Recent reviews by mac

Reading Witchfire's devlogs a few years after seeing the trailer at The Game Awards long ago, I felt confused that they were eager to make this game as a Destiny-derived roguelite.

Having finally played the game, I'm confused that they were eager to make this game as a Destiny-derived roguelite.

What caught my eye about the first trailer was, simply put, that the sell of a shooter with souls-y presentation and mechanics felt like a novelty in the genre. High-damage enemies that have to be consciously dodged, high-impact weapons, high-caliber environments and level design, you know- something that evokes that on-edge feeling of exploring something grand and dangerous, where it's satisfying just to progress.

Witchfire still has some of that going on, but it feels blunted by the other aspects of its design. The very obvious affinity held for Destiny is especially confusing to me, as Destiny, to me, feels almost diametrically opposed to what a good Fromsoft-styled game can offer, where even normal encounters are consistently engaging. Gunfights in Destiny often feel more like pulling weeds than having a gunfight, and honestly, it's often the same here. You have battles with fodder that are utterly mind-numbing and THEN it throws something real at you and if you're sleeping at the wheel and die there, you have to deal with a ton of fodder again by virtue of the roguelite structure, and every time you return to a level after leaving it to save your not-souls.

The game's art in general is gorgeous, the alt-colonial dark fantasy setting is neat, but while playing I just kept wishing that the game was a more traditional singleplayer game where individual battles and explorations felt meaningful as opposed to things that would be revisited without much joy over and over again.

I'll note in fairness that I didn't get far in Witchfire, around two hours- but there was no point in those two hours where the game really clicked for me and I went "oh, now it's getting fun." I did hear that the game was made significantly easier between its initial launch on Epic and its launch on Steam, and I wonder if I would've liked it more back then- or perhaps the opening levels were always this way. Either way, I am interested in checking out the game again at some point, maybe when it's done- but likely with very different hopes.

It's pretty fun.

At its core, Shady Knight is fluid and fun to control. The movement is extremely smooth with a nice little learning curve to it and the combat is very satisfying and visceral on a basic level. It's also fun to gradually feel out everything your character is capable of over the course of a playthrough, which is about all you can ask for from an indie game occupying similar spaces to games like Dark Messiah or Ultrakill.

Visuals and Music are serviceable. While pretty static, the environments employ a pleasant use of color, and while the music being dynamically linked to the style meter is a cool idea as always, it rarely clicked for me and contributed to the excitement in the way that something like DMC's implementation did.

If there's any critical feedback I have to offer, it's that by the time I was nearing completion with the game, I'd found a strategy that it felt like there was pretty much zero reason to avoid, simultaneously disabling enemies en masse, fairly safe to perform, applicable to every enemy with specific weaknesses, able to be combo'd into anything to generate lots of style or efficiently finish anything off, etc. It didn't have time to get boring outright and you could argue that in a game like this it's on the player to pursue a playstyle they find most entertaining (which may be true on some level,) but a single hit from any enemy will lock you out of SSS-Rank for that level, which provides some strong incentive to stick to what works.

This continues to the final boss, which is just as vulnerable to this strategy as any other heavyweight enemy you're encountered up to this point. My hope before even reaching him was that an approach a little similar to Mr. Freeze from Arkham City would be taken, where he'll start defending against repetitive strategies, forcing you to showcase some of the varied approaches that the game has been trying to teach you to beat him- instead, you just manhandle him.

In the end though, I think Shady Knight accomplishes what you really want from it in the first place, providing a quick and fun movement and melee combat sandbox with plenty of opportunities to show off and experiment. If you're a big fan of first person melee, movement, and games with dedicated kick buttons, you'll probably like it- it's just plain fun.

This is the most fresh a multiplayer shooter has felt to me in a good while. To try and put the appeal simply, if you're familiar with games like Deus Ex or Dishonored, in particular how those games are known for offering a sandbox that rewards thinking up creative solutions to your problems- it can often feel like a multiplayer shooter version of something like that.

Most of the gadgets in the game have multiple case uses or potential interactions, the best example being the goo grenade, which can be used as cover, as a barricade on a door or window, as a ledge to help you climb somewhere, to cut off someone's escape, to re-seal holes caused by destruction, or even to help spread fire.

There's a lot of interactive moving parts on maps and a ton of emphasis on engineering and navigating the map by completely destroying it, building cover, placing down items and traps, etc. The interplay between mobility, destruction, and preparation makes for a game that can simultaneously feel fast+dynamic and careful+strategic, and it feels pretty novel.

There were voices in the Titanfall community that pushed for the game to be delisted if the long-spanning DoS attack problem wasn't fixed. Respawn eventually acted on these requests, but I think this was a mistake. To me they more often than not read like a spiteful cry for help than an actual desire for the game to be shuttered.

During TF1's development, there was a deliberate decision to not allow for player-hosted servers, as I recall because the average player's internet connection at the time wouldn't really be able to handle hosting it. The decision was framed as "either we allow for player hosting, or we cut back on the things we want to do (heavily scripted sequences and presence of AI in PVP multiplayer.)" In the end, it was decided that the main drawback of Respawn then being single-handedly responsible for the game's playability was worth it, because maintenance and server upkeep would be cheap and easy while ensuring player goodwill in the future.

TF1 has enough passionate fans that I'm sure that eventually, at some point in the future, there will be a way to play it, whether that's from a fan-client, an official remaster- or something like that. It's just a shame that the ambition that helped make the game interesting and unique is also what condemned it to becoming almost impossible to play today, and it's even more of a shame that something so avoidable as an online multiplayer game being permanently unplayable as soon as support is dropped has become such a sweeping, industry-wide trend.

For now, it's a simple and enjoyable shooter if you've got some friends to play it with and Like Cool Robots.

A quick note for the future: I'm writing this a day after the initial early access release. Also, I really wish Steam had the option to post reviews without tying a hard general yes or no recommendation to it.

I think this game is neat, I'm interested in where it's going, and I'd like it to succeed, I'm just not sure I'd recommend it to the average person in its current state at the moment, and I have a few personal hangups here and there on top of that.

First and foremost for the everyman, the content that's there can be completed very quickly and it's not entirely finished, most notably with a setpiece the game actively teases being locked behind a wall that says "under development." If you're looking less for a development sneak peek and more for a nice chunk of the finished game, you might want to wait just a little while before hopping on.

For my issues with it- it's not really a surprise from the trailers, but there's less of an emphasis on combat avoidance than Thief. Your tools are chiefly guns, stabbing enemies in the back is incredibly (almost too) easy, and you're given plenty of explosive barrels to blow enemies to bits with. Despite this focus, I found the game to be a lot more fun and interesting playing it ghost-style, avoiding combat and kills altogether- especially in the later parts of the EA content where it becomes very noticeably linear compared to the excellent open-ended nature of the Fishery at the start.

They've said before that they're not that interested in actively facilitating a pacifist playstyle and I won't assume that they'll casually reconsider, but if opening options and adding tools to a pure stealth playstyle isn't going to be a focus, I hope they might at least look at ways to make picking enemies off feel a little bit less mindless.

All that said, there's still some damn good level design there, the setting is interesting, and there's a solid level of presentation and polish on display. If you're interested in the premise and aren't bothered by paying for a fairly early version of things, or just really want to support imsims or stealth games whenever they appear, then sure, go for it. If you're just some dude without much investment in it and you're just looking for a new game, any new game to try out, I might give it a bit to develop before coming back.

This is probably the best Half-Life 2 mod I've ever played.

A very fun multiplayer stealth game that's pretty unique in the current multiplayer gaming sphere. Hard to play without friends though, and good luck getting them to try it!

This is difficult, because I can't really overstate how much I appreciate Doom Eternal and TAG Part 1.

To put it simply- in response to the backlash to TAG Part 1, they've dialed things back to a level of intensity that's no longer super engaging if you got used to TAG1, so core players are dissatisfied, but they're also sticking to their guns as far as things like enemies that respond to certain weapon types, so the people complaining about TAG1 still aren't satisfied.

The final boss feels too weak and defensive for a game as beloved for aggression as Eternal while also being impossible for a poorer player to brute force because he heals on hit, so again, doesn't really satisfy anybody.

The story has completely jerked away from the satisfying minimalism that made 2016 feel so fresh in flavor of convoluted and not all that enjoyable lore leading up to an ending that feels like a repeat of 2016's ending in how dissatisfying it is.

At the end of the day it's not garbage, or anything. It's still Doom Eternal, and as such it still feels better to go fast and shoot demons in than the vast majority of shooters out there- but it's undeniably a weak and concerning note to end on for a game that was in my opinion doing so well up until now. If you can get it very cheap I'd honestly say go for it just to experience it, you'll still have fun- but in the context of the base game and TAG1, it's a bit underwhelming.