Recent reviews by mycelo

Steam is already a launcher. Games shouldn't create another layer of launcher just to advertise their other games. Seriously. One login is enough. One account is enough. One launcher is enough.

This remaster singlehandledly sideswiped this whole wave of "boomer shooter" releases. Quake II is one of my favorite games of all time, it was an absolute masterpiece on launch and got a lot of undeserved hate. More than a mere visual upgrade, the game feels much more nimble and dynamic. I would gladly pay for this as a DLC, but we're getting this for free, and feels like an entirely new game no matter how much times you already replayed it in the past.

The Quake sequel I was waiting for.

I cannot stress enough how fun this game is. It is a shame how underrated JC games always were. Admittedly, it does crash on me every 2-3 hours which is fairly acceptable. I strongly recommend to keep all DLCs disabled until you're really done with the vanilla experience.

First impressions:

Throw in the blender Hexen, Heretic, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem, and then display the results in gorgeous Quake1-ish visuals.

Then add full gamepad support.

A new, free game for Commodore 64 that doesn't need an emulator.

That's all I needed.

I'm not sure why this game was always so underrated.

I played both Prototype games on X360 and they were tons of fun through and through. Their graphics were nothing to write home about, but the cinematic presentation was interesting. The memory fragments that you collect throughout the game are kind of compelling albeit a bit cheesy (which is totally intentional). But the focus here is obviously the action, meaning torn everyone apart as you please with no consequences at all.

It is an easy game, and you might think it would become a bore pretty soon. However, you'll be getting a steady supply of new powers through the course of the history, and I for one was always eager to experiment new forms of flesh tearing goodness. Also, there are quite a few stealth infiltration missions where you must take shape of high ranking commanders to gain access to doors and terminals which was always pretty entertaining.

Also, no technical issues at all on my PC.

Nevertheless if you like the idea of a gruesome mutant anti-hero set loose on NYC to shred milliary and monsters by the thousands in the most creative ways with a good amount of collateral damage and some stealth moments threw in, do try this game.

I can't help but draw comparisons to the good old AVP games.

The marine campaign is expected to make you feel weak and vulnerable, checking out every dark corner and be terrified of air vents and screeching noises. However, your arsenal is quite powerful. You'll be mowing down aliens with your pulse rifle in no time. There's no tension. The difficulty comes from sheer number of enemies coming from nowhere and scarce ammo. Once you go out of ammo you just have to bunny-hop around until you find more ammo or the next level transition. Because the enemies become endless whenever a scripted event requires. Whenever that happened, I just rolled my eyes.

The predator campaign, on the other hand, should make you feel like a badass. But humans could spot my cloaked shape from afar whenever I aimed the triangle laser thing ON THEIR BACK. At this point any humans around will shoot at you with god-like aim. Also, two or three laser strikes would deplete your energy pool, which can only be charged at some fixed power node-things, and each one can only be used ONCE. Melee-fighting with aliens is just obnoxious. After getting my ass kicked I realized I'm supposed to lock my targeting at one of then, pounce with my claw and press the grab-execute button. Rinse and repeat. With only two or three different animations, that gets old really fast. There's only one vision mode which don't work with aliens and isn't really required to find humans at all.

The alien campaign is somewhat on par with what I expected. You can walk on walls and roof but the transition isn't seamless, which is pretty annoying. There's no fisheye-vision to make you feel less disoriented (like previous games had). The claw attack is pretty weak and the tail whip attack is meant to be used to break lamps but stealth isn't really encouraged let alone required. Again you approach each prey and press the grab-execute button until they're done. You'll see the same 2-3 different human models all the time. Also, the alien is supposed to PRESS BUTTONS with its byte attack. WTF.

Last but not least, no matter how much I fiddled with settings and drivers, this game hard-crashed all the time. My impressions above are based on around two hours or so that I could squeeze between crashes until I decided to refund.

TL;DR that's not the remake that I expected.

THE GOOD

+ Deliciously dangerous exploration
+ Procedural planetary sandbox with actual orbit simulation
+ Beautiful Play-Doh-like landscapes
+ Soothing music and ambiance
+ Smart and straightforward crafting system
+ Cool power sourcing / transmitting / storage
+ Gadgets that look like a mix of NASA and Apple
+ Modular machines and vehicles that fit together like Lego pieces
+ Fast and powerful terrain modeling system
+ Travel seamlessly from planet to planet
+ No crashes, no game breaking bugs (so far)
+ Several savegame slots

THE BAD

- Terrain modeling / deforming can get clumsy and confusing
- Easily getting stuck on geometry
- Cumbersome object selecting / picking / placing (gamepad)
- Bad, bad camera
- Rough terrain makes things detach from your vehicle
- Geometric / vectorial art style might get old after a while
- Textures and geometry popping into view too late
- Cannot move / destroy / dismantle base modules
- Unable to freely drive your ship: point and click where you want to go
- Cannot delete / rename / organize saved games

THE UGLY

* Ultimate purpose?

By far one of the most well-crafted game that I came across.

My only complaint is about traversing rough terrain with your character or your horse. You never know if you'll be able to climb that waist-high rock. Sometimes you climb smoothly. Sometimes you need to wait for a key press prompt. Sometimes you keep jerking around, trying different angles, until you give up. But that's 0.001% of the game. The rest is just pure fun.