Recent reviews by Mister Paytwick /LLAMATRCKR/

Dood, it's FEAR in GZDoom cranked up to 11.

People complaining about guns being a bit "meh" have a skill issue and aren't using other ways or tools to kill enemies, or even understanding that fight being to quick will prevent the John Woo ♥♥♥♥ of blowing-everything-up-in-the-room-to-pieces.

And it has Doom heritage bits. So there is the "hunting keys" part, which isn't too bad, as it let you know what and where to go without having to explain much about it, you look around for a key after seeing a few corresponding doors, it's simple, it's good usage of a very simple design. But there is also the secret hunting, because of course. And it's well done enough that just looking around a bit in first playthrough let you get 50% of them without it being a ♥♥♥♥♥. There is a few spicy ones, but this is just being curious.

So you get into a room, repaint everything with the enemies internal bits and every single stack of paper, in well designed encounters and maps.

Some people complain about the size of those, and I would say I think we are a tiny bit slower that what would really feel amazing, we don't have to backtrack often, I'm a moron and I don't even do it much...

Overall Selaco is a game made by people that want to make a good game, but also get how to give the feeling they want to give. It'll have flaws like all games, but the things it aims to do are done very well.

♥♥♥♥, look at that shotgun, the devs said "we want to have a doom stick that compete for a "top 3 video game shotguns of all time" spot" and it shows.

Game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic.
But you have sony in the mix. Now 177 countries are blocked because they either can't log into PSN, or because of a reason that stem from that (ie may get sued because of it).

This is a shame.

UPDATE :

Sony heard the community. At the end of the day, it's first and foremost a bad communication that led to that cluster♥♥♥♥.

But getting mad at it and breaking the review system and going ballistic did work out to create the chain of events that led to Sony rolling back the mandatory accounts.

Democracy prevailed. Seems we are back to diving.
The devs acknowledged the ♥♥♥♥ ups and didn't try to play coy.

While Sony had this worked in the deal with the deal, it's a show of understanding us from both the devs and the publisher.

As it is, there was hurt trust, but as the community didn't understood that the requirement was supposed to be there, the community should be doing a show of good faith and fix reviews for people that think we can actually build something from this.

Let's be a bit naive, the game is good and trust a bit Arrowhead to manage Sony and explain to them when needed what they view as best for the game and the community.

Reviewing Fortune's Run gonna be a bit hard. It draws influences from tons of medias, wearing them on it sleeve, such as Star Wars, Dune, Deus Ex, Quake and even, always a winner in my book, the most broken great game ever, EYE Divine Cybermancy.

It's a weird FPS, because it is a FPS at the core, with some RPG elements, with some inventory management and extensive health system, but it also borrow from Deus Ex and System Shock in the vibe you get from exploring a level : it's a bit like a dungeon and you have tons of way to go, but all comes with challenges and catches.

It's not an easy FPS, but you get tons of tools to deal with it. You can definitely play on easy or normal to enjoy a chill time, but if you crank up to hard (the difficulty the devs thought out the game for), or the last tier, you'll have to use all the tools you have. And there is where it meets EYE : you come into a room where, sure you can 1v1 everybody, but so can they. And as you struggle taking on 3 or 4 or 7 guys thrown at you, you'll improve and make the mechanics click together, and once you do, you become a walking demi-god, shooting one, grabbing another as a human shield and beating the life out of the last one.

Like screw it, you want a fighting game but it's a FPS and it's unhingged ? Juggle enemies, you don't need to defend yourself if the enemy can't get hit the ground.

While the game lack a level of polish, it's a 2 devs studio, it's as indie as it get and as insane it can get, but all of this in the spirit of the 1980s-2000s action movies with a lot of entertainment. And with that idea, we have amazing set ups, like when you blow up a pod and jump into the water tank at the bottom to _not be blown up too_.

But this isn't a cutscene, this is your doing, this is you figuring out what you can and want to do.

Once of the cool feature of the game is a quickload feature that just let you try more things, and recover from mistake more easily. While the fights are hard, it's very possible to quicksave before one, and work it out. This help out as you can actually fail pretty hard in a fight and just rollback and try again.

The game also has quite a few things going on : poise meter, localized damage which translate into specific crippling effect (My legs are OK being a thing here too, but too many hit in the face and you end up struggling to read)

Speaking of reading, the devs decided to throw in BEING A HACKER, people complain, but as I was mentionning the 1980-2000 movies, this is exactly that feeling, but on a more linux like CLI.

It's far less obtuse that people think, but it gives the vibe of it, which is so awesome.

What do you get currently is about 3 maps : A club map, which was the demo, A physically accurate space station, but the second boss is a bit hard in hard. And an arena map.

This is a FPS at the end of the day, don't expect 100% stealth run, but this FPS has FREEDOM, you pick the fight from the angle you like, you combo and chains stuff as you feel, it's hard in order to be rewarding, it's deep in order to be flexible.

The devs are pretty chill too on the discord (you got to be an ass to get banned, let's be real).

Overall, a game I strongly recommend, by a team of dev that give a ♥♥♥♥ about making a game, not for a paycheck, but as an opus magnus : it has to have weight, meaning and worth being played in 10 years.

And that's super dope.

To explain properly Postal 1... It's not a game about the gameplay alone. It has an ambiance.

Postal 2 is a dark comedy take on FPS, our relation to them (remember it's perfectly possible to do a pacifist run in Postal 2), our relation to stereotypes and media. As such, it is always borderline in good taste, without ever falling into the trap.

Well Postal 1 is a disturbing psychological horror game. The whole going postal is fine, tho the game is kind of straight forward and not to hard. The images, the sound design of the music and menus, that is some nightmare ♥♥♥♥.

And unlike *that other game* (hatred), which is edgy to the point of comedy, as a so bad it's good kind, the normal and easy difficulty of Postal tends toward some edginess, but remain far shorter and hence better delivered overall. Now I point out at normal and easy because when you get to hard and nightmare, the texts displayed between the levels change. The edginess is loss to the frantic rambling of a man that is losing it.

It is a weird game in the sense the ambiance makes you uneasy, almost queasy the game is pretty simple and is overall helped by being short enough as the gameplay loop is simple. But it's overall mostly an experience into an horror game sliced by action packed scenes.

Even the action packed scenes border on the horror as people agonise around you, some begging to be finished off and that kind of thing, all the while without any music during those. It's dark man, it's dark.

Sidenote, it's funny how the artworks remind me of Ben Templesmith artstyle in his Woodworm serie.

What the ♥♥♥♥ am I looking at? Why are Scandinavian sewer themed interior design important? First you sweat bullets finishing a mission, until you hit a wall, then you backtrack, do some missions again, you do them faster. You beat the wall down, the game keep throwing ♥♥♥♥ and killing you, without a single second of caring. Then you get it. You start using powers, but it's not enough...

Then, after getting beaten again and again by the game, it clicks. Gorbino's Quest, the CEO mindset, MT ♥♥♥♥, selling organs, the trading... It clicks and the flow of the game fully unfold as you make this game your ♥♥♥♥♥.

And you keep trying to one-up yourself as the game become more twisted in it's way of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with you.

This is an Immersive Sim, a too rare genre of game, and people meme a lot about it. It's punitive, but the high is one of the highest high, the power trip one of the best. You start eating ♥♥♥♥, and you end up forcefeeding the game back the same ♥♥♥♥. You have no care for any of this, you aren't anymore a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters, you are MT ♥♥♥♥.

And this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rocks.

How good is this game? Amazing.
Do I recommend it? Yes.
How hard is it to get into it? Pretty hard, but once you mastered the lock and unlock mouse, everything else will start to click.

Locking and unlocking is done by pressing E (default) and doesn't prevent you from doing things outside of turning with the mouse, so you can still shoot stuff if need be. And you can annotate the map. This is all you need to start a run.

Now the real question is how to explain how amazing this game is?

Often, a game require the player to master it to feel good. System Shock, despite some clunkiness, manage to give the feeling you are mastering more and more the game all the while throwing ♥♥♥♥ hard enough that you have to be on your toes.

It give gadgets that are useful, but sometimes you have to learn them. It gives good guns and ammo types, but again you have to understand them, good grenades, good utility items.

Basically, where most games give you a feeling of being good, System Shock will force you to start to break it to feel it. It make it look like doesn't care how much ♥♥♥♥ it throws at you, but we are walking that thin edge were you feel amazing about overcoming real odds, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that simply make the game a walk in the park.

This game is also amazing because of it's ambiance: with keeping the player on their toes, it mix with it a grim situation and manage to keep us under pressure.

The story isn't new or anything, but the writing of SHODAN, the fact the player isn't railroad'd into actions ("who said we need to raise the shield before firing the laser if I want an early game over?"), also add into this whole feeling you are free to figure out how to beat the game.

Many games tried to sell us a villain that can say "Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?" and not sound ridiculous. System Shock doesn't try, SHODAN is one hell of a villain.

Yet the game isn't without flaws by modern standards: no quest logs, clunky controls, the sprites sometimes go wild (looking down on an enemy, the sprite will remain perpendicular to the view) to name the biggest, most noticable offenders.

If the looks could be upgraded*, the other parts will, in the end, always be there in a way or another: no quest log is great for ambiance, as you have to take notes on the minimap of stuffs, relistening to audiologs to figure what to do and so on. The clunky controls can't really be fixed as there is just way too many things you can and have to do, the current schemes is pretty amazing by default.

There is, in theory, a remake coming down the road, I hope it works out, this game truly deserve that. And even people that can't get into the old ass interface or graphics should discover that title, even if it's remasterised.

TL;DR: This is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing buy it. And if graphics and all aren't you thing, try to support to NightDive Studio because they are working on a remastered. It has an amazing atmosphere, it is rewarding, and it's well written.

A fun, unhinged, adrenaline pumping game.

Sseth convinced me to try it, but there is even more crazy ♥♥♥♥ in this that he could convey.

And multi is great as ♥♥♥♥.

How can I start? I mean, E.Y.E. is E.Y.E. in all it's unpolished glory of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-crazy whatthe♥♥♥♥ness. You break your leg, your legs are OK, you gain Brouzoufs...

OK, here is my story with the game. Back in 2012 I got it in a warez forum in VO and the game was so hard to get in, that I failed to get in. But I had it since 2015 in my steam library and I decided to pick it up again. A friend told me even back in 2012 that the hacking system had no equal. And it is true. It has its flaws, but it's the best hacking mini-game (so not a full game about that) that exist. Now, after 10 hours in game, I started to understand why people liked that game. By 20 hours, I was one of those guys that'll tell you the game is awesome. Now, I think it's a lost gem.

The game is, let's be honest, kind of half finished for the "Welcoming you" part. The tutorial videos are thin resources, the in-game explanations are light, the in-game narration is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up (but I think it was wanted, just the translation make it even more gloriously weird and bad-ish)

To break it up why you should try that game: EYE is a RPG shooter that manage to do the things many others fail: you start feeling like you can do things, but you finish the game feeling like you are a god. All the while still throwing things at you that can kill you. But here, we have the tools to still be harder, better, faster, stronger.

Weapons kick hard and feel good, and when they don't kick you, they make ♥♥♥♥ look good: there is a katana that make people explode, you can block bullets with melee weapons and run down people, minigun them from afar, auto them down with a grenade launcher, fuller auto them with a submachine gun. It include too a drone and mini-turrets

Implants can let you see the sound people do, highlight the humans, become invisible, become harder, make a bait (like Duke Nukem 3D's one), jump several stories up and run faster, or suffer no recoil.

Powers can let you telefrag enemies, make them go mad, explode into a werewolf (which you don't control, because safety is for the weak), lift and throw cars, or spawn other yous to mow enemies down.

And then you get the hacking: think of it's minigame as a sort of JRPG way to make turn-based combat. But the results aren't just the "unlock the door", "complete the objective" and such. No here, you can hack a door to open it, a terminal to complete an objective, or a turret or a drone to have them help you. Or any human enemies: you can hack them and have them help you,
possess them to start a gun fight in their group. You can hack that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flying gunship that nail you down with rockets.

You can rebind all the powers and implants, you can set your pie menu as you want. It's an amazingly weirdly made game. And while there is no Difficulty walls, it's because it's a whole new concept: it's a roller coster of difficulty. And it can be a good thing here. Because the game is about becoming ever more powerful, and you have to face that kind of things to realize that you now ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rock.

You can go mad, you can make people go mad, you can be hallucinating, this game tried to be so much more than your run out of the mill game. Without a crafting system, without a real openworld, without all those buzzwords.

And you want to bring friends in it? Don't believe the shop page, you can load up to 32 people in coop. it has a few problems, but if you intend to load a mission, kill things and have fun that way, then it's a highway to fun!

In all that, while getting into the game is hard, while it's not the most beautiful game that exist, EYE is a game that people really wanted to do with an amazing focus on the growth you have as you play it.

So buy that game, try it a bit, it can be harder. You may hate it and that's fine, but many people discovered a game they really didn't knew that existed a game that was made without giving a ♥♥♥♥ about slowing down the bonker train. Sit down, enjoy the ride and gain Brouzoufs.

And invest in the legs augmentations.

Note: for Steam's Proton users I had the best performances on 3.16 something beta. I had a bit of troubles using the 4.2-7 version. Otherwise the game run very well.

Note 2 as of 2020 04 11: Let's be clear I don't recomment that game to everybody (well, I do but I do acknowledge it's a broken piece of ♥♥♥♥ too), but if you are ready for a wild ride of wild powertrip of both getting good and getting stronger, it's kinda for you.

If you don't know it, or can play with friends, despite the problems it still has, it's a good game.

Choosing a game engine depend on the game you want to do, but it can depend on other factors, here we have a game engine from which you can modify the sources, has a GUI and an editor that allow most of the things to be done just by trying out first. But everthing has it's own way to be simple:

you make elements of a game from nodes, by parenting them together, in a logical way: a mesh, an animation player, a collision shape, are the children of a Kinematic body, could be a character. And there is plenty of things that simply help out, want to switch around elements, there is a node perfect to be a position placeholder.

Those elements are defined by their own scripts, you can give every single one of your node a script, if you are into that!

Then it include a complete, and functional GUI, said GUI is the GUI of the editor too.

The design of scenes, that you then instance in another one, to make a bigger scene, let you fix small stuffs that'll be carried over the other scenes, you can do per instance changes for values you set for, which make it quite the handy way to proceed.

Language-wise, Godot seems quite the challenger. It has his own scripting language, akin of Python, made for prototyping and light stuff, while not insane performance-wise, it remain good enough to try. It has C++ too. C# too (considered WIP, but working)

But here come the game-changer aspect: imagine that you can have ANY language, as long as the community is behind. You want D, Godot has the binding, you want Nim, Godot has the binding, Rust? Guess what. Godot use an API to allow a plugin (community made) to be the language binding. You have a benchmark of it here[github.com], so you can see, it's not just a random thing put into the engine, it's really something the devs want to see working very well. It also mean you can get the steamwork API, or Google Play API working without a special build.

And you can export to basically anything (Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobiles, Desktop) with a few clicks. Consoles can be done, but because of licencing, you'll have to manage that with the company doing the console.

EDIT: I realized that people may find weird the recent positive reviews that have been added. The 26th of febuary, the person managing the steam version (akien) put a reminder to post reviews on the godot subreddit, so many non-steam users actually bothered to get their reviews in.