Останні рецензії користувача Protagonistical

I remember playing these games close to a decade ago and being absolutely captivated by the world created in such a simple way. Finding and coming back to Deep Sleep after so long felt like visiting your hometown: a poignant trip into nostalgia in a place that was once your stomping grounds. You know the rough layout of the area, but some things manage to surprise you still.

This trilogy is a piece of your past that you get to revisit, and I can't recommend it enough to people who like the genre, have played the trilogy before, or who haven't even heard of it until they clicked on this store page. It's got something for everyone -- nostalgia, scares, puzzles, lore, timey-wimey shenanigans, and secrets. To me, this series is on par with other great titles like Alice is Dead, the Last Door, Daymare Town, and Rusty Lake in terms of surrealistic and almost whimsical horror. The price is great, so why not try a true classic in the genre?

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat; this is an unimpressed recommendation.

For the first hour and a half, I was hooked, despite the nausea I get in first-person games, and the head-spinning mechanic of the corner gun. I wanted to get into the story and explore around. And then I hit the stealth part. Up until I got a dozen security guards sicced on me, I was doing alright. I was fine with the usual waiting-game that stealth games invest so heavily in. But when I can't control when my last save was, along with enemies being spastic and unpredictable, and with no signal as to the intended path, there was just no way.

And that makes me frustrated. I was so ready to dive into this game and explore it, ready to uncover mysteries and recoil from sudden scares. I was already planning on doing at least another playthrough to try for different endings. And then this. And it's doubly frustrating because there is already a lot of promise. I WANT to play the game; it looks cool and thrilling. But the lack of direction is currently killing my willingness to tolerate this crap.

I'll probably try again later, maybe with a walkthrough, which is a sad phrase to say, especially with a game that is so dependent on the story and pacing, but that's what'll happen.

I love metroidvanias, existential horrors beyond my comprehension, and swinging a weapon at more enemies than you can shake a stick at. And Sundered does this well. There's a lot of detail-work in the game; the graphics are hand-drawn, there's descriptions and lore, and I think they even made their own language.

But the thing is -- there's not much beyond that. There's no plot besides "ancient eldritch deity piggybacks on your hip for the foreseeable future." Combat, while engaging, gets monotonous, and there's only a handful of enemy types throughout the game. There's, like, 4 varieties each of ground-based and flying enemies, and most, if not all, of the minibosses are just amped up versions of the regular enemies. Bosses, while much more memorable and awe-inspiring, suffer from the common problem of being just too darn big. I get lost in the screen and combat feels extremely slow and unwieldy.

I like the game; I actually do. The voice acting, the animations, the art direction, the level-up system, how your choices impact your abilities and even the endings -- this is all spectacular. But just like with the bosses, the game often feels cumbersome and bogged down when it should feel fast-paced and exciting.

But as you can see from the 40 hours I've spent playing this game, I like it fairly well. I'm just about done with everything in the game and am currently standing at 18/20 achievements. Clearly, the pros outweigh the cons for me. Each playthrough takes about 10 hours, or at least it did for me, so it's a decently sized game if you take your time and explore literally every corner of the map.

Ranking time
Combat/leveling system: 8/10 (the air attacks are breathtaking)
Enemy design, including bosses: 9/10
Boss fights: 5/10
Exploration: 6/10
Final score: 7/10

Very trippy game. Saw the Solar System explode and get turned into a deer which was then hunted by a cavewoman. Seriously, this game is one part noir aesthetic, one part thought-too-hard headache, one part artistic experiment, and one part existential crisis. Strange turn at the end, and it dragged on for a bit, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first half, and then tapered off. As far as story goes, it's indecipherable. As far as I can tell, it's about a cosmic entity - Time - who falls in love with Mass, only for Mass to be killed by Light, and Time goes on a journey to save her, except he falls in love with Life along the way. The game devs are on the good stuff. Go support them, because that stuff must be expensive.

I want to like this game. I really do. It's got some great ideas, with the lifegems and powerstancing. It really made the hub area a place you liked coming back to and greeting all the NPCs you met along the way, contrasted with DS 1, where it's a chore to go all the way back to Firelink. It's got heart and charm, and you can really tell that Fromsoft tried hard to make this a worthy successor to the Dark Souls name.

But there's the problem. They tried too hard. The game is too long, filled with way too many areas to remember, with a lot of them feeling experimental in tone. Yes, that's it; experimental. The game feels like Fromsoft threw a bunch of concepts together to see what stuck.

The level design is baffling; many a time I have battled through an area, went to the wiki to see if I missed any items, only to see that there was a hidden bonfire that would have made my life that much easier. Many times, there are too many branching paths, and if I'm in an area that I'm getting through by the skin of my teeth, I just want a straight shot, not a twisting maze I need to memorize in order to get back my 100k I just lost because I dodged the wrong way off a cliff. And then, there are some segments that are too linear.

I've died many, many more times to random enemies than I have the bosses to the point where it's ludicrous. Maybe it's because I overleveled, but I found many of the bosses too easy; I beat most of them within 5 tries, whereas in DS 1 and even 3, I could make 20 attempts before I even started to get the hang of the bosses' moveset.

The thing is, I like parts of the game. There's parts of a great game in here. But there's too much noise. There's too many items, whether it's consumables or weapons. It makes my brain hurt, trying to remember all the items I've missed and if there was a path in this certain area that I didn't go down.

All in all, this was a mediocre experience. It felt like they tried too hard to do too much. But at its core, it's a Souls game, and it gives you that initial challenge and learning curve in typical Souls fashion. It adds a bunch of great ideas that I wish showed up in DS 3, and Fromsoft clearly tried to be as creative as they could be. And I respect that. I respect wanting to try different things. But maybe don't make a game with every single one of those things you want to try out.

If you're debating getting this game, get the other games in the series first and only buy this one if you're starving for Souls content.

6.5/10. But it gets bumped up to 7/10 because of its great Fashion Souls.

For fans of the Bioshock series and who are curious about how it stacks up compared to other entries in the title, here's my comparisons. Mild spoilers? Idk, nothing major or that you won't find out pretty early on.

Graphics: better than ever before. Not exactly groundbreaking or impressive, but it was made in 2013 so I'll give it some leeway.
Art style: eh, I mean it's pretty cool, I guess? Not quite my cup of tea. Rapture was better imo.
Genre: not really horror, more adventure/action than anything else. A shame.
Escort missions: used to be radically difficult, now your escortee gives you ammo and you don't have to worry about protecting her. Win win.
Story: incomprehensible, with a side of incredulity. Decent at the start, middling at the middle, and dissolved into lunacy by the end. Twist endings are typical of the series, and this game is no exception. But at least the other two's twists were easily understood and clearly defined. This one, I shut down the game after the end, stared at my steam page for a solid minute, and then feverishly researched theories and explanations because I had no earthly idea what had just transpired.
Combat: great weapons and combat mechanics! Skyhook is your best friend! But you can only have two weapons at a time, which just discourages experimentation and fosters a false sense of desperation as you scrounge and desperately hope Elizabeth will bail you out.
Plasmids: there's plasmids. That's about all I can say.
Absolute no-doubt-about-it-plusses: the twins. The gear/clothing system. The fact that you now have shields.

All in all, I respect what the devs tried to do. They kept the heart of what Bioshock games are at their core -- themes of family, themes of identity, a setting of an impossible city in a place where humans shouldn't be -- and they took a major step away from the franchise and tried to breathe something new into the series. And a part of me respects that. But the rest of me just dislikes how they went about doing that. I feel like the game would have been better received by fans of the series if it hadn't been attached to the Bioshock name. It's not a great Bioshock game, but it's a pretty decent game just by itself. It's only when you try to compare it to its predecessors that it falls short. So, the best way to play and still appreciate the game is to try to view it as its own game as much as possible.

Obduction, otherwise known as the game where the load times are almost as long as the game itself.

All jokes aside, this is a pretty good game. The puzzles are beyond difficult, and I had to look up walkthroughs about halfway through, but there's a wealth of good qualities to the game that make up for it. There's excellent worldbuilding, gorgeous landscapes, and a thought-provoking story.

Messing around got me surprisingly far, but just be advised that there will be a lot of patience needed for all the inevitable backtracking you will do. Unless, of course, you go in with a guide handy. And even then there will still be some backtracking.

In conclusion: bring something to fiddle with during load screens, be ready to tear your hair out over some obscure puzzles, and prepare yourself for some of the prettiest and tightly constructed level designs I've ever seen.

This ... this is awesome. I always wanted to play Dark Souls like I play this game; sneaking and striking from the shadows. That's why I used bows so often in the Souls series -- to separate enemies and take them out one-by-one. More than a little, the game reminds me of Batman: Arkham Asylum mixed with Bloodborne, and that's a very good thing.

I'm still new to the game, but just wanted to get my initial thoughts out there.

66.6 hours? Nice.

Pretty cool game. Heavily reliant on atmosphere and sound. Less so on puzzles. Obviously, it takes inspiration from games like Limbo, Inside, and Little Nightmares.

Be warned, there isn't a lot to the game. It takes about two and a half hours to get through the whole thing. It's very linear and not very challenging. It's got a decent story going, but it explains a lot more than it should.

The hardest challenge is near the end, when you're stuck in a room with bars on the door and nowhere you can see to go. I had to look up where I was supposed to go, because there was no visual indicator to help me out.

Still, it's got a nice dystopian world full of darkness both literal and figurative. Definitely get it on sale if you're going to buy it.