Recent reviews by Keiynu

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvCRT4vcwRM

"Call of Duty: World at War" is the fifth game in the series and in my opinion holds up fairly well today. I went through the pain and suffering of clearing the campaign on Veteran difficulty, which absolutely exposed the flaws of the game and was pure misery, but I will remain unbiased for this review as one could argue this is not the intentional way to play the game in the first place, and most players will not go through the troubles I did.

In the campaign you will switch between the American and Russian perspectives as they fight against Germany in World War II. When you are playing the American missions you are US Marine Raider Private C. Miller. When playing the Russian missions you are Soviet Red Army Private Dimitri Petrenko. You will also be entering combat against the Japanese.

Masochism of Veteran aside, Call of Duty 5 is an incredibly good campaign experience. It's probably the most historically accurate Call of Duty narrative to date, and even features real life World War II footage during loading screens. Captain Viktor Reznov was a great memorable character and I found myself really enjoying the Soviet missions in particular (Probably because they have the overpowered PPSh-41.) There is fifteen missions in total and I was surprised at the variety of content, from your typical frontal attack combat to a stealth focused sniper mission, to a tank control mission and even an on rails airplane mission where you visually see your character get up and switch between the various seats and gunner positions.

World at War introduced the iconic Zombies mode we all know, love, and still enjoy today. Unfortunately this mode is actually where I take away some points from my rating, while the maps are great themselves, and the engine of the game works just fine for campaign and multiplayer, the engine completely fails and falls apart for the Zombies mode, making this one of the worst Zombies modes to date, despite the nostalgia and ingenuity. Most people can probably shrug this off as a side mode, but Zombies is actually what draws me to Call of Duty in the first place, and I would not touch most of these games if this mode didn't exist, so it's incredibly important to me. World at War zombies is bugged regardless of platform or version number you play on, you will die during nuke activations and even several seconds after the activation, you will get one tapped and instantly go down, Hellhounds will down you in less than three hits, Quick Revive does literally nothing in solo, when a zombie hits you it draws you towards it like a magnet, if you accidentally recoil yourself with a Wunderwaffe DG-2 blast in Der Riese, then Juggernog will permanently have no effect and you will go down in one hit for the rest of the game, knifing is not viable, training is barely viable, Verrückt zombies sprint at full speed randomly for seemingly no reason, and the list goes on and on, this mode is jank and I don't want to give it the excuse of being a developer pet project when the DLCs are still sold for their original asking prices today on consoles.

World at War is buggy and doesn't function correctly all the time, but it does offer a fantastic campaign, genuinely good graphics even by today's standards, and a general high production quality with an attention to cinematic and historical detail. There is a ton of value with the game especially if you are achievement hunting on console.

7/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLsbUsTKmpw

The Stanley Parable is a charming short walking simulator game. It starts off with a simple mystery but ends up posing you with various philosophical questions.

You are Stanley, a generic employee of a generic corporation. You notice there has been no new work for you to do for over an hour, so you exit your office to see what's up. All of your coworkers are missing, but the Narrator speaks to you and starts to tell you what to do and where to go. You must decide if you will be a willing participant in the Narrator's game, or defy him and forge your own path.

The Stanley Parable is extremely short but it's memorable and impactful which is very important to me. This is a game with very obscure off the beaten path options to discover. If you only consider the one straight path in front of you, then the game will be over in less than five minutes of playing. The magic comes from how many alternate paths and hidden lines of dialogue there is.

The Narrator is a great companion character who is voice acted expertly. The game is more than what it seems, what starts as a simple office building quickly turns into a mind control facility. The story of the game is definitely referencing the horrors of the modern working world, a deep seated fear everyone playing likely has themselves. What is worse than becoming a generic numbered cog, powering the corporate machine for little gain or purpose?

The Stanley Parable does not offer much in terms of game play or longevity, but it's an interesting narrative experience that will satisfy you in other ways. I do recommend it, especially if you can get your hands on the Ultra Deluxe version which just pushes things in even further.

8/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8zyLppNpYo

Outlast 2 was more annoying than anything else. I am a big fan of the first game and this one just doesn't even come close in terms of gameplay or fun factor.

You play as Blake Langermann, the cameraman for his journalist wife Lynn. The two travel to the Sonoran Desert to investigate the possible murder of a pregnant woman. They get split up, and Blake now has to survive the dangerous wilds in hopes of finding his wife alive again. A sadistic cult chases after Blake and Blake also has to deal with his guilt surrounding the death of a childhood friend of his named Jessica.

Outlast 2 starts off extremely strong, with an interesting premise, location, and some of the best graphics you'll ever see, especially when it came out in 2017. It intrigues you with it's deranged denizens and the school sections are the best part of the game. It introduces one new mechanic which is cool and useful, being the microphone used to listen in on and locate predators before you even run into them. Other than what I just mentioned, everything else is painful, chore-like, and I had to actively force myself to finish this game.

Outlast 2 focuses on heart rate inducing chase sequences instead of hide and seek or stealth like the first game. Granted the first game was already imperfect in this area of game play, but while the first just eventually got silly at how easy and repetitive it became, this one is actively irritating . . . Forcing you to restart at checkpoints repeatedly until you eventually find the obscure little barely visible place the developers want you to go; because the game is purely linear and there is no alternative paths to take whatsoever at any point in the entire game. These chases are not scary, but more infuriating than anything else, it becomes difficult to get scared when you're just annoyed and cussing at the game as you're playing it. Obviously Outlast is a non combat experience, but it becomes pretty silly at these pathetic, barely held together by bones enemies proving great physical threats to you when you could just destroy their whole existence with a single punch, or better yet you could pick up one of the many farming tools littered everywhere, if this was a real life survival scenario, Blake could not survive by doing the things he's currently doing and refusing to fight back . . . Oh and also, the ending is genuinely terrible and makes you question why you even bothered to play the game in the first place.

Outlast 2 is a beautiful disaster. It's a game which I consider more fun to watch others play than actually play yourself, because to play it yourself is just torturous and completely devoid of fun value apart from the school sections of the game which unfortunately never really pan out in terms of story and serves more as an irrelevant sub plot / inconvenience.

5/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMvcIWhqS3c

Brawlhalla is a fast paced two dimensional fighter game. It features good game play but the skin and design elements surrounding it don't really interest me enough to become a long term fan.

Pick from over 65 different Legends to play as. Then you can pick a game mode ranging from a simple 1v1 to a chaotic four player free for all. Once in-game you start with just your bare fists, so be on the lookout for power ups to fall from the sky so you can get equipped with your Legend's weapon types. Deal damage to your opponent to soften them up, then try to deal one big blow to knock them out of the arena.

Brawlhalla features a fun and satisfying gameplay loop. I feel like my personal skill is actively improving with each match and my own contribution when playing on a team is very significant. There is a huge roster of Legends to choose from. There is some interesting crossover content with "Star Wars," "Halo," "Assassin's Creed," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and more.

Where the game loses me is how cheap it feels. The art style is not for me at all, and there is plenty of mobile game tactics here. It even goes as far as giving you some free to play currency for watching ad videos inside the game client. Character unlocks are very slow and the game honestly demands too much time to get anywhere within the natural progression.

Brawlhalla is well made and is worth giving a try since it's free to play, but it's not really my cup of tea. I personally prefer "MultiVersus" to this one even if that is unpopular.

5/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdTC21PcFc

"Star Wars: Battlefront II" (2005) might be the greatest Star Wars video game ever made. It is the perfect simulator, sandbox, and entertainment package with an endless replay value.

The "story" is pretty much the same as the previous game. Take control of one of four iconic factions and fight in legendary battles from the films. Play the Rise of the Empire campaign and get the full story of how Anakin turned to the dark side and helped found the Empire. Unlike the previous game, personally take control of your favorite characters in battle.

Battlefront II surpasses it's predecessor in every way imaginable. It has a better campaign, even more maps and units to choose from, and most importantly allows you to personally control and play as the Jedi and Sith instead of them just being A.I. companions. Galactic Conquest is better than ever. The new fleet to fleet space battles feature actual boarding / infiltration and are very well designed and a ton of fun.

The campaign still features actual movie scenes like it's predecessor which I think is tacky but still, the campaign is far more fleshed out here, with unique objectives for each scenario as opposed to just capturing command posts every time. The enemy variety is much better here too, featuring interesting wildlife and heroic leader characters. There are even more maps here than the previous game which already had an impressive amount. While the heroes and villains are mostly reskins of each other, I still appreciate how many there are, giving us quite a few obscure minor characters that I would not have expected to see but it's nice to be able to play as them.

Battlefront II is well made and holds up by today's standards. It's an extremely addicting game with satisfying combat and mechanics as well as a semi-open world experience to explore and play around in.

10/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLEBxq_W1Sk

Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) is an underrated game which gets overshadowed by it's sequel. Granted there's not really any huge reasons to choose this one over the sequel, but still, it's an extremely well designed experience.

Take control of one of four iconic factions and fight famous battles from the films as well as some newly engineered scenarios too. There are four game modes, two of which being a campaign experience (Less of a campaign to be honest and more of a highlights reel.) The main objective in Battlefront is to deplete the enemies reinforcements to zero, which you can do faster by capturing command posts and destroying key targets. Fight alongside your favorite characters from the films.

That's right, I would like to say again that there are in fact hero units in the original Battlefront. Unfortunately they are not playable whatsoever and merely exist to look cool and help break stalemate objective choke points. 2004 Battlefront plays very well by today's standards and features a semi-open world experience which I really like. The attention to details as far as films and lore accuracy is very strong, and I appreciated that some classes were significantly stronger than others, such as the Droidekas being far above all of the other classes which makes complete sense since that's how they actually are in canon. There is a great variety in locations and vehicles.

Probably the only single unique feature or reason to choose the original Battlefront over it's sequel is the neutral team and their interesting units. On Tattooine there is an entire Tusken Raider team with a seemingly infinite reinforcements pool which attacks both teams, and you have to judge whether they're worth attacking for an extra command post or two or if you should stay focused on the true enemy. The optional objectives in the campaign are also very cool, for example on Geonosis you can destroy the transport ship pod things, Endor you can destroy the shield bunker, Hoth you can destroy the AT-Tts via tow cable if you want, and Naboo you need to be brave enough to walk through and shut down the shield being generated by those large creatures, to name a few. I will also mention that while the sequel is famous for the game mode, Galactic Conquest was actually invented in this game.

The original Battlefront holds up today in my opinion. I played for several hours today and despite how ambitious and large scaled and open the game's design is, I did not run into a single game breaking bug.

9/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC9ccd9RRzw

Stumble Guys is a clone of "Fall Guys." It's much easier than Fall Guys but it's also of a much lesser quality overall.

It's just like Fall Guys except with larger amounts of players. You play three rounds of random mini games in hopes of being the winner. The games usually fall into categories like racing or survival. Each game can have modifiers applied to them to keep things fresh.

Stumble Guys is useful for PC players because it's available on Steam, that's about it. I personally played it quite a bit because I am an achievement hunter and this game was free and had plenty of easy ones to get. The graphics are of lower quality than Fall Guys and there is practically no reason to pick this one over Fall Guys.

This might be the easiest "competitive" multiplayer game I've ever played. All of the games are child's play and then of course you are literally playing against seven year old's who's brains haven't fully developed yet so you pretty much automatically get first place every single game if you're even slightly above average at platforming. The game's monetisation is some of the worst I've ever seen too, while it has some interesting collaboration licenses like "SpongeBob SquarePants," MrBeast, Tetris, The Smurfs, and more, it actually paywalls emotes which allow you to directly punch, push, and harm other players for an advantage. By default, there are no mechanics other than moving, jumping, and diving.

Stumble Guys is a clone title which belongs more on mobile devices than PC and consoles. I don't know how intellectual property disputes work but I'm surprised Stumble Guys even exists at all considering how directly derivative it is.

4/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZEeEXrzP4E

The First Descendant is a free to play looter shooter by NEXON, which is a company with not the best reputation ever. Honestly it can be difficult to criticize free to play games because . . . They're free, but I'm going to anyways because I feel it's deserved after taking up several hours of my time.

You play as a descendant, who are powerful warriors. The Descendants are humanity's last chance at survival. Humanity is at war with an alien species called Vulgus. Your objective is to acquire the Ironheart pieces so that you can unlock an important power before the Vulgus' leader Karel does.

The First Descendant starts off extremely rocky, then gradually gets better until you burn yourself out from the grind. I played entirely through the first three zones for the sake of this review but it was honestly testing my patience quite a bit. The gameplay is not very engaging or impactful (The one exception being during Interceptor boss battles since you actually have to turn your brain on a bit and play the game for real to survive them), and while there is technically a lot of enemy variation, they all feel the same, are not distinct from each other, and are all "popcorn" enemies meaning they die too quickly and serve more as a one or two distraction than an actual combat threat.

Then we get onto the core idea of the game, and this is where things irritate me the most. This is a company who uses mobile game tactics and models and applies them to cookie cutter throwaway desktop / console titles. It gets worse here because the monetization centralizes on the overwhelming sexualization of female characters, and attempts to create cash cows out of depraved men, before it inevitably shuts down it's servers due to a lack of longevity strategy. Nearly every single female character is a perfect ten and has their "assets" featured as much as possible within their own limits, and all of the shop's cosmetics focus on hiding clothing or unlocking "viewing windows."

The First Descendant is depraved and pathetic. It's not the worst game I've ever played by any means, but the fact that "Warframe" & "Destiny 2" exist completely make this game pointless and then the icing on the cake is the ridiculous monetization and manipulative tactics.

5/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jene2IILMZ8

MultiVersus is a free to play fighting game starring all of Warner Bros. most iconic characters from their various franchises. It's an enjoyable little party game that I recommend giving a try but not purchasing anything in.

Choose your character from Arya Stark to Superman. Battle against opponents in iconic set pieces like the Batcave. Engage in the PvE mode called Rifts or go online against other players. Level up your fighters and choose different perks to run with.

MultiVersus is fun for a little while but it will get old pretty fast. The fighting gameplay is mostly tight and feels good. There is a steady sense of progression and account unlocks. The famous IPs present are used faithfully and given respect.

MultiVersus' business model rubs me the wrong way. First the game randomly shuts down for several months killing the excitement for it, then when it finally comes back more than half of the fighters are locked behind a pay wall. The game uses a psychologically manipulative scheme to shower you in as many tiny rewards as possible to ensure you keep coming back every day and devote your life to it. The game does not respect your time as shown by it's PvE mode which encourages you to do the same battles hundreds of times repeatedly.

MultiVersus is fun for a little bit and certainly worth giving a try, but is not a game you should play or support long term in my opinion. It will fade away once their business / game model fails and then they will blame it on us when it does instead of taking accountability or realising they made some poor decisions both in the past and present.

6/10.

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2ag-86uUzk

Slender: The Arrival is the official commercial remake for the original "Slender: The Eight Pages" short survival horror game. It boasts higher production quality and a much more fleshed out timeline of events as well as various different chapters with unique encounters in each of them.

You play as Lauren who is coming to visit her friend Kate but she has gone missing. What Lauren can find is a bunch of ominous messages written on the walls and she continues to investigate. She encounters a supernatural being called the Slender Man which is stalking her. We learn the origins of the Slender Man and how he was created.

Slender: The Arrival is a truly terrifying video game, even by 2024 standards. I loved the original Eight Pages game but honestly that one is child's play compared to The Arrival. Now The Arrival is actually an easier game to get through and fully complete due to adjustable difficulty settings, a perfectly working flashlight, a checkpoint system and a seemingly unlimited or at least much longer hidden stamina bar, but it's ten times scarier still which to me is much more important. So basically if you're looking for scares go with The Arrival, if you're looking for a challenge then go with the Eight Pages.

This game's story and timeline is far more clear and fleshed out than it's predecessor. Things get particularly scary when Slender Man is no longer the only thing chasing you in the dark. The atmosphere of this game is nearly unmatched and you will find yourself out of breath in real life and having to take a pause every now and then, in fact the game knows this and even prevents you from pausing during key moments and awards you with achievements for even trying to pause. One thing that does frustrate me is the invisible borders and also the fact our protagonist character continues her journey without the help of police or weapons, I'm sure literally everyone in real life in this situation would have immediately vacated once they got to the abandoned house of the friend they were supposed to be meeting, but instead we foolishly venture on into the dark forest by our lonesome.

Slender: The Arrival is superior to it's predecessor but is less legendary obviously since it wasn't the OG. Still I recommend giving it a shot if you have the stomach for it, this is about as scary as video games can possibly get due to the live unpredictable A.I. systems and the fact there is usually more than one thing chasing you at any given time.

9/10.