Recent reviews by Phileosophos

Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) is a surprisingly special game. Most tie-in games--whether novel, movie, whatever--suck. It's really that simple. I actually read a few GotG comics back in the day and could hardly believe it when James Gunn managed to make a successful MCU film with those characters. To me that was Marvel basically demonstrating they could make anything good, which after years of DC screw-ups was a true shocker. But enough about all that.

The GotG game is an odd beast. I'm inclined to say it's almost a genre unto itself: a third-person AI-team action game or something. It would be easy enough to call it a "third-person shooter" because we've had plenty of those, but it's just not. Yes the camera is in third person, and yes there is a good bunch of shooting, but if that's what you're doing you're playing it wrong. The game would be a fairly mediocre shooter, but you'll have a lot more fun focusing on all the ways you can use your team in combat instead.

One of your better tools to help them is surely through using Peter Quill's element guns, either with their normal fire modes or via one of the four elements, but the biggest chunk of the fun to be had is in using your teammates. Pin them in place with Groot, or knock them all off balance with Drax, then blow them all up with Rocket, slaughter the biggest foe with Gamora, provide spiked-root enemas for all, or just enjoy watching Rocket jump into a mech and gun down everything with gleeful malice.

It took a while for the game to click with me. I loved the amazing environments and sense of wonder and exploration immediately, but for a long time I kept approaching it as a shooter and using my teammates only occasionally. That was a mistake. Abilities recharge more quickly than I realized, have more syngergies than I recognized, and are far more fun overall. It was only when I leaned into Peter Quill being a fully-engaged leader, calling the shots from start to finish in a fight, that it all came together beautifully.

I think the "huddle up" mechanic is uniquely emblematic of the game. When available, you can call everybody into an honest-to-goodness team huddle in the middle of combat, listen to what they say, and then give them exactly the kind of inspirational pep talk they need. The damage bonuses and defensive buff are helpful, but it's really the randomly selected 80s soundtrack tune playing in the background that makes this absolutely hilarious to use. Like I found myself fighting arguably the biggest, baddest monster in all Marvel lore to the tune of "Don't Worry, Be Happy", which had me laughing so hard I was in tears.

Yes, the game has a few quirks and bugs. There were a couple times I had to restart from the previous checkpoint because one of the guardians had disappeared or something similarly wonky. And I sure wish it was easier to skip certain cut scenes as they can drag on a bit and slow things down at times. But I'm very glad I invested the time to finish GotG and enjoy it for what it is. The moment to moment dialogue in particular is stellar and suits the characters beautifully. And the story arcs you forge genuinely make a difference in the way the team comes together over time, from a fractious pack of malcontents at the outset to a laughing, joking, team of dear friends by the end.

If you like the GotG comics or movies at all, and are willing to put some time into learning the team aspects, then this game is a blast.

I have a mostly love partially hate relationship going with this game, and despite having spent over six hours with it that isn't changing. I've completed the first chapter and believe I'm about halfway through the second, so given my understanding the game contains a total of three chapters I'm probably at the midpoint. Now maybe it's going to change everything the next time I fire it up, but I feel like by this point I understand it well enough to offer a grounded review.

Let me start with the good. I'm a W40k nerd, have played almost every W40k video game ever made--even the bad ones (and I mean the really bad ones)--so this thing is almost exactly what I've wanted more of ever since finishing Space Marine for the umpteenth time years ago. That is, I want more W40k FPS games! I love all manner of strategy games, but what I really want is the power fantasy of being a space marine or even better an inquisitor--the Eisenhorn video game sadly sucked, so that itch remains entirely unscratched.

Happily, this game delivers that in spades. Everything about your movement, weapons, taunts, abilities, and Emperor be praised a fantastic chainsword is as perfect as I'd hoped. I even find I love the pixel-art style. Sure, it's not as pretty as Space Marine, despite being released over a decade later, but I'm old enough to remember playing the original DOOM (and earlier games) so the art is a pure nostalgia sugar cookie to me. The audio is great, save for maybe too many noises from the damn servitor that follows me around all the time, and the taunts are so awesome I never get tired of them. Why just decimate your enemies when you can MOCK them in the name of the Emperor while you do?!

In so many ways, this is truly a top-tier W40k experience, which is why its main flaw is so incredibly disappointing, to me at least. The best way I know to summarize it is to say that the developers must be dark and terrible creatures of the warp for hating joy and fun so much as to design levels the way they do. Allow me to explain by making two points.

One of the things I positively adored about Space Marine was how so many of its levels made sense within the fiction of the world. You felt like you were walking through exactly the sorts of places they were supposed to be. The different floors had sensible purposes, the layout of rooms had a certain logic to it... it had a certain "reality" to it that was beautiful.

Boltgun does away with all of that in favor of the worst failures of 90s era shooters in games whose maps were just strung together with little rhyme or reason other than "gee, that looks cool" or "let's trap the player in a blind corner because we can". Honestly, I could live with this. I played a lot of those bad 90s era shooters and can ignore the lack of sensible layout. I love a great design, but honestly I care more about whether a map is fun to play.

And that's where this game really falls short. The level designers deliberately make maps that are very repetitive, difficult to navigate, and that will force you to examine every crevice to find the obscure, damn-near-hidden path to where you're supposed to go next. I think for every five minutes of fun, it extracts three times that in wandering, backtracking, listening carefully, checking every corner, etc. trying to locate the key, the hidden path, the hole in the ground, the obscure jump, the... you get the idea. And its mortal sin, given this sadistic, counter-productive approach to map layout, is that it has neither compass nor mini-map nor ANY other map of any kind! Hell even the original DOOM had a bloody map!

This is honestly almost a deal breaker to me. I've played a lot of "boomer shooter" games of late, and nearly all of them feature much better map design. It says something about how good the rest of the game is that I keep putting up with the 75% of my time I spend wandering for that 25% pure W40k adrenaline rush. So if you're a W40k fan looking for an FPS game, and you don't mind wasting a ton of time on bad map design, pick this up now. For you it's worth full price. For anyone else, wait for a sale or go play something better like Turbo Overkill instead. And may the Emperor have mercy on me for saying this is a very limited recommend. I wish Steam would let me give it something other than thumbs up or down.

This is a rare FPS game that I just don't like. I wish I'd refunded it during the window. The only way you're going to survive at all is by constantly performing stunt moves: (1) wall running, (2) diving, or (3) sliding. That's not horrible in itself, but the controls are fiddly enough that all three are just annoying to begin with. I've got too many better games to care and beat my head against this un-fun nonsense.

I think this is the best first-person shooter (FPS) game I've played in a while, and I've played a lot. I'm a sucker for any kind of cyberpunk-themed game, but I've been playing others of late and "boomer shooters" more generally (Deadlink, W40k: Boltgun, Trepang2, Sprawl, etc.) and not having nearly as much fun as with Turbo Overkill (TO). I've seen some posts about how it's the love-child of one developer, and I have no idea whether that's true because this is better than most of the AAA FPS I've played of late.

Seriously, the mechanics never cease to be fun, the weapons are well thought out and fun to use, the alternate fire modes are often just as glorious and inspired as the original Unreal Tournament, the movement mechanics are fun without turning into a boring wall-running simulator (I'm looking at you, Sprawl), ... I just never fail to have a great time with this. Now I'm only about 5 hours into it, so I've yet to see everything, but just when I thought I had done everything the game has to throw at me, I get in Johnny's car and start mowing down EVERYTHING in sight!!! Now I'm flying around this crazy beautiful neon nightmare cyberpunk metropolis in some crazy level and don't even want it to end.

Unless you downright HATE this type of game, or you're one of those players who can't stand anything that doesn't have the most bleeding-edge or extremely realistic graphics imaginable, then I do not see how you will fail to get your money's worth out of TO. This thing is an absolute gem, and I will be following this developer closely going forward, likely buying everything he turns out.

I don't normally review games with only two hours of play under my belt, but I feel like Liberté is special. I'm not usually a big fan of "rougue like" games, I'm not really much of a fan of the French (though I appreciate the themes of the revolution and how this game handles them), deck-builders aren't normally my thing, and like so many reviews pointed out to me before I took the plunge, the game still has some serious jank.

In particular, combat can feel floaty, disconnected, behind my actions, and I can't count how many times I've gotten stuck on some small thing on the map and gotten pummeled (or died) simply because I couldn't get unstuck in the middle of combat. The number of assets that comprise the game's art and level design is also so minimalist that even I notice it, and I'm from the original DOOM generation that normally doesn't care if a dozen textures define the whole bloody map. Honestly, I feel like that damn bathtub is following/stalking me.

Having said all that, however, I've genuinely enjoyed my time with the game. I think the developers have created something genuinely interesting. I found the possibilities for my loadout to be quite engaging. I always feel like I'm on the verge of ruin only to pull off a win and suddenly find myself on top of the world. And I'm typically left agonizing over the choices I keep getting handed between the factions, never sure what makes the most sense. I clearly know far less than I have yet to learn, but the game has that crucial and difficult to define "fun factor".

It also doesn't hurt that the story is apparently quite long, seeing as I've completed like 5% of it during two hours of play, so I've got a long way to go. The world feels surprisingly real, save for the downright goofy recurring bathtub meme, and engages me. Where others find the combat irritating (from the reviews I've read), I find it an interesting set of puzzles to solve. I find shaping the battlefield and careful attention to my current skill set makes all the difference in the world.

Honestly, for the price, I don't think you can go wrong if you have any interest in these kinds of games. I am just about the opposite of the expected player base, and I'm genuinely enjoying it.

I don't usually review a game without spending a lot more time with it. I've got roughly five hours into it so far, and have made it just over halfway through the game at this point (based on a list of chapters I've found online). But in this case I think an early review is warranted because my view of the game has already coalesced.

The short version is this: if you're like me and positively loved the original Dead Space series, and hoped that this would be a wonderful new version to resurrect that franchise and carry its legacy forward, then you're probably going to be disappointed but in a very qualified way I'll try to explain. The sad central truth is that The Callisto Protocol (TCP) does not live up to its predecessor in too many ways, but I do think it succeeds to an extent on its own merits albeit in a more limited sense.

Everything about the original Dead Space was simply brilliant. The graphics were amazing, the audio was fantastic, the story was gripping (and had a great twist that did what it did better than any other game I've ever played), and the mechanics were just about perfect. I loved that Isaac wasn't a run-of-the-mill soldier archetype blasting everything with his big gun, grenades, special abilities, power-ups, etc. No, Isaac was an engineer, armed with substandard tools ill-suited for combat but that could be upgraded into a disgustingly effective arsenal of eviscerating decapitating destruction nevertheless. I think I played it start to finish half a dozen times because I just couldn't get enough of it.

Compared to that standard, TCP is weak. The graphics are even more stunning, and the audio is done as well or better, but it falls down in the mechanics and diversity. The ranged combat system is decent, but the melee half of things might as well just be a series of quick-time events or QTEs as it grows stale and boring very quickly. Once I got the basic timing and understood my options, I could beat virtually any creature without so much as the barest worry about damage. I mostly started relying on the hand cannon because it was more fun than the QTEs without the button prompts that melee combat is at its core.

And speaking of QTEs, you'd better like them. Maybe even love them. Because at certain clearly scripted points, you're going to get hit with some creature out of nowhere, which sometimes makes zero sense in the location, and you'll have to start mashing the 'E' button within a second or two or die instantly. There isn't even any challenge to it: it's always the same button. Honestly, every time my QTE sense started tingling, I could just walk around smashing 'E' just in case. It was boring. I still enjoyed watching the beautiful graphics play out, but it got old fast, just like the melee combat.

I've enjoyed the 3D weapon printing upgrade system somewhat, but I've finished half the game with a single melee weapon--two if you count the shiv for stealth kills I suppose--and a single ranged weapon. I think by that point in Dead Space I already had three weapons, stasis, and telekinesis. I felt like I had so much more variety. But then that's true of the enemies too. I'd venture a guess that 85% or more of all the enemies I've faced are the same basic thing that hasn't posed any threat to me since the melee timing clicked with me. It has already grown stale.

I should also note that for a survival horror game, I'm not having any trouble surviving--well, beyond the occasional failure to mash the 'E' key quickly enough at some unexpected point. The environments seem littered with health packs, ammunition, goodies to sell, etc. and I can barely carry anything with my paltry six inventory slots. The inventory dance is more frustrating than anything, and I've honestly been selling virtually everything for upgrades because I haven't needed health or ammo badly yet at all. I'm playing on the normal difficulty for sake of reference, and I don't find it a challenge at all.

Now to be fair, I haven't seen the latter half of the game. Maybe the developers will absolutely blow my hair back and dazzle me with their ingenuity for the last five or six hours of play. But I don't think there is any number of weapons, any number of unlocks, or any amount of enemy variation from here on out that can make up for how stale the game got beyond the first hour or two of play.

And yet again to be fair, I am still enjoying my trip through the world. I guess I'm a big enough fan of this genre that I appreciate the incredible graphics and wonderfully atmospheric environments enough, along with the admittedly tired combat, to find it entertaining. I bought the deluxe version on sale, and I'm definitely going to get my money's worth out of it, but this is not the amazing spiritual successor for which I have longed for all the intervening years. And I'm not sure that anyone who isn't nearly so HUGE a fan of the original franchise is going to get even that much from it.

So, bottom line: if you wanted a great and innovative successor to Dead Space, and that's all you'll accept, then take a hard pass. This game is a pale shadow of the prior franchise. If you're a survival horror nerd who lives for amazing graphics, scary audio, and doesn't really care much about a challenge in combat or a lot of variety, then this could very well be your jam. I would suggest everybody else ignore it completely. And what a shame that is.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with Ghostrunner (GR) in that there's a certain groove that is indescribably rewarding when it's all clicking. I was a big fan of the Mirror's Edge games because the focus on chaining together different moves to find the most fluid path from point A to point B was both relaxing and oddly rewarding. But I think GR is a much less forgiving game by any measure and devolves into frustration pretty quickly when it gives you so little clue as to what to do and understates what it does tell you.

For example, the opening sequences teach you only the most very basics in a very minimalist way. When in reality that first time-distorting move you learn (pressing the 'Shift' key on a PC keyboard) is pretty much the move you will master or die endlessly. And there are many subtleties to its use, as there are to virtually every seemingly simple move: wall-running, jumping, dodging, you name it. I found some of it immediately intuitive, but I really had to work to figure out some of the intricacies.

I've had that same feeling multiple times as I work my way through the game too, encountering some new thing that doesn't work like anything else I've seen. I'm sure I could probably just do a quick web search or look on YouTube and watch somebody else solve it for me, but I don't want to do that. Some of these things are pretty tricky. Some of the "puzzle" levels are downright incoherent and illogical and deliberately so.

I've made it roughly halfway through the game now after about eleven hours of play, and in part that's because I had to beat my head against certain sections hundreds of times before I could figure out what to do. GR is consistently amazing how it adds something entirely novel into the mix that often makes the situation seem completely impossible at first, yet then by the end of that same level you've been forced to adapt to the point where it's just another voice in the mix.

I also cannot overstate the degree to which changing up your load out and using different skills can completely change the feel of the game. There was one section in particular where I kept dying to the same trio of enemies. No matter what order I tried to take them in they shot me in the air every time. I couldn't find any way to deal with them and gave up more than once before cooling down and coming back to it. But then I went looking through my load out and tried a skill that let me reflect projectiles: the impossible situation almost immediately became trivially simple. I could easily murder two out of the three foes with their own fire!

Not long after I unlocked the "blink" ability, and now I've more recently unlocked "tempest", and they lend themselves to very different styles of play. And that's a good thing given some of the much harder enemies that appear by the time you're halfway into the game. I don't want to spoil much of anything, but there are some tricky environmental bits and a few outright slaughterhouses you're going to be forced to endure, death after death until you find the way.

So here's the thing. I'm at the point in life where I have very little time to play anything, so when I do sit down to play I want to have fun. I don't usually find very punishing games fun because they require a skill level that my responsibilities will simply never allow, so they're the kind of thing I try and usually refund or walk away from pretty quickly. And yet despite how punishing GR is, and how "cheap" some of the deaths and last-minute architectural stumbling blocks are in some maps, I have come back to it for a solid 11+ hours. And while I'm improving slower than I'd like, I am still improving. I think that says something about it.

Unfortunately, I don't know how much more I'm going to get out of it. I've run into the first real "boss", and it's completely ridiculous garbage. I don't believe there is any level of skill that makes it possible to navigate that absolute crap-fest without hundreds of pointless, repetitive, deaths--and that assumes you don't stroke out completely from epilepsy given what's on the screen at that point. There are boss fights that are hard. Difficult. Punishing. But this might as well be labelled "Push Buttons 1,000 Times In Sequence Properly With Blind Luck".

Having said that, I don't want to leave my review at that point. The game also deserves huge credit for its fantastic visuals, perfect audio, style, controls, etc. It is truly a pleasure to play in all its basic mechanics and presentation values. There's so much I like about it, I find it frustrating that I've made it to a certain point, and there's essentially no way I will ever make it any further. There is no amount of patience or improvement or anything but goodness knows how many hours of blind trial and error that will ever get me through the next level.

In short, if you're easily frustrated, this game is probably not for you. But if you're more like me, I think you'll easily get your money's worth out of the game, even if you don't finish it. I've enjoyed my time enough with it to be happy I've bought it. I just wish it didn't involve such ridiculous nonsense at points.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite (AFE) is a game that far too many people wrote off and ditched too soon, not realizing what they were missing. It's easy to understand now too in hindsight after 31+ hours of play. So I thought I'd write a review in the hope that it helps bring some more fan(s) of the franchise to a game I think most will enjoy.

It's easy to understand why so many people ditched the game and were disappointed because honestly I was too at launch. The aliens seemed like pushovers. The maps were very linear and very formulaic, moving from one big fight to another with some of the encounters feeling more like they were designed solely to tick boxes in a design document or just irritate players by forcing them to burn through ammunition (in particular the downright boring marching hordes of "poppers" in the third mission of the third campaign section).

The amount of content seemed pretty weak too. Yes, there were four classes to play initially ("Demolisher", "Doc", "Gunner", and "Technician" if I remember correctly), but the loadout limitations were confusing, the firearm mechanics and stats were not intuitive (making it surprisingly hard to compare gear and know which was better), and frankly I owned virtually all the weapons, attachments, and perks I could buy within my first five or six hours of play. I felt like I'd paid *far* too much money for the relatively small amount of available kit.

But here's the thing: I'd now venture a guess that what I had at the time was one quarter of the total content, maybe even less! I didn't realize there was a *fifth* class until I finished the campaign for the first time and gained access to the "Recon" class, which might actually be my favorite. There's something about the combination of his loadout choices along with the PUPS sensor and health/ammunition drone that really suits my play style. He's got a lot of fun options for perks too.

And that's not even counting all the stuff that's been added post launch. We've had multiple new classes added (e.g., phalanx and lancer), new game modes, new weapons, new attachments, new perks, new challenge cards, and a whole bunch of new cosmetics. The developers have not been idle in the slightest, having added quite a bit along the way.

But honestly, I'm not sure all of that stacks up to the hidden stuff that was apparently already there. It was only when I started playing the game on the "Intense" difficulty with a couple of friends that I began to realize just how much is hidden under the surface. I started getting weapons I'd never seen before, perks I couldn't buy, and all kinds of other stuff. Then seemingly out of the blue, the requisition store opened up with *dozens* of new weapons I'd never seen before either.

I'm still not sure why that happened, but I'm guessing it had something to do with completing missions on the "Intense" difficulty level. I say that because a friend and I were working through the campaign together a second time on "Intense" and we both suddenly noticed what seemed like an almost completely new weapon inventory.

We haven't even tried the other game modes yet, as we're too busy having fun on "Intense". I imagine we'll finish that soon enough and move on to "Extreme" to see what lurks behind that gate. If what we've seen so far is any guide, then I expect we'll be finding some truly interesting goodies.

To be fair, the game is not without its faults. I can't believe the bloody developers still haven't fixed the audio-stops-working problem that happens to me all the time with the pulse (and a few other) rifles. And the campaign is indeed extremely linear and repetitive. But the AI and overall feel of the game is almost entirely different on "Intense" compared to standard. I can't help but think this is the difficulty the developers expected us to play. I can say this much: the aliens are no longer pushovers, that's for sure!

In short, if you're a fan of the franchise and have a couple friends to play with, then I think the game is well worth the asking price. You just have to understand going in that it's not going to open up and show you everything right at the outset. But there's a lot more there than meets the eye as you progress.

This is a tricky title to review, for me at least. On the one hand, I love the visuals, the sound track, and the general experience of driving around a cyber-punk city in the clouds. The developer(s) did a great job of marrying bits of Blade Runner with a high-granularity Minecraft/LEGO aesthetic and wonderfully evocative music.

And as hard as it is for me to believe, I actually like how the game doesn't put me in stressful situations. It's one of those rare titles that I enjoyed simply sitting and driving around without worrying about dying in combat or something. It did ask me to make the occasional, intriguing moral tough choice, but it's left me curious to what extent those choices matter at all. So far, I haven't seen any sign in game that they do, though I've only spent about eight hours with it thus far. Perhaps those choices come back to you later.

But here's the thing: that's where my appreciation for the game ends. The mechanics are extremely repetitive: get way point, drive around, hop out and do something, get another way point, drive around some more, finish the "mission", then get another way point. Along the way you meet some engaging characters--as a fan of classic old noir films I particularly liked Huxley--and there are some enjoyable dialog bits between the protagonist, Rania, and her AI "dog", Camus. You can also pick up some things lying around here and there, getting to which can be a bit of a mini-game at times. But it honestly starts to feel more like work than play after a while.

And Rania becomes increasingly, preachy-irritating over time. She ignorantly dismisses all the world's religions as no different than cults, makes not-subtle comments about gender, etc. as the story progresses. She ends up coming across as a virtue-signalling woke harridan who is increasingly difficult to tolerate. The worst part is that much of her most annoying dialogue is unskippable, and you can't talk to anyone else while she's preaching at you.

In summary, I love the game's aesthetics. The driving around in a cyber-punk city in the clouds is lovely. The soundtrack is wonderful. And given that I paid about $12 for it, I easily got my money's worth. But I don't think it's a game I'm going to complete simply because it's grown boring and off-putting in its preachy protagonist. Given its obvious politics, I'm surprised it isn't explicitly screaming "FEMALE PROTAGONIST" in its tags. For casual play by those who identify (see what I did there?!) as part of the woke crowd, I expect you'll love it. For everyone else, as with driving a HOVA, I expect your mileage will vary.

This game has a lot of negative comments and reviews because (1) the developers abandoned it, and (2) arguably left it in a worse state than it was in previously to hear some tell the story. I have roughly six hours of time with it, largely binge-gaming for a day-plus as I rarely do, and I've easily got my money's worth. I thought I'd offer a perspective from someone who just bought the game on sale and has been having fun with it.

First, I should probably note my bias: I went into this looking for an interesting survival title set in a high-tech future. I've played a number of the X-environment-survival games where X is an island, a forest, a frozen tundra, a fantasy hellscape, etc., but the one thing I hadn't tried was something more in line with my science-fiction leanings. I'm not saying those are bad options, mind you, I just wanted something different. Memories of Mars (henceforth MoM) delivered that.

It also wasn't immediately irritating with its mechanics. I hate survival games that have ridiculously fast cycles: full to starving in minutes, hydrated to parched in minutes, day/night flying by in minutes, etc. I dearly love Hardspace: Shipbreaker, for example, but find it utterly ridiculous that I run out of air in just a few minutes. That's plain stupid. I understand that developers want the systems to matter, but there's a difference between mattering and being so irritating that I just don't want the hassle. I think MoM strikes a pretty good balance here too: you can't ignore your oxygen or nutrition levels, but you don't have to futz around with them all that often either. They remind you that your job is to survive, but they don't nag you constantly.

The crafting, skills, and building mechanics are also pretty cool. I genuinely enjoyed learning how much of them work. I had a little trouble getting started, but then the next major problem I had was finding magnesium (I think) to progress in the tech tree. Once I realized that different areas of the map have different minerals lying around, I was back on track. I'm not exactly new to these games, but I'm not an expert either, and I found that I could correct my stupid mistakes with my home base easily enough. I was glad to learn that.

My main gripes with the game are (1) the wildly repetitive soundtrack, and (2) the lack of more interesting enemies. I'm not that far into the game, so maybe some big bunch of enemies opens up soon, but so far I've been running around fighting the same three or four different types of spider bots for my entire game. And I've been listening to the same music loop, which seems about four minutes long at most, the whole time. I could do with some variety in both.

So here's the thing. If your biased toward sci-fi like I am, don't require a killer story (this has a story, but I can't seem to care much), and don't mind repetitive music and few enemies, then the game will absolutely be worth it for you on sale. I paid all of $4.99 for it and have been having a good time. Cheers!