Recent reviews by DuckiestHydra

Space Marine 2 can very easily be defined by its lack of bloat offering a very simple game design that hails from the simpler times of late 2000’s era of games. There are no obnoxious skill trees, daily guests or time sink activities. From the surface Space Marine doesn’t seem to offer a particularly intriguing gameplay loop, the pond isn’t very wide, but I can assure you it’s as deep as an ocean. The attention to detail in its world and emphasis on weight in its combat is something we rarely see. This game is of the highest quality and while it rocks the 70-dollar price tag this is one of the few times the price reflects the quality.

Unlike the posers of today’s AAA giants, Space Marine 2 is an unapologetic and gritty experience, it wont hold your hand or try to teach you about the power of love, friendship and peace. The characters have interesting arcs, engage in conflict and most importantly feel believable. Space Marine 2 is a true to form and authentic Warhammer 40k game, you will roleplay as a space fascist war criminal that has committed countless atrocities all in the name of the Imperium of Man and despite what the “media literacy” people try to say you will like it.

Sure you could just buy the next COD, but where you spend your money today will forever change what you play tomorrow, you are not just one person.

Edit 2 - 18.12.2024

An early Christmas gift has come in the form of outrageously overpriced microtransactions on the super store (Helldivers 2 ingame irl money store) hiding behind the idea of it being a “crossover price”. The Killzone 2 content in question was originally supposed to be a warbond but due to either Sony meddling or Arrowhead growing rotten it has turned into selling ridiculous overprized armors and weapons that aren’t sidegrades. It sets a dangerous president for the future of the game and brakes promises made in days past. Even if they refrain from making such mistakes in the future, this will forever be a major stain on Helldiver’s record.

Helldivers 2 has had its shares of ups and downs but has mostly been on an upwards trajectory, its sadly clear that this review needs to remain negative.

Edit 1 - 09.05.2024

Sony has at least temporarily backed out of the steam-psn account linking requirement. A battle won but a war still ongoing. I’m leaving the old review and negative rating, some scars should remain.

PSN account linking to be enforced on the 30th of May

It’s a tale old as time, a group of passionate and talented developers overshadowed by their publisher. Sony has decided in their infinite wisdom to finally enforce the steam-psn account linking hidden in the fine print. In this case I think its less about needing to link an account and more about the unnecessary and malicious oversight. Sony has proven time and time again that they are unworthy of their legacy.

What information does sony get from your steam account when linking?
- An identifier linking your steam and psn account together.
- Everything publicly visible on your steam profile; games, playtime, friends, etc.

Basically, more accurate data to sell on to third-party advertisers. Sony DOES NOT get access to your login or any personally identifiable information linked to your steam like your email, name or purchase methods.

Sons of the Forest struggles a lot with a design choice Endnight Games seems extremely reluctant to let go off, that they are terrified of making the player do anything.

Most of the gameplay elements suffers from this design choice as you have no need to engage with any of the games systems. Survival is a joke; the map is cluttered with so many processed food and drink items that you will never need to worry about creating your own food source. Environmental factors like cold and being wet is a simple hit to your stamina bar. You can sleep in the dead middle of winter with a tent made from a stick and a tarp. There is no need to build your own weapons, armor and invest effort into fighting enemies because the game gives you so many new toys to play with that combat at all stages is trivial. Base building doesn’t work due to your inventory being the size of a small truck therefore not needing to do any sort of resource management, you gain nothing in turns of survival benefits and lastly the map being approximately 4 times the size of the first game. Someone didn’t learn from the mistakes of Todd Howard, the absolutely colossal size of the map is an enormous detriment to this game. So much so that they had to add these comically out of place transportation options. Get ready to jump on your very own one wheeled hoverboard and blaze through the forest at mach 1 speeds or better yet get behind the wheel of Chariot 1, (a golf cart) indestructible and instantly kills anything you ram into. There are other options like a glider and ziplines make a return now with the ability to go up the lines as well, but once again it clashes with the map size. Building infrastructure to make use of these ziplines is a massive undertaking. The devs have placed so little faith in the game that they’ve built that they would rather make playing it optional then potentially making people upset that they must engage in a system that isn’t perfect. It. Is. Boring.

The Story and narrative are up next and while I won’t talk to much about it as not to spoil but it is essentially the same formula as the first game; being told through environmental storytelling and notes scattered at key story locations. Endnight still nails this part but for the sequel they’ve decided to experiment with cutscenes and voiced characters. These cutscenes appear out of nowhere same with characters. You cant interact with them, they arrive say a few lines and then round the corner and disappear. Never in all my years of playing games have I seen something so jarring, these moments are the opposite of seamless.

So, are there any parts of this game I did enjoy? Yes, building while pointless it’s actually a lot of fun due to you are now being able cut up logs and shape a structure to your liking. Que up “House Building Theme” from Red Dead 2 and have a good time, its surprisingly satisfying.

So in my opinion the original “The Forest” is still the superior game. The Sequel fails to deliver any meaningful change to the formula. Endnight might have gotten caught up in the “More is better” sentiment bit I think they lacked any real direction with this game.

Edit: Spelling/Grammar

Short comedy game where you help Lumi (a filthy undergrounder) recover her past. The game plays on similar elements to Oneshot being played partly on the desktop which is unique and fun. The game offers a large set of different minigames as you play and progress, having great variety in gameplay and jokes. Its a very well-made game for what it is, its clearly a labor of love. Its free if you don’t value the integrity and safety of your computer, check it out!

The Invincible is a pure walking simulator. I have played my fair share of walking sims and it’s not a category that I dislike but you are essentially watching a movie you are forced to interact with and The Invincible is one of the weaker ones I’ve played. For a game like this to succeed you have to nail 3 aspects, story, music and atmosphere. The game doesn’t do to well in any of these aspects and while it has its moments it struggles with pacing.

World and atmosphere are probably the games strongest card, the atompunk theme and art style is excellent and translates well into gameplay and interactivity. Set in an uninhabited solar system on the satellite Regis III, a barren lifeless moon the game does an ok job at making a vibrant and visually striking landscape that could just have been another Starfield planet. Without talking to much about the music just yet the atmospheric tracks on display are impactful and do well to add to the immersion.

The worldbuilding carries the game but can only go so far, story is the biggest letdown. The game sets itself up with a duo dynamic similar to Firewatch with your commander named Novik over the radio. Sadly this relationship between Novik and Yasna, the main protagonist never really develops and stays quite shallow throughout the story. This hurts the game quite a bit because the downtime between the narrative could have been filled with character development with this duo but never becomes anything more then just talking about the mission. Novik isn’t a bad character just not the right one for the job, this severely hurts the pacing and makes large parts of this game boring as there are no gameplay elements the game can fall back on. The narrative and mystery is exceptional and its presentation to the player is commendable. It has a dash of philosophy which helps retain some attention and get your brain going. However the narrative mostly fails due to the things mentioned above, it isn’t the sole focus and tension between plot points takes a nosedive with nothing to support it with. The music here is straight up disappointing. Not saying Brunon Lubas made a bad OST, in fact he made some satisfying sovietwave atmospheric tracks of good quality, but implementation is poor. To keep it short, during major plot points music plays a key factor in emotions. In moments where the characters are the focus music can take a backstage if done correctly. In this case the world and its changes are the plot points, good music implementation is crucial during these moments and the game just goes silent. A good soundtrack when you’re traveling and exploring is not good enough.

If I were to describe this game in one word it would be; boring. The narrative is interesting and enticing but you must slog through a lot of boredom to get to it. 10/10 IGN

Dying Light 2 is an excellent example of a sequel where the game devs absolutely failed to realize what made their first title unique. Not only that but they also decided to take a lot of inspiration form Ubisoft when it comes to world design and monetization. There is a lot to criticize here so let’s get started.

We’ll begin with the story, while the first title didn’t bring anything big to the table it established an interesting protagonist, narrative and a strong villain of the bat. It had good pacing and missions. DL2 starts and ends strong but fails to deliver anything meaningful in the middle. The entire game feels like a filler episode inspired by the walking dead, where you try to do something, fail miserably and get sent right back to where you started. All while meeting unfriendly, harsh and mostly uninteresting characters with weak motivation. It’s a shame because the game starts off with some nice plot and we meet probably the best character in the game but after the first few hours it just falls flat. Side quests are also just as terrible as in the first game, boring fetch quest with the only small gratification being some comedy skit at the end, it gets old fast. Side quests are what builds your relationship with these people and in turn its world, without anything good they are just npc’s and the tragedy they experience has no effect.

The gameplay is one element that has improved depending on how you look at it, combat has been slowed down a few notches. Its now more natural and less chaotic especially against humans, guns are also a non-factor here which is a welcomed change. The parkour has seen a massive improvement mostly due to the map getting very standardized so to speak. A lot of the districts have very similar building types, layouts and map is very flat with little terrain and while this can be a negative with the different areas getting repetitive with little variation it definitively helps with making parkour smooth and fast as its easy to predict what’s generally around a corner unlike the uneven and essentially random slums that mostly covered the first game. Its clear that a lot of effort was put into making the map fluid and intuitive to traverse. Sadly Techland has decided to lean even more on the RPG elements in the sequel which in my opinion the game really doesn’t need. Going as far as to try to create some sort of class building that feels really weak and unnecessary. One element that has fallen down the stairs is the world activities, it is blatant plagiarism of Ubisoft. Copy paste building and activities that only serves to waste your time. “Activating another windmill for the 20th time will surely entertain the player” yeah no, I haven’t played a Ubisoft open world title in many years and it too got old very quick. There are also limited time events and collaborations with other games? Collabs can work sure but its implemented in such an immersion breaking way and stands out like a sore thumb. Luckily the monetization isn’t too bad, a handful of outfit packs with no currency micros. Entirely unneeded and out of place but could be worse. The sudo live service is not a good feel for a singleplayer game. One last gripe I’m gonna mention is how little tension there are in a lot of the main missions. Not talking about story or plot but rather when you get thrown into these “arena” type situations that the first game nailed. The scripting in these situations is poor and the game fails to build any significant atmosphere. These moments also fall in to some major plot points and it just grinds the whole experience to a halt.

While I did enjoy playing this game I wouldn’t say I’m glad I did. Compared to its predecessor it can’t keep pace. If your on the fence I would skip this one.

Inscyption is your standard rogue-lite card game, how it sets itself apart from the pack and why it has received such positive reception isn’t just its great elements but also its very special narrative.

The immersion here is world class, especially for the first act. The art style, sound design and atmosphere created one of the most immersive tutorials I have ever experienced. Its vivid, captivating and played on a few horror elements. The immersion and world building is by far Inscryption’s strongest card and this holds true throughout the rest of the acts. Sadly, the actual card game here can only be described as shallow and a little tedious, and its shallowness only increases the further in you go. The first act was fine but it was pretty obvious that the further in you go its intensity only increases, if you are buying Inscryption for its cards you might be disappointed. But none of this really matters because Inscryption isn’t really a card game.

Trying to explain what makes this game so special would be doing it a disservice. Inscryption plays on the element of surprise, more than any other game I’ve ever played. Explaining its narrative would ruin it but in short it curbs your expectations and wants you to feel -̸͚̯͓ ̵̪̲̘̟ ̷͇ ̴̲̫̟͖͜-̷̖͇ͅh̵̠-̶̗̖͙̱'̷̺̥͙\̶̩̠̤̦̩e̵̱̩,̴̭|̸̩̟̤,̷̧̡͍̜̱l̵̨̦̩͚͇\̸̰̱͍͉\̸̯>̶̳͙'̶͈p̷̙͚'̶̜͎̝¨̶̩̯§̴̨ ̶̢̰͔̹͜ ̷̖̩͕̫ͅ-̶̨͉̻͍ ̶̡̜̙͎ ̴͖ ̵̜

Verdict:
Highly Recommended

A game about guiding a lost child through a strange world on the verge of collapse. The gameplay and puzzles are nothing to write home about serving only as pieces to bind the world and story together. Oneshot relies solely on its story or rather your connection and investment into the protagonist and a wide array of interesting side characters to drive the narrative. The story here is great, heartwarming and filled with conflict, splashed with a bit of philosophy. Its clear a lot of love and care went into creating this. 100% worth your time and money.

Highly recommended

Subnautica is an open world survival horror game that preys on the players fear of the dark deep and the unknown. Unlike many survival games Subnautica has a story to tell, one told through exploration and I think this is one of the strong points of the game. You aren’t led by the hand when it comes to understanding your environment or how to progress the story. You may be given a quest marker, or you may be given a cryptic clue that only becomes useful after receiving another clue. You’ll be doing a lot of reading, keeping thoughts in the back of your mind. The game almost forces you to pay attention if you want to stand a chance of progressing, puzzling together bits and pieces to form the bigger picture. While the game isn’t as atmospheric as something like Soma it does a good job of making you feel alone and vulnerable as you venture further from the safe shallows deeper and deeper. The art style is anything but generic offering a wide array of different biomes all with varying tones and music to set the stage. The game does a great job using its world for putting stress and tension on you as you near its climax.

Fear of the deep blue is a common one but if you are not affected by this the monsters and how you overcome them as obstacles do leave something to be desired. The ai is very basic and the game offers no creative way to deal with each one, as most of the monsters only do melee damage and chase you at a brisk speed, dodging and weaving then running away is all that’s really needed. One let down of the exploration-based progression is that sometimes progression of the story is locked behind something of a hard factor. Something you need to find that you can’t obtain through knowledge of the world, the environment or clued about. An egg hunt, something that needs to be found at complete random. To me there is no gratification in spending hours and learning nothing new in the prosses.

Subnauticas strong point lies in its storytelling, exploration and wonder, similar to something like Outer Wilds. And while it may be slightly lacking in other aspects its more then worth your time.

but not the reborn version here on steam. In my opinion the original mobile version is far superior and before you call me a mobile gaymer I will try my best to explain why this is the case.

The reborn version presents a lot of seemingly interesting improvements to the original with a visual overhaul complete with voice acting and gameplay outside of the rhythm parts mostly done by walking around solving puzzles as well as adding a new control type that being the keyboard. Walking around the environment and getting to experience the world in a new light was really enjoyable, its clear that the source material was respected but I think the new visuals and the way that changes how the story is being told is really a detriment to this game. The story is the same word for word, however the charm of the original laid in its simplicity, a story as much told through its visuals as its music. Reborn lost a lot of tracks due to Rayark simply not bothering or wanting to extend the licenses to have them in the remake. Most notably all tracks from V.K are gone, the songs that arguably gave Deemo its identity. The story suffers a lot from these missing tracks, having to play other songs during key moments in the story that objectively aren’t as good. There is also a value argument to be made here, the original is free to try and 5-10 bucks to fully unlock and comes with far more (and better) songs.

That being said I did enjoy playing this remake, it might not have been a worthy successor, but it was an admirable attempt. But I cannot recommend something when a far better alternative exists.

Verdict:
Mixed