Recent reviews by Kon

Kickstarter backer here. I'm enjoying parts of the game, but the lack of any kind of objectives tracker is absolutely killing it for me. I get that nobody likes excessive handholding, but the developers have gone too far in the other direction here and made a game that doesn't respect players' time. I'm an adult, I've got lots of s**t that I need to do in my life, so I need to be able to go away from the game for a few days (or weeks) at a time and return to it without being expected to remember exactly what I was doing the last time I was playing. At least make it a toggleable option so that "hardcore" players can still play it the way they want to, and everyone else with other commitments has a better experience.

This remake of System Shock aims to be a completely faithful remake of the original, and in many ways it is, for better or worse, but for me it's mostly worse. One of my least favourite parts about playing games back in the 90s was getting lost, and this remake has brought that right back, even though it didn't need to. Nobody likes getting lost or stuck for hours at a time with the only option to figure out what you're supposed to do being to trawl through hundreds, yes HUNDREDS of logs, but that's what you have to do here. In this game, you might eventually spot some implication of where you're supposed to go - but you'd better hope that you haven't already been there and completed that objective before, because there's no way the game will tell you! Have fun wandering around the station, fighting the same enemies, and visiting places you've already been for hours until you end up progressing by accident.

I will change this review if an objectives tracker is added.

Some people call this game "Counter-Strike: Vietnam", but it's actually way closer to Day of Defeat with its historical war setting, sprinting and stamina system, and game modes like Conquer and CTF. If you like Day of Defeat: Source then you will probably like this too. It's perfect for hopping into a few matches here, especially GunGame if you want to get straight into the action. The player base is currently pretty small, but there are always at least a few populated servers in Europe and people don't take the game too seriously. Hopefully the community continues to grow over time.

Opening the options menu will instantly launch SteamVR if there is a headset connected to the PC, and the game will crash if SteamVR is closed. There's no excuse for Source modders not knowing how to disable VR support in their mod in this day and age.

On top of that, the devs somehow thought it would be a good idea to add head bobbing, which can't be disabled without enabling cheats. And good luck trying to read what the console says when it's being spammed with error messages multiple times a second.

So far, the English translation and writing is also terrible, like someone ran it through Google Translate. I don't think I'll bother going back to this one unless the devs at least fix these issues first.

A Half-Life 2 mod-turned-game with an atmosphere so thick you could drown in it. Because G String was developed as a HL2 mod for many years before going retail, many of its levels and encounters were designed in a way that assume that the player has played HL2 beforehand, so I would recommended playing that game first to familiarise yourself with its weapons and mechanics before picking up G String. G String is also a pure, uncompromised work of art borne from the artistic vision of a single developer, and much of the quality of the game reflects this.

At their worst, some of the levels feel like the kind of basic-geometry maps you might find bundled in a compilation from RTSL (although the atmosphere is never broken), but at their best, they're some of the most gorgeous and intricate levels I've ever seen on the Source engine. Some of the puzzles are hard and you may frequently find yourself whacking all the walls around you in desperation, but the solution will always reveal itself in the end if you persist and think outside the box.

The overall meaning of the story, like many great works in the Cyberpunk genre before it, is left somewhat up to interpretation, though there are already some excellent analyses in the Steam Discussions if you want to take a dive after completing the game. There is also the possibility of a developer commentary in the future if Eyaura chooses to make one (and I really hope she does!). If you like HL2 mods, first-person shooters in general, the cyberpunk genre, or especially all of the above, you may find G String is worth your time.

Pay to win

I wasn't sold on ray tracing technology in videogames until I played this. Can't wait to see which classics Lightspeed Studios decide to modernise next

The World War II-themed shooter that's been long forgotten by Valve but not by its community. There are still a bunch of active community servers hosting both vanilla and custom maps as well as other modes like GunGame. Always fun to go back in for a few rounds every once in a while.