Recent reviews by Steve Bollocks

As the original Kickstarter backer who finally got the boxed version of the game after how many years of waiting, it's lame to see that soundtrack is only available in digital and in mp3 format.

I have never experienced a game like Pathologic 2. It's harsh, unforgiving and you constantly need to manage your limited resources. Confusing too because you're not spoon fed with information and dialogue/quests you go through just spins "the truth" even further.

It's a game where time isn't on your side. You have twelve days to find a cure against a plague in your hometown, solve a murder of your father and among other things. So much to do and you need to think carefully which quests you want to tackle first because you can't do them all. And most important of them all, you can't save everybody. And the slav jank gives the extra oomph and charm. For most part.

Before I started playing, I knew the game's reputation for being hard. The first four days were brutal for me. Just pure survival because you need to keep searching for resources so you can buy/trade food etc. I even had to go back to the older save file because I made one grave mistake which set me on a path of nothing but dying. Yeah, it was one of those two hours worth of play time down to the drain kind of mistake which was a whole day in game time. Lovely.

I kept playing. I understood pretty early that maybe everything what was happening in the game wasn't real and I was in a theatrical play. A meta play. The director said it to me blatantly during one of our conversations in the theater and I even met my successor at one point. Now that was a mindf*ckery at the best.

On day nine, I noticed a feeling I experienced with the game for the first time. I started to enjoy it. I later discovered the cure and in the middle of this... madness or mayhem, I used all the learned skills of barter and scavenge to my advance and the plot started somewhat of what sense to me. One point I even thought that I found a way to escape the town with a train but no, something bad happens and the game tells you to go back to town to finish your journey. By foot. Soothing ethereal music starts playing and I ponder my choices and what awaits for me in the town. Just inhale and exhale. Just couple more days of survival.

Recommendation? Sure. If you call yourself a gamer and all you do is play Call Of Duty etc, this game isn't probably for you. If you like to dip your toes to the grinding experimentation where you suffer at first because you take your time to learn the mechanics of the game but it's never-ending chase because the game itself constantly changes the rules but you learn to enjoy it slowly. Somehow. The first playthrough will be one of a kind experience which is roughly 25 hours and most likely will give you a strange fulfillment you won't get from anywhere else. For me it's also leaning towards The Witcher 3 type of territory where many days later after finishing the game, I think about all the choices I made and if I really made the right calls (in The Witcher 3 my first playthrough was with the bad ending). Yeah, it's one of those rare games where I am still processing what happened to my character/the game world and I need to compress it internally before I can restart a new game. And while doing so, I need to play something else. I'm not ready to return.

All in all, Pathologic 2 is full of jank, the ugly washed up textures, weird design choices (ie. have some spoken dialogue but it's 99% text) but with the abnormal writing style and continuous rule bending, it still manages to rise towards a 9/10 game. Not perfect in any means but very unique.

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey felt like i had a third job. It took me 140 hours to do 100% achievement run and previous game, Origins, took me to beat in 80 hours. When I started playing this and game introduced me to one of the side characters Markos, I had flashback to other game with bad facial animations. Initial thought was "oh boy, we are into rough ride or what?". First 20 hours felt like I played this game before and missions have no variation. Kill that. Fetch that. Boring. And top of it all, Odyssey literally is Assassin's Creed: Origins 1.5. Even one of the DLC deals with death and underworld just like previous game. Lacking ideas, Ubisoft? But after the first 20 hours, I started to enjoy the game a bit but more you play it, the fatigue starts seeping in and all you have is the will power that you want to end this game with 100% and then uninstall it and never play it again.

Would I recommend it? No. Main story is boring family stuff and the game recycles ideas and mechanics from better games and implement it poorly. And it's a Assassin's Creed game only by name. One DLC tries to make some connection to the lore but it felt like rushed job to fix it.

For the past week, I have been replaying Mass Effect: Andromeda on insanity difficult and so far it has been an absolute blast. There are small but gripping moments when the game shines and I see the vision what the developers were trying to achieve. One of those moments is when you're on mission in Asari Ark. You start to see the horror what happened inside the ship through many logs and the cold, vacuum atmosphere sinks in when you enter a room with a huge hole on the side of the spaceship and this makes the whole room sound muffled. During the fight, you start seeing parts of the office chair etc floating around and for a split second, you come back to your senses and remember that you need to shoot the bad guys.

What I am trying to ramble here, I would even go so far and honestly say that this game is easily my second favorite in the series. I know, crazy talk. Okay, Mass Effect 2 is still my favorite and is prime example on how the team building side missions are as important as the main story and first game could easily be my second favorite - just for the plot, the wonderful ambient score and I still remember the first time when the end credits started to roll and first notes of Faunts' "M4 Part II" hit in my headphones. This is pure gaming nostalgia for me. But when you start thinking about the combat, empty planets in side missions - the paint starts to peel off and the design on old game doesn't feel that hot anymore after fifteen years later. The third game? F*ck that game with a rusty spoon. The ending with multiple choices whack-a-mole and therefore discarding the player choices in the trilogy really left a bad taste in my mouth. Didn't deliver what was promised.

Is Mass Effect: Andromeda perfect? No. And it doesn't need to be. Bugs, wonky running animation that looks like it was made by developers doing their first ever third person game or horrendous facial animations where some human characters almost have bell's palsy but to me the graphics doesn't dictate if the game is good or bad. It's the feeling of the game that is more important to me. And yeah, the main character doesn't have the charisma of Shepard and looks like average joe/jane at the best but that is the appeal of it. You're sibling of the pathfinder and right at the start you have big boots to fill when simultaneously you're pulled into these new worlds and you try to understand the big picture. Despite the flaws it carries, it's one those games where developers took risks to freshen up the franchise and the gameplay of Andromeda rise above of the trilogy because of that. Meaning the shooting and combat is more tight with included rocket jumping and you have a lot more toys to choose your play style and you can really mix it up if you really want to.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is still a great f*cking game. Yeah. I will defend that statement to the grave.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is basically a walking simulator with thin puzzles and shallow combat system. So yeah, i didn't enjoy this game. Don't get me wrong. Audio, animations, graphics department is top notch and the message of mental health is always important (look at the world situation we are currently living) but when the game is just bare bones, the engine isn't enough to carry the weight of the whole game / the message. Especially the combat was so off-putting with locked camera angle and mainly because the enemies have only 2-3 different attack patterns and you have only two melee attacks plus dodge, roll, block and special ability to add more damage to those two melee attacks. And so, after fifth combat encounter, you'll start too see big cracks in the combat system and how the whole thing becomes tiresome chore. What i'm trying to say, this game isn't for anyone. Very positive reputation in store can sometimes a be bit misleading that you expect it to be a home run on every department but in this case, to me, this is a 6/10 game. Very Interesting concept but not enough meat on bones.

One of the most miserable gaming experiences i have ever go through and it only lasted almost four hours. First six chapters made the game crash every time it started to load the next one. On chapter 9 or 10 or whatever, i don't really care, the aiming system just told me to go f myself and made the aiming total nightmare. Meaning when ever i was behind cover and started to aim, Lynch decided to block the view totally. Luckily restart fixed that. And oh boy, the camera system. The camera angle tried to be some sort of abstract piece of art by mimicking handheld video-recorder and it made me nauseating, especially when it shaked like mofo. Only funny thing about the game was that the shotgun in this universe acted like no scope sniper rifle. All in all, avoid like the plague.

It took me about 45 hours to complete the main story campaign with Zane and two more hours to level myself to 50. So bang for the buck for this game is superb. Is it perfect? Hell no. Game still has bugs / missing major optimization after the early access period with Epic. Radeon control panel says that i'm getting average 88 fps but sometimes it dips to zero for a second. Usually when i'm starting the level but sometimes it also happens during the combat. One cutscene was horrible out of sync. End credit song was blasting more to the left channel than the right. I know, silly stuff to complain but it shows in what states the game is.

You either love or hate Borderlands. If you're a fan of the previous games, you have no problem hopping on and playing with this game. It's like riding a bicycle. Meaning the gameplay is tight as expected. Story was okay with reflecting nowadays streaming culture and cliche writing about family connection but it's still the same old hunt the vault stuff and if you're playing Borderlands for the story, well then you're in the wrong game my friend. It's not called looter-shooter for nothing and loots are really good this time. The first Borderlands had good balance which meant you could use the same gun for several levels. Second one had horrible balance. After two levels, the gun was useless and you needed to use golden keys way too often to get better gear. In this third installment, we are back with first game balance and loots are way better and more frequent than ever. I lost count after the 30-40 legendary guns i got from the first playthrough. So that's a thumbs up from my end.

My first playthrough of Metro Exodus was 25 hours and I went straight to the hardcore difficulty when I started the game. Which is unusual move in my over 30 years of gaming history because I pretty much always start with normal difficulty and later rank up the difficulty level when i replay the games. Then again, I have been huge fan of the previous two games and played both of those atleast 5 times. That is one of the reasons why I started straight away with hardcore mode because I knew what is the most intense and rewarding gameplay for me with Metro series.

So... How was the 25 hours of first playthrough? Awesome. Terrifying, And most of all, intense as f*ck. There were so many moments when i was calculating my bullets, desperately collecting stuff to make either more ammo for my guns or supplies to stay alive in this deadly environment and trying to kill the enemies with the little I had. Exploration of the grim open world maps were super fun and those open world maps really elevates the game on a whole new level because all I wanted to do between missions was to explore if I saw something interesting in the distance with my binoculars and learn the background story of the place. One of the reasons why this game is so much fun, is the the pacing which is top notch. First two levels in Moscow are familiar radioactive atmosphere from previous games, then it follows with open world map with lots of to see and explore, suddenly game falls back to claustrophobic/close quarters level design and once again hooks the player with bigger open world map and so forth. Which means the locations have tons of variety and it keeps the game fresh and the crafting system is welcome addition because now you can change your playstyle on the spot if you want to.

Is it perfect? Sadly no. One particular boss fight left a bad taste in my mouth because I didn't have enough ammo when I squared off with the beast for the second time and after several deaths and stupid mistakes, the brutal boss fight suddenly turned into a movie because I was standing in the correct place. Important lesson to the game designers, that's not how you design a boss fight. Anyway, timed exclusivity deal with Epic robbed me from last years game of the year but I'm not mad. I'm very glad that I finally had the option to play the game on store front of my choosing. Highly recommended for the previous Metro players and those who likes FPS games in general.

Cahf ah nafl mglw'nafh hh' ahor syha'h ah'legeth, ng llll or'azath syha'hnahh n'ghftephai n'gha ahornah ah'mglw'nafh. Mgehye'bthnk ephaizhro.

Sometimes good horror doesn't need jump scares to be scary. Like in this game, the feeling of uneasiness comes from the thought-provoking visuals with elements of psychological body horror, sci-fi nightmares and cyberpunk psychedelia that mixes together seamlessly and thus creates a truly memorably experience in horror. The storytelling pulls you in with such force that you want to see where your journey is heading with lots of twists and turns. And oh boy, it delivers in so many levels. In a single ghetto apartment building, you're investigating your missing son, gruesome murders, grey areas of human minds in medical science, interrogate all kind of wacky characters through the door eye camera and best of all, the world building shows homage to early 80's cinema and that era's projection of the future with low level computers and blinking neon lights.

Roger Ebert once said "Video games can never be art". What a rubbish statement. This game is a truly fantastic display of an art and I love every second of it.