Recent reviews by Rayman

This game is chaos... and I love it!

Titanfall 2 has a brilliant singleplayer campaign. The gunplay is great and the campaign keeps on throwing new things at you. Don't expect an amazing story or difficult puzzles or great level design or anything like that but if you just want to shoot bad guys the campaign is great for that. Non-stop action at its finest.

Campaign is about 5-6 hours.
Also, I just want to mention how beautiful this game is. It looks great, and the levels often feel spacious and there's a lot going on. Also the game feels very good to play; with an FOV of 90 and a high framerate (Vsync turned off of course) it feels good.

Only original Doom 1 and Doom 2 (and community WADs) can compare with the sheer ferocity of the gameplay in Titanfall 2.

The ORIGINAL co-op game to play with friends! Good selection of short co-op campaigns, and super fun! The game has some VERY noice mods too (check out my steam workshop collection :))

This game is awesome! The pacing is perfect, the puzzles are fun, and the game always throws new things at you to solve. It is perfectly bite-sized, and can easily be completed in just a few hours. I think the short length is one of the game's biggest strengths; it is easy to get into for people unfamiliar with FPS games, and it is very re-playable.
This competes with Doom 2 Half Life 1 Deus Ex for my favourite singleplayer FPS of all time.

Great game to play with friends. Also just a great game to sit back and relax. Very simple mechanics, can be played on pretty much any Windows device. Be warned though that the game has a lot of RNG, so things can change very quickly in the game if your luck is very good or bad. The combat reminds me a lot of classics like Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Also the developers are very active on this game. They've been pushing updates out for years, and the game now has many hours and hours of campaign content, all for free! I've nominated this game for the 2021 Steam Labour of Love award.

The Witcher 3 is a great game. The combat is easy to learn but hard to master, the open world is fun to explore with well-written side-quests and lore, and the story is intriguing.

Before you read the rest of the review, I wanted to mention a couple of things.
Firstly, I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers but at times I do vaguely mention a few things that happen in the game – it shouldn’t spoil the game for you but I just wanted to give a heads up. Secondly, The Witcher 3 is a game that requires commitment – you pretty much have to commit to spending multiple hours on the game at a time over multiple consecutive days, otherwise you’re not going to finish the game. In my case, I took the opportunity of a 2-month-long holiday to play this game and I thought it was well worth the time. The game is rather addicting and it’s probably not the type of game you’d want to play when you’re busy. If you’re a busy person with poor time management, then this game is probably not for you. The base game incl. most of the "good" side quests is about 70-90 hours long and the expansions add at least an additional 30 hours to that number - it's one of the longest RPG games out there. It's one of the few singleplayer games where you're almost guaranteed to hit triple digits.

One of the weakest parts of the Witcher 3 are the main quests – while the first half of these are particularly good the second half of the main quests are a pretty standard affair, roughly comparable to other games of this calibre but nowhere close to the fascination of a good book. For comparison, I would say that the story of Mass Effect 1 is roughly comparable in terms of quality.

Where the Witcher 3 really shines is in its subplots and its characters (sort of like Mass Effect 2 but way better). For instance, The Witcher 3 is set on the backdrop of a war between nations and there are multiple characters who have vested interests in the war – your decisions and actions involving these characters may change the progression of the war. Many of the side quests are very well written and provide the intellectual and emotional stimulation of a short story along with the fun of good gameplay. If you’re a fan of folklore tales and short stores you’ll like The Witcher 3, as many side-quests resemble short tales. On top of that, all the characters are likeable (except Lambert) and the emotional connection you have with these characters pretty much tops any other game I’ve come across. I’ve always thought of video games as a great story-telling medium, and The Witcher 3 shows just how good video games can be in this regard.

One issue with the side-quests is that the quality of the quests is rather inconsistent. After you get past Velen there are a lot of fairly average side-quests that appear and aren’t close to the quality of the best side-quests. In addition to that, there is no clear distinction between the good side quests and the average ones on the quests panel which can make the quests panel rather messy considering there are so many side quests. Another consequence of this is that it becomes tedious to revisit books in your inventory that you may have read for specific side quests because there are so many of them and there is no way to distinguish between books from the current quest and books from previous quests once you've already read them - to deal with this I put books and other items from already completed quests into my stash to prevent my inventory from getting too messy making it easier to re-read books during quests (useful for treasure hunts). As a general rule of thumb if the side-quest involves a friend of Geralt’s or someone involved in the main quests it is likely to be a good side-quest. Once you get past Novigrad you begin to develop a keen eye for which quests are good or not – I generally take a habit of accepting the quests I receive even if I don’t intend to do them.

The Witcher 3 is audiovisual masterpiece. The music is fantastic and varies depending on the location you are in the game world. The weapons even sound different when your character gets stronger (I can see they got some ideas from Gothic). The visuals are excellent, the trees and foliage especially look pretty and the game world is very detailed. Cinematics look fluid and stylish, and the animations are roughly comparable to Half Life 2 and the Mass Effect trilogy – it’s more than good enough to be immersive. My only gripes with the audiovisual department are that audio sounds sometimes do not register when you hit enemies, some dialogue isn’t mastered correctly (too loud or too quiet, although this is quite rare), and some of the models are low quality – most of the models can easily be fixed by installing Halk Hogan’s HD Reworked Project which I would strongly suggest installing if you use a 4k monitor. As of writing this, CDPR is working on a “next gen” version of Witcher 3 using enhancements from the new consoles akin to the enhanced version of Witcher 2 – I assume most of the models will be fixed making the HD Reworked Project unneeded if your computer is capable of running the next gen version of the game.

The expansions are just as good if not better than the main game. While the expansions have fewer interesting characters, the main quests are more entertaining and the Blood and Wine expansion has much more consistent quality in its side-quests compared to the base game. I’d recommend playing them after you finish the base game, especially if you enjoyed the base game.

Witcher 3 is not strictly an RPG, as the main story and the character you play as remains largely the same throughout the game. However, it does have a lot of RPG elements, such as being able to customize your character with skills and potions, an open world ready for exploration, and having many subplots which can be completed in different ways changing the fates of certain characters in the story. If you’re looking for a “true” RPG where you can have different playstyles, story outcomes and character configs you might be better off playing a get-stuck-often-read-the-wiki-and-save-scum-a-lot game like Age of Decadence or Fallout 1 – other games that come to mind include KOTOR II, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate II, and Gothic although I haven’t played those yet as of writing this. In my mind though, The Witcher 3 is still a very good RPG.

Overall, it’s a great game. I rate it 9/10.

Update #1:
I wanted to post a quick little update. Some of the side-missions in Toussaint (Blood and Wine) remind me a lot of Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. In terms of combat, from memory, it is quite reminiscent of that and the Batman games. So, if you're into that style of combat you'll probably like The Witcher 3. I would say that Witcher 3 is just a better game in general compared to shadow of mordor anyway so unless you want a more short / arcadey / sandbox experience I'd recommend The Witcher 3 instead.

EDIT: HL1 recently patched - don't change settings anymore.

OLD: Some tips before playing:

Uncheck "Enable HD models if available" in Video Options.
Uncheck "Auto-Aim" in Mouse Options unless you want to use a controller.

The HD models look different to the original models, so I think it is better to not use them so you experience the original art style rather than something different. Also, the HD models don't really fit in with the low resolution map textures in the game.

Set the resolution to something low-ish like 1024x768 resolution. I would recommend not using widescreen for the sake of compatibility. One thing to note is that low resolutions scale surprisingly well on 4k monitors - I think valve implemented some in-game scaling that basically makes the game window the same size as your desktop resolution even though the in-game resolution is much lower.

Oh yeah, and keep in mind that you have to press ctrl right after pressing space to get into some parts of the levels like vents and tall ledges or going on top of boxes - I had long pauses between some parts of my play-through and I kind of forgot that you could do this until I got stuck and remembered it again.


Review:

Half-Life is a very good 1st-person shooter.
The level design is generally very good, and the way each level flows onto the next is practically seamless - it's quite an immersive game. The world building is pretty well done, and the art design looks quite good.

The game-play is quick and fun, with some cool puzzles that take advantage of the game's mechanics.

Story-wise it is interesting but the story doesn't have much depth - what sells this game story-wise is the combination of both the world building of the levels and the interesting dialogue even though there is no clear narrative. The ending to HL1 is anticlimactic, but in a good way - it ends with a pretty cool twist. Anyway, Half-Life isn't the type of series where you will expect a detailed story but it does get more story-focused in the later chapters of the series - it becomes more of a character-driven story rather than a plot-driven story.

The biggest problem with Half-Life is that it peaks half-way through and the last few levels are worse in quality - but it's not such a big problem as even the worst levels are still pretty decent in terms of gameplay and in terms of world-building and immersiveness are just as good as the previous levels.

I have to say, Half-Life is one of my favourite 1st person shooters if not my favourite. It has the perfect balance between gunplay, puzzle-solving, and exploration and it never gets boring - although the Xen levels can get a bit tedious at times.
Overall, I give Half-Life a 9/10. It is near-perfect.

-End of Review-


-EXTRA-

I thought I might as well place a little comment at the end here comparing Half-Life 1 with Half-Life 2, as I don't think I can be bothered writing a review for HL2.

In terms of level design:

HL1 is better as it has a pretty good balance between linear and non-linear sections. HL1 also rewards exploration of levels so levels feel bigger than they actually are. If you think about it, HL1 is actually pretty linear compared to something like Doom 1 but it makes up for it by having rather large levels for the puzzle and platforming sections, and the linearity is better in some aspects as the time length between fun parts of the game never gets long thanks to the scripted events while in a game like Doom there can be a lot of tedious backwards and forwards lengthening the time between each combat encounter. Comparatively, HL2 is a lot more linear with levels that strongly resemble long corridors - whether this is bad or not depends on your preferences. For some people having less detailed levels might be better for enjoyment - perhaps they prefer gameplay over exploration.

Now, what about gameplay?

Half-Life is a series that is famous for its varied gameplay. Compared to games like Doom 1 which mainly consist of running and shooting - the half-life series has a lot more mechanics in play like using objects to solve more complex puzzles or having underwater parts in levels. HL1 is both better and worse than HL2 - on one hand it has better shooting mechanics, but on the other hand HL2 has a LOT of physics-based mechanics and a greater variety in the gameplay. If you like having pure variety, HL2 has variety in spades. Whether the mechanics are used well or not depends on the levels - in HL1 you have a few mechanics that are used extensively in larger well-designed levels, while in HL2 you have a lot of mechanics that are used occasionally in smaller levels. HL2 can't help but feel a bit gimmicky at times with its mechanics - this isn't necessarily a bad thing and at the time the newness of its mechanics did a great job at selling the game to people. Nowadays though, HL2 feels a bit less new which reduces its appeal a little bit compared to how it was back in the day - but it's gameplay is still just as fun even though it lacks that "wow" factor now. In my opinion, HL1 has aged a bit better as even though its object physics aren't as good as HL2 the platforming and gunplay is more refined and I prefer the level design and unique art style. In my opinion HL1 is better than HL2, but I fully understand why people would prefer HL2 as HL2 does have a lot to offer that HL1 does not.

Now I say that "HL1 has aged a bit better", well this is not exactly the case. In my opinion the core gameplay (player movement and gunplay) has aged pretty well, but there are 3 things where half life hasn't aged that well:
1. Graphics. This is probably the biggest one. Now, graphics =\= gameplay however the fact of the matter is a lot of people prefer having newer and better graphics - people tend to like the new more than the old. Half-Life's textures for the most part are good enough (and the polygons high enough) to be immersive, however every now and then there is a very low resolution texture that can break immersion. In my opinion the textures are *just* good enough, any lower and I would probably say that Duke Nukem 3Ds pixel art looks better. The textures are high resolution enough to be immersive and low resolution enough to use your imagination - I would say that it is just about good enough for modern standards. However, I feel like, in the distant future, games like Doom 1 and 2 will probably age better graphically due to their pixel art style.
2. NPCs and AI. The NPCs are rather simplistic in Half-Life and the animations are pretty old school. The biggest issue is that when you get an NPC to follow you in Half-Life they don't always behave as you would expect.
3. The physics. Moving boxes is a bit unintuitive in Half-Life, you can't really pick them up you have to shift them side to side.
When you compare this to half-life 2 - HL2 does feel superior in these aspects. HL2 has timeless graphics using complex shaders which look more than realistic enough to be immersive - although sometimes there is the occasional blurry texture. It scales better with high resolutions (running 4k resolution is a non-issue although the menu scaling is a bit off - this is not an issue if you primarily use quick-save to save the game). The biggest advantage of HL2 is the NPCs - the animations are practically flawless, especially the facial animations. Every NPC feels like a real person - HL2 is well ahead of its time in this regard. HL2 manages to be more immersive overall compared to HL1. In terms of physics HL2 feels more sandboxy you can put objects into different orientations by making them fall off ledges, which you can use to accomplish different tasks, although sometimes it breaks immersion when there are invisible walls in the way.
In terms of gameplay - I personally found that the little quirks of HL1 such as the simple NPCs and weird physics made the game more interesting - it's kind of fun to mess around with NPCs. HL1 feels more mystical rather than realistic.

The perfect casual RTS.
Best played with a controller.

Awesome to play multiplayer split-screen, one of my favourite split-screen games, but mini-map in this mode could use some work as it can be hard to tell where the enemy is. \
Multiplayer matches are short at ~10 minutes and encourage offensive rather than defensive tactics.

Campaign is challenging as you are only limited to a select few units per mission.

Here's a tip: Attack with your artillery first (control units of a specific type, by default this can be done using left trigger instead of right trigger on a controller), then just when the enemy retaliates, attack with your full army.

Preliminary review:
I haven't played much, but I can already tell that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is one of the best racing games you can find on steam.
Why, it has TF2 characters!

It has a fun career mode that can be played in split-screen or single player.
If you're looking for a racing game to play with friends, I would recommend this.

Controls are simple and easy to learn. It's one of those games that is easy to learn but hard to master.

NOTE: The transforming mechanics are quite interesting and the level design for the transforming bits is awesome. Just a word of warning; some people may not like the aeroplane transformation as the controls are VERY different compared to the other transformations.

Excellent game to play with friends.
I think it's more fun than minecraft thanks to the epic boss fights.
Minecraft on the other hand is more of a creative game than a strictly "fun" game.

I am making this review because I have nominated this game as a "labour of love" for the steam awards. The developers are still active on this game and have recently pushed out their "final" update. Considering the age of this game it's impressive to see that updates are still being released. Depending on when you read this review the devs may have already decided to call it quits, but as of writing this it is still being supported.
The only other games I could think of for this category would be warframe or CSGO but Valve doesn't seem to be putting as much "love" in their games as they used to, rather they implement more incremental patches but at least they don't abandon their games, so I think terraria is a more fitting nomination. I haven't played warframe so I dunno about that one.