Recent reviews by SageOne

Borderlands 2 was wacky. This is just wack.

A power fantasy, a perfect conversion of 2D RoR into 3D and much more.

This is the first RE game for me and seriously, what a treat! The best remake of a classic game hands down.

Grapically the game is gorgeous. Somber tight corridors of the police department, night outside with a constant downpour of rain, grime and dirty sewers and the technological facilities of Umbrella: everything looks crisp and atmospheric. Sound adds to that atmosphere splendidly, if sometimes falling off a bit in the voice acting department.

But what keeps the player moving and pushing forward is the gameplay, which consists of action and puzzles complimenting each other in one of the best ways I've seen in gaming. The puzzles are quite simple, but they rely on exploration, so the exploration itself is a puzzle of a bigger scale. While going through the twists and turns of the Raccoon city police department you meet the scares of this game: zombies. The enemies are slow, but twitchy and so is your aim most of the time. And let me tell you, missing is not an option, as zombies can take a lot of lead before actually dying. The clunkiness and slow speed of the encounters make up for great tense moments and after the new enemy types are introduced, your playstyle has to adapt accordingly. The pace, at which new problems are tossed at you is almost perfect as well.

The story itself is pretty basic, but you don't need an intricate story to support such a solid game. Now when you finish one character, do yourself a favor and play the other one to really see, how much faster you flow through the levels. And if you're up for a challenge after that, complete the Hunk gameplay mode, where you have to escape the RPD as quickly as possible.

All in all there's quite a lot of content and some interesting characters to explore. If you can, I recommend playing on hardcore. The only issue I had with the game were the later bosses, which were quite hard to dodge and aim at, but in the end I managed and it felt great.

tl;dr: a love letter to the Resident Evil fans and newcomers alike, try it!

Far Cry 5 has been one of the biggest disappointments in gaming for me. And I haven't expected anything from it.

Let's start with the stuff, done right. I've enjoyed the fishing mini-game a lot. The graphics are gorgeous and I'm sorry for developers, who poured their heart and soul into the graphical aspect of the game only to be paired with sub-par storywriting and AI and environment coding.

And boy is the environment a clusterf**k of bugs: enemies going through walls, infinite enemy spawns, close to useless follower system, AI pathfinding issues that have been mitigated in 2011's Skyrim. By this year all these issues scream prototype (or alpha test, or early access), not a full game. The bugs are actually preventing me from playing the game the way it is meant to be.

The story is lacking severely, imo it is really generic. You could easily replace the religious cult with any antagonists and you wouldn't even have to rewrite their phrases for the most part.

There is not much to say beyond that. I have completed the first area (John Seed's story arc), enjoyed the start of the game and fishing minigame, the world looks incredible, but the bugs prevent you from enjoying exploration and the story doesn't motivate you to play the game. While pushing the graphics forward the devs have forgotten to keep the other parts of the game on par.

What would happen if Elon Musk went hollow?

Inspired by the concepts of the latest action RPG's, The Surge puts the genre in a futuristic setting with strong focus on close combat.
CREO - scientific giant of a corporation - tries to improve humankind in various ways: exosuits, bio-engineering, rockets, you name it! You enlist as one of the personnel, but during your exo-rig installation something goes wrong. When you come to your senses, the whole facility has gone crazy and you're trying to understand the situation.

As you embark on your story-driven adventure, you aren't given too many hints or directions, except for hidden audiologs and rare NPC's. The NPC storylines seem quite similar to the Souls series, as you follow the people through their perils into a finale, caused by your actions. Listen closely and listen well, because your next objective might be lost in one sentence of a dialogue.

Pressured with the feeling of being lost goes well with the exploration aspect of the game. Intricate routes through the giant facility lead you far away from your safe haven just intertwine and return you back. Coming back through a new path gives you this feeling of discovery and offers a moment of relief after you start losing hope. Stellar level building.

The setting overall seems to have a refreshing "functionality over good looks" aesthetic. Everything seems clean and colour-coded, but very grounded and believable compared to other sci-fi games out there. This comes at a price though: with such lack of landmarks you will often get lost in a maze of similar service tunnels, especially in the second half of the game. Don't get me wrong, these are some sexy service tunnels!

Another game element that you'll experience a lot is combat. Sometimes clunky with targeting controls, sometimes not the prettiest camera angles and quite a learning curve. Behind these small frustrations lies close combat with tactical dismembering, which brings more and more joy, the more upgraded your gear is. I personally went with a single-rigged PAX weapon for most of the game, but in the late-game switched to twin-rigged Firebug Throttle v2.0 and had a blast!
The bosses are cool and not too hard to beat for the most part, but the Cerberus guy seemed cheap and gimmicky. Look him up if you struggle in this fight.

The roleplaying part is where the game truly shines. With character building through implants, weapons and armour-sets, The Surge abandons starting classes entirely and lets you "respec" at any moment, changing the way you play. The idea is simple: you have core power limit and cannot equip anything past it; to raise core power and upgrade gear - go out and earn scrap. Building on this simple idea all the systems interact and come together beautifully, and THAT was a highlight for me.

Now let's see if the devs will expand upon the good features of the game in The Surge 2.

tl;dr: really good game, if you can look past rare clunky controls, try it!

Best Dark Souls 3 DLC.

In all seriousness Hollow Knight is a metroidvania with close combat and profound storytelling.
The game starts off as an intriguing adventure into the depths of the unknown city. Everything seems like a fairy-tale. However as you progress through the game, you uncover deeper, darker lore and various bizzare characters of Hallownest.

The narrative of this game strongly resembles that of Dark Souls 1 and 3 with the style of its dialogues; lore, implied through hints and items; and the overall grim "knights and mages" setup. The metroidvania part of the game bonds well with the storytelling as you will explore the world and become stronger.

Exploration is enjoyable for the most part, but occasionally platforming seems like harder levels of SuperMeatBoy and the difficulty may skyrocket from location to location.
The combat-mechanics are complex. 10-15 hours into the game you keep learning something new. There're also some peculiar details, like you can overequip your socket-items, but you will receive double damage.

The enemies deserve their own mention, as the bestiary is vast. Plus I was in for some surprises, when I noticed, that some enemies (usually - weapon wielders) can be parried, if timed correctly.
The artwork is clean and gorgeous. The levels look rich and have great variety. The sound design is simply amazing in all aspects.
And last but not least, the game has so much content, I can't see an end to it. 21 hours in seems like early mid-game.

Overall I am astonished with the scale of this project. Even though platforming is not my thing and it enrages me, the game keeps envoking positive emotions as well. In fact, Hollow Knight overachieved my expectaions, and I am looking forward to seeing more games from the awesome dev team!

tl;dr: game is great, try it!

Layers of fear is an exploration of a deteriorating mind of a once genius painter. He had (or maybe still has) a wife and a daughter, but his main focus is not the family, but his yet-to-be-completed best painting - his Magnum Opus. You delve deep into the everchanging coridors of an old mansion to finish the masterpiece and simultaneously uncover hints to the tragic story of this man's life.

The story itself is uncertain and open to speculation, since you never know the full picture, but the experience you get, while trying to salvage and put together the bits and pieces of whatever you're looking for, is truly a horror one. The studio uses a vast variety of methods to make you question every single item in each room, every single turn, door or window. The grotesque transformations deliver a unique (and overly original, compared to the other similar titles in the industry) feeling of dealing with the unknown.

I found the game frightening, disturbing, building tension and stress, with a fair dose of bizzare puzzles and a fistful of classic jumpscares in the sea of horror tropes. In my opinion this piece is an exquisite horror game and should be played by fans and newcomers of the genre alike, as it sets high standards for the titles to come. Plus it deserves a fancy-worded review, so here you go.

What is Risk of Rain in short: pixelated space, pain-inducing monsters, button-mashing combat, permadeath, ukuleles, lasers, rockets, tears, rage, huge bosses, a hint of salt and frustration, but a warm and fuzzy feeling once the game is complete.
In Risk of Rain your goal is to find a portal to the next level, this way clearing all levels of the game with a certain character (total of 10 guys). Still there's a little twist, to achieve your goal you'll need to obliterate every single living being on the level, without dropping your HP to 0. The combat will require quite a bit of skill, each character due to unique abilities has a unique playstyle, but to that skill-based battle every game an element of randomness is brought: the collectibles. A huge pull of items is generated randomly, similar to The Binding of Isaac, and will significantly affect your playthrough. One more thing, the longer you play, the more difficult the game will get, so good luck ;)

What Saint's Row The Third is? Just one of the most awesome open world games I've ever seen.
Just imagine jumping out of a jet without parachute and destroying zombies with a giant purple dildo. You can suit up for it too!

SS3 at first seemed like a completely different game, so I even dropped it at some point. However, playing it a little bit further, I understood, that (unlike SS2) the game returns to the traditions and setting first parts. Travelling through Egypt and Luxor, you're going to have as much fun, as you'd expect from a Serious Sam title. However, something appeared to be missing for me (probably the boss fights were not as good as in the first 2 games). While this game is still fun and good, for me The Second Encounter remains the pinnacle of the series.