Recent reviews by Niz

[The Review's using my Standard Edition Hours instead of my Director's Cut hours of the game, as of the time of writing I have 243 hours in Director's Cut and I highly recommend that version over standard as it adds perks, precision shot, and some quality of life changes.]

Honestly one of the best iso rpgs I've ever played. Don't get me wrong, the game's ugly, there's only a handful of character models in the game, so it's super dependent on its portraits, and it can be pretty daunting at first because of how heavily it depends on the hotkeys. It makes up for this by having portraits with ample personality and a beautiful UI system that fits seamlessly into the setting, though the game does have the issue of not having enough portraits for everyone, so you will see some reused or variations of the same one. The game also has tons of means to express your squad via customization, the ammo system builds a sense of the matter of survival in the post apocalypse as you attempt to manage your ammo, make sure your weapons are armed, and not jammed. The weapon skill's system makes certain weapons stronger early game than others, but others can be way more rewarding with superior crit scaling on leveling the skill. The perk system Director's Cut adds encourages more build synergy while not going too far to streamline it. Combat is very simple, but far from the sole focus of the game, there's a lot of in-squad interactions like having a mechanical repair expert fix locks that your locksmith broke via crit failure. The skill check system is pretty forgiving and excellent at giving players solid risk assessment while providing multiple approaches to most situations, and the system also means you don't have to fully commit to a skill but you still are encouraged to.

People will probably say the story is very linear, which is true. There's one ending that isn't just a bad end, the line of objectives will remain the same as well, the game is pretty up-front that you play as Desert Rangers and that comes with very specific responsibilities your squad are expected to fulfill. But how you approach them can drastically change, for an example I'll go with Damonta, which is a difficult location near the end of the first half of the game that burns through a ton of the resources you collected up to this point to save the people there. The items you can pick up from the enemies are heavy and effectively worthless, the rewards you get from the people are not at all worth it. However, your objective is halfway into the map, so you could just blitz towards it, complete the objective, and leave, and you will have completed the mission. But this results in the radio host of the town leaving a parting "♥♥♥♥ you" message in regard of everyone you left to die, the game punishes you for being a good guy by making it inconvenient, it's an excellent system of morality without having to quantify it in the game itself and showing the difficulties of being a lawbringer in the wasteland. The main conflict is constantly looming in the story but is subtly placed, to the point your first time playing you may not even notice that they've orchestrated the majority of the conflict in the game.

If you are to get this game, I will warn you ahead of time, the combat isn't very exciting compared to other isometric rpgs, a lot of the game's best parts is doing things that either avoid combat or being rewarded for preparing accordingly. The visuals are very plastic, and some of the quality of life changes are locked away in the Director's Cut, but if you can get past that, the story is amazing, the game's very good at demonstrating that you need to do more than the minimum to help the people you're protecting, and the finale is the best I've ever seen in a game like this, coming full circle in the message of the story but also making the player hesitate to accept the positive outcome because it risks the lives of people they saved before. An excellent game, but definitely an acquired taste and you may want to give it a look ahead of time to make sure you're okay with how it plays beforehand.

A heads up for anyone not aware of Awesomenaut's current state, the playerbase plays on 3.2 now that the Galactron servers are down, which was before the f2p patch. In short, this DLC does not work on the pre-f2p versions of the game. If you didn't own the game before 3.2, you will be missing any available nauts from the Starstorm and Overdrive expansions. Even with the all-nauts pack, even if you buy each character on their own. Don't waste your money on this.

Honestly, I'm a little on the fence on this game, as I write this, I am not sure if I would recommend it or not. This was another small time game in the part of the horror genre that I miss dearly, and wish there are more of out there at this point. But since this type of game has been around for a while, and was more likely inspired by early Silent Hill and Lone Survivor, I would not say that it is lacking tough competitors, I've been meaning to do this for a while, so with that, let's go over the game Claire piece by piece:

Gameplay: Claire's gameplay is a bit odd, sanity management can be difficult in levels where eerie things are happening, which makes things a bit more frustrating considering one. small... detail, but I will get to that in a minute, I promise you that. Claire's mechanics mean she needs a flashlight for lighting, but there have been about 2 or 3 times where I have actually needed a flash light, I'm not sure if it helps with your sanity or anything, it's just there, and the lighter works just as well. Now one problem with Claire that is similar in Lone Survivor is the map system, oh dear lord the map system. In Lone Survivor, it wasn't as bad because they slowly, and gradually give you more and more of the map to learn and get used to, and by the time you get the new stuff, the old routes are already memorized and easy to get through, sure there's a spot or two you may miss, but most of the time, it doesn't break your game flow. With Claire, however, you are set from different location to different location very often and I do not think you go to a single one twice.

This means, once you no longer need the map and you know the place like the back of your hand, you're put in a completely different area and it's back to staring at the map, and it breaks immersion. It is also a tad difficult to figure out how maps made with ups and downs works in a 2D sidescroller at times, Also, not to spoil anything, but the monster at the end is the only one you are supposed to fight, you can't fight the others, but this one, you can, which can be a bit confusing when you got so used to hiding in closets and boxes. One thing that really annoyed me is that your loyal pet Anubis was only used to alert you when monsters were nearby, and to comfort you in a couple moments, why this annoys me is because due to a majority of the puzzles being confusing and vague, all I remember is really wishing Anubis could find notes for me or lead me to hints, anything. But that might just be me thinking about Mercy in Valiant Hearts, I just might have high expectations for friendly dog characters now.

Story: Claire's overall story and plot twist is... Well, to not spoil it, think of 3 typical horror story plot twists, and think of the common or overused ones. Chances are, one of those three, if you guessed the ending with it, was right on the money. This does not make the story bad, though, not necessarily, it's pretty hard to think up of plot twists in horror stories at times, especially a completely original one, it's still being done, but it is difficult. I don't think that's necessarily the problem with Claire, Claire's character is pretty well defined for the short time she is given, strong willed, responsible, hard to upset, as well as other features that I will not get into just yet. I think the issue is the game gives you too many answers, in a shady game with a lot of interpretation such as this one, giving this many clear answers may not be a good thing, I'm glad they're leaving that comfort zone, but a lot of things become a lot less interesting once their mystery is gone, but not explaining enough will only annoy people and nothing else, so you have to find that sweet spot of mystery and answers, and I think Claire leans too much towards answers.

Another problem is that they give a lot of small characters that are likely symbolic to Claires mindset and past, which is all well and good, but there are a lot of them, and they all usually make one impression, or depending on what you do, technically, two impressions. So some seem to not give you any information on her, and others seem like they could have done much more if given more time, and a few are downright forgettable, you can easily end up with any of the endings not interacting with every single one, just an amount depending on the ending. The game is not entirely that predictable, and doesn't give you ALL the answers, we are not certain what happened that lead to this, what the exact trigger was, or if anyone Claire used to know is still alive or not, although it is implied in one ending (Good lord this takes a lot of beating around the bush). I feel like they should have taken the Lone Survivor route, rather than about 10 characters giving you small important things to the story, and are a part of your personality and past, have 3 different types of characters that cover three different categories of the protagonist, I will tell you I can remember more about the main three illusive characters, and likely the side characters as well in Lone Survivor than the crowd in Claire. I will say one thing, though, it takes one of those crappy childhood moves in the game, and it did not go anywhere near the way I thought it was going. When they brought up an issue in the family, and violence in the family, it's incredibly unlikely you guessed which family member caused the issues when it was happening. But let's end on a lighter note on this subject before I end up spoiling the hardest to predict part of the story, I do enjoy how this game has a bit of it's own lore, Claire has her own depiction of the Carebears being her childhood enjoyment, she even has it as her ringtone for nostalgia, it must have been at least a decade that had pased and she still remembers that song, and one of the few things I remember very well in this game is the theme song to that in Claire, and good ol' sun cola.

In Summary: I do recommend this game, but not for the majority If you like Lone Survivor, and the earlier Silent Hill, you'll likely like this as well, because it's a bit more of it. The game looks nice, with a lovely bit of lighting. Even with awkward maps and a lot of side tracking, you can get a bit of enjoyment off of the development of the character and her past, it is a fairly interesting one despite the obvious parts, and there actually is some unpredictability in the bits and pieces despite what I said. If you're looking for a game that has an understandable map, more memorable side characters rather than atmosphere, something with a higher replay value than maybe 4 runs through at max, more likely than not, this is not the game for you, and with it usually being 10 dollars, I'm afraid you might be able to do better. Although I don't recommend it to all, for those who do, I bet you'll enjoy it for what it gives you.

Go Elks!

Alright kids, gather around it's story time, go ahead and scroll down for the summary Billy, I already know you're gonna. The Dark Project 4 is a free2play game, and if you've already read the reviews, you already know it's incredibly pay2win. Well, here's an example, on a site where I've played this up to level 10, I got the AUG, the AUG does 175 damage max, which is good, it's minimum isn't much different! Let's say you're... Oh, level 2, follow me here, there's a point. let's say you put 2 levels on stregnth, let's say you bought all the stregnth upgrades, that's 110 real life currency, add a little more cash on the side, you can get the gatling gun... The gatling gun, at level 2... It does 290 damage per shot, and has 7.5 reload time, ok, and the aug has 4 seconds. Sounds fair at first, but then you account for the fact that it has a little over 7 times the ammo... So it does about 60% more damage... Fires ever so slightly faster, and has a 7 times the ammo which easily makes up for the almost double reload time. Even better? In a stroke of luck, I got a free small amount of cash currency from this flash game site for being there for so long, I used it on tdp4 for the hell of it, yes, the aug is not even a free item, it costs about 14 real money currency. So lemme just sum this up, a Level 10, not even an entirely free account, can easily be outmatched by a level 2 that has put money in the game. That's only level 2, take a swig every time you run into a fellow with a rocket launcher close to level 10.

So we went over the elephant in the room, let's go over the gameplay, huh? On the site that I have an experienced character on, the game runs decent, solid frames on said site. Problem was, you could not access to the options without joining a game, you have to join a game, to change the options, and the options are basic, I mean, BASIC. Change in gore, keys to press to do things, that's about it, no out or in on fullscreen or anything like that, so if you play on steam, you're likely stuck in fullscreen, if you play on other sites, it's windowed. Not only are the optiosn poor, so is the shop system, you cannot see how much an item is until you reach the minimum requirements, so you either have to look it up, or hope that it's not too much by the time you unlock it, if you have to look up the prices in a shop of a game outside the game, something's wrong. Steam's letting in too many flash games mostly for the fact that they're multiplayer and free to play, most of the time we're not going to get much quality, usually stuff like Brick Force and this, I love flash games, I really do, I could make a large list of flash games I grew up on and adored. With that being said, I don't think flash games should take up the featured unless they're real quality, maybe have a section for flash games, but something's gotta change or we're going to end up with stuff like Freefall and S.A.S zombie assault 4. Not neccesarily bad games, but rely heavily on making you pay for them to even enjoy long term or sometimes even short term.

In summary, it's incredibly pay2win, I mean, battlefield heroes pay2win at least. The progression in levels slows down very quickly, and is prob'ly not worth your time unless you have the money to spare, and even then I advice using it elsewhere. One last thing: The respawn system is flawed and inconvenient, so to fix this, they have respawn protection... That you also have to buy, and you cannot buy it permenantly.

Ok, children, go upstairs for bedtime and don't forget to pray to the Gabe for sales.

I really like Awesomenauts, I usually lack patience and strategy in most MOBA games, but Awesomenauts is the exception, I do feel it's somewhat simplified in comparison, yes, but that's not necessarly a bad thing. A game with simple mechanics can have large amounts of room for creativity, because then it's easier to learn, giving more people a chance to get creative. Although I don't agree with some of the things, like having a DLC for a bunch of new characters, and a separate DLC for a new announcer in the game, the bots aren't the most amazing, and limited as well. But the game can easily be enjoyed otherwise, the new characters are generally limited in strengths so they're not pay to win, hell, most of the people who get the DLC characters don't play all of them often. The game's still an enjoyable experience, picking from a vast group of characters with unique personalities, themes, and upgrading systems, rather than leveling up the same ways as everyone else who picks that character, you can pick your own personal upgrades for specific character abilities, as well as universal character upgrades that can mean the distance between being caught in a tight spot, or dying because you didn't have the gear to get out of said tight spot. If you don't mind a little bit of corny humor and movie references, I think this game is a good buy. Also, Ashly friggin' Burch!

This is a game that knows how to mess with your head, it's not just like any zombie apocolypse where you can just shoot all of the zombies and you're good to go, oh no, it's also not just a gme that focuses on survival, keeping you alive and happy is all you have to do? Think again, this game is also about keeping sane, eating rats and rotting meat, while talking to inanimate objects is the easy way out, but it's also a big no-no, and the game will punish you for it soon enough, what's crazy is the game has so much deliberate mystery, there are so many theories about the end, some that I have myself, this is a game you can replay and think to yourself "Is this real? Is this fake? Has he done this before?" It even has a great fear factor for a pixelated game? Ever heard the sounds they play if one of those things notice you? Heart attack worthy the first time.