Ulasan terkini oleh Commissar

Lasombra deserve all the moody magister attention we can get. A bit pricy for what it asks for - but the flavor of your clan, sire, and the additional auction house mission (which I genuinely LOVED) are very much a "your mileage may vary" affair.

Overall it adds one moderately sized mission (about the same length as other deliveries) and tons of flavor sprinkled about in small amounts. The new powers feel fully realized and really lets you customize your playthrough, but I am biased - Oblivion is probably my favorite school.

A no-brainer if you're a Lasombra (or one of the 4 other turbogoth clans) junkie, but for those who aren't I'd maybe get it on sale instead.

I'll start this off by saying I don't "get" cars. They're murderboxes that Americans fellate deeper and more vigorously than any ♥♥♥♥ star ever could so the sheer amount of super cool vroom vroom mobiles falls upon me as a simple collection of statistics - I'm here to be a moody goth ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, not drive cars.

That being said, this is a pretty amazing offer from CoG. Really gets into the mood of Vampire: The Masquerade effortlessly and allows you to be an idealistic or nihilistic kindred with ease. I especially found the auction house enjoyable, and the Lasombra DLC lets me actually play a Lasombra with enough tailor-made content for each clan that it feels like you really are sitting inside of a proper VtM tabletop game.

The endings seem different enough, as well, and I was satisfied with the options I was given. The concept of a hub world between missions in a Choice of Games title isn't new but this is done so well that once again I cannot stress that this feels like a proper VtM Storyteller-Player experience.

I highly recommend this to any Vampire: The Masquerade fans or those who like interactive fiction.

The beautifully stylized, rain-drenched neon of a cyberpunk futurescape take up the majority of your time in Cloudpunk. The music - while a little too 80's for my liking - is pretty decent and largely compliments mucking about on foot or in your flying car. If you like wandering around in a place that feels real, then this is a solid buy.

The story is pretty straight forward but enjoyable and many of the characters are stand-out, including Rania, Camus, and Control. While a lot of the voice acting can be a bit dodgy, the writing more than makes up for it especially when dealing with issues such as debate bros, bigotry, and capitalism.

Best arcade flight sim on the market with a fun story, amazing music and top tier Project Aces development quality.

The framework for Sandstorm is here and back in 2014 this game was awesome. These days, you're better off getting Sandstorm but for what it is, it's still competent and entertaining.

I haven't used social media beyond my little corner of Tumblr for almost a year at this point. Facenook's real-world analogue hasn't been touched since maybe 2012 or so, so it looked like an old relic I hadn't seen in a long time, like World of Warcraft or a Call of Duty game. I was surprised at how much it drew me in, how much of a time capsule this game is. The visual design is only part of it - the playlists curated by the characters are another. And some of those songs can really bring you back.

What you get is a somewhat linear, but ultimately impactful story about relationships and social dynamics in high school. Picking the right parties, saying the right things, and following your heart in the forgotten year of 2008. As someone who had a non-traditional High School experience, I often felt like I was reliving a fantasy. The quintessential American experience I was denied. Unlikely to be intentional, but it never catapults into the uncanny Riverdale-style TV High School, but a believable group of friends in the late 2000's in a Massachusetts secondary school.

If you like to break games, if you like to buck narrative and are angered when you don't have full control of a narrative or are presented with a game where losing is a reality regardless, I'd recommend skipping. This game is more about the experience, not being a game to "beat." Spoilers ahead from this point on.

One thing I have to comment about is that whoever you pick first you're doomed to "fail" with. You take a break, break up, or worse. I truly began to hate Evelyn's creeper - Steve - as much as a real person. And in the end you end up with a heartbreaking level of ennui that really resonated with me as someone who saw everyone in high school go their separate ways. Was I supposed to resent Evelyn for falling in with that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Steve? Was I supposed to resent her? Was the listlessness and bittersweet taste as LCD Soundsystem supposed to hit me as hard as it did on a sweltering summer morning at 6AM?

I can't say, but it did. I'm a sucker for narratives that are laid down. I don't look to break things, I follow context clues and try to walk in-line with the narrative presented to me. If you play games like that, then the Emily Is Away series will be a fun, cheap distraction from the day. You just might appreciate the days gone by a little bit more, too, and it might leave you with a little bit of a a bittersweet taste whether its on your first play-through or your second.

Kyle Seeley, thanks for the time capsule. And the tunes. Deuces.

Aside from the "side story" episodes, Revelations 2 builds upon what made Revelations such a breath of fresh air. On the harder difficulties in particular it is a game that takes the DNA of Resident Evil 4 and injects a little more necessary tension in by having a pair of characters that operate on a level where one can use a gun and one cannot.

Generally, I am not a replay junky nor am I a fan of scoring systems so I did not pursue the extra features here. There is also a "Raid" mode I didn't play.

I am solely here to blast zombies, get a little scared, and watch cute girls do things. Revelations 2 lets this happen in abundance as the unintentional ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and romantic tension between Claire and Moira was top notch and really elevated things. Barry and Natalia act as a parent and child should, if the parent were letting a child run around during a parasite-virus-apocalypse. The story is a remarkably predictable but if you choose the good ending it ties itself up nicely with a hint at what Outrage is going to be about.

Revelations 2 is just as much of a treat as Revelations 1 is if the RE2 or RE3 remake combat formula is your bag

Sometimes Always Monsters (SAM) is an interesting game and one I would recommend to anyone who has played Always Sometimes Monsters (ASM). It is simultaneously a reflection of ASM and a counter to it in everything except basic premise: they are both journeys across a country. Long story short: S'a good little game. I liked it!

Spoilers will be flowing freely from this point forward.

The good in SAM is easy. The art style is charming and the new sprite work is honestly gorgeous and I wish more games would go into an aesthetic like this. The sprite animations are top-notch when they show up. The character writing is phenomenal - they all feel like different people. Some of them I hate, some of them I love. The story writing is largely at a young adult level with a focus on tongue-in-cheek parody and an airy, fun sense of humor. In one of my favorite encounters, you can also tell a blonde conservative lady (who looks like Sarah Pallin) in a library to go f*ck herself and say 'do svidaniya' to her holding back the revolution of non-hetero love novels and also weird guys in Seqouia who want to supplant the firearms industry by making their own ammo. Godspeed, brothers.

The ending alone was worth the price of admission. Seeing Sam again and seeing how your choices in ASM pushed them into a total mental breakdown in SAM was a phenomenal final act to a game largely devoid of tension and riding on routines and comfort. If ASM was "cause," then SAM is "effect" and in that silly little printer room with that typewriter and gun it felt somehow remarkably a lot like ASM in every positive way. The feelings of panic and dread I had before that point while refusing to read Sam's (I see what you did there, VD! SAM? Sam? Clever!) teleprompter and book were top notch as well. You spend so much of the game in relative comfort that it comes out of nowhere - even if you play stupidly like me and get stabbed and mauled by a werewolf in the same playthrough.

The "bad" in SAM is... difficult to place. This game is constantly improving as they pepper things in but as of this review I do feel that the protagonist "speaking" less was detrimental to the game at large. It felt like they had less personality despite a few moments where I had an experimental feature on where it had some more of those internal thought processes. They stood out like a sore thumb simply because they were great and I wished for more of them. Similarly, the Spouse often felt somewhat stiff and as a happy little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lady I wanted to talk to my wife all the time, which often led to repetitive text as most of the conversation was contextual. One of my favorite moments - in Gator Bay - was another post-launch addition and it was one of my favorite parts of the game. You got a better image of your Spouse and what they wanted as opposed to an almost antagonistic role that they seemed to take by being a little prickly as an individual.

I also feel like the "good" ending where you end up with your Spouse in the post-credits back in domestic bliss could have used an achievement or prompt to help indicate that this was an endless scenario, as I simply felt lost. While I could put this up to "working as intended" given the clear and present impression from the narrative that "yes, the adventure is over. Boring stuff has resumed" as a game it felt a little sudden and jarring when I had just stared down the barrel of a gun.

I'm not much of a replay junky myself (it took me roughly the entire development cycle of SAM to play ASM for a second time) so some of the cities felt a little less filled with life as those you pick in the book tour dictate your "random" activity load for those cities. As I almost exclusively frontloaded mine, the last town in particular felt like I had nothing to do - but I am hesitant to call this a negative as this game is built and designed to be replayed. Another point for some may be that you "need" far less things and it clearly seeks to somewhat emulate a comfortable routine despite primarily taking place in a tour bus with a bunch of strangers. It's nice, although it may be too Sims-like for anyone who has an irrational fear of games needing features.

While I may never relate to the life of my ASM/SAM protagonist as I left her in financial comfort and prize-winning novels being cranked out like candy corn I did very much enjoy the journey. In an altogether different way SAM affirms the message of ASM: love is worth it. Love is work, love can have a cost, but if it's truly reciprocated then you'll figure it out.

In my ending, Sam lived (as a fugitive, obviously) but so did everyone else. Death was harder to come by in SAM and I think that was intentional. Personal experience colored the game in an interesting way as my character sat in her cute house with her cute wife and her 10 chickadees scattered around the living room floor and I realized that with allowing me to type what Sam did at the end, the game also let me decide what it was about. Revenge? Love? Going bonobo-bonkers at your ex and your ex-bff?

For me the answer was as simple as a single word: reset. Truth be told, that may be why I never replay the game. Forgiveness seems like a great note to end on. And I'm sure my story is nowhere near identical to anyone else's. So that's exactly why I recommend this game.

I'm not sure what more I could say about ASM that hasn't been said by others. You're thrust into the shoes of someone struggling; a creative with the tightening collar of financial pressures, dissatisfaction at one's personal choices and a yearning for the good times which are most certainly gone. The story that then unfolds is the one as old as time itself: going on a cross-country adventure to reclaim lost love.

The choices present make it so that's all you get. You can become wealthy by stealing, sacrificing any values you personally hold, working legitimate jobs (for much more meager wages) or you can engage in the infamous boxing minigame or gamble. Even then, you can play your character as bitter, resentful, depressed, hopeful, completely in denial of their own faults or owning up to every perceived wrong by others. And it just works out. The flowcharts here must be a magnificent sight.

The writing is hardly top-tier when it comes to how it's laid out and taken (think young adult novel level) but it's got passion within it despite some juvenile writing and some really uncomfortably out-of-touch concepts such as a union and anarchists going head-to-head despite the obvious reasons why anarchists would never WANT a union to get out of power because of the exploitative power plays that corporations could take. Still, the game was made with love and adoration and it feels that way.

ASM is the King of RPG Maker games and will likely never be dethroned because of all these reasons and more. Going into this, know it will show it's age clearly. If I had a structural complaint? The transgender conversation prompt was way too hidden and personally it's one of the best representations of that issue in video games and it is woefully hidden in a three-part encounter in the second city (arguably the one that feels the most rushed to get out of.)

At the end of the day, playing this almost a decade after its release made me feel the same things I felt when I first played it in 2014. Life is a struggle. Everything has a cost and a benefit. But love? Love is worth it all, and it's worth taking risks and worth doing stupid ♥♥♥♥ and hoping for the best without a plan more than five seconds ahead if you know that love is real.

Pretty fun Left 4 Dead style co-op gameplay. Cool aesthetic and the actual mining and spelunking are really cute and fun. It can get tense when you're not prepared for it and turn a milk run into a panicked egress.

No playable women, though so it's ultimately a no from me. I'm just not that into playing sweaty bearded guys.