Reseñas recientes de Roy595

Listen, ignore the haters. They were wrong about Man of Medan and they are wrong about this game as well. It is a ton of fun to play and the story is gripping. There is nothing really new here that was not in Man of Medan but that is fine, the formula for that game worked and will continue to work for awhile. The characters are most definitely NOT bland, they each have way more personality and were better written than the ones in Man of Medan and those were fine anyway. The interplay between the fog and keeping the group together as well as figuring out the "rules" of interacting with the witch trials flashbacks were well-done and really anxiety inducing. There is a lot going on story wise here with three separate timelines portrayed in the game without clear delineation so it will take multiple playthroughs to really digest it. The branching paths through the game were really well done in Man of Medan and from what I could tell on a first playthrough are well done here also. And come on, the ability to play with someone else who can also influence how the game plays out is very cool and unique. I finished it in one night and plan on several more playthroughs!

These games are not meant to be played just one time, so it would not surprise me if a lot of the negative reviews for these games were people that picked paths that were weaker than others. There are a lot of jump scares but big deal. Not everything has to be a slow-burn existential horror type experience. I do not even think the developers were going for something super scary here, the game is more of a psychological experience that explores darker themes. It is set up and feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 with less scary.

If I had to level criticisms at this game it would be towards the broken controls at launch, the reduced exploration, and the ending. The only way to play this game currently is to use a controller or the new "point-and-click" scheme which completely removes the keyboard from the equation, so you can not even play the game like Man of Medan. There is an option to switch to mouse and keyboard, but the game is bugged right now so you can not move your mouse to select dialogue options. They also seem to have seriously cut down on the size and number of areas you can actually walk around and explore, which were nice moments that helped pace the game in Until Dawn and Man of Medan. As for the ending... well, at least for the one I got, they tried to do too much at once which I feel detracted from the events leading up to it. This could just be an issue with the ending I got in particular, I got the distinct feeling that the bearings might redefine the entire outcome of the game so I can not be sure until I finish it again.

Buy this game, have a great time, then have a great time with your friends as well. The way it plays out will be almost completely different each time if you get adventurous with your choices, I guarantee it. Buy this game and support this developer which is putting out some of the most unique games on the market.

What do you think of when you hear the name "Amnesia"? Chances are, you think of the abject terror and existential anxiety the first game brought players (and YouTube Lets Play channels) almost a decade ago. As a fan of Frictional Games since Penumbra, it breaks my heart to say this but... this game is not it. Frictional has taken some wild liberties with the formula of Amnesia and really all of their past titles in order to tell a story which does not land or feel satisfying except for the final hour of the game. As a result, the game feels more like a cinematic experience than it does a horror game.

The story revolves around Tasi retracing her steps after a plane crash in the Algerian desert. Minor spoiler: she turns out to be pregnant. Sounds like an interesting setup, and it is. There are even some cool survival features near the beginning of the game that reminded me of Penumbra in a very good way. I enjoyed the very natural way the puzzles felt in this game with most of them being intuitive physics puzzles with the items you need in or nearby the room you are in. The story is solid but we have seen it all before and not much is done with it to make it particularly gripping. The game also tries to keep things on the down-low and throw some twists your way regarding Tasi and her past, but if you pay even a modicum of attention to the memories and backstory as it unfolds you will see it all coming from ten miles away.

These memories by the way are pretty lame and do not serve the story well. You catch on quickly to all you need to know about Tasi and her backstory within the first few memories, and the game keeps beating this drum for hours - long after we get the picture. 80% of these memories are pure noise and bring nothing to the game other than to break you out of the experience. Whereas in Amnesia the flashbacks and memories were creepy, cryptic, and often times helped contextualize the area and mental state Daniel found himself in while giving little bread crumbs on his past to keep us interested.

After a few hours in you will realize something is off. Monster encounters are not only rare and short, but they pose virtually no danger to you and can be bypassed by simply laying on the ground, even if you are not particularly well hidden in a well lit room. Most of them are just chase sequences, and there are maybe one or two patrolling monsters you will have to outwit. There is light management but the sanity system has been completely removed in favor of "fear", a very dumbed down version of sanity which affects nothing except for when an annoying WASD struggle mini-game and temporary "death" occurs. There is not even a health or fear meter to manage. Most of the survival elements are gone very early in the game. The first hour or so of the game feels like Amnesia/Penumbra in true form, survival and horror in all its glory, but later on it shifts to something different. It honestly feels like a cheap bait and switch.

These classic features of Frictional have taken a back-seat to a more narrative-driven approach. Tasi is fully voiced, and almost every part of the game is narrated. I have to say that this came off as a bit try-hard and annoying at times. Tasi has a line or a memory for EVERYTHING. Frequently, I would be exploring a creepy abandoned area and the immersion would be completely broken by Tasi offering unnecessary thoughts or a silly little memory would pop up telling us that a watering hole was nearby. This seems trivial but Tasi became tedious when you would be trying to explore and take in the ambience of a dark cave only to be interrupted by "ohhh I cant keep doing this" over and over. Instead of helping me relate to her it really only made me irritated that I had to share the same headspace with this pregnant lady who was constantly complaining.

Contrast this with Amnesia where you get bare bones explanations from notes and very sparse memories. This leaves you to fill in the blanks, and makes you FEEL like you are the character in the game because you are getting only your thoughts. Even Penumbra handles this better: you get lots of optional dialogue if you look at something and right click it for an explanation. This would give you more background on the character and what he was thinking. It was purely optional, unobtrusive and unvoiced as well which made these moments as immersive as possible while still giving the player some hint of what the character thinks or feels. In this game these moments are not optional, and very obtrusive with a voice blaring in your ear telling you the obvious about how bad the situation is.

The last hour of the game manages to come together fairly well with a nice, neat ending. Getting there is a bit of a chore though and I found myself impatiently rushing through the game after about a quarter of the way through.

And this is really the problem. The game's exploration of pregnancy and motherhood are interesting and not often done in horror games, but it does not feel particularly well executed and this type of story has been done many times in other media. It also does not go much deeper than "I need to protect my unborn child", which is an obvious impulse for any mother. The constant narration and unending exposition also does not mix well with a series known for its quiet, creepy ambience which more often than not allows the player to scare the crap out of themselves.

This is one of the greatest sins of this game: it has its moments, but it is not very scary at all nor do you feel particularly threatened at any point. The first game made you feel like an ant stuck in some mysterious cosmic struggle you could not hope to even begin to comprehend. This game not only ruins the mystery behind the more vague plot points in the first game with strange and unnecessary elaborations on them, it feels like a retread of Ripley in Aliens.

This game does not feel like Amnesia, Penumbra, or even SOMA once you get past the first few areas of the game. There are some common characters with the first game and some mentions of them in notes scattered around as well as some shared story beats that let you know you are firmly in the world of Amnesia but that is all. You certainly will not feel like you are playing Amnesia. I have to give Frictional credit for trying to break the mold but it just does not work for this game, and especially not for an Amnesia title.

If you know anything at all about Amnesia and are thinking of making this your first experience with the franchise: don't. You will be disappointed. Play the first one instead, it is dirt cheap, there are years of custom stories to play and having recently played it myself I can comfortably say it has aged very well. If you are a veteran to the series or a fan of Frictional's work pre SOMA like I was, you will be disappointed. It is not the genre cracking game or faithful continuation of a beloved series that we all hoped for. If, however, you have no clue at all what Amnesia is and are looking for an atmospheric gaming experience with a bold take on the horror genre then you will get your money's worth. $29.99 is not that much in the grand scheme of things, but this game feels like something completely different with "Amnesia:" slapped on the title.

TL;DR Very solid horror game, and a marked improvement over the first in almost every way. I was really reluctant to play this game since I so disliked the first one, but it won me over - this one is worth your money.

The Good

Writing: It is greatly improved upon from the original. Whereas in the original almost none of the characters or dialogue were written believably, pretty much everything in this game was. The film reel narration, certain key flashbacks, and the ominous voice guiding you through the game that I assume is the director are all written and performed well. Some of it is good enough to actually make you pause and think. Everything fits the tone and the setting well.

Story: Also very good. The game starts off with a similar artistic horror idea to the first - the main character is to act in what appears to be a cursed film, with his descent into madness accentuated the more he works on it. It does take some VERY interesting and unnerving turns from here though when we delve into the character's past, with some events that will disturb even the most cynical and experienced fans of the genre. The game also properly incentivizes you to play through it again, as it is difficult to get the whole idea of what is going on in one playthrough. Unlike the first, the story is framed properly to give you just enough of an idea of what is going on in an initial playthrough to entice you to come back and get the good ending. 

Length: The game is almost twice as long as the first, but there is enough meat to the characters and the story that I feel this is about perfect. The chapters spend just enough time covering the background of the characters without being plodding, with enough attention to the present to keep things interesting.

Key Moments: There are some really brilliant moments in this game that will startle you with their visual beauty and great writing, as well as wow and horrify you in its tense moments. Moments like being trapped in a room, desperately trying to escape while a monster climbs through the projection on the wall, or when the player wanders, forlorn, through otherworldly shipwrecks with the character's childhood trauma playing in the background. There are more than a few moments that will stick with you.

Chase Sequences: They are not "good", but I am including this here because so many have, I think, unfairly criticized the chases. They really are not that frustrating and there are not that many of them in the game. There are maybe five chase sequences through chapter 3 and virtually none afterwards. Yes, you will probably die once or twice at first when you start getting chased but you will quickly get the hang of it. Running through the corridors and slamming doors shut behind you to impede the monster's progress is intuitive and there are few tricks or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moments that will frustrate you. As opposed to a game like Outlast 2 with truly unfair and infuriating chase sequences, this game is a breeze.

Technical Improvements: Personally, I had a lot of rage fuel moments in the original game due to technical issues I encountered. I am happy to say that I had zero frame rate or crashing issues with this game. It was smooth sailing throughout.

Reduced clutter: In the first game, you could spend hours searching through dozens upon dozens of empty cabinets, cupboards and drawers looking for, and finding, nothing. There is a lot less of that in this game; if you see a drawer or a container of some sort there is a good chance you should probably look inside of it for a note or key item.

Improved Ending Paths: It is not ridiculously hard to get different endings in this game, nor are the requirements absurd as they were in the first game. The ending you get is actually tied to the decisions you make in the game rather than which notes you decide to pick up.

The Bad

Silent Protagonist: The silent protagonist does not always suit every story, and unfortunately for this game the use of one was a poor design decision. The story in this game is very Silent Hill-esque in that it is very personal and relates to the life of the main character. You would expect then that they would write and narrate the main character to interact with the story as it unfolds but sadly he is silent throughout the game. Most of his characterization is given through dialogue from flashbacks of his sister or observations from the director which I guess leaves the main character up to some interpretation. However, it would have been more interesting to have him react to the events of the game because this feels a bit too impersonal.

Still No Flashlight: Again the developers leave out an option for the player to light the environment around them. This is not as much of a problem as it was for the first game which has some very, very dark rooms; the environments are a little better lit in this game but it is still a puzzling design decision.

The Ugly

The Aesthetic: Really the only thing this game fell flat on was the aesthetic. This is especially disappointing because the first game did this really, really well. The colors are very monotonous and do not deviate much from black/white or sepia colors. There are some cool effects in the game but there is hardly anything in the environment that demands your attention like there is in almost every room in the first game. There is a LOT of repetition of the same ship corridors, but at least they change slightly as the game goes on. The aesthetic can be described as "boring cruise-liner cream".

TL;DR I wish I could say that I enjoyed playing this game, but I did not. I have played a lot of horror games and I can safely say that this game, while not terrible, is highly overrated. The story and concept in the game are alright, it touches on some interesting things but safely stays within the well-trodden realm of common horror tropes. It is not particularly fun to play, has a myriad of technical issues, the writing is very uneven, and just falls flat in general. The game certainly has its moments, and if you are not accustomed to the atmosphere and techniques used to scare players in horror games you will probably even be scared or at least very unsettled by it. However, I cannot say that there is anything in this game that someone absolutely should experience that has not been done before, and coupled with the poor execution you should either get it on sale or skip this one. It will provide some entertainment on a dark night but not much else.

The Good

Atmosphere: It is very well done. There were more than a few moments in the game where the sound design and the environment combined to become a big old "NOPE I am not going in there". The atmosphere is a constant oppressive presence, and it is fun going from place to place to bask in it. The psychedelic segments where reality itself is shattered are extremely well done and imbue the player with a feeling of being small, weak, and totally out of control of the situation. Unfortunately, this is the only thing for the player to really do in this game: walk around and experience the atmosphere. There are no stealth or action segments, no other goals to strive for other than to walk from room to room and exist in the moment.

Environments: They are very well designed. You can tell that the developers took their time to design every room in the game with love. There are minute details that tell a story in every room you encounter, and the world feels lived in. It is awesome to see the mansion deteriorate around you as you explore, much like the player character's mental state.

Concept: While not particularly unique, it is interesting. The story follows a deranged painter trying to finish his master work in a very artist of Dorian Gray sort of way. This picture becomes more and more strange and deranged as you work on it, representing the dwindling sanity of its painter. The game also touches on some dark and uncomfortable topics in the male psyche that actually are interesting and fresh, but it is hard to say what they are without giving away too much and there is no catharsis or resolution for them.

Visuals: The aesthetic in the game is very well done. Everything looks great, and the effects are well done. The visuals alone are (almost) pretty enough to justify the game's existence.

The Bad

Technical Issues: I had some issues playing this which made the game extremely frustrating. My frame rate while playing would frequently stutter and plummet and rapidly approach zero at certain points in the game, where it would remain until I restarted it. This happened more than a few times, and the issue was compounded by a really bad save system causing me to lose pretty much all my progress since the start of each chapter that this issue occurred.

Linearity: The game is very linear, and because of the way the game progresses you can very easily miss a collectable and not be able to walk back the way you came and grab it without having to restart the chapter. Granted, the chapters are not overly long, probably 30 minutes at the longest, but this is a symptom of poor level design.

Puzzles: They are frustrating and not fun. The biggest offenders are a puzzle where you have to follow lines through a convoluted maze of ink to find a lock combination, and a surreal rotary phone puzzle. I simply skipped the former and looked up the solution, and while the latter was surreal it was frustrating because if you "died" while dialing one of the phones, you would (very slowly) reset to the beginning of the puzzle and be forced to repeat the entire sequence again. I am ashamed to admit this, but I had to look up how to operate these old rotary phones in order to complete the puzzle.

No Light Option: Most of the game is set in darkness, yet there is no flashlight, lantern, or other lighting option to help find your way. Some areas are so dark you will literally stumble around until bumping into the next thing you need to grab or door you need to open. I had to turn my brightness up to even be able to finish the game.

The Ugly

Auto-Save System: I harp on this a lot, but if a developer is going to use ONLY an auto save system in their game it better be a good one! This is not the case here. I probably lost an hour's worth of progress in a 3 hour game simply from all the backtracking I had to do from my restarts due to technical issues. The autosave was almost completely useless in preserving my progress, frequently just restarting me from the beginning of the chapter. I will note that when it worked, the auto-save was done in a cool way where you would load back into the main art room, but as soon as you walked out you would find yourself in whatever area you left off in.

"Replayability": The game has multiple endings, but I have no interest in replaying the game to get them. I looked this up, and the criteria for getting different endings is absurd. The endings are tied to whatever collectables you pick up during the game, which would make it ridiculously hard to get anything other than one ending without using a guide to know what you should actually pick up and what you should not. These endings amount to about 20 seconds of a different cinematic at the very end with no other changes to the game. In my opinion, it is not worth playing it again to get them.

Writing: The writing and dialogue were poor and really took me out of the moment several times. It was hard to tell what year the game actually took place in... it is set in a Victorian style mansion which implies the game would be in the mid-late 19th century, but then you see electric powered ceiling fans and dialogue like "you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pleb" which leads you to believe the game may be set in more contemporary times. I had to look this up, and the game is set in the 1920s. Point is, the dialogue is anachronistic for the times and really feels like much of it was written by an edgy internet troll LARPing a descent into madness.

Mechanics: The developers nearly straight up copied the mechanics from Amnesia: The Dark Descent, even down to the vision blurring effects but without understanding what made that game so special. The mechanics and intuitive interface in Amnesia served a purpose, they made you feel as immersed as possible in the game world and the physics puzzles made everything feel more real and logical. If there was something you could not reach or wanted to see in that game for example, you could pile up whatever was at hand and climb it to get a better vantage point. In this game, the mechanics are pretty much the same but there really is no reason for them. It is cool you have to reach and pull back with the mouse to open things, but there is really no reason to. There is nothing to grab and so few notes to find you can spend hours searching everything in the game and probably 95% of the cabinets, drawers, and doors you open have nothing in them.

Length: The game is only about four hours long (this is being generous) and even this is overstaying its welcome. By the end of it, I was not having much fun and was just rushing through the levels to get to the ending.

TL;DR: Capcom has jumped the shark again. Resident Evil 3 is not a bad game. It is (almost) as enjoyable as Resident Evil 2. The big issue, and what keeps me from recommending it, is that this is a 6 hour game with a $60 price tag. While a single play through of Resident Evil 2 takes about as long, there were multiple story routes you could pick from plus multiple extra modes to keep you entertained. Resident Evil 3 on the other hand, has one story mode and an unlockable store which allows you to purchase in game items with in game currency. I have heard that a lot of content was actually cut instead of being remade and remastered as well. While there is little "wrong" with the game, this feels like a huge step back from the amazing remake we got with RE2 with the same big price. Get this one on sale.

The Good:

Mechanics: Not much to say here other than the core game is pretty much the same as it was in RE2, with some not so great changes.

Graphics: Same as before. The game looks just as great as RE2.

Nemesis: I actually prefer the Nemesis in this game to Mr. X in RE2. Nemesis is much less of an annoyance and more of an actual threat in this game. He is fast, has multiple ways of closing the distance with the player, and he can very easily kill you if you are not careful. He is not a constant presence at certain points in this game like Mr. X (which quickly became annoying), but only appears at certain points briefly. I still think it would have been better to have Nemesis show up randomly for short periods of time, but this mechanic is an improvement from RE2 nonetheless.

Environment/Level Design: We get to explore the city that is shown very briefly in RE2, and it looks great. The levels are sufficiently different from RE2 to keep things fresh, and the developers have done new things with their design. We also get to revisit some of the popular locations seen in RE2 like the police station and gun shop.

Boss Battles: They are more diverse and less annoying than they were in RE2. Nemesis has multiple different versions of himself, each somewhat similar to the last but each requiring their own strategy to beat him. This is a vast improvement to the boss battles in tight, enclosed spaces in RE2 that regularly devolved into run and gun. These actually take some strategy and skill to win, not just timing and spatial awareness.

Story: I think the story here is a little better than standard. There are hints of paranoia and self doubt relating to Jill's virus exposure, which allows for some interesting exploration of her character and how the situation is affecting people. Jill's history with the virus and the police allows for some good moments too. Unfortunately, these elements are quickly left behind after the beginning of the game but they are nice to have and help set up the game and its conflict.

The Bad:

Action Cinematics: A huge amount of the action that happens in the game is restricted to cut scenes, especially encounters with Nemesis. These are cool, but if I wanted to watch an action movie well... I would watch an action movie. It is not clear why so much control is taken from the player when it would have been fairly easily to program these cinematic encounters as controllable moments.

Quick Step Mechanic: There is nothing wrong with the mechanic itself but instead with how they chose to go about implementing it. They got rid of the secondary weapon system in RE2 which allowed players to equip knives and grenades alongside their main gun in order to use this system (with the same key bindings). This was not a good choice since the secondary weapon system found in RE2 greatly reduced time spent in inventory switching between weapons. In RE3, it was very annoying having to manually go into my inventory or take up a quick slot to equip knives and grenades. There is also no way to use a secondary weapon to break grabs in this game like there was in RE2. I am not sure why this mechanic was removed, but with its removal a huge part of the strategy in the game was taken away as well. I am sure they could have found a way to keep both, there are plenty of un-utilized keys.

Blue Herbs?: What happened to these? Did I miss them all? I did not find a single blue herb in the entire game, and the poison effect seems to have been replaced with parasite. This effect only appears once and very briefly in the game, remedied by green herbs instead of blue. It would have been nice to have this herb in RE3 as well since it adds a damage mitigation dynamic that would have been very helpful at certain points of the game. It is strange they were not put in the game.

Atmosphere: It is hard to say why exactly, but the atmosphere of this game is significantly less scary and tense than RE2. I have heard that RE3 always had more of a focus on action, but its hard not to draw unfavorable comparisons to the RE2 remake which so masterfully balanced action and horror. It also does not help that at no point in the game did I feel like I was low on resources. There is ammo and herbs everywhere, and it is hard to feel threatened when you always have another herb or another clip on hand at all times.

The Ugly:

Resident Evil Resistance: This is a whole other tangent, but the multiplayer game that comes with RE3 is poorly realized. I could be saying that this game, while appearing to be hastily pushed out by CAPCOM, is a surprising amount of fun especially with friends. Instead, I will say that the game is a buggy, laggy, exploitable mess. All it takes is one person, especially the master mind, to have a trash connection and the entire game falls apart. People walk through walls, enemies teleport on top of you, health melts away in lag spikes, etc. Basically, the game is unplayable as it is and very easy for cheaters to take advantage of. This does NOT help justify the price of the game since it can hardly be played online.

Cut Content: From what I have read online, the original RE3 was already very short. It is puzzling then why the developers chose to cut additional content from the remake. There really is just no excuse for this. There was already a very short amount of time between the release of RE2 and RE3 (1 year 2 months), so it would not have been a big deal to push the release off a few more months to get all content remade.

Characters: Aside from the opening half hour, the characters are not particularly well written. There appears to be some effort on the writers part to make the characters a little more fleshed out than they were in the RE2 remake, but Jill comes across as a mega-♥♥♥♥♥ princess who needs to be saved multiple times by Carlos. Carlos can get a bit creepy in 2020 with his multiple unwanted flirtations with Jill.

The Price: As stated above, $60 is a big ask for a game with 6 hours of content. The game comes across as a lazy cash grab.

Disclaimer: I never played the original PS1 version.

TL;DR Resident Evil 2 is a return to form for survival horror games, keeping its gameplay simple, refined, and a joy to play. While a single run through the game is pretty short (~5-6 hours), there is enough incentive in the form of bonus modes, alternate story routes, and tight gameplay to justify the asking price and to keep you coming back for more. This is the most fun I have had playing a horror game in a long, long time.

The Good:

Core Gameplay: The core gameplay is very simple, and its simplicity is its strength. You go from room to room, investigating leads, conserving resources, solving puzzles, and shooting zombies that get in your way. The game is fun, addictive, and satisfying.

Graphics: They are beautiful, nearly photo-realistic and run extremely well even on my old, low-end GPU. Animation is fantastic, and other than Claire's face edging toward the uncanny valley at times everything looks good and believable.

Atmosphere: The game achieves a consistently intense, chilling atmosphere. The music, lighting, enemies and sound designs all work very well together. The game is filled with slow, quiet moments walking through empty corridors with nothing but the sound of your foot steps accompanying you, punctuated with quick, intense, visceral action. It all works very well, and even after 40+ hours of gameplay I still found myself unsettled and occasionally jumping from my seat. You feel vulnerable at all times even later in the game when you get some heavy weaponry, thanks in part to a vague health system and a limited inventory size, forcing you to plan out your trips from the safe areas to explore.

Replayability: The game is infinitely replayable, and does not lose any of the fun between playthroughs. There are two characters you can play as that change the story considerably: Leon and Claire, and each character gets two slightly different runs through the story.

Extra Modes: The extra modes are a ton of fun and add a lot to the game if you tire of the main campaign. They are significantly more challenging than the campaign is though, so be prepared to die A LOT at first until you get the layout of each bonus mode. This can be rage fuel if you are not patient.

Horror/Fun Balance: The game walks a fine line between being fun and gamey and being scary. It manages to be tense and scary while also being a fun shooter. It avoids the pitfalls of horror games that may focus too much on horror to the detriment of being fun, and of horror games that try to be so fun and action-y that they forget to be scary.

Technically Impressive: I can not recall encountering a single bug or technical issue from my 50 hours of play time. The game is well programmed and runs smoothly.

Resource Management: Whether you are playing on standard or hardcore or even in the extra modes, the developers have done a great job of always making you feel short on ammo and health supplies. You really have to be smart with your use of ammo and other consumables or you will find yourself in a very hard spot. At no point does the lack of resources feel overwhelming though, there is always just enough to get by with a modicum of effort. This really enhances the atmosphere and the rewarding feeling that comes with progressing successfully through the game. I know how much of a balancing act it can be to pull this off, so major kudos to the developers on this one.

The Bad:

The Story: It is very minimal, and does not stray too far from standard zombie movie plots. Characters are kind of wooden, including the main cast, and other characters are basically cartoon villains with unclear motivations. Dialogue ranges from okay to cringe ("you can adopt me and we will all live together!")

Bullet-Sponge Enemies: The damage rules, and amount of ammo necessary to kill zombies, are unclear and vary wildly. Sometimes you will get lucky and a single head shot will explode a zombie's head and kill them instantly. At other times, you can empty entire clips into one zombie's head and they will continue shambling towards you as if nothing is wrong. I can understand why they designed the game this way as it can make certain moments much more tense and unexpected between playthroughs, but it comes off as unfair a majority of the time.

The Ugly:

Backtracking: There is a LOT of back tracking in this game, a symptom of poor level design. This is compacted by Mr. X who can be very annoying and inconvenient, chasing you away from areas you need to get to constantly. The map will be your best friend, marking key puzzles and color coding areas to let you know if you missed something or not.

Mr. X Himself: He was a bit of a mixed game mechanic for me. It is interesting, and certainly brings a new dynamic to the game, having an invulnerable hulking monster hunting and stalking you periodically through the game. On the other hand, he can be a persistent annoyance, running a train through the atmosphere making it more run and gun. It would have been better having his encounters random and end sooner. As it stands, he can be an annoying, predictable time sink that will not go away until you advance to certain parts of the game.

TL;DR: I heard a LOT of positive things about this game, but having finally played it my reaction is a great big "meh". It is not a bad game by any means, but it really is showing its age in 2020 with mechanics and visuals that are very 2006. There are many other games that have come out since Condemned that do what it tried to do a hundred times better. In my opinion, the game is not worth a play now unless you are a hardcore enthusiast or are curious about the earlier years of survival horror.

The Good:

Ambience: While the horror falls flat for most of the game, one thing it does right is the ambience with the environment and music. I would compare the feel of the game to that of Penumbra: Overture, which was a contemporary of this game. If you enjoyed the basic feel of that game, you will enjoy this one. The game manages to be very creepy at times, with enemies wandering in and out of your peripheral view, fading in and out of darkness constantly. There is a moment near the end of the game where you have to wander around in a dark basement with a UV light tool, completely defenseless with enemies slithering out of the dark corners to attack you. There is a consistent level of tension in each level.

Environment/Level Design: The dilapidated buildings and subways you visit are well designed and look great. Levels are sufficiently creepy and confusing to navigate in a good way. Wrong turns can lead the player into mazes of dank, abandoned corridors heightening the tension. These locations are believable and eerie. The graphics for the environments and objects still hold up well today. There are strong "Rats in the Walls" vibes in a couple levels.

Combat/Weapon System: One interesting thing the game does is how it approaches combat. You fight with whatever is at hand, whether its a lead pipe you pull off the wall, a drawer, or even a mannequin arm and each item has its own stats and feel. This was a refreshing approach to horror I have not seen before, with most survival horror games opting to give you either nothing at all to defend yourself with or an entire arsenal of powerful weapons. The combat itself is serviceable - entertaining but not bringing anything particularly noteworthy to the table and slightly repetitive since there is a LOT of it.

The Bad:

Achievement and Collection System: You collect dead birds and scraps of metal for achievements. This came off as very phoned in and a relic of archaic game development. I think the number of items you collect changes the ending in some way, but finding these items were such a pain I could not be bothered to go back and collect all of them.

Poor UI: There is little indication of which items you can interact with, or where to go to advance through the game. There were times I would be lost, wandering around an area looking for how to proceed, and I would stumble into a waist-high obstacle only then to be prompted to jump over it. With no lighting or hint whatsoever to the player, how are we supposed to know what we can and can not do in the game world?

General Feel: It is not very scary, at least in the first half of the game. A few hours into it, I started thinking "is this really it? These are just vagrants and drug addicts, I can walk downtown and see people like this". Most of the enemies are just cracked out people swinging clubs and pipes at your head and can be handled with little trouble.

Gimmicky Investigation Tools: The player has a number of tools at their disposal to use for detective work, but they do not add much to the game other than flavor. The game automatically picks the tool you will need for every situation, and they all work basically the same way with you scanning an area for clues then taking a picture of whatever you find.

Sound Issues: It seems that some sound files are missing completely from the game. There was a sequence where you hop on the back of a moving train, with the railings and platform you are standing on coming apart as the train speeds up and turns. A very thrilling moment, with just one problem: there was no music and hardly any sound effects for this section. It really took me out of the moment.

The Ugly:

Graphics and Animation: They are BUTT UGLY. Characters shamble around stiffly, faces look like melted plastic that barely match up with spoken lines of dialogue, every character looks like the big blocky men in a Kanye music video, etc. The graphics are not good even by the standards of the time it was released, and most horror games by this time had the good sense to hide and disguise poor animations in darkness but you can see all of it here and it is not a pretty sight. The environments look great though.

Story: What even is it? The title may as well just be changed to "Condemned: Building Simulator" because there is absolutely no discussion about "Criminal Origins" at all. In fact, there is more story in the couple of paragraphs given in "About this game" on the store page than there is in the entire ~7 hours of play time. You get about 10 minutes of story set up at the start and it is BARELY a presence at all for the rest of the game. It sets up this cool, if over done, serial killer story only to throw it away in favor of having the player character trek from condemned building to condemned building looking for clues. The whole premise is kind of dumb and hard to believe too: the main character's gun is taken from him and used to shoot his fellow officers, which sparks a man hunt for the player character. Are we really to believe that cops would assume a fellow officer was guilty when he tells a believable story about how it happened with no prior history of bad behavior? Weak. There are also hints that maybe something supernatural is going on, and that its somehow tied to the main character's unnatural abilities, but this plot point is unceremoniously dropped without further elaboration. Also, I actually had no idea what was happening in the last hour, hour and a half of the game. It is set up to this point, and then it completely comes off the rails with a whacky final boss fight that feels completely disjointed from the rest of the game.

Characters: The characters not only look ugly, but the writing behind them is also ugly and flimsy. It is not clear who characters are or their motivations. We get hints about the main character, but these are not elaborated on. This may have to do with how many items you find, but it is still not good form to hide characterization behind optional collections. The characters exist only as proxies for the game's mechanics.

The Sprint Mechanic: It is a joke. Everybody can run faster than you, and for unlimited time, but your character runs like an obese chain smoker with a meter that lasts about five seconds, and takes almost 20 to fully regenerate. Meanwhile an enemy will Usain Bolt away from you - they will not be caught unless they want to be. There was a sequence where I literally chased an enemy around in a circle for five minutes that I simply could not catch up to, cue Benny Hill.

TL;DR This is the best indie game I have played in years and I honestly have no idea why it gets such mixed reviews. It is unique, gripping, atmospheric and well worth your time.

The Good:

The story: very solid, and the ending was immensely satisfying. It is tragic and epic. There are many points during the main story with radically different choices that impact the game world, and your character will act slightly differently depending on whether you choose to embrace innocent citizens or not. There is a lot of replayability, especially with the amount of builds you can make.

Atmosphere: you truly feel as if you are in Victorian England. The developers obviously did their research on everything: the architecture, the manners, the fashion, even the known medical knowledge at the time. Theres a section where you can suggest doing CPR and the nurse questions your competence, which I thought was strange until I realized CPR had not been invented until a few years after the game takes place!

The combat: a lot of people hate on it, but I found the combat entertaining. It certainly is not groundbreaking or new, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it, and you can avoid it fairly easily if you desire most of the time. You can spec your character a certain way and find out which abilities chain and synergize best together.

The music: amazing. It is a blend of classical, eastern European folk, and industrial. This sounds like a weird mix but it works amazingly well and builds up the tension and atmosphere in the game. It always compliments what is happening in the game and nothing sounds out of place.

The embrace mechanic: it is unique and interesting. Embracing certain citizens have vastly different affects on the world. Embracing a pillar citizen for example, will cause the district to fall into disarray. Embracing someone with a large social circle or someone who is well liked may result in certain characters coming after you. Embracing people in the same social circle in different orders will have different affects on how the survivors react. There is a ton of complexity to this mechanic and you can not just go around embracing everyone or else the district will fall into chaos and citizens will die. You have to be strategic about it. The downside is that someone going for a no embrace run misses out on this very cool mechanic and there is nothing equivalent.


The Bad:

Uneven difficulty: mobs can jump up 10 levels inexplicably, bosses are either a joke or an absolute nightmare to handle (the hardest boss is about 35% through the game), side bosses and even regular mobs walking around can without warning absolutely eviscerate you, and citizen hints/side quests can be lost with the tiniest of mistakes. Pay extra close attention to dialogue choices that have the red Y in the middle when speaking with NPCs, this means your choice may affect whether you get the hints or side quests for that particular character. The problem is there are almost never any relevant contextual clues to which dialogue choice you want to pick to get hints, and if you pick the wrong one the hint is locked away forever and of course the game instantly autosaves after.

Temptation to feed on innocents to level up: it was not there for me, but I only played on normal difficulty. With five minutes of research, doing all the side quests in the game and talking to every citizen you will get enough XP and create a build that will make short work of 95% of the game, except for one nightmarish mid game boss. If you want to do a no embrace run, I highly recommend NOT looking up builds and/or playing the game on the highest difficulty. I also suggest looking up what exactly counts as embracing and what does not, as the distinction is not super clear in the game.

The writing: it is a little uneven. Luckily, the bad writing is confined solely to (very few) of the side NPCs. Some of the characters are so transparently evil that the developers may as well have hung a sign on them that says "you can feed on this person without feeling guilty". One character in particular could not slip in enough references to how much he hates immigrants, how much he loves exploiting renters for money, and oh yeah he also forces women to have sex with him to pay their rent.

Thinly veiled political leanings: a lot of the dialogue, situations, and characters are very obviously supposed to mirror hot button political topics of the modern day that do not even try to disguise the leftist bent of the writers/developers. There is even a rich industrialist character that literally wants to build a wall to contain the epidemic. All the characters talk about him as if he is the supreme evil big bad #1 with nothing "but teh wall" given to the player as a reason to dislike him until later in the game, which is hilariously undermined by the main character who is an actual doctor acknowledging that a wall would be helpful in quarantining the epidemic. I wonder who he is supposed to represent? The "hes evil!" narrative was not convincing at all until more is revealed about him later. The left bent in the writing comes off a little heavy handed and comes dangerously close to being obnoxious at times but I found it was at least well done and made sense for the time period, nothing was shoe horned in to make a statement. There are also good and bad examples of characters of every political leaning in the game, such as the alcoholic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ union rep that takes her problems out on her kind hearted sister and everyone around her, as well as the seemingly out of touch rich foodie living in the nice neighborhood who actually plans to donate his fortune to the poor upon his death.

The Ugly:

The romance: it really does come out of nowhere. There are a few hints here and there, but it goes from this to "WE ARE SOUL MATES" real quick.

Continuity: many of the conversations you have can seem bizarre or repetitive, meaning you may pick a non-essential dialogue option, have an important tidbit or great revelation, and then the same information is delivered with even more gravitas when you pick the essential conversation option and I guess we are supposed to act surprised. Or you may just finish accusing someone of being a terrible mother who will end up killing her daughter, the character rages at you, and then everything returns to a normal, jovial tone right after this. Also, unlike games like KOTOR where finishing quests or convincing someone of something causes the character to change for better or worse, the side characters never seem to benefit from your actions or change in any way. This seems to be so the NPC is always available for you to feed on, if you so choose. It seems clear that the game was built more in mind for vampiric characters to have their fun feeding on everybody than it is for a benevolent play through.

Poorly optimized: technically speaking, the game leaves a lot to be desired. There are weird graphical glitches, especially with light reflection. The loading times can be absolutely atrocious too for a game this recent. It took me almost 10 seconds to load into a relatively small dungeon instance frequently.

Inability to skip single lines of dialogue: if you attempt to skip a line of dialogue, it will actually skip everything that the character is saying and move on to the next character in the conversation. There is no way to skip a line at a time, which is annoying and a time sink. However, the incredible voice acting makes up for it.

Unclear choices: some of the most well meaning and innocent seeming choices you make can cause apocalyptic catastrophes to happen, and with very little hint to the player. Depending on your personal preference, this may be a good thing but I would recommend using a guide for major decisions to avoid these kick in the pants moments especially since the game autosaves after every little thing you do in a single slot.

TL;DR: Call of Cthulu, while noticeably unpolished, is a delight to play, especially for Lovecraft enthusiasts and those who enjoy a good mystery. However, it is hard to justify the asking price of $40 unless you are one of the aforementioned groups.

The Good:

The story: It really stands out in this game. It is a true and faithful homage to Lovecraft in that it utilizes all of his core themes from his writings such as mystery, the cosmic insignificance of humanity, truth that can only be faced at the cost of sanity, etc. Even better is that the story is not exactly spoon-fed to you. The bare bones is given, but you must pay attention to the clues to begin to grasp the nuance of the backstory.

The first half: The game starts off very strong. The game is so gripping, it is difficult to stop at this point. Choices matter, and there are multiple paths through every area depending on how you allocate your character points (attributes include, occult, investigation, strength, etc). The mystery is thick, and every clue that is found is enticing.

The art direction: it is almost perfect. Everything associated with Lovecraft is here (at least, what has been associated with his writings posthumously): prominent colors of black and green, great creature design, mysterious images and drawings, wonderful, haunting music, etc.

The core gameplay: it is addictive. Playing it made me want to crack open my old edition of Call of Cthulu by Chaosium. The game is very unique from most others that I have played, and the detective/investigation mechanics are fun. The RPG elements of the game are cool but sadly ultimately fall flat in the final half of the game.

The writing: it is engrossing at points. Especially in its descriptions of unholy knowledge, eldritch creatures, and dialogue with things/people that should not be. The game can almost be poetic in these moments, in true Lovecraft fashion.

The Bad:

The voice acting: it is extremely inconsistent. Some of the characters are pretty decent, but others are horrible stand outs and unfortunately they have some of the most lines in the game (Edward Pierce the main character, Officer Bradley come to mind). There is a life-or-death moment between these two at one point and the lines are written as if the characters care about each other but they are delivered as if they are having a normal, every day conversation with slightly more inflection. The game definitely suffers more from underacting than overacting, so there is that.

The polish: there are a lot of great ideas apparent in this game, which makes it all the more frustrating to see how they ultimately come to nothing by the end of the game. By the second half, the game abandons all illusions that player choice and the RPG elements of the game matter. There are typically only one or two solutions to the problems in the last half of the game, which pales in comparison to the start of the game. When skill checks fail and you are forced to make certain choices, it has little impact on the story and the end game. It almost seems like at about halfway through the development either the team said eh ♥♥♥♥ it or someone higher up pressured them to finish the game quickly and toss aside some of the exciting concepts seen in the beginning. Ultimately, the game feels like wasted potential especially since a lot more could have been done with the core gameplay. I wish the developers would make more stories using this system or would have included a custom story option like Amnesia does, to help justify the price of the game.

Inconsistent chapters: some chapters are very long and greatly influence your character development. Other chapters are either very short or have very little to do with your character. The game has an annoying habit of fixating on these and on the medical center in the game for example, which I found to be one of the weakest points of the game with phoned in stealth gameplay. If you are thorough and do not rush through the story, you can expect maybe 10-15 hours of time on a first play through, but there is not a lot of replay potential except for hardcore Lovecraft fans.

The RPG elements: they are poorly executed. The distribution of player stats matter a lot in the first few parts of the game, but near the end the game stops caring and neither gives you more points to assign or pretends to do skill checks anymore. Only one or two attributes actually matter at all, the others maybe have three at most skill checks in the game while others exist only to open up additional dialogue.

The Ugly:

The save system: there really is no excuse for using an autosave system that only saves in one slot at this point in game development, especially for linear games like this. Why should you not be able to reload to earlier saves, especially when a single clue may be missed and to get it you'd have to restart the whole game?

Artificial length/replayability: this game is a completionist's nightmare. It is very difficult to get everything you may want to get from a single playthrough, and this is solely due to some silly mechanics tied to the RPG point system. There is a truly merciless RNG in the game that may deny a player with adequate skill a certain route, and then immediately autosave after forever denying them that opportunity. The most egregious example of this is that some hidden items may never even spawn into the game because you did not allocate enough points into the Spot Hidden skill.

The difficulty: somehow this game is simultaneously very easy and also very difficult. It is easy, as others have stated, since it could almost be described as a "walking" simulator. There are not a lot of difficult challenges or combat sequences to get hung up on. At the same time, some of the very slightest choices can lock away certain endings forever without any obvious indication of what you might want to pick to end up with the ending you desire, other than "this will affect your destiny". Especially early on, some of the paths through can rob you of certain moments with little indication. Certain puzzles in the game can seem impossible to solve without a guide or a very keen mind, also. This can partly be chalked up to the uniqueness of the gameplay, but since there is almost no hand holding, you may want to have a guide open while playing.

The graphics: if graphics are a selling point to you, you may be turned off by this game. They can look dated at certain points, almost PS2-like, but I personally found them to look more stylized than ugly. It is a matter of taste, and I think most graphics oriented people will be turned off by them.

Sanity mechanic: the game plays it up, but ultimately it does not seem to matter. Your sanity level does not seem to change dialogue options, how your character acts, or even the endings much. The game seems to progress the same way no matter how high or low your sanity gets. Yes, having low enough sanity does do something, technically. It opens an avenue to another ending, and unlocks some dialogue choices at certain points.However, even if your character goes completely insane and has no sanity left at all, it does not affect anything outside of the unlocked ending and flavor dialogue. There is absolutely no incentive for you to avoid trauma to stay sane, and strangely enough there is some incentive to lose as much sanity as possible with zero drawbacks. You may as well knock yourself out and go down the rabbit hole. This is very disappointing since sanity is so integral to Lovecraft's stories and his protagonists.

This game gets a lot of unfair criticism, and I think it comes from two places: horror purists and people who really liked Until Dawn. In fact, my gut reaction after my first play through was to come here and criticize the game's jump scares and compare it unfavorably to Until Dawn; instead, I booted it up to play it again. This is as sure a sign as any of a solid, fun game.

When they say "choice matters" in this game, they really mean it. In fact the phrase invites comparisons to other games which does it no justice. Every single choice you make, whether life or death or casual conversation with characters changes the story. You read that right.

Choosing to have a character say or do something funny for example will change the character's personality and they will act more humorous in later cut scenes. This is an unbelievably cool feature of the game which blew me away when I discovered it.

Characters also have relationship meters toward each other. How much they like each other changes how a character may react to their death, and even simple things like how they interact with each other in non controllable moments.

The detail in these features to my knowledge were absent from Until Dawn, minus a few key moments. This feature also saves the likability of the characters which seem fairly bland and stereotypical on the first play through. This essentially allows you to change a character's personality entirely to your liking, which changes how they interact with the story and each other.

The butterfly effect system has also been carried over from Until Dawn under the name "Bearings" which is worth mentioning. These bearings are important choices the characters make in the game which change the story dramatically, and not all of them are directly controlled by the player which adds an additional layer of complexity. They seem to have more influence than the butterfly effect did in Until Dawn, with certain bearings determining if certain scenes or 10+ minute long segments happen at all in the game (and even which characters are involved). This is an improvement on the butterfly effect which mostly determined who lives and dies.

The attention to detail and complexity of choices affecting how the game unfolds is mind boggling. It really feels as if you are observing and partially controlling real lives of real people stuck in a real bad situation. The story is the perfect length too: 4-5 hours per play through, which is just long enough to appreciate the branching choices and have a satisfying story without being too long that repeat plays are a drag. It is just long enough to enjoy with a friend for a "movie night".

One last cool feature is that the game has multiplayer support. I have not tried it myself, but its worth commenting on and it can be played with people at home or online. Each player controls different characters and each makes decisions which affect each other and the story as a whole, which is amazing in my opinion. There is also an alternative version of the story you can play where you play as different characters at different moments of the game which allows you another angle of interacting with the story and its characters.

It is important to note that this amount of detail may not be fully apparent in a single play through. In fact, depending on the route the player takes through the game it may come off as underwhelming to initial, naive playthroughs.

In my opinion, the games greatest flaw is not its (sometimes) uninteresting characters or its technical shortcomings. Its achilles heel is how the game hamstrings its plot and suspense by utilizing arguably the worst horror trope imaginable. I will not spoil it, but near the end of the game the mystery is dispelled by a single document you can find which clearly outlines what is going on. This almost completely deflates the horror aspect of the story, especially with repeat play throughs.

As a result, it is hard to describe this game as "horror" after the first play through. It becomes more of a mystery/suspense survival drama. It discourages any further investigative work on the part of the player, unlike in Until Dawn where it is actually fairly difficult to uncover the whole plot on a single play through. Fortunately, the drama of the story and its characters, as well as the shifting nature of each playthrough is more than enough to carry the game forward and keep it enjoyable.

Yes, there are a lot of jump scares. There was a lot of them in Until Dawn too though, and some of them were very dumb. One in particular comes out of nowhere, is completely tone deaf to the context of the scene in that game, and the characters do not even react to it. This is absolutely not the case here. I am not a fan of jump scares, but Man of Medan utilizes them well. There were no jump scares where I thought "that was kinda stupid", in fact they put me on edge and tensed me up even on repeat play throughs. None of them felt cheap, and in fact fit with the narrative of the game. They keep the tension fresh each play through, which is good especially since the game robs itself as I detailed above.

In the grand scheme of things, $30 is a jaw dropping steal for a game of this quality. I have played through it almost three times already and the way the events unfolded has been very different each time - the replay factor is huge. Do not be dissuaded by the haters - this is one of the most unique games out there, and it stands just fine on its own merits, even if with just a few tweaks the plot and horror could have been much better. 9/10