Recent reviews by Otterman

A cute story and a fun cast along with highs and lows when it comes to puzzles and alright game play. Short and sweet with a few noticeable bumps.

The story had me intrigued not in how he gets out, but the certain mysteries of why things are taking place. They will get delivered to you piecemeal as the story goes along, so there's always something to think about. I never felt bored and wanted to see what was going to happen next. That's enough for me.

The ending was especially great, a nice bow to tie everything together. I knew with one line being said what was about to go down in the next few seconds and they delivered in such a victorious way that it gave me a good chuckle.

It lives up to the 2.5D name with about 60% of the game through Trevor, 40% of the game through the black and red haired lady. The Trevor gameplay is platforming that I think is most similar to Limbo or Inside. Moving boxes around to get to higher places, constantly going one direction with a few things to spice it up. Nothing surprising, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

As for the lady... there were some great puzzles and some others that made me feel like either I somehow completely had my wires crossed or the devs were thinking I should make the same logic jump that they did. At the beginning her puzzles are fairly straightforward and I understood them. It was neat helping Trevor by hacking stuff to get him through cops or buildings. It's also a very nice way to break apart the Trevor sections as my left thumb might have gone numb pressing the left stick for so long. Not to mention building on the story along with another character to like and learn about.

However, near the end of the game in a certain facility I took almost an hour in there. I probably would have taken 20 minutes to get through it all if the devs gave me just one hint on the mindset I should have to get through a puzzle. There were lessons I thought I was learning that were then expanded upon without buildup, like a puzzle was missed that would teach me what to expect next. I don't think the puzzles themselves were bad once I got the logic behind them, but I wish there was some buildup there rather than sending me in on a wild ride.

And spoiler for one puzzle: There is also one puzzle that, unless I'm wrong, is impossible to solve without giving up on it and looking around. To me, while it looked complicated, I already had a jump in difficulty from the previous puzzle that I thought "Well... it had faith in me to figure out last time. I should have all I need right here. I didn't get anything else the last two times. I can do this."

While this section frustrated me, I did manage to get through it all in about 6 hours by myself. With a few puzzles that I felt needed a bit of buildup before solving, I did have a nice, fresh run through American Arcadia. If I had to guess what the inspirations were, one would definitely be Truman Show, but the other surprising and possibly spoiler one was The Shawshank Redemption unless I read that movie wrong. Even with those inspirations, they do something new with it that I think deserves a playthrough. For $20, or $18 when I bought it as it just came out, I think it was well worth the price and time.

Oh, and I'll also need help from my Spanish speaking friends on all the very nice things I'm sure the lady said.

Don't be a fool!

whoever had the idea for the bucket.

i hate you. i think you are brilliant. but i hate you.

Play with the Kaiserreich mod for an alternate history experience that's even better than singleplayer.

I took India, France, Netherlands and colonizing all of North America as Great Britain, where the Sun Never Sets.
I dominated Eastern Europe and conquered Constantinople as the Russian Empire, renaming it Tsargrad, fulfilling the ambition of Third Rome.
I overthrew the Ming Dynasty, Japan, and South East Asia as the Qing Dynasty, with more than a million troops at my disposal.
I instituted a great Pirate Republic that completely controlled Indonesia and the Philippines as Malaya, monopolizing the spice trade.
I created a great French Empire that controlled all of the Americas, Africa, and Western Europe while in a Personal Union with Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth and outlawing slavery in 1717.
I controlled all of the Mediterranean cultivating an extremely multicultural and multi-religious Ottoman Empire, placing pashas in France and Moscow.
I decimated my enemies using invincible Space Marines as Prussia and, eventually, the German Confederation, where I destroyed armies three times my size practically unscathed.

And I still feel like I haven't explored even half of what the game can offer.

It's a drug that can give you incredible insights into the world rising from feudalism into centralized governments. There are plenty of events in the game that depend on what country you're playing as, learning about people, reforms, and disasters.

There are very different playstyles and things to focus on. If you play as Spain for example, you'll probably be focusing on Colonizing the Caribbeans, South America, and Mexico. Whereas if you play as Palembang in South East Asia, you're focusing on carefully consolidating power to become an extremely rich Pirate nation. Or you can be the Ottomans and absolutely destroy others due to their insane government reforms and military bonuses.

This game is definitely one of my favorites and I highly recommend it to anyone who's even remotely interested in history in this time period. It's supremely addictive and satisfying to start from, say, a Jurchen horde, creating Manchuria, and invading a powerful China with 30k horsemen against 100k infantry and somehow winning because horde troops fighting in plains are invincible in early game. From there, I kept taking over land from China, taking the Mandate of Heaven and establishing the Qing dynasty.

There is the unfortunate thing about Paradox having a plethora of DLC's to actually start playing the game. Luckily, the vanilla is experience has plenty to offer anyways, and to me, I felt only a handful of DLC's seriously changed the gameplay, with most of the other ones you can ignore if you don't want to play in that region of the world.

Anyway, great game, highly recommend. I reckon I'll have to put in double the hours I have now until I'm positively satisfied.

Probably the most varied total war game there is. Every single faction has something different going on, whether it be gathering influence to get better lords or make your enemies hate each other for High Elves, to managing food resources that affect public order and upkeep for the Skaven. They all have different units, with different strengths and weaknesses, with overarching strengths and weaknesses that the faction is geared to play as. High Elves archers are stupidly powerful with their long range and damage, Skaven just surround the enemy with very high unit sizes. Then you get Vampire Coast, who are just about protecting your disgusting artillery and missile units with terrible melee units.

So everything is varied, every faction has distinct look, units, styles of play, and goals. That's great!

Also, if you own Warhammer 1, you can download a DLC that combines both maps, along with the factions. So you can play as the Dwarfs in this huge map in Warhammer 2, and take over everything because Dwarfs play as an unbreakable line of defense that you can't get rid of, which allows them to beat the snot out of those pesky Orcs!

I have 140 hours in this game and I bought it a month ago. I plan to have at least a thousand until they release Warhammer III, which adds a new map, factions, and, of course, the dlc to add both Warhammer and Warhammer II maps with Warhammer III to get the entire map of the Warhammer Fantasy franchise.

The only downside I see in this game is when you're playing the huge map. Because there are so many factions, ending the turn makes all the ai calculate stuff, so for the first few turns, you're probably looking at a few minutes wait until it's done. Don't worry though, most factions are killed off quickly, so it goes down to around a few seconds below a few minutes. (Basically no difference I really dislike this boohoo)

So yeah, you want to play a fantasy game with lots of different races all killing each other for REASONS??? then have some fun!

Damn.

This, like the title says, is really painful.

The game goes through really tough themes, and precaution should be taken if sensitive to the material. Right off the bat, in the main menu, we see a girl hung to death. The story itself is personal, with the world taking a backseat. You're given hints of what it's like, but never really explore in depth, which to me is great. It leaves a bit of mystery. The title says "The miserable journey of a broken man," and it's true. I could leave it there. But eh I wanna get a little bit of details here. It's a simple story about trying to find your adopted daughter after she's been kidnapped. Nothing will stand in the way of Brad Armstrong and his trusty companions, and oh boy are these companions a lot of fun.

The RPG system with companions is the best I've ever seen. You don't want them to live because you like them (even though every companion is so much fun in their own right), you care because if they perish, the game itself is harder for you. This makes the combat system refreshing, as you need all the help you can get. Items, companions, etc. Inventory management is a big deal. Firebombs are extremely useful, but you need to pick the right time to use them.

You also have to choose if you want to keep your arms or, lets say, kill a party member. Losing your arm lowers every stat by a bit, and even loses a few skill moves. You can lose your arm again as well, which makes the game significantly harder.

All the enemies in the game are unique (with a few exceptions for the few possible grinding sections) which gives every battle a personal feeling to it. When they die, they don't simply fade away. They say something to remind you that these are people, and they freaking explode after they perish, accompanied by sad piano. This can at times come off as hilarious, and this game nails humor.

The game is extremely hilarious and yet superbly dark. At first it's got a lot of dark humor, but as time goes on the humor tends to slip into extremely dark, where you can still have a laugh, but the effects do take it's toll on your overall mood. Still, the game offers many experiences that'll make you chuckle.

Did I mention the music yet? It's soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. I bought the original soundtrack about halfway through the game. The soundtrack alone deserves to have money thrown at it. It has this scalpal sharp tone that exemplifies every scene you're in. It's grating and loud at times, but at the very best moments where it's used very well.

The main game I finished in about 13 hours. The DLC, 4.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this game.

It's an experience that will stick with you, on a personal level. And, even though it gets very real with you at times, it does offer hope. We can be better people if we tried. Not letting our past experiences dictate who we will be, even though most of the time we're trapped as that's all we've experienced in the world. Simply choose for yourself, not for others. Be joyful, my dude.

Remember the old games that were hard and dickish? Well, Hotline Miami is hard, but is quite fair. Your enemies are killed in one hit, but so are you. Get used to dying again and again, as you will get killed a lot. It gives you moments that descisions are made in the short break between inhale and exhale.

For you bloodthirsty folks that want blood all over the place and gruesome deaths, then you have found the game, my friend. Although it gets your blood pumping and your heart racing, ít might get a bit boring after a while. It gives you that burst of addrenaline that might last for 30 minutes to an hour, but after that, you will probably take a break, then come back after an hour or two.

If you are not that skilled in über fast pased action and can kill enemies quick on the draw, this game is not for you. If you are, then why are you reading this review, you should buy the game immediately. At the low price and fair price, you should be able to afford this beautiful indie game.

9/10

The LEGO series of video games are incredibly humorus in every which way. You can always play with your family / young ones without having to explain adult situations. The gameplay is fantastic, though some of the controls are a bit funky, having to go in by manually changing them to the one I choose to play wtih. Like what other reviewers have said, you will have the ability to play in the battles, even the first battle at the beginning of the movie, which is entertaining at the most. All in all, if the controls, and my computer stops making a wierd fps lag every now and then, I rate it 9/10. But if you see it from the gameplay and the story, 10/10. Fantastic game and worth the money.

9/10