Neue Rezensionen von retrogex

A really enjoyable venture into mid 2000s instant messaging software and a masterclass in capturing that nostalgic feeling we all crave so badly. Massive improvement from the freeware version of its predecessor and actually worth the price-tag it usually gets, with a much more beefed up game-time, with plenty of gimmicks thrown in to guarantee you smiling from ear-to-ear. Just remember, don't look up anything about the game, play it blind for maximum enjoyment!

I played through this using the Revision Mod available on Steam, but felt the need to write this using the original game. This game as a whole is absolutely fantastic in experience, atmosphere, gameplay and immersion. I am convinced anyone who debates that Deus Ex has aged badly did not get past Liberty Island and found that modern conventions in controls and gameplay have spoilt them from enjoying this game. Although I can agree visually the game has aged (released 17 years ago), everything besides that criticism is void.

The gameplay is intuitive, the stealth functions very well and while exploitable, can be fun in doing so. The weaponry is massively arrayed and almost everything is applicable in terms of viability. The set pieces and world overall are incredibly well designed, allowing you to ALWAYS find a way to the next objective without the typical "B-line to through a corridor" approach. Level design is one of Deus Ex's greatest assets, and definitely helps in terms of replayability, along with plenty of secrets and hidden items to find and furthering progression. Augmentations are a joy to use, from cloak devices to the use of a portable spy bot to disable robotics. The methods available to approaching each mission are incredible, and honestly make hundreds of modern games look primitive in contrast to its gameplay.

The story, without spoiling anything, is an amazing but simple intrinsic story about conspiracies, world domination and questioning the nature of man and machine. The themes that run through the original Deus Ex are one of the many huge reasons it has still got modern relevance. Mature storytelling, immersive world and also gives the player the REAL ability to decide how the fate of the world is molded.

Music score needs a big shout out, as the original soundtrack is easily one of my favourite parts to Deus Ex. Each song is appropriate to the theme of the level, from the dire empty cyberpunk streets of New York, to the headquarters of the world peacekeepers UNATCO headquarters, each musical piece is an absolute blessing in a video game of this age. I also have to mention that the atmosphere of this game is cleverly done simply on the basis of it ALWAYS being night time, in mostly urban levels and industrial style levels.

There is a HUGE amount of this game that can be dissected and discussed, and still is today from people experiencing it for the first time. If you haven't played this game before, and are wanting a role-playing game like no other of its kind, definitely give a try; forgive its old school nature and get immersed into the world, I am sure plenty of people will agree with me they wish they could turn back the clock and replay this game for the first time.

After playing Vampire the Masquerade completely vanilla besides those mandatory patches to play it on a modern OS and without it crashing every 20 minutes, I can say that the game brings about a lot more positives than negatives to the table. It is one of the most unique settings for an action-RPG I have played, set in the dark drab cities and slums of night-time locales, and brimming with that early 2000s era gothic atmosphere.

It is difficult to encapsulate all thoughts on this game, as there is so much to cover, so I will be rambling about my favourite aspects to the game.
You remember the music video to the song "Bring me to Life" by Evanescence? That is how this game feels visually. It has nailed that perfect atmosphere that is both a product of its time and a testament to good world building. My favourite aspect out of all the atmospherics is by far the nightclubs found in around each city or location. This game has nailed this dark but seductive atmosphere of an early 2000s club scene, reminding me of the intro scene to the movie "Blade" starring Wesley Snipes. Notice how much pop culture references I have been talking about? Well the game is compact full of them; references to bands, music of the era, plenty of movie references from before its original release, and I adore this game for that alone. It shows references to these things without going overboard or coming across as too corny.

The faction system and how each vampire class, without going into too much detail, helps provide a very noticeable and large variety of gameplay styles suited to different players. The game does an excellent job in explaining what each class is capable of doing and what you should be in for should you choose those types of classes/sects of the vampire secret society. The game does an amazing job at immersing you into its world, with its incredible voice acting, damn good facial animations during conversations for a game released in 2004 (put the source engine to good use) and provides a storyline that will seriously make you trudge through even its lowest points due its intrigue and buildup of interest.

The music is incredibly good in my opinion, it will not be to everyone's tastes, as it has that very early 2000s gothic music choice, but it really helps solidify its unique atmosphere and style. In some ways the game has helped immortalise this game as the cult classic it is. Art direction is completely on point from each varying area that you explore, and although completely limited by what you can do by today's action RPG standards, it still has a lot going on to keep you interested.

I have listed off many positives, and the rest would be spoilers, but in fairness, there is a reason this game is a cult classic besides it huge bug problems that will inevitably occur even when patched. Some patience will be needed with this type of game and if you cannot stand the occasional potential crash or glitch messing things up like in plenty of RPGs in this day and age, you might be disappointed. Combat in some classes will leave a lot to be desired, if you play it vanilla, and while the game promotes plenty of playstyles, a lot of the time you WILL be forced to fight in some shape or form. The last major negative I have for this game that I and many, many people have with this game is pretty much the the latter stages of the game, involving a particular sewer, and other aspects that come with following up this part of the game that might put off a lot of people from continuing on.

Despite that last negative, I will say without a doubt, VTM:B is absolutely worth a playthrough in your lifetime if you love RPGs and you are looking for something almost completely unique in experience and setting. It is difficult reviewing a game like this because you would like to explore every part to it, but there is a lot of content to be had in this game, and spoiling it is doing it an injustice.

Here is the link to the website I used to obtain the unofficial patches for this game:
http://www.patches-scrolls.com/vampire_bloodlines.php

A fresh take in an otherwise, incredibly nostalgia entrenched genre. First I would like to list the features and things Snake Pass does right, and then list some of the issues that come from an extension of playing for a while. The first, and best, feature of this game in comparison to other 3D platforming games is the incredibly unique feeling of control, which I can only compare to games like Octodad, but those games are made in such a way for comedic effect, rather than for intuitively enhancing the challenge. In Snake Pass, as the name implies, you play as a snake named Noodle, and goal is to complete a relatively open ended, but somewhat tightly designed level. You collect 3 objects or so (usually found in difficult to reach vantage points) and then proceed to the end of the level. Pretty basic fundamentals to a game, you will have seen this kind of work in games like Banjo-Kazooie, but what Snake Pass does best is how you CONTROL the game itself.

I have played both with keyboard & mouse, plus using a controller, and both seem to work virtually in both ways efficiently, whether you choose between will typically be preference, and I went with the controller on this one. The game does an amazing job at how well it controls, as you meander around a deep-grass jungle looking environment, attempting to wind up bamboo-looking structures and traverising the environment using simple puzzles. The real meat and challenge of the game comes with mastering the controls, and with this, makes you feel like you are having a truly unique experience with the game, as you become the snake.
Visually, the game is gorgeous, using the Unreal 4 engine, and really showcasing excellent lighting, and just the right tinge of bloom and an effective colour pallette. You will more than likely get that trademark feeling of "Rareware" from playing this, with its cartoony and friendly look. The soundtrack is also very enjoyable, composed by the extremely talented David Wise, known for his works on Rare titles in the past (Battletoads, DK Country) and fits perfectly with the game's aesthetic.

Unfortunately, unlike Snake Pass, this review isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and there is an issue that arises the longer you play the game. One of my biggest complaints would honestly be the somewhat repetitive nature of the game overall; as the objective does not change, and eventually assets from the previous levels will be reused again, and again, and again. Unlike some other 3D platformers which would have suffered from this, they would have broke up the monotony with minigames like in Banjo Kazooie or other titles of similar nature. This game lacks some variety, and it is a shame, considering how much potential there was for variety with their physics engine and how the controls functioned. The novelty runs thins after a while, and this personally, makes me question the price tag at its current level. Currently I have clocked around 6 hours of gameplay, and I am honestly not sure how long this monotony continues throughout, however at this point it does admittedly get tedious.

Overall, if you are not put off the repetitious nature, and instead can focus on the music, aesthetic, challenging controls and FEEL of a classic Rareware title, I would highly recommend the game, though I would still be relatively cautious of its current price tag at £15. I hope to see more of these types of games that attempt to spice up the formula of 3D platformers.

Subnautica has been a real pleasure to invest in, especially considering this is still considered an early access game. I have not invested as many hours as others into getting fully developed technologies, the best vehicles or the most ideal buildings, but the game always has the best formula; the game is continuously teetering on the verge of getting boring; but suddenly, Subnautica throws you another curve ball to keep you on your toes. The game, at its core, is a survival game based around mechanics you typically would find in these kind of games. Food, health management, how much you continue to stay hydrated, and of course, your oxygen levels, in case you didn't realise this is a game where you will spend 90 percent of the time submerged underwater.

However, what this game for me personally plays on, is the search for what lies further below on the oceanic planet. The game starts you off escaping from some kind of giant mothership in an escape pod, where you have ejected on to an oceanic planet, covered almost entirely in water. With this, comes your need to survive until help arrives, or you find a way to communicate off planet. That is the basic premise of the game, and saying anymore is a spoiler in my eyes. The gameplay comes down to collecting your resources, building some kind of place to live, using those resources to develop tools and equipment, further progression ensues, etc, etc. You get the gist of these kind of games. But Subnautica has one particular element which makes this game amazing. Immersion.

You see, in Subnautica, when you begin to develop better oxygen tanks, better scuba gear, and then eventually after some time, a submersible vehicle, you will begin to plummet further down into the depths of this oceanic planet. The game is amazingly detailed and beautiful on the surface levels of the water, hosting massive bodies of alien-like fish, plants, and other such things. As you further investigate, the more ferocious and disturbing these plants and alien-like creatures become. As you begin to enter depths of the ocean where the light does not reach, the game suddenly traverses genres, from a simple collecting-resources-survival sim, to a survival horror game. Pressure becomes paramount to keeping an eye on, watching your oxygen levels deplete the further you plummet and dependant on your resources, and the EXTREMELY LIMITED offensive weaponry you have to defend yourself from the deep creatures turn this game into something that comes out of childhood nightmares.

The game is brilliant at giving the player scaling to the environment around them, and makes you truly feel small and insignificant in a vast ocean of shrouded mysteries. As of 12th of April, the updates continue to be made for this game, and provide many more features and large overhauls to both game elements and content, allowing you to traverse land, volcanic deep levels of the ocean, and Alien life that goes beyond both the fish and ourselves. I don't like overpraising games in general, but what I do love is early access DONE RIGHT. The only feature I beg of Subnautica to implement is co-operative; something that could potentially make this game from great to INCREDIBLE. After experiencing my fair share of early access games that provide a lot of promise and potential at first but slowly decline into little to no changes and experience, Subnautica gives me optimism for the survival game genre. A whole-hearted recommendation.

A pathetic attempt at cash grabbing on the part of Gearbox after another floundered failure in videogames. Borderlands 2 after Aliens Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever failed miserably, and now the 20th Anniversary after the failure of making a "MOBA" shooter (Battleborn). Of course you probably didn't know Duke 3D Atomic edition was already available on Steam at one point, right? Well suddenly, the game disappeared off the Steam store, and now we replace it with this overall mediocre version of Duke Nukem 3D.

It pales in comparison to Atomic Edition for a lot of reasons. A lack of DLC expansion episodes that came with the previous version. Duke it out in DC, Nuclear Winter and Life's a Beach are all suspiciously missing. The level editor has now been streamlined for Steam workshop, which of course is a positive, however I cannot forgive the lack of the expansions. A new episode was added, "officially" made by Gearbox, however it really lacked something about it overall. Yeah, there's Serious Sam jokes hammed in, and it has a "Around the World in 80 days" kinda atmosphere going on, but I just cannot forgive some of the clearly lazy efforts given by Gearbox in trying to replace Atomic Edition.

Overall, I can only recommend this to either hardcore fans or people who have never played Duke Nukem before, but if you ask me, this felt like some kind of desperate attempt to cash grab with a "NEW AND FRESH" version of Duke without filling out the true quality of the Atomic Edition, while asking for a hefty price tag.

(P.S. Jon St John's voiceover for his new lines is some of the laziest ♥♥♥♥ I have heard in a while, made me kind of depressed when it shouldn't).

Duke Nukem Forever... It has been a long time coming. One of the few first person shooters I had bought virtually day one in hopes of the gaming industry redeeming itself and bringing back the golden age of first person shooters. Unfortunately like many before me, I was dead, dead wrong. The real question to ask is what DNF does right rather than wrong. But I can barely scrap together any real coherent positives about the game. Instead I am just going to give a minimal rundown of some problems I had in the extremely long list of excruciating issues involved with DNF:

The guns are limited to two. TWO WEAPONS AT A TIME. IN A CLASSIC GOLDEN AGE FPS SEQUEL.

Regenerating health. Why on God's green earth was this considered an okay notion in a Duke Nukem game. The basis in use for regenerating health is to hide behind something or take cover until your health gradually recovers. When you put this into context for Duke Nukem, it make almost 0 sense.

The ego system. Although the idea seems fitting in retrospect to Duke's Alpha male personality, once translated into gameplay it becomes nothing more than a gimmick that breaks up the action makes the game feel like a poor man's POSTAL 2 somehow.

Gearbox lying through their teeth. Gearbox have made their fair share of half decent games in the past, but in these recent years with games being released under their alias such as Aliens: Colonial Marines, Battleborn and Duke Nukem Forever, I have grown to despise them. The lies from both DNF and the Alien game about the promises being made, its visuals from E3 "demos" and rumours/facts that the company outsourced most of the work to newbie developers really makes me question the work ethic over at Gearbox.

The problems stack up against it more and more and I could rattle on about it for far too long, but I never even bothered to finish the damn thing. It is visually revolting, runs like anus, weakest gunplay I have seen in a game, and literal "♥♥♥♥ you" to anyone who ever gave a damn about bringing Duke back. I don't care about how long the game was in development hell, and I don't care that Gearbox just think they can't bring old classics back into action. If modern ID Software can bring DOOM back to life, then what excuse do Gearbox have?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6qFFEkALg&app=desktop

R.I.P. Duke, hail to the king, baby.

I don't know why, but I love this little indie game. It has decent level structure and tough moments, but it is a somewhat advanced equivalent of an Atari 2600 game. The one thing that just keeps me occasionally coming back is its beautiful sound-scapish music. I love the music! I highly recommend this to any bored steam player who just wants to listen to good tunes and have fun.

I love the original Hotline Miami, and I consider myself a pretty big fan of the game. I love the atmosphere, tightness of controls, music, stylised look, etc. of the original game, and after trying my damn hardest to get into the second one, I really cannot just seem to get into it at all. A lot of people really enjoy this sequel, and at the end of the day, whichever Hotline Miami you prefer is pretty subjective.
However, my experience of HM2 was one of sheer disappointment, as rather than keeping to the original game's pacing and playstyle, it changed into one of a much slower pace.
This review isnt going to be about nitpicking the story, as the story is fine and doesn't bother me much, except for many one too many cutscenes about the story that drag on a little too long. It is definitely not the reason as to why I am so extremely disappointed in this game. The music, atmosphere and graphics are all there, but unfortunately the gameplay is the worst part of this game for me.
In HM1, after planning which enemy I was intending to dispose of first, I would bust the door down, knock them down, grab their weapon of choice (usually a bat or lead pipe) and take them out as quickly as possible, with an incessant droning beat in the background with a neon-stained environment lighting up. The speed and movement encouraged in tight corridors or medium sized living rooms which helped make it feel very frantic and fast-paced, with the music complimenting its gameplay very, very well. The game nailed it right first time, and even though it wasn't perfect, it still had its level design and solid gameplay to fall back on.

In HM2, I was instead peeking around corners with a gun, hoping to God that a random hail of bullets weren't going to kill me from off-screen, with having no indication as to where it could come from. That is the biggest issue for me in this game. The massive, open ended levels with no cover, ridiculous amounts of glass windows/walls and a ridiculous amount of enemies with long range weaponry killing me so fast I couldn't possibly react in time. It kept the quick reactive AI from the first game but changed the way the levels were designed. And for me, I am left with playing a game of peekaboo, luring massive amounts of enemies to one room, and praying for sheer luck of the draw more than getting a nice feel of the level. This really stumped any enjoyment from using melee weapons especially since when you knocked down enemies, and attempted to use your melee weapon on them as a finisher ( just like HM1) it would take the exact same time as using your fists. WHY?? Did they deliberately try to discourage melee weapon gameplay?

I understand Hotline MIami games aren't meant to be easy, but for me this one had a lot of cheap quirks to it that just made me pissed off enough to just not want to continue, ESPECIALLY when you are just getting used to one of the characters certain playstyles, then it forces you to play one which you really despise (the Swan brothers are easily the most enjoyable so far). This gives the game an extremely spiked terrain of difficulty, rather than making it an escalation of continued difficulty. The first few levels are grueling and very punishing, especially the ones which involve playing characters which have to "pacify" enemies, so no guns are allowed. Then you will get the levels which involve the "Fans" (not spoiling) which feel more reminiscent of Hotline Miami 1, since you get to choose your powerups and abilities. However, those levels are broken up far too much with a lot of really shoddy and god awful level designs (putting enemies behind doors, enemies in corners which make it extremely frustrating to deal with).

Overall, I just cannot recommend this game, and it really baffles me how much praise it has gotten on Steam, honestly. The atmosphere is just like the original in a lot of ways, same with the music, but I always prioritise the gameplay over any of those features. Do yourself a favour and try Hotline Miami 1 first, then play some of this, and understand how drastically different they feel.

Edit: the soundtrack to this game is incredibly good, lives up exactly to the original in its own unique way and definitely tells it apart between the two. Download the soundtrack to this game at the very least if you are like me and not compelled by its gameplay.

This is the worst DLC I have played from FromSoft. There is absolutely no substance to this DLC, and even though I enjoy their games, I am not holding back on this review.

First of all, the enemies right off the bat in this game are, in essence, "Bloodborne ripoffs". I am dead serious when I say this, since most of the enemy movement patterns come straight from that game. The enemies in this one are absolutely uninspired, and pace of these enemies, along with the inability to properly stagger most of them, will leave you extremely infuriated for playing with a two handed strength weapon. It feels like the enemies are appropriate for fast and overly aggresive playstyle, and I played the whole of DARK SOULS III in a completely steady and heavy armoured playstyle, meaning this DLC has already amped up the cheapness of the gameplay.

Secondly the environment in this DLC, is atrociously ugly. The enemies and NPCs suffer from hilarious drop in effects, meaning one moment you are walking through the snowy tundra without any enemies in sight, and the next will be you with an axe through your scrotum. The amount of times the viking enemies just disappeared from sight due this "game glitch" if you can even call it that was pathetic for a triple A budget game.

Thirdly, the length of its DLC is incredibly short, ranging from 2-3 hours or even less. Like I said, it took me 3 hours just to beat it, and I was at a SEVERE handicap with my playstyle, and even then, the cheapness still hadnt done much to extend game time.

And last, but not least, the boss fights in this game. Subjective if you will, but I expected 2-3 boss fights in their DLC here, but the ones I got were boring and incredibly uninspired. The conclusion of this DLC leaves you with virtually nothing else, and the weapons/kit overall is simply not even close to interesting to even pique interest for people looking for more nice armours or weapons.

Overall, the DLC was a complete waste of time, the bugs were atrocious, almost like someone never playtested it with anything but one build, and the price for something of this length is laughable. I can expect some kind of backlash since most Dark Souls fans cannot handle criticism when it is due to this franchise, but this DLC simply is anything but good.