Recent reviews by P4099

A useful weapon to start off with that makes the start of the campaign a little easier and a part that I, personally, quite like using in Raid mode. With a total price of 12€, I'd say the game and all its DLC offer plenty of bang for your buck.

Old, negative review: Capcom somehow managed to break this DLC almost a decade after release, rendering this DLC unusable if the Parker's Government and Jessica's G18 DLCs are installed, forcing players to pick between this one or the other ones.

EDIT 7/10/2024: After three years, they finally fixed the DLC. Congratulations, Capcom. Now bring back the RE Revelations Complete Bundle.

Ah, yes. Battle for Bikini Bottom. A game that quite a few remember as that one Spongebob game we played when we were younger, a game that has a rather dedicated speedrunning community surrounding it, coupled with an amazing soundtrack, smooth controls and as many original voice actors from the show as the devs could get.

The general premise is as follows: Plankton has built a machine that creates robots so that he may use them to take the Krabby Patty formula. However, things don't go according to plan and the robots take over the Chum Bucket, kicking Plankton out and leaving Spongebob and his friends have to clean up this mess by saving Bikini Bottom from the mechanical menace.

Gameplay-wise, the game is a collect-a-thon platformer. There are a few types of collectables:
-Shiny Objects (henceforth referred to as "shinies"
-Patrick's lost socks
-Golden Spatulas
Shiny Objects are mainly used to unlock the path leading forward throughout the levels. You should almost always have enough of these to keep progressing without having to grind too much (with one notable exception, which I will talk address later). They are obtained by smashing tikis and robots, as well as found scattered all over the levels.

Golden Spatulas are used to unlock completely new levels altogether and progressing through the main hub world in order to reach the end of the game. They can be obtained by doing tasks, some of which are more challenging (like solving a challenging puzzle or completing a difficult platforming segment), others are far easier (talking to the right person, taking a small detour, annoying Squidward), so if you're having problems getting a certain spatula, rest easy knowing that you don't need to get all of them just to finish the game.

The last item would be socks, which are pretty straightforward. You can find socks in all the levels. If you find ten, you can exchange them for a golden spatula. Once again, not all socks are required to beat the game.

This is where the game slightly deviates from the original PS2 release, however. You see, it is also possible to trade shinies for golden spatulas. However, in comparison to the original version, the Rehydrated prices are extremely high and actually require grinding. I recommend skipping those unless you want 100% completion.

The game's platforming is really good, almost like the original. However, there are certain sliding segments where you need to hold W/your stick forward in order to reach full momentum, which can take some getting used to if you want to get certain spatulas/nail certain jumps.

The graphics are really good, trying their best to find a good middleground between the original game and the show's animation. Though some people might feel that certain characters look a little off in this style, I, personally, find them rather pleasing.

As for bugs, there is a well-known exploit that allows players to immediately teleport to the final boss, allowing speedrunners to finish the game in less than two minutes. Once you know this exploit, you can flex on your friends and show them that you've beat the game faster than they ever could!

While initially, we were led to believe that the content that was cut from the original game would be restored, apparently, the restoration of the cut content was cut once again due to time constraints.
The only new thing that comes to this version of BfBB is the multiplayer mode, which is a horde mode that can be played with two players. A cut boss actually makes his appearance in this mode, so...yay?
Look, I haven't played this mode, but I've heard that it's not that great.

As for the soundtrack, it's amazing and, combined with the writing and graphics, make you feel like you're playing an episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

Did I mention that this is a platformer that actually doesn't have garbage controls for mouse+keyboard users? Yes, you heard me right, the game is indeed playable without a controller! That's a rarity among non-shooter/RPG/Strategy games nowadays.

Also, the game is very small compared to many other modern games, being around 7,6GB. A welcome change when you consider the size of titles such as Modern Warfare or Destiny 2.

...did I mention it's also DRM-Free? Because it is.

I should also mention that BfBB has a really great soundtrack on par with, if not superior to, some of the more memorable tracks from the series. Whoever played the mayonnaise for the Jellyfish Fields theme really did a great job.

Now, what if you don't know anything about the show?
Well, first off, you're probably missing out and second, if you don't like the show, you probably won't like the game either. If you're curious, however, I'd definetely recommend giving this game a go and perhaps you will become like me, someone who desperately hopes that the Spongebob Squarepants Movie game gets a Rehydrated version as well.

All in all, I'd say that if you're interested in what you're seeing, you should buy this game.
Let Spongebob take you back to a time when cinematic cutscenes, QTEs, Microtransactions and DLC were far less widespread than they are today.
A time when gaming was a lot more about having fun than it is in the modern day.
This little game right here made 2020 so much more bearable and I hope that you, too, will enjoy it.

Badly optimised game with interesting premise. I paid money for this game in Early Access, hoping they'd make it a really good mix between Dead Space and Trouble in Terrorist Town, but I feel greatly disappointed by the product I see before me.

For starters, there's the ridiculous "micro"transactions. Yes, I know, F2P games have microtransactions, but that doesn't excuse single items costing over ten bucks. There is already a DLC for those who wish to support the devs, but the amount of items locked behind paywalls is rather ludicrous.
I could use money to purchase the cosmetic loadout I want, or I could spend that money on several different games that have more content and are far more enjoyable than this one could ever hope to be.

The tutorials are pretty okay for what they are, though the attempts at humour were irritating at best and in the first tutorial, I spent a good chunk of time just standing around waiting until the next door opens.

That's when I wanted to learn even more about how the game works, and as such, started playing PvE since I wanted to get a feel for how combat feels.
Sadly, the co-op campaign doesn't really seem to represent the multiplayer, as it was a boring horde shooter. If there was something I could compare it to, I'd say Left 4 Dead comes to mind what with the players having to move through the levels while being attacked by enemies, but that's where we reach the problem: the enemies.

There are three main enemies in the campaign from what I've seen; small aliens that don't have any special abilities, bigger aliens that shield themselves from incoming damage after they've been shot a little and then get shot to pieces once they lower their "shield" (fancyspeak for "front legs") again and, last but not least, the shapeshifters that are player-controlled in multiplayer. In PvE, however, they act like the other aliens, but they can have a gun when disguised. Aside from that, they all seem to act the same. A few other enemies exist, namely flying enemies that are a pain to hit and have an annoying ranged attack, however, all in all, they don't have any real charm to them whatsoever.

What about the multiplayer? As I said, it's similar to TTT with the spacemen having to complete tasks to get a ship and leave the place while the shapeshifter needs to kill 'em all using several means of transportation and, well, hunting their prey.

Now, since I don't really have any friends to play with and I'm not gonna play with randoms just to have barely any means of communication and a ping that looks like my phone number, I didn't spend that much time in the multiplayer mode.

Weapons don't really feel that strong since small fry is meant to die quickly, shapeshifters are underwhelmingly weak and those shield alien thingies are just plain annoying to fight since they only cover themselves once and then die.

When carrying objective items, you are vulnerable, driving home the point that this game is made for people who have friends since they could shoot the enemy and cover you.

Despite all this, I wanted to play the game since it did have a few interesting gimmicks and in hopes that it may prove me wrong and show me that it's actually better than I assumed from the first level alone.
So I played the second level and started to feel bored since it dragged on for a bit. I was still looking forward to finishing the level and moving on to the next one some other time, moving forward as I felt the level was going to end pretty soon aaaaaand...the game froze. I thus killed the game via the task manager and uninstalled it, bummed that I couldn't refund it anymore.

From a game made by a small indie dev, I expect little. From a game I paid for that's been in Early Access for four years now, however, I do expect a bit more.
I hold indie devs, especially New Blood, to much higher standards than AAA devs due to the amount of quality, polish and passion I see present in their titles where any trace of such things would be absent in a number of AAA titles.
However, when an indie game has issues I usually would only expect from said AAA titles, with microtransactions that bring AAA games to mind, then I don't have much faith in the future of this game.

All in all, I'd recommend looking for an alternative to this game instead. Deceit would probably the first one I'd think of. Dead by Daylight of Friday the 13th if you can spare the money.
They might not be set in space, but they are otherwise quite similar in terms premise.

Wait a second...you've never played Portal?
Uh, okay. That's...uhh...interesting...
Portal is a first-person puzzle game by Valve that mainly focuses on the mechanics of the Portal Gun, a device that can place two portals, one brange, one blue on any white surface in range. The game has you use this device and its mechanics to solve puzzles all the while the AI GLaDOS constantly delivers its darkly humorous lines.
If you want to get a deeper look into what the game is like, feel free to play the demo of the game, Portal: First Slice.
Also, you get the soundtrack for free if you own the game, so that's cool, I guess.
Portal's story isn't too great, but GLaDOS' comments make your time rather amusing and the puzzles get more difficult as you go.
After you finished the main game, you even have a few more challenges to get through, allowing you to get your money's worth out of the game

Look, while it's on sale this game is less than a hamburger at McDonald's. Buy it. You have no excuse.

F.3.A.R/F.E.A.R. 3 is the third installment in the F.E.A.R. series and concludes the story that follows the Point Man, who possesses enhanced reflexes and now looks like he's half-rat or something and his insane psychic brother Paxton Fettel who is also kinda dead already but actually not in their quest to find their mother Alma, who raped the poor sod we played as in the previous game.

The second game already brought a lot of changes with it that made it more generic compared to its predecessor, but this one is so generic you could slap a sticker that says something like "Call of Duty: Nightmare" on it and I would believe you.

The weapons are mostly rather generic, we have...a pistol...an SMG...two smaller SMGs...a rocket launcher...a sniper rifle-wait who the ♥♥♥♥ would use a sniper rifle if the first game had ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ particle cannons?
Oh, there's also a laser, but that's nothing new either.
What is new however are annoying shield enemies whose shields you can steal after you've killed them.
If you do that, you are literally god and can simply walk up to any elite mook and whack him to death with your shield.

The combat system is similar to your average Call of Duty: sit your ass in cover, shoot bad guys until your screen is covered in strawberry jam, sit your ass back in cover, ocasionally go to the next area, repeat until you're done with the game.

The game is very co-op focused, as evident by the constant competition for points between two players, which becomes extremely evident whenever the game tells you how great it is that you were the one who got the most points in a solo campaign. This actually affects the ending, apparently, but I'm not playing the singleplayer again to see the other ending.

There's also a multiplayer mode, but I don't particularly care about the multiplayer mode in a F.E.A.R. game.

If the game has voiceover in your language, you may consider changing the game's language to English so you can enjoy Paxton Fettel voiced by Peter Lurie. Or don't because one of your allies, Jin Sun-Kwon, does not retain her original voice actor from F.E.A.R. 1. Instead, she is voiced by Kim Mai Guest (Xian Mei from Dead Island[deadisland.wikia.com] and Mei Ling from Metal Gear Solid 1 and 4[metalgear.wikia.com]) who, in my opinion, didn't quite do the character justice. Might just be me, but I prefer her original voice from F.E.A.R. and its expansions.
Michael Becket, the player character from F.E.A.R. 2, is voiced by Robin Atkin Downes (Kazuhira[metalgear.wikia.com] "Fiddler"Miller[metalgear.wikia.com] from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker/MGSV and TF2's Medic) though, so that's nice. I guess.

All in all, I only recommend this game if it's on sale and if you either have a friend to play with or desperately want to be done with the F.E.A.R. series.

Edit: Game collects all the data about you now. Good ♥♥♥♥, Overkill. Really capturing the core Payday audience here.
PAYDAY 2...where do I even start?
The game (if you haven't noticed already) is a four player coop first person shooter where players have to work together to rob banks, steal money, drugs, gold and other valuables in pursuit of a big paycheck.

The sheer amount of characters is absolutely and definietely too much; either that or it just feels that way because many characters are just not good (the worst offenders either don't even speak english, reuse a lot of lines or have lines that are very similar to other lines they use or they don't sound all that enthusiastic/their VAs can't voice act for ♥♥♥♥ ).

Many weapons are just copy+pastes of already existing weapons, the balancing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ overall, the game has performance issues, crappy netcode, an overall outdated racing game engine and without the modding community, this game would get boring extremely quickly.

There are many bugs, glitches and examples of poor optimization; as far as I know installing mods even makes the game more stable and less prone to crashing than it normally is.
An example would be the Golden Grin Casino heist, which, on my old PC (which could run games like the new DOOM and Dead Rising 4 at a consistent 60FPS), was more like a slideshow, stuttering like hell unless I turned all my settings down to low.

The community has a bunch of friendly people in it, however you shouldn't really expect those people on public games.
You will run into a lot of cheaters and people who play the same heists over and over for easy xp, ruining the fun of progressing (because that's the purpose of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ progression system) only to jump into high difficulty heists and not knowing anything about a heist that isn't Cook Off, Hoxton Breakout or Rats (at least I think those are still the farm heists? I mostly just play by myself).
This means you'll spend hours looking for that one lobby where the people are actually nice and competent just to have them leave upon completing one or two heists. Or you could just get friends, but I don't have any friends to play with.

The AI isn't...really smart, but it's okay for what it is. Your team AI on the other hand tends to be absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suicidal in the worst situations.

The higher difficulties used to mean that enemies become slightly tougher and more well-armed, then they turned them into bullet sponges, but now they mean you get absolutely rushed.
On the maximum difficulty, you will almost always be attacked by two extremely heavily armoured elite mooks who can easily rip you to shreds if they get close, let alone about 20 regular units all shooting you and your friends with extremely accurate and powerful weapons. And if you're out in the open, there's a 99.99% chance you're getting oneshot-downed by a sniper who possibly might have spawned a mere five seconds ago.

The game's objectives and mechanics practically force you out of cover, sou you'll either have to complete your objective mid-assault wave (meaning you'll turn into swiss cheese on higher difficulties) or even kill a certain boss that makes the enemies bullet spong-ier and locks the game in the assault state, meaining that the game will keep spawning enemies without giving you a break (and no, he doesn't spawn close to you; he sits somewhere, usually close to your freaking spawn location, with a bunch of elite mooks surrounding him, forcing you to run out and engage him).

Payday 2 also features a skin economy as we know it from CS:GO, TF2, Killing Floor 2 and other popular games. The chances for you to unbox anything good are close to zero, so don't try it. Do not. Try. It.

The game has an amazing soundtrack by Simon Viklund, the soundtrack is included in the game for free!
However, the Soundtrack is also missing tracks that were added to the game itself back in 2017.

The yearly "Crimefest" event where OVERKILL releases a load of cool, free content, has gotten more and more disappointing as time goes on, with crossovers, ♥♥♥♥ balancing changes, microtransactions, difficulties that aren't exactly fun to play and small heists that end on cliffhangers, forcing the community to wait another month or two until we actually find out what happens next.

The original idea behind the game was amazing, but over time it has slowly turned into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ memefest with a buttload of crossovers, useless characters, horrible balance and other issues.

All in all, it's simply not the co-op heisting game I bought back then.
I can't recommend PAYDAY 2 at its full price, consider buying it on sale, but only if you have friends to play with.

This game isn't even fully released and I think it's the best game I've played this year.

The soundtrack is amazing, just what you'd expect from Andrew Hulshult, the gameplay is fast, bloody and violent, the levels have plenty of secrets in them, you can dual wield shotguns, great enemy designs, an interesting setting, dual wieldable shotguns an endless mode,
*inhales*
no lootboxes or other microtransactions, no other modern AAA game nonsense, multiplayer mode, an upcoming co-op mode and amazing boss fights.

Are you convinced yet?
No?
Fine. You can pick up all sorts of items and throw them at enemies (including bars of soap and bones lying around), there is a powerup that slows down time when you're not moving, a different powerup literally called "the climbing thing" the one and only Big John...

Look, if this didn't convince you, think about it that way:
The people behind it are actual people, not a big company out for your money.
Within a single month, they do more for their community than companies like EA ever will.
Hell, even if you don't like it, you can always get a refund.

EDIT: Did I mention they have a discord that's basically a massive memefest?

Also HDusk when

Behaviour really went back to their roots with this Bugs Bunny themed Character DLC.

Grand Theft Auto V. A fun open world game, just what you'd expect from GTA.
The story is quite good and the characters are memorable, driving around Los Santos is amazing and it has a lot of stuff for you to do.

Those were the positives, now onto the negatives:

Pretty much everything in online mode is absolutely overpriced to the point where you have to either farm for cash for several hours, if not even days for that one thing you really want or just pay up. Yes, microtransactions.
A decent ingame sports car? That would be about 10 to 15 real life bucks, sir.
In addition, I'm experiencing many crashes; the game apparently can't run for 2 hours without crashing.
No, this can not be attributed to my "bad pc xd", it's simply poor optimisation on Rockstar's part.
Many newer features (anything that has to do with being CEO of a company or part of a group of bikers, probably more features as well) are only accessible in a public lobby, meaning you'll have to deal with griefers, cheaters and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in general. Every time you start the online mode, you will be drowned in text messages and phone calls that are basically Rockstar's way of nagging you to pay for their microtransactions.
In addition, the singleplayer mode has and will not recieve any of the new weapons and cars, as far as I know.

All in all, I would recommend you don't play the game.
Rockstar already have enough whales to make microtransacion money off.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, basically a way to get a quick look at what The Phantom Pain is going to be like, it is recommended that you pick this game up while it's on sale or as part of the MGSV Definitive experience pack.

Ground Zeroes begins some time after the events of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, giving the player a quick recap of what happened during that game as well as Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Spoilers ahead for those two games. You have been warned.

Naked Snake (also known as Big Boss) enters "Camp Omega", a place based on Guantanamo Bay, in order to rescue the child soldier Chico and Paz, a 16-year-old girl who studied peace. She was actually a spy who had infiltrated the military organisation he built with his ally, Kazuhira Miller: "Militaires Sans Frontières" (Soldiers without borders), an "Army without a nation", however was sent drifting through the ocean after hijacking the MSF's super weapon "Metal Gear ZEKE" and being defeated by Big Boss.

Players can approach the Mission in many different ways, all of them more or less efficient in one way or another, but since this is Metal Gear Solid, stealth is usually the best way to go.
Big Boss is usually armed with a lethal assault rifle and a non-lethal handgun, both suppressed, but suppressors on fully-automatic weapons will wear out after some time, requiring the player to carefully place his shots or avoid firing his guns whatsoever.
The secondary weapon for most missions is a handgun that fires tranquilizer rounds. If the player shoots an enemy with this gun, said enemy will fall asleep after some time. How long exactly the enemy takes to fall asleep depends on how close the shot was to the head: a headshot will cause the enemy to fall asleep immediately, a shot in the arm or the torso takes a few seconds and a shot in the foot will take quite some time.
This forces the player to be very cautious, since an enemy spotting them at long range will probably not allow them to land a perfect headshot, since bullet drop will kick in as soon as a shot leaves the weapon's effective range.

If the main mission itself wasn't enough for you, you can also unlock additional side ops that, upon completion, will net you some nice rewards you can use in The Phantom Pain.

However, be warned: The port isn't exactly perfect.
For about one or two seconds after leaving the pause menu, your mouse will still be moving along the screen, i. e. you can't look around or aim for that time. The sensitivity also actually causes the mouse to simply skip a few pixels, which makes using a sniper rifle very frustrating. The CQC mechanic allows you to grab an enemy by holding the left mouse button, holding Q and then hitting up, down, left or right on your keyboard (only up and left are used in CQC, down works only if your target has dropped his gun because you sneaked up on him and pointed your gun at him, right is unused as far as I know).

However, if you can see past that, you get quite an amazing "tech demo" that might just be enough to properly hype you up for The Phantom Pain.

Also, please insert obligatory joke about violins here.