Review: Hypnospace Outlaw (PC – Steam) ~ Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

Steam store page – Wikipedia – Official website

So, when I’m writing this, it is 2024. I turned 31 years old back in February. I still love playing video games and surfing the internet since I was a young lad. Besides that, I also have a fascination for anything that has to do with dreams and their meanings. And then a game called Hypnospace Outlaw turns up on my radar. A game that promises to bring back the early years of the internet that I remember. Not only that, we are going to have to moderate the internet with a new technology that allows people to surf the internet while they are dreaming. We have to play as an unnamed enforcer to keep the internet safe and on top of that, we can create our own pages and mod this game easily. But before we start spending time on that, let’s find out if the base game is actually good and if it’s worth to start playing this game or if it’s something we should skip. Also, feel free to leave your thoughts and/or opinions on this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. Besides, dear enforcer and MerchantSoft, this isn’t harassment, this is a fair review/critique of the game. Removing this from HypnoOS isn’t the solution.

Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

In this game, you play as an unnamed enforcer for MerchantSoft. A company that developed a headband that allows users to surf the web in their dreams. Your goal is to clean up the HypnoSpace for everybody. You start in late 1999, where your first case is assigned. When your first case is assigned, you are left to your own devices, and you can explore the internet by yourself. And let me tell you, there is a lot of internet to explore.

The story of this game is fascinating. You get to dive and explore through various pages on the internet about various things. A long time before social media was a thing and everybody had a website for their own creations. The HypnoSpace has several zones, with each their own theme. If you remember AOL, you will know what I’m talking about.

If you want to get the most out of this game, I highly advise you to take your time with this game. Don’t rush it at all. This game is sadly rather short if you only follow the main story of the game. It’s only 6 hours long and shorter if you know what you are doing. I mean, the speedruns are only around 11 minutes. The strength of this game is the depth it has. This game has three main chapters, and there are clear triggers that separate the chapters.

The deeper you dig and the more you read up, the more interesting lore gets revealed. I actually started a second playthrough to try and find the things I missed. And honestly, this game is one that gets ruined by playing it with a guide in any sort or form. Do not play this game with a guide. It’s a lot less rewarding if you play it with a guide in your first or second playthrough. The wonder of getting lost in all of these pages is just so nostalgic.

Now, while I was playing, I was wondering if it would appeal to the younger players out there. I’m somewhat on the fence about that. While it tackles a lot of subjects that are still somewhat relevant, I honestly think that it’ll mostly click with those who grew up with the internet of the ’90 to early ’00. With that said, I think that it still might click with the younger people, but know that the internet was very different back then.

Point-And-Click Detective

This game is a point-and-click adventure game in any sense of the word. You get a case, and you have to explore the internet to see if anyone broke the rules or not.

Each infraction you find, will reward you with HypnoCoin. You can use these coins to buy various things in the Hypnospace. This can go from stickers, wallpapers, themes, applications to so much more. But be careful, it’s quite possible that some of these downloads are infected with malware. And back then, malware was a lot more visual and less aimed at serving you a lot of ads or stealing your information.

The controls of this game are quite easy. You mostly click with your mouse and input things sometimes in the search bar. If you know how to do basic things with a computer, you’ll very quickly find your way around with this game as well. While I sometimes struggled with opening apps, I didn’t have too much trouble with the controls. Thankfully, there are some options to tweak the controls to your liking, like disabling that double-clicking opens apps. But, I’m a Windows user and the double click to open apps is just hardwired in my brain.

Visually, this game really looks like you are playing with the old internet. When I noticed that there was a mod that changed the OS into Windows 95, oh boy, I was sold. There are various themes for the OS in this game, and they go from amazing to silly. There is even a fast food theme. Now, if you read that this game is mostly created by a team of 5 people, it’s even more impressive. Not only that, one of the main designers of Dropsy is part of the team.

The creativity of this game never ceased to amaze me. Let me continue on the trend of the visuals and say that the little details on how the webpages look is just so realistic. The little typo’s here and there, the rabbit holes you can jump down, the crazy visuals on various pages… Even the “help me, I can’t remove this” and “Test 1 2 3″… I made me crack up and remember my early days when I used to write webpages in plain HTML with barely any coding knowledge as a young teen.

While I knew that wiggling the mouse sped up the loading of the webpages, I just never really did. I just enjoyed the webpages loading slowly and having that experience again when I was a teenager before Facebook or any other big social media started to take over. Yes, even before MySpace. While I only experienced the late “pre-social media internet”, I do have amazing memories of it.

On top of that, you have the amazing wallpapers and sticker packs you can buy and play around with. With this, you can really make your desktop your own. But, something that really triggered memories for me were the viruses you can encounter. Back as a young teen, I was a lot less careful in what I downloaded and seeing the visual mess some viruses can create in this game, it triggered some nasty memories.

Memories like how one time, I got a very nasty variant of the SASSER worm and each time I installed something new, my computer would lock up and crash. Yes, even when you tried to re-install Windows, it locked up and crashed the installer. After a lot of digging, I found that it was caused by a program starting with boot and I had to screw out my hard drive, connect it with somebody’s computer and then remove the start-up file from there. I also had a piece of malware that looked like the ButtsDisease virus in this game. Where it started to change all the text on a webpage to another word. Oh man, those were the days.

So, during your investigations you can encounter various things. Things like people breaking the rules, and you have to report those. You mostly need to focus on one of 5 categories. Copyright infringement, harassment, illegal downloads/malware, extra illegal commerce and illegal activity. Each law gets several infractions, and you do have to look for them. At one moment, I really that to take notes. I really have to say, taking notes for this game is really helpful, you even have the notes’ app in HypnoOS.

Sticking in your brain

Now, something I have to commend the developers for in this game is that they also took accessibility into account. Something I have to commend the developers for as well is the amount of content in this game, even when the main story is extremely short. I already talked about the visuals and how much I love them, but the music in this game is something else.

Some of the music tracks are really stuck in my mind and I wouldn’t be surprised that if I ever write another article in my favorite game music series, some of them will pop up in that. Some tracks are real earworms and got stuck in my brain. The music for some of the parody products in this game is so good, that I wish they were real.

The music in this game is a mixture of various styles, and I find some of them more catchy than the others, but it’s really impressive at how many styles there are in this game. If you know that this game has over 4 hours of music in it, that’s an amazing feat.

There is even a whole suite where you can create your own pages, music and mods released by one of the main developers of this game. It works only on Windows and you can read more about it on the itch.io page of Jay Tolen here. There were even various community events where your stuff could appear as an Easter egg in the main game. Yet, these tools are now part of the main game and are in your installation folder.

Speaking about this, modding this game is extremely easy. There is even a build in mod browser, and it’s a piece of cake to install and downloads mods. If you use the in-game mod menu, you don’t have to reboot the game for most mods to take effect. Just go to the main menu, choose the mods button and install the mods you want. Now, there are a lot more mods out there then just what you can find in the in-game mod browser, so check them out here.

The game has an autosave, it doesn’t really show when the game gets saved. There are three save slots, so if you want to replay the game, you can pick another save slot. Now, if there is one mod I highly advise is he expanded endgame cases mod. This mod expands the game quite naturally and is a lot of fun and additional challenge. But don’t read the description when you haven’t finished the game, since it contains quite a lot of spoilers.

This game can be quite tricky. Sometimes the solution isn’t the easiest to find. It’s even possible you don’t find the solution to every puzzle out there. Now, there is a built in hint system for this game. It’s somewhat hidden to avoid immersion breaking, but for a small HypnoCoin fee, you can get a hint to progress. I really love this system, since I rather have you getting a crowbar to get yourself unstuck than you getting a guide where it’s very easy to other things and spoil the whole experience. Since the fun of this genre depends highly on solving the puzzles with what’s given to you. If you want to get a hint, just search hint.

Overall I have been extremely positive about this game, and I have to say that overall this game is extremely well-made. I rarely found any moments where I thought, this isn’t right. But does that mean that this game doesn’t have any negatives? Well, sadly enough there are a few things I didn’t like about my experience and that I want to talk about.

First of all, I wish the default text-to-speech voice wasn’t the default language of your system if you aren’t English. I’m from Belgium and my text-to-speech voice reads English extremely weird. Thankfully, I had the English soundpack installed on my computer so after I went into the BIOS settings, I was able to quickly change it to the English one and it sounds a lot more natural and better.

Secondly, this is an issue in general with point-and-click games but the replay value just isn’t here. Once you explored everything, you have seen everything. There are various mini-games, but those are quickly beaten. While I personally don’t really see this is a negative, since not every game needs high replay value and sometimes playing it once and having the whole experience engulf you is the idea… I want to mention it, if somebody is looking for replayable games.

Third, you can find more infractions than what’s required to close the case. While I can understand that the game doesn’t tell you how many other things there are out there for immersion reasons, as somebody who wanted to experience everything, I was sometimes a bit annoyed that I couldn’t make sure I found everything. If only there was an option you could toggle to see completion percentage or something of that nature. Since, because of this, it’s possible to lock yourself out of achievements or content in this game.

Yes, this game has achievements and some of them are extremely tricky to get. It took me a lot of researching and exploring in HypnoSpace to find all the material. Thankfully, taking notes really helped me to find it all.

And the final thing is that the final chapters of this game feel a bit rushed and undercooked. One of the final cases is a breeze to solve if you have written notes during your playthrough and it feels like there is content cut out of the game. The ending comes a bit out of nowhere and if you didn’t explore everything or didn’t register certain things, the ending won’t make sense to you and it will loose it’s impact. Thankfully, the mod I shared earlier resolves this to a degree.

That’s all the negative I could say about this game, in my honest opinion. When this game clicks with you, it clicks really well and doesn’t let go at all. But, I’ll leave my final thoughts after the summary of this review. So, I think it’s high time for that since I have touch upon everything I wanted to in this review.

Summary

The bad:

-Text-to-speech should use English by default

-It’s possible to miss content or lock yourself out of it.

-The game is rather short.

-Rushed ending.

The good:

+ Amazing nostalgic trip

+ Amazing music

+ Fantastic writing

+ Easy to use mod tools

+ Great puzzles

+ Great controls

+ …

Final thoughts:

Hypnospace Outlaw is an amazing nostalgic point-and-click adventure trip through the late ’90’s internet. This game might not be for everyone, but when it clicks… Oh boy does it really click. Now, this is also a game you shouldn’t rush. The charm of this game is in all the little details and references that are hidden in the pages and the world building of this game.

While the game is rather at the shortside for point-and-click games, I don’t see it as a big problem to be honest. The journey that this game took me on was a lot more worth it to me than having a long game. Since, I think it would have lost it’s charm if this game kept going and going.

While I personally have more memories with the internet time period that came right after it, the developers are already working on the sequel to this game called Dreamsettler. I honestly can’t wait to play that one, since the quality that this game has is just top notch. The music is catchy, the visuals are amazing and it alls comes together in an amazing nostalgic trip that makes you want to play more.

There are some minor blemishes on this game, but you can work with them. Like I said before, when this game clicks, it really does click extremely well. I’d compare my experience with games like There Is No Game or SuperLiminal. Amazing small titles that leave a lasting impact on those who play it. All of these games are passion projects that turned out amazing and get a recommendation from me.

If you enjoy playing unique point-and-click games and/or if you have nostalgia for the old ’90’s internet, I highly recommend that you give this game a try. While this game is on multiple platforms, I highly recommend that you play the PC version since it has mod support that gives you even more toys to play with and expands the game even more.

I had a blast with this game and it’s a breath of fresh air for me. I’m angry at myself that I rushed my playthrough, but now I have installed several mods and I’m so going to replay this game after I have published this article. I also want to earn every achievement in this game, since I really want to see everything. I’m also extremely hyped for the sequel to this game and I can’t wait to start playing that, since that is going to be an even bigger nostalgic trip for me than this game. And with the amazing set of developers behind this game, I think we get another gem in our hands.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap this article up. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 100/100

Gamer’s Thoughts: How I write my game articles?

Every writer has their own creation process. These processes are rarely to never set in stone. People change, and their habits and routines can change as well. Now for a few weeks now, I have been thinking… What is my process? How do I decide on which game to write, and how do my actual thoughts get into an article? So, I think it would be fun to explore some of those things in this article. While I have written a similar article back in 2018, I also think it would be fun to just start this article as if I have never written that article. So, here we go, from choosing the game to clicking on the button “publish”… How do I do it?

Choosing the subject

When I look at the taglines I have chosen for my blog in the past, most of them have one thing in common. They represent in a way what this blog actually is. This blog is a public diary of a Belgian game collector who shares his opinions on the games he plays. Sometimes I play with the idea to create series, where I look at each game from a series or look at several games I have played in the past.

While that could be fun, I don’t like forcing myself to play a certain game because I have to write an article about it. That’s because I might not enjoy the game since I need to rush my play through, so I can have an article out. On top of that, it might reflect in my article as well. I like to take my time when writing about a certain game. Writing about a game right away without giving it time to let things settle is such a risky idea. Since, you never know if you are overreacting on something or not.

Now, when I’m playing games, I have a rule. I never go into playing a game thinking how to turn it into an article. The only exception I make to that rule is when a developer requests me to write an article about their game. While playing the game, I let myself enjoy the game. Now, there comes a moment while playing the game, where I think… “Should I write an article about this game or not?”.

In the past, I used to have a long list of games where I answered yes to that question. When my writing day arrived, I opened the list and picked a game from that list and started the process of writing an article. But, I felt that, that system didn’t work for me anymore. I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped using that system, but I wanted to write more in-depth articles, so I wanted to more research on the game I was writing about and that was taking a lot more time compared to just having a list of games I want to write about.

So, the decision of choosing the game for the next article is a bit more complicated. Sometimes I have a game in mind that I want to write about, and sometimes I don’t. When I have a game in mind, it’s easy to move on to the next process. When I don’t, I look at the games I have played in the past months/weeks and decide from there.

Now, what do I take in consideration when deciding if a game can become a good article? The first question I ask myself is this, what can I say about this game? There are several games I play that don’t have enough things going on for me to write about. Even when they are fascinating like Yeti Quest, it’s your typical match three game like Bejeweled. But in this game, you can choose between three different play styles on the fly in this genre, and that makes it more interesting. But, besides that, there is not too much else going on. Maybe I might turn them in a short game quicky. But I find writing and creating shorter articles about a game less rewarding than writing a longer article about them.

The second question I ask myself is the same question as the first but in a different direction. The first question is actually more, how much is there to talk about, and the second question is what is there to talk about. Something I dislike writing is very negative articles. I don’t want to write an article where I just rip into the game and only talk about the weak points of a game. I also don’t enjoy reading those articles myself, and I personally rather write and read a balanced article over an overly positive or negative article any day of the week.

Now, when a developer requests an article from me and I notice that I’m going to write mostly a negative article… I actually scrap the article. From talking to various developers, I learned how much time and effort goes into creating games, and it takes a lot of courage reaching out to the press to show off your game. People sometimes base their decision on this kind of articles, and I don’t want to turn people away if the game doesn’t click with me or if I’m not the correct person to review the game. But, I do give a list of feedback back to the developer. This feedback exists out of bugs/issues I found or suggestions for improvement. That’s the least I can do for declining the article.

While I answer both of these questions, I start coming up with the theme of the actual article. What will be the core of my message? On what do I want to focus the article? The music, the game mechanics, the visuals, the writing style? It’s mostly now that I come up with the subtitle of the article. A great recent example is how I came up with the core of the Another Code – Recollection article. While playing that game and streaming it with Klamath, I remembered that I wrote an article about that game in the past. One of the game’s core story mechanics is how memory works and how people grow with them. At that moment, I decided to make that the main focus of my article. To show how I have grown as a writer, while using the memories of the past game and articles to take a new look at the game.

The actual review process

Now that I decided on which game I want to review or write about, it’s time to talk about the actual process of preparing the article.

The first thing I start to look at is the story of this game. The reason why I start with the story is simple, it’s one of the best ways to start your article, in my honest opinion. With that, you can set the scene for your readers and explain the mechanics, visuals amongst other things more easily as well. I have tried several times to write about the mechanics or something else first, but I felt that these articles didn’t flow well enough, and I rewrote the whole article. By now, it has become a habit of mine that I don’t know how to change and even if I should change it.

Then, depending on the message I have chosen of my article, I chose something else next. In most cases, that is the pacing or the gameplay, but it can also be the world building or the visuals. Besides having a core message, I also want the article to flow well. My main goal in writing these articles is not only to inform and entertain those who are reading my articles, but also as a way to easily share my opinion on the games I’m playing.

When you read my articles, you’ll notice that I don’t focus on the same things that most big reviewing outlets do. For example, I don’t focus on how realistic the visuals are or if the game is using the latest technology or running at the highest frame rate. Personally, I don’t really care about those things too much. I rather focus on the actual game over those things.

Now, when I’m looking at the visuals for example for my article… I look more at how consistent everything is. How well does everything fit together and fit together with the story and themes of the game. Are there models and moments that look rough or unpolished? Are there animations that look out of place and unnatural? Now, since I sometimes review a retro game, I take in consideration the technology of the time and the size of the studio that developed the game.

I mostly put my focus when writing about a game on the whole package. For example, if you introduce a certain mechanic in a game… how often is it used and what does it bring to the gameplay. There is nothing that annoys me more than having a mechanic in a game that is underused when it’s shown off with a lot of potential. I’m looking at you, for example, Death Mark II. There were some mechanics like the shop or the hidden teeth that were just underused. If a mechanic is going to be underused, don’t put so much focus on it.

Something I also find very important is consistency. While it can be interesting to break consistency in a game to surprise the player to keep them on their toes, there is no excuse to have an inconsistent game. I’m talking for example about huge difficulty spikes or the UI having different ways of working in the game. Let me give you a specific example, in Suikoden Tierkreis, the final boss of the game is so much stronger than all previous enemies, and it felt just unfair. Without any warning, you also had to know you had to grind certain characters and build them in a certain way. Maybe it might be less of a problem now that I know that, but it felt like a slap into the face after the balance of the game being very consistent.

So, do I take notes while I play through the game I’m going to write about? In the past I used to do that, but I stopped doing that. I started to have this bad habit of only writing down the negatives moments or just trying to work everything in from my notes and forcing some sections in. I do have an alternative when writing about a game now.

First, I play the game for at least an hour before I write about it. So, things are fresh in my mind. Also, I leave the game running while I’m writing my article. In case I’m hesitating on something, I can quickly jump in the game and replay to test something out.

And second, I’m abusing my visual memory. I have a very strong visual memory when it comes to games and I found out that when I play the soundtrack of the game, I start to remember quite a lot of things. I can’t write an article without playing the soundtrack of the game.

Sadly, a lot of things in a review are extremely subjective. The biggest thing here is finding a right balance for me. For example, if I didn’t enjoy certain tracks in the soundtrack of a game but I don’t see that complaint while doing some research, I mention it that way in my article. That it might be that the tracks didn’t click with me but that the overall impression of the soundtrack is positive.

The final part I usually do before I sit down and write is doing my research. This research consists out of just looking up this game in Google, reading through other articles, reading through press material, looking at the voice actors, looking at other projects of the developers… I have a whole list of things I want to answer and know about the game. Like how big was the studio that developed it? How long was the game in development? Sometimes reading up on the game helps to clear up things on why certain creative decisions where taken.

Writing the article

Now that I have chosen the game, played through (most of) it and did some research it’s time to start writing the article. The first thing I do is put in the title and it’s subtitle. And then, I create the subtitles and screenshots for the article. In case of a game review, I write in brackets the main themes of that section. For example: (gameplay, controls, music).

Then I put on the soundtrack of the game and I start writing the introduction and just continue to write. While writing, I look at the flow of the article and when I notice that a certain section would fit better in an earlier section, I move it. Now, when I remember a certain detail that fits in a later section, I add a small note in that section before returning to the point I was writing.

I don’t like writing out of order, since I find it more difficult to make sure my core message shines through or the flow/theme of my article stays consistent. So, that’s why I’m doing the article editing somewhat at the same time. When I’m finished with a paragraph, I re-read what I have written and think about the flow of the article and when it doesn’t fit, I just remove the whole paragraph and rewrite it. Now, I also read my paragraph again since my mother tounge isn’t English and sometimes I use certain expressions that don’t exist in English or just make silly typo’s.

While I use two spelling correctors to help me to avoid mistakes, I rather review it myself as well. Too many times I see that spellings correctors fail at understanding gaming terms or make the strangest corrections. While I know that my articles contain grammar issues and typo’s in the end, I try to catch as many as I can before they go live. During some breaks, I spend a couple of hours going through old contect and correcting typo’s and grammar issues. Also, when readers point them out to me, I try to fix them right away. Since, you start to read over your own mistakes way too easily.

While writing, I usually try to not take a break. I find it quite important to do everything in one go while writing. Apart from refilling my glass or taking a quick bathroom break, I try to keep writing. Usually, the whole writing process takes me around 4 hours on average.

After I have fully written my article, I copy it from the WordPress editor to Microsoft Word and let it check again for typo’s and grammar mistakes I missed. I also quickly skim through my article to make sure I haven’t left a paragraph on something stupid like an incomplete thought or sentence.

Now, if you would ask me what I enjoy the least in this whole process… I have to answer the whole SEO process. It’s one repetitive task that is just boring to do in my honest opinion. Looking for the right keywords, pasting the links everywhere and making sure you did everything to make the article appear in search engines. I’m always happy when that process is over and done with.

The opposite question is a more difficult to answer. I can’t really say what I enjoy the most in writing gaming articles. At one hand, I love the interaction with people who read my blog. The developers who found my blog by reading my articles and decide to request a review from me. It’s a rewarding feeling that people enjoy your creative hobby and are able to relax or find new games.

I also love talking about underrated or forgotten games. I just love when I get a reaction from people: “I totally forgot about this game! This game was part of my childhood.” It’s a great way to connect with people and make new friends and/or discover new games.

But, I also just love writing itself. I just love being creative and trying to entertain people and I find that writing and just using languages in creative ways is something I love doing the most. I love telling stories and being able to tell them through a game article without it overpowering the actual article is just a lot of fun to do.

Of course, playing the actual games is quite a lot of fun as well. Since I have such a broad taste in games, I play so many different games and it’s just a blast. I love discovering things about games and how they are developed and how the whole creative process works behind it. Especially since people don’t always stand still by the fact that a lot of things have to come together perfectly in order for a game, movie, album or any creative work to get created.

I just enjoy the whole process. If I have to give an average on how much time one article takes, I have to say that it takes at least 20 to 30 hours. And that’s when everything goes perfect. When I don’t have a writers block or when I don’t have other things going on in my personal life. I’m happy that I found this hobby for me and I’m surprised at how much you are all enjoying it. It still surprises me that some students of the school I work for discovered certain games through my blog and talk to me about them. I even have coworkers who come and ask me for game advice for themselves or their childern. Besides that, I get a lot of reaction through Discord and other platforms and it makes me just happy. Being able to make someones day or just help them (re)discover games and/or entertaining them… It’s one of the main goals of this blog and that’s just perfect.

Now, I think I have said everything wanted to say about this for now. Know that what I talked about in this article is my personal process and feel free to copy (parts of) my process but I highly advice you to make sure that your process works for you. Since, if it doesn’t work for you, you’ll hit a brick wall eventually and either burn out or just loose interest. Enjoy the process and stay true to yourself. That’s how I managed to write around ~ 600 articles over almost 15 years.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What is your creative process or did you learn something from this article? I’m curious to know, so feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I’m also curious if I’ll be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Gamer’s Thoughts: My Palworld wishlist

Steam store page – Twitter/X – Wikipedia

I know that I’m extremely late when it comes to the Palworld hype. Palworld released in early January 2024 and currently, since there aren’t a lot of updates dropping, the hype died out. Yet, the roadmap looks extremely promising. Since this game is still in early access, I’m always hesitant in writing about the game. Since, you never know which mechanics or things will change and evolve during the early access period. Especially since we are currently only at v0.1.5.1. So, I decided to hold off on my first impression/review article for now. But, I wanted to talk about this game. So, here are some things I’d love to see in the full version of Palworld or even in one of the next updates.

First of all, what is a Palworld?

Palworld is a combination of several games, all thrown into one. It’s easy to describe Palworld with saying which games it combines.

Foremost, at its core, it’s a game you can somewhat compare to Ark Survival Evolved. When I first started playing, I noticed the similarities right away. The way how you have a crafting system to build your base, and you have monsters running around you can tame/catch is totally here as well.

I haven’t played a lot of Ark, so I can’t say if this mechanic is also present in Ark… But, the fact you can use your monsters to preform tasks in your base reminded me quite a lot of The Survivalists. A game where you are stranded on an island, and you can train monkeys to preform actions for you. The big difference is that now certain monsters can only preform certain tasks, instead of the monkeys just copying you.

Now, a lot of other articles describe this game as Pokémon with guns. After playing this game, I think that’s a somewhat unfair comparison. When I think Pokémon, I think a journey with gyms and an evil team. I think turn based battles and a big ending tournament as its conclusion. While some Pals share a very similar design language to some Pokémon, most of the mechanics of what makes a Pokémon game aren’t in this game. The other big mechanic is the capture mechanic, but by now this isn’t exclusive to Pokémon games anymore. Especially since we have games like Coromon.

There are also influences of the latest Zelda games. Especially Tears of the Kingdom. There are these huge, strong bosses roaming around on the huge open world map, you can beat at any time. Also, the korok seeds to upgrade your character are also here in the form of effigies and Pal souls to upgrade your monsters.

This game really feels like the developers looked at all the games they liked playing, looked at what worked and threw it all together into one pot and shook it until it all clicked together. The mechanics of this game really click extremely well together. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be surprised if I said that this was a finished game.

There are some silly bugs here and there and in some spots, this game feels unfinished. But, overall the game we have currently is amazing and if you would enjoy a game like this after reading what I wrote here… Give this game a try. I only told you the most basic things in this game. This game is a survival game with elements from a lot of other games like those I have already mentioned but also Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders and various others.

Let’s talk improvements

While the game is a lot of fun to play at the moment, there are some things I wish that were improved or updated. While you get a lot of warnings that there are: save corruption bugs, crashes and bugs… Besides sometimes the lighting engine giving up for a moment or the AI of the pals or enemies doing some funky stuff, I haven’t seen too many worrying things.

Take for example this floating rock screenshot here. I have explored roughly half of the map after 35 hours of play, and this was the only floating rock I could find. That’s extremely impressive, especially since if you look at the size of the map… It isn’t small at all. In the future, new islands and area’s will be added so if they deliver them with this kind of quality, I have no complaints.

Well, I do have one recommendation. I’d love to see more landmarks in the map. Currently, almost all the landmarks in the game are based upon the terrain. I’d love to see more villages or ruins of them. I loved finding these things in the Zelda games and letting my mind wonder what happened there. It’s a very difficult balance act, since too many landmarks would make the map feel crowded and limit the amount of possible base locations.

Basically, I’d love more reasons for me to go exploring these regions and get unique rewards. Besides completing the Paldex, there isn’t a lot of reason to go exploring in certain area’s. And when you have set up the right kind of farms and work stations for your pals in your bases, the chance you run out of resources is rather small.

Speaking about bases, currently you can only have three bases. Most likely, this is done to improve the multiplayer performance. Since, the game emulates the three bases in the background, so you can easily have a base close to big ore clusters to farm those while you are working in your other base. If you don’t place a cap on those, it’ll tank the performance of any computer or server. Yet, I’d give the tools to the player to increase the cap. Personally, I think Minecraft has one of the best systems with the game rules. You can almost change anything to your playstyle and even disable or remove caps that are there for performance reasons. You already have quite a lot of toggles and sliders in Palworld, but I’d also expand on that.

Currently, the building system is decent, but it needs a lot of polishing up. The biggest problem I have with the building system are the stairs. It’s a nightmare sometimes to place stairs to go from one to another floor. Also, why can’t we place a full wall next to stairs? Most likely because some pals their hitbox would do some crazy stuff? Also, placing certain items or crafting stations on elevated floors doesn’t always work the best.

On top of that, besides the visual look of the floors, walls and ceilings, what’s the point of being able to unlock stone foundations? As a test, I tried to build a high tower with wood and one with stone. I didn’t find a difference. I’d love to see more meaning to what I unlock. Granted, stone can’t burn down. So, if you have any raids with flamethrower or fire enemies, your base isn’t in danger. But what’s the difference between stone and metal, then?

I honestly think that it’d be a bad idea if PocketPair only created more content and not make the mechanics have more depth. For example, something I’d love to see them implementing in the pal task system is a mechanic I love in Cult of the Lamb. When you welcome a new member in your cult, you can set the main focus of a member there. I’d love to see that you are able to set the main focus per pal. For example, when things are damaged in the base after a raid, you select one pal to go and get the repair kits and repair all damages first before going to do their usual tasks. Or when you have a pal that can do multiple things, and you mostly need that pal to pick up items, you could disable their other abilities. Maybe we need some items for that and those items can be only found in the wild, and we need to hunt for them. That’s an interesting idea to lure players out of their bases.

Dreaming like a madman

There are some UI elements I’d love to see change as well. First, I’d love to have a mini-map. The compass at the top of the screen only shows things in roughly 300m range, and that’s too short. Especially since in some areas the warp spots are spread quite far apart. A mini-map where you can pin certain things like the nearest warp spot would be amazing.

Secondly, in terms of the weapons. I’d love to see their stats before I craft them. Now it’s a guessing game that if I craft a certain weapon, if it’s going to be stronger or better than the one I currently have. It’d also be amazing if the durability is shown outside the inventory as well. There is some space in the UI element at the bottom right, so why not show it?

Now, in terms of the inventory. Sometimes I have issues with combining stacks of items. Sometimes I have to do it twice or thrice before they are combined. This is a rather small things, but outside of those… I don’t have a lot of small quality of life things that I could recommend. Maybe that if you sleep during the day in your bed, you can skip to night if you are hunting the nightlife pals?

Maybe there is one quality of life feature I think would be amazing. Quite often, when I’m hunting the stronger pals, I have my pal instructions set on “Focus on the same enemy”. I think it would have an amazing option if you have a feature where you are able to say to your pal if they are allowed to kill the wild pal or not. Since, if they are dead, you can’t capture them.

There is one attack that is a double-edged sword. In the Pokémon games, you have the self-destruct attack. You also have this one in Palworld, yet, some wild pals with this attack always take it over their other attacks. These bee pals always swarm me and instead of being able to weaken them, so I can catch them, I just get blown up. You barely have a chance to do any damage to weaken them to make capturing possible.

I just remembered one other quality of life feature. You can create saddles, gloves and other things to do special things with your pals. But, why I am allowed to create more than one? I mean, I can only use one of them at a time and they can be interchanged. So, if you make a saddle for a certain bird pal e.g. Helzephyr, that means you can use it on all Helzephyrs you catch.

But the biggest quality of life feature PocketPair could add is a mini-map inside caves/dungeons. The times I almost got lost in these caves is insane. Especially since there are only a handful of rooms in these and it’s easy to get turned around and confused.

Now, to completely change the subject… I wish there was more music in the game. The soundtrack in this game is amazing. Sadly, there isn’t enough in the game at the moment, so there are some silent moments. A little bit more ambient tracks would go a really long way in this game.

But, I saved one of my biggest things for last. That is inventory management. This is a total pain in bases. Since pals can put things inside chests, you can forget organisation. Thankfully, while crafting, the game pulls from all resources in your base, but if you need a certain item to use at another base, have fun to go searching through all your chests. What I usually do, if I can, is start crafting an item with the one I want to move and then cancel it. Since it drops the resources then and there. Now, how to solve this without breaking the game and the idea that pals can put things in chests? What if you have a new skill that pals can have? An organisation skill and depending on the level, they either put red things with red things or make a weapons chest and come to complain to you when there aren’t enough chests for their organisation?

If your base is fully set up, the proper of a lack of depth starts to show as well. When you build your base, why should you return to it besides needing to craft or repair your weapons? Give us some activities we can do in our base when we build them. I mean come on, we even have the amusement furniture set. If only we could play some mini-games with our pals to increase their sanity for example? Since currently, there is not a lot you can do when a pal is stressed.

Of course, a certain balance needs to be maintained. The more things a pal can interact with, the more chance you have to create lag or overwhelm the player. Also, the more depth you create, the more things you have to maintain and maybe that’s not the type of game that PocketPair wants to create. How I currently see Palworld is a playground sandbox in the schoolyard. It’s an amazing playground where you can make your own fun but it’s only part of the schoolyard and only has a swing, some monkey bars, a climb rack, a small castle and a slide. It’s all solid built and amazing to spend your time in… But, then you notice the potential this sandbox has to grow. What if we enlarged that sandbox with another castle, so the multiplayer can be player vs player as well? Or wait, why don’t we add an underground to that sandbox?

All I’m saying is that currently Palworld has an amazing foundation. The biggest issue at the moment is that the game lacks depth. While the current roadmap has a lot of expansions and more content, I hope PocketPair doesn’t forget to also make it more than just surface level. For example, imagne that the raid bosses can be captured and barely have an unique skills. Why should the player do the raids then? What reward do you get out of it? Not all mechanics can be fun because they are enjoyable to do. Players will get bored and they will look for a way to spice things up or to challenge themselves.

Now what that said, I’m going to close off this article. I’m quite excited for the future of Palworld and I’m going to wait a few more updates before I decide to write a review on the game. But overall, I’m really liking what I see. The basis of an amazing title is here already and I think we are going to get an even better game when this comes out of early access. Let’s wait and see what happens when the first big updates drop. Especially the raid bosses that got teased a few weeks ago.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What do you think of PalWorld and what should be added or changed? Let me know in the comment section down below. Also, what do you think of my idea’s? I’m curious, feel free to leave a comment about that one to. But, I also hope to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Another Code: Recollection (Switch) ~ The Remembering Of A Remake

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia page

Next year, I’ll be blogging for 15 years. I have taken a look at quite a lot of games. Now, if you go back to the start of this blog, you might notice that I only started in May 2013. The three years before that, I wrote a personal life blog in my native language. I have since deleted that for personal reasons and started blogging in English in 2013. On my Dutch blog, I wrote an article about Another Code – Two Memories, but I haven’t written one for my English blog. Yet, I have mentioned it in 2014 in a top 25 list of my favorite DS games of all time. I have written an article on the Wii sequel called Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories in 2013. While my old articles aren’t up to my personal standards anymore, I still leave them up to see the growth I have gone through over the years. Now, these two titles became classics in my eyes. When Cing went under, I didn’t hold up hope of these games ever seeing a sequel or a remake. But, we got a big surprise this year. Suddenly, both games were coming to the Nintendo Switch and not only that, they were remade from the ground up. Did these two games grow like I did in my writing, or is it something that should be better left to the past? Well, that’s what I’m going to discover with you in this article. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, but now, let’s dive right in.

Editorial note: shameless self-promotion: if you want to see me and my buddy Klamath playing through this title… We started streaming it. So, more opinions can be found in the streams. Here is a link to the playlist.

The Remembering Of A Remake

In this game, we follow the adventures of Ashley Mizuki Robins. In the first part of the game, Ashley got a letter from her presumed dead father to come to Blood Edward island to meet him on the day right before her 14th birthday. On that journey, she meets a ghost named D, who has lost his memories.

In the second part of the game, we fast-forward two years. Ashley takes a camping trip to a lake. When she arrives at lake Juliet, she gets flashbacks from when she was very little. Not only that, she meets a young boy whose father wanted to build a holiday resort at that lake but was blamed for the pollution of the lake.

Since this game is a point-and-click game and is quite story depended, I’m not going to talk more about the story than the two small blurbs above. In terms of the story, this game tells a very heartfelt story with very nice life lessons. The writing in this game is extremely well done. The build up towards the ending of the story is very natural and stays true to the themes of the game. The biggest theme in this game is memories and history. Overall, this game is quite relaxing, and the story is never really in a rush to move forward.

New in this version is that there is voice acting. While not the whole game is voice acted, most of it is and the non voice acted scenes have little grunts and vocalizations to indicate the emotions of what’s being told. I have to say that the voice acting in this game is fantastic. I wish the voice actors of this game had more of an online presence, since I had a hard time finding other works by these voice actors. The fact that these voice actors didn’t really promote that they worked on this game on their socials is a shame.

The voice acting in this game brings so much charm to the game. For this article, I replayed parts of the original DS and Wii game and I kept hearing those characters talk in the voice of the remakes. They fit the characters like a glove, which is a hard thing to do since when you have voiceless characters… Everybody has their voice in their head, and that doesn’t always match up with the official voice acting.

Now, in terms of differences between the original games and this remake… There are quite a lot of things. On the Cing wiki, there is a long list of changes. But I would highly advise you don’t read that before you finished the game. Since, it contains a lot of spoilers. I can say this without spoiling anything. The list of changes on the game article page has no real spoilers. If you haven’t played the originals, you won’t really notice a lot of the changes. Especially because most of the changes are done to improve the flow of the game and the story. Other changes have been done because some puzzles used the special features of the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo Wii in unique ways.

Arc System Works worked together with several members of the original development team, and I have to say that it really feels like this is the definitive way to experience these stories. Both stories now flow into each other, and it feels more like one big story. If you didn’t know better, you could think it’s just one huge game with those major chapters. They have done an amazing job of translating the story into a modern area without destroying the original messages and atmosphere of the story.

Fuzzy memories make imperfections

In terms of visuals, this game goes for a cel shaded look. This makes the remake of the original DS game look more in line with the Wii title. In the original DS game, the game was played as a top-down puzzle game, with some moments you could see a 2D scene that you could explore.

Visually, this game is quite detailed and looks amazing. Yet, I have noticed some rough models here and there. A book here, a window there. Some of them really stick out like a sore thumb. Now, I might be very critical on these things since I review games as a hobby. But let me tell you this as well. Overall, this game looks amazing. Timeless even. There are only a handful of objects that could use some touching up.

I have the same opinion on the animations. Overall, the animations are fantastic. Seeing the first game in 3D was breathtaking. It brought the game to life in such a different way, and I’m all for it. There were a few stiff animations, but if you aren’t looking for them, I can guarantee you that you won’t notice most of them. I especially love the comic book style cutscenes where the characters speaking go inside their own square next to each other. The animations in these cutscenes add some charm to this game, it makes the more relaxing nature of this game shine even brighter.

The controls of this game are excellent. Sometimes the motion control puzzles are a little bit wonky, but overall they work perfectly. The only thing I really don’t like is how, by the press of a button, you can see the orientation of Ashley. Now, what do I dislike about this? Well, it has a sort of build in walkthrough attached to it. This is something that’s too easily accessible, and I have pressed the button too many times.

Something I’m mixed about is how the additional lore spots are now somewhat easier to find. In the original DS game, you could find special cartridges with additional story lore on them. In this game, the hiding spot is located on your map. So, if you have missed one, you can quickly see on your map in which room you need to look. Now, some of them are hidden in very tricky places. During the stream, I have seen Klamath walk past two of them several times. If you want all the additional lore, you will have to keep your eyes peeled.

If you have played any point-and-click adventure game, you’ll know what to expect here. Personally, I compare this game quite a lot to Broken Sword 3, but without the platforming. You can explore the environment, and you have to solve various puzzles. Something unique is that you can also take pictures. And let me tell you, keep every mechanic the game teaches you in mind. The fact you can take pictures is something that is going to be quite helpful during the solving of the puzzles.

The only complaint I have is that solving some puzzles have a bit too much menu work involved. I especially remember one puzzle in the first part of the game where you have to weigh coins. Instead of them being all five on the table, you have to take them from your inventory each and every time. And the annoying part is that the last two you used, move to the last spot in your inventory. There are a handful of puzzles where some quality of life improvements would be very welcome.

Relaxing with puzzles

There are some amazing new features in this game as well. One of my favorite things is that you can access a big board where all the relationships between the characters are mapped out. Not only that, when you open the profile, you can read a small note about them. If you click on Ashley’s profile, you will read a small hint on what to do next. So, if you put this game down for a while, you can catch yourself up quite quickly.

Also, something I adore is the attention to detail in this game. For example, in one of the puzzles, Ashley digs into a building blocks box. After she found what she was looking for, you will notice a small building she built next to the box with the blocks she took out. There are various other moments like this, and it adds to the charm and realism of this game quite a lot.

The more relaxing nature of this game not only comes through the visuals and gameplay, but also through the music. The music in this game is a rather calming and relaxing soundtrack. The main motive is piano through the whole soundtrack. Other major instruments are violin and acoustic guitar. The soundtracks fit this game like a glove. Now, it is tense when it needs to be, but it never steps out of its lane. It keeps being that relaxing soundtracks that brings this game more to life, and I have no complaints about it.

The biggest strength of this game is the charm of it all. The writing, the music, the sound effects, the puzzles… It all flows together so well. While the game is only roughly 15 hours long, if you know what you are doing, it’s a very enjoyable time to play through. In this remake, the game also auto saves now but outside of cutscenes, you can save at any time in 15 different save slots.

Currently, I’m over midway in the second part of the game and I have been enjoying it quite a lot. While the game has it’s minor shortcomings like some rough object models and some annoying menu’ing during puzzles… I’m falling in love with these titles all over again. If you would ask me if the remakes or the originals are better, I’d have to say both. Both versions still have their charm but if you want to experience both these titles, I’d really advice to go for the Switch version. Since, it brings both titles together in a lot better way.

I mostly have minor complaints about these remakes. Like how silly it is that you can only have ten pictures saved and deleting them is a bit too fincky. But overall, the issues I have with this game are mostly minor. Maybe a bit more time in the oven or a polishing patch will bring this game to perfection.

A lot of other reviewers are giving this game lower marks since it’s slower paced or it’s a remake of a rather obscure duology. I personally disagree with these lower scores. These two games deserve another chance in the lime light since they are quite amazing games. I personally don’t mind the slower paced gameplay, since it’s refreshing to be able to wind down with a slower game. On top of that, if you look at the care the developers put into remaking this game and bringing it to modern audiences while not chaging too much to alienate fans of the original is such a fine line to walk on… And they never fell off that line in my opinion.

I can totally understand that this game isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But, the complaints that this game is linear and doesn’t have a lot of replay value, I find ridiculous. I mean, does every game need to have a lot of replay value and let you explore a wide open world? No, it’s okay to play a game where you need to go from point A to B. It’s okay that the story looses some of it’s charm because you know how it’s going to end. It’s how that experience impacts you, that’s what matters.

The reason why I’m so happy to see remakes of these DS and Wii titles is because we now have remakes of amazing titles like this one and Ghost Trick for example. Now, because these two games have been remade, I’m holding out hope that Cing’s other titles like the amazing Hotel Dusk and it’s sequels are being remade as well. And if they are, I hope the same team is working on them since the love and care they placed into remaking these two titles is amazing.

I remember Klamath’s reaction when I suggested this game for streaming. He was worried that it was going to have low numbers and not a lot of interest. But, after our first stream, he started calling this game a hidden gem. I mean, if this game can have that kind of an impact on somebody who loves point-and-click games and the fact that we had a very high number of viewers watching our streams, it must mean something.

This game has a lot of impact and I hope that others who enjoy puzzle, adventure and/or point-and-click games give this game a chance. It’s something different especially since it’s slower paced but if you let it take you by the hand and if you walk along the journey, you won’t regret the powerful journey you are going on. It’s a journey that will stick with you and sometimes a memory will pop back into your head. You’ll remember the fun and relaxing times you had with this game. While the game isn’t perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s one of those games where going along with the ride is the most important. Since, the ride of this game is one of the best point-and-click games I have ever played.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m curious to hear what you thought about this game and/or the content of this article. So, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I also hope to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Spirit Hunter Volume 3 – Death Mark II (Switch) ~ Ghost and Ghouls in School

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia – Death Mark Wiki

It’s finally here! The 3rd game in the Spirit Hunter series. If you have read my blog in the past, you might know I have been waiting for this game since the studio launched the crowdfunding campaign for this game. Back in 2019, this game got successfully crowdfunded. The game came out in Japan in December 2022. The English version was going to come out in October of last year. But, it got pushed to this year, and we saw a release on the February 15th, 2024. While a lot of other amazing games have come out this month, I have been mostly playing this game. Does it live up to my expectations, or did it ruin the series for me? In this article, I want to talk about my honest opinion on the game, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article. So, it’s time to dive right into this new volume in the Spirit Hunter series.

Editorial note: to avoid spoilers, the screenshots will only be of the first chapter of the game.

Ghost and Ghouls in School

Unlike the previous volume, NG, we don’t play with as a totally new character. As the name implies, we continue the story of the first volume, Death Mark. If you are afraid that you need to play Death Mark again to understand the story in this game, don’t worry.

The game explains who the returning characters are, and the game doesn’t spoil what happened to them in the previous game at all. Some characters hint at their chapter in Death Mark, but not outright spoil it. The way how this is handled in this game is impressive. This way, you can play the games out of order without getting a lot, if any, spoilers on the previous titles.

While you can jump into this game without playing the previous games, it’s quite helpful if you have played the previous titles. The references won’t fly over your head, and it makes the writing that more enjoyable. In this game, you take on the role of Kazuo Yashiki, the protagonist of the first game. A few months after Death Mark, he gets called by the headmaster of Konoehara Academy since there are rumors of a spirit haunting the school. This spirit called “the Departed” is posting disturbing notices of killing a student at night. The investigation is started after the first student has disappeared, and the second notice has been found.

Compared to the two previous games, there is some more voice acting in this game. While not everything is voice acted, it’s more than the previous two titles. It’s not fully voice acted like Corpse Party, but the voice acting mostly happens when a character gets introduced or at very special moments. The voice acting in this game is quite well done, and I only wish there is more in the next games. Since, I honestly think that the voice actors really nailed the personalities of their characters and might make the game even better.

To really avoid spoilers, I’m not going to talk too in depth about the story in this game. But what I can say is that overall, the story follows the structure of NG quite a lot. I haven’t finished the game yet, but so far I have been enjoying the story. Surprisingly, this game is twice as long as Death Mark. If you know what you are doing, you can beat Death Mark in, give or take 11 hours. NG can be beaten in, give or take 16 hours. According to howlongtobeat.com, this game is 25 hours long.

Now, this game doesn’t feel like it’s taking 25 hours to complete to me. While I’m playing on my Nintendo Switch, where you can’t really see your playtime very well, I did write my playtime down for a while and honestly, I can totally believe this game can take you between 20 and 25 hours to beat. The story flows so well, that you get the impression it’s shorter. I think that mostly has to do with the lack of padding there is in this game. This game doesn’t waste your time and gets right into the meat of the game. This game takes you on a journey and doesn’t let go. It tries to keep you on the edge of your seat to see what’s going next, and it succeeds in that for the most part. But for a horror game like this, this breakneck pace is a knife that can cut both ways.

Tamer Ghosts

In some ways, this game is a lot tamer compared to the previous two titles. All the chapters in this game involve the student body of the academy in someway or another.

I can’t really put my finger on why, but I found this game less scary than the two previous titles. This game has its scary moments, but it’s a lot tamer in its scares.

Maybe the rather fast-paced flow of the game isn’t doing it any favors. There is not a lot of time for the actual scares to sink in and grab you by surprise. Thinking about it, padding is quite essential in horror games. Since it gives you the time to let it all sink in. The strongest moments of horror in this game are the cutscenes before the final spirit battle at the end of a chapter. The small cutscene of the spirit entering the room is something I want to see more of.

Another thing that isn’t doing this game any favors is how lame the actual jumpscares are in this game. In the original Death Mark, we had some very creative jumpscares and a lot of them fit the context of the story extremely well. Now, NG had a few cheap and easy jumpscares. But, it dared to even insert jumpscares and creepy moments in the pause menu. Now, I can totally understand people not liking jumpscares and I really like how you have an option to disable them in the options’ menu in this game. I left them enabled to see where the creative jumpscares are in this game.

I was extremely disappointed. Every jumpscare in this game is during scene transitions. And not only that, if you play on a controller, your controller rumbles several frames before. The tutorial actually tells you that it’s a feature so you can brave yourself. This is an extremely stupid mechanic and is a step back from the previous two games. Currently, I’m midway in the game and I have only seen a maximum of four jumpscares. And I can only remember 1, while I can remember several from Death Mark and NG. This way I’m less on edge and the actual scares have less of an impact on me.

It was really promising in the first chapter, where you get introduced to special events that can actually drain your soul (health) if you make a mistake in your investigation. The potential to make you think twice before you investigate something would make a player very nervous. Are you sure this is the right path forward, or will it lead to loss of your soul? Especially since a spirit interaction can happen at any moment, and you need your soul power to be as high as possible for that. I’ll talk about that more later.

Yet, this mechanic is extremely underused. After its introduction, it’s barely used at all. Apart from some forced moments, I have barely seen any of them. If we ever get a volume 4 in this series, this is a mechanic they surely need to develop further. Also, the penalty for these moments is way too weak. Especially, you have a button to quickly travel back to the save room to fill your health to the maximum.

Something else that makes this game tamer is the fact that it blocks off some exploration. There were several times when you were stopped from exploring the hallways of the academy because you get tunneled to the right location to investigate next.

I honestly felt that after chapter 2, this game got a lot tamer and the scares in this game are somewhat underused. It’s a shame since there are a lot of improvements in this title that will take the series forwards. A perfect example is when you select a wrong choice, you don’t have to replay the whole interaction anymore. You start right back at the start of the act with the loss of some soul.

Also, you don’t have to pick the right character anymore while facing the spirit. Since, you can actually choose the standby characters during your suspension acts and spirit fights. Granted, this takes away from the puzzle elements in this game, but it fixes that you have to go back to the save room to change character and go back to face the spirit. It saves a lot of hassle with juggling saves.

More game this time

There is a lot more game in this volume compare to the two previous games. First, the exploration is extremely different. This time, you don’t go from room to room or from scene to scene. You can actually walk around with your character. There are some moments where you explore a room, and it goes back to the style of the two previous games. And I love it. The controls are extremely responsive and easy to understand. The only issue I had is that the skip button sometimes didn’t work after the first press. But it’s something that didn’t really bother me that much.

Another major improvement and gameplay element in this game is how there are collectables in this game. Yes, in each chapter there are various teeth of lost souls you can find. These have two benefits for you to find them. The first is that when you collect enough of them, you can actually level up and increase your amount of soul power you have. Let me tell you, this comes in extremely handy since some fights can be brutal if you haven’t solved the puzzle in your mind yet.

Another benefit of collecting these teeth is that it unlocks more information of the characters in this game. It’s a nice addition, but not the main reason you should collect them, since the additional information is mostly for 100% completions and don’t really serve a gameplay mechanic beyond that.

Now, what can you do with these teeth? Well, this time the collectable is more than meeting somebody if you collected all the “D-Man Cards” in NG. Now you can purchase special items with them. These will help you in combat quite a lot and are somewhat essential if you don’t want to quickly get in a game over loop. But I’ll talk about the tense moments and spirit fights later in this article. Just like the D-Man cards, these teeth are chapter based. So, make sure you explored everything before you move on to the next chapter if you want to collect all the teeth.

Now, there are also blackend tooths that can appear. These curse a whole area and drain your soul power while you are in that area. You can’t leave that area before you have found and destroyed the blackend tooth. This is an amazing mechanic I would love to see happen more in the series. I would also love to see it being more creative, since after you found them, the puzzle is solved. I would love to see in a sequel that you have to use a certain item or interact with it in a certain way to destroy it.

The stats system comes more into play this time around. There are several puzzles where you need to have a certain character with you to solve. And it’s made even easier, since you can quickly see the stats of the other characters in the chapter from the pause screen. While it’s sadly underimplemented, it’s a step in the right direction and I would love to see more.

The tense moments like the Live or Die from the original return as Suspensive Acts in this game. Instead of your soul power being a countdown clock, you now how two things to worry about. The first thing is that you have soul power. Each action costs a certain amount of soul power. Not only that, each action has a chance to succeed or fail. If it fails, the next time you preform that action, the success chance increases by quite a lot. Also, a wrong action can give you a big penalty to your soul power.

While I can totally understand that this new system isn’t going to click with everybody, I honestly think it’s perfect. The only thing I dislike is that the options are a bit too limited. If you spend your time collecting the teeth and buying the items, the amount of choices you can pick from makes the spirit fights a lot easier. So, it’s a balancing act. How difficult or easy do you want to make it for yourself?

The biggest issue people have with this new system is that it’s based on RNG. I can totally understand that from a gameplay point of view, but it actually helps to make this game even more scary. Since, actions can fail and not everything can happen perfectly from the first time.

On top of that, this game has several endings. Like the previous titles, it depends on how good you purify each spirit. This time, you get even more tested upon how well you understand the spirit you faced. This time you don’t destroy or purify the spirit during the fight, you actually have to do one more interaction and depending on that, you get towards a certain ending. Honestly, I can’t really choose which system I like more. At one hand, now you are tested if you understand the grude of the spirit, but on the other hand… Now, you don’t have two ways to finish the spirit fight and you having to figure out if you did it right. Both systems are quite enjoyable and maybe in a sequel I would love to see both appear.

Visually, this game is really amazing. The game has a very similar style compared to the two previous games and the art this time around is amazing. Several times I was looking in awe at my screen at the spirit designs. Apart from the spirit entering the room, there are no real cutscenes in this game. A lot is done by big 2D drawings with the text describing what’s happening. To avoid me talking in circles, I’ll just say that the visual style of this game didn’t dissapoint. You can even choose between two outfits for the main character.

I really want to talk more indepth about the visuals and describe them more, but I’m not going to do that to avoid spoilers in this article. But let me tell you, this game has amazing design. You’ll get the most out of the visuals and the scares when you are playing this game not too far from the screen. There are some details on the spirits you can miss if you are setting too far from the screen. The first time I encountered the Departed, I didn’t notice some details since I was playing on my big TV and I set three meters away from that. But, the second meeting was while I was playing on the train to work. That time those details caught me off guard and I actually jumped a bit.

In terms of the audiovisual design, this game is pretty good as well. The sound effects in this game are pretty good. Some of them are re-used from the previous games but why change a winning formula? But the music is something that’s extremely well done. I already added the soundtrack to my playlist, I love it that much. The music is hitting the same atmosphere compared to the two previous games but it’s also standing loud and proud on it’s own two feet.

Now, there isn’t an autosave in this game just yet. So, don’t forget to save every so often. This time around we got 99 save slots. While the actual save file only tell you if you are at the start, middle or end of a chapter… We do have a lot more save slots now.

Also, we have a gallery in the main menu where you can see the different artwork, character profiles, play through the sound track and also watch the spirit introductions. You can even choose which partner is with you without having to replay that chapter. And there is also an “extra menu” that will unlock when you have beaten the game… What will that be… I’ll find out soon.

So far, I have been enjoying this game quite a lot. This game changes the formula of the previous two volumes quite a lot and makes it more like a scary game than a scary visual novel with some interactive elements. The biggest complaint I have with this game is that there are a lot of things very undercooked. Some mechanics are barely used or don’t have a lot of gameplay to them like the blackend teeth or some just fall flat on their face like the jumpscares.

But, I’m really loving what I see in terms of evolution through the series. I really think there is a lot of potential to make more volumes in the series. If this game was meant to test the waters with the new mechanics, then I have to say that is was extremely successful. I can’t wait to beat this game and see how the story will end. Now that there is more gameplay in this game, I even dare to say that this game might interest people who enjoy playing adventure games as well. The negative/weaker parts of the game don’t outweigh the positive and good parts of this game in my honest opinion. There is a lot of potential for growth. I look at it that way. And what we got is an amazing foundation, especially since there aren’t really any mechanics or things that don’t work. It’s just that they lack some depth.

Now, if you are a fan of the previous two titles, Death Mark II knockes it out of the park and then some. If you have never played any Spirit Hunter game, this game comes highly recommened if you enjoy horror and/or adventure games. Don’t let this series be a hidden gem and give it a shot. To me, this game was totally worth the wait. And honestly, I’m actually crossing my fingers for Spirit Hunter volume 4. Since if they can do this with the series, oh boy… Can’t wait to see where they go next.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (PC – Steam) ~ Role playing With Guns

Official microsite – Steam page – Wikipedia

Something that is on my bucket list for a while now, is playing a round of Dungeons and Dragons. Currently, I haven’t made the time to actually do it. But, when I saw that there was a shooter with a lot of dungeon and dragons elements, I got quite interested. I mean, I love unique shooters, so I gave it a shot. I didn’t know that this game was a spin-off of the Borderlands series, another series that is on my bucket list but… you guessed it, I haven’t played yet. But, is this game any good? I mean, I placed it on the 9th spot of best game I played in 2023, so you would think it’s good. But perhaps it’s a “me thing” and if I look with a critical eye, this game might be full of flaws. There is only one way to find that out, and that’s taking a good look at it, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article in the comment section down below.

Role playing with guns

In this game, we play as a new character joining a group of D&D players who are about to wrap up a game. At the start of the game, you can customize your character. The amount of customization options you get are quite overwhelming. The amount of control you have in this game to fine tune your character is possibly a game in itself. Now, it’s a shame you don’t see your character yourself outside the pause menu or some cutscenes.

The pacing of this game fully depends on if you do any side quests or just want to explore the world. Overall, the writing of this game is charming. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you really feel that the main characters are a group of friends who welcome a new player into their world. During the game, the personalities of the characters really shine through in the world building and through the voice acting.

We get quite the diverse cast of voice actors lending their voice to this game. I have to say, they did an amazing job bringing this world to life. The personality and the emotions of the characters really shine through, giving this game even more of a Saturday morning cartoon vibe. While the story is predictable and silly sometimes, it’s written in such a way that you always want to know what’s going to happen next or how they are going to resolve the current crisis.

The silly puns of the enemies, the charming world, the over the top writing… It’s like I said earlier, this game’s story feels like you are watching a Saturday morning cartoon. There are also various different builds you make, so I think that the replay value of this game is going to be quite high. It wouldn’t surprise me that all the different builds play quite different from each other.

Now there is a whole multiplayer section to this game. Personally, I don’t play a lot of multiplayers. So, I’m not going to talk about it in this article. But, it sounds interesting. I wonder how they balanced this game, since overall this game feels a bit easy to me. Maybe I got quite used to keep moving and prioritizing enemies after playing games like Metal: HellSigner and Doom Eternal. But, if you balance your weapons and equipment to your playstyle, this game isn’t too much of a problem on normal difficulty.

On the fly polish

Visually, this game goes for the Borderlands style. This game uses a lot of shell shading and comic book style to present their world. It has quite realistic environments, but I do have some complaints.

The first complaint is that after fast traveling or traveling between zones, the game took quite some time to load in the high resolution textures. If I compare my computer specs to the recommended specs for this game, I shouldn’t have any problem. Thankfully, this is something that quickly fixes itself. After max 5 seconds in an area, the whole area loads.

The second complaint I have about the visuals is that in some houses, their front door is open. Yet, it’s a complete black hole with an invisible wall. You can’t even enter the houses. I can totally understand that modeling a lot of houses and balancing the loot and such inside of them is a lot of work, but this is just bad. It feels unfinished. You would think that there is only one of these houses like this, but oh no. There are several. Even some side quests have an NPC exit a house and, behind the front door, it goes completely black. Why?

But my biggest complaint is how quest markers aren’t visible enough on the mini map. In the screenshot I placed a bit higher, you can see that small blue marker above my ammo count in the right corner. Guess what, that’s a main quest marker. Now, you also notice that same marker on the mini map on the top right. But, if the area isn’t on your mini map, you don’t see it. You don’t get a hint in which direction you should go. So, we start playing a game where we have to open the pause menu to look at the map.

Overall, this game looks and runs amazingly fine. Just like the options to create your character, there are a lot of options you can tweak to your liking. There is even in a built-in benchmarking feature. I raised every setting to the highest it can go, and let me tell you, the game looks amazing. The vibrant colors and the smooth animations of this game are really great. Apart from the complaints I talked about above this paragraph, I don’t have anything really that I didn’t like about the visual presentation.

Now, let’s talk about the gameplay. In this game, you go from area to arena to finish battle arena’s. Honestly, I call it Doom in a Medieval fantasy setting. That’s one of the core gameplay loops in this game. Now, this loop has one negative, the risk of the game becoming repetitive. Let me tell you, this game can be quite repetitive. Outside the battles, there isn’t a lot to do in this game, and the fact that the enemies respawn in certain area’s for you to grind isn’t doing the game any favors.

Now, you also have the overworld sections of this game. This is nothing more than a fancy level select. Now, you do have these wild Pokémon encounters… Well, I call them Pokémon encounters because they spawn randomly, and you go into a small arena to battle for weapons amongst other things. The biggest difference is that you can’t really run from these battles and don’t really have a clear indication on how many enemies are left in the encounter. Apart from that, you have some minor environment puzzles where you have to go through a dungeon to get a key to open a gate, or a cheese chip. Yeah, a cheese chip.

Overwhelming

Now, there is a lot that this game does right. The amusing story, the amount of depth are just two examples. Visually, this game is also quite good.

Now, something I don’t really like is how many stats there are in this game. It didn’t take very long before my inventory was filled with various items like weapons and armor that I didn’t know what to do with. Also, the amount of ammo creates in the area is just too much. I rarely ran out of ammo. To a point that I that the ammo that the enemies dropped fill the floor.

You also have a helpful dragon that attacks enemies for you on the battlefield and saved my skin several times. You have a whole tree to upgrade your companion. And on top of that, you also have a melee attack you can preform. But, that melee attack is quite risky, since the animation takes quite some time… more than enough time for the enemies to gang up on you and do some serious damage.

The game feels a bit overwhelming sometimes. Especially for loot goblins like myself, who don’t throw any loot away and think that we can use them to craft or upgrade them for stronger ones. And this game is also hell for somebody who wants to open all chests in this game, since your inventory is anything but big enough to hold all that loot.

You’ll need to make decisions and adapt to the environment. Thankfully, we can run around the environment with responsive and easy to learn controls. I only have two complaints about the controls. The first one is that in certain menu’s like the blacksmith menu, the way to move left/right/up and down isn’t changed with the controls in the options’ menu. That menu uses WSAD to move, and I use an AZERTY keyboard here in Belgium… So, I have to set my fingers quite unnatural to move in that menu.

The other complaint I have about the controls is that you need to hold some keys to preform an action. In general, this isn’t a bad thing, since now we don’t have to deal with silly “are you sure” boxes. But, if your inventory is full, and you are fighting, and you are standing on top of some junk… the pickup key turns into an equip key. Sadly, the communication to the player that your inventory is full isn’t strong enough and I equipped weaker weapons and armor so many times. Just pay attention to that.

This brings me to the music and sound effects for this game. The sound effects in this game are overall very impactful. You really feel the impact of the guns you shoot and projectiles hitting you. I don’t have any complaints about that part, apart from sometimes not having a clear enough sound effect when you pick up health or when your inventory is full. I mostly had this problem in hectic battle situations. Thankfully, the visual effects sometimes helped to solve this.

The music in this game is amazing. I didn’t hesitate to buy the soundtrack of this game to add to my playlist. It’s very bombastic and orchestral. It’s loud and proud. Furthermore, it fits the game writing like a glove. I tried to play this game without music and the impact of some scenes really was lost. The battles also became a bit boring.

While, I’m currently midway into the main campaign and I haven’t touched any of the DLC’s yet… I’m quite enjoying myself with this game. This game isn’t perfect, it has some flaws. But, the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I actually had a hard time finishing this article because I kept playing this game while taking notes to finish this article. While I said that the gameplay loop might be somewhat repetitive earlier in this article, I still enjoy it. I also enjoy that you can get a second chance in a battle and revive yourself. The frequent saving in this game and the fact you can have multiple characters in this game is another cherry on this cake.

Personally, I recommend this game to everybody who enjoys playing shooter games and don’t mind having a bit of fantasy in their shooters. It’s an unique RPG where your main weapon isn’t a sword but it’s a gun. It’s a great game and if this is what the Borderlands series is about, I’m quite interested to give the whole series a chance. If I would give this game a score, I would give it a 70/100 for now. But, I haven’t finished the game, so I’ll leave my final score up for when I write a review of this game or fully finished it.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

The top 10 games of 2023 – NekoJonez edition

It’s that time of the year again, where we get our usual top 10 lists or “game of the year” articles. That’s no difference on my blog as well. I have put together a list of 10 games I started playing this year. The big difference is that in my list, I don’t really care about release date. So, what is the best game I have played this year? I have to tell you that this year was anything but an easy year to put together. I had such a long list of candidates, that I created this list several times until I felt that I had a great list. In any case, enough rambling. Let’s get on with cracking my favorites this year. If you want to share your own list and/or your opinions on the games I have chosen and/or on the list itself… Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: some of these titles are multiplatform. The one I placed between brackets is the platform I played it on.

#10 – Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2023, PS4)

I love games with unique story mechanics. The idea that you can fight ghosts via on old camera is just a perfect description of things that just interest me. Now, Fatal Frame is one of my most favorite horror game series. While I have to be honest and admit that I have played a part of this game before via a fan translation, I’m not really counting that as playing this game before.

This game finally got translated and officially released in the west. And not only that, it got remastered. Besides it being built on a new engine, it’s extremely faithful to the source material. While I haven’t played through this game to completion yet, I’m so glad I picked this game up, and I’m hyped to see new Fatal Frame/Project Zero content coming to the west. Now, I’m just hoping that we get a totally new Fatal Frame 6 in the future. In the meantime, I’m so going to beat this game, so I can finally say that I completed all the Fatal Frame games.

#9 – Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (2022, PC)

I think that this year’s theme was unique story games. Since, this pick is another example of unique stories. A while ago, I played Knights of Pen & Paper and got hooked.

Now, when I started to play this game where you actually go through a D&D campaign instead of it being told to you and not only that, have the characters talk in their D&D character AND as themselves, I think it’s a complete package.

The charm of this game, and the silly campaign we are going through, is just amazing. It’s a medieval shooter that’s quite addictive and doesn’t hold your hand like other games would do. While I learned after the fact that this game is a spin-off from the Borderland series, especially Borderlands 3… I’m so happy that I played this and look at it as a stand alone. Now, I still have to finish that campaign… So, if you would excuse me after writing this article, I have a game to play.

#8 – PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (2023, Switch)

My review

What if you had a unique power that just put everything on its head. Not only that, what if you can use and control folk tales? Well, that’s what this game is about.

It’s really difficult to talk about the story and gameplay mechanics in this game and not spoil several unique twists that this game pulls. You really have to think outside the box in this game. It’s one of those games where I actually had to take notes to make sure I didn’t get stuck.

A lot of planning and play testing had to be done to make this game work. While it has a few issues, I think it all works together quite well. And not only that, we are actually playing a game that’s created together with a museum, and it’s not a big advertisement that takes you out of the experience. So, I have to say that the developers of this game did an amazing job on this one. And if you want to learn more, feel free to read my review. I think if you enjoy visual novel adventure games… You’ll really like this one.

#7 – Doom Eternal (2020, PC)

My review

For years now, I wanted to build a stronger PC. And this year, I finally did it. I built a totally new computer. On my old gaming desktop, I was unable to play Doom Eternal. While I heard that the game was “more of Doom 2016”, I still wanted to give it a try.

And let me tell you, at first… The new mechanics didn’t click with me at all. But, after a few levels… Something started to click together and started enjoying myself quite a lot. I especially loved the feature you can use a totally different skin during this game, and it changes also during the main campaign as well. The cutscenes and reflections are totally changed.

I totally felt that this game was one whole compared to Doom 2016. I loved that we had a hub part where we could unlock more special powers with things we unlocked during the levels. It’s a big improvement compared to Doom 2016 and I love it. I’m so glad I played through it and I gave it a chance.

#6 – Metal: HellSinger (2022, PC)

My review

I don’t like rhythm games at all. But, what if you combine it with a high action game like Doom Eternal? Well, you get this gem of an action game called Metal: Hellsinger.

While not all metal tracks suit my personal fancy, I just fell in love with the gameplay loop of shooting demons and going through amazingly designed arena’s that reward well timed attacks. And it’s also somewhat forgiving for people like me who aren’t rhythmic at all. It’s one of the biggest surprises to me this year.

I played this game not too long after I had beaten Doom Eternal and I was in the mood for a new shooter. I found this in my Steam library and without knowing it was a rhythm game, I booted it up and started playing it. Even when I found out that it was a rhythm game, I kept playing. The game got me hooked. The story was simple, the game mechanics as well. But, the loop is just so perfect and the music fits this game like a glove. Also, the DLC that released after I had written my article adds just so much more on top of the already amazing base game. I highly recommend this game to everybody who is interested in an unique rhythm game where no being rhythmic isn’t a gate keeping mechanic. Interested, feel free to read my review on the game.

#5 – Alan Wake 2 (2023, PC)

One of the main reasons why I loved the original Alan Wake so much is because the story was something I always wanted to play through. What if the story of a writer comes to life and starts attacking the writer. That, without even the writer knowing what’s going to happen in the story.

On top of that, the unique mechanics with the flashlight usage is just the cherry on the cake. This game plays with the themes of light and darkness as if it were nothing. Now, after a lot of years and content in other games… We finally have the next main chapter in the Alan Wake series. We tried streaming this game but we had a lot of technical issues we are trying to figure out. But, I also played this game outside us (Klamath, the_Kovic and I) streaming. And let me tell you, am I glad I built this new computer. It’s highly worth the price of admission. This game is taking the mind bending story telling of the original to a whole other level. While I’m only at the half way point in this game, I can’t wait to finish it so I can experience all the mind bending story this game has to offer. And after that, I still have to beat the other Remedy games and experience the other side stories of our beloved cursed horror writer Alan Wake.

#4 – Resident Evil 8 (2021, PS4)

My review

There is a reason why I write down at the start of the year which games I have played. Otherwise, they risk of being forgotten or just never considered to be put on this list. Yet, this game impressed me so much that I didn’t have to do that.

I found this game for quite cheap on the PlayStation store and I thought, why not? I was able to buy Resident Evil 7 for 2 bucks physical, why not the sequel for cheap as well? When I started to play it back in January and February, oh boy did it not disappoint.

While I haven’t beaten Resident Evil 7 just yet, I can’t wait to do so. Resident Evil 8 was a game I booted up once in a while during the year just to replay parts of it again. I have completed it twice this year. Now, I have been distracted by other games, so I still have to beat the DLC… But, I think that won’t be a problem. I think the next time I boot up my PS4 and this game, the game will hook into me again, and I’ll just keep playing the DLC until I’m done.

#3 – Cult of The Lamb (2022, Switch)

My review

So, when Cult of the Lamb came out, I placed it on my wishlist since I wanted to play it. But at that time, my budget was a bit too tight and I was unable to buy it.

Not too long before leaving on a family trip this year, I bought this game to play during downtime. And this game, just took me by surprise. This charming gem of a game is one of the best games I played all year. It even made me forget that a lot of big titles like Super Mario Wonder, Alan Wake II, Baldur’s Gate 3… all got released this year and were waiting on me to play them.

This game flows so amazingly well and apart from some glitches is near perfection. I have to admit that in several drafts of this article, this game took the number 1 spot. It’s so totally worth the price and it’s going to get a major free content update early next year. That content update got announced a few days after I had written my article about it, talk about coincidence. I can’t wait to see what the new update will bring and maybe I’ll restart my game and create a totally fresh cult and take different decisions compared to my current playthrough. But, I’ll need to be careful… Since it’s totally possible that I’ll be unable to put down this game and ignore all the other games I still want to play. Urgh, the dilemma’s of good games.

#2 – Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes (2022, Switch)

My review

Did you ever play a 40-hour game with somewhat repetitive gameplay and after beating it, told yourself… Yes, I want to play this game again twice just to see the different routes? Last time I did that, I was playing Persona 5 for hours upon hours. This year, I have been playing Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Houses.

I started playing this game early-middle last month and it’s almost the only game I have been playing. It surprises even me, since I’m not that big of a Fire Emblem fan. Yet, the balance in this Warriors cross over hits that perfect balance for me that I keep playing it and just want to fully complete it.

Now, why am I placing this so high on my list? Well, that’s because it feels right on so many levels. The characters are stereotypes, but they are used extremely well. They tell quite in-depth stories and give amazing messages. The gameplay might be repetitive, but is quite rewarding and addictive to do. It also has unique outcomes depending on way you play it. The fact you can carry over so much in New Game+, so you can see the other parts of the story without having to grind for certain pieces is fun as well. And if you are afraid that it takes the challenge out of the game, well… Don’t worry… The higher difficulties are really going to give you a run for your money.

I honestly think that this is one of the best Warrior games I have ever played and fixed so many problems I had with all the previous games. I even tried to pick up Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, and I have to be honest… I’m just too addicted to this game for now. It really does something quite unique and I think it’s slowly making me a Fire Emblem fan, since I really want to replay all the other Fire Emblem games in my collection that are sitting there gathering dust. Oh, and maybe give Destiny Warriors a try as well… that too maybe.

Honorable mentions

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch), Immortals Fenix Rysing (PS4), Venetica (PC), Ark: Survival Evolved (PC), Fire Emblem Engage (Switch), Stray (PS4), Cultic (PC), Escape Simulator (PC), HROT (PC), Dark Cloud (PS2), House Flipper 2 (PC), Control (PC)

#1 – The Legend of Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom (2023, Switch)

My review

Is this a surprise? That my game of the year is the new Zelda title? Maybe. But, this game just grew on me and I had a really difficult time putting this one down.

When I was creating this list, I looked at what the games brought to the table to impress me and make it stand out. Make it different compared to other games and make the experience stand out during the year. While the games on this list had some elements, this game kept having surprises left and right, I couldn’t justify not placing it on number one.

I didn’t think Nintendo would be able to re-invent their open world formula after Breath of the Wild. The fear of the sequel just being a rehash of Breath of the Wild was huge. But not only did they add two new world layers, they completely changed Link’s powers and opened up so much more of this game. As a test, I played some Breath of the Wild this year as well… And I have to admit, that they have outdone themselves. Tears of the Kingdom is my game of the year 2023 for just adding so much more depth and content that it just blew me away and made me quite exited for the future of one of my favorite game series out there. What’s going to be next?

Conclusion

Writing this ending section is always one of the most difficult sections I have to do all year. What do I write in here? A retrospective of my year? That’s possible, but I don’t want to go in too much detail to avoid throwing something private on the internet. Besides that, the main reason why people come to read these articles is because they want to read about the games I have played and recommend playing. I don’t want to look forward to next year, since that’s what my top 10 games I’m looking forward too is for. Of course, that’s the article I’m going to write next, so yeah.

What surprised me most this year is that I wrote fewer articles this year compared to last year, I had more readers compared to 2022. I also felt prouder of all the articles I have written. I feel my quality is finally going up, and I’m finding my way to write and review the games I have played.

If you have read articles from me before, you might know that I work as an IT admin in two art schools here in Belgium. This year, I had several interactions of students and coworkers who bought a game because they read about it on my blog and came to thank me for the recommendation. And I also had other coworkers who complemented me on my writing and said that they enjoyed reading my articles whilst not being into games.

And honestly, that’s what it’s all about for me. I have also said it in the streams with my buddy Klamath. I’m so happy that I have this creative outlet and I can entertain, inform and help others. Not only that, but I have been doing this for over 13 years now, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings.

Each year, I start putting this list together during my summer break. I always think, what games are going to be put on this list? And each year, several games just surprise me. I can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store for me, since 2023 was such an enjoyable adventure. But for now, thank you 2023 for being such an amazing year. It has been the year of rediscovery for me. Like I said earlier, I’m just felt prouder of the things I have been putting out, and I hope you are enjoying things as well. Thank you for the support this year and I hope to see you in the future. So, for now, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Fire Emblem: Three Hopes (Switch) ~ Mashing Buttons For War

Wikipedia – Nintendo.com microsite

There are only a few Nintendo franchises that are suited for a cross-over with the Dynasty Warriors series. The best one in my mind is Fire Emblem. So, it was no surprise to me that when you had the unique concept of Three Houses, a warriors-style game was going to follow. I wanted to play it since it released, but I got distracted by other games and the game gathered dust on my wishlist. Recently, I saw it was on sale on my local store, so I snagged a copy. I put it in my Switch and I knew it was going to be a game I wanted to write about from then. What do I think about this game? Is it a good game, or is it a game I have buyers regret over? Let’s find out in this first impression, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article. So, let’s mash buttons for this war and let’s dive right into giving this game a good, honest look.

Choosing your starter

In this game, you play as a mercenary Shez hunting down the Ashen Demon. This Ashen Demon is actually the main character of the mainline game, Three Houses. The story being told in this game is actually an alternate timeline of the mainline game.

That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to play this game. In Three Houses, there is a lot going on since the main character joined the academy and started teaching one of the three houses. But, what if that never happened and things go differently? Well, you get the story in this game. Now, you’d think that this game is either filled with spoilers for the mainline game or you won’t be able to follow it if you haven’t played the mainline game.

But, that’s far from the truth. Both games can be enjoyed separately. Things gets explained and since this is another timeline, things can go rather differently. Since, in this game, the school life is extremely short-lived. After your first few battles, you meet the three Lords of the lands, and you have to make a decision on which house you will join. After that, you basically choose your story path for the game. For my playthrough, I have chosen another house from my Three Houses playthrough, and I’m glad I did. I was always curious about the other characters, and I actually want to replay Three Houses with the other house now.

The stories in the three houses are quite different from each other. Without giving too much away, I’ll say this. The stories of all three paths do intertwine and depending on which house you join, that house will succeed in their mission. Now, I’m really curious to see how different the stories will be in the end. But, for that, I’ll have to play through this beefy game. This game can take around 140 hours to beat 100%, and I’m only half way the first route.

The writing in this game is pretty good in my opinion. It feels like that, an epic adventure anime series that can really draw you in. The story can take its twists and turns, but it has extremely powerful heroes and characters that have their own little quirks and charms to make you love them and cheer for them. You clearly have your episodic structure in this game, and it fits like a glove.

And on top of that, the voice acting in this game is just the cherry on top. The same cast returns from the mainline game to this game. While some characters do sound a bit different with the different direction and the time passed, the performance is amazing. They all fit the personality of the characters and give that additional layer of charm. Not everything is voice acted, but most of it is.

Also, I have to give some additional props to the voice actors since with the amount of things that can happen in this game and the different paths you can take, it must have been a beast of a script to do. And to write for that matter. Yet, I did notice some narrative tricks being used so that dialogue can be reused. Since, there is this mechanic there is a chance to recruit enemy generals to your side, and then their dialogue is mostly written is such a way, it doesn’t really matter in which house they are in.

Depending on which house you choose, you also choose your focus in the game. In my playthrough I chose for the Blue Lions. They excel at military tactics and mostly focus on swords and spears.

During the game, you unlock materials and seals to let your fighters go to a different class, so you can balance out your team. This is something extremely important, since choosing the right crew to go into battle will make all the difference in the end. Don’t always choose the class of your crew based upon numbers, make sure you have a diverse team, and you have all different types of warriors.

Mashing buttons for war

The biggest difference it will make is in the battles. There is a strength and weakness mechanic that is extremely well-balanced and can make an easy mission extremely difficult. But, I’ll talk more about the battles later in the article. First, I want to focus on the other mechanic in this game, and that is the base.

In between battles, you can run around in your base to talk to other characters and improve their bonds for not only more lore, but also for benefits during the battles. Your typical elements like in all the previous warriors games are here. A smithy, a supplier, a market… But this time, instead of it being a somewhat boring or overwhelming menu system, it’s a lively camp. It’s a joy to run around in, but sometimes it felt nothing more than just window dressing. The main issue is that you have fast travel and nothing else really happens in the camp. You do have some animations at certain places, but they never move from their location or interact with others. In Three Houses, you had characters walking around, making the place feel more lively than it actually was. Now, we have one NPC maybe walking around and for the rest we have empty paths and market vendors that shout to buy their wares to you. That being said, it’s extremely nice set dressing. To such a degree that I now feel that the menu system in Fire Emblem Warriors feels lazy.

One gameplay mechanic that really got improved is that the upgrading of your units isn’t a mindless menu system anymore. I always felt that it was really silly that you needed to upgrade your units through so many steps each and every time. This has been streamlined quite a lot and I love it. No more grinding certain missions for that one resource to beef up that one unit you wanted to play as.

Also, various other mechanics and activities of Three Houses made it into this game as well. Things like cooking and going on an expedition with you are also present in this game. They are some fun side activities, but don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Just like finding various notes scattered around the camp, they are just nice and welcomed set dressing.

Now, explaining every little detail and mechanic of a Destiny Warriors game is asking for a long article. There is lots to do and balance in this game. I won’t be surprised that some players will lose hours just to maximize and perfect every little stat. But, that wouldn’t matter if the other main mechanic in this game wasn’t fun. How do the battles play?

Well, if you played any warrior game before like Hyrule Warriors… You know what to expect here. In this hack and slash game, you are dropped in a map with your allies and you get a main objective. That main objective is your win condition. In a lot of battles, there is also a loose condition. So, taking that into account is quite important. Do use the battle map before the battle to your advantage and swap out your units accordingly. If you strategize before the battle starts, you will make it yourself easier.

During the battles, you can take control of a maximum of 4 characters on the battlefield. You can easily switch between them with the up and down arrows of the D-pad. Knowing when the switch is half the battle. Overall, the AI in this game is pretty good and provides you with the help you need, and the other units follow orders perfectly, yet it is faster sometimes to do the fight yourself. And as soon as you learn the combo’s and master the mechanics of each fighting style, oh boy can this become an enjoyable button mashing gaming.

Your right side of the controller will get a work-out. Especially the R, X and Y buttons. The faster you’re mashing them and use R for your special skills, the fights can become a cakewalk. But, don’t rest easy. You would think that this game is going to be easy from reading my previous sentence. But, don’t get yourself fooled. The difficulty differences are quite straightforward, like explained in this section from gameguides.com. Yet, if you don’t keep your wits about you and focus on taking out the right strongholds and generals, you will be overwhelmed pretty fast. When you understand that the non-general soldiers aren’t that big of a threat, you will make it yourself easier. Also, know when to defend a unit and when to attack.

Also, you can choose if you play this on Classic or Casual mode. Whilst you can change your difficulty level if you so desire, you can’t change the gameplay mode. So, if you don’t want to play with permadeath of your characters anymore, then you are out of luck. Personally, I’m playing on normal and casual mode. I get too frustrated when one simple mistake would mean that I loose a character that might make a later fight nearly impossible and the worry just ruins the fun for me. It’s a me thing and I’m glad we have the option.

Another part of the difficulty comes in via trying to get the best battle rank in each mission and chapter. Since, the rewards of these ranks are extremely worthwhile your time. They also helped during the side missions and unlock even better weapons and abilities.

There are a lot, and I really mean a lot, of mechanics in this game so that the players who love to micromanage will be able to eat their heart out. Thankfully, this game doesn’t force you into learning every single detail of this game and lets you play how every you want. Making this game’s replay value go through the roof. Now, another related question is… Is this game best played in short bursts, or should you play it in longer sessions. Well, that all depends on how well the gameplay clicks with you. Overall, there are a lot of different things that can happen during a mission, but after a while we see the same things happening over and over again.

This game can become repetitive real fast. There are various battle mechanics and things that can happen during a battle, but the breaks in the camp are quite welcome. Also, the side missions and the additional bonus things you can do in between battles are needed to break the repetitive nature of the battles. Don’t get me wrong, the battles aren’t boring… But, it doesn’t take long before you have seen the majority of gimmicks that can happen during a battle.

Yet for some reason, I felt that the battles in this game compared to all the previous warrior style games I have played are the best flowing so far. Giving order to your units and seeing them dash off and really have an impact on the battle… It pays off. I feel like they hit the sweetspot here. I can’t really put my finger on it but the battle gameplay just flows quite nicely. Maybe it also has to do with the audio and visual presentation during these battles.

The fact you see your allies icon dashing on the mini map towards their goal and saying a quick line when they executing their task, really helps during the hectic battles. They warn you when they are in need of aid as well. The controls to easily switch between your units help a lot with quickly managing everyting. You rarely feel like you wasted your time with a mechanic.

Visually, this game also helps a lot. The animations really feel impactful and give you the feeling that you are fighting an epic battle. I can totally excuse the game not animating all your soldiers in fighting for the sake of performance, but the little fighting that happens around you to “fake” this actually happening is doing quite a lot. Rarely did the game slow down for me, so everything happened with a smooth framerate. Now, I haven’t played the two player mode in this game… And maybe the framerate there isn’t the best… Especially in the previous Fire Emblem Warriors game, I played the two player mode and oh boy, that wasn’t the most optimal mode.

Also, looking at screenshots of the two player mode, I feel like it does a number on the amazing visual presentation of this game. It cuts the screen horizontally in half and I’m sorry but it just doesn’t look right. Maybe on a big screen it looks better but, on the Switch itself… I shudder at the thought. It’s a shame that the visuals looks so streched and wrong in multiplayer since they are quite nice.

Almost the sweetspot

This game almost hits the sweetspot on being a “perfect” game, it’s insane. Yet, there are somethings I find strange how they got through the cracks.

First of all, the visuals are amazing. You really feel like you are running through a real world that’s going through a big war. The visual style is medieval fantasy and it really shines through in the whole game. Yet, when somebody crosses their arms in a cutscene, the hands keep upright. To a point that it is immersion breaking sometimes. Oh, and the same thing happens in cutscenes when people want to place their hand in their side. The gap between their side and their hand is big enough to fit a your whole arm in between. Also, in cutscenes, everybody is mostly in their idle animation apart from when they are talking. And this is something that annoyed me a lot in this game. Dare to keep that shocked pose instead of just going back to idle. It breaks the flow of the story and it feels stiff and slow.

The UI is extremely clean and easy to understand. It’s a blast to navigate and gives you all the needed information. Yet, after unlocking a class for a character you get the question if you want to change it or not… without seeing which stats are impacted and which ones aren’t.

Using your abilities in battle is quite easy to do. Just press “R” and choose the right ability. Yet, the very powerful ability using R+A doesn’t always work as you expect. Sometimes I feel that the very strong final attack just didn’t trigger and got skipped. Also, the meter changes to being almost full again so I started wondering if it was glitched or not.

There are also various item pickups in during the battle. But, it’s not always too clear what item pick up does what. For some reason, I always confuse the blue and purple pick ups. And it’s so easy to waste a pick up, it’s rather annoying. Also, when an ally is wonded, you can’t easy heal them or move them to pick up an item or break a green pot. Little sidenote on pots, these red pots on the mini map sometimes look quite brown in game. Maybe because of lighting or maybe it has too much blue and green added to the texture.

These small issues started to grab more of my attention as soon as I decided to write this article. Like not all sunrays have good anti-aliasing (making straight lines look less jagged basically). It is distracting once you notice it. Just like the hand thing I talked about earlier. It’s a shame since the cutscenes are more lively now since they use 3D character models instead of character portraits in Fire Emblem Warriors.

Something that doesn’t have any issues is the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack really pumps you up during the battle and helps make the game feel even more impactful during battles and relaxing during camp visits. The orchestral score is a joy to listen to and I have to admit that I listen to it here and there while I’m working. It’s a great soundtrack and I’m glad it’s added to my playlist.

The sound effects are pretty great as well. They stand out quite a lot so it’s easy to know what is happening and it always gives the needed information to the player to not make it a guessing game. Thankfully, you also get some visual information as well so people with hearing problems don’t loose out on the advantages the sound effects can give you.

The amount of options you have in this game is incredible. You can tweak the game to your favor, you can also change the whole button lay-out to your wishes without changing the default button lay-out of your Switch. While I prefer playing this game with a Pro controller, the game plays smooth with joycons as well. While the same supports one joy con to play the game, do yourself a favor and play with either both joycons or a pro controller.

Now, this game does have an autosave feature, but I’m also really glad that this game have several save slots. While you only have 8 slots in this game, that’s more than enough to experiment in your playthrough. The only minor issue is that when have saved before the last battle, the game forces you to save before you enter the war map the last battle. Without mistake. One simple if loop where the game checks if the player has saved a few minutes manually before and it wasn’t an autosave would solve this minor issue.

Overall, I fell in love with this game. Compared to the previous warrior style games we got from Nintendo franchises, this is one of the better ones. It isn’t overwhelming and you don’t have to micromanage every little stat, but it does provide you with that option. It’s the same addictive hack and slash gameplay we are used too in these games but it also manages to flow a bit better.

While the game does have some minor issues here and there, they aren’t too big of a deal. Like when you teleport in your camp to a facility you can press A to interact but when you teleport to a unit, you have to walk a few steps towards them before you can interact.

If we ever get another warrior style game, I think that this game has set amazing foundations for the next title. The main complaint I see other reviewers say is that the combat isn’t diverse enough. Personally, I somewhat agree that some classes play extremely similar but, it’s one thing they should focus on expanding next. Do more with combat styles like archers having a larger attack range but being weaker in close combat. Or give mages the chance to buff their allies.

What we got in this game feel like an extremely solid foundation for the next games. I’m so glad I played this game since it’s one of the better ones I played this year. I was afraid that I was burned out of the warrior style gameplay, but no. This game drew me right back in and reminded me why taking care of the details is so important in making a good game. I can’t wait to see what else this game has to offer since I’m going to beat it, that’s for sure. And after that, I should beat the other Fire Emblem games that are still on my backlog… shouldn’t I?

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys warrior style games, hack and slash games, Fire Emblem fans and everybody who enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors games. This game takes leaps and bounds to improve itself compared to the previous warriors game in the Fire Emblem series. While it has some small distracting issues, overall this game delivers an amazing experience where you can sink a lot of hours into and with a highly replayable game. So, what are you waiting for soldier? A command to play the game? Well, here it is! Pick up your controller and join the war with quirky, unique characters that takes itself just seriously enough. Join the fight in something that feels like you were young watching your favorite adventure TV-series every Saterday morning whilst you feel extremely powerful and wonder what’s going to happen next. That’s how I personally felt while playing this game.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Metal: Hellsinger (PC – Steam) ~ Rhythmic Doom

Steam – Official website

While I love music, I’m not that fond of rhythm games. Because, I can’t keep a rhythm for some reason. Especially in games, since my playing style is quite reflex based, and I act on instinct instead of on the beat of music. Anyway, I was scrolling through the games I got via my Humble Bundle subscription and I saw Metal: Hellsinger. I was like: “Oh, a new indie shooter game, let’s give it a try.”. I only noticed that it was a rhythm game after I installed it and booted it up. So, I was afraid that this game wasn’t going to be something for me. Yet, this game surprised me… And in this article I want to talk about it, while I invite you to give your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Going to hell singing

In the world of this game, hell is a place where memories are lost. Demons don’t know who they were and why they are down there. Also, because souls are tortured in hell, something is taken away from you. For the main character in this game, the Unknown, that’s her voice. She is out to get it back and travels through hell to defeat the demons standing in her way to get her voice back.

The story in this game mostly takes a backseat for the actual gameplay loop of this game. I’ll talk more about the gameplay later. First, let me talk about the voice acting. The voice acting in this game is pretty good. Since the main character is mute, one of our weapons is our guide and tells what’s going on. The skull named Paz is voiced by no one less than Troy Baker. His performance here is excellent, and it’s a joy to listen to. The other voiced character is the main antagonist of the game, the Red Judge. She is voiced by Jennifer Hale. I have to tell you, the voice acting in this game is well done.

In terms of the story, I’m not going to critique it too much. Because the game is rather short, and I don’t want to spoil anything. Not that this story is going to move you to the edge of your seat, but still. Howlongtobeat puts this game at a runtime of 4 1/2 hours, and I have to say that’s a very low estimate. If you are good at rhythm games, I can totally see this game taking you give or take 5 hours, but if you aren’t the best in rhythm games, I think that 7 to 8 hours is more reasonable.

Now, something I really like in this game is that the cutscenes are mainly lightly animated comic book panels. This makes the art in the cutscenes of this game highly detailed and give it an amazing atmosphere. A few cutscenes are in-game and they look fine. Let me just say that if I had to be real nitpicky that some textures in action moments were a bit rough and stood out from the amazing looking visuals in this game. Thankfully, it’s something that will be noticed if you review games for a hobby or a job, but I’m certain it will be less noticeable if you are just enjoying this game.

The story is mostly told at the start and at the end of each level. The pacing of this game is quite fast because of certain gameplay mechanics. But, more on that later. If it’s too fast for you, you have a codex where you can look up more lore or more information on the enemies and events in the game. These unlock automatically, and you don’t have to go looking for them… Looking at you, Doom…

Rhythmic Doom

If I had to describe this game in a few sentences, I have to say this. Take the hectic shooting combat of Doom, combine it with the combo system of Devil May Cry, and mix it with the rhythm gameplay from Crypt of the Necromancer.

In this game, you go from arena to arena and fight a boss at the end. The arenas themselves are combat puzzles where you have to know how each enemy operates in order for you to prioritize the right enemies. Each arena is gets between 2 and 5 rounds of enemies spawned in. In total, you have 7 main enemy types for you to deal with. They get introduced one by one, and you get more than enough time to learn the behaviors of these enemies.

You also have special elite versions of some enemies, and let me tell you… They are the ones you will hate. They are not only stronger than their normal counterpart but also hit harder. I still hate the first elite enemy you encounter. The shield cambions can go and die in a fire. You need to get close to them and strafe around them to get through their shield, but they have a very nasty wide fireball attack that makes getting close to them quite difficult.

Just like in Doom, you can stagger an enemy. When you stagger an enemy, you can glory kill them. Instead of blinking blue, they blink orange in this game. If you press E at the right time, you will fly towards the enemy and glory kill it. If you don’t press E at the right time, the enemy will get up and continue attacking you. Glory killing is important since you can regain some health from it. This is especially handy when you used up all the healing crystals in the arena.

Now, you might have noticed at the top of the screenshots, you have a multiplier. This multiplier is exactly what you assume, it’s a damage multiplier. Like in Devil May Cry, if you keep fighting, that meter will go up. The higher it goes, the better. It’ll slowly go down, so you have to make a mad dash towards the next arena to fight again to keep it high. There are also sometimes power-ups in the arena’s that either double your current fury OR up it to the maximum right away, which is 16x.

Sadly, just killing enemies doesn’t increase the counter. If you look closely at the crosshair in the screenshots, you might start to understand how the rhythm mechanic in this game works. It’s sort of like DDR/Guitar Hero, where arrows come from one side, and you have to hit the right button when they are inside the arrows of the crosshair. The better your rhythm, the more damage you do and the more your fury meter increases.

But, that’s not the only advantage of keeping a rhythm. When you press “R” at the perfect time during the reload animation, you’ll be able to instantly reload your weapon. Now, unlike Doom, you don’t have limited ammo. So, no need to keep in mind which ammo you still have and which one not. You can only take two guns into a level, so choose wisely. Each weapon has their own special mechanics and usefulness and maybe if you die over and over again, you might want to try with another weapon.

Another important gameplay mechanic is the yellow bar you see in the screenshots. This yellow bar is a charge bar. The better you hold the rhythm, the more you charge that bar with that weapon. When it reaches max, you will be able to unleash the special ability of that weapon. For example, for your blade, it’s going ninja on your enemies with extremely fast sword swings. Another example are the dual pistols, where you spawn a temporary clone of yourself, they not only helps you fight but also increases your fury meter.

Now, interesting to know is that you can revive yourself 3 times on the easiest difficulty when trading in some score. This is an amazing feature in my opinion. This allows players with a bad sense of rhythm to play this game without getting too frustrated, but it’s also a punishment. Now, these points are nothing more than bragging rights for the global leaderboard, but it works quite effectively. I don’t know how different it is on the other difficulty modes, since I’m playing on the easy difficulty. There are four of them, with the 4th one being locked at first.

Metal rhythmic

I think that it’ll surprise nobody that for this game, we get a metal soundtrack. On the Wikipedia page for this game, you get an amazing list of all the tracks in this game.

Now, while I do enjoy metal music, I’m not that big a fan when the vocals are just screaming the lyrics into the mic. I just enjoy my music when I understand the lyrics right away without listing closely, and English not being my first language also plays a huge role in that. Thankfully, in this game, it isn’t that bad. There are a few tracks where it happens and most of them are understandable, like in Amaranthe tracks, for example.

The amount of different artists that helped to make this soundtrack by Two Feathers come true is just incredible. Some of these are real earworms, like the main theme and “Stygia ft. Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy”. I think I’ll have to look up some of these bands later, since I really liked their work for this game. Each level has its own theme and the soundtrack fits this game as a glove. There are also two DLC’s for this game. One adds 9 additional songs and the other one adds two songs and some cosmetics.

Let me be honest, I feel that the second DLC with “essential songs” isn’t the best. There are some none metal songs in there and clash hard with the vibe. The other DLC that adds two additional songs and cosmetics is a lot better and a steal for the price. I’m really curious to see what they are going to do next, since when you look at the DLC list in the main menu, there is a third option saying “coming soon”.

The music and gameplay work together quite nicely to bring you a highly addictive arena shooter with a lot of rhythm game elements. Apart from that, the sound design of this game is also quite amazing. The guns and weapons feel amazing to use, and you really hear the impact they have. Now, sometimes the feedback of getting hit isn’t clear enough, but playing a bit with the options fixed that for me.

Speaking about the options, the amount of flexibility this game has is just insane. You can adjust quite a lot to your liking, and you can even totally disable the whole rhythm mechanic from the game. Now, I advise against doing that since the game is quite well-balanced on the easiest difficulty setting, and you can just recalibrate so the audio and video latency is to your playstyle.

Visually, this game looks amazing. While the colors used in the levels can be quite monotone, everything still stands out and everything is quite easy to read during hectic fights. Also, details like the marionete enemies having strings aren’t lost during the hectic gameplay. You can quickly see when you are low on ammo on a gun or when an enemy is hiding or walking behind a wall. You also quickly see exit when you finished the arena.

Each level also has it’s own unique visual presentation. From a snowy arena to an big church… Each level looks different and looks amazing. A lot of memorable set pieces. I loved the mine level where you always came back to a similar room and had a lot of different fights. Also, the visuals change whenever you are in a higher fury counter. A lot more fireworks are displayed with some more animations.

In terms of animations, these just add to the atmosphere. Attacks are quite well telegraphed and with the quite responsive controls, I rarely felt that taken damage wasn’t my fault. Also, the green glow healing crystals give off, makes them easy to read as well. Something I also love is that you can see the top of the Unknown’s wings when you double jump. There are a lot of details present in this game without the UI and the screen becoming cluttered with information. Oh, and in terms of the animations as well, the animation of the main character in the main menu, oh boy. The way she throws you the peace sign and flies off when you click on the exit button or when she looks at the skull when you look at the codex, just wow. The charm while staying true to the setting is amazing.

Something you need to be careful of is that there are no mid-level saves in this game. One time I had the bad luck that just before a bossfight, Windows Update decided to reboot my PC. When my computer rebooted and I restarted the game, I had to restart the level. Thankfully, the levels are rather short so it isn’t that bad. The game saves automatically when you beat a level so we don’t have to worry about that one.

Something else to keep in mind is that healing crystals can be destroyed with one simple shot. And yes, they despawn quite rapidly. So, stay aware while fighting since these healing crystals are really needed in this game.

I have been mostly praising this game, but are there any negatives I can say about this game? What is this game doing wrong? It’s not the extremely stable frame rate, since I haven’t seen any slowdowns while playing this game. Most of my complaints about this game are rather small in the grand scheme of things.

The first minor complaint I have is that actually preforming a glory kill is quite unforgiving. If you are even a little bit off, you get denied. Thankfully, you get that information quickly with a visual and sound cue. But, still the amount of times I was off by just a few milliseconds and got denied, is frustrating.

The second minor complaint I have is about the default controls. Your blade is the first weapon you have and let me tell you, with the font useed, you barely see the difference between É and E. So, it took me some time to realize I had to press 1 on my number row instead of E… Just show the number keys too on that small icon.

Apart from going for a higher score or finding the hidden coat of armor for more additional bonus goodies, there isn’t a high replay value. Also, the UI before you enter the level gives you the impression that you need the sigils … while you don’t need them at all.

Sigils are bonus challenges that can unlock additional perks but unlike Nightmare Reaper these are anything but essential to finish the game. I only finished my first Sigil after I had beaten one of the final three levels. Yet, they are a fun challenge to challenge your skills with the game with an unique twist. They are also timed as well.

The third minor complain I have is how semi-aggressive the DLC is promoted. “Unlock by buying the DLC”. But on the other hand, I totally understand that the company needs to make money and promote that the DLC exists.

My final minor complaint is that as soon as you have found your two weapons, you are set. Apart from when they are introduced, there is no reason to use them anymore. It’s a shame since all them have unique and nice gameplay styles. Do yourself a favor and change up your weapons sometimes.

Honestly, I’m having a hard time finding negavites with this game. Most of the negatives I can say about this game are rather minor and don’t detract from the amazing gameplay loop. While I can totally understand that this game can feel repetitive to some, I feel that the gameplay loop and unique arenas are addictive enough to stand up on their own two feet.

I’m surprised that a rhythm game is this much fun and provides challenge for every playstyle. Even when you can’t keep rhythm like myself, you can still enjoy this game. You can also disable the rhythm mechanics completely. You’ll be able to experience the whole game but not be able to submit your score to the leaderboards. But, like I said earlier, you’ll miss out on one of the fundemental mechanics that make this game so much fun to play.

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys action/shooter games. Especially if you enjoyed games like Blood, Nightmare Reaper, Quake or Doom. Do be warned that this game is on the short side, but is in my opinion totally worth full price. The amount of polish and care that has been put into this game is fantastic. At first I was afraid that this game was going to frustrate me like all other rhythm games do, but this game is polished to a fine diamond that really makes me want to stay in rhythm since it feels so rewarding to finally beat my score.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Review: Doom Eternal (PC) ~ Just A Little Bit More

Wikipedia – Steam – Official microsite

I still remember when I had beaten Doom 2016, I wanted to play the sequel. Yet, for some strange reason, my PC which was strong enough couldn’t run the game. Now, I was planning to build a new computer and recently I did. Now, I have a totally new computer, and I got Doom Eternal for free via my Humble Bundle subscription. Currently, I have beaten the main campaign, not yet the DLC. So, was it worth the wait for the new computer, or should I have played other games first? Well, in this article, I’ll talk about my honest first impression of the game and what I thought of it. I only focused my playthrough on the main campaign. So, no opinions on the DLC and the multiplayer. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Just A Little Bit More

Doom Eternal is a game where the core mechanics of Doom 2016 are taken and expanded upon. Kind of like Tears of the Kingdom did for Breath of the Wild. The first piece of evidence of that move is the story.

In this game, we play as Doom guy. 14 years after the ending of Doom (2016). And of course, we get no explanation why it took Doom guy so long or what happened during that period. We do get some amazing voice acting from an outstanding cast. But the story this time around isn’t the best. While yes, we don’t play Doom for the story… But, this story has some problems.

There is a lot of technobabble in the game. Various things you can understand from context clues, and I mean the word context here in any way shape or form. Others are never explained at all. Of course, we have the scattered lore documents… But, that’s not the way how you pace a Doom story. We don’t play Doom to read notes, we play Doom to shoot demons and save Earth. If there was a bit more: “This is such and such, a member of that demon race that invaded Earth after that energy source was discovered…” or amongst those lines, it would feel a lot less mediocre.

Also, the unexplained 14-year gap between both games isn’t doing the story of this game any good. Quite often I felt I was playing the 3rd game in a story driven series. Where in the second game, a lot a thing happened and step up this 3rd story.

I think the balance between not explaining and explaining things is off here. Suddenly we are hunting for Hell Priests now, why are these important? How powerful are they? Why are we hunting them and… Hold up… Is this taking the gag of not caring about the details of the story to an extreme? Maybe so. Yet, this execution falls flat on its face in my opinion when it takes itself so seriously.

The expanded lore is there through the sometimes quite hidden notes you can pick up. So, if you want to make sense of the story and the events, you can read them. But, like I said… We don’t play a Doom game for reading, we play a Doom game to play a badass and challenge ourselves in tricky arena’s.

Nevertheless, I think the story is okay. I’d give it a just passing grade, out of 10. I just feel that it could have been fleshed out a bit more. Not only that, but I couldn’t help myself compare it to the opening of some of the previous Doom games, where things gradually build up, and we get to learn what everything is. Just like how this game introduces all the returning and new enemies to us.

Oh boy, the enemy roster is quite expanded in this game. And some of the new enemies are fascinating. For example, the Carcass. This enemy can put up energy walls that serve as shields. And they are used to protect their demon kind from an attack. Also, the new Whiplash snake enemies are creepy. They are snakes with whips that are quite annoying to hit when they are moving on the ground. There are other enemies like the Marauders. These just frustrated me to no end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the start of this part of the article, I said that Doom Eternal is an expanded version of Doom 2016. So, if you have played Doom 2016, you will feel right at home in this game. This game is still the action packed and tense shooter where you feel that you are locked in with the demons, but the demons are locked in with you.

Hectic micromanagement

Most of the gameplay loop is still here from Doom 2016. But, like in Doom Eternal tradition, there is more. The first big change is that there is no pistol anymore with unlimited ammo. So, if you run out of ammo, you’ll have to rely on the chainsaw.

You’d think that, like in Doom 2016, you’d use glory kills to refill your ammo as your health. But, oh no. In this game, that’s only for health. If you want ammo, you’ll have to chainsaw attack the enemies. So, it’s a good idea to keep the weaker enemies around to chainsaw them if you are running low. New in this game is that you don’t have to refuel the chainsaw when you are out of fuel. One piece of fuel automatically recharges. You can pick up more fuel if you want or have to chainsaw the bigger enemies.

Now, Doom Eternal got a lot more tricky compared to Doom 2016. If you are quite used to the Doom 2016 combat loop… Well, you will be thrown for a surprise here. This game is even more of a balancing act than before. You have so many options to kill demons, it’s a joy to enter an arena and fight your way through it.

Overall, Doom Eternal is quite linear. You go from A to B and overall, the path is almost always clear on what to do. And if it isn’t clear, a quick glance at the map will help you to figure out where to go next. At first, I was afraid that this would mean that secret hunting would be quite easy, but oh boy was I wrong. When I finished my first level and saw that I didn’t even find half of the secrets, I was surprised.

I can’t wait to replay through some scenario’s and try things differently or look at what I might have missed. Since, sometimes the secrets are quite helpful in your quest. And other times, they are fun collectables to decorate your ship.

Personally, I think this game can be a bit overwhelming. There is so much you can do in this game, it’s hard to keep track of everything. There are so many different types of enemies with their own unique weak points. You also have to juggle your ammo pool and on top of that, you have secrets to find… It took me until over the halfway point before I understood a lot of the finer mechanics of this game.

At a certain moment, the game just started to click. Yes, there is a lot in this game, and don’t expect to be able to find everything at your first playthrough. Unless you are using a guide, that is. Overall, this game took me 14 hours to complete, and I felt I found quite a lot of the secrets. There are several I didn’t find, but that’s for another playthrough.

The gameplay loop is mostly the same as Doom 2016. You go from arena to arena, shooting up waves upon waves of demons. If you stand still or let yourself get cornered, you’ll die. In this game, you can pick up extra lives. Now, these extra lives are extremely worth it. They respawn you when you die without you having to reload from a checkpoint. Let me tell you, if you think that this makes the game easier, oh boy… At the final three levels, I had close to twelve one ups in the bag. Even while being careful, I had zero of them at the final boss fight. This game will punish you if you don’t keep moving and prioritize certain enemies.

If you kill the weaker enemies right away, you’ll be in trouble. Since, it’s quite easy to run out of ammo. Even when you fully upgrade the ammo cap. Then, you’ll have to stagger the weaker “fodder” enemies to chainsaw them for ammo. Or blow up barrels for ammo. Sometimes I felt I wasn’t playing a shooter but an action strategy puzzle game.

Especially because this game becomes a sort of game where you have to make quick decisions. Remembering your controls and what does what is essential. I even mapped various things to my mouse for quick access. The trickiest thing is deciding if you chainsaw or glory kill the fodder enemies. Do you need health or ammo? Since, chainsawing fodder enemies gives you less health than glory killing. I do have one complaint about that, if you have the bad luck a stronger enemy comes in front of you, and you press the chainsaw button instead of the glory kill button, the animation of “not enough fuel” takes a bit too long before you can really preform your glory kill or chainsaw the right enemy… Or even shoot.

Outside the shooting, this game turns into something resembling the modern Tomb Raider trilogy. There is a lot of jumping and platforming puzzles in this game… So much so, that I even considered subtitling this review “Doom’s Identity Crisis” where I started to compare both games. In most cases, the way forward is very clearly signposted, so it’s quite rare to get lost or not know where to go. In very rare cases, it was not. It was either a swing bar being a bit too hidden or a switch that I didn’t know I had to hit. For example, in the later levels, swimming sections gets introduced. In these sections, there are tubes you can shoot into to shoot a button. Thankfully, I know from previous Doom games that this is a mechanic in the series, but newer players will have a tough time figuring that one out.

Happy journey

This article first started out as a first impression article. Since I played this game with a lot of breaks in between, I felt that I had to play this game again for a longer time to fully form an opinion. So, I played it quite a lot these past days and I even finished it.

I wondered if it’s better to play this game in one long sitting or in short bursts. To be honest, I don’t have a clear answer on that. The game is a lot of fun to play and when you get into the rhythm of things, it’s hard to put down. But on the other hand, I felt that this game was repetitive in longer bursts.

Now, during my research for this article, I noticed that a lot of people praised this game for it’s polish and smoothness. I do have to agree for the most part. Visually, this game is amazing. It’s gore and creepy in the right places and gorgous when it needs to me imposing. Very rarely I encountered some visual strangeness. Sadly, a few times I noticed some rough parts of the game. A door texture in the main hub here, a floating arm there.

Something that I felt that was off is when the Archvile spawned enemies, they don’t come alive right away. It’s an amazing effect to see them get “build to life”… But, quite often it took a few seconds for them to become active. As if the newly generated object was loading in the code of the AI for that demon. It felt jarring sometimes especially since this game runs so smooth. Just like me having the game sometimes not boot when I change my screen resolution.

Something that’s also quite impressive in terms of the visuals is the fact you can dress up your slayer as you wish. There are a lot a cosmetic options and skins you can unlock. Some of them ingame, others via cosmetic DLC. It’s amazing to see that all the cutscenes and reflections in game change as well. But, the cosmetics don’t give any buffs or change anything gameplay wise. So, having around € 90 of cosmetic packs in the Steam store, no thanks.

In terms of preformance, this game ran amazingly on my new computer. I had quite the smooth framerate and I have to agree that it’s optimized quite well there. Yes, the game is overwhelming and there is a lot going on… But, all sound cues and visual cues still give the player the information they need. Very rarely I nocited some input lag with the jumping.

The controls are quite good as well. Thankfully, the keys are shown in the UI, so you can quickly find what you are looking for at a glance. The UI isn’t “in your face” but gives you a lot of information as well. The only annoying thing in terms of the controls is that near the end of the game, you have to “use” some doors instead of what your are used too, runnig up to them and open them.

Now, I touched upon sound cues earlier. In terms of the music and sound effects, this game is just amazing. You’ll have a hard time playing this game without the sound. There are so many sound cues like low health or bosses charging up, it’s quite important. Thankfully, most of these sound cues also have a visual cue so deaf people won’t have trouble with this game too much there.

The music as well is amazing. The heavy metal tracks by Nick Gordon just pump you up for the action and add some amazing atmosphere to the game. During writing of this article, I have beene listening to my buddy Kovic his arrangement and I’m reliving the game again. I just have a weak spot for heavy metal soundtracks from shooters.

Now earlier, I said that I mostly agree that this game is extremely optimized. Sadly, I did encounter a few things that raised my eyebrows. First of all, sometimes after ammo depletion of one of my gun suddenly switched to the BFG. In the hectic fight, I didn’t notice that right away and the amount of times I shot a BFG round without wanting too, is just sad.

Also, I did notice some minor bugs. Twice, I clipped through the floor while climbing raising platforms. Sometimes I found a spot where I could clip into the level geometry. Yeah, some parts weren’t solid. Thankfully, these parts are very far and few between.

One thing that really felt “bad” is one boss fight. I’m sorry but the Khan Maykr boss fight is just silly. Just like others, I quite often ran out of ammo during that boss fight. Now, it turns out that when you shoot the new minion enemies in the head, they drop ammo. This is fine and all, but Khan Maykr eletricifies half of the arena and there are no fodder enemies. So, if you really run out of ammo… Though luck. That means you have to redo that boss fight. And how do we learn that these minions drop ammo? Well, from the codex page of course in the menu… Unlike all the other new enemies where you have an introduction screen with their weakspot.

This bossfight was needlessly hard and I honestly didn’t like to play it. Since, a few too many mistakes in your ammo management and it’s game over. Even all other boss fights spawn fodder enemies for you to heal or get more ammo. Why not this time? You can’t recover after a few mistakes and that just feels unfair. Especially when you read online that several weapon mods are quite effective… But, what if you weren’t focussing on these mods?

One other thing that I felt was disappointing in this game was that some mechanics are underused in the main campaign. During one moment in thte campaign, you can take control of a Revenant. You have a battle as that demon. There are also upgrades for that fight in your suit. But, this is only a short fight and once during the entire game. But maybe I can experiment with that more in the endless battles or the new battlemode that update 66.6 brought.

Now, I fully know that I haven’t talked about everyting this game has to offer. But there is just so much that this game has to offer that talking about everything would make this review take hours to read and weeks to write. So, I’m leaving various things as a surprise for you to discover when you give this game a shot.

Conclusion

The good:

+Addictive shooter loop.

+Amazing music and audio design.

+Great animations and visual presentation.

+Replay value in a linear shooter.

+Secret hunting is a lot of fun.

+Amazing controls.

+Great voice acting.

The bad:

-This game can be a bit overwhelming, so it’s easy to forget certain mechanics or features.

-Very minor visual hickups here and there.

-Presentation of the story. A bit too much reading for certain lore points and twists to make sense or have any kind of impact.

-Too many cosmetic DLC’s.

Conclusion:

If you enjoyed playing Doom 2016, you’ll love this game. This game is an amazing action game where quick decision making is key and central to the gameplay. I only have two major problems with this game.

First, is the story and how a lot of the lore and background information is explained in notes. Notes that are sometimes hidden in secrets. It’s a shame it’s presented like that since the pacing, writing and voice acting is amazing.

Secondly, the game is a bit too filled with content. This is a very tricky balacing act since as a casual player, you can only remember so much. The game is a bit too hectic to always remember that you have challenges and such. Thankfully, this makes the game quite replayable. Hopefully, the second time you play it in a different way so you unlock the other things.

Now, I’m happy that I played Doom Eternal. I can’t wait to start the two DLC campagins and explore all the mechanics and modes that I have missed. This game is amazing ride and an amazing follow up to Doom 2016. In my Doom 2016 review, I wondered if this game fixes a lot of the grips I had with Doom 2016. They set such a big step in the right direction. I honestly think that if in the next Doom game, they explain the lore eabout certain things more.. I think I’ll have a hard time finding flaws in this game.

If you enjoy action shooter games and don’t shy away from an interesting puzzle… This game is for you. You don’t need to have played Doom 2016 for you to play Doom Eternal. It wouldn’t surprise me that this game will be on my top 10 games of the year list. It is an amazing gamee with a few flaws but overall, these flaws didn’t hinder my enjoyment with this gem of a game. While the main campaign will take you 14 hours, I can totally see myself sinking a lot more hours in it.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reaeding it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welecome you in another article, but until thene have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100