Recent reviews by swz

A very flawed game that makes the world a better place by just existing. Took about 6-8 hours at least for the game to click with me, and there's still a lot of parts of the whole experience that just don't really work... but I ended up liking it quite a bit.

After 1k+ hours in the game I can honestly say I adore this game's combat & class system. Unfortunately, almost everything else is a problem, and the thing that completely broke any sort of enjoyment for me is the fact that your daily content lockouts are done in such a way that you're never free to grind (and grind you will have to) at your own schedule - the game is constantly throwing time-gated stuff at you and forcing you to squeeze everything else in-between that time-gated content. It just leaves an impression of a lack of confidence in the actual game and it kinda feels like an overbearing manager at work that doesn't trust you to complete a project and keeps checking in every hour, or a very insecure romantic partner who's paranoid you're messing around with other people and keeps sending texts demanding to know where you are at 1 hour intervals. The whole thing is very weird because so many core mechanics of the game feel really good, and the game doesn't really have any good reason to have such a lack of confidence in itself.

Other than that, there's of course the rampant botting, RMTing that gets punished by 3-day bans at best, and there's a general feeling of both Smilagate (the original publishers and developers of the game, based in Korea) and Amazon (publisher for the western release) just winging the release of various game features (as the game is "catching up" to the fully realized Korean release) at an extremely disjointed pace, lacking a concrete roadmap, constantly tinkering and finding new ways to disappoint the player-base.

I'm so sad I have to write this review because pugging Valtan as a first-timer on week 1 for 7 hours was some of the best MMO experiences I've ever had (and I'd even go as far to say one of the best gaming experiences I've had, period), but it is what it is.

It has the potential to be an interesting game, but years after release it's still filled with game-breaking bugs that receive absolutely no support from the devs. Stay away until a community patch or something drops.

The game looks absolutely wonderful and it does have an aura of being created with a loving touch and with the best of intentions... as well as lots of talent.

However, it suffers from several big problems that prevent me from recommending it - the platforming feels very floaty, it's really obfuscated when it comes to using visual cues and it's pretty inconsistent on what kills you and what doesn't in platforming set-pieces.

Now, if platforming was only a part of the game, this would all be excusable. However, the combat is barely there and it's just... not good.

Too bad. I'd still recommend checking it out if you catch a discount I guess.

Note: this is a short review of both Metro 2033 and Last Light, since I played the games back-to-back and can't be bothered to write 2 separate reviews. I've played Redux versions of both.

***

2033: a well crafted mixture of an old-school and modern shooter (leaning more to the modern side) with an incredibly well crafted atmosphere and visuals. The combat is decidedly average, but is saved by great-feeling and great-looking weapons and by the fact that it's well paced and I very rarely felt overwhelmed by it. The story keeps a lot to itself (which I liked) and offers some choice with regards to the ending (which I don't like, since Last Light picks a canon ending and throws everything else away), the supporting cast is reasonably memorable and decently voice acted (with Russian VA at least).

The only two things I can really criticize are the facts that the game at times feels very inconsistent with its combat mechanics (trolley ambush and Librarians were a pain and felt more luck-based than anything else) and that the cutscenes were extremely repetitive and at odds with the gameplay itself.

If you're looking for silly comparisons, it's kind of like the narrative gameplay of Half-Life 2 and the atmosphere of STALKER (and I'd say that the Andrei Tarkovsky film had an even greater influence than the STALKER games) had a mutated baby.

***

Last Light: to me personally, this is a strictly worse version of the original game. While the story is, broadly speaking, more fleshed-out and filled with characters that develop a closer relationship (for better of for worse) with the protagonist, it feels a bit too exposition dump-ey at times. While that in itself isn't a huge problem, more and LONGER and still repetitive cutscenes were added (sure, a few select are really visually impressive and break the mold a bit, but most were still just you getting captured and then rescued, both COMPLETELY out of your control), there are more large combat encounters (which just drives the point that the combat in these games is average at best home ever so painfully) and for some weird reason, now we get a bunch of weird boss-fights that completely break the combat mechanics established by the game up to that point, and are then never reused. Now, this would be fine if this was a throwback-oldschool shooter, but it still tries to be grounded and 'realistic', and those boss battles feel completely out of place (I'm not even going to mention the fact that in some boss fights you have to shoot specific places at ONLY specific times, and are guided by glowing red signs...) and... boring.

Even with all that, I'd still recommend the game to anyone who enjoyed the original, just bear in mind that you might find yourself disappointed with the sequel.

Note: this is a short review of both Metro 2033 and Last Light, since I played the games back-to-back and can't be bothered to write 2 separate reviews. I've played Redux versions of both.

***

2033: a well crafted mixture of an old-school and modern shooter (leaning more to the modern side) with an incredibly well crafted atmosphere and visuals. The combat is decidedly average, but is saved by great-feeling and great-looking weapons and by the fact that it's well paced and I very rarely felt overwhelmed by it. The story keeps a lot to itself (which I liked) and offers some choice with regards to the ending (which I don't like, since Last Light picks a canon ending and throws everything else away), the supporting cast is reasonably memorable and decently voice acted (with Russian VA at least).

The only two things I can really criticize are the facts that the game at times feels very inconsistent with its combat mechanics (trolley ambush and Librarians were a pain and felt more luck-based than anything else) and that the cutscenes were extremely repetitive and at odds with the gameplay itself.

If you're looking for silly comparisons, it's kind of like the narrative gameplay of Half-Life 2 and the atmosphere of STALKER (and I'd say that the Andrei Tarkovsky film had an even greater influence than the STALKER games) had a mutated baby.

***

Last Light: to me personally, this is a strictly worse version of the original game. While the story is, broadly speaking, more fleshed-out and filled with characters that develop a closer relationship (for better of for worse) with the protagonist, it feels a bit too exposition dump-ey at times. While that in itself isn't a huge problem, more and LONGER and still repetitive cutscenes were added (sure, a few select are really visually impressive and break the mold a bit, but most were still just you getting captured and then rescued, both COMPLETELY out of your control), there are more large combat encounters (which just drives the point that the combat in these games is average at best home ever so painfully) and for some weird reason, now we get a bunch of weird boss-fights that completely break the combat mechanics established by the game up to that point, and are then never reused. Now, this would be fine if this was a throwback-oldschool shooter, but it still tries to be grounded and 'realistic', and those boss battles feel completely out of place (I'm not even going to mention the fact that in some boss fights you have to shoot specific places at ONLY specific times, and are guided by glowing red signs...) and... boring.

Even with all that, I'd still recommend the game to anyone who enjoyed the original, just bear in mind that you might find yourself disappointed with the sequel.

Months after the launch date and the game is STILL in a completely horrible state with various glitches and game breaking bugs. Unless you plan to encounter them all within the first 2:00 hours of gameplay (which would make you eligible for a refund), please just stay away. At this point I'm not sure if this game will ever be a product that's worth your money.

A fun, short, quirky experience with a crapload of personality, unfortunately slightly marred by somewhat unresponsive controls (which are an annoyance only in a few select puzzles) and weird FPS dips (on an overclocked 970). However, the good outweighs the bad by a huge margin here, so I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who owns a keyboard.

I would also beg you to take note of the fact that the devs don't hate you and have actually offered a free demo on Steam - try the game out, you literally have no excuse not to.

Short, sweet and sad, a beautiful game whith an unfortunately problematic level of polish. Still - a strong recommendation.

A wonderful game with beautiful visuals, a haunting soundtrack and punishing, yet fun combat. While it does have some pacing issues (as do most non-linear games, and it is non-linear for the most part), I would whole-heartedly urge anyone to buy it ASAP... however, it seems like it was released before it was really ready for release, and a lot of people's experiences of playing it have been plagued by various bugs and glitches (especially for Mac users) - I'm counting myself lucky that I encountered just a few, and all were solved by either reentering a zone, teleporting out or restarting the game.

So, if you want to play it, but have other stuff to play as well, I'd say wait out a few patches. I'm just hoping that the game doesn't end up with a bad reputation (what with being hyped up quite a bit, and then shipping in the state it shipped) and that everyone will have some patience and give it a fair shot (and hey, use but don't abuse the refund policy).

Note: people mostly describe this game as a mix of Metroidvanias, Hotline Miami and Dark Souls - if that scares you off, be aware that I haven't played a single Metroidvania, HM or DS in my entire life :D Took me twice as long to complete the game compared to people who enjoy this genre, but hey, I still completed it!