Recent reviews by Noxxy

Purely personal opinion I'm not going to tell people what to like and what not to. Will likely update later.

I think I enjoyed this game so much because I expected it to go so badly. I've been on alert ever since Konami announced like 5+ Silent Hill related projects almost two years ago including the SH2 Remake. After the train wreck that was Ascension I expected this remake to be awful.

I don't think the remake is a replacement for the original game by any means. What I can say is I think the game is gorgeous, the new takes on the bosses is definitely an improvement. Stale, hollow voice overs have been given emotion with only a few lines that I could say missed the mark. Combat is a bit more engaging and you can't just mindlessy wack/shoot at the enemies without them countering. Music is pretty great and I loved the new rendition of "Betrayal" and "Theme of Laura" I'm partial to the older soundtrack overall because it has this grittiness to it but it's nice hearing the new renditions. The sound design is amazing, from subtle sharp inhales in your ear to droning hums emanating from voids. The audio definitely tries to keep the player on edge, There's many call backs to the old game to find throughout including references to other Silent Hill titles that will be easily spotted by long time fans.

I can't really speak on performance since I know I'm playing under the minimum requirements on an old RX 580. But it's playable for me and that's what matters.
I think this remake can be best explained as a new take on the original. I don't like remakes that are just reskins with bloom thrown on, this isn't that at all. Many of the areas have been expanded such as the prison with more floors and areas which adds to the average gameplay time.

I think that most fans will enjoy this remake, but there's no rush to grab it at release price. It's single player/horror so it's bound to drop come Christmas on a steam sale. Give it a try and see what new gen games can accomplish from old gen stories. Solid game 8/10 and restored a small bit of faith in the remake trend.

**Careful salty gamers in the comments warning, easily offended by opinions they don't seem to understand why I rated the game as not reccomended when my issues with the game outweigh the positives**

After finishing the game to completion and collecting everything I've decided to do a review. Don't get me wrong I'm a huge fan of Psychonauts ever since I first played it, but I have a few reasons I'm not recommending this one. It's absolutely not worth the full price tag at $60. There's plenty of good reviews on it but not a lot of negative reviews and honestly it's not fair for someone unfamiliar with the game to give it a try and possibly be disappointed with it.

First, what's great about the game?
-Artstyle, Lisette (Art director) lead the team in the right direction here. It's nice to see a game stick to it's original style based off Scott Campbell's artwork only benefited by the polish of newer graphics. It's a very stylized game so I don't care about high end graphics as too much would just make it look uncanny.

-Music, the score is phenomenal. Every song has this handcrafted orchestral score that changes seamlessly while out exploring the quarry then delving into caves and other areas. It was nice to hear the new renditions of older songs such as Meat Circus and the new spin on the original camp ground music.

-Combat controls, honestly I've heard some say the combat is too much but I think it's fine. Raz controls a lot smoother in comparison to the first game's clunky controls. Powers from the first game used to anchor the player in place to charge them up, rendering many of them useless in fights. This time around the game sort of forces you to use more variety which could be seen as a good or bad thing.

-Bossfights, the bosses were great and felt pretty unique especially towards the end. I found myself wishing there was an option to replay some bosses especially with new powers and upgrades.

-New player friendly. I think the first mind (Loboto) does a good job of writing in the controls as simple reminders to Raz of how to utilize them and their importance.

Now the bad. I had a lot of issues with this game.

-Pacing, the pacing absolutely falls apart mid to late game. You find yourself hopping from brain to brain fairly quickly. Going through a lot of dialogue. Sometimes you'd hit a cutscene walk a few steps into yet another cutscene. I get the vibe that the end parts of the game were rushed as the game suddenly decides to place the player in an "on rails" ride to convey the story revolving that character and it took me out of the game each time it did that since there's nothing engaging for the player to participate in during the ride.

-Writing. Along with the pacing the middle to late game turns into a lot of dialogue that centers around three specific characters. So much dialogue but not spread evenly among the cast that I started to begin thinking this game wasn't about Raz but instead Ford. What bothered me most about the game being so dialogue heavy is it feels like many characters served no purpose, only having a few lines or none of that dialogue expanded on existing relationships. Characters that are related don't really act like it, main characters being a couple but not really doing anything with that in the writing either.
Interns felt like they were written in as a way to prevent Raz being recognized as an actual Psychonaut. They go from hazing Raz and being fairly rude to him to acting like his best friend by the end of the game with hardly any dialogue/character development to justify it.
Along with the lack of writing you'll find most characters stay in one or two areas for the duration of the game. I expected to find them in a variety of locations based on the brains finished (much like the first game) but that wasn't the case.

-Humor, I laughed at some of the jokes, but many of them rely on player familiarity of the first game, also some just sort of fell flat. I'm not really sure why DF doesn't push it's jokes more, it already has a teen rating but they aren't using that edge. Remove a couple curse words, alcohol and tobacco and it's an E for everyone game.

-Lack of side quests. There's 5 total, two of them just requiring some basic platforming to complete.This speaks for itself. I expected to have at least one side quest administered by the main cast and interns. Severely lacking in this department.

-Console exclusive features. Yeah, this sucks. HDR is only available to series X also console players for some reason are the only ones able to pose Raz using the in-game camera item. Making taking photos fairly boring with Raz always in his basic stance.

-Tacked on features. The pins, costume change feature, and even reaching rank 102 all felt tacked on. You can only equip 3 pins at a time and many of the pins are just for looks or laughs, while some of them improve powers. I found myself not even bothering with cosmetic pins in favor of the ones that improved powers. Many of them you can't even equip until you've basically finished the game making them redundant. As far as I know, you cannot do a second run with immediate access to all your pins, the costume options nor the cooldown benefit of reaching rank 102. So why add them?
Accessibility features. I absolutely believe that games being accessible to all are great, but I don't think DF deserves kudos for simply putting an invulnerability option on Raz. Any game developer can do this, it's not commendable. And using it as a "look at us we're a company that cares" selling tactic is pretty lame. I'm surprised there's a feature for this but no feature to up the difficulty on a second playthrough alongside the option of using the pins/benefits earned.

***-Currently on a second playthrough and the crashing is worth noting too. Many "fatal errors" I had 4 crashes to desktop on my first run of the game and some how getting more on my second run. This is not acceptable, it's not an issue with my rig.

-Someone on Doublefine's team actually took the time to code a giant typewriter to censor curse words...even though your own brother calls you a "dumbass". I really don't understand the logic here.

As a fan of the first game I overall enjoyed my play through I think if you enjoy platformers, collectathons and easy achievements you'll enjoy this game. It's got around 15-25 hours of content varying on whether you plan to 100% the game or not. But I don't think the game is worth full price. Pick it up on a sale, don't reward developers for locking features to specific consoles. Personally, the cons outweighed the pros for me, also worth noting the game was originally set to debut back in 2019 and knowing the game was two years late after two delays, at one point bosses were cut, I can say my expectations were higher for this installment.

My favorite part of this game is some dumbass either moving around as a prop or hiding amongst other props and sticking out like a sore thumb then getting mad when you kill them. Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself Surviv0r- and get gud

New update means a new review. This development team manages to always take one step in the right direction before taking 50 steps back. 10 years of development hell have brought us to the most recent updates that have completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over the game. Random crashes are at an all time high in this forever poorly optimized pos.
New server browser is ♥♥♥♥. Its happy to show me plenty of chinese servers when my region is set to NA East. Can't seem to join any of the NA servers with playable ping. Many of the previous servers I played on are missing altogether. Would love to know what version these 20k active players are on because none of the top servers shown are even at max capacity.
Now let's talk about gameplay because it's just as bad. Development team constantly making changes to force players to play the way they want them to. Wanna stay out of fights and instead focus on building a massive base with traps to protect yourself? Nope. Zombies are kitted with galaxy brain so they can pinpoint your weakest base wall and tunnel to you. To top it off many of the traps don't give exp (some do very little but it's locked behind a specific perk tree). After the zombies tunnel into your base and you try to make a run for it on your bike or motorcycle, vultures will immediately seek you out and hone in preventing you from getting very far. Yes, the devs that decided a player running from horde night and not getting any exp or items for doing such needed to be punished for doing so. Many of the traps are extremely lack luster and it seems many players have forgone building an actual base altogether. Other players simply find loop holes in the AI by creating kill boxes with melee weapons and electric fences.

So if you like grindy crafting games that will reverse all your progression with a simple bug or new update this one's just waiting to take your money!