Recent reviews by Qain

I have no idea what I just played, but I liked it.

I'd say it's a mixture of Ren & Stimpy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, some South Park (minus the crude humour) and all of that insanity blended with the dry british humour.

I'm sure there's a deeper message deep beneath the spanking of the cockney accented guy complaining about being in a queue waiting for their fish n' chips while the locksmith is too infatuated in kicking a bike until he breaks his leg after an afternoon in the pub while a home owner is too polite to complain about you wrecking his house for the 5th time....

... But I'll let someone else write that up.

Good short experience.

I finished Danganronpa yesterday after playing it with my friends watching, and I definitely have some opinions, which may not like some fans.

First of all, the game is one giant cliche and cringy linear adventure where you are sent to a very highly regarded school, however he was apparently randomly selected as the "Ultimate Lucky Student", which compared to others like "The Ultimate Baseball Player", "Ultimate Progidy", "Ultimate programmer" and others, it kinda feels like you're just a random generic dude, almost like every japanese anime. Anyways, this school is not really a typical school, and you are faced with having to kill your classmates and get away with murder; if the rest of your classmates cannot figure whodunit, you escape and the rest die. If you can figure out who did it, only the killer dies. In concept it is a great idea, allowing you to play the detective.

Why the first sentences then? Well, as I mentioned, it is a typical Anime, with the stereotypical characters, some with a bit more character development than others, but still extremely one dimensional, with cringy dialogue lines in general. This made me want to start skipping some of the dialogue despite the great voice acting (played in English) as most of the characters were quite annoying in general. Add some dating simulator elements in the mix and you've got a 30+ year old's cringe fest.

So why did I keep playing, and why am I rating this as positive? Well, the game exudes personality and charisma, with a well placed and excellent sountrack, a very distinctive visual style, and quite a few cases that make you feel smart enough but can get challenging. These cases are well developed, with some that are too exaggerated, but in general they are well structured. The dialogue lines between the characters allow for the observant kind to realize what is going on and set up the rest of the case figuring out what, when, who and why, which is pretty fun.

Now granted, this doesn't even hold a candle to the likes of Obra Dinn, Laura Bow, Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword and others, but at the same time, the devs of this game made it very clear from the beginning that this is a linear game where the fun is in the story, and every decision, including the cringy dialogue and stereotypical characters were all VERY deliberate, which I admire very much.

So with that said, I will be playing Danganronpa 2 with my friends when the opportunity arises.

Played with 2 friends, and while we had fun, the biggest gripe comes with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ physics and overall broken hitboxes. Now..... Do these things affect gameplay that bad? Well, not really, since the puzzles themselves are fairly easy.

Its level design is boringly repetitive, using repeated assets and fairly simple structures that are essentially variances of the same puzzle you saw on the first 500meters.

Also, where is the last wing????

Meh, play it with friends, or don't play at all.

I don't think there is much to say here, so I'll add a few things.

This is indeed, FromSoftware's Magnum Opus. It is an amalgamation of the concepts laid out in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II (though we don't talk about that), Dark Souls III, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. On every turn, every detail, and every bit of frustration and satisfaction, you will see traces of all these previous games.

Does that make it the best overall Souls Game? I think it makes it the most complete, but I'm still struggling when putting it against Sekiro.

Yes, the presentation is absolutely a cut above, the lore and setting is simply stellar, together with the visual storytelling. Each boss is not only a showcase of what the team can do, but also the beauty and terror that each one conveys in their own way. Pair that up with what is probably THE best soundtrack ever, and you got yourself a rush of emotions, when you die, when you hit a boss, when you kill it, when you die again, and when you die again.

My biggest issue with Elden Ring probably comes from the switch to Open World. Sure, exploring feels amazing, and the map is riddled with checkpoints (points of grace), but after a while each "curiosity" has a chance of you finding a repeated boss with a very predictable structure, rather than netting you a really cool item or a plot-important point. It's the same story as with many open world games; they need to fill the space with content, and eventually they can't put a new boss for each dungeon.

What about the difficulty? Well. If you've never played a Souls game, this will be your biggest challenge. If you've played Dark Souls I, II, III, then this will be familiar territory, only *some* enemies will kick your ass pretty badly. Some bigger bosses will in fact be so big, that the camera won't be able to cope with it, nor will it have proper focus points, so you will die just trying to figure out what the enemy is doing....

... And this is in part the second biggest crux. Some enemies are simply too big, and the character feels too slow despite being so much smaller, which is essentially the biggest physical dichotomy ever. This reminded me of playing Shadow of the Colossus in a way; the size was immediately solved by changing the camera zoom, and the interactability changed with how the character moved within the space and the enemy.

Another game that did it better imo, was none other than Sekiro. Sure, Sekiro was much, MUCH harder, but it also gave you the tools and nearly the same speed so you could counteract and counterattack each and nearly all affronts, making the game more fair than just rolling around, despite being so difficult.

This is the second time I play through the game, first was when it came out. Now I'll try to do all bosses in the main game (including Malenia and others) and then go straight to the DLC.

The game is good, mind you, REALLY good, REALLY REALLY good, but it's a bit enfuriating that this is an iterative project that, after so many variations, it's still failing in the same aspects as before.

I hope that their next release, maybe not necessarily a Souls game, manages to polish on these aspects, without just making each enemy a hit sponge that essentially requires you to build ludicrous sets like dual blade bleed only to make a fight not last half an hour.

Minds Beneath Us is a game that picks up piece by piece all the fears you may have about our future and sets them on a plate for you to reflect on, one by one, or all together at the same time.

Its wow factor does not come from its graphics (though they are pretty for being so simplistic) nor its gameplay (though they could have made an effort, maybe?) but from its stellar story, dialogue, and character development.

In MBU, you are.... essentially a mind agent, that can move from body to body in order to extract information from predetermined targets. You are, at first, tasked to extract some information from a guy, only for everything to break lose, leaving you stranded in another man's body, this time however... without a goal, a target, or information to extract, you are just.... there.

From there, you live in the body of Jason Dai, a guy who is about to start a new job in a Flop Farm (basically, where people provide their brains to feed an AI), you have to learn the ropes, the nice side and the really ugly side of what that job entails, the great and horrible people, the different departments, their judgements, and how each character views this morally ambiguous world that surrounds them.

That last part is what Minds Beneath Us really strives for; moral dilemmas. You are constantly being pushed to, more than to make decisions, to discuss morality and face the reality of how people move in this world, both from the perspective of someone who just wants to make their pay grade to that one executive that thinks of you as a number, and that alone is a fascinating thing to be able to express in a videogame.

The biggest downer for this one, IMO, is the gameplay -there is action, but the one you make is pretty bland and repetitive- From there, you could argue that, being a text-centric game, it may not be for everyone, and for those only interested in graphics, this may not be the biggest art showcase either.

Also, disclaimer: I found a few minor bugs, mostly with translation and missing lines. Nothing too big -it was easy to draw them out from context, and weren't important to the plot-, but I think it's better to say this. I did see many updates prior to launch, so this may not be relevant.

But yeah, totally recommend this one.

Pacific Drive is not an easy one to review....

I could say PD is a rogue-lite driving sim with stage-based levels and world progression, with RPG elements, looting and has a narrative focus like Firewatch. Kind of like a mixture between Firewatch and My Summer Car.

Is it though? Ehhhh, we need to get into the details.

So, in Pacific Drive, you, a nameless driver, is cruising along a nice looking road in the woods, when suddenly, you get sucked into a vortex of some sorts. When you wake up, your car is in pieces, but you find another one in shambles, but working.

You hop on and you drive, until you start to hear the voices of different people who explain the basic gist of the situation. Essentially, you are near a "zone of exclusion" like in Chernobyl, and you need to cooperate with the people talking with you, the car, and the environment to get out of there and understand just what the heck is happening.

The first few hours you'll need to explore your surroundings, understanding what anomalies do and how to navigate the map, and that's when one of the first big positives came up to me: The car handles great. You can "feel" (even if using a keyboard like myself) the loss of traction and how every bump affects the handling. Braking feels a bit off, specially when driving fast (it's as if the front gets lighter and turns the car, which doesn't make sense), but I'm nitpicking. For a game that does not even attempt to be a sim, it handles far better than many racing games I've played.

As you keep on driving, possibly terrified of everything due to the amazing atmosphere the game generates, including sounds, you'll probably damage the car, be it because you forgot to put it in park and it rolled away, it was stolen, you dumped it into acid, crashed into a mine, got into a thunderstorm or just flew too high and landed hard.

Anyways, you gather up resources by disassembling wrecked cars, getting into abandoned houses and exploring, you need to gather up enough energy to warp back to your safe garage. This leads to an improvised race where you must find the most efficient way (be it the fastest, safest, most fun, etc) to it and floor it so as not to get destroyed by a radioactive storm. Even if you have the best gear or are an amazing driver, you are bound to make plenty of mistakes, or find yourself in very precarious situations because of this, which makes even the most rudimentary runs a joyride of trying to get to the warp point in time and in one piece.

When you finally make it, you'll find yourself back in your garage, where the scientists that were talking to you try to piece together what is happening and telling you what to do next. All the while you are fixing back your car, nurturing it and tuning it with different pieces. You'll find your car's quirks (small details that come up as you drive, like a car door opening when you go in reverse, or battery draining faster when the lights are off). You'll also plan your route for the next run; as you move forward, you'll realise that certain sections have different effects, like eerie darkness, storms, extra enemies, or constant stability (there is no time limit). This will be very useful as you explore, as it will help you make a path towards where you want to go (and FYI, if you want to move to a section up north, you need to go through all previous sections, hence the planning).

As you progress, the difficulty ramps up; you'll need to farm more materials to upgrade, and more runs to clear a path. Nearing the end game the requirements for farming get a bit ridiculous, specially considering that by then you have the driving down to an art and you'll put yourself in "dangerous" situations more often just for the heck of it (I did at least), but the game also commits a serious crime by dropping the ball narratively, in my opinion.

The game gets REALLY interesting narratively speaking, and while you don't really get a say on anything that's happening, you do feel a part of it. At one point in specific, something happens which is a rather emotional moment and is very well shown through the voicing (which btw, really sells you in on the story). After that though, it feels as though the game loses its gravitas, and it just doesn't have the same effect as you'd expected. The ending is.... also, rather bland, unfortunately.

So what else? Let's see:
-Graphics look very stylized, but the game does not run very well and needs a few optimization passes or turning down settings for it to run accordingly.
-Farming can get annoying, specially in the end-game.
-Story gets REALLY interesting, but then drops the ball hard late.

Played on:

Intel I7 12700k
32gb RAM 3200mhz
Tested on RTX 3070 Ti at 1440p
NVME Drive

I was expecting this one to be akin to Inscryption or even Undertale, and while the potential is there, it was not exploited or taken that way. Maybe in the future? Who knows.....

Anyways, Buckshot roulette is exactly as per the title. You play buckshot roulette with a grim looking dude; he loads shells in the shotgun, some blank, some live. You only know how many are live and how many blanks, but not the order.

If you point it at yourself, and it's a blank, you get to keep firing. If you point it at your opponent and it's a blank, you give the shotgun to them.

In this very nerve racking situation, you are also presented with certain items, which will help you in deciding what to do. It is a bit of a shame that these items do not have a side effect; every item can have a positive one. Also, the variety is rather small, sadly.

That said, the game itself is VERY rewarding, despite being so short in both length and scope. The price is very fitting as well, so really any complaints regarding game longevity are counteracted with the very small price.

To conclude, I'd say go ahead and take this one for a ride. Who knows? Maybe Mike will get to improve upon this already excellent experience of a game.

Excellent game that I will never play again. Lemme tell you why....

Darkwood is an isometric 2D horror adventure game that puts you in the shoes of.... someone, who is clearly in a.... forest that is clearly..... not right.

I just came to realize, it's hard to describe this one, mainly because nearly all, if not all of it, revolves around the idea of insanity. What I can tell you, is that the game is REALLY good at defining insanity by itself;

It's doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, but it's also realising you're doing the same thing over and over, and trying to change it slightly, only to realize you ARE doing what many have done and have been doing for the past hundreds of years.

What really struck me about the game is that the element of horror lies in pretty much every aspect: Right from the beginning, the game tells you that it will not hold your hand, and that you must respect the woods, for they will not. You are given some basic tools to understand your surroundings and go explore.

You are prepared for your first night, yet it is uneventful.

You go exploring, and get much better prepared for the next one, and suddenly, nothing is safe anymore. You survive, barely.

Third day, you grow weary of every noise, and you start to meet certain... colourful characters, some with quests even! They seem trustworthy, right? I mean, they didn't attack you on sight at least.
"Eh, I don't know what I'm doing here other than what happened in the prologue, so I might as well go with it" you may say to yourself, only to realize that after some days pass, and you finally complete that quest, you have essentially destroyed the last remnants of a semi functioning village, killing their last chance and hope of survival. Cute. And that wasn't even the quest itself, that is far more grim.

In the midst of all of that, you are still struggling to understand what is happening, are these visions you are having?, is this madness getting to you? Does that explain why people behave like that? The answers to these questions lie deep within the woods, yet little of that is tied together with a nicely woven string; it's up to you to figure it out.

What about the rest? Combat is unforgiving, resources are scarce, the woods are trying to kill you and so is darkness, which shows you true horrors, while lighting things up gives only a sliver of hope in a world of death and decay (good GOD what an amazing addition!). Oh, and you're beating defenseless people to death with a shovel.

I got the worst possible ending in the end, but only because my smooth brain did not manage to fully keep track of the needed codes, keys and quests (as previously stated, the game does NOT hold your hand at all). Will I play it again? Probably not, but not because of the fault of the game.

Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely, 100 times. Just remember:

You are playing a challenging and unforgiving game.
You will not be led by the hand.
Respect the woods. Be patient. Focus.

Oh Boy am I gonna get some hate from this but...... sorry not sorry.

Visage is a horror game about a heavily deranged person living in a house that seems badly haunted. Its main premise lies in the fact that it hits hard at psychological horror, and manages to do so right from the beginning.

This mainly happens first with how AMAZING the setting looks overall. Sure, it is extremely inspired by P.T (Playable Teaser for Silent Hills, the game that did not come to be by Hideo Kojima) and it even has very similar beats. At the same time, Visage manages to hit home with some very specific elements, be it randomized events, jumpscares and some storytelling, however sadly, these elements are eclipsed by many others that I will try to put together in a few.

First of all, the inventory. MY GOD THE INVENTORY SUCKS! You can carry picture frames that are as big as your torso, but you cannot store more than 4 "dynamic" items. On top of it all, managing them is an exercise in patience, with you having to hold F to hold both items on your hand in front of you, and then you have to press either the right or left mouse button to drop them. All of this with a very basic UI that scares you but with its shoddy design.

Interacting with items is also a pain; In order to open a drawer or door, you either need to physically move your mouse or set an easy interact option, but because they're all physically based, both your items and yourself will collide with them, which is very likely to either bug you out by blocking your movement, or bug your items by blocking interactions.

Sadly, the negatives do not stop there.

The game uses and overuses the usage of keys, be that a physical key (more common) to using items (crowbar, sledgehammer, etc). Sometimes, even a simple room gets more complex by the need to add a key that opens a locker that contains a card that opens an electronic gate. It's unnecessary padding that not only gamifies the whole concept of horror (thus breaking immersion and suspension of disbelief becomes much harder) but also bores the player by filling a section that could last just a few minutes with an hour or two of "content". The only "puzzles" you may find are mostly matching combinations, and trying to convey cryptic messages that attempt to explain the plot of the game as you progress.

What about the level design? Well, the architect in charge of the house must have won an award in "most confusing design of the century", with a house that has as many floors as keys, and double the amount of passageways, to the point where the puzzle comes from traversing the map alone. It's cool at first when you find some semblance of logic within some chapters, but becomes enraging after just a few hours as the map gets more and more complex. Don't get me wrong, some scenes are absolutely beautiful, and some rooms and their interconnections are really well done, encapsulating the eternal madness the main character suffers on a daily basis, however that did not manage to keep me captivated throughout the game.

Well, what about the story? That's a bit of a mixed bag. See the game is centered around a hub which is the house itself. As you progress through each chapter (which can be freely accessed in any order), the house gets more complex, and the game becomes more dangerous for the player by introducing Insanity, affected by paranormal events and staying in the dark (this one element is also a bit borked with how light interacts with the player). These events range from lights flickering to some really really gnarly stuff which are AWESOME visually and also quite disturbing for some, or just... dying, which is rather unfortunate because of just how random these events seem.
Two of those chapters hit really hard, with a really cool developing arch throughout that has its own twist at the end, all while scaring the CRAP out of you, or presenting some really gruesome scenes. The other two are, sadly, rather quaint in their presentation, mechanics introduced, or just their impact or characters introduced, and while in the end they do have a connection, the whole journey just encapsulates the frustration to the point where the end (even the "good one") does not manage to hit the spot.

Probably the best part of the game as a whole is the story, but it's still marred by the rest of the elements, sadly.

So yeah, it's.... hard to recommend this game in the end. In part, I understand the positive reviews; the horror genre is so starved for quality content, that something like Visage, a buggy mess that overuses horror tropes and antiquated mechanics manages to stay at the top of the food chain. At the same time, it shows and reminds us just how much you CAN improve upon a game of this genre, but that takes A LOT of careful planning, visual presentation and of course, getting scared. Maybe the company can improve upon this one? I hope so!

I started playing this game as per a request from two friends who wanted me to play it and stream. Being an avid fan of Metroidvania games I thought it was the perfect opportunity to fully understsand why this game was so lauded as one of the best.

If you are expecting a perfect game, you.... won't find it here, I mean it in the sense that, to this day there are still bugs, there are still issues with how the game is paced and structured, and the initial rhythm is way too slow, enough to discourage new players to keep on playing, BUT......

... If you can grind your teeth for just a little bit, you'll understand why it's one of the best.

You see, Hollow Knight is indeed a Metroidvania, and while this genre has its story rich games, it does not even hold a candle to what HK achieves. I think its greatest strenght lies in how characters are developed, the setting, and the cryptic nature of environmental storytelling. If you are a regular reader and pay close attention, you can see how the plot magically unfolds in front of you. If not, you can still follow it, but you'll be missing out, and this game is riddled with details, enough to build an iceberg of theories, certainties and uncertainties. You'll find yourself hating some of the characters and loving others, but not for being badly written (though some are there just for filler), but because it would seem the writers intended for it to be like that, and that alone is a huge accomplishment.

Combat is, at first, what I guess can drive some early players to quit the game. In the beginning, it can get way too slow and boring, with very little dynamics within combat. However, once you start to not only comprehend the mechanics that lie at hand, but also unlock certain power ups and abilities, the skill ceiling goes through the roof in pretty much every aspect, including traversal. This goes both ways though, as certain bosses will push you to your limits. Thankfully, many of them can be ommited entirely if you're not feeling up for it.

What about music? Absolutely stellar, it perfectly encompasses the current situation or context under which you are in, enhancing each experience.

What about the graphics? It's.... an acquired taste for some. Stylistically speaking, it seems the characters are... cute and affable, but as you go deeper, you begin to understand the darkness within, and how there's a deep shadow within every cute character, which once again makes you punch the air at just how good the game was made in some aspects.

Story? Given the 2D constraints, it is staggering just how good they are at environmental storytelling. I'd say it's as deep as say... Dark Souls, but with only two dimensions, which is an amazing thing to say. I do have to object at the fact that many story elements are hidden way too much, or are under some extremely tough challenges, and while they do push you to become the very best, it can sometimes feel like a bounding contract.

What about time to play? That's entirely up to you. I "finished" it for the first time at around 76% completion with 40 or so hours. Now I'm 73 hours deep, just finished 112% with all pantheons, and I still have many things to do.

Is it worth it? Yes. Play it now, then cry with me while we wait for Silksong.