Recent reviews by Lazm

An easy game to sit down and play any time. By that I mean, there is no great time commitment, it is easy to understand and play, and has an excellent scale of difficulty where truly any level of gamer is welcome to spread their own brand of democracy. Maybe the first "live service" game that lives up to it's promise to provide an ever evolving experience by way of the direct setting of stages by a dev GM role. The field looks a little different every day and it creates overarching narratives for you to be part of, no matter the difficulty you play at.

Really brings a community of players together to meet common goals and progress the game forward (or backward).

I like Inugami Korone.

If open PvP is your thing. Go for it. I'm too old to waste my time waiting for higher level people to get bored or cleared out of newbie zones.

Game is super generic unreal engine glidey slidey. No bueno.

Bought this on Steam sale largely due to the obvious influence on the game by the art of Zdzisław Beksiński, of whom my wife is a big fan.

To be brief, I will say I recommend the title. There is more to love than otherwise, particularly of the visuals and set design.

What stuck me as an immediate positive was to instantly recognize the musical DNA of Silent Hill's Akira Yamaoka in the ambience. This, combined with fixed cameras, gave an early impression "Medium" was to be a love letter to the series I adore, but it quickly comes into its own.

The art design, set design, and general visuals are a wonderful. I am aware of Bloober's previous work, but had never played them myself. If this is the visual work of this studio, I'm very interested to catch up.

The story of Niwa Resort, the many characters who lived there, and discovering Sadness were the most interesting components of the game's story to me. It reminded me of Bioshock, each segment of the narrative exploring a different person who is no longer there.

This begins to become less interesting as the narrative focuses on our main character. It becomes clear that she is very much tied in to all the events and goings-on, and once that cat is out of the bag, there is little more to keep up the narrative's suspense.

The music is wonderful and haunting, but the couple vocal tracks that are in the game pulled me out of the immersion. There is so little vocal music in the game, that when it comes in, it feels out of place and too heavy.

This is very much a story game. Much of the gameplay consists of exploring enclosed environments on foot and solving access puzzles to get to the next zone. There are a few segments of very weak stealth gameplay and run from the monster but nothing all that interactive.

The gameplay segments described, many of them, do provide the unique experience of playing them simultaneously both in the "real" world and the "spirit" world. This adds a small modicum of complexity to some solutions, but mostly it just looks awesome.

Every time the cutscenes or world view is split such a manner is a treat to see. Lots of care is taken in the direction of the animation or mo-cap to show Marianne interacting with things in the spirit world, but also interacting with nothing in the real world.

The voice acting in English is mostly quite good. I would have loved to see it in Polish with English subtitles, but it didn't seem to have the option for that. Troy Baker as the Maw was incredible and reminded me a lot of performances by Tim Curry.

On that note, Marianne talks a lot. There are many times where Marianne begins talking to herself where her tone or attitude did not seem to match the situation. It's hard to be spooked by the ambience with as much monologuing as there is.

Medium is an entertaining and very light adventure game experience that we finished in about 8.5 hours. It ends a bit ambiguously and seems to tease a potential follow-up.

I recommend it.

The game is a frustrating and nauseating experience. I likely won't be finishing it. I bought it alongside Medium during the Summer sale, and while Medium was pretty great, their previous work did not strike the same chord with me.

The good

Mind exploration segments are interesting and a great method of exposition on characters and their back stories. It feels like a cyberpunk fun-house attraction. Best parts I had in this game thus far.

Fire & Sword pixel meta-game sections you find in computers through the game are probably the best puzzle game play this Observer offers.

The bad

Controls "feel" terrible. I can't explain it exactly. It's like the game feedback to user input feels off. It was making me feel sick.

Alternation between bio-vision and the tech-vision or whatever is a completely pointless exercise when you are just trying to progress. The same information could be gathered by just examining things you see and having player character commentary speech or something. Changing between the visions, and the brightness and colors of them is just irritating.

Voice acting is rough. Rutger Hauer, RIP, seems to do a decent job, but everything else is off. I think it might be more the fault of the writing/translation.

The "puzzles" in the game vary from "not even a puzzle" to "how on God's Earth would anyone have determined from this that it was the solution to something?" Lots of solutions are nonsensical. For example, early in the game, you need a password for something. SOMEWHERE in an area there is a copy of "1984," and from that you should gather the password is 1984. A lot of the password things are like that.

tl;dr Not for me. I'm not saying no one should buy it, but it's not my cup of tea.

Magic/Power focused souls game featuring a cute witch. Called to the castle by a talking cat to retake your family's throne, you gradually explore and engage in the mystery and danger held within.

Shows a lot of promise as an early access title. Look forward to more content and pantsu.

Probably the most pleasant experience out of a free game on steam yet for me.

Simple puzzler that amps up to some surprising difficulty.

Really good art and theme. Graphics are great and wonderful effects to transition levels/scenes.

I wish it was longer and would play more.

Buying the artbook and pancake recipe, cause this was worth paying for.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance succeeds in being a largely historically and geographically accurate experience boasting a unique combat system, amazing environment design, great voice acting, and a rich (though linear) story to play through.

However, in it's release state Kingdom Come: Deliverance has near countless hiccups and bugs. Though not many of them are game breaking, there are two or three quest progression bugs that if you did not know about them, and actively steer clear of them, could result in you having no choice but to reload and old save and lose time. Bugs where quest A requires quest B to be in a particular state to continue, but quest B was able to progress to completion before quest A calls to it. The team at Warhorse are actively building patches to resolve these errors which really should have been picked up in the multi-year beta test they ran for this title with kickstarter backers.

The story of KCD has you playing the role of Henry, a fairly run of the mill peasant, who is thrust into a civil war of sorts between regional lords after his home town and nearly everything and everyone he loves is slaughtered with no warning. Able to escape the destruction, Henry finds himself in the employment of a local lord who has a history with his father. Henry progresses through the story, investigating the attack on his town, finding its prepetrators, and learning the political entanglements that lead to these events. Along the way he meets a wide cast of characters to support and thwart him. Most large events depicted in KCD are real events that occurred in history, in real places that exist. It was fun to use google maps and locate some landmarks featured in the game still standing in some of these same small towns in the Czech Republic.

Stats and skills in the game are increased by action. While there is a main character level and experience points to increase it, there are no arbitrary points to distribute among stats as a result of progression. Instead with every few levels, Henry is granted a perk point which you may choose to use to gain an ability (usually passive). Each stat and skill is increased by performing different actions. For example, shooting a bow and arrow at wildlife will gain Henry experience in Hunting, Archery, Strength, Agility, and character level. Each of these stats and skills has its own perk list. Hunting may reward you a perk to do 20% more damage to wildlife, while Archery grants you a perk to draw the bow faster, and the stat perks may grant you things not necessarily related to hunting or archery. Not all perks are useful though, and several of them have give and take; such as "Sprinter" which increases sprinting speed by 20% but also increases stamina used to sprint by 20%.

Due to this "get better by doing" leveling system, some tasks in the game, especially at the beginning, have a bit of a steep learning curve. Continuing with the archery example, there is no crosshair or reticle to assist your aim, and very early your aim is not very precise and you are unable to hold the bow very steady. So landing your first shots, while incredibly satisfying when it happens, can be a frustrating struggle coming from games where it can be point & click on the thing with the dot on it. With practice not only does Henry's ability with the bow increase, but your skill doing so as a player increases. By the end of the game, I was able to use the bow fairly reliably, while early on I would have to take 10 shots to hit a rabbit.

Combat is much the same. You have several types of weapons to choose from; such as long swords, short swords, maces, and axes. There are also spears and halberds, but these large, two-hand weapons are in a strange class where they cannot be added to inventory, but behave like an evironment object you can interact with. I never really used them as a result of this, and surely is a missed opportuinity. Combat is very duel based, as the camera locks in and focuses on your one and one exchanges with enemies. This makes taking on more than one opponent exceedingly difficult, but that is kind of the point. You are not a movie action hero, and the game ensures you rarely feel like one, at least not until end game abouts.

You and your opponent may attack in 6 possible directions, 5 directional slashing angles, and one stab or lunge. As you move your mouse around, you can see Henry move his weapons position to prepare to strike from that angle, your enemy may also change their position to prepare a guard or parry from that angle. You may react the same to your enemy etc. In combat you must block, parry, or dodge incoming attacks by watching and reacting to your enemy's movements. Blocks and parries are more successful when done from the opposite direction of the incoming strike. Each attack decreases the fighter's stamina, and each blow landed decreases the fighter's stamina. Stamina regenerates as you wait, rather quickly. So you should caution yourself against throwing a wild flurry of strikes when they could all be blocked and leave you vulnerable to counter attack. If a fighter has no stamina left, and takes a hit, it will instead to damage to their health. This is a problem, as maximum stamina is tied to health, and once you start losing, there are few options to recover.

This can become frustrating as early on many opponents are stronger, faster, and more skilled then Henry. Henry can take advantage of some training offered by NPCs as well which helps a lot, as well as giving you some free character development. Getting better will take some practice. Take advantage of highway bandits as you encounter them. They are fairly weak enemies and are unarmored. Additionally, the game observes stabbing, slashing, and blunt damage types. Some armor guards against these damages better than others. For example maces are great against plate, slashing grat against cloth, stabbing great against leather.

So yeah, combat is tough and has a player skill component. That's a deal breaker for a lot of people. If you face multiple enemies, lead them somewhere the helps you, like into a corridor where they can't both get at you at once, etc.

There is also stealth, which helps a lot early on, but once you get good at fighting, you will rely on it less. Stealth is a great way to pick apart groups of enemies, and lower their numbers so you can feel more confident taking them head on. It also helps with committing crimes, which I didn't get into much. There's a whole set of side quests relating to criminal activity, but my Henry is a good boy.

I'm tired of writing now.

TL;DR It's a great game, suffering significant launch flaws. I was able to complete it and have a great time despite that. It will be frustrating to players who do not anticipate the skill gap. I paid full price at launch and I loved it.

Gameplay and quest structure is like Bioshock in space, like exactly. Game does a very good job of making a zero gravity environment easy to control and navigate in. Zero G was legitimately fun. Enemy variation is pretty good, and combat difficulty scales relatively well. As your character gets stronger, you have an easier time fighting the enemy, but it doesn't feel as though you have become a God-like. There are a couple of annoying enemy types that are easier to fight if you advance certain abilities, punishing you for passing on them. Overall the gameplay is good. Much of the same areas are reused repeatedly, which can make running back and forth quite an annoyance.

The story to the game is kind of predictable, as it progresses and you have half a brain you'll realize what's going on. It's cute that it takes place in an alternate history, where JFK survived. I wasn't at all shocked on it's twist ending. Most of the characters are not very well developed, less so than Bioshock, with the exception of Morgan Yu's brother and Morgan Yu himself. There also is very little variation on the endings. Push the red button or the green button, and have a report on which quests you did or did not complete and who it hurt or saved. Basically your moral choices result in a progress report at the end, not much more than that. The ending itself is very abrupt. There is no real "Final Boss" fight or challenge. You just reached it, the ending, which is kind of deflating.

Graphics are very nice, but that's kind of the easy thing to do in AAA gaming now. No point really even commenting on it anymore.

tl;dr Gameplay is decent. Story is weak. I picked this game up on sale for $20, and I was generally satisfied with it.

Game is lovely.