Recent reviews by Petabik

I'm certainly biased here, but playing this game I was amazed by just how much it did feel like a proper sequel to the franchise, yet how much of it just made me want to replay DOOM 2016 for the fifth time. It was inspiring seeing how much that game did in fact take notes from this one: the plot, the UAC facilities, Hell's architecture, some demon designs; yup, it started here. Even the damn Soul Cube thing, when you're not saving it for the first Archville/Hell Knight you see, using it for healing might as well be a Glory Kill.

The ideas here are great, and I will forever respect wanting to aim for a bit slower paced game with a higher focus on atmosphere. I think it fits, these aspects were in no way absent in the first Doom, they're just focused on harder here. Perhaps too hard, and I'm not saying that because I often have to whip out the flashlight to see ♥♥♥♥ - that's how it's clearly meant to be, otherwise I'd be playing BFG Edition instead (hell naw). But when the game seems so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AFRAID to stop trying to spook you even though your growing arsenal is making the average life expectancy of every demon lower and lower, so it keeps throwing imps and those new demons that no one remembers by name, that's when the game just gets boring. When I have an imp leap at me for the fiftieth time, I am not spooked - I'm annoyed.

Annoyed is what this game does to me way too many times for its own good. It does manage to peak - around the last third or so. And even then, theres some stuff that will never go away. It's clear this game was designed for tighter places, so you will only rarely have encounters with more than three enemies on the screen at once, often less. As a result, something like the BFG or Rocket Launcher saw less use than I'd remotely wish them to. I often ended up using the shotgun, which - okay, no, it's far from the worst weapon I've handled in a videogame. The issue is that it's like a huge blueball. It can be powerful if you really kiss your enemies with it, and it is often a great, quick response to a lot of enemies, but just a few centimeters of distance, and the spread can easily feel atrocious. That's why it's annoying. And the enemies just ramp up way too slow, the game is so damn insistent on never giving up on using imps everywhere, even though by 2nd half of the game, you can dispose a horde of them in seconds, and there are several enemies that can create way more interesting scenarios. Pinkies are so damn scary in this game, they take a while to kill, they hit hard, they never stop coming at you, and they're *yuge*, and yet, I don't think they ever used them more than 20 times.

The plot is... there. I already said this is one of the things DOOM 2016 copies, but that game still wisely had its story beats that felt important. It was rather blunt, even if did the cardinal sin of interrupting you a few times. Here, everything felt like it happened in the background, and you're just unraveling it through bits and logs. Not a bad approach on paper, but nothing here (except perhaps the ancient race stuff) felt remotely compelling enough to justify this. I found it so funny how long the game tried to be a little "nudge nudge" about something being wrong with the UAC (there's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hillarious audio log about section Delta getting so mentally ill that the rest of the UAC made a slur for them), and then I come back from Hell and it's suddenly: HERE'S MAMA'S RECIPE FOR THE IDEAL SUMMONING RITUAL. I mean... lol.

Speaking of Hell, it looks cool, sure. Probably best looking Hell in the franchise. Too bad it lasts like... less than an hour. It's such a great peak of the game; everything you did up to this point is suddenly twisted: your weapons are gone, the areas are all distorted, the loading screen has no comforting visual or information... it felt weird to come back to Mars so quickly after that. The buried temple came close to it, but it was too little, too late. Oh yeah, I really like how you get unlimited stamina in Hell, so they can then throw scenarios at you where you really need that. See, this game can be clever at times. But then at other times... it does something so dumb that I feel like the game decided to just start going on autopilot. Like the final boss... you give me so much to prepare for it, and then its just hitting it with the Soul Cube four times? Did they really think I need this much ammo to just kill those ads around the arena a few times to charge it? What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ letdown. And how exactly does that suddenly close the hell portal? What in hell even happened? Were they planning the DLC from the beginning?

Gameplay pocitově nijak moc změněný od základní hry. Toto teoreticky je plus, udržuje to klasiku v HD provedení, ale zároveň není na tom nic co vychvalovat, a na moc dlouho to zábava není. Mapy jsou rozhodně nejlepší část, jsou jasně dobře propracované a detailní, ale i tak, jejich různé hrátky nemění gameplay na tolik, aby šíleně vyčnívaly. A je jich taky málo, a to mám Map Pack DLC díky mé podpoře na Startovači.
Když je řeč o DLC, dávat možnost upravovat si postavu jako DLC je taky absolutně k smíchu. Chápu, že F2P hra potřebuje nějaký zdroj financí, a snaží se vymáčknout nové odměny pro podporovatele, ale na takové uvažování je fakt příliš brzo.
(Tohle je spíš hnidopich ale v menu to ani nevypadá moc dobře lol, sluchátka clipují skrz roh polštáře a provázek pro pásku přes oko je jasně jen plácnutá textura[i.imgur.com])

Vizuální stránka žádná sláva není. Animace jsou celkem pěkné, a již zmíněné mapy jsou skvělé, ale to je asi tak vše. Originál nebyl šílený, v mnoha způsobech to bylo pro to desetiletí i typické, ale měl kontrast. Polštáře krvácely, zajíci explodovali, načítací obrazovka pro mapu Na dobrou noc určitě v nejednom děcku vzbudilo noční můry, Bulánčí historie přímo parodovala druhou světovou válku nebo hippie éru. To vše pro střílející polštáře s hlasy jako Wormsové. Zde byl jasně brán více věkově přístupný styl, který však ve výsledku nevypadá moc odlišně od všech podobných her, co teď sužují trh.

Zkušenost s multiplayerem je ubohá. Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, a podpora až osmi hráčů nejsou špatné přídavky, ale jejich efekt na gameplay je moc malý. Lobbies jsou až směšné, chatovat se v nich dá jen skrz předem vybraný seznam odpovědí. Úprava spawnovaní zbraní nebo respawnů nebo něco podobného by bylo milé (osobně mi přijde, že zbraně se tu spawnují až moc málo, a skoro furt jsem jen zaseklý s pistolkou), ale nic takového. Soukromou lobby vytvořit nelze, jedinou možnost je kickovat ty co tam nechcete, ale pokud stihnou dát, že jsou připraveni, tak se jich nezbavíte. Nechápu proč. A až dohrajete zápas, tak se vaše lobby automaticky rozpustí a musíte založit novou. A je to skrz Epic Games... proč?

Celkově, tyto věci jsou něco, co by šlo vysoce snadno odpustit, kdyby to byl pořád studentský projekt z roku 2001. Pro hru v roce 2023 se sedmi-milionovým budgetem už toto nefunguje. Pokud hra ještě není dodělaná a plánuje další updaty, budiž. V tom případě nechápu, proč oficiálně opouští Early Access s F2P vydáním.

Disappointing.

I can absolutely see why this game was considered a cult classsic at the time, but looking back at it now, I struggle to find any enjoyment in it. And that's besides the fact that you need fanpatches to make it work properly. Yes, it sucks, but I play old games on Steam all the time, it's not something I'm not used to.

The stealth is jank as ♥♥♥♥. I am not expecting Hitman levels of detail, but the AI is clearly very barebones and easy to cheese. They never felt that threatening, my strategy often devolved into baiting them into the shadows and just quickly killing them off, and that was on the higher difficulty. Using sound and objects to distract the enemies felt like it had very random levels of effectiveness and never felt like I could do it consistently. The combat itself is clearly intented to be last resort, but it feels like its rather easy to abuse as well, and can be the easier way to get past. The first couple levels I did get past felt incredibly linear and not really remarkable in any way.

Perhaps it's the disturbing feel and context of the game that is intended to be the real hook, but I have not felt even remotely absorbed in it. It all feels too scripted. The basic AI aside, the enemies just sometimes feel like they're explicitely lined up for you to be killed. I know the setting is that you're basically helping a guy record his snuff film, but with how everyone seems to be right in for the show, it almost feels like a silly battle royale or something. Maybe I'd be more accepting if the game wouldn't feel so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pleased about how "disturbing" it is. Also, while I'm not advocating vigilante justice, when you're explicitly told most of these people you kill range anywhere between a serial rapist and Hitler, it's a bit hard to find this game that morally questionable. The most messed up thing I did was kill a bunch of pretty much objectively evil dudes, which sums up almost every violent videogame I've played.

I'm trying to 100% this game but I'm keep getting interrupted by sex scenes. True "Suffering from success" simulator

Looking back at Amnesia is a bit of a strangely nostalgic experience. Even years after its prime age, if you mention this game, the first memory that usually pop in people's heads is them sitting in bed with their laptop around the age of 12 watching a youtuber of their choice scream like a girl at every opporturnity. Still, I'd say that right after that come up various memories of a time when horror games were booming largely thanks to this game, the times of roaming around unlit castle corridors with no guarantee about the safety behind the next corner.

I think that many modern horror games nowadays, at least the ones made by studios rather than indie devs, try to shoot for higher means to cause horror than what is clearly a simple stage, where if you understand the layout by any means, such as a replay or a fanmade map, you realize that you're really just roaming a badly lit series of rooms with some scripted moments here and there to throw a monster near you that will inevitably despawn without starting a chase as long as you stay hidden and not do dumb things to attract it close to you, unlike what seemingly many people didn't have the patience to do in many of the old videos (probably because they either didn't bother trying to understand the game mechanics or because they knew what was way more fun for the audience). Nowadays the standard for horror seems to have risen, with many long terms fans of the genre being at a point where just being stuck in dark and solving some puzzles as long as you don't hear a monster around isn't exactly fresh or that unnerving.

But it's this exact design that in my opinion makes Amnesia still stand high among many modern attempts at survival horror. If some indie games like Slender showed us already back in the day that sometimes less is more, especially in terms of horror, then I think Amnesia nails this very well while still bringing a lot of thought and design by its team to strike a perfect balance. It's really not a complex game, but it's clearly aware of it, even at the first startup they tell you that you should let the game take you in and that you should try to enjoy it for an optimal experience.
Despite the very scripted nature of the events in the levels of Amnesia, it still is in many ways oozing with atmosphere, thanks to the polished level design, pacing, usage of lighting, Lovecraftian story, and the even nowadays highly remembered sound design and music compositions. It fully relies on this method to suck you in and make you more jumpy and on your toes, and if you don't allow the game to fully take you in, you will most likely find it as a pretty boring game. It is understandably not everyone's cup of tea, with some horror game fans preferring more unique and faster means of getting scared, rather than roaming around for more than half an hour and solving puzzles just to finally encounter one monster that they didn't even give chase.
But that's exactly why I still love it. It does require an ideal time and mood for an optimal experience, but if you put some effort into it, it becomes an experience that you will remembers years after playing. I know I still do.

And despite the possible slight venom that some custom stories might have brought during the mainstream popularity of the game, which flooded the scene with little to no attempt at atmosphere and instead kept throwing teleported monsters and naked corpses in your face with the same few loud sound effects, many of them nowadays are at best remembered as more funny than scary (possibly because they also often had some very 2012 humor thrown into them out of nowhere), but they stand low before some amazing custom stories that the fans have made. I would argue that some of them possibly beat the base game in terms of level design, with decisions such as making more monsters actively roam around and be a danger instead of just despawning after two minutes as long as you won't make a sound. Some of them go as far as to fully modify the game to add new looks and functions to strike even the experienced fans by surprise. And the overall freshness and insanely shocking polish of some of them can easily provide hours upon hours of enjoyable experience. Some of them aren't even that old, as far as I know the community is still alive by the time of writing, and not too long ago Frictional Games officially made the game's source code open source. And even if there wouldn't be any more custom stories, the amount of them is still high enough to make your money's worth for at least double the base price, and that's not mentioning how cheap it's on a sale these days.

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

An incredibly well done remake that while I don't think replaces the original experience, it most certainly takes it in a great direction that doesn't step too far from the original while adding a ton of polish.

MINERVA: Metastatis is a mod you can play for free by owning Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and honestly, the fact that it's free should be a crime. If this mod would be expanded into a bigger game, I'd gladly pay for it.

Compared to good amount of other famous Half-Life 2 mods, MINERVA doesn't stand out for having some very unique concepts, ideas, and redesigns of the game, or the Source engine as a whole. Instead, it simply does the things in the same way as Half-Life 2, and does it so well that you could swear that Valve made it. Especially with the level design, and there's probably no better way to compliment it than mentioning the fact that the author got hired at Vavle because of it.

There isn't much to be expected if you want to see something really new and unique, but that's not necessarily bad. As I said, the mod simply does the same things that Half-Life 2 did that made it so great. The levels, the enemy placement, weapon distribution, puzzles that often involve physics, etcetera. All of that is what makes both this mod, and Half-Life as a whole special.

Of course, one of the things that also made Half-Life work so well was the storytelling, and this mod doesn't lack at it either. You are a war criminal who got a last chance at doing something useful from an anonymous voice called "MINERVA" (which I'll further just call "Mina" so you can tell that I'm not talking about the game itself), and you are sent to a perculiar island occupied by the Combine to investigate what they're cooking there and stopping it in the process. Mina often gives you some exposition through messages on your screen, often providing guidance, tips, descriptions, food for thought and smacktalk. While messages on the screen is a clever way to make up for not having voice acting, it also suffers from often slowing the pace, since the messages don't last for too long and it's much easier to read them by just standing still.

• Gameplay - While not anything unique, the mod uses the guns and the levels in a professinal way that results in quite enjoyable gameplay. Although it made me miss my Gravity Gun sometimes, despite me knowing that having it would make no sense story-wise.
  
• Levels - Definitely the most refined part of the mod. From simple starts on a small island to quickly going down the rabbit hole, or in this case, Combine facility, that only gets bigger and more complex the deeper you go.
  
• Soundtrack - In many cases, it's the good old Half-Life soundtrack that we know and love, but there are actually four unique tracks included in this too. Kinda makes me wish there were more of those, but the parts with Half-Life music are done well, so I don't mind too much.
  
• Puzzles - For the most part, the puzzles were just as well made as the level designs, but it made me scratch my head few times near the end. There was one annoying puzzle with grenade throws that I had to look up, only to find out I was throwing them on a completely different place then where it seemed I was supposed to throw them.
  
• Story and pacing - The story is nice and simple, and fits well into the Half-Life universe. Nothing exceptional, but for the fact that this mod only takes about 2 to 3 hours to complete, it didn't feel too short or too long. Although I feel like there is much more we could learn about Miva, which is one more reason why I would love this mod expanded.

9/10

It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years

This is just Europe