Последние обзоры Eidolon

HOLE is a surprisingly simple and tight formula on a genera often characterized for complexity and opulent production values.

You start in a mostly empty, featureless building. Who are you, and why are you there? It doesn't matter, turn on the microwave and fall into HOLE. You'll select from one of four maps (though I can only play one, for reasons I'll mention ahead) and be dropped into a stage filled with strange hostiles. Your objective is to kill as many of them as you can before finding your way out. Get out alive and earn resources with which to buy upgrades to your weapons and your base, die and have your rewards decimated. The longer you stay in a level, the more rewards you get, but the more dangerous and aggressive the enemies become. How much do you want to push your luck? Depends on how much you're willing to lose.

In terms of the sim elements that characterize other games in the genera, HOLE is surprisingly light: Your character doesn't suffer from fatigue after sprinting for more than thirty seconds, nor do they realistically fall into shock when shot, nor do they get shaky with adrenaline after shooting someone else. What do they do? Well, they suck at aiming from the hip and they die very quickly, and that's all you really need to create some shockingly tense and challenging gun fights. Especially once you get to some of the more punishing enemies; as someone who greatly enjoys a good horror game, some of the scariest moments I've had in a game have happened after a run of HOLE that lasted for over ten minutes.

Of course though, the game does have issues. Remember how I said I could only play one map earlier? Yeah, that's because the textures on the second map won't load for me. Being the work of a one-man indie dev, the game is (perhaps unsurprisingly) poorly optimized and buggy. Given the simple graphics, I'd wager any machine built for gaming in the last 10~ years can probably run it fairly well, but if you (like me) were hoping for a tactical shooter you could play on your laptop while on a trip, this probably isn't it. Movement also feels a bit janky at times, and while the enemy AI can be very challenging, it's also very simple in a way that can make it easily exploitable if you know what you're doing.

Would I recommend it in spite of that? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's more than worth it, for the price tag. The core gameplay loop is great and I find the aesthetics very compelling, but you should probably know what you're getting into and be willing to accept it, imperfections and all. Personally I'm happy I supported this dev's work, and I'm looking forward to what they do next.

A few years back, I briefly found myself as a young man living a big city in the middle of the desert, staying in a crumbling house and getting around on a cheap motorized bike that could sometimes keep up with traffic. It was a stressful, troubling period in my life, and yet a deeply liberating one: With little in the way of responsibilities, every day was a chance to see something different, to meet someone new; to see the world and find who I was in it.

The biggest compliment I could give Sable as a game is that it not only captures the freedom that I felt back then, but also the longing for something more. With simple mechanics and a gorgeous visual styling, it so effectively manages to encapsulate the energy of youth as well as it pitfalls, the sense that the world is beautiful and big and open for you, and yet that you're only a small part of something bigger; that there's a place out there for you, waiting for you to find it.

Movement is at the core of Sable. Over the course of your playthrough, you'll spend the bulk of your time walking, running, climbing, sliding and hoverbiking your way through a rich, varied landscape, from vast desert dunes to dense cities to the derelict ruins of an ancient civilization. While this movement can feel a bit awkward and clumsy at times, in a way that perhaps reveals a lack of experience or overabundance of ambition from the devs, learning its inner workings and figuring out how to best make it work for you is a deeply involving and satisfying process. I can't remember the last time I plainly refused to fast-travel anywhere in game, simply because the process of getting from place to place is so much fun.

The story is loose and only tangentially present, which allows you to sort of look past it and engage with it in your own terms. Personally, I chose to talk to as many people and engage on as many quests as possible, and I've greatly enjoyed the experience. The writing, to me, felt charming, personable and at times, profoundly heart-warming, in the way only stories about people can. Special mention has to go to the music and soundscape, which were captivating enough that I never wanted to play my own tracks over the top of them, which is a rarity for me.

Of course, it's not without problems. As other reviews point out, the game has some technical issues that can really take you out of the experience: Strange bouts of stuttering, odd visual glitches and some weird stuff going on with the climbing mechanics and low ledges. These are annoying, but in my opinion they're minor blemishes on what's overall an amazing experience.

I would strongly recommend Sable to just about everyone that wants a fun, yet stress-free game about exploration and freedom.

Gunsmith Simulator manages to do something I see a lot of games fail at in spite their best efforts, which is capturing the satisfaction that comes with doing mundane, repetitive, but meaningful work towards a detail-oriented job.

The game is almost stupidly simple: Guns come in and you go down a checklist of pre-determined tasks to either modify, give maintenance to or otherwise fix them. There's very little in the way of mechanical or tactical skill involved and the game rarely throws any curve balls at you. You click on the highlighted parts, do the simple mouse motion, hear the satisfying little clicks and dings, finish the job, repeat. It's cooking-mama adjacent in terms of difficulty and engagement.

The real charm of the game, in my opinion, comes from a) getting to play around with the broad arsenal of lovingly rendered weapons, which are recreated part-by-part in obsessive detail, and b) the simple satisfaction you get from taking a thing that is broken and ugly and slowly working on it until it's functional and beautiful again. It eliminates most of the frustrations and pitfalls that often come with straight-forward manual labor and delivers pure catharsis. If you're the kind of person who actually enjoys washing dishes or organizing your desk, this is the game for you.

That said, some caveats: The game has (I believe) 22 weapons, which is plenty in my opinion, but can get repetitive to work on after a while. Personally, I don't mind this, as I believe a long list of guns isn't as important as building a compelling experience around them, but if you just want a larger catalog there are other options out there.

Additionally, I really wish the background music was better. I don't really get what it is with games like this one, where so much of your attention is going to be taken up by the soundscape, and looping a single generic rock song over and over again. Then again, this isn't much of an issue, since I have the sound muted and a podcast running in the background most of the time, but I still wish the devs would put a little more effort in on that regard.

Overall, if you you're looking for a relaxing, satisfying and simple game to zone out to while relaxing after work on a Thursday afternoon, I can't recommend Gun Simulator enough.

UPDATE: Game now tries to force you to install a root kit when you run it. The devs must have realized their review score couldn't get any lower and decided to get as scummy as they could. Goes to show me for having faith in them, I guess. Do not purchase this game: It is not worth compromising the safety of your PC for.
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As it exists right now, I think Undisputed is a worthwhile purchase for any fans of boxing craving for a quick, easy fix of that good old pugilistic action. It is, in my view, easily the best boxing game we've gotten in the last ten or so years, and in some ways better than the old Fight Night classics, with a roster full of legendary fighters and mechanics carefully and lovingly crafted as to emulate the feeling of real, visceral, fist-fighting combat.

This isn't to say the game is perfect. Right now, certain features are missing or lackluster, the career mode is repetitive and anticlimactic, some of the boxers are underdeveloped and a lot of the core fighting mechanics lack impact and flow — having said that, these are things the devs are actively working on fixing right now: You only need to take a look at their youtube channel or check out their discord to see them actively taking feedback from the community and working on future updates to enhance the experience.

Progress can be slow sometimes, sure, but they've consistently delivered an outstanding product so far, which is frankly mind-boggling for a relatively small team. Personally, I have faith they'll continue to do right by the community, but even if they didn't? What they have here right now is already outstanding, and I think that makes this game worth checking out.

This is one of those games that REALLY makes me wish Steam had a "maybe" option for reviews, because in spite of my decision not to recommend it, I cannot emphasize enough: BPM is incredibly fun and outstandingly well designed. It's a masterfully executed love-letter to old-school shooters that nails its lightning-fast movement and heart-pounding action, all while creating from the ground up one of the most satisfying rhythm mechanics I've ever experienced.

Now, as a huge fan of both rouge-likes and FPS games, I did struggle to get ahold of the whole "acting on the beat" thing at first. I'd line up a shot to find the game wouldn't let me fire in time to hit my target, or try to dodge out of the way of a projectile only to get a 'NUH UH' and a slap in the wrist from the game. It felt weird, stilted and sometimes frustrating.

As I started to get a hang on the rhythm though, BPM transformed from your average run-of-the-mill shooter into something fantastic. Once I got used to timing my attacks, managing my abilities and dodging / reloading on the double, it became less of a test of precision and speed and more of a dance, a performance: The backing track was my notes sheet, the shotgun my guitar and I was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shredding. Make no mistake, this game has a steep initial learning curve, but once you can get over that first hump of playing with the music, it's beyond a shadow of a doubt a wonderful, one-of-a-kind experience.

People have offered complaints regarding level design, but I feel that's a given with procedural generated dungeons. Some have said they dislike the over-saturated artstyle, but you can actually turn that down in the menu settings. So if those aren't issues, and I otherwise I like the game so much, why am I not recommending it?

In one word, performance: Minutes-long loading screens, texture popping, stuttering every time you enter a new room, music that freezes seemingly at random — which in a game based around music, seems absolutely egregious to me. Looking through the game's forums reveals this has been a common issue since an update a few months ago, and while it seems it wasn't always this way, my experience with the game is comprised entirely of these technical misgivings. BPM can bring you to unprecedented highs with its tight gameplay and sound-design, but never without dropping you like a hot potato by freezing for six seconds at a time in the middle of an intense combat encounter.

I'm used to working with janky games, so thus far I've been happy to put up with these issues for the sake of what has proven to be one of the most fun shooters in my library, but I don't expect everyone to be as patient as I am, especially not with a game that's supposed to be all about speed and flow. For this reason and this reason alone, I can't recommend BPM in its current state. I'll happily change my review if the developers ever get around to improving the performance, but until then, I advise that you be wary of this one.

Quick note before I start: A lot of the negative experiences I see detailed in the reviews bellow can be fixed by installing MoArtist's UserXpMod. You can find further details on this mod, along with a download link, here. Be sure to drop the author a line thanking him for his contributions to the community.

Having said that, even with the quality of life additions made by the mod, River City Girls won't be a game for everyone: It's an old-school beat 'em up in every sense of the word, with all the good and bad that entails. If you weren't a huge fan of games like Final Fight or Super Double Dragon, don't expect this to be what finally gets you into the genera — but if you were, you might find this to be a breath of fresh air amongst a mostly dead and stagnating formula.

First, lets talk about what I liked.

River City Girls is an absolutely beautiful game in every sense of the word. The sprites are colorful and well realized, the animations are fluid and bouncy, the music is easy on the ears even after hours of play and the sound design is clean and satisfying. All of these blend together to create a game with an incredibly strong core combat loop that keeps me coming back for more. Even now, as I take a break from the game to write this review, I'm tempted to pop the game back open, travel downtown and beat up on some gangsters. It's just that good.

You start the game off with a relatively weak and narrow moveset that explains the principles of combat fairly well: Light attacks for knockdowns, strong attacks when enemies are set up, position yourself so that you can combo multiple enemies at once, all that good stuff. Additionally, River City Girls also adds a parry, which you can access by blocking an enemy attack with perfect timing and grants you extra time for a counter attack, something I found really fulfilling to master and use.

Leveling up happens quickly, and as you do, you'll start to gain more power and moves, which you can start integrating to your gameplan to take out enemies more efficiently. This is where the real fun of beat 'em ups is, in figuring out optimal ways to take out enemies and how to implement them across different scenarios, and River City Girls builds on this by allowing you to "buy" (train, but you're effectively just paying for them) certain moves, therefore giving you a level of freedom in designing your own kit.

Are you focusing on long strings of light attacks? Or on your ability to reliably land slower, but more damaging hits? Maybe most of your damage is in your grapples, so you build your whole style around knocking enemies down to stun them? Regardless of what you do, you'll most likely find something that works for you, and the feeling of having your own personal style of play come together is very rewarding.

But just as combat can be incredibly fun when you're laying it on, it can be hair-pullingly frustrating when you're on the wrong end of a beating. Beat 'em ups are chaotic games, often having dozens of enemies on screen, plus you, plus perhaps your co-op partner, and it's easy to get lost in that madness.

What's more, the overabundance of enemies makes it almost impossible to avoid all attacks at all times, and getting hit only once can easily lead into a catastrophic series of combos that can have you losing half your healthbar in one fell swoop. I can't count the number of times the game had me feeling like an absolute monster, plowing through enemies with ease, only to have that feeling interrupted by a single guy knocking me down with a kick, immediately followed by his ten buddies proceeding to wail on me while I tried to get my bearings back.

This is not so much a fault on River City Girls' part as it is a flaw inherent to beat 'em ups that River City Girls does little to try and fix. Anyone who plays a lot of fighting games will tell you that getting comboed sucks, but unfortunately it's a necessary evil to achieve the high you get when you get back up and kick your opponent's ass. Thing is, if you're not skilled enough to kick your opponent's ass? That high never comes, and you just end up feeling angry and frustrated at the game for wasting your time.

Now, I am not the type of elitist gaming jackass that just shouts "get good" at anyone who disagrees with me about a game's quality, but reading about people's negative perception of RCG, it does strike me that a lot of the people who didn't enjoy it might've had the wrong expectation for what beat 'em ups are. Yes, the game can feel awkward and clunky; yes, a lot of your moves are slow and leave you vulnerable to counterattack; yes, sometimes it feels like the game puts you in inescapably bad situations where there's nothing you can do but to wait for the worst possible outcome and suffer.

And it feels wrong to say, but the reality is that often the best way to escape these sorts of situations is to just not get into them in the first place. No, you shouldn't have allowed yourself to be cornered by five enemies. No, you shouldn't have thrown out a heavy attack that hit only one guy while three of his buddies are right behind you. No, you shouldn't have tried to beat out that character's run up when it clearly has more range than yours. Yes, these are mistakes that are hard to avoid and the punishment for making them can often be monstrously disproportionate, but having them is the thin line that maintain the game a challenge as opposed to a power fantasy.

This isn't to say River City Girls doesn't make some straight up mistakes in its designs. Some of the enemies can be extremely annoying, and sometimes the chaos gets to be a little bit too much for even the trained eye to effectively analyze. [s]I seriously want to sit down with the person that designed the whole Hibari bossfight and just ask them what the ♥♥♥♥ they were thinking.[/s] But I think these moments are far overshadowed by the overall fun of the game, how satisfying it can be to play and how entertaining it is to watch.

I'd recommend River City Girls to anyone looking for a solid, high quality beat 'em up that doesn't mind getting their ass kicked from time to time.

A fun, surprisingly deep platform-action fighting game, which unfortunately lacks a bit in terms of community support. Great for killing a few hours and playing with friends.

A barebones but functional and entertaining boxing game, which is sadly probably as good as we're going to get in the platform for now.

Before I start I feel the need to clarify, I don't think Paint the Town Red is a bad game, not by any means: It's a perfectly fine product. If you've researched it, seen it played and still really want to get it, by all means go ahead. I just can't personally recommend it for a few reasons that I'll get into further down.

First, some of the possitives:

• Satisfying combat with good feeback to hits and visually dynamic bodily harm for your enemies, wich makes each strike and how you place it seem important.
  
• Well-designed prepackaged levels which are visually interesting, fun to explore and a blast to brawl in.
  
• An accessible and in-depth level editor, which I'm sure players who are much more talented than I am will use to create some amazing content further down the line.

In my opinion, all of this this makes PTTR a worthwhile package onto itself. My problem with it, however, lays at the very core of how it's designed.

PTTR is extremely combat centric. Levels consist of running around, beating up an enemy until they collapse and then repeating the process... Seventy-five times, I think? And this wouldn't be a problem if the combat was nuanced and interesting, but it doesn't feel like it is at all.

During a fight, you can swing, stab, kick, block or throw, although you'll only ever need the second and last to win. Mostly, your strategy will consist of throwing something at a target, running at them and holding M1 in their general direction until they collapse, or (if you really wanna get fancy) weaving in and out of their range while you attack. It doesn't mentally engage the player and, after a while, it becomes monotonous and repetitive.

While there are other elements to help mix things up, such as an energy bar which allows you to use some really cool superpowers and an arena mode which puts you in more specific, interesting situations, there's no getting around the fact that the combat feels bland and shallow, since it brings every other aspect of the game down.

Not a bad game, not at all, but you can definitively do better.

I'm a writer... sort of. Sometimes I sit down and write stuff about videogames, but not very often. It's nice, because I like to talk a lot and when there's no one around who wants to listen to my inane ramblings I know I can draft something up, throw it onto the internet and there will probably be *someone* out there that cares to read it. But that’s besides the point: I write because I have a lot of thoughts that go nowhere, and I feel the necessity to share those thoughts with other people.

But coming up with words to describe TF2? How am I even supposed to do that? This game… it’s not a game anymore for me. It’s the background noise of my life. I can’t imagine a time where I didn’t play it. I can’t imagine where my life would be if I hadn’t found it. It’s been with me through so much. It’s taught me so many things, it’s helped me meet so many great friends -- ♥♥♥♥, is it weird to say that it’s changed my life? Because I think it has. And I think that’s a good thing, too.

I have over 900 hours played. How did I get here?

So yeah. TF2. It’s a team based shooter where you get to pick from one of 9 classes, all of which you probably already know from numerous internet memes. You and your teammates must work together to complete an objective -- whether that’s capturing a point, pushing a cart, getting a briefcase or preventing the enemy team from doing any of those things. Usually there’s a lot of running around and shooting involved.

Graphically? It’s pretty great. I use this game as evidence that aesthetics in gaming mather so much more than actual graphical power. The art style still holds up even after 10+ years and looks to not be falling out of fashion anytime soon.

Performance wise? It’s… okay. It’ll run on most of everything, but there’s definitively a certain level of spaghetti code going on in here. Weird bugs and performance issues are abound. Far from perfect, but it works 90% of the time and that’s enough for most people.

Gameplay wise? Well, if you’ll pardon my french, it’s ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sweet. TF2 is both amazingly simple and ridiculously complex. A new player can pick it up and learn how to play it in a single sitting, but a veteran could play it for years without fully mastering it (thus, over 900 hours my friends). You can team up with your friends and screw around all match and have a grand ‘ol time, but there’s a certain beauty to getting good enough to stomp an entire pub by yourself. And then you can go online and find a team and actually compete and…

Over 900 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours. Jesus.

It’s not without its flaws. The developers, mostly. I love Valve as much as the next guy, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ have they made some stupid decisions regarding this game. Updates are few and far between, and lately seem to add mostly cosmetics. Each bug fix brings about 15 new bugs. The game has ♥♥♥♥ balance, and this is coming from a guy who stuck with LoL through seasons 4 and 5.

TF2 is plagued by a myriad of technical issues that provide constant annoyance, but here’s the trick: The actual game beneath it is so good, by the time you start noticing, you won’t care.

The biggest selling point by far is the community tho. Yeah, bad apples and whatnot -- we do what we can to deal with those -- but you’d be hard pressed find a group of more creative, dedicated, hard-working people than the TF2 community. 10 years later, servers are still being hosted, mods are still being coded, content is still being made. There’s still competitive leagues active and moderated, and entire youtube channels dedicated to the game. It’s ridiculous in the best of ways, and it makes the game feel alive in ways other just cannot.

Feel like finding the next big thing you can play with your friends? Need something else to invest afternoons into trying to get good at? Wanna meet some of the most awesome, passionate people on the planet? Or maybe you’re just into it for the sweet, sweet Heavy x Medic fanfics?

Then give TF2 a shot. Yeah, it’s probably my favorite game. And there’s a good chance it’ll be yours too.