will do "undercover" missions for both sides in the hope to work your way up and finally meet the Jackal. You take out HVT's in these missions which, honestly, feel very repetitive once again very quickly, even though the setting is different each time. Without spoiling too much, the ending is an interesting twist to the game's pace as it drives you through a linear bit in persuit of the Jackal.

The game has a big map, graphics hold up, but is noticeble of age, feels alive, has interesting gunplay, let's you decide how to play the game and makes for a fun experience... were it not for the repetitiveness and the inability to fast-travel. I got tired of having to fight my way through so many checkpoints for no other reason than to get to my destination, once completed I had to go through them again. It got actually annoying.

So what to make of this?
I'd say buy this game in a sale and have a go at it. It was one of the best games at the time and you should be able to see why.
It's definitely fun to play an older game which has some solid foundation, but there are better games by today's standards.

6/10

Review based on 100% completion of the game.

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This was the first game that brought me to Steam when I bought the hardcopy way back.
This game was the first in the Total War series to encompass and flash out multiple continents.
What I really like about this game is setting and replayability. Every campaign will play out differently. However, after 700 hours, that's about it when it comes to the positives, because there are a lot of painpoints in this game that were never resolved. This is the first game that started the clunky unit collision and locked animations trend in the Total War series. When it comes to the gunpowder battles, there's not much to complain, but as soon as cavalry and unit charges begin, that's where the problems of immersive battles begin. There's tons of critique video's online, that go into detail as to why Rome 1 and Medieval 2 had better unit collision and combat mechanics so I won't dive too deep into that here. Large factions such as the Ottoman and Russian Empire will spam single stack units on the campaign map, that over time will incredibly slow down the campaign end-turn timer to multiple minutes. I remember once taking a break just to see if the game would eventually figure itself out but after half an hour I came back to the same frozen screen. This is a game-breaking bug that has never been resolved outside of mods attempting to fix the issue. Another pet-peeve I have with this game is the unit draw distance. Since this is an older game on an older engine designed for older system architectures, they had to figure out a way to have hundreds and sometimes thousands of units all while maintaining optimized framerates. They did this by rendering the 3d units as 2d sprites as you zoom out further. However, this has never been a smooth transition and they stick out as a sore thumb and completely breaks the immersion. I've noticed that some mods have somehow increased the range over vanilla, probably by using elements from the Napoleon:TW game.

To summarize: I have had a hate-love relationship with this game as I love the time period and the potential, but the poor execution of the game itself is a big turn-off. For that, and placing this game within the context of its TW franchise, I rate this game a 6/10, it's an okay Total War title, and overall if you're new to Total War, expect an above average strategy game. There are, however, better Total War games out there.

Still waiting for Left 4 Dead 3

A must watch for every real gamer.

I'm not a proffesional gamer or anything, and I never realy have that much time to spend at games. But every time a big event happens, like the E3 or GamesCom or big tournament for any game; I notice how excited I get. Probably as much as (for example) when my fav. football team plays the Champions league finals. I guess I love the shared excitement of a crowd, even behind my own laptop. This 75 minute long trip through the 2011 Dota2 International championship could be seen as a marketing trick by Valve, but I don't see it that way; I see this movie as being dedicated to, what realy is, the rise of competitive gaming and the first footsteps of a new kind of entertainment. The pioneers who dedicate themselves to something in which they believe can become something bigger. I don't have a good comparison but I think everyone knows someone or a group of people that tried something new: they walked a different road and had faith that it would lead to something good, aware of the risks of what failure may bring but still pushing the idea.
That's why I think this is a great documentary. Maybe it doesn't show the origin of competitive gaming being lucrative, but it definately shows that in the last few years this has become something worthwile. And with Twitch becoming more and more popular I can only see this competitive gaming becoming bigger and bigger, a real thing; not only for a handfull of the best players but expanding (to infinity, and beyooond :P).
The future is now, and I like where it's going!