Recent reviews by Thenimas

A perfect trilogy. Amazing story, worldbuilding, likeable and developed characters, and atmosphere to spare. None of the games came off to me as the "weak link", it's an immersive, wonderful story from front to back.

Never doubting your judgement again, Soom.

I've been been playing Terraria since version 1.2 on console and I somehow haven't bought the soundtrack??? Literally one of the most praised parts of my favourite game of all time?

Literally how. Well, I've rectified this mistake now. I know the tracks are slightly different than in the actual game, but I'm fine with a bit of a different mix. There's always youtube or just extracting the wavebank yourself if you want the original versions,

I seriously just... Wow. What an amazing game. And I should be hunted down by the Reaper himself for foolishly taking 7 months to finish it.

As an entry within the Ace Attorney franchise, it's really more of a spiritual reboot than a prequel. It's obviously in the same universe, but this and the rest of the series are separated by about 100-150 years or so, and there's no real plot thread between this and the rest of the series besides the names implying ancetral connections to the characters in the main series - But you can play this game just fine without any knowledge of the main series.

And this premise works in the game's favour. From what I've heard of the game's development, the reboot aspect was a deliberate choice to condense down the gameplay and story by a lot (For example, the main series often has to tiptoe around or explain away fingerprints as evidence. Here? Not an issue - the science for that doesn't exist yet). Aswell, the main series (ESPECIALLY the later sequels) suffer because of some admittedly poor decisions on how to keep the continuity going - but again, here that's not an issue because none of that matters for the time period the story is set in.

I'm not much of a game reviewer, I can't highlight much else that hasn't already been said by other people. If you need any more convincing, just watch a review of the game (TRY TO AVOID SPOILERS THOUGH! Seriously. Even if you're someone like me who typically doesn't care about spoilers, just don't. Trust me. For THIS series, you don't want spoilers.)

I will praise one other aspect in particular. THE SOUNDTRACK - HOLY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥. I was admittedly skeptical about an orchestral ace attorney score - But it is seriously sex on the ears. They've added so many new and unique themes that fit every situation perfectly, and every piece just slams! It never misses! Seriously, it's that legendary! It's hands down my favourite Ace Attorney OST - Ever. And if you know anything about Ace Attorney music, that's some STIFF ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ competition. The soundtrack just workes that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ well, and each piece is also just amazing individually. It's seriously a marvel.

The last thing I will mention that might be a positive or negative depending on how you see it - this game is LONG, for Ace Attorney standards. Even though it's technically a compilation of two games, story-wise it's basically just an Ace Attorney game with 10 cases instead of 2 games with the standard 5 cases each. The second game is a direct continuation of the first and pretty much everything that happens in the first game sets up everything that happens in the second game - they're not really separable in the slightest.

The reason this is a bit of an issue is I kinda got burned out a little bit into the third case of the second game and ended up putting the game down for quite a few months - And well, the end is seriously worth sticking through the entire game. I'm just autistic and have issues fixating on a game for too long, what can I say.

the swarm

help

i think i actually like this game

This pack is fine, but DON'T PAY FULL PRICE FOR IT. It is not worth $27.

It's just more Half-Life 2. If you like Half-Life 2 (especially if you're interested in what happens after that game ends), you'll like this expansion (it's ~3 hours of content, about the length of Blue Shift)

Everyone loves Half-Life 2. I love Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is good.

Go play Half-Life 2.

I actually think this is the weakest of the GoldSrc Half-Life games, but it's still worth checking out. My main gripes with it are the weapon selection doesn't feel as fleshed-out and balanced as the original Half-Life, some of the chapters in the midgame just feel like aimless filler and the last few chapters felt incredibly rushed. Other than that, it's authentic Half-Life but with some new stuff added in.

I like a lot of the weapons they added, my favourite being the Desert Eagle, which combines the raw power of the Revolver with the speed & consistency of the normal Pistol. The SAW (the machine gun) is a fun toy to play with when you do get the chance, since ammo is sparse and it chews through that stuff. The sniper rifle is basically just the crossbow but hitscan.

The shockroach gun (or whatever it's called) is a better weapon than the hivehand (the weapon it replaces), but it doesn't have the shooting around corners niche, instead it's just an all-rounder (sorta like what the SMG and shotgun are for except it doesn't require ammo). I'm not sure what the point of the spore launcher is. It's cute, i'll give them that, but you already have tons of explosives at that point. It's just sorta there.

You get to see so much more of Black Mesa, and so many things that raise questions (like stuff that was brought up back in Questionable Ethics), it's neat and I love it.

The introduced expanded enemies ("Race X" yeah really tried on the name there guys) are nice, but some of them are a pain in the ass to deal with. There's a part of the game where they just spam these giant walker-looking enemies that shoot energy orbs at you and have SO MUCH ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HEALTH, ALL OF THEM.

As alluded to earlier, this game seems to be a bit less generous with the ammo pickups than the original Half-Life (probably to encourage use of the Displacer), but there were parts of the game where I seriously had no ammo for like 50% of my weapons. So, watch out.

Overall, it's good, but some of the things it tried weren't perfect in execution.

This is not a "shoot first, think later" game, you need to approach every situation like how Gordon Freeman (a theoretical physicist) would. If you follow that, it's a very good game.

The last few chapters suck, but everything else in the game is full of different situations with different kinds of enemies that all require first looking at what's around you & using the tools and tactics at your disposal to solve each predicament, and I found almost all of it to be fun & enjoyable (even On A Rail)

Weird take, but I actually really like the graphics in this game. I've always found janky low-poly graphics to be strangely charming and endearing. Obviously, objectively not that great by modern standards but come on. Who even wants hyperrealism anyways? Instead we have goofy looking scientists that make funny noises.

It is for that reason that I highly reccomend DISABLING the HD models in the settings if you buy this game, since they don't really help matters that much (Plus I'm not a fan of what they did to the weapons)

If you haven't played it or tried it before and gave it up, seriously give it another chance. It's very fun if you know how to play it properly.