Recent reviews by d3Nk

To put it simply, it's an Early Access game way too early into the development to be an Early Access game. The game has a humongous pile of flaws and bugs that simply makes it unenjoyable, at times even unplayable. However, it has potential. You can tell that the team behind the game is passionate and in a few months time, once all the issues are fixed, it could become a title worth playing. But as is, it simply cannot be recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z8cSiBRZzk

Hired Ops is a game from Absolut Soft, whom which you may know from Contract Wars, a pretty popular browser based FPS released during 2012. I personally have very fond memories with Contract Wars, it being my first true Multiplayer First Person Shooter and basically the only game I played til late 2015 when I got into Counter-Strike. The game had it's flaws, you couldn't sprint, shotguns and snipers were overpowered, but as far as browser based games went, it was alright.

HO >Hired Ops< is also a successor to Contract Wars, taking the franchise to the modern age by adding sprinting, leaning and better graphics, all though by 2016 standards they were still far behind. Crosshairs are also removed, taking the game one step closer to the Hardcore FPS it wants to be and that's it. Everything else is somehow worse than it was on CW and that game hasn't aged too well on it's own.

Moving, even now that there's sprinting, feels way too slow and clunky, visabilty, lighting, maps, the inconsistency in weapon damage, purchasable airstrikes, drones, sonars etc, snipers being even more overpowered than they used to, to the point where they're the only viable weapon, optimization, the lack of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ server browser - all of this combined makes one heck of an experience that simply isn't fun + add that players are absolute sponges when being shot to the body.

Really the only compliment I could give the game is that hip fire-ing feels awesome.

In some ways, it still feels like Contract Wars and I did get a sense of nostalgia out of it, they kept the same kill notices, the design of the game feels familiar, contracts are still there, being more difficult and.. bugged and the progression system is roughly the same.. all though it wasn't the best then and still isn't now. It takes an absurd amount of time just to unlock a single weapon for 1 of the four operators and then you'll still have to buy it. What really bumms me out is the In-match progression. Doing basically anything during a match gives you money and for that cash you can buy upgrades, healthpacks, gadgets etc. They removed the skill tree from CW, which you used to upgrade your character a little with Skill Points, by reducing recoil as an example, slowly, overtime and you earned those points by leveling up. There are also no killstreaks, due to things such as the sonar and mortal strikes are now implemented into the in-match progression system, meaning you could buy them.. whenever! For some forsaken reason they also added the ability to see enemies locations through walls, not just on the minimap. All this entire system does is take away a real "need" to get better, promotes nade-spamming and camping.

While it may work in concept, in reality it changes an unbalanced game to a unplayable one. It also doesn't help that the maps available are a bad gamble, you either get an abomination to the mankind, or something that's passable. Really the only map I'd consider "good" is Bay 5, which is only accessible in deathmatch and a remaster of a already existing map in CW. Speaking of deathmatch, one of the best gamemodes used to be the VIP. A random player would spawn in as one and it was your teams duty to protect them, while the other team tried their best to eliminate the VIP. It was fun and chaotic, but instead we now have a bland "kill this amount of players to win" TDM gamemode.

Hired Ops could have been a great successor to Contract Wars. Instead, they opted to go in for a blander version of the original and a cash crab, which didn't even turn out successful. There are many great Free to Play games out there, that could use your time much more, with some of them being seriously underrated and fun. I did not enjoy my time with Hired Ops and do not recommend it. If anything, HO is a spit in the face to the legacy left behind by Contract Wars.

I want to like this game, as said prior CW used to be the only game I played. I know that the game will get some changes in the near future and if it really does improve, I'm be more than happy to change my stand on the game.

I've had my fair share playing Battle-Royale games, having clocked in thousands of hours into them. However, Bean Battles surprised me. It doesn't try to copy every existing BR game out there, but rather bring to the table it's own mechanics. Looting isn't the main aspect of the game, due to weapons are everywhere and most hold their place in the game! Being the last bean standing isn't the most important factor to if you're going to win or not. It's fast paced and the maps are considerably smaller than in most other games in the genre, but all of this promotes more aggressive playstyle - leading to a much more fun and action filled overall experience, due to you almost never get the change to feel bored. It almost feels like a deathmatch game, yet still feels like a Battle-Royale!

Map design works, you're bound to find a one that suits you out of the tree that are available. They can get repetitive, but in the 80 hours of playtime as I have writing this review, that hasn't happened. Imagine it being the same as re-playing the same maps in Counter-Strike, getting to know them better and better as time goes on. Gunplay is surprisingly rewarding, every weapon has it's own recoil pattern and getting good at managing them takes skill. You also still have items you'd expect from a BR: medkits, grenades, knives.. katanas, rocket-boots etc. The thing that makes BB well, BB in my eyes is the Movement! The slow jump takes time to get used to, but once you do, it opens up a LOT of possibilities. Parkour, silent jumping, strafing mid-air to dodge bullets, this is by far one of the best things in the game!

The community definitely on the smaller side. There's always a moment when someone is playing, but be prepared to wait. Luckily, you can always host your own server through game and it's still good playing with just one other person, due to the size of the maps and speedy pacing. The game is being constantly updated, which is really cool considering that it's developed by a single person. In terms of progression, there are levels, leaderboards and cosmetics to be earned - and there are no microtransactions!

For the price, you definitely get what you payed for! The game is surprisingly addictive and does enough to keep you engaged for hours. The amount of new and unique mechanics differentiates it from other popular games in the genre and as far as 1$ games on steam go, this is a quality game worth your money and time!

If you're picking up the game, I suggest reading through my guide to get tips and pointers starting out: https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1820960790

This is a follow-up to my First Impressions had in the non Definitive Edition, where I go into great detail about every element of Ori and the Blind Forest. Link to the original review can be found here: https://steamproxy.com/id/d3Nkmess/recommended/261570/

All though you can't buy the original Ori and the Blind Forest on it's own on steam anymore, it comes as a free bonus when buying DE. Story is the same in both of them, but you get more content, options and features in DE, most notably a whole new "hidden" area (found this by accident while exploring through the map) where you unlock 2 new skills and expand the story by discovering Naru's past - all presented by a new, beautifully crafted special soundtrack and gameplay features. You don't even have to play the area at all if you so wish, but I highly recommend it; just like the main story, it's emotional and you really sympathize with the characters. Now you can also choose a difficulty between Easy, Normal, Hard and One-Life; warp between spirit wells and return to the same save even after you've finished the game. My personal favorite addition that comes with the DE is Theater mode, which allows you to see character concepts and footage from the games early development - which, if you are any-what of a fan, I recommend going through. Seeing how much it progressed is just phenomenal.

That being said, it all comes at a small cost which originally was the reason why I chose to play through the original first: unless you want to use V-Sync and run into "speed problems", the game is locked at 60fps, while the original has it unlocked. Now, I have a 144hz monitor and it bothers me when I can't reach my monitors full potential, but I really couldn't spot a difference between both versions. Both run smooth as is and if I didn't see the framerate, I wouldn't be able to tell a difference. In fact, the only reason I'm bringing this up as a whole is to save you a few hours of browsing about the "issue".

But which one should you play first? I'd recommend playing the original first, due to that allows you get to experience the game bare-bones and while playing DE, still be engaged and even surprised about everything new! But no matter which one you choose, you can't go wrong with either one. But thanks to the features DE offers, it has a lot more endgame content.

In this segment I want to briefly discuss some things I wasn't able to add to the First Impressions review. Ori and the Blind Forest has made me realize how bad trailers in general are. They simply spoil too much and there's nothing you can do about it. Ori was such a surprise to me personally, but I'm sure I would have been even more blown away if I didn't see the trailer and went in completely blind. So from now on, if there's a game that I'm even vaguely interested about, I'm going to cut myself off of any promotional material until I've actually finished playing the game.

Ori has also made me realize what a genius it takes to figure out a good, preset spawn point; due to Ori has none that are preset (besides the few wells and poi's), I find myself consistently making one.. or forgetting to make one.. or not being able to make one due to I haven't payed attention to my energy.. the point is, you are making a soul link wherever you want to. But let's look at games outside of Ori that have a preset spawn point, so many seem to add them either too consistently, to the point where dying loses it's value; or too spread up, forcing to repeat the same steps multiple times which just makes the game more frustrating. To find a game that strucks a balance between the two seems to be quite rare these days, and if the amazing spawn system Ori has thought me anything, It's that I really appreciate a good spawn point more now than ever.


Ori and the blind forest has proven to me that a platformer can be so much more than what I previously thought, having more depth than most other games I've played. I'm truly excited for the next game in the franchise, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, so far 2020 is shaping up to be one of the best years in gaming. If you're still wondering if you should pick this game up, I wholeheartedly recommend that you do. I, for one, will surely hop back to play the game even more!

This is my First Impressions review where I go in depth about every aspect of the game. Definitive Edition review can be found here: https://steamproxy.com/id/d3Nkmess/recommended/387290

Breathtaking. To give a little backstory, I've never been huge on platformer games, being born during the time when 3D and FPS games were becoming quite mainstream, those were the type of games I grew up playing. That's not to say that I didn't play any platformers what-so-ever, as an example I used to play a lot of Super Mario 63, (a solid 2D Flash-Copy of 64) - that, however, was a decade ago and I never really got any further than that. I decided that I want to get myself into the genre, seeing how still so many tend to play these type of games, which was always a mystery to me. Ori and the Blind Forest is the first game I got and so far the only one I've started and finished. I didn't look into it any more than just the trailer, so it was all fresh. I'm going to try not to spoil much anything with this review, due to I think that's how the game is supposed to be experienced - blind.

Throughout my playthrough, I died over 700+ times, collected about half of the health and energy cells, explored most (but not all) of the map and the playthrough itself lasted about 9 hours.

The first thing that struck me were the graphics. This game is absolutely gorgeous! I honestly can't even make comparisons, due to I can't think of a single game that struck me like Ori did. There are multiple areas in the game, each bringing their own atmosphere/style and every single one of them just absolutely nailed it! This game has a lot of screenshot material and you can bet I'm using one as my new wallpaper! Hence they are "cartoonish", they are also timeless. The animation was just way over-done, in the best way possible. Everything looks silky smooth, I couldn't spot anything that was even remotely rough. This is by far one of the best looking games I've ever seen, especially for a platformer.

What I think is the most important part of a platformer though, are the controls. I think this game is best experienced on a controller, due to while very much possible, on keyboard and mouse quick actions are much easier to screw up than on a controller. Personally, I played using keyboard and mouse and can't complain one bit. Everything works like a charm; throughout my 700+ deaths, not once did I feel it was the games fault, not mine. To add, none of the 700+ deaths threw me off, I don't know how, but they just didn't matter to me, I wanted to keep playing even after multiple times losing and losing and losing doing the same thing.. have I ever told you the definition of insanity... There are so many games that get this wrong, but Ori is not one of them. I want to talk about the skills for a second - it's so easy to to over do the amount of them. When I originally saw, while starting my playthrough, that eventually there will be 9 different skills, I thought it was going to get very confusing. It didn't - it's still very easy to navigate. I don't think, that after a few minutes using a new skill, I screwed up once. Skills themselves make Ori feel like a BADASS, I couldn't imagine a better set. This reminds me a lot of how Prototype made me feel, all though Ori is much more "destructible" - when played right, they are godsent. The enemies are all unique in their own way and just like the map (next segment) offer more to do with them as the game progresses. Every single one of them has a purpose, just like your Skills. Their placement even has a purpose. One of the biggest mistakes so many games do, is overcrowd and swarm a area with baddies, making it a pain to get through not cause of their effectiveness, but due to their volume. Ori does not have that issue what so ever.

The Forest of Nibel is one of, if not the most well crafted map I've played on in any game ever. The atmosphere and style aside, (which are amazing on their own) doing everything in an area and coming back to it later on and discovering that there is even more to do due to you got new abilities in a totally different zone felt INCREDIBLE! You will be re-visiting same areas for a few times, due to the game has no fast-travel systems. This is a good thing, mainly due to what I said above, but it also allows you to truly appreciate how much work went into making the map so well.. great! The way different zones just blend into each other is very well done and honestly, every single area in the game was so well done. There wasn't really a moment when I felt "lost" in this massive world, due to everything just works out, if you use logic. That's something that is really hard to do, due to so, so many games add stuff to make the game more complex and longer.. which makes them also more tedious. Not once did I feel like the game was trying to extend it's length, especially by making certain things unnecessarily more difficult. That's not to say that the map is small, in fact, it's quite huge. Something to also note is that there are no loading screens, meaning your immersion is never broken.

The story is full of emotions, memorable characters and is overall very solid and well built. It's mostly spoken through cutscenes - which there are 5, all crafted amazingly (I loved the addition of you being able to move in them) and dialog, backed up by a "ancient language" that you can't understand, but that actually makes it even better! The dialog that you do have is very minimal and mostly "built into the game" while you move around. The biggest way the story is spoken is through the map, the way it evolves, by you making it evolve. There are 6 main parts to the story, 6 "Events" to be exact. I don't want to spoil anything about them, due to they are worth every second of your experience. All I'm going to say that they are hard (More than 200 of my 700+ deaths came from those 6 events alone) but rewarding as hell. Let me add, that each time I started up Ori just to play it for a little while, I ended up being sunken into it for hours. I couldn't stop til I had to. I think it's everything in this game combined that just got me so immersed in the game that I just didn't want to leave. I would pinpoint out my favorite parts, but I honestly can't. That's not due to everything was underwhelming or mediocre, but the opposite: everything was spot on amazing! Same goes for the characters, which there are only a few, but those few are again, are stunning, all with a purpose and I'd take a few very well made characters over a buttload of badly written characters any day.

I was questioning where I should fit the soundtrack to, but it deserves it's own segment. One of the most overlooked things in games, that can make or break a game, is the soundtrack. Games with amazing OST's tend to do well, due to usually, when a OST is good, the game is good. I feel it's due to developers of those games realize how important each one element is for a good game and they put extra effort into the soundtrack, good examples would be DOOM (2016), Minecraft and I honestly have to add Ori into the list. Listening to this games music will on it's own fill you with emotions and I can say it's going to be very nostalgic in the future. Ori's OST is competing with Minecraft's OST in my head and that's saying a lot. Ori wouldn't be nowhere near as good as it is without the amazing music backing it up and a huge chunk of the atmosphere is brought by it itself. This is why, Ori's soundtrack is the only thing I can single out as being one of the best features in the game. Every single one of these songs is on point/amazing!


No game I've ever played has deserved a perfect score. Ori and the Blind Forest will be my first one. It knows what it sets out to do and it does it better than anything I've ever seen before. A true Masterpiece.

Far Cry 3 isn't anywhere near the best story game out there, not at the time, not now. But it is really, really enjoyable.


The Rook Islands is the best setting for a open world game that I've seen to date, it stunning and provides so much to do after you finish the story. Side quests aside, the game can double as a hunting simulator, triple as a outpost liberation simulator (cause you will want to reset it once you complete them all and do them again and again and again), quadruple as a treasure hunter simulator, quintuple a radio tower scrambler simulator.. there is so much to do, that it can get overwhelming at times. Gunplay feels very smooth and responsive, no complaints there. The game has a skill tree and a "upgradeable inventory system", which works pretty well aswell. Even just driving around on the island is fun. I can easily say that the game can provide more than a hundred hours of gameplay for the average player.

Vaas is one of, if not the best video game villain ever,that it's such a bummer he get's killed off so soon in the game. Vaas should have been the main villain to the very end, cause Hoyt, all though he did even worse actions imo, wasn't anywhere near as well written as Vaas. That's not to say he was a badly written character, I still found him enjoyable.I was truly waiting for the moments when I could meet him, he is so well written that every interaction that I had with him is very memorable. Every other character however.. not so much. The character you play as, Jason, is just kind of a douche that I never really cared for. Your friends that you ever so desperately are trying to save, seem emotionless (besides Lisa). The only character that I actually liked besides Vaas, was Dennis; and that's just because of how funny it is to think that he saw a body on floating on the water, decided to drag him out and give him a tattoo, like it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fetish. Buck is a character that had potential but turned out to be more annoying then "good", same goes for Willis and Sam. Everyone else was just kind of.. there. I didn't care much about them, but they were fine.

The story itself is just "there". It's engaging enough to keep me playing, but not engaging enough to give me any true emotional reactions. As said before, the best moments really were when Vaas showed up and those moments truly were amazing! I think Far Cry 3 is a game that you really shouldn't take as a story game and more of a open world game, cause that's where it really shines at. By not spoiling anything (all though the game is about 7 years old now) the game has 2 endings that no-matter what you chose, just didn't feel satisfying. That being said, it is still very much so worth playing through at least once.

I don't have any experience with Co-Op or Multiplayer, due to they simple never seemed interesting enough to even give a try. Pretty sure Ubisoft killed the servers for the Multiplayer as well.


For years Far Cry 3 has been my favorite story game, but I think that's wrong to say. It doesn't excel at being a good story game in my opinion, but excels at being a open world game, so it's safe to say Far Cry 3 is my favorite open world game. I really recommend you give it a try, cause over half a decade later, the graphics hold up, it is damn fun and still (in my opinion) the best entry in the franchise.

From what I've read, it seems to give different results depending how powerful your rig is. So I'm speaking as someone who is playing the game with everything maxed out at 1080p.

This Texture Pack really does make the game look a lot better! Since it's also free, there's no reason why you should not at least try it out! I can't pin-point the exact differences it makes, but it's very noticeable coming from playing it without it!

My favorite game 10 years ago.

That's why it's so sad it has problems holding up today, with unusual frame-rate issues, that even after using every possible fix, you can't get above 48-60fps on modern hardware (Easiest fix being disabling all HID) - but resolution is fixable, alongside the crashing issues.


If you can get past the "issues", Prototype has some of the best movement in any game I've ever played. Running on walls and gliding with wings made out of bio-mass is one thing, but the parkour element it brings makes Alex Mercer, the guy you play as, just so much cooler and the jump.. the JUMP is incredible! It's hard to explain the feeling that you get while just moving around, but its uncomparable to any other game and is worth to experience on your own for sure!

Prototype is also not afraid to go hard on gore, while still having it feel as it's used to show us how strong this virus really is and it just not being a pointless addition. As an example, you literally tear open and consume civilians to heal and have an ability to change to them afterwards, with the added addition of you getting access to their memories. You can also just grab and yeet them, with the experience being somewhat similar to how you can throw solders in Crysis.. except with much more power! This really sounds as cool as it is and is something we will probably never see again. Seriously, if "No Russian" wasn't in the headlines during 2009, Prototype would have been.

However, the frame-rate isn't the only thing that's having problems holding up today, even when you played the game at the time, it was outclassed by pretty much every major game on the market if it comes to the graphics. This is something that really shows the games age, so keep that in mind. The city of New York for example looks more like empty boxes and a lot of taxis, but it makes up for it with the insane amount of NPC's there are at all times. Just like the gore, pretty much no game today has a world that feels this alive and that's all thanks to the numbers. This is the one part when quantity really is better than quality and it's really impressive, taking into consideration this is a decade old game.

While Prototype does a really good job gameplay wise, it sucks at telling a story. I'm really not going to try to sweetcoat it - it's uninteresting, the characters suck and it's the most tedious part of the whole game. The bosses feel broken, making fighting them a very frustrating experience and similar to DOOM, you can't ignore it, due to you need to progress in the story (for the most part) to unlock more abilities. While you don't need to use most of them - especially once you unlock the blade, they are actually very well built. In the roster, we have: Claws, Whipfist, Hammerfists, Musclemass, Shield, Armor and of course, the Blade (this is excluding all side-abilities, like gliding and such). Each one of them allows you to deal more damage in a certain way to a certain target, aside from allowing you to take a different approach with each one of them, to what you are doing entirely. These really are what makes Prototype.. well, Prototype!


Prototype can, to this day, offer experiences and features found in no other game - besides nostalgia! It has one of the best movement mechanics there is, which outside of PS4's Spider-Man, you can't compare to anything we have to date. It's not afraid to show gore and it makes gameplay as much fun as it is in DOOM. The game's really fun, if you take the game as a open-world, "kill all" game, rather than a story game, which outside from the graphics, is the only part Prototype really lacks at.

Edit: Prototype recently became 10 years old! I'm just here to wish it a Happy Birthday! 🎉
I was lucky enough to experience the game 10 years ago myself and at the time, this was one of the very best gaming experiences I've had at the time and I will always cherish them.

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