Recent reviews by ShiftyEyedKirk

Blood West: Dead Man's Promise literally has everything that made Blood West great, but in a much smaller package. The open-world, the immersive sound design, realized and interesting characters, and the urge to never stop playing are all present and accounted for. The new additions are a complement of melee weapon choices, voodoo-themed magic, and a new gravely-voiced protagonist voiced by Redd Pepper, all of which are welcome additions! It's a bit short, coming in at about 5 hours for my luxurious play-through, but that is the only downside to this fantastic expansion. Keep them coming!

I literally just searched for Seal Game on Steam and could not be more pleased.

This game's dedication to its theme, its masterful execution of immersive stealth, and its addictive and unapologetically fun game-play loop creates an experience that leaves you wanting more. In a year full of fantastic titles, this one stands out for all the right reasons. The voice acting is excellent, the sound design draws favorable comparisons to the original Thief franchise, and the soundtrack rocks way harder than it has any right to! The only thing we can hope for now is a sequel!

I really wanted to enjoy this game more than I did. As a massive fan of the original Dead Space, who always wanted the original concept to come to life, I couldn't have been more excited to learn of this game's existence. However, the frustrating and inconsistent melee dodge system caused far too much frustration for me to ever enjoy playing. The story was not engaging enough to incentivize me to continue to play, and because you are forced to get in the faces of your enemies, the scares weren't very effective. You get desensitized to it early on in the experience. I would only recommend this game for those who have already completed Dead Space and want a similar, but toned down experience.

UPDATED REVIEW:
If you are a fan of the original System Shock, this remake is a no-brainer. It perfectly and lovingly recreates the original environments in Unreal Engine 4. As with the original, the levels are dense, sprawling, and treacherous, with Shodan seemingly always one step ahead of you. The renewed voices are probably for the best, since the original had some questionable performances, though some of the new voice lines are not much better. With Terri Brosius reprising her role as Shodan, this remake really does hand fans of the original everything they could ever ask for. The difficulty levels are appropriate and allow you to customize your play-through to match your play-style. Upon launch, the final boss fight with Shodan left something to be desired, but patch 1.2 has remedied this.

Given the positives of this title, it should have been an instant recommendation from me, but given the state of the game at release, I can only recommend this game reluctantly. Upon release, Cloud Sync integration was posted as a feature on the page, despite not being functional until nearly a year later. When I opened a support ticket about this, the response was to wait for patch 1.2 and for them to close my ticket. They did not care that they were currently advertising a feature that did not work. As such, I would be cautious of any future releases from Prime Matter. Many needed fixes were withheld from the PC audience in order to sync up the patches for the console release.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: This game is exceptional, and I would loved to write a detailed review of it, but their store page has a lie on it that must be addressed. This game does NOT have functioning Steam Cloud Save support. When it first launched, I assumed it would be patched. It is now mid September and still nothing to fix it.

When this gets fixed, I will write a full review, but as long as my support ticket keeps getting marked as "resolved" with no fix in sight, this review will stay up to warn people.

The concept here is great! A dark take on Robin Hood with interesting takes on all your favorite characters. The only problem is that the PVP modes are pretty much inaccessible due to low player counts, leaving you with only the PVE option to play with friends. If you're looking for something like that, I HIGHLY recommend this game, but if you're playing by yourself, subject to the whims of the matchmaker, maybe give this one a pass.

A fantastic view into Bohemia. While most mechanics in the game require a lot of stat-building in order to progress, they are well worth the effort and satisfaction gained. The story is deep and immersive, and the world is engrossing.

***SPOILER-FREE REVIEW***
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor does nothing new. It takes the stealth elements of Assassin's Creed and the combat system of Batman: Arkham Asylum and makes a genuinely compelling Lord of the Rings game out of it. Monolith have succeeded where many have failed; they made a video game based off of a book-movie franchise that wasn't poorly received by either the book-waving tolkienites nor the movie buffs. It properly referenced Lord of the Rings lore whilst maintaining the cinematic nature of the films. The story is a bit cliche, with both main protagonists being motivated by revenge, but the well-balanced gameplay more than makes up for any lull in the exposition. While the Nemesis system takes a back seat for a majority of the game, it really shines near the end of the game and after the conclusion of the primary narrative. I found myself playing this game again just to test out different scenarios when pitting multiple captains and warchiefs against each other.

PROS:
- Compelling Narrative
- Well-balanced gameplay
- Tactical freedom
- Nemesis system encourages replayability

CONS:
- Cliche premise
- Little exposition

NOTES:
- Approximately 15 hours to complete main narrative

***SPOILER FREE REVIEW***
Although Alien: Isolation may not be the Holy Grail of the Alien Franchise as many had hoped, this game does very little wrong with its formula. It made a proper stealth action game out of the Alien property. Nearing the end especially, the game drags on. The suspense that took so long building doesn't really feel like it leads up to anything. It just keeps building until the game abruptly ends. I would recommend this title as a rental if you have a good few days to set aside. Other than that? Wait for a sale. The only thing worth playing in this game is the storyline. Unless you enjoy a timed cat and mouse session, the Survival Mode is pretty boring.

PROS:
- Captures the spirit of the original movie perfectly
- Builds suspense very well
- Avoids pandering to fans too much
- Realistic AI for the alien
- Genuinely surprising jump scares
- Impressive cinematics
- Good level design

CONS:
- A bit too long to maintain suspense
- Certain cinematic sequences like the escapades out in space detract from the anticipation
- Many mechanics are not explained well in the game, such as the Rewire Stations
- Technical Issues: The game itself runs at a variable framerate, but the sound anticipates a fixed 60 fps, which causes audio/video lag. This is most noticeable during cutscenes.

NOTES:
- Little to no replayability
- Took approximately 23 hours for a leisurely playthrough

***Spoiler-Free Review***
Dark Souls is by far, the most immersive, addictive, and well-rounded RPG I have played in many years. I recommend true RPG afficionados to play it. That being said here is a brief run-down of the most common quesions I have received from early adopters:

-The Difficulty -
While it is a game that is willing to punish the player, it does not do so unfairly. If you are the kind of player who expects to run headlong into an ambush of 12 undead skeletons and live to tell the tale, this is not the game for you. You gain no special status by being the player, other than your ability to learn. If you like that, you will LOVE this game. If you dislike having to learn how to play a game properly, you will dislike this game. It is that simple. The immense sense of accomplishment you gain from learning more about this game is what keeps players coming back again and again.

- Level Design -
Dark Souls understands something that I think Bethesda has missed with Skyrim, and that is that the immensity of a map does not equate to content. Dark souls is by no means a monster of a game, but the number of things to do and places to explore is quite overwhelming. Every nook and cranny of the game is jam-packed with new characters, invisible walls, diverse weapons, and extensions of the storyline. Another thing that is to be applauded is the masterful connectivity between areas. You may not know where you are until you find a shortcut to some previous area you had been. Learning about these shortcuts makes the map a bit easier to traverse, but also puts on display the genius of the game designers. Everything is connected and makes perfect geographical sense. The use of depth to create distance and elevators to reduce it was a stroke of pure genius. It makes it all the more satisfying to travel to an area using the shortcut you found.

- The Story -
There is as much story in Dark Souls as you want there to be. That is not cryptic language or market-speak either. If you so wish, you can completely ignore the story of Dark Souls and kill everything in the game. For a lore-lover like myself, that would be a travesty. Through dialogue of the NPCs as well as item descriptions, you can gain insight into this deep, rich, and intriguing universe full of betrayals, discovery, wonder, and of course darkness. Many of the NPCs who aid you in battle have motivations, hopes, and backstories of their own which give them reasons to help you along in your quest. Discovering these relationships and motivations is part of Dark Souls' charm.

- The Combat -
Dark Souls uses a very deceptively simple combat system. Without going into too much detail, melee combat consists of timed attacks and blocking as well as some critical attacks, while the various magics are mediated through their respective "wands". When you kill enemies, you acquire souls, the world's currency. These can be used for leveling up, buying items at vendors, or improving items at blacksmiths. Dark Souls rewards players greatly for specializing early, but does not punish those who choose to spread their experience points around. Upgrading weapons and armor encourages you to try many different configurations to find the one that suits you as well as the different enemies you are fighting. For example, you may want to have high fire-resistance for a dragon fight, if you intend to take the flames head on. Another major factor is that Dark Souls contains dynamic weight for your character. Want to wear 120 lbs of armor? That's fine, but you will have to accept that your character is going to move around like a sloth until they are strong enough to move around in it comfortably. All of these factors combined make battles in Dark Souls different every time you play them.

- The Bottom Line -
So is Dark Souls good? I would go beyond saying Dark Souls is good. It is masterfully simple, rewardingly addictive, and unbelievably rich. If any game this decade was worth full retail, it is this one. And you won't even have to pay that anymore! So buy it!