Recent reviews by ThaiSan

"Hey, wanne play a quick round or two of Mechabellum?"
"Yeah sure"
... *5 hours later*
"F#ck"

It's something I've been waiting for for a long time: Tarkov without PvP but with cool setting. The aktive warzone is a rat's wet dream and I love it.
Sure it's a bit janky at times. Enemy AI is a bit of a mess and some animations and sounds need polish. But all the flaws that I found are easily fixed by time and work.
The only big flaw it has right now (aside from bugs and so on) is a severe lack of content. Too little missions and the loot is mostly just for selling. I hope they will implement better uses for my piles of garbage. Then I can be a happy rat

Damn! That’s a good game right here!

Art and Music are peak, combat is meaty and you can go FAST!
The maze-like levels (while confusing at times) are really well laid out, give a nice sense of flow and are packed with secrets to discover. That feeling when they loop around on themselves and bring you back to a closed door that you saw 20 minutes ago? Nice.
The artstyle is consistent with a colour palette consisting of metal, rust, dirt and blood. But even with those limited colours the levels are distinct, leading you from apartments, through factories, down into old eldritch tombs.
When I discovered the sprint button it felt like I just unlocked the full version of the game. Gravity is none of your concern! But that last part can be a mixed bag: While the short float you get after a double jump gives you good air for horizontal movement, it takes away all vertical velocity of the character, which is most notable after using jump pads. Feels like you just hit an invisible ceiling.

All in all this goes right up into my list of favourite old school shooters alongside Dusk and Prodeus. Can’t wait for the next episode!

Just beat the first boss so this is a very early impression review:

The atmosphere is great. Giant concrete buildings with rusty beams holding staircases into nothingness, flickering neon lights singing their last song in dirty hallways and an ominous soundtrack to match.
The graphics are pretty rough at times, but the design lets you overlook it.

The gameplay itself is not as soulsy as I imagined. It feels more floating and is not as direct as you are used to from fromsoft games, but Once you get past the initial clunkiness it has a nice flow to it.

It’s not a full polished AAA game, but I knew it wouldn’t be going into it.
Can’t wait to see what awaits me further down the line!

Edit: Still love the game. The devs ironed out most of the bugs and just keep improving the game from update to update. Better graphics, more enemies, weapons, areas. It just keeps getting better!

This game is certainly an awesome trip. The environment is amazing and outworldly. I could hardly stop myself from taking screenshots every couple of steps. The atmosphere is so thick, that even a surgical knife couldn’t cut it.

The combat would be the only thing I see as a negative in this game. Your ammunition is very limited and I found myself always going back to the “melee” weapon, which has two shots, but regenerates over time. BUT the most common enemy takes 5 shots. So you hit it two times, run to cover, wait for recharge, hit it two times, run to cover, wait for recharge, hit it one time. More tedious than tense or fun.

Many people also see the price and length as a negative point of the game. With a price of 36€ it took me a little over 5 hours to beat. I personally think that’s a good amount of time for this kind of game. It took its time, but never overstayed its welcome. The old “Every Euro should give me x hours of gameplay” is just a stupid take for an experience like this(or in general tbh). For the amount of care, passion and eye for detail the devs presented to us 36€ is fair. And like I said before: 5 hours is a good time for an in depth experience such as this one.

As someone who likes to think about the media they consume and uses impressions for inspiration in art and illustration: This experience will feed me for years to come, even if I never touch the game again.

So you could say 36€ for infinite hours of entertainment.

I just finished it and... I tried, I really tried liking this game.

I followed the development progress and was really interested in the project. But the final product has so many little things that ruin the experience for me.

The general concept of the game is really good. Fast gameplay, organs instead of equipment. A semi open world with a few quests in it. Retro graphics.

But every positive point I just mentioned also brought something negative.

At some points the game was too fast. Like the second boss, that I only managed to beat because I cheesed the mechanic. Or the final boss, that I couldn't even see because of the bullet hell of their weapon. I literally threw myself against it and hoped I'd land enough hits before I died. There were attempts where my playtime between loading saves was around 3-5 seconds. Hearts were used up in the blink of an eye after I implemented them and switching to better durability intestines dropped my health, so I had to eat another body, which cost durability of my intestines. The open world was a bumpy surface with a couple of hot spots sprinkled in, which also ruins the feel of the world.

And that's just the game design. I bought the game on release and dropped it until today because it crashed every couple of minutes. Now, after the patch it's better, but not totally fixed. The autosave feature is completely broken, since your organs keep the durability loss from your death. So better make a manual save before you switch areas. Combat music keeps playing after you die, until you trigger a music change by entering a village for example. Also, every enemy respawns when you load a save. And since most of the savepoints are guarded by enemies, you are getting attacked immediately after loading.

I didn't hate my 3,5 hour completely, but this game is not worth 17€. It feels like a free proof of concept demo, for a game that's releasing in a while. But not like a finished product.

Just finised the mainstory and all sidequests.

I had so much fun. The gameplay is great and you can just go for hours without getting bored.
Some of the sidequests are more on the bad side, like the delivery missions for the casino, but all in all a great experience.

The world is just great. I have never seen such a well made, detailed, beauteful and gritty cyberpunk world in a game before. The soundtrack drives that point home even more.

It has some issues with the performance and some not that well tought out design choices here and there, but nothing that would lessen the quality of the experience.

Everyone who liked Alien Swarm or would like a diablo with guns or is just a fan of the cyberpunk genre in general should buy this game now!

@Devs: Please make DLCs. I want to give you more money!

Yeah, Doom Eternal is nice and all... but have you played Prodeus?!

If not, you should!
The weapons feel great.
The movement is fast and responsive.
The level design has a great flow.
Music and sound is just awesome and fits perfectly.
And truckloads of blood.

Haven't had a game in quiet a while that puts me in the zone as much as Prodeus.

Currently the campaign is a little short, but it's fun to play them several times to find all secrets, get better, and maybe even get a good score for the leaderboard.

Also there is a Mapeditor. Haven't looked into it for too long at the moment. But from a first glance it seems to be a way better version of the doom 2016 snap map editor. Played a hand full of player created maps already and they are great.

The only, let's call it downside for the sake of the argument, is that there is no story at all. The campaign maps have a short description to give them at least a little bit of context, but that seems to be it.
That's not bad in any way, since I'd rather start the game and jump into the action in literally a couple of seconds (the load times are godlike), than sitting through cutscenes and standing next to talking npcs... but I don't know... a little more context to the general lore of Prodeus would be a nice bonus. Maybe at a later stage of development, but if there will never be any more story I wouldn't shed a single tear.

I see myself playing this game for a long time. There is currently no better old school shooter out there.

Good work devs!

Can't wait for the full game.

The demo is really short but gives you a feel for what's coming.

Hands down, one of the best... if not THE best horror game I've ever played.

Team Silent would be proud.