Recent reviews by PKFire199X

Not psychological horror at all. You play as a guy who thinks it's a good idea to look for his missing brother in the dead of night on a freezing mountain trail -- alone. Sure, he must be desperate, and it's his brother, but at least bring a weapon or some other people. Or search in the daytime. Nothing makes sense as you're pushed along a linear path.

Good ol' arcadey fun. Being a simple survival game that borrows heavily from Castlevania's art direction (and the addictive sights and sounds of a slot machine), the novelty of it all is initially very appealing. However, once the shine wears off, things quickly get boring. The levels are all designed in similar ways, different enemies have the same attacks, and it's pretty easy to become OP, at which point it's just a chaotic waiting game until Death hurtles toward you to end the run.

I get that this is a "bullet heaven" game and not a bullet hell -- it's not really meant to be a challenge. So if you just want to chill and feel like a demi-god for a while, then go for it. I'd probably like this game more if all the offensive power-ups weren't just set to auto-fire. At least then I'd have a more active role instead of only being able to move my character around.

A peculiar tale where there's always more than meets the eye. I saw this on my discovery queue and thought heck, why not try it out? The writing shown in the teaser reminded me of old fairy tales and ancient myths, so it seemed right up my alley. Glad I gave this a shot.

This game is like being in both a dream and a nightmare, but you're never quite sure which one has taken the reigns until you're plunged into the thick of it. The game is also a slow burn, its paths inviting you to soak in the atmosphere while making you curious enough to continue reading.

The characters are written well—unpredictable in that ethereal, Wonderlandian sort of way that captivates your imagination. Some of them are endearing while others are frightening, and they altogether make for a compelling narrative. The writing itself is good, very maximalist at times and great at evoking melancholy, longing, tranquility, etc. And the eerily comforting soundtrack ties it all together.

Definitely try this game out if you're looking for something off the beaten path. And it's even a fable from your childhood, how could you possibly pass it up?

Now you're thinking with wires.

I've had this game in my library for a long time (at least a decade, sheesh) but never got around to fully experiencing it. Like other reviewers have mentioned, it's a short game, and the puzzles never really get too complex, but it has just the right amount of humor and subterfuge shenanigans to balance out its shortcomings. The story is decently intriguing, pokes fun at itself and various tropes, and makes neat references to old detective fiction. Some of your choices do matter. And each main character is memorable, but unfortunately the story ends without much closure.

Gameplay-wise you can leap through the air, crawl up buildings, rewire appliances to your fancy, and listen to classy jazz while beating the daylights out of an unsuspecting guard. You can be completely stealthy, completely overt or anywhere in-between. I played through the game a second time to finish some achievements and I enjoyed speeding through everything again.

Overall this is some good light fun, can't go wrong if you're in the mood for 2D stealth, silliness and brainteasers.

After nearly deciding that this game wasn't for me, I stuck with it and ended up enjoying it a lot. It starts off slow; you get your feet wet and begin adapting to the various mechanics and level structures. The jaded main character, Garret, often has a simple incentive (money) and yet is compellingly written due to his extensive dealings with people. The eerie atmosphere and stylized voice-acting make for a great combo, and the stealth aspects, once mastered, really start to make you feel like a "master thief."

While the gameplay can be very clunky and unresponsive in the beginning, this is mostly solved in time with experience and changing the keybinds to your liking. I'd highly suggest downloading TFix and using one of the hotkey presets it comes with (and tweaking it) for smoother play (TFix is also necessary for fixing bugs and being able to watch cutscenes properly). Once you get the hang of how movement and cover works in tandem, and how you and other characters interact with the environment, the game becomes a lot more fluid and more of a joy than a pain to play.

And as for the level design philosophy, it's a hands-off approach. It's just your tools, your (often scant) map, and your wits. No hud markers, no easy hints, you're just dropped into a place and must use your creativity and memory to explore, thieve and stay alive. The challenges you face get brutal and it's easy to get turned around in some of the more labyrinthine areas, but coming out on the other side a bolder and better thief is very rewarding. My advice is to take things slow and experiment a lot, you'll probably discover things about the gameplay that will add a lot to your style. I love exploring in general and my curiosity paid dividends in this game.

One of the strongest aspects of this game is the art direction/sound design: very 90's-ish (of course) and much like a dark comic book at times, but also with many foreboding passages from in-game texts that intrigue the player and show that there is a rich, arcane and divisive history within the world of Thief. Here's the opening scene and first mission introduction that show exactly that. And Garret, well, he comes off as indifferent and opportunistic, so that makes for an interesting dynamic between him and the city. And the atmospheric soundtrack - coupled with varying degrees of the supernatural and perilous settings - can really begin to make you uncomfortable and twitchy. I get a similar feeling when playing STALKER, so two thumbs-up in the horror and suspense department.

The writing itself is simplistic yet nuanced and poetic. As I mentioned earlier, you will not only be shown old texts, but discover bedside notes, hidden messages, and get to hear all manner of clever quips from Garret and the characters you meet throughout each mission. These all serve to build the world's mystique in a way that leaves lots to the imagination, resulting in a rare type of appeal that's tough to find these days in gaming. The story's main twist is a bit predictable if you've got a sharp eye while on missions but that by no means diminishes its impact. The twists that happen midway are fantastic, they really took me by surprise and got me hooked from that point on. Solid stuff.

Of course, the game isn't without its flaws. There are still some clunky things you can't avoid (like weird collision physics sending you off like a catapult, or enemies sometimes having selective hearing). Save scumming is a must sometimes, and I found myself wishing that I could move faster more times than I could count. Close combat is just plain terrible. I was often able to dodge enemies pretty well by hopping around them in a circle and whacking them with the sword or blackjack until they went down.

The graphics can also be a turn off, but the game works its magic in a way that enhances its appearance. And while some levels near the middle of the game can drag on, the game always amps things up plot-wise in the right spot. I can see now where Arkane got their inspiration for Dishonored. It's all there; in the setting, the guards' conversations, the supernatural, the whole "outlying protagonist" idea, and especially the type of gameplay freedom you're given. Now that I've played both Thief and Dishonored, I might even rate Thief more highly in terms of execution, atmosphere and design, but it's tough to say as both are strong titles in their own right. All that said, Thief is definitely worth a shot. It's old but still holds up well and blows a lot of modern games out of the water.

(Will be rewriting this one at a later time.)

Hollow Knight is a magnificent metroidvania. I was initially skeptical given its slow start, but I soon found myself immersed in the atmosphere, the intriguing yet scant story and the challenges presented while exploring. The fluid hand-drawn art style is a great stylistic choice as it paves the way for a lot of clever and spirited animations. This thing's got soul and polish down to the last speck. And man, is it difficult. Some parts are downright infuriating but not impossible, and with practice they can be overcome.

If you've played Dark Souls, you'll immediately see the parallels between it and HK. The relation between soul and hollow plays a big part in HK's own ruined kingdom, but HK is able to stand on its own and develop those themes in a unique way. One of my favorite things about Dark Souls is that you're constantly dwarfed by the ruins of this once-great civilization, overwhelmed by the sheer ethereal and horrific scope of it all. Much of it is unfathomable and sticks with you due to the reverence it evokes. HK follows in those spiritual footsteps and presents you with its own unfathomable world where many surprises and secrets weave together into a vividly dark and well-crafted experience. And it's a world full of bugs, no less.

HK also takes a leaf from Tolkien when it comes to the game's gibberish language. It's a great way to bring an added level of liveliness to the world's inhabitants, and some mad lad fans even turned that gibberish into an actual language. I thought I would get tired of hearing HK's characters speak but instead I found myself looking forward to those odd or hilarious sounds.

The writing itself is decent and a lot of care was put into the way that each character talks. Some lines can be overly dramatic but on the whole it fits the game's tone and goes a lot deeper than most -vanias in terms of story and dialogue. Still, true to Metroid the game won't simply hand you answers to every question you have; the world's ancient writings and inhabitants are usually quite cryptic, so you'll have to go clue-hunting and keep a watchful eye to get a grasp on past and present.

The music itself is excellent, a blend of baroque and classical with a modern spin. Some tracks are so tranquil that you can just lean back and close your eyes for while, whereas boss themes are aptly tense and get your pulse racing. The music is a big part of why I enjoy exploring the world. Without it the game would become incredibly eerie (similar to DS1, although the silence fits in that world).

Gameplay-wise, there's a parry system and "bonfires" befitting the environment. There are means of fast travel and the controls are smooth. Like I mentioned earlier, this game gets pretty tough. If you're comfortable with metroidvanias or platformers that require quick reflexes then you'll have an easier time with the game's difficulty curve. And if you're enthralled with exploration in games then you'll have no problem discovering power-ups. If there's one complaint I have with HK's gameplay it's that certain abilities leave you vulnerable for too long in certain fights, making it hard to find the space to use them, but maybe I just need to get good. I also like how it's possible to bounce off spikes with a downward swing, learning the timing on that helped me a lot throughout the game.

This game is solid. It wears its influences on its sleeve as homage to the classics, but never in a distasteful way. Even if you have no idea what inspired Hollow Knight, it's a game that stands on its own; a masterful work that lives up to the praise.

This game is a mixed bag. On one hand it has a decent story, great voice acting (well, at least for the main characters) and proper Wild West immersion. On the other hand, the game gets so mired in bad scripting and sloppy mechanics that it's nearly impossible to enjoy the game as intended.

At the beginning you receive a gun only for it to be taken from you a minute later. What follows is a nice little minigame where you must pick up a box to block bullets as you get chased toward a hill by deadeye cowboys. Oops, while the box was obscuring your view, you slid down a short slope and died. You tried to hold the S key to slow your descent, but gravity was stronger than your keystroke. Better luck next time, bucko.

This is just a mere taste of the unnecessary pain that this game puts you through. Small tumbles cause you to die; your whip is inaccurate as hell, even at close range; going a pixel out of bounds in certain areas will cause you to fail an objective and force a checkpoint restart; the 2nd character you play as can't climb over anything even though he can jump; you can't ADS unless it's a scope; the sound mixing is so poorly done that you'll often miss essential dialogue and be confused as to where enemies are; fistfights are hopeless unless you spam your right hook; and much more. But the biggest offender of all is the dreadful stealth system. If you so much as poke a bottle while crouched, somebody across the map will hear you and point their gun in your direction (or you'll just fail the task due to being noticed). Some of the game's areas tend to drag on more than they should, and usually you're left wandering for a while before stumbling onto the next story event trigger. The gameplay is dated in a way that makes it feel older than it is, like it was conceived in the 90's. The clunk is real.

The game is rather nice to look at on DX10, though. In one part of the game where you get to freely ride a horse around an expansive wilderness, you can tell that the devs put a lot of effort into making the atmosphere visually sublime. The various settings are always tastefully done. And while much of the combat and movement feels janky, the bow feels great to use, and enemies' hitboxes are shockingly accurate. Nailing somebody in the head from really far away feels immensely satisfying because the arrow and bullet physics have proper travel/drop velocity applied to them. Bullet time feels pretty good, too, as does the horseriding.

But despite its positives, CoJ is a rough ride. It's a shoddy Western game that looks good for its time but plays like a rusty antique. I don't recommend getting the game if you value your sanity. There were a few times where I was very close to giving up out of frustration, but the story had me hooked enough that I stuck with it (at times it had some welcome touches of magical realism, which you rarely see in a Western plot). Unless you've just got to play every Western game out there, or you're a CoJ megafan, avoid this game and look elsewhere for your fix. If you're still undeterred, just remember this: quicksaving is your friend. You'll thank me later.

Since I don't agree with much of what I said in this review, I'll be revising it in the future after replaying the game.

If you loved Asylum or Batman in general, then you'll love this game. I don't consider the story to be as good as Asylum's, but it's still intriguing and contains some great twists here and there. Instead of the lonely, moody atmosphere of the Arkham Asylum, Arkham City presents itself as a lively character that thrives on violence. Not only has Batman's arsenal/versatility developed by leaps and bounds, but now you also get to control other characters throughout the game. Rocksteady really, really focused on fun when they were creating the new combat system. Time and again, I'll find myself grinning like an idiot whenever I'm in a fight because they're always so damn thrilling. It's easy to find yourself spending hours on a lot of the challenge maps because of how well they're designed, and also because of the fleshed out mechanics for each character.

It's a lot easier to get around now, too. Thank God for the grapple boost. You can also dive straight down while in the air, and then use the momentum to swoop back up. Simple things, really, but it's the simple things that make this game solid.

If had to nitpick some cons, I'd say that Harley's voice actress change kinda sucks, and I still think that there are far too many Riddler puzzles for the pay-off to be worth your time. Everything else about the game is pretty good, though.

EDIT: I forgot to mention a certain game-breaking bug (and its fix). For whatever reason, using an Xbox controller wirelessly will cause the frames to plummet (even down to 1 fps in my case, which may lead to a crash). The solution for this is to simply plug your controller in (or switch to the keyboard, instead). Thanks to this simple fix, flying through Arkham City in 240 fps looks spectacular now. Here's to many more hours of caped crusading.