Recent reviews by P4099

I don't know what it was about this time, but Square basically just decided to release two absolute peak games, those being Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts 2 only to then refuse to build upon the formulas these games had, instead opting for something completely different (KH BBS Command Decks and literally just never doing anything like the Sphere Grid and CTB from FFX ever again).

Dead Island, a singleplayer and/or co-op Action-RPG by Techland and published by Deep Silver, takes the players to the fictional island of Banoi in the middle of an outbreak of a zombie plague. This might sound like a decent premise but sadly, Techland have this weird knack for making a zombie game, giving it a really good premise, starting off extremely strong and then just faceplanting into a pit of mediocrity in terms of writing. Okay, maybe not mediocrity. Garbage would probably be a bit more accurate. Dead Island was my first time experiencing this phenomenon, after a free weekend convinced me to buy the game, only to find out that the writing goes absolutely down the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, despite having a few interesting ideas, the way they were all put together makes it feel like they just got more ideas and decided to put it all into the game, not giving any specific bit enough time to explore fully.

Instead of exploring the setting of island of Banoi, it feels like they made a bunch of locales (i.e. Resort, Town, Jungle and Prison) and then sort of just sewed them together. Once you leave one of the locales, you will probably not return to it for the story a lot, which is a shame since the resort part from the first chapter was what interested me and I didn't like having to leave it for places that, in my opinion, felt a fair bit more generic.

As for gameplay, it's more or less a mix of Borderlands' looting, questing and RPG mechanics and something like No More Room in Hell's focus on, well, making your way through a zombie apocalypse. Building Melee weapons might evoke thoughts of Dead Rising in some, but here, it is far more important, since enemies scale with you, meaning you will never not be scavenging for gear.

This is both good and bad, since your gear eventually breaks anyway, you will be replacing old weapons with new ones, but on the other hand, you'll often find yourself feeling rather weak if you haven't got the resources to upgrade something at the moment. In addition, the game features some of, if not the worst firearms I have ever seen in a video game. Special mention goes to the shotguns, which I would genuinely consider worse than DOOM 3's hilariously inaccurate, frequently-memed shotgun.

Aside from regular slow zombies, you have freshly turned zombies who are more easily dispatched but faster and more aggressive, brutes who knock you on your ass a lot and are quite a bit tankier, the obligatory fat poison-spitting zombie, suiciders who do exactly that and butchers, whose gimmick I don't even remember because they are quite easily dispatched.

For players starting out, I recommend against picking the firearm-focused character Purna for this reason, unless you have friends who can cover you, particularly in the early game, as you have only slightly more stamina than the average Discord moderator. Xian Mei is great for those who wish to keep things simple with sharp weapons like machetes, knives and swords, Sam B is a big, strong guy focused on bashing zombie heads in (and generally being the most powerful character in the game) and Logan is focused mostly on thrown weapons, be they molotovs, grenades or the Deo Bomb, a craftable weapon so powerful, you should always carry at least twelve of them at any given moment just in case you need to nuke a bunch of enemies.

Speaking of which, craftable weapons are much more grounded than in Dead Rising. This, in my opinion, makes craftable weapons feel quite underwhelming a lot of the time because the upgrades often just boil down to some barbed wire with some batteries to electrify said barbed wire or a bunch of nails hammered into the weapon. There are some more extravagant craftables, but you probably won't have much time to use them, especially in a first-time playthrough.

Despite the flaws that Dead Island has, it can be an enjoyable game and there is certainly worse you can buy with the money. However, there is also better. In fact, Techland themselves made one such game in the form of Dying Light, which improves upon the basic gameplay Dead Island had and adds parkour into the mix, among other things. Still, if you want to see one of the bigger games from the big zombie game craze that started somewhere in the late 2000s or just want to bash some Zombie skulls in with your mates, Dead Island is certainly worth a shot.

A perfect game for midwits who pretend to be intellectuals, many problems are absurdly stupid or give so few details that there is no way one could possibly justify either option.
Unless you have a humiliation fetish or are one of these aforementioned midwits, there is no real reason you should buy this, because this game is utterly unenjoyable, which some may say is the point, but I beg to differ.
For a game about philosophical quandries, it goes off the rails (pun not intended) rather swiftly, in addition to going into politics (particularly a few modern day ones) on quite a few questions with little to no proper nuance to them.
Without seeing any of the dev's personal opinions outside the game, I was already able to guess their political leanings from some of the writing in this game, which is a huge red flag as it shows that they can't separate their work from their personal ideals and, as such, I will also not separate the art from the artist in their case going forward and assume all their games will be like this.

Bruh imagine waiting several months to add an additional layer of DRM to your game and cucking the playerbase from many countries out of the game they paid for because your account DRM service isn't available there.

Only way I can see this getting fixed is just reverting the change or offering refunds.

Edit: inb4 "Off-topic review activity"
Edit 2: In an astonishing once-in-a-lifetime move, Sony actually listened to the players and decided to not implement the PSN account requirement. Though I would still advise against supporting them for the time being, just to make sure they don't wait for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to blow over so they can then implement this crap anyway. You might say that this sucks for Arrowhead, but they did kind of sign up for this with Sony and even their CEO knew Sony would be pulling this move ahead of time and didn't tell us, so there's that.

As for the game itself, chances are, you already know exactly what it is. Note that performance seems to get worse with every update and frankly, I personally don't like how pathetically weak many of the regular guns in this game feel. As for the stratagems, calling in an eagle is cool and all, but it honestly just makes me wish I could be the one piloting the eagle instead of just running around chucking markers. I don't know, I guess it just isn't for me.

It's an almost perfect remake of the first two Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, which I have spent a lot of time playing as a kid.

The game feels very much like a Tony Hawk game and all the levels and their objectives are there.
more or less...bonus content from, say, THPS2x isn't included.
The levels that are included are pretty much the same as they were then and you can even do tricks that would be introduced in later Tony Hawk games, such as Reverts, Spine Transfers/Acid Drops and Flatland tricks, making the games feel more modern and on-par with the later games in the franchise.
However, I feel that a lot of the levels in this version feature some very bright colors that I, personally, am not a fan of, much preferring the older look of those environments.

Although the Spider-Man and Private Carrera unlockable characters from the original THPS2 aren't included, they have been replaced with an Alien skater, unlocked by finding all alien plushies, as well as the Ripper Skeleton, bought as part of the Deluxe Edition. Bruh.

On the topic of Skaters, Create-a-skater customization is quite lackluster. There does not seem to even be an option to specifically make your character male or female, they both share the same build, which sucks because past Tony Hawk games allowed players to customize their characters down to things like the shape of their head, size of their hands, length of their arms, so it's quite the step back, but is at least somewhat excusable due to this being a remake on a different engine...I guess...?

Music is more or less the same tracks you remember from the originals, with a few new ones sprinkled in like Bomb Drop by Less than Jake and Machine Gun Kelly's Bloody Valentine to replace some tracks that didn't return(?)

Sadly, it sorely lacks the original music made for the menus in THPS1 and 2, instead opting to simply play the regular in-game music. You do have funny loading screen tips, though, so, uh, yay...?

Despite what many reviews say, it is possible to play this game offline, even on PC, however doing so Requires the user to have purchased the game on Steam and use Launch options to make it happen. [www.pcgamingwiki.com]

All in all, THPS1+2 is a wonderful way to play Tony Hawk on PC, complete with Steam Deck support and online multiplayer. That said, if you want to play levels from the other games, your best bet will probably be to get Tony Hawk's Underground 2 somehow and use the THUG Pro mod for that game, since the Studio was pulled away from THPS3+4 so that they could work on Call of Duty Warzone instead. Thanks, Activision!

Game's good, DRM being added 10 years after release after Capcom already took away one of the DLCs I paid for is not.

EDIT: I managed to fix the issue by installing the games on my SSD, but since these are literally the same versions of the game I already own on PS3, I refunded anyway.

The games all just immediately crash on startup. Good job, Konami. The GOG version of MGS2 died for this ♥♥♥♥.

Imagine making a game online only and not investing in servers.

Edit: the game has servers now, but still lacks the content to justify the price tag.

While the game doesn't exactly have that much content (I got to 100% completion within 1 1/2 hours), I quite adore the idea of turning RE4's inventory management into a puzzle game while also wondering why games these days don't have systems like that anymore.

An enjoyable two-player puzzle game with a focus on communication and cooperation, Operation Tango puts players into the shoes of two agents working together to save the world from a supervillain.

The game is rather short; in fact, you can easily complete it within an afternoon if you're good at it, though it obviously depends on how good you are at solving the puzzles.

The classic spy vibe is really charming, though the character designs are an interesting choice, but certainly easy to recognize, even in a crowd.

The puzzles require communication via voice chat programs such as Discord or Teamspeak. In addition, only one player needs to pay to access the full game; player two is allowed to play the game using the Friends Pass. Woo!

The gameplay itself differs depending on whether one plays the hacker or the agent.
The agent has to move around the level and find specific information they can then give to the hacker, who then tries to use said information to help the agent reach their goal.

As such, the hacker's gameplay mostly consists of using hacking tools to open doors and disable/warn the agent about surveillance cameras/drones, as well as providing information to allow the agent to proceed, whereas the agent's gameplay tends to contain a bit more navigating the level and solving more physical puzzles, which, of course, require information given by the hacker to solve.

However, the game does its best to shake things up and make sure that no particular type of puzzle is used too much. In addition, it also has a decent difficulty curve, as later levels can be rather tricky if you don't already know the solution.

The story is nothing too special; the protagonists are just trying to stop a bad guy who wants to cause global mayhem. You're tasked with finding said bad guy and bring him to justice. That's all I'll say without getting too much into it.

The frequent changes in puzzle types do a successful job of keeping the game from getting stale and for the most part, the players have all the time in the world to figure out the solution. Sometimes, though, the game will put you on a time limit, forcing you to think fast and stay on your toes.

From a technical point of view, I don't really remember experiencing any great issues with the game, which is commendable. Also, it has cross-play with other platforms, so you can send an invite code to your friend on, say, the PS4 version! As long as one of two players owns the game, nothing stops you from playing together!
...aside from problems with the connection and paid online on consoles, perhaps.