Последние обзоры Lyshkami

Presentation: The UI is okay, it's a racing game, so what do you really expect. The UI elements are bigger than they really need to be, so the screen isn't exactly clean, and feels a little crowded, but this doesn't really impede gameplay. There is no real story to speak of; again, racing game. The menus feel a little weird, like it was designed for a console, not a mouse (though it works fine with a mouse).

The game-play is just bad. All the cars feel squirrelly and hard to control. Some objects in the game look like barriers to avoid, but are knocked away like they were made of styrofoam and will give you points for hitting them. Other, similar looking debris will stop your car dead on impact, and cause you to lose points for even slightly touching them. The physics are just weird, crashing into anything often causes your car to jerk violently to the side (not spinning, sliding laterally), and at no point will any of your tires leave the pavement, no matter how badly you crash. Different paint jobs for your car affect it's performance in the races.

The graphics look fine, but don't impress. Some of the scenery is relatively low-res, but you're not likely to be looking at it in a race. The atmospheric effects are just a variety of skyboxes; there's no weather at all.

The sounds are basically just a variety of revving engines and squealing tires. There is no announcer, or voice acting at all that I noticed.

Additionally, the multi-player is individually hosted. Hosting a server dropped my game to ~10 FPS on the menu screen (and no one joined). I did not see anyone else hosting servers.

In conclusion, playing this made me want to play TrackMania again. If you were thinking of buying a racing game, I'd recommend you pass on this and give TrackMania Nations Forever a look instead; It's free, so you can hardly go wrong there.

King's Bounty is the Heroes of Might and Magic I've always wanted to play, but never knew it. The key difference? King's Bounty is a single player game. The Map screen is not turn-based, but real time; You're not managing any army of heroes and castles, just the one hero. But in exchange you get richer character development, as well as stories and quests; More of an RPG experience.

Presentation; The Tutorial is adequate, and there's more story then you're probably expecting. The UI is not quite as good as I remember from HoMM games, but quite playable.

Gameplay; The Combat is basically the same as from HoMM; But the Map screen being simpler and less managerial means you can focus more on the combat. And if you find yourself in over your head, you can always fall back and rebuild your army, without it costing you turns that the enemy will grow in strength during.

Visuals; The graphics quality is more than adequate, and the aesthetic, while not quite as stylized as HoMM was, works fine. My only complaint would be that some of the combat animations are a bit slow, and unskippable.

Sounds; The sounds are average. Little voice acting, which may disappoint some, for how much text there is in the story.

In conclusion; While lacking multiplayer, King's Bounty offers a more fun single player experience, in my opinion.

Nation Red is an 'arcadey' top-down zombie shooter.

Presentation; Story, well, there isn't any. Zombies are here, you shoot them. There are a handful of game modes, but they're all just small variations on shooting zombies. The UI is not great, but it doesn't get in the way too much, I do wish the camera control could be a bit smoother though.

Gameplay; The gameplay feels pretty good. Running around, dodging zombies, and shooting to clear a path in front of you. There is a learning curve in every single match as both the quantity and danger of the zombies increases over time. The game is replayable in the sense that you can try using different weapons and different perks, or a different strategy altogether; but you've pretty much seen all the game has to offer after only a few matches. I do wish the arenas were bigger and more interesting.

Visuals; The graphics are adequate, not great. You won't be looking too closely at the zombie textures while you're playing, but the special effects aren't particularly impressive either.

Sounds; The music and sound effects both feel repetitive; While the gameplay itself is repetitive, some variation in sound would have been nice. No voice acting.

In conclusion, not a bad game. I had fun playing it for a bit. After a few days I got tired of it, and I haven't been back since.

As someone who did not play any of the XCOM games in their childhood, only finding X-COM on Dosbox a few years ago after having heard stories about it, I feel that I am in a uniquely un-nostalgia-biased position to say that this new XCOM is awful.

Well, let me rephrase that; It is a decent, if unremarkable, Tactical-RPG that is in no way deserving of the X-COM name.

Enough of my personal disappointment, on to the review:

Presentation: The story, an aspect that the first X-COM was unashamedly lacking in, comes across as ham-fisted and forced in the form of unskippable voice-acted cutscenes that linearly direct you from objective to objective, always telling you exactly what you need to do next. I won't pretend that UI design hasn't advanced in the nearly two decades since the original X-COM; as would be expected of a modern game, it is considerably better in both usability and accessability. Unfortunately this is marred by a range of bugs, ranging from misunderstanding orders to the game hanging or crashing entirely.

Gameplay: The designers seem to have gone to great lengths to eliminate as many 'bad choices' from the game as possible. In the original X-COM, you might choose to send a soldier into battle with nothing but a rocket launcher and 5 rockets to fire; such a configuration could be very effective in certain situations, though it would be folly to equip all of your soldiers as such. In this new XCOM, there is no inventory system at all, so it's completely impossible to screw yourself over with poor outfitting choices. It's also impossible to shoot your own soldiers in battle; your bullets always all hit the target alien, or go flying off into space, even if there was someone else blocking the line of sight between you and your target. Action points had been dumbed-down to the point of all of your soldiers able to take two 'actions' per turn, regardless of what those actions are. Cover is generally more resilient as well; offering better protection for your soldiers. Though combined with the fact that you can't even manually target cover to open up lines of sight for your soldiers means the aliens will be better protected as well. Unlike in the original, where the aliens would often actively hunt you down, or at least shoot at you if they saw you, in this X-COM all the aliens obligingly wait for you to spot them before playing an unskippable 'surprise!' animation and taking a free move to run for cover. Whereas the original had randomly generated maps, this new XCOM has static maps that will quickly have you saying ‘Oh, here again’ even in your very first playthrough. I could go on and on but I'll wrap this section up; All of the many, many gameplay changes render this game all-but unrecognizable compared to the original X-COM; and result in an experience that is bland and dumbed-down all around. A thin veneer of randomness to make the game feel 'difficult' while ultimately offering no challenge what-so-ever to the player.

Visuals: The graphics are good, if not exceptional. Generally the sort of thing I would expect from a modern X-COM game. There are numerous graphical glitches where the animation will not match the results the games decides: The bullets visually missing the target when the game rolls a hit, or a character pointing his gun in entirely the wrong direction when firing.

Sound: The audio is okay. I found the constant, repetitive voice-overs a bit grating, though some may like the guidance they offer. Some cutscenes don't obey the audio settings of the rest of the game, and will play at whatever volume they feel like, even if you've turned down the volume for the rest of the game. The music is much more forgettable that the original X-COM.

You may have noticed that many of the issues I presented as negatives in this review are the result of unfavorable comparisons to a games that came out nearly two decades ago. Let me just repeat this, for emphasis: Nearly two decades ago, the original X-COM simulated the flight trajectory of each bullet path in 3D to determine if it hit anything along the way, or shot through an open window without breaking any glass. Both things that a modern game bearing the same name nearly two decades later was apparently unable to replicate.

If this did not have the X-COM name, I would say it was a bog-standard average Tactical-RPG. As things are, I have to give it an F for effort and wasted potential.

That said though, I can't really in good faith recommend you go and play the original, it really is showing its age after all these years, so I'll leave you with this as a conclusion: If you really liked the original years ago, don't bother with this, you'll just be disappointed; enjoy the memories you have, or play X-COM again on dosbox. If you've never played X-COM before, you might enjoy it, but I can't really recommend it.

The gameplay of Diablo (2), the art asthetic of Starcraft (2) and the plot of Dead Space (1). You are a space hero, responding to a distress signal from a space mining ship because... well, it's not really explained, you just are. Anyway you find out in short order that some kind of space plague has turned everyone into space zombies and you pretty much have to kill them all.

This game is actually better looking that I expected, but unfortunately it falls flat in terms of gameplay, which is sadly rather bland. The level up and equipment systems are both very basic and uninteresting. Left-click is used for move, attack, interact, and pickup, which can be problematic if you mis-click, and some of the pickups, particularly ikarium, which serves as the 'gold' of this game, is actually quite tiny to click on.

Overall an average game. Could be good for a few hours of fun on a train for instance. But if you're looking for a good ARPG and have an internet connection I would recommend Path of Exile instead, which is pretty much better all-around.

Ten years ago, I got invited to the Path of Exile closed beta. And despite not playing much of the ARPG genre before, I enjoyed it.

Eight years ago, Path of Exile was added to Steam, and I left it a glowing review, calling it the best of the ARPG genre.

Since then it's been mostly positive. There are been good leagues and bad leagues. I can't say I agree with every change they've made, but at the very least it was 'two steps forward and one step back'.

Up until now. This was the first patch in a long time where I didn't feel like there was any reason to play. And unfortunately, with player numbers that are 40-50% below previous leagues, it seems I'm not alone.

I say 'unfortunately' because I don't want to see the game die. I'm not angry at the game, I'm angry at the boneheaded decisions that are killing it.

So for that reason, I can no longer recommend it. I can only hope that my voice, in some small way, helps the game become better in the future.