Recent reviews by Neo da BIG

Aliens: Dark Descent is a tactical RTS game with the focus on stealth from the people who made BFG: Armada 1-2

Pros:

- Great atmosphere, faithful to the movie.
- Addictive gameplay, with focus on stealth and abilities.
- Good/appropriate music.
- Unit upgrading and customization (XCOM style).
- Aliens are a real threat, fast and deadly.

Cons:

- Bugs. Some are even gamebreaking.
- Story/characters - a bit meh. Weyland-Yutani is bad as always, characters will do stupid stuff.
- A lot of frustration. Enemies love to spawn all the time right next to you. Very slow ability points regen.
- Random choice of skills to pick while leveling up, while some skills are pretty much essential.

I enjoyed my time with the game a lot, however, I must warn you, game is bugged as hell. Objectives that you can't finish, being unable to rest and save the game, stress level not going up, marines being in a combat state all the time and opening fire without order, marines being stuck in walk mode after using an ability - just to name a few.

But I will still recommend the game. When it works as it should, it is an amazing experience. Exploring a hive, 15 minutes from last save, checking every corner, hiding behind cover and praying that this thing will go away, while motion tracker beeps fater and faster - that's a real treat for any Aliens fan. So buy it, if you're into the franchise, or if real-time XCOM sound like a nice idea to you. Preferrably after a few more patches.

P.S. Great to see Tindalos learned how to do stealth in RTS, I still have PTSD after BFG: Armada 2 Chaos playthrough.

Despite all the problems with EGS exclusivity, confusing amount of editions in store, high pricing for basically a one third of a complete game, always online requirement, limited-time content and DLC of questionable worth, this is, without a doubt, an ultimate Hitman game. It still gets free updates and a new roguelite mode (which is hard, but extremely fun) is coming soon (again, for free). Recommended to get on sale.

Pros:

- Heavily stylized look, that gives off an omnious, unclean and lovecraftian vibe.
- Disturbing and sometimes unnerving atmosphere (straight up horror moments).
- Huge, fun to explore levels.
- Fast-paсed and also somewhat tactical combat.
- Chonky, brutal kill animations and sounds (headshots feel especially good).
- Lots of great upgradable weapons, with almost no outsiders even in late game.
- Tons of secrets in style of Build engine Holy Trinity of games.
- Price. It's even way too cheap for what it is.

Cons:

- (Personal nitpick!) Synth soundtrack, which is not bad, but somewhat unfitting 70% of the time.
- Rather short, 3-5 hours depending on how much you explore (only one chapter is available rn).
- Bosses are a bit annoying. Tons of extra enemies in both boss rooms and no saving available.
- Some minor balance nitpicks (Very Hard isn't really hard, ammo quantity balance, dynamite toss charge is too fast, etc.).

This game is a Blood sequel I always wanted and even more. This single developer managed to create one of the most fun and enjoyable boomer shooters I've played so far (good on the level of DUSK and HROT), and selling it for 10 bucks (even lower in some regions). And there's more content in development. Please, buy this. If you love Blood and/or play FPS in general - this is a must.

Phantom Rose is a rogue-lite deck building game with great artstyle and a troubled history. This is an updated review, written after finishing max difficulty level adventure.

Pros:

- Absolutely breathtaking anime-like dark artstyle.
- Great (sadly short) piano soundtrack, that compliments the atmosphere very well.
- Good selection of different cards and combinations.
- Requires some thinking and strategy without being tiresome.
- Easy to start, easy to put away (i.e. play a bit to kill time then come back later easily).
- Lots of unlockables (cards, skins, upgrades).
- Several game modes with steadily increasing difficulty.
- Old version of the game is also included, if you wanna try it out.

Cons:

- Balance is a bit all over the place. Very easy until Diamond 8, D8 and D9 can be ultra unfair.
- RNG. A bit too much of it, especially with high-difficulty debuffs (i.e. losing two cards that were in the core of your strategy after boss fight).
- Some grind and repetition. You have to play a lot of extra runs if you want most of the upgrades and especially for some of the cosmetics.
- Lore and endings. Easy to miss (for me personally) bits of lore, max difficulty run didn't have any extra ending.

I bought the game around the time if first released and it had a somewhat bad reception. Top negative reviews (actual for older version of the game) mostly pointed out that one-use cards in a deck building game is a poor decision (it's another layer of random in a rogue-lite game, which can be very frustrating). The art of the game was usually praised though. Personally, I thought that it was a bit too hard/stressful as a result of one-use mechanic, and didn't play a lot.

The recent "Scarlet" update offers an new version with cards going on cooldown instead. Did it improve the game? Yes. Cards going on cooldown is way better for planning your strategy and building the proper deck. Art direction was already stellar and stuff like timing minigame didn't bother me. Game does give a feeling like it's something from mobile, with its shop thing and different currencies. Well, that's because it is, you can download it for free in playstore for example. But fear not, steam version doesn't have any purchasable stuff and you earn everything in the game.

Is it perfect though? No. As mentioned before, there are a few issues.

Balance is a bit strange. How difficulty works: game buffs enemies and debuffs you (hp-damage) while also adding some especially evil debuffs (like losing 2 cards after boss, not being able to see enemy cards in the 1st phase, losing max hp if you take more than 4 turns). I played arcade mode (somewhat of a boss rush) two times, normal and risky mode (you lose hp when attack) on silver and gold difficluties, and diamond normal mode from 1 to 8 without failing a single time. It was very close sometimes on D7-D8, but items carried me through. And then I was able to finish D9 on 4th attempt while having 1hp left after some battles and using the resurrection once. It was absolutely crushing and sometimes felt very unfair.

And what was the result of suffering? Another banner (shield that appears on the screen during combat) and some diamonds, which weren't that useful by the end of the game. Silver and Gold had one different ending each (both are bad ends) , so I was expecting to see something new. Pretty disappointing. I cannot guarantee there's no third ending, but the only thing I didn't unlock were the small lore bits, which randomly appear after the battle sometimes. They are extremely easy to miss, because my attention is glued to the map after combat and I'm busy thinking how bad things are. So sadly, I can't be bothered spending hours just to collect them and check if it adds anything.

Overall, I still recommend this game. I'm not really a fan of card-based games and most rogue-likes, but I like this one a lot for the atmosphere it creates with it's beautiful art and music. Gameplay has some flaws, but it's still fun to play. Price is pretty low (imo and in my region) and you can always try the free version on your phone, if you aren't sure.

The Henry Stickmin Collection is a game about making choices and looking at the hilarious ways MC fails. Most people, including me, remember playing those games back in the flash games era. And now they come in a complete package with an extra one, which is huge and has many, many ways the story progresses based on endings of previous game. Wanna have few hours of good laughter? Then this collection is a great deal. Heavily recommended.

Pros:
- Decent melee combat.
- Supply raids: grabbing all you can with limited time and tons of zombies around can be thrilling.
- Lots of upgradable weapons.

Cons:
- Boring and short story (7 chapters of walking around as Daryl with some zombie killing).
- Tons of reused assets (supply runs use same levels over and over again, only loot changes).
- Outdated VR shooter design (weapon is glued to your dominant hand, changing them with radial menu, etc).
- Invisible walls (especially the moving one during supply raids).
- Almost zero interactivity (you only interact with zombies and doors/switches).
- Awful guns (revolver, crossbow and assault rifle are somewhat fine but still useless) - up to 3 headshots to kill a walker.
- Unpolished and glitchy (walkers sometimes fly away to the moon from a single arrow or glitch around violently).
- Graphics - not bad, but 2d sprites of walkers in supply runs and 2d fire in Alexandria...
- Physics - weapons are basically weightless, light poke with fireaxe will decapitate a zombie. Objects on levels don't have physics at all.
- Random lags and stutters on walker kills or just turning around.
- No turning speed adjustment.
- Very easy, walkers are harmless even on max difficulty.

I don't know what happened during the development of the game, so my best guesses would be zero budget, zero effort or a mountain of compromises. Remember all those awful licensed games that were released at the same time the big movies hit the theaters? Onslaught feels just like any of them, just in VR. Game is basically just smashing zombies with a hammer while playing as one of TWD characters. Everything else was just thrown in to make it longer or look like a more complete game.

So much weapons - only fireaxe is really good, broken even. Machete is decent, revolver, assault rifle and crossbow are usable.
Weapons are upgradable - they just suck a little bit less with them. And fireaxe becomes even more broken.
So much resources to scavenge - literal waste of time, since upgrading Alexandria is useless (weapons mostly too).

Maybe the core is so good all of this is not important? Sadly, no. While fun, melee combat is barebones as well. You can smash or stab through heads, cut off limbs and hit zombies with offhand or grab them by the neck (grabbing is off when you hold ranged weapon). Aside from slow-mo/berserk modes with some weapons, that's it. Cut off a leg - walker will die instantly, cause you need effort to make a crawling animation. Slice a body with katana - nothing will be cut off. As a result, after couple of hours combat becomes boring.

Thanks to regional pricing, game cost me about as much as couple of meals, and it's probably worth even less. 30$ for this would be an unfunny joke. If you really want to check it out - wait for a 80% plus sale. Hoping for fixes is usless IMO, technical issues can be fixed, but it'll remain a super-turbo-zombie puncher-2000 with some walking anyway. And the existence of Saints and Sinners makes this game a complete embarrassment.

Into the Radius is the immersive survival (horror?) shooter game made for VR devices.
This is my second review, written after beating 2.0 version story. Previously, I reviewed 1.0 version (completed soon after the game released from EA), giving it thumbs down because of how buggy and overall incomplete the game was. I still really liked a lot of things about it, so I was really hoping there will be a chance to play an improved version sometime later. So, does 2.0 live up to that?

Pros and cons, with some 1.0/2.0 comparisons.

Pros:

- Amazing atmosphere of a late soviet village gone wrong, greatly inspired by Roadside Picnic.
- Unforgiving environment, you need to learn by mistakes to survive.
- Lots of well-modeled real-life weapons (even more added since 1.0)
- Weapon handling (reloading bullets in magazines one by one, placing attachments, etc).
- Dangerous but rewarding scavenging (gathering artifacts and equipment).
- Free item placement in your backpack and at the safehouse.
- Lots of features for more VR immersion (gas masks/smoking/eating with knife/weapon maintenance)
- Not annoying survival mechanics (sleep and hunger).
- Good sound design (all enemies have distinct sounds, ambient sounds and music are creepy as hell).
- Pretty good visuals.
- New story missions and locations (basically a whole new world to visit after playing 1.0).
- Saving system (biggest problem in 1.0 for me) is way better now (loads are quick).
- Game still gets updated a lot (seriously, commitment of the devs is worth praising).

Cons:

- Story isn't anything special (basically listening to some audio logs and making a decision for ending).
- Security level system - locking you out of buying better stuff unless you finish a story mission.
- Weapon degradation. Improved since 1.0, but random can still kill you.
- Exploration is cool, but gets repetitive after a while (tide system isn't perfect).
- Controller tracking and body placement - improved since 1.0, but it's nearly impossible to grab what you need from your body blindly.
- Some good levels/ideas removed in 2.0
- No more open world.
- Generally a lot of aspects of a game are still unpolished (bugs, balance, performance, exploits).

Basically, this is one of the most immersive and addicting VR games I've played (true for both versions of the game), mainly because exploring and looting in a creepy, otherworldly soviet-ish environment is totally my jam. It's up there with Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. But I couldn't recommend 1.0 because of how broken it was. The biggest problem was the combination of unpolished late game levels with over 1 minute long loading times. Example from my 1.0 expereince:

"During the story mission on the railroad station, the amount of frustration reached barely tolerable levels, because you're required to get a certain object, which is located high up in the air and surrounded by pulse anomalies, that send waves, which kill you if they touch you. In a game, that's supposed to be played with one life and with dropping all your stuff on death. Uh-huh. So, you just load a save and try again - but you die a lot, because it's not obvious at all where you start a climb (area is lit, so it's noticable, but next grab point is not easy to guess, especially since there's a lot of useless climbing constructions around) and every save load takes MORE THAN A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MINUTE. It was the first time I had to use an exploit, jumping down from the pretty high platform and opening menu while falling to negate falling damage, just because dying and loading was already unbearable."

2.0 adressed stuff like this by remaking a lot of aspects of the game and adding some new stuff. Those changes are:

1) Open world is no more. Supposedly it helped optimizing the loading times, and some shortcuts to the base help save time. However, the feeling of being on a journey is lost.

2) Weapon maintenance. Impressively looking, using rods, brushes and oil to clean guns is a new experience for sure. But (it seems) jamming occurs even with 1% wear, so it can randomly screw you.

3) New enemy types and balance tweaks.
- New types of mimics, BTR and 1 new melee enemy
- Sliders are nerfed and not that scary and dangerous anymore (more fair though).
- Addition of armored enemy variants – not a fan, more bullet sponge.
- Security level system – locks you out of better weapons until you finish corresponding story mission. Not good.
- You get much more money now (maintenance fee was removed, ammo and repair doesn’t consume most of your budget, healing items are very affordable).
- Loot is better (tide refreshes and randomizes placement of it).
- Sleep and hunger even easier to manage (smoking is overpowered af).

4) The Tide. Resetting the world every few days, respawning enemies and loot. More good, than bad. Shakes things up, but makes you play on a schedule.

5) Bug-fixing and other technical improvements. Loading times are fast now. Bugs – for every two fixed, one new added. Lag, stutter, crashes. Not a perfect DLSS implementation. Still, doesn’t look like an unfinished game (unlike 1.0).

Overall, I’d say 2.0 is a better game than 1.0. I dislike some of the changes, but they didn’t make the core gameplay worse.

I can finally recommend this game, with some “buts”, of course. First time players – if you enjoy atmospheric games with lots of looting and inventory management (Bethesda games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) – this one should be engaging for you. If you’re returning player – there’s a reason to play through it again, because of all the changes made (and 1.0 is still there, if you don’t like 2.0). Be prepared for a lot of technical difficulties though. But if you can overcome a pretty harsh learning period and close your eyes on some bugs, you’re in for a wonderful experience, rivaled only by a chosen few other VR games.

The Citadel is a very poorly optimized shooter, heavily reminiscent of doom mods like brutal doom and project brutality.

Good:
- Setting - religious anime cyber apocalypse
- Weapons are heavily impactful, upgradable, and just fun to use (mostly)
- No ammo/item limits
- No hitscan
- Great sprite artwork - lots of detailed gibs
- Combat in general, especially with a battle mech
- Unusual health and food system

Bad:
- Awful fps drops even on powerful pc
- Crashes (had at least 4 crashes on one certain level)
- Lives/no saves system combined with platfoming
- Enemies always facing you (no sprites for moving in other directions)
- Music isn't that great/appropriate most of the time
- Almost no game options (no v-sync for example)

For me this game was a short (around 3 hours) but enjoyable experience, since I'm a fan of old shooters (as well as mods like Project Brutality) and into anime violence and gore. If that doesn't scare you away and you can tolerate the awful framerate - give this one a try. Especially if you like aforementioned doom mods or played games like Project Warlock.

Full release? Give me a break.

Yes, first couple of chapters were pretty impressive for an early access game, and some issues were expected. But since it's a full release now, I won't close my eyes on those things:

- Enemies popping up from air and having an ability to teleport into you
- Enemies with guns sprinting into invisible walls and shooting you with perfect accuracy from great distances
- Items falling through the floor
- Visual glitches
- Physical glitches, especially with bodies
- Dark (scoped) rifle drops fps to single digits when you take it in your hand (issues with a scope, I guess)
- Overall unpolished and poorly made late game levels

I decided that I've had enough of this on the level, where you need to go through a series of portals to reach your goal, but there are always more than one portal on your way, and if you choose the wrong one you're sent back to the beginning and every single enemy will respawn. Earlier on the same level there was a door that played Willheim scream when you approach it. Every. Single. Time. And giant boulders which instakilled you if you're not psychic and can predict them appearing behind you.

Even if all the issues were fixed (and I really doubt they will be), it would still be a pretty average game with cringy dialogues, uninteresting story and very questionable game design. Take note that developers now work on another VR shooter Zero Caliber, which is also in early access and pretty fun, but unpolished, especially in terms of physical glitches and AI. I wanna be optimistic, but A-Tech Cybernetic is a great example of early access game that wasn't actually finished, and it's hard for me to trust XREAL Games now.

Azur Lane Crosswave is a third person action game based on a pretty good moblie game. And sadly it is way inferior, compared to the original.

Good:
- Voice acting.
- Story mode has some enjoyable moments (as well as extra episodes). No bs like PTSD Enterprise in anime.
- Gameplay can be fun for a while (trying out different ship types and setups).
- Some challenge from high level missions (dashing and carefulness are necessary).
- Squad building (ships with something in common get extra bonuses).
- Marriage system and secretary interaction (becomes a bad thing later).
- Music is alright (Siren theme is nice).

Bad:
- Non-existent level design (just a square with water. Also some land far away, which you can't reach anyway).
- Levels have clear border you can't cross.
- 95% of mission objectives are sink those couple of ships, only other is to survive for 2 minutes.
- Graphics look pretty bad. Water looks strange and ships don't move with waves. Models are fine.
- Awful difficulty spikes. Not skill-related, simply requires leveling to pass dps-check.
- GRIND. First for levels and equipment upgrades, then for marriage, over 30 hours to get all achievments.

As a AL player, I somewhat had fun with the game, especially during first few hours. Seeing ships you're so familiar with in action is great, listening to fully voiced dialogues is also awesome. But gameplay loop slowly degrades to the point where you just repeat one mission over and over again to get what you need. This could be so much more, but in reality it's just a low-effort/budget game, which is sold for 50 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bucks, ffs. Only way I could recommend Crosswave is if it was on 80% sale and you're a fan of the original game. Otherwise - stay away.