Recent reviews by TheProfessorCloud

Somehow, I completely missed the entire Silent Hill series during my love of the survival horror genre. So when Silent Hill 2 Remake was announced, I became very excited for making this game my first entry in the series.

After spending around 20 hours in the game, there is definitely a lot of very positive things that I found about this game in comparison to the games that I have in my Top 5 survival horror games. Unfortunately, the story was not one of them.

Let me start by focusing on the positive aspects of the game.

1. Graphics - Much like Alan Wake 2, this game is gorgeous, especially when you are outside running around and can see more than 5 feet in front of you. (There is a lot of fog in the game) When there isn't any fog, this definitely made me feel like I was in the Pacific Northwest just like Alan Wake 2 did, but it does require a pretty heafty GPU. I was running on a 4080 and never saw more than 120 FPS.

2. Puzzles - The puzzles in this game for the most part were incredible. I would even go so far as to say that they have been my favorite within the survival horror genre. They are certainly better than the standard color or shape based key puzzles that you find in most games. Each one of them was very different from the previous one and some of them required a lot of exploration before you could solve them. Thankfully, the game allows for different difficulties for both the puzzles and combat if puzzles are not your thing.

3. Combat - Although the combat is not my normal cup of tea in that it is primarily melee to start and even when you are using guns, it feels slow. That being said, it made for a different learning experience for me in comparison to the Resident Evil, Alan Wake or Dead Space way of killing monsters. Although I did get frustrated from time to time, it was always because of my ineptitude and not because of the game. The combat feels very weighty and intentional and exactly what you need to kill these weird ass monsters.

Let me wrap this up with my thoughts on the story. As a new person to this series, I didn't really know what to expect. Due to the fact that the game is definitely longer than your normal Resident Evil or Dead Space, that definitely says that there should be a lot of good interconnected story. Unfortunately, this game's story is way too disjointed and takes too long to even tell its true story.

Many of the characters that you meet have absolutely nothing to do with the main story and are just used as connection points to the place in the world that you are. By the time you do get to the end of the story and realize what is happening, you really start asking questions that the game cannot answer.

Overall, the story does feel dated, but if you take into account when it was originally written, then it can make sense. At the end of the day, I felt that it was too long and certain sections felt like fluff, but the end game conclusion was good. Most especially the final boss fight, because of all the dialogue that was delivered during that fight. This was a very good entry for me in the Survival Horror genre, but does not fit into my Top 5. RATING 8/10

I was really looking forward to this game as a competitor to Diablo IV, especially when it comes to Hardcore runs. I was not disappointed, but there are definitely some small little things that shows that this was the first game from the devs.

The combat felt really good, but what really stood out was the skill system. It definitely has more depth and therefore many more reliable options than you would see in Diablo, but not to the overwhelming depth of a PoE.

The worlds are very well designed, but there is no large open world like in Diablo and personally I don't think that there is anything wrong with that.

The story is just meh and for me personally not my cup of tea. I have never been a fan of time travel in any story, but it does at least provide for some nice connections throughout the game.

The endgame was not introduced well in the game, matter of fact, after the final story boss, you just end up in the end game without any credits or explanation and that was very frustrating. I don't particularly like the layout of the endgame, but I suppose that it is ok. It will definitely provide for more variety than what I have seen in Diablo IV.

Overall, this is a great competitor to Diablo IV and a great first game for the Devs, they should be very proud. I will be trying my first hardcore run soon and looking forward to more. RATING: 8/10

OK, so with the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds, I thought that it was finally time to play through and try out Monster Hunter World in a serious way.

As a Souls/Souls-Like fan and challenge runner, my expectations were pretty high with respect to combat which I have always been told is the highlight of the series because of the monsters themselves. Unfortunately, the combat is not nearly as tight as any FromSoft game and nothing even close to a Nioh or Lies of P.

Because of this, it took me few streams before I found a weapon that I felt comfortable moving forward with. I ended up choosing the Great Sword because it limited the number of attacks were required and therefore reduced my experience of the extremely loose and slow combat that is the Monster Hunter series.

I completed the main story and killed all but one of the available monsters. The story is just plain cheesy, but the locations, the monsters and all the different hunting, crafting, exploration mechanics were really good. The music is phenomenal and it is definitely a game worth playing, but it does not hold a candle to a Dark Souls 2 or Nioh when it comes to combat or story.

I am currently playing Rise and liking it much better than World which definitely gives me hope that I will enjoy Wilds as well. RATING: 7/10

I seriously doubt that I have anything new to say about this phenomenal experience, that other reviewers have not said. In fact, I cannot even talk about all three acts of the game, because the ending that I got was in Act 2. I will call it the Gale Ending and for those that have played the game, you should recognize what I am referring to.

In my first play-through I chose a Drow Monk as my custom character and I did really enjoy the character and race combination. However, I was not happy ultimately with my subclass choice of "The Way of the Four Elements", which I dubbed the Elementalist. The reason that I didn't like it is because it just didn't seem as valuable in latter parts of the game as I was hoping. So many enemies came in with so many different resistances and immunities, that the elements had very little extra effect.

That being said, I did enjoy the Drow race additions to the dialogue and the backstory being that the Duergar were a big part of the enemy pool in Act I.

From a party perspective, I primarily focused on Astarion, Wyl and Karlach, but I did make sure to have Shadowheart in the party when working through the Nightsong questline. I just didn't find her all that valuable in battle based on my play style. At the end of the day, Astarion was my favorite party character when in combat. I just wish that I had not respec'd him with a ranger multi-class. I should have stuck with pure Rogue, because only having one action and one bonus action, just was not enough.

I do want to call out all of the great visuals, dialogue and phenomenal voice acting. I think that everyone agrees, it was incredible, but I will say that J.K. Simmons as Kethric Thorm was my favorite performance.

I do also want to call out the musical score. I bought the soundtrack and have been playing it in the car ever since. It is hands down one of my favorite video game soundtracks.

I do have two complaints. The camera causes all kinds of problems in areas with multiple levels of elevation. It got stuck on me in multiple scenarios and caused all kinds of problems. The same can be said for the Party AI. Certain party members would get stuck and not follow me because they couldn't climb a thing or jump a gap, but when I went back and controlled them manually, I had no problem. In some instances they would follow, but go a completely different route and take damage for no particular reason. It almost looked like the AI was only trained to take the shortest route, rather than either following the leader or taking the ideal route.

Overall, this game is incredible and is certainly the best CRPG that I have ever played. It is not perfect, but it is damn close. Because of my choices in my first play-through, I did not see Act 3 and apparently many side quests, so I am definitely looking forward to future play-throughs. RATING 9.5/10

This game was a definite struggle for me. I love both the Western and Horror genres and them combined in video game form is right up my alley. I have played a ton of 3rd person shooter style games, so I was really looking forward to this.

Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. I loved the setting, the characters, and the monster designs. However, the implementation in game form did not come out all that well. The AI behind the enemies really didn't know how to handle themselves when there were too many versions of the same monster on the screen. There were also a crap-ton of collisions on the screen. I got stuck on what looked like a blade of grass multiple times and it took 3-5 rolls and getting hit multiple times before the game would let me out.

As for the combat, again the designs of the different combat mechanics were really interesting with a focus on melee punch combat and numerous different weapons which could all be upgraded and changed over time. However, making that all work on keyboard and mouse was not good at all. There was one mechanic that I could not get to function consistently at all, so I ended up not using it and it was one of the first ones in the game. In addition, as the game progresses, the developers decided that more and more arena fights with more and more enemies on the field was the way to go. So melee combat no longer works because for every hit you dole out, you receive 3-5 in return. So using all of your ranged weapons is the only way to survive in the latter third of the game.

I did experience a number of bugs, enemies getting stuck, bullets not coming out of the gun, but all other animations working, floating projectiles, etc. Most of them were late in the game when the arena fights were getting overwhelmed with enemies. BTW, how does a Gatling gun aim 90 degrees straight down?

At the end of the day, I did enjoy myself, but because of all the problems that I mentioned above, I did just reduce the difficulty down to story mode so that I could enjoy the game and not get frustrated by the problems. Unfortunately, this is a game that I enjoyed, but will never play again. I do think that it is worth playing because of the western/horror themes, just do not play it on higher difficulties for your first play-through. RATING: 6/10

Remnant From the Ashes is a Third-Person Shooter based Action RPG set in a dystopian universe that does include Earth. In this universe, an entity/infection called the The Root has taken over multiple worlds and it is our job to try and rid the world of the Root by killing the World Guardians.

Although From the Ashes is the first game in the series that was released by Gunfire Games, it is actually the second game from a timeline perspective:

- Chronos: Before the Ashes
- Remnant: From the Ashes
- Remnant II

All of the games in the series tell how the Root was brought to Earth and then how you go about clearing it away. They are also all Souls-Like Action RPGs where there is a level of difficulty that should be expected, there are "bonfires" throughout each world and the majority of the lore is told through found items and not through actual storytelling.

This game was the first Third-Person shooter based Souls-Like that I had ever experienced and I definitely enjoyed it a great deal. The only real negatives that I have to say about the game were around the world design and the lack of character build options. All of the worlds, with the exception of one, were very muted and felt like they were the worst version of themselves. You understand why because of the story, but it just meant that there was not a lot of variety in world design in my opinion.

The are only three classes to start with and then the only weapons and armor that are available after that first selection are either through a limited set from a vendor or come from creating them after killing a boss. I played as a Hunter and stuck with long-range whenever possible and never regretted my decision.

All weapons and armor can of course be upgraded throughout the game, just like any good souls-like, however, this only means that you are upgrading the damage. No other stats within the guns are upgraded, which gets very frustrating from an ammo perspective.

When it comes to positives, there are a number that I do want to call out:

- The combat mechanics felt excellent. I played on mouse/keyboard and the responsiveness was incredible
- The addition of mods for each weapons was really nice and then quick slots for consumables was a nice twist on the consumable piece of these guns
- The armor actually has an effect on gameplay and you do need to upgrade it. You will not be doing an SL1 run of this game.
- The boss designs, especially in the latter half really made you think. They were more like puzzles to solve. Rather than only needing to figure out roll timings and attack patterns, you also needed to figure out when you could do damage or where best to deliver damage and learning weak points were very key.

I really enjoyed this game a great deal and am looking forward to doing some Hardcore challenge runs of specific worlds as well as the Subject 2939 DLC. In addition, Remnant II has released and once a couple of the DLCs, I will definitely do a "Professor Plays" for that game as well. RATING: 7.5/10

My entire playthrough, can be found here: {LINK REMOVED}http://bit.ly/ProfRemnant

My entire play-through of the game can be found here: {LINK REMOVED}Professor Plays Ghostwire Tokyo

Ghostwire Tokyo was not as well received by fans of Tango Gameworks as the Evil Within series and in truth it is a very different style of game. It is not a true out and out survival horror game, but it does have some very spiritual horror moments and the enemies you fight, called visitors, are frightening to look at.

However, if you look at Ghostwire Tokyo as a whole, it absolutely stands up to the Evil Within series in almost every way and in some ways surpasses them.

1.) Environment: The environment of Tokyo is beautiful and extremely well designed & delivered. The addition of empty clothes in certain places to represent the bodies that were lost, combined with corruption in different places and then the addition of the enemies protecting the souls of those people that have been caught in this story is very earie.

2.) Characters: The growth of Sebastian Castellanos was incredible throughout the Evil Within series. However, you can say the same thing with respect to Akito, KK, and Rinko and even the big bad of Hannya. All of their stories were very well flushed out by the end and you really felt connected to all of them.

Let's not forget about their voice actors, all extremely top notch. I really enjoyed hearing the voice of Ishikawa from Ghost in the Shell as Hannya.

3.) Story: Let's be serious. Horror games are not always the best of story tellers. Not all Horror can be Alien or Resident Evil. However, the story in Ghostwire Tokyo is very well done and as someone that has visited Tokyo and studied some of its history, I felt very connected to the story and was engaged in it the whole time.

4.) Combat: This is very much an action horror game all done through first-person which I very much enjoyed and I think that it fit the game very well. When the game first came out, there was a big complaint about a lack of variety in the combat, enemies or in the skill progression system. An update came out a year later with a large number of improvements and additions. After said update, I never once felt that there was any lack of variety unless you played on lower difficulties.

The game gave you three different element types to start with: wind, water, and fire. It then introduced archery and then lastly introduced five different talismans that could provide support abilities in battle. You also had both ranged and melee combat as well as dodge and shield abilities.

With the update mentioned above, the number of enemy types doubled or tripled and some of them are just a big pain in the butt and pray that you only have to deal with them one on one and not as part of a mob. There was always plenty to do, plenty of visitors to destroy, spirits to rescue and artifacts to find.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time in the game, enjoyed the story, the characters, and the setting. I did try the addition of the Rogue Lite mode, but did not find that as engaging as the main game. RATING: 8.5/10

This was definitely not my first play-through of this game, but it was my first on the PC. Thankfully, I waited until after 8 or 10 performance fixes were made by the developers. The game ran very smooth and looked beautiful. There was still a little bit of the jank when trying to do some stealth based maneuvers, but otherwise everything felt really good and I loved playing with mouse & keyboard.

At the end of the day, this is still Last of Us and the story continues to be the best part of the game and it is still fantastic 10 years later.

All that being said, I did have four crashes during my play-through and the loading of shaders was just painful. I did also see a few lagging moments, especially in the later parts of the game. Otherwise, this was great. RATING 8.5/10

I have just finished my first play-through of Jedi Survivor on Jedi Master difficulty and as a Star Wars geek, I loved it ... most of the time.

The story is incredible and hooks into much of the new content that is being released in the Star Wars universe via Graphic Novels and mainstream novels around the High Republic. It of course also connects back to the first game, Fallen Order. Please keep in mind that the story is much longer than in the first game. Each main story quest will take upwards of 2-2.5 hours each and there are 10 main story quests. This is assuming of course that you are not trying to either mainline or speed run through the game.

The character development and growth in this game was tremendously better and larger than in the first game. The first game focused on three main characters and only only one antagonist. This time around, you get five main characters, 10+ side characters and more than one antagonist. The character development for all of them are top notch as is the voice acting. Some of the side characters in particular just really added so much to the game each time that you came back to the hub of Pyloon's Saloon.

Speaking of the hub, this was one of the biggest additions to this game over the first. The first game's hub was the Mantis which was very static except for the cosmetics of course. This time around, you get a whole planet and town to not only visit each time you come back, but you also get to recruit side characters, build a garden and add different vendors. All of this completely adds to the enjoyment of coming back to the settlement.

The main hub planet of Koboh is huge and allows for a lot of exploration and searching for all of the collectibles that are available. I would have to say that Koboh is as big or larger than all of the planets in the first game combined. However, this is not always a great thing.

I talked about the collectibles. Because this game is so much larger, Respawn had to add more collectibles and these tend to fall into three categories.

- Currency for the Vendors
- Priorite Shards
- Jedha Scrolls
- Datadisks
- Chests with Cosmetics
- Upgrade Items

The first two categories make up the majority of what you are going to find when you do your exploring, where as the upgrade items will almost always require some kind of fight to get access to. I would say that the ratio is about 75% vs 25% which can lead to long periods of time where you will not feel like you have accomplished much and that definitely did happen to me because I really don't care much about the cosmetics.

The last thing for me to talk is where I lost a lot of confidence in the game was in the combat, its AI and its mechanics. I loved the combat in Fallen Order, but you could definitely feel that it was a first attempt and was somewhat simplistic with respect to its souls-like nature. I am a huge fan of souls/souls-like games and was really looking forward to a new updated entry of that in the Star Wars universe. However, I actually feel that in implementing these new mechanics, they actually took a step backward and introduced a lot of bad design decisions and bugs, especially in the later boss fights and areas.

1.) The AI for multiple enemies were almost always linked which meant that you could easily parry/block the first attack, but could never prevent the second or third or fourth, etc because they were always a split second off of each other and they were performing the exact same attacks. It was way too easy to get stun-locked
2.) Some of the mechanics and how they worked just did not make sense, like the block meter. It was clearly segmented for your character there by only allow a certain number of blocks/hits before you would get stunned. Those same rules did not apply to enemies and boss fights were the worst. The number of times where the enemy had a sliver of block meter left and my next attack did not stun them was ridiculous. The one that frustrated me the most though was an enemies block meter going from half to full in an instant without any indication of why.
3.) The most frustrating item though was the jedi design decisions. You are given all these powers and abilities, but you can't use them all the time or to very little affect. Somehow, your abilities have little to no affect on a raider enemy, even though they are human and have no force sensitivity. This becomes even worse when you are fighting droids or force sensitive bosses. Somehow, they can throw you around the room at will, but you can't take more than 10% off their block meter. There is just always some kind of reduction on Cal's side and increase on the bosses side to provide the difficulty that you chose.

When you combine all three of the items above together, it is very clear that Respawn in creating a great Star Wars game, clearly missed the mark when it came to creating a Souls-Like game. It is still a lot of fun though to deflect laser bolts back at storm troopers or throw them off the edge of a cliff. You lose that later in the game.

Overall, I loved this game as a story-driven action RPG in the Star Wars universe, but as a Souls-like game in a Star Wars universe, I walked away just OK with the game frustrated at times.

One thing that I did not talk about much in this review is the performance problems that most of us had on PC. I did have a lot of crashing until I turn off Ray Tracing, but afterward, I never saw a crash again. The only issues that never got resolved where the framerate drops that happened in certain areas and the screen tearing from certain character fights that were wearing capes. I actually died to a mini-boss twice because I couldn't see the boss thanks to his cape flying around all over the screen.

I do look forward to playing the game again, but on a lower difficulty RATING: 8.5/10

I just recently replayed this game as preparation for the release of Dead Island 2. The game was just as much fun as I remember. This is just a great tongue and cheek game where you get to chop up zombies. All the different weapons felt good and the combat for the most part was a lot of fun. A really good FPM First Person Melee combat game. I am looking forward to the sequel. RATING: 7/10