Recent reviews by Drinjanin

The Bureau - Xcom Declassified is a third person, both Shooter and Strategy game, set in the retro-fictional universe invaded by the aliens, a setting similar to retro fashion of Fallout 3, Fallout - New Vegas and Fortified. The big difference is - those games are more fun than this one.

This is a boring and repetitive tactical Shooter, where players manage the main character who has AI companions, and the goal is to baby-sit them, while killing aliens and struggling to survive. The companion AI is so dumb, yet there is not much to do with them either, because companion controls are limited. There are only three options to be issued to your companions: 1.) get in cover 2.) move freely, 3.) shoot specific target and 4.) heal targeted companion. If the player doesn't issue the command for the companions to take cover amid fire, they will stay in the open, until you either order them to take the cover finally, or die while awaiting your orders. Dumb and loyal guys, what can I say.

The action is good and bad at the same time. While the action itself is interesting, and can be thrilling at times, the problem is repetition - you will always move through the tight corridors, be it the streets or building halls, and move between the obstacles, which can be used as the cover. In fact, taking cover is mandatory for every single enemy encounter. That is dumb. No matter the numbers, no matter their strength and tactics, every encounter with the enemies is always the same - take cover, or die quickly.

The weapon variety makes the game even more boring. There are limited types of weapons, with one weapon model per class. Even though they are historical weapons used by the USA during the 30's and 40's in real life, they could have played around the models by modifying them a bit. This universe is already alternative by every other criteria, for example, the main character has arm device similar to the one used in the Fallout universe. The game used to bug itself at one sequence, and it crashed whenever I reached that specific area. The problem was luckily solved with Steam's option to verify the game integrity.

I do not recommend this game at all. It is boring most of the time.

"Hello."

An ancient Adventure game, which aged terribly... which is understandable. What is not understandable is it doesn't have Steam overlay, which limits the access of Steam's social and browsing features, and disables taking screenshots. Not that there is anything good-looking to be captured, considering how bad this game looks, but despite its ancient graphics I have noticed how realistic the movement of the main character alien is. In the past developers didn't have 3D graphics, nor nearly as good program development tools and hardware as some developers have them nowadays, but they found ways to mimic realism by recording motion of the real actors. Unfortunately, not many do that nowadays, as most developers settle with making good-looking graphics, but that does not necessarily increase the immersion, if the physics are not mimicking reality.

Oddworld - Abe's Oddysee is dated, 2D Adventure game, with weird, outlandish art style, where the character moves in two directions, must jump over obstacles and traps, climb the obstacles, sneak, hide and avoid the detection of the enemies, while moving through the factory, which used to be the working place of the main character, before he found out what was going on with his management.

The game is too old for anyone to care, let alone to recommend it to someone, but people who played it back in the days know all they need to know about it, as they go on their nostalgia trip. Some things should stay in the past. It sends crash message every time I exit the game. Not recommended.

"Goodbye."

Amateurish, B-side, bland Action game, which reminds me of the Satellite Reign. Both games belong in the same genre, and both were released in 2015. Both of them given away for free via Humble Bundle. Both look as if were made on the same engine, by the same team of people which split up, because they had different creative vision. Of course, the latter coincidence didn't happen, as it would be too much of coincidences.

The game is generic top-down, third person, tactical Action game, which tasks you with leading a squad of space marines who are protecting their military base on Mars. The Red Solstice is the storm, which affected Mars, and those space marines were tasked with protecting the military base, which was attacked during the storm by martian monsters. As if the storm, which happens naturally, as explained by the game description, and martian attack are somehow relevant or related. Maybe they are, but I didn't complete the game. The story is not interesting, because the introduction video failed to start a convincing storytelling. The game is too boring and bland to get into it more than couple of hours, after which I finally decided to uninstall it.

It is enough to make a conclusion about the quality of this game just by taking a look at the cheaply done main menu interface. Main menu interface is so over the place, lazily designed and the graphics look cheap for a game that came out in 2015. The graphics of the main menu are faithfully representative of the in-game graphics. It could have been acceptable had this game been released in the late 2000's, or the very early 2010's. naturally, the graphics are not the most important thing in a video game, but this one has nothing to compensate with for its weak graphics. The introduction story is generic and cheezy, the setting is predictable and cliche, the gameplay is dull, simple and repetitive, the voice acting is fairly average, but not annoying, and the music is forgettable.

Overall, the mediocre top-down, squad team, tactical, real-time Action game where you command space marines to kill monsters, loot crates, hack the doors and repeat again. Boring. Not recommended.

An Adventure game about a liberal girl (dressed in shorts, long socks, combat boots, hoodie... and a backpack!) who is into witchy stuff. The cheezy image sequences which are the introduction cutscenes tell the story that she had a dream of an old chateau. And then she decided to magically go just like that into that old, dusty, creepy, abandoned chateau she dreamed about. And then the ghost magically appeared in front of her. The ghost was magically obsessed with her fancy amulet, which is passed from generations. And then she took the few steps back, because she was scared, and stumbled upon the root which was magically there. And then she got magically possessed by the mentioned magical ghost, and fell on the ground. And then, the ground magically cracked as she fell on her a$s. And then the ground magically opened up a magical hole as she was still sitting on her a$s wondering what happened to her. And the magical hole was magically perfectly symmetrical in parts all of its length during her fall at the bottom of it. And even though the girl was falling for a few seconds, which means the magical hole was magically very deep, she fell down below, and magically stood up, and she was magically unharmed. She stood up as if nothing had happened, she just brushed off the dust from the shoulder, and kept walking like a true edgy, feminist, teen queen.

The game was done in Unity, what the fuҫk can you expect from it. The 2D art, cartoonish world design, cartoonish colours, moving left and right down the tunnels and underground rooms, interacting with the locked doors, observing the items in the halls, all that cheezy, generic detective stuff. There is no minimap, at least not at the beginning of the adventure. What makes you think do I even know do you get a map or not, since I was barely able to focus on playing this for a couple of minutes. Oh, and you can switch to control the ghost which has possessed the main character, I almost forgot to mention such original and unique magical feature. Wow.

This game is a generic IT school project. It might be ok to some teenage girls, who might be into the old TV series Charmed, which was adored by pre-teenage / teenage girls when I was a pre-teenager / teenager myself. Nah, not even for the teenage girls. All in all, pass this one.

This game is for you if you happen to be a weeb, who is into the weird Japanese weeb ♥♥♥♥, like semi-human, semi-robot male characters with cold, expressless faces and deep baritone voices, and (most likely) underage girl characters dressed in miniskirts, with hairs tied up in pony tails or braids, with hypersexual, underage, high-pitched, overexcited, overreacting, moaning female voice acting. It is a weird Action game, where players assume the role of a Japanese guy, with robotic parts attached to his body, who hunts down and slays other freaks, similar in character and appearance, as well as some creepy, weird, eerie monsters, which are projection of the minds of people who are obsessed with weird Japanese dark fantasy.

The game runs in terrible 30 fps, which is by the way locked. If unlocked, it will mess up the game. The thing is, those 30 fps are not constant. Even those poor 30 fps tend to drop from sequence to sequence, because the game was made with the Unreal Engine, which is not optimized for the pc games. Add to that the fact that the game was originally made for consoles, later ported to the pc, and you might get the picture. The game doesn’t look good, to be honest. The art style is weird, just like the game itself. It has weeby 3D anime looks, with the strong emphasis on the eye-poking grey shades as an “artistic flavor”, in order to distinguish it from other weeb anime material.

The user interface is a mess as well. The main menu has to be navigated with the fixed control scheme: the arrow keys to choose up and down, left mouse click button to select the option, and space bar to return. That doesn’t sound bad, but when you find out that the only way to select level from the previous playthrough is possible only if you enter the “continue game” mode, then skip the cut-scenes, press the [Esc] button, and return to the safe house, so you can access the missions window. So much inconvenience.

The gameplay is just a left mouse button clickfest, not a mindless one, since there are combos which can be used to counter the enemy attacks. And then you proceed to spam some more left mouse clicks when the combo mode, demanding that you press the left mouse button so rapidly, I bet even Dota 2 and Counter Strike – Global Offensive players would feel tired while doing it.

I could only recommend this game to weebs and creeps who are into Japanese anime pedophilia, and to others who like it, but won’t admit it. I can not recommend this to sane individuals, because the game is generic, has weird graphics and user interface, and is overall a sick package of dark Japanese weeb fantasy.

Ooh, this one. I remember it had the advertising hype, and when it was released developers and publishers faced the commercial failure. Both of them are to blame for this - developers for making a generic First Person Shooter, publishers for hyping this ♥♥♥♥ up. I have played it before, beaten it to the end, I did it for the sake of completing it, not because I was enjoying it. Then, when I got it on Steam, I have decided to give it another try, just to see if I can find it more enjoyable than the last time, but no, this game is bad in many ways.

The game is set in the United States Of America, after they got invaded by North Korea. Yeah, get the taste of your own medicine, boo hoo. But seriously, 'Muricans should think about this scenario, you know, sometimes. Not always like every single day, but sometimes... Anyway, while the plot was a good idea, the game failed to deliver almost every single thing that makes an FPS game good. I will break it down to good and bad stuff about it.

The game has good variety of weapons, and you can tell that from the very start, when enemies drop their cool weaponry. Most remarkable being the assault rifles with different scopes and different firing modes, and all of them having different, unique design. Other types of weapons include pistols, shotguns, snipers, machine guns and anti-armour weapons, but they seem less impressive in design and variety. The shooting sounds sound convincing and appropriate, the recoil is not obstructive, voice acting is solid and the graphics look decent. That is it. That is all the good stuff Homefront has to offer. Now for the bad stuff.

Let us start with the movement. The game has linear level design, with buildings, walls and ruins creating natural obstacles, but on certain occasions players will stumble upon invisible walls. Imagine that, invisible walls in an already linear game design. Sometimes on the open surfaces, which are small areas in this game, if you decide to wander off a bit away from the NPCs, you will hit the invisible wall. That feels so pathetic, because it takes away the immersion. I have never played a First Person Shooter with the invisible walls on linearly designed maps, it is something that should not be in a game. I don’t know what is with the games which use Nvidia Physics in the development process. Some developers do it right, like 4A Games, with the Metro series, but others don’t. Most developers who use Nvidia Physics tend to make the games with invisible walls, clunky movement which can be caused by a slightest bump in the ground. That can be witnessed in Call Of Duty – World At War, when one walks over small stones and cans on the ground. Some other examples of games with clunky movement using Nvidia Physics include Darkest Of Days and The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing – Final Cut. Nvidia advertised its engine as a revolutionary thing, with all the crazy physics details in the presentation video. The question is do they deliver, or do developers fail to implement it properly. Who can tell. Back to Homefront now.

While assault rifles are great to shoot with, and are available in variety of models, other weapons are not so diverse in models. One of the funny things I have noticed is the Steam achievement for killing 25 enemies with a knife. The level design is so poorly done, it is hard to get close to the enemies, and kill them with a knife. Maybe it’s doable on the easiest difficulty, but on normal and higher, it is not. The enemies hit so hard with their bullets, it is hard to break through their suppressing fire, let alone to score some melee kills. Since I was disappointed with the single player campaign I have decided to try out the multiplayer instead. I was in for another surprise – the multiplayer servers are almost always empty. No wonder, since the game was a failure, as I mentioned earlier. The single player campaign is very short, less than 4 hours short, and while the setting is unique, the story is not so good.

Homefront fails on many fronts, so it is the best to wage war in other First Person Shooters. Not recommended.

Third person shooter where player tends to fight off the incoming zombie hordes for as long as he can. The game is very basic - move and reload with your keyboard, aim and shoot with your mouse. There are three game modes: defence mode, endless mode and deathmatch, with multiplayer mode for all three.

For every zombie killed in defence mode you get loot drops, like money, grenades, mines, perks and ammunition drops. Once the incoming wave has been cleared out, money can be spent on buying more weapons, ammunition, barricades and weapon turrets. The more waves you survive the faster and more durable the zombies become.

Endless mode does not have waves of zombies, they spawn constantly and infinitely. The goal is to stay alive the longer the better, while using the dropped loot from zombies killed.

Deathmatch is like endless mode, but it allows players to kill each other, as if having the infinite zombie hordes was not bad enough.

While the game is fun it gets repetitive fast, the movement is clunky, firing is not very responsive and zombie waves in endless mode tend to be overwhelmingly unbalanced. There is one dumb multiplayer feature: the host is the one who is in charge of everything. All players participate in making money by killing zombies, but only the host can buy barricades and design the defences, and he also is in charge of buying ammunition and weapons for the party members. If you happen to join someone who is cheap, or is not considerate of his teammates, you are just wasting your time. It would have been great if the host gets a bigger cut for buying and placing the barricades, plus his weaponry and ammunition, while the remaining players are in full control of spending their share of money on their weaponry and ammunition. I think that multiplayer is connected with peer to peer. It can cause massive lag dalays when playing with people from different continents.

It’s a solid, fun, little game, with few downsides. I can recommend it.

A First Person Shooter with boxy graphics like Minecraft with more pixels, very reminiscent of another First Person Shooter called Dead Bits. Unlike Dead Bits, this game is more ambitious, because the developers have put some interesting game mechanics in it. Besides the regular shooting players can dig holes, break walls, build walls and build covers. That part is interesting when playing on your own, because it's not a good idea to spend too much time playing as an architect or an archaeologist while the roaming players might hunt you down. This won't be a problem, as players can have plenty of time building stuff and digging, because the game is dead. It's an online, multiplayer game with the dead player base. There are around 15 servers, but it's hard to find players. Usually at its peak you can get lucky to find 3 servers with some players in them, only if at least of the active servers is password-free.

Since the game is all about boxes, the physics are weird, and it creates some issues that can't be ignored. The jumping is sloppy, movement is slow, switching between weapons is slow, and controls are pre-set, without the option to rebind the controls. The only issue I have is with the grenade button, which I prefer having as a middle mouse click, but nope, can't change it. Grenades have to be selected like regular weapons when used. Combine that inconvenience with already slow weapon selection, and that can be a recipe for disaster at times of action.

Speaking of action, maps vary from smaller, closed environments, to larger, open fields. There are standard weapon types like rifles, machine guns, sub-machine guns, and other stuff. Players get to choose weapons of preference, one main weapon plus side weapon like shotgun, pistol or uzi. Environments are destructible with shovel which serves as a straight-forward digging/breaking tool, but with explosives and bullets as well. This adds a bit of immersion in this cartoonish world. There is one more interesting detail – equipment weight. It serves as a balance for weapons selection. Choosing more destructive weapons like machine gun and RPG combo will slow down player a lot. Everything in this game is customizable, weapons and characters alike. Players are free to design literally anything in Minecraft boxy fashion, if willing to spend some time on it, dealing with unintuitive and questionable design mechanics. I wish some more popular and better games had this feature with customizing the aesthetics of weapons, uniforms, besides character customization.

All in all, the game does have some great mechanics like customization, building, digging, destructive environments, but it fails at everything else that makes great First Person Shooter Game - rebindable keys, better movement and jumping physics, faster movement, faster weapon switching, and single player content. There is not an option to play this game with bots, therefore avoid it for the single most important reason - it's a dead game. Let it rest in peace.

It's the Mallcore music in the drop C tuning, similar to Killswitch Engage and the likes of it. The difference is, all music is instrumental, so you don't get to listen to screaming vocalist, who sings how much he hates religion, society, politics, and his parents. The music alone would be worth the purchase had it been released as an extended play (also known as mini album), although it should have been longer, as the total duration of the tracks in this game is 13 minutes. There are some nice, crunchy, chuggy riffs, followed by enjoyable, galloping drum rhythms. The drummer did good work with his double bass pedal.

The game sucks terribly though.

Third person action game, set in bloody, gruesome arena. Player choses one of the three playable classes: two ranged and one melee. No matter what you choose you will face the following issues:

Movement is clunky and slow.
Controls are awkward and unresponsive.
Key bindings can not be changed. The default ones are unintuitive.
Collision detection with the melee class is inaccurate.
The game is not balanced, because some monsters are overpowered.
There is no option to put minimap on the corner of the screen.

The good stuff here is the music. It's the Mallcore music in the drop C tuning, similar to Killswitch Engage and the likes of it. The difference is, all music is instrumental, so you don't get to listen to screaming vocalist, who sings how much he hates religion, society, politics, and his parents. The music alone is worth the purchase, had it been released as an extended play (also known as mini album), though it should have been longer, as the total duration of the tracks in this game is 13 minutes. There are some nice, crunchy, chuggy riffs, followed by enjoyable, galloping drum rhythms. The drummer did good work with his double bass pedal.

Considering this is not a music album review, but a video game review, I would recommend to stay away from this lazy attempt they call a video game.