Recent reviews by kottadragon

Dark Sector is an obvious product of its time. From the post-processing out the ass to effects Resident Evil 4 had on its design, implementing features and ideas that would later go on to be perfected in games like Dead Space and Prototype. The problem is that for its ambition, Dark Sector manages to execute very little in any way that leaves a lasting impression.

Dark Sector isn't bad. There are good things here, like the immersive lack of UI. It's just underbaked.

The game is very short, lasting only about 4-to-5 hours. I finished my first play through around 6.5, but I was just kind of taking things in, making sure I wasn't missing any secrets, and not trying to rush. I have no doubt most could shave a few hours off that.

At roughly $2 per hour of game, what's there should be pretty good but it sadly isn't. Control over your character is clunky (invoking memories of early Gears of War), the PC keybindings feel like they were designed by an alien, and there's very little motivation to go back and play through again once you've beaten the thing.

By far, Dark Sector's aesthetic and designs are the best thing it has going for it. The world truly needs more of that bio-weapon aesthetic this game and Prototype nail, but the eye candy alone cannot carry it.

The story is the worst thing on show here. You are given very little background on the characters and even less reason to care for any of them. There are clear implications at a deep, brooding era-appropriate Hot Topic-esque backstory for Hayden but never any real details that delve into what he did and why it was so terrible. This issue compounds upon itself with Nadia who is shown to have a shared history with Hayden and resent him for what he did, but it's difficult to care when the game won't even clearly paint what it is he actually did other than mentioning he killed people and calling him a psychopath. This makes her death, one of the very few major events in the game, very lackluster. Sure, we've confirmation of a shared history. Implied romantic feelings and prior relations. But we don't really know anything about Nadia. We barely know anything about Hayden. You won't have any strong feelings about her death because the game never gave you time to develop any feelings.

So for full price, I cannot recommend it. If it's ever on sale for under $5 or free to keep again, then grab it for sure. But there are a lot better games out there and Dark Sector ultimately feels more like a prologue for a game with a real story than a standalone project.

Dark Sector may be Warframe's big brother but it's clear which one attended Special Ed classes.

Lured in by the gooning, stayed for the love and effort by the developer that went into creating a well made game.

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Atlyss takes obvious design cues from MMO RPGs shrunken down to a smaller, more intimate lobby-based ORPG experience. And while MMOs are not typically a genre I associate with fun, the developer clearly knows what he’s doing and has a strong grasp of what actually makes a game entertaining.

Quests get you to where you need to be, combat is solid (though certainly more engaging if you’re melee), and the movement is god-tier. Honestly, I cannot oversell that last point. I actually have more fun moving between the fights than the actual fights themselves, and Bandit gives you plenty of nice options to take that to an even further extreme.

Can be played single-player just fine, but definitely a game that falls under the umbrella of ‘more fun with friends’.

Atlyss isn’t breaking any new ground. It just fulfills everything it sets out to be, and you can’t really ask for more than that at the end of the day.

Even after only a few hours, I can determine this game is not for me. It's a bit too much for my computer to handle smoothly and I found a door requiring nearly 700 collectibles. I assume this bars the way to the game's only achievement, but collecting just 100 was enough to rocket my blood pressure to the point where I speculate it came close to killing me several times.

The game requires a controller to play. There are technically keyboard bindings, but they're unprompted and I was never able to find the casting key. After fishing out an old controller to play, I was then acquainted with the tightness and momentum the game's movement tech holds. There is clearly a good movement system here at play but the design around it is unforgiving and leaves little room for error.

That said, a bunch of love and effort clearly went into this prologue and I imagine just as much of the full product as well. As somebody who doesn't usually play with a controller and devolves into neanderthal hands when using one, I fully accept my frustrations with the gameplay are a skill issue. Which is why I will give it a positive review.

Does actually playing it fill me with rage and hate? Yes. Did the devs accomplish what they set out to do and pull it off? Also yes.

Fun demo. I'm looking forward to how the full game shape's up. I have a soft spot for these immersive sim's inspired by retro low poly games. The devs really have the vibe and atmosphere they're going for down. The foundations of the combat are a little basic, but what weapons are in the demo are neat and I'm interested in seeing what else they'll add in the full version on top of the weapons final forms; I'm a big fan of the cannon and lamp mace in particular, the latter of which is a very creative way of giving you a light that doubles as a weapon for those darker areas, and the whip opens up some options for exploring with its heavy.

Bought V Rising after the recent free weekend, and 100%ed it in basically the two weeks since then. I had a lot of fun and the game left a strong impression, but my recommendation is a tentative one.

What’s good here is really good. Combat is fun and engaging. The whole dodge-dash isn’t really anything new, but the ability to augment that and the versatility that your two slotted-in spells can bring to your playstyle, in addition to the abilities from your weapons, gives you a lot of room to play around with. And when combined with the sort of ladder-type system of progression of the V Bloods, you’ve always got something to do and work towards.

There’s always a challenge to be found at whatever tier you’re playing at, and even if you’re not in it solely for the combat, there’s the castle building which I was genuinely impressed by for a grid-based system. Now, it’s not perfect and you don’t have total freedom, but I was satisfied with what it allowed and can see a lot of potential for getting lost in that.

But that said, there were some things that frustrated me that are more nitpicks than anything.

The progression is, as I said, solid—for the most part. Whenever you enter a new act, there’s always a long stall around the start of it. Gathering the resources takes time, finding the correct research drops can turn into a real roll of the dice, and you’ll often be punching at bosses several levels above you who are required to unlock the mats that’ll let you progress. The latter two are where my main issues lie. The former just becomes a tedious grind based around RNG, which is coming from a guy who likes grind, and the former just seems weirdly tuned. Why aren't they just around the level you’re supposed to be coming at them at? Idk. It felt like one of those systems that’s probably been tuned more for playing with other people in PvE and PvP.

And speaking of, the final tier of equipment is a massive resource dump. You’ll be upgrading several tiers of mats with diminishing returns from different endgame zones and costs that feel higher than ever (repairing can be as about as costly as making new gear). That definitely felt like something that was balanced with PvP in mind so it would give high-rank clans something to spend their stuff on and hold them back from going at each other 24/7 like rabid animals. When I later switched to brutal, it actually felt a lot more satisfying of an experience because those bonuses to the drop rates and reduction to durability loss kept things from becoming too much of a chore.

By the end, the enemy variety of the basic humans was starting to get a little boring, too.

Also, I heard from a friend that Soul Shards, which are the only real reward you get from some of the toughest bosses in the game, used to grant passive buffs you could collect when slotted into their pedestals. Which is neat! And kind of blows hard that that’s no longer the case. As they are right now, they’re just some very powerful amulets that gradually lose durability over time and their pedestals are very expensive but useless decorations. Which, you know, considering what you had to go through to get them kind of blows. It seems like some more thought could be given to them—apparently this was a concession done for the sake of PvP—but as it stands they’re kind of lackluster.

I can’t really comment on PvP as I had no interest in that and did not play any of it. Frankly, I think anybody who is playing this game for that is lowkey deranged (I don’t even want to imagine putting a lot of work into making a castle only for it to be stolen).

All that said, I did still really enjoy my time with V Rising. It’s nice to see such an ambitious take on such a surprisingly underutilized concept like vampires and I hope the devs will add more than just cosmetics in the future to expand on the already very solid base they have.

A very good point & click adventure game from somebody who clearly went into it with a passion. Puzzles and object interactions never broke out the usual 'moon logic' that the genre is sometimes infamous for.

The setting was interesting as were the characters, and delivered with a level of presentation I wasn't expecting from some very competent VAs who really knocked it out of the part with their performances. Crispin in particular gave me worries gave me some concerns he would devolve into annoying sidekick character but never reached that point.

Being glad to have finally gotten around to it, my only regret is that it spent so long on my wishlist instead of in my library.

Its biggest flaw is the price point, being on the shorter side for what it asks but still very fair given the amount of dev time that has to have gone into the game. Though, that said, if that's a deal breaker for you the game goes on sale for dirt cheap fairly regularly.

UOOOGHHH, NINH!

Nice post-launch DRM you got there, Crapcom.

LET THE ♥♥♥♥ IN!

I got this game as a gift from my friend. I love 40k and have been a fan of the setting for over two decades, I dumped hundreds of hours into Vermintide II, and I can’t in good conscience recommend you spend any money on Darktide. Fatshark are awful devs that constantly mismanage their projects, take far too long to develop the level of content they deliver, usually break things when they do, cannot optimize to save their lives, and tend to either ignore or belittle the community.

Fatshark make some incredibly fun and addictive games, but the fact of the matter is that they just don’t deserve your money. The game will need several Update #13 before it’s even at the state it should’ve been a year ago.