Recent reviews by Dahlen

What happens when you cross Grounded with Half LIfe?

Spoilers or whatever
FIrst and foremost the game looks stunning but that is where the praise pretty much stops
The shooting feels fairly OK but the vigors is where the disappointment truly starts
We no longer have the immersive sim features of the previous games on how to approach the combat where we use the environment to our advantage
Instead we get the tear system where we can summon in oil spills or water puddles to make our vigors more effective and even that is scarce

One could say "but each vigor/plasmid have 2 different modes now!"
Yeah sure we got direct cast and trap cast, amazing stuff
What about mixing and matching Vigors? Nope, oh I'm sorry they have plasmid combos you say? Do they interact with eachother in a unique and fun way? No? oh ok...
The guns are aight but nothing that really shines, shame we only have 2 weapon slots.
This isn't really a problem since you don't really run out of ammo even on 1999 mode
and if you do just switch to the other weapon (just don't drag the shotgun along, what is wrong with you?)

Oh boy the story
I think it can be summed up as someone read about Schrödinger's cat and quantum physics and decided to build a game around it
The siren boss has to be one of the most stupid things I've ever witnessed, the alive and dead meme personified
Booker and Elizabeth bouncing off of each other I was actually fine with
What about the meat and bones? The tears into other worlds / universes?
Oh this NPC is dead in this universe? Let's jump into a tear for another iuniverse where lives! brilliant!
Does this world have the same established facts as the one they left? Maybe, who knows
Shouldn't this theoretically mean that you suddenly have 2 Bookers and 2 Elizabeths running around the place? Probably
And this just keeps going, jumping into another world where the goal they are trying to achieve (get the tools back to the weaponsmith or the weapons themselves) and that world just somehow have all the established past of what Booker and Elizabeth have just done, I don't even know anymore man

Main character revealed having amnesia around selling Anna to Comstock? Main character not remembering who hired him and even rowed him to the lighthouse only to meet them a solid 10-15 minutes later? That's awfully convenient

The ending also in of itself does not really make sense
Kill Booker at the point of where Comstock is born?
Sure meaning no more Booker OR Comstock meaning the world where Anna / Elizabeth is born no longer exists
But if Comstock does not exist, then he can't buy Elizabeth off Booker and Elizabeth can't become the dimension spanning entity that she is or exist at all for that matter
Meaning it will end up with universes where Booker goes through with the baptism again and here we go the cycle repeats... please just make it stop

As cool as it was to see Rapture in it's full glory that we got in Burial at sea, but at what cost?
This game is infurating in more ways than one

Some of the pre-release footage had me worried but in the end it turned out great

Laid-back fishing / inventory management sim

I generally tend to hunt all the achievements and finish all side content before writing a review but will make an exception for this one

Don't get it
Gameplay wise it has some interesting mechanics in terms of "mesmerizing" NPC's and consequences but that is about it
The combat just feels bad
The skill / power progression feels bad
The story is somewhat predictable and honestly not that good

To summerize there is nothing that really hooks you into continuing playing other than the mechanic to see how the world changes by killing off NPC's which does not affect gameplay other than giving you more XP faster if you make the choice of killing them off
Apparently this affect the ending but to what extent I don't know and to be honest I don't even care that much either

What can I say?
Fantastic story
Smooth and satisfying combat
If you are chasing all upgrades for weapons and pods you may or may not have to grind for a small amount but nothing overwhelming

Only complaint is the performance I suppose
Solid 60 FPS with everything maxed
For the love of god don't turn on Anti Aliasing, that sucker makes the game drop to stable 25 FPS in combat...

other than that
10/10
PS. Remember that the game is not over when you see the credits for the first time, you've only seen at most half the story and the game keeps going

Ran to chop down some leaf planks to build my first little hut
Got attacked by a spider
Screamed like a girl
Died
Cried
10/10 playing with a friend, can recommend

A fantastic FPS in the vein of the old school DOOM and Blood: Fresh Supply
There is a story in there somewhere but I was way to busy with pumping cultists and monsters full of lead and having a blast doing it

Movement and gunplay feels really good and incredibly smooth with a decent amount of maps
They are not too long if you are speedrunning through every map but there are a ton of secrets scattered across where in some cases you need to do more than rub 2 brain cells together to find

TL;DR got nothing but praise for this one, if you like FPS games go get it

Took me about 3 hours to realize I hate Rougelikes

Oh boy here we go

With the micro stuttering on release fixed this game should be a slam dunk right?
Not really
To start off with the positive
This game looks gorgeous, disgusting and vile at the same time.
Great graphics overall and everything looks amazing
The sound design is also on point and got nothing but praise for it
The story is not 10/10 material but it is still engaging and I enjoyed it

Now to the let's just say less than positive parts
So to get it out of the way the combat
When you are playing a survival horror how often do you have a potent melee weapon with infinite durability?
I personally can't think of one cause it mostly destroys the survival part. Running out of ammo is never really an issue since you can just rely on the good ol' zap stick to whack those pesky zombies till they are nothing more than meatloaf.
Now to be fair it was kind of alright when I had my weapon fully loaded with nothing in reserve and up against more than 1 enemy and had to utilize a mix between shooting and swinging but that happened like once in my run (played on maximum security which translates to high difficulty)
Dead space handled this better with weapons being the bread and butter and the melee swing being nothing more than trying to kill enemies with a spoon but could be used in absolute emergencies where no other options where available

The checkpoint system... this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ checkpoint system...
Not sure if I would rather have another game with checkpoints handled like it did in Callisto Protocol or a kick to the nuts, going to have to think about that one for a while.
More than one occasion where a checkpoint saves, you go to sell ♥♥♥♥ / buy upgrades at the 3D printer store only to die on the next pack afterward and get sent back to BEFORE YOU SOLD AND UPGRADED AND HAVE TO REDO THE WHOLE PROCESS AGAIN
The first time it was kind of funny how out of place the checkpoint was placed, the second time I was getting annoyed and on the third time I was close to losing my sanity
Just why? Why do you hate us this much? Haven't we suffered enough?

So last part bugs
So never had any game breaking bugs like crashing or anything of the sort, so refreshing not having crashes every 10 minutes on release of a new game
Now the incredibly minor that I encountered was if I whacked the arms off an enemy and they killed me and the kill animation played splitting my face in half with his invisible ghost limbs but that was more hilarious and immersion breaking instead of breaking my spirit and motivation to continue playing, thumbs up for that

So what is the final verdict?
5/10
I think what Dyatlov infamously said sums it up nicely
Not great not terrible
Probably wait for a sale to get this one as I did have a decent time playing but nothing more