Reseñas recientes de Diver Willie

I was browsing the Winter Sale on the last day when I suddenly ran across Ratshaker in my recommended games. I'm not 100% sure what I was expecting and really wanted something silly and stupid that would be worth about an hour of my time.

What I got instead was something that I'm now going to make my girlfriend play. I REALLY didn't expect any of it. I was disappointed that it wasn't what I thought it would be, I got stuck and sh***er filtered by a walking simulator for a minute but once I finished it I was more or less accepting of what I'd done.

I sat for about 30 minutes wondering if I should refund the game, but ultimately decided against it. It isn't the developer's fault that I now shake my mouse compulsively when I hold down the left mouse button. The voice acting and sound design is very, VERY good, and there's about one more cartoon anvil in the game than you would expect.

The game is alright for the hour I spent playing and I would recommend it to anyone who likes horror stuff with absolutely internet brainrotted premises.

A wonderfully educational game for anyone who is considering entering the faith, becoming clergy, or otherwise taking up the scholarly pursuit of Christianity. This game taught me the proper ways how I, a gentleman steeped in the religion and philosophies of the one true Catholic and Apostolic Church, is meant to punish women who participate in the heretical and satanic practice of witchcraft.

You do it with your peepee.

I picked this game up during the pandemic.

Things were pretty fun at first. At the time the most recent pack was Chains of Hate and the game was popular enough that getting matches wasn't really a problem. I was brought in by a couple pretty chill friends of mine (we don't really speak anymore and honesty I'd say it's the games fault but I blame this game for about 90% of my problems even if I caused them) and we spent a lot of time playing. Things were pretty cool.

After the first 500 or so hours I had a pretty good grasp of the game and managed to get to red rank killer and survivor, the "upper level" of gameplay. Things were cool. I was mostly a killer player but found a lot to enjoy regardless on both sides especially with friends. Around this time Silent Hill was announced and I was looking forward to playing as both Pyramid Head and Forever Girl Heather Mason. More of my friends were playing than ever. Game was more popular than ever.

And it just stopped being fun. A lot of it has to do with Behavior Interactive (formerly known as A2M games -- I'm not joking. look it up) being unable to code their way out of a cardboard box without spilling spaghetti all over the place. The game is rife with bugs that make the playing experience less enjoyable.

As a killer main I can attest to the quality of the community. A lot of 4 man teams of survivors seem to make it their goal to take out as much of their daddy issues on you as possible. Streaming the game I was frequently harassed live by both random survivors who I spanked as well as other streamers who acted like they were some big deal (1000 followers versus 250, 4x zero is still zero) and generally go out of their way to be as unpleasant as possible. As it is very hard to counter an experienced 4-man team of players who have a solid understanding of all of the games mechanics and what they're doing you'll run into a wall pretty quickly.

This says nothing, of course, of the map design. Many changes to the "semi-procedural map generation" system have been implemented to keep TL walls and killer shack and other god loop combos from spawning too close to one another and it still happens at times. If you don't know what either of those mean, imagine chasing your pet dog around your yard, only for him to pass between two rocks, then suddenly pull out a plank and hit you in the face with it. And while you're still reeling and trying to react, he runs into the doghouse, waits for you to get close, and then shoots you with a gun. This is the essential Dead by Daylight looping experience. Sound fun yet? Just wait, there's more.

You're probably looking at the game as a fun way to play as some of your favorite slasher film villains. There is a totally acceptable number of franchises in on this, everything from Hellraiser to Texas Chainsaw and a few killers very similar to ones you'd find in mainstream IPs. If you want to play them I hope you like either a grind or you've got cash to spare. Unlocking every killer with in-game currency only having purchased base is nearly impossible. You're meant to spend money you won't get back, and time that will never return. The game is really effective at tricking you into doing both.

I really liked this game once. A thousand hours and change later and it's like I've unplugged from the matrix. New bugs every patch, laughable and nonexistent progression, a dev team full of surv mains and a dwindling killer playerbase that will soon only be comprised of a talking otter, a British man who doesn't like Dead Hard a lot and a large man in an orange shirt who facecamps as Bubba.

Just go play VHS instead.

Just Monika.

My old review of this game was an esoteric reference to Bain's lines. I've decided to update the interview, given the story of the game's "come to a close" and the game's sort of come full circle (and I've played double my original playtime)

THE GOOD
Really fun with friends. Sometimes fun with randos if you can play the carry consistently. The sandbox gives you ample options for build variety pre-DSOD, and a lot of different guns to play around with. For optimal enjoyment, Mayhem difficulty is the way to go -- an intensely challenging experience that still encourages build variety and "fun" over obsessive-compulsive number-forking and build optimization that won't make you friends and will make the friends you play with think you're weird.

THE BAD
Most randoms are braindead. If you have a friend who is a crybaby, don't play this game with them on a difficulty higher than Hard and don't have high hopes for them; play easy, exciting heists and don't try to get them to do anything complicated like standing in one spot to defend a switch or something, they'll just get mad, quit, and complain the entire time.

THE UGLY
This game's got its weird graphical quirks. It isn't a gorgeous triple A game so don't expect everything to look very nice, but there are some heists (GGC, Scarface, Alesso) that look really well done in my opinion given the shoestring budget of this constantly troubled game. Don't expect any waifu bait, either. The character models themselves look pretty awful, and the only cute girl in the game is Jacket from Hotline Miami 2.

CONCLUSION
This game helped me see an ex's red flags a little too late and spend less time looking at imageboards when I sit at my computer. about 650 hours in and it wasn't wasted time; the game has grown and evolved and with PD3 on the horizon PD2 creeps into its twilight years walking not on a cane like at launch, but on its own two legs, with a distinct and refreshing identity compared to its predecessor, like The New Coke or plastic frame Oakleys. It may not net you as much time as the seasoned veterans have extracted from it, but it remains worth a pick up on sale with as many DLCs as possible for a few hundred hours of satisfying gameplay loops, homicide, and deep drilling.

This game is a great survival FPS. Good mechanics, a nice range of weapons easily modifiable, and good difficulty that isn't too excessive. That's the short. Now for the long.

The long is that S.T.AL.K.E.R. is a great survival FPS renown for it's excellent portrayal of The Zone, a post-Chernobyl irradiated anomaly in Ukraine that is growing day by day expanding it's influence and luring treasure hunters guns-for-hire and thieves all to it's landscape for either massive wealth or their inevitable doom. Some of you might think, "but Wille, this has been done before. Why is this any different?" It isn't but it's done right and that's the key difference. A lot of survival games might thrust you into an area you know all of nothing about. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. doesn't do this. Your character is given plenty of dialogue with other characters as they slowly establish this large world around you from the starting area outwards. It's done like this in all of the series' titles and that is easily their best feature. Where they don't excel in graphics they do excel in amazing story and worldbuilding among other things, and the graphics are more than passable.

On to gunplay and mechanics. It's a survival game so you have your standard fare here. Heavy-hitting high recoil weapons that shred mooks and shred you if you're naked along with the typical things like hunger, radiation and the ability to bleed. Bleeding is easily stopped with twenty plasters applied on the wound whether it's a shot from a 9 mil or a crater-making blast from an anti-materiel rifle. This works to the game's benefit as it is a survival game but it also doesn't have to be overly difficult to be one. Many survival games think survival is ball-busting fun-stifling monsters teabagging your corpse death after death before you can even reach the level one safe zone. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has always given you time to prepare where other games wouldn't. For this reason alone it could get my reccomendation it could look Minecraft bad and with mechanics like this I'd still love it over anything any day of the week.

Not much more can be said. The flaws could be focused on but there aren't many. Buy the game and play it.

Pros:
- Excellent world spanning 3 games
- Satisfying gunplay that rewards patience and skill, without being too difficult for those lacking such things
- Mechanics that don't suck
- A wide variety of weapons and armors. The armors scale as the game goes on, but weapons are totally preference.
Cons:
- Graphics can be ass.