Recent reviews by Qu4tr0

My monster rises when I hunt.

Really disgusting how literally unplayable this game is, and they happily released it here without even bothering to do anything about it. Pretty sad, because I absolutely loved this game as a kid.

To finish the story in total it takes about 20-30 hours, which depending on what price you grab the game is really good or mediocre. The story is nice, has a few perhaps predictable plot twists to keep it interesting, however the real fun in my eyes begins after you've beaten the game, if you opt to go for collecting all the badges on each mission, meaning replayability is pretty high but it has an ultimate end.

Every level has a new mechanic introduced or something special about it, which makes the gameplay pretty dynamic, doesn't let you settle in a singular strategy and keeps you on your toes.

The game tries it's best to keep you unrestricted, doesn't force you into playing a certain way and lets you come up with your own interesting solutions to each problem. Even levels where things seem straight forward, there's multiple avenues you can take, and none of them feel scripted or like this is exactly how they wanted you to play, which gives it a great feeling of freedom.

There's 3 difficulties, each being what you'd expect from them, and they cater well to the type of player that would select either one of them, whether you just want to experience the story and do some ninja stuff, or be challenged and appropriately rewarded.

Each mission has "badges" that are basically challenges for that mission. Most of them are unique for each mission, except 2 that are always present: beating it on hardcore difficulty, and speedrunning it within a certain time.
These challenges range from not using a certain ability, not killing enemies but incapacitating them, to helping civilians or extinguishing light sources. Each badge changes how you'd approach a level and is fun and engaging in its own way. This is where I think the true meat of the game is, since it's pushing you to come up with new and creative ways to complete the mission.

I've had a blast scanning through the badges for a certain mission, and trying to challenge myself to complete multiple of them if not all of them at the same time. It's extremely rewarding to spend 2 hours on a single mission, pushing the game's mechanics to it's limits and completing all but the speedrunning badge at the same time, after which you have such a mastery over the level, that you can speedrun it in 5 minutes, even though the timelimit the developers set was 30 minutes.

At these times you truly feel rewarded for mastering the game, by being able to pull off big actions fluently and chain them continuously, micromanaging multiple characters and enemies at the same time.

The 5 characters you end up controlling all feel different and unique, from Yuki who likes to lure enemies in, Mugen that excels at dealing with groups of enemies, or Takuma that can safely pick off enemies from a distance. Each have unique abilities that allow a plethora of different strategies, especially when you combine them with each other and start tying things together.

The graphic and sound design are both well done, each sound is responsive and clear as to which mechanic it's tied to, and the graphics are always exactly representative of what they're trying to portray, each enemy sight cone is exactly what it shows, never less, never more, etc.

I've encountered only 4 bugs in total over the span of 85 hours, 3 of the same and 1 unique; all of which were easily fixed by loading a earlier save, which isn't exactly a hindrance due to the game incentivizing saving very frequently.

My only gripe with the game is it's movement input recognition at certain times, and realizing what the player wants to do. The input and controls are fluid for the most part, and while the game does try to predict a bit what the player wants to click, etc. sometimes it does a bad job at it. If there's an wagon that you cannot climb on or interact with in any way, and you're clicking around it to move quickly, clicking on the top of the wagon takes the input, realizes that you cannot climb it, and just makes you stop dead in your tracks. Pretty nonsensical, since if I cannot climb on it, and I click on it, clearly I'd want to go behind it; either ignore the input or read it like I'm trying to go to a location behind it.

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All in all if you're a fan of real-time tactic games, or it just sounds interesting to you, I'd definitely recommend it. They've recently announced a "big stand alone addon", which as someone who isn't frequent in these types of games I'm happy to hear and excited to dive in anew.

A great simple game to pick at your mind for a short time, perfect for those moments where you have a couple of free extra minutes and want to entertain yourself with something real quick. Definitely my favorite game to open up while sitting in a queue for another game, waiting for an installation, on a loading screen, etc.

Personally I cant say I enjoyed the human-created levels too much, because there are instances where it's a 50/50 guess, or it revolved into this guessing game you have with the creator. I much prefer the randomly generated levels since they're always 100% solvable and there's 0 guessing involved, ever.

Nevertheless, probably one of the better 5€ I've spent.

Despite it shutting down, and people going haywire about it, I believe this is by far my favorite concept game that never got to flourish and I never got to experience fully.

The sense of freedom and relaxation this game has provided me with in the small 40 hours I've played of it, I think I'll never forget. Call me a nerd, but the sense of adrenaline that rushes through your body as you jump off an airship that your friend is flying, into the certain death and nothingness below, only to latch onto it last second with your grappling hook, and to launch yourself back up, was one of my favorite experiences from any game. Soaring through the sky, manipulating how you move with the ever-so-wonky but nonetheless satisfying grappling hook, exploring intricate and interesting community made maps, the game in it's current state didn't have much content or much to do, but the little things you were able to do felt really fun.

Sad that the game was littered with bugs and seemingly inexperienced or incompetent developers that weren't able to cross that wall they've hit and make the game they truly wanted to make.

No matter what the reason is or how this journey ends, I'll cherish the memories I've made in it for times to come.

GTA V was an amazing game when it came out. I've bought it twice, on the original release on the PS3, and again first day it released on the PC. While it had a lot of issues and difficulties keeping you in sessions, not having horrific loading times, etc. on the PS3, it was somewhat understandable. Sure Rockstar is a big company, but this was their first time at something this huge, so some hurdles we're to be expected.

What isn't expected is for that same big, now even bigger company amassing unfathomable amounts of money just from milking this game, yet those problems still existing. Matchmaking is still garbage, even 4 years of such a huge game release I've known to sit in a lobby for 10 minutes, waiting for people to connect for a incredibly popular mission to say the least. The fact that if I wanted to play the game right now, I'd have to boot up the game and sit for no less than 5-10 minutes to just get into a session with other players, and the best thing about is that if you Alt-Tab to try and do something else instead of sit in front of your screen, it will actually stop trying to connect you to a session. The time I'd take me to get into a session to even start playing this game, I could play a match or two of Rocket League, or a plethora of other things in other games.

Not to mention the disgusting business methods Rockstar and TakeTwo have been implementing, downright forcing people to either play 24/7 for the rest of their lives if they want to keep up with the content, or literally forced to purchase microtransactions to be able to participate in the newer content.

Instead of trying to fix original issues, bugs and problems, that have persisted for the whole duration of the game's existence, the only thing they've been doing is trying to find more ways to milk money out of this seemingly originally good, but in it's current state god-awful game.

The only thing that is keeping this game alive is the addition of community map creations, and the game is split in small, dedicated fan groups who are based either on YouTubers and interacting with them, or certain activities like Racing and hosting events for those.

It's pretty saddening to see a community favorite developer go from making such classic hits and changing the gaming in general to performing such disgusting acts of pure greed. Even their recent game, Red Dead Redemption 2 that's been waited for for so long, is an amazing single player game, but in multiplayer, it reeks of microtransactions and shows that they've adapted this scummy business method for the unforeseeable future and will try to milk money in pathetic ways out of every game they make from now on.

A lovely little game from an ever so cheeky developer, clearly made with love and passion.

Simple in its core, it can still present a nice challange, especially if you're willing to pull a few hairs out and try to master its "Rush" mode, aka speedrunning. There's also a bunch of secerets to uncover, and a bit of mindwork if you want to 100% the game's achievements without external help.

While you're rolling around, the game's text will try to guide you, mislead you or sometimes, like everything in life, stab you in the back with the first chance it gets. The thing I loved about this, is that it actually felt like the developer themselves are talking to you, which is pretty obvious, but it felt personal, and therefore more enticing.

The only objection I'd have is; while it's unintrusive in normal mode, there's seems to be a bug of sorts that affects you the most in Rush mode, that sometimes delays your spawn a tiny bit. In normal mode it doesn't really matter, but in Rush, while you're trying to crack down on a time, slowly building muscle memory, it can really kill the vibe. If I reset the level 5 times and spawn in lets say 0.1 seconds every time, and the next, 6th spawn suddenly takes 1 second to spawn me, it actually messed with me quite a bit on a bunch of ocasions. Thankfully, the fix is easy; just don't die.

Rarely do I finish a game and immeditely check the developer to see if they have any other gems I can buy and experience, so all in all, I'd absolutely recommend buying it.

I hope I get Alzheimer's one day, so I can experience this masterpiece over and over again.

I was really excited to play this game when I originally got it. The setting and atmosphere are great, our main protagonist has a good amount of personality and the story is decent enough.

That being said, with how the gameplay plays out, I just couldn't force myself to play through it, and I really wanted to.

I personally think the game would have been infinitely better with one simple change like making the game a 3rd person based one, rather than 1st person. I feel like 1st person ruins so much of how the gameplay plays out.

Sure, 1st person view would be better for immersion and roleplaying purposes, but that idea gets kicked out immediately as soon as you do anything else except walk around.

The game utilizes a cover base system where you're put in 3rd person. Performing a take down? 3rd person. Talking to someone? 3rd person. Using a cool looking augment? 3rd person.

You get my point. For pretty much everything you do, the game kicks you out of 1st person and shows you an animation in 3rd person, so 1st person being there for the sake of immersion is absolutely non-existent. If we we're originally always in 3rd person, we'd get to look at our protagonist and all his sick looking augments, as well as not have that weird transition between 1st and 3rd person view.

Take a look at the little action clips they have on the "about this game" section of this page. Wouldn't it be sick if you could do that in the game, seeing it from that perspective? You can still do cool things in the game, but it ends up feeling really lack luster because you can't really experience it from 1st person without animations as you would from 3rd.

There's also a pretty horrible system in place for jumping and climbing. The first mission in town tells you to go to a store in an alleyway who's main enterance is guarded by goons. So what you're supposed to do is climb into an appartment nearby and crawl through a vent inside. You have to do a bit of parkour to get to the balcony of the appartment, and at certain points I felt like they don't want me to go up there, even though it's clear I should. The character jumped and got stuck in an animation of climbing on the weirdest little stupid ledges, but then it didn't want to grab onto a main ledge whatsoever. Or when trying to cross a gap that is literally in leg's reach, I'd have to sprint and jump to it, only to slide off 20 times for no reason other than the character not deciding to enter the animation to climb and grab the ledge.

Also it has the regular bad-stealth game problems, where you get spotted through a tree top that is so dense you can barely shoot a bullet through it, but the normal human NPC can see right through, NPCs knowing exactly where you are at all times once you're in combat, and so on.

Be smart and go buy Stronghold HD, thank me later. It's infinitely better, and cheaper as well.