Recent reviews by HUM24H

WHAT A WASTE!

I LOVE this franchise, I never gelled with the characters in LiS 2 and so never finished that but with LiS 2 even I recognise that game was really good. I have 100% completed all the other LiS games both on PC and Playstation, these games mean so much to me!

Then you have this one...

As far as I am concerned, this game does NOT deserve to be called "Life is Strange"... Period.

Honestly I am going to keep this short, I could write an entire novel on everything wrong with this game.

So instead I will say one word: Marvel, this has now turned into Marvel and Super powers! And this has nothing to do with Dialogue or Inclusive or DEI, I have zero issues with any of that in this game - this all comes down to super powers and heroes, etc...

These games had meaning, they had a message, they were emotional - these games meant something...

This though is just a waste, simple as that!

There is nothing new in this game, there is just rehashing of scenes and ideas from the previous games - on top of that most interactions are bland and the characters don't fair much better.

And when we DO get amazing characters like Gwen or Amanda, the game just shrugs them off! I mean I feel so sorry for Amanda, the dynamic that could've been explored so much more between Max & Amanda would have been amazing!

Anyway, I don't recommend this game at all! Play the other LiS games if you truly want to experience a true LiS game! This is not a LiS game!

Still Wakes The Deep is a game that I have been looking forward with a lot of hype since it was announced and I can safely say it did not dissapoint!

First thing I want to say is that an Oil Rig is a very under utilised environment in almost any video game! Given its secluded nature, its large size and clostrophobic interior - it honestly makes for an amazing environment in almost any video game but it really works in a horror like this one.

I loved so much about Still Wakes The Deep:

• The music is so good and fits incredibly well in this environment, allowing it to build onto the already amazing atmosphere.
  
• The visuals are really well done, there were some odd shadows here and there plus in certain locations textures wouldn't load correctly but overall the visuals, design and attention to detail are really good!
  
• The horror aspect is also really good! I would say this is not the type of cheap horror with jump scares, this is (as part of the tags) a Psychological Horror with Body Horror as well.
  
• The Story is also fantastic with a story arc for our main character (Cameron McLeary) and then the horror story with the Oil Rig.

Overall I loved Still Wakes The Deep, it ticked every box for when it comes to an amazing single player narrative driven game and the grotesque horror was the icing on the cake!

This is a review that I thought would have been 100% positive but it is more a mixed review unfortunately and that will be explained in length in this review.

To start with though the first 8 chapters or about 75% of the game is fantastic! I loved every second playing this games.

The level design is amazing! The developers did an amazing job with this game when it came to level design as everything flowed smoothly with great interconnecting corridors.

The bosses are also top notch! (with some exception, see further on) The arena design and the design of the bosses themselves visually were stunning.

And overall the combat in this game is snappy, rapid and feels awesome! Honestly this is my favourite (for the most part) souls-like that isn't made by From-Software.

Honestly if the game was just these first 8 chapters, I would 100% recommend this game and I would be replaying it over and over again... But unfortunately this is not the case and so we get onto what I hated, the last 25% of the game!

The story as well is fantastic! The main story is very well paced, each character is unique and has their own personality. Also the side quests are great as well as they play directly into the "Humanity" system at play in this game.

As you play the game decisions you make, the side quests you complete and the music you listen to will increase your "Humanity" and this is how you get the different endings. I loved this system as it was mostly hidden but it felt like a good incentive to go a do a lot of the side stuff in the game.

Here we go...

Near to the end of Chapter 9 is where I would say the game just went off the rails and ultimately became really bad!

Chapter 9's second to last boss (Walker of Illusions) is one of the worst bosses in the entire game! With a move set that gives zero room to manoeuvre and also next to no way of dodging.

Then Chapter 10 which is so short that I don't understand why it is even in the game at all!

And now Chapter 11. This entire chapter is full of recycled enemies from other chapters in the game, it introduces nothing new and the entire chapter feels like a time waste simply to pad out the playtime.

On top of that, we now have the camera breaking throughout Chapter 11. Below is how many times I had the camera break for :
- 26 --> Total Times
- 3 --> Boss Fight (Laxasia)
- 1 --> Boss Fight (Simon Manus)
- Infinite --> Completely Broken Going Down Elevator After Boss Fight (Simon Manus)
- 2 --> Boss Fight (Nameless Puppet)

Honestly from the end of Chapter 9 all the way through to the end of the Chapter 11, felt like it was designed and built by a completely different team who had absolutely no idea what they were doing and had zero imagination.

Now initially this review was going to be a "Not Recommend" but having thought about it more and more, this is more a mixed/neutral review and overall it does lean just enough into "Recommend" but I am disappointed into the game overall thanks to the last 25%.

Horizon Forbidden West is exactly what a sequel should be! While there are aspects of HFW that I don't like over HZD, there is a lot that I do enjoy and love over HZD.

So lets start with what I don't like.

Firstly while its nice that the Forbidden West is bigger and contains way more things in it - I do think this is a double edge sword as it can feel a bit too big (IMO). The next thing I don't enjoy is I think HFW has traded some of the stealth elements for more action focused combat.

The next thing I am not a fan of is the Story, I will say that I love the Story up until a point where the Story takes a very hard turn into a direction that I personally did not like.

Now both HZD and HFW are Sci-Fi games but it always felt that HZD was more grounded and felt like a future that could actually exist but with HFW that feeling did disappear by the end of its Story due to how hard it went in a direction.

The final thing I don't like is the revamped Skill Tree, for me this Skill Tree is unnecessarily larger than what was in HZD and it doesn't add that much over what we got in HZD and I wish they did not decide to make the Skill Tree this big.

Now aside from that, absolutely everything else I love! The music, visuals, overall combat, side quests, collectables, DLC expansion, characters and so much more!

This is a great sequel but I just wish the Story went in a direction that I would have wanted but this is very much a subjective thing and is not at all a dig at the Guerilla, I will always respect any Story Teller that sticks to what they want to do instead of trying to fulfil the fans desires.

I highly recommend HFW for those that love epic stories and for those that loved HZD!

This definitely a hard game to recommend to almost anyone.

This is a very slow hard sci-fi story driven game with almost nothing to the gameplay aside from a lot of walking with some driving and some button timed events.

The pacing of this game is incredibly slow but it is very consistent from start to finish. There is no point where the pacing of the story changes either getting slower or faster.

I would say that if you enjoyed Firewatch then this is a game that I would recommend but even then, this game is for slower paced and I would is harder to keep engaged with unless this style of game and this type of sci-fi story is something you know you will enjoy.

I thoroughly loved every moment and the story kept me intrigued as we discovered more and more about what is going on.

This is such an amazing game!

If you are a fan of Metal Gear and old-school top-down stealth (ish) games then this is definitely a game to play.

The way the story is told, the characters and the levels are all fantastic! This game does such a good job of telling its story with just the right amount of humor.

This is a game to play!

I will be honest, I had no idea what to expect or whether I would even enjoy Sea of Stars. I am not know to enjoy turn-based combat games but I wanted to get back into them with Sea of Stars.

Well... Sea of Stars is an absolute masterpiece!

I loved every single moment playing this game, now my play through was just a single run through and definitely not a completionist run.

For me I loved almost every aspect of this game and I cannot pick any single part of the game that stood out because everything was standing out and every aspect has been done super well from the characters to the story to the absolutely amazing soundtrack to the awesome combat.

But with that being said, I do want to highlight the combat! It is both simple but intricate at the same time. It is a very fun and engaging combat that can be super simple if you want but if you want to really do the best in combat then getting into its intricacies is a must and by doing so the combat will feel amazing.

There is only one thing that irritated me and it was early on, a few of the enemies started to repeat move sets from other different enemies which to me did not seem good and it is not something that I like but luckily this did not repeat itself for the rest of the game and the game introduces a lot of unique enemies with really cool move sets.

I am genuinely surprised by Sea of Stars and I love it a lot! I highlight recommend this game to literally anyone and everyone!

Still There is a game that I put off almost immediately when I first got it but I decided to revisit this game after many years of owning it and I am super glad I did.

Firstly I want to say that this game's puzzles can be quite confusing, even when referencing the Technical Manual and your companion AI you'll struggle with some of the puzzles to solve them.

I would honestly recommend that if you do get stuck on a puzzle, just reference a guide because it so worth it. It is so worth it just to experience this emotional and profound story that honestly I was not expecting.

I honestly think the way the story plays out, the characters, the dialogue, the music, the atmosphere and the story itself are just fantastic! This game is an experience and its an absolute gem!

I would recommend this game to those that enjoy games that are hyper focused on telling an emotional story, as this is one of the best I have experienced.

I want preface this review by saying that I absolutely love "Deliver Us the Moon" and honestly was super excited to see what happened after the events in that game.

Unfortunately I think the Developers dropped the ball on this one and I don't think its anything more than they went too ambitious with this title.

The beauty of the first game was its simplicity and the eeriness of the abandoned environment with the only holograms to explain in small parts what has happened here.

Now with "Deliver Us Mars" the Developers decided to go with a 3rd person camera system and fully animated characters which leads us to the first problem, the characters are quite badly animated. The facial animations honestly make the characters look pretty dead. The characters looks and appear quite robotic as well which just takes away the immersion.

Leading on from that we move onto the visuals of the game. While in some places it does look good, in a lot of other places the textures look very low res and overall I think this game is a step backwards in regards to visuals when compared to "Deliver Us The Moon".

The story itself is, in concept, really good in my opinion and I think with more time in the oven this could've been a step up over the story in "Deliver Us The Moon" but unfortunately the issues with the characters and the odd need for fade to black transitions, the story deliver is done in a fairly disjointed manor which is unfortunate.

Overall I think the concept idea for "Deliver Us Mars" is something that could be a step up from "Deliver Us The Moon" but the far more ambitious design of this game over the first one leads to the game feeling disjointed with far too many downfalls.

I don't recommend "Deliver Us Mars" and honestly just recommend people skip this and play "Deliver Us The Moon" and if you have played that then do check out "Titan Station" for another great space story game by an Indie Developer.

*Update 18/06/2023*

I am updating this review after the 1.0.4.7 update which did drastically change the game.

This review will go from a Negative to a Positive but only just because while the big updates to difficulty in 1.0.4.7 have made it so that the areas of the game that I found baffling I can reduce or even disable, there are still a few points of the game that don't sit with me.

At the moment the only points left that still annoy me while playing this are:
- Free movement of Workers - for me this is a big one because for me Ixion should be a game about managing an entire Space Station but instead it actually works like managed 6 mini Space Stations instead. This for me is a annoying because there is no reason to not have a crew quarters section with a factory section and then a science/research section but instead you have to have crew in each sector with their own food supply etc...
- Events causing distrust, this is improved but still baffling in places. An example is the crew getting a "-1" due to being in our Home solar system but then when we leave they then get another "-1" because we have left our Home solar system behind. There are other events like this that are equally baffling.

Overall I do think this game is now in a positive position for me and I do have to applaud the Developers for listening to community feedback and acting on that feedback.

I do now recommend this game but keep in mind the points highlighted above.

*Update 10/12/2022*

Adding an update to this review after playing more of the game and progressing a bit further in the story side of things.

My original opinions still stands for me personally, this review is more just me expressing my opinions and if you enjoy the game then that is great. Plenty of games people hate that I enjoy.

The recent patch did improve the accident rate and they are now not constantly happening, so that is good.

I will say one additional thing which is that this game isn't really hard, at least not to me. It's more frustrating than anything else. Frostpunk is definitely a harder game than Ixion, so my thoughts are more coming from my opinion on how the game functions and how things progress as opposed to getting stuck on something.

This review for me is in a mixed state, I am 50/50 now with the game and that is down to a number of things that I personally am not a fan of:

- First the idea that workers can't move freely between sectors. For me and for what I have seen in other Sci-Fi stories and their Stations, you usually want to separate living quarters and industry but that isn't possible here.
- The "automation" of resources between sectors is still an annoyance and my original opinion still stands. Yes you can automate this but it shouldn't be necessary.
- The Tech Tree is hard locked until you progress the story, on one hand I can see why this is done but also on another this really does limit your ability to expand and fulfil your ideas for the station. I have on final ring of the Tech Tree locked and Trains are still not available.
- Finally it seems that the population gets to a point where they continuously decrease their trust in you but not at any fault of your own. Yeah I lost 2 Science Ships and their crew but I recovered that decrease in trust. The now massive decrease in trust is because of things the UN did in the past and other matters relating to DOLOS to which neither agency exist anymore. This can be recovered for sure but it just isn't fun.
- Also permanent Hull damage is something that really should either be toned down or allow earlier on to fully repair it. What's the point of repairing something that never actually gets repaired? Seems pointless to me.

I do honestly like what this game is trying to be and the story is really good, that I thoroughly enjoy but at this stage I think the game is starting to become something isn't my cup of tea now so I'll possibly revisit it again in the future.

*Original Review*

Writing this review as the game currently stands, it needs a lot of balancing.

The core game and a lot of the mechanics are great. Overall the game is a lot of fun and the setting for the game is fantastic.

The opening couple hours are a lot of fun. The game has you micro managing a lot which is enjoyable, with you managing your population and resources.

But the amount of things just breaking, the punishing act of opening sectors and other balancing issues make the game feel like the game itself is doing absolutely everything to fight you instead of you fighting to keep the station running.

Also why on earth can sectors not share resource autonomously? You can move resources from sector to another sector via a lot of button clicks but clearly the crew can move resources around and I feel this should just be something shared. It feels like instead of a single station we can have potentially 6 individually stations (sectors).

Also why can't workers live in one sector and work in another? I know this is supposed to be challenging but also what Space Station doesn't work like this? I'd imagine this is possible much later via the tech tree but this is a problem you face early on quite quickly. There are clearly doors between the sectors but people can't move between them apparently.

Like I said it feels like 6 individual small space stations instead of a single large space station that you are managing.