Recent reviews by DuncanH

A while ago I got this game as part of an escape room bundle and I have to say this was likely the worst of the bunch.

The initial concept of using potions to solve puzzles is fine enough, but the actual puzzles you need to solve are lacking, they were all either mediocre simple puzzles or tedious new ones. I spent ages walking around to find something to fix the steam puzzle before realising it was just trial and error they wanted - I even got stuck in the first room with how un-obvious they made the solutions be for that.
the alchemy was lacking too - the potions weren't all that interesting and the crafting system was a chore as you had to remake potions nonstop to complete most puzzles, and worst of all you have to get a specific timing to craft them.
The interactivity was bad too. I like an escape room game where you can pick up and interact with everything, but this one made nothing usable unless it was lore or puzzle related. speaking of lore that didn't make any sense either, with just a jumble of magic and alchemy and a terribly delivered voice-over.
The graphics are annoying too - in that they're terribly optimised and you can't turn down the light shafts and all the other really costly graphical settings.
Worst of all, I couldn't even finish the game as the saving and loading system deletes items from your inventory so that I couldn't progress.

Overall, mediocre escape room brought to bad by poor development focuses.

I saw this game as a beta some 2 years ago now and was pretty hooked by it's approach to liminal space, but unfortunately the full version doesn't live up to the early versions.

The most egregious one of these shortcomings was the new levels. apart from the one featured in the beta, they were all boring and tedious to traverse. there was a country club level that consisted of infinitely repeating mini golf courses where all you had to do to win was just to walk away from the course towards the exit. there were not one, but two levels which were just completely empty corridors and rooms with no interesting objects or points of interest but the entrance and exit elevators, so they both consisted of walking in random directions until you find the end. there was a reasonable (but still kinda samey) movie theatre where I just stumbled around the corridors entering non-euclidean doors to the exact same room until it eventually gave me an exit. the only saving grace was the pool sections, but even they did away with most of the encounters with the shadow creature which made anemoiapolis unique by having a monster that wasn't immediately hostile and just floats in the corners of your vision and vanishes when observed.

The second major problem was the "Gamification" of what should have been an interesting exploration sequence. this comes in the form of tickets, which you can find in strips around the levels, allowing you access (by paying a certain amount) to all of the various elevators in the hub area, which is also a bad game design mechanic. in the beta, you would just linearly make your way through, whereas now there's an annoyingly clear indication that you can access the exit elevator after completing all the levels, it even quite literally says "Please wait for X number of elevators to arrive." while the hub area is understandable from a development standpoint, it always being difficult to link areas, but the ticket system is useless and unnecessary, and no amount of patches can fix it.

The third major problem is the plot, which is lacking in some respects, and insolent in others. for one thing, they removed the dialogue at the beginning explaining why you're inspecting a random electrical box in the middle of a place that looks a lot like the windows 98 wallpaper, that being that it was an unused development plot which is sucking up more power than it ought to. they did keep the best story mechanic however, the protagonist only being voice acted when they are actually speaking (which isn't often) and other times just having an internal monologue that is simple text. The ending wasn't good. not to spoil it for anyone who may still play despite my warnings, all I will say is that it snatches escape from your grasp without explaining much in the way of plot, ending on a cliffhanger that creates more questions than answers. with the developer not planning a sequel since they have switched game engines from unity to Godot, and so the cliffhanger will remain un-bridged indefinitely.

a more minor problem that may not affect everyone is the graphics. while they are quite lovely, they are poorly optimised. as a slightly more budget gamer that plays more indie or older titles, I simply can't justify getting a big fancy PC, so this game was super laggy even on the lowest settings. even when there was a consistent FPS, it would just lag spike at random. apparently even people on high-end computers have difficulty running the high settings consistently. I don't even think that all these reflections and lens flare is even needed, because it doesn't add much to the game compared with putting more effort into the aforementioned major issues.

In general, this game showed a lot of promise early on, but the developer ruined it by poor levels, mechanics, and plot. the only thing I can say that makes it better is that not all of it sucks and it least it's cheap. I would say it's a do not buy unless you like empty levels and tone shattered by bloated ideas.

Edit: I think that I enjoyed writing this review more than the conference hall and the country club levels

Yet again, New Blood have made peak with this.
As a quick explanation of the plot and gameplay, you play as a detective called Mike Thane, who ends up getting involved in gang wars while investigating the disappearance of a former ACE (a group of vigilantes). Generally, the gameplay is simple to learn, but hard to master, consisting of a combination of a mostly simple to use melee weapons, along with some ranged weapons which can often be used for melee also. you have very limited inventory, so you will have to decide which weapons to keep and which to leave in order to be as effective in combat as possible. my personal favourite weapon was the harpoon gun, which is quite rare, as far as I can tell it only appears twice in E1M2, but it is extremely accurate, does huge amounts of damage, can be used underwater, and can be used as an effective melee weapon, but has to reload after every shot, making it not as useful as some of the other weapons on show, but still really cool.
The maps are quite cool too, it seems that Fallen Aces has done an entirely different approach than many other modern FPS developers, in that while the majority will do large maps with not a lot in most of it, Fallen Aces has tiny maps that contain copious amounts of secrets, Easter eggs, and different ways to approach problems.
The game is still in early access, so only one out of the three planned chapters is out when I was writing this review, but they often update with free updates of high quality, like reworking levels and even adding a hub area in the most recent one. in general, I am excited to see what they do next.

All in all, Fallen Aces is one of the best games I have played in 2024, and it shows all the signs of getting better the more they update it.

I really like Catalyst. it improves almost every aspect of Mirror's Edge.
better world, better missions, more content, I even like the divisive new combat features.

Why the bad review then?

The game is broken. the first broken thing about it is the EA launcher, and everyone hates having to jump through hoops to play a steam game.
the second thing is the Achievements. since the servers were shut down, the achievements don't work about 60% of the time. there is no point in 100%ing this game as it will not show up. EA are aware of this and make a public announcement that they are not fixing it, because EA are greedy soulless buggers.

They neglected the game in favor of forcing DICE to make another battlefield game.
Mirror's Edge was an attempt to create a First person game that wasn't a shooter, but has ultimately been doomed by corporate greed.

A shame, as this would be quite good otherwise.

DISCLAIMER: I did not play the original risk of rain but I did play risk of rain 2. also at review time I had only played 3-4 hours, so this information is only a first glance at the game.

Originally, I played risk of rain 2, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
when I saw they were remaking the original game I just got the game soon after release, during the festival of gup sale. here are my thoughts.

The main difference between the two games is that one is 3d, one 2d. the switch between perspectives is not particularly jarring, the same strategies that are used in one, can be used in the other, with the slight change that returns is not as focused on using movement to survive as items, and certain movement focused skills are not as good in returns as they are in 2, such as the huntress' blink, which is only good to avoid enemy attacks, unlike in 2, where it was a long-range movement skill.

I did enjoy my first couple of runs as there was not too much difference between returns and 2. my first run to complete the game with was with huntress, and I enjoyed the levels, which were much bigger than in 2, owing to an entire dimension being removed. I worked my way methodically through the bosses and enemies, getting reasonably good luck on item drops, until I reached the temple of elders and could go to the contact light and fight providence, the end boss. the only level I found annoying was the contact light itself. there are large blast doors which are required to go through, and you have to wait ages for them to open. several sections of the ship are locked by keycard doors, and the keycard item required to open them is a rare drop from enemies. the keycard doors are not required to fight the final boss, but almost all the item chests are behind them.
Providence himself is actually a pretty fun boss, in comparison to his counterpart, mithrix. while Providence uses graceful and predictable attacks, mithrix flails around like an idiot, but somehow does more damage. while Providence uses giant worms that fill up the screen to attack you, Mithrix just spawns surrogates that die to a toothpick. In general I would say that returns does the end boss better than 2, as Providence is fairer and more fun than mithrix.

The characters have not changed much. I only played 4 characters, so this may not follow for the rest. commando is slightly better in returns than 2, but is still a poor character that is designed to teach you the basics. Huntress is good as always but requires a slightly different playstyle of using your secondary and utility skill more, and relying on your movement skill less. Bandit is much worse, with his shotgun being nerfed into oblivion, he relies on his alternate skill, the whip, to be at least moderately effective. the loader is still decent, but not to the level she was in 2, as the really powerful charged punch is missing, and the scrap barrier, which means that hitting enemies gives you a shield, is replaced with a secondary attack which makes you momentarily invincible. the loader's grapple is slightly worse also, as it is had to control and not the overpowered traversal tool it is in 2. the loader's problems pain me as she was my Favorited character to play in risk of rain 2.
Later edit: I have tried one of the new characters, the Pilot, and I think that it is my new favourite.
The playstyle for the pilot is pretty complex, but still fun to use. all the attacks switch function depending on whether you are on the ground or in the air, and this creates an interesting character that requires strategy, skill, and a good deal of button mashing to get through. I would recommend this character as I have not seen anything like it in the previous game.

The providence trials are an interesting new addition for the remake, as previously you needed to complete almost random tasks to get new items and abilities, and you still can do that, but the providence trials let you do it in a quicker way by doing trials of skill and strategy to unlock abilities and some items. the majority of items are still unlocked the old way, and all abilities can be unlocked the old way too, it is just more difficult.

In general I would say that risk of rain returns is a good remake, and a amazing addition to the risk of rain series, adding new and old things in a more modern way. Highly recommend to anyone unsure as to rougelikes, as risk of rain is a good introduction to the Genre. I would also recommend it to anyone who played and liked risk of rain 2 or risk of rain 1. In fact I would recommend this game to almost anyone.

I may update this review in the future but maybe not.
for now, I would rate this game 10/10.

I hate to leave a negative review, but in this situation it fits.

This mod makes a bad use of 'time travel' mechanics. it is not really time travel, just recording what you are doing and making a clone. it's not even as if it is a particularly interesting device anyway.
the game does not use portals much as well, so its not really portal anymore.
there is a 5 minute section where you need to listen to incomprehensible robots.

worst of all, it takes the lore spot of what happens after portal 2 and puts the most half baked, horrible, and unfinished story in the best ambiguous ending.

this mod puts other portal mods on steam to shame.
portal stories mel, portal reloaded, aperture tag, and rexaura put this to shame.
play them, not this.

this is good.
play any old game
only thing it needs is ps2 support
96/100
(I nominated this for labour of love award)

I am in two minds about this game.
on one side I think that this has top-tier gameplay, especially the blueprint parts, making it a good game. But on the other hand, this game did crash on me regularly and it has a data leak apparently, as it's using too much ram.

so I don't know. if you think the gameplay looks good, and you can deal with crashing get it, if not then no.
I hope they fix the crashing in the full version.

(also they said they would release it in june. it's august and still no full version)

this game is a masterpiece. I originally played it on a different platform, but had no network access, so I switched to pc. this game has a lot of good survival game aspects. it has multiplayer, singleplayer, many difficulties, mods, and also character customisation. it has a perfect hand-drawn art style and that ties in perfectly to the surreal characters and gameplay. overall, this game is great for casual gamers, as well as advanced gamers. highly reccomend.

perfect homage to old arcade machines
gameplay, graphics, and music perfect.
bit sad that some powerups can get stuck.
still great game.