Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Life is Strange: True Colors
Rating: 5/10

Alex Chen has long suppressed her 'curse': the supernatural ability to experience, absorb and manipulate the strong emotions of others, which she sees as blazing, colored auras.

***

Life is Strange: True Colors has been a confusing time for me. The second game in the franchise was the one that truly got to me and remains dear to me after all this time, so I went in expecting this game not to match the incredibly high bar the previous one set. After all, why hold a game to a standard when the standard would be one of the most meaningful narratives I’ve personally experienced? I’m not in the business of setting up a story to fail. As much as I would’ve loved to say that it turns out the game proved me wrong, that’s not going to be the case here. While this all sounds like it’s setting up a myriad of negative impressions, it’s actually a lot more mixed than that. Haven Springs, the setting of this newest entry, is charming, gorgeous and full of likeable characters that I connected with and wanted to learn more about. The Life is Strange formula is at full display here, with its setting and cast full of promise, so why did the game feel so… soulless?

Your protagonist in this game is Alex Chen, a 21-year old moving to Haven Springs to live with her older brother after spending most of her life in foster care. In traditional fashion for this franchise, her power? Reading people’s emotions. It all sounds like an interesting concept, and it’s one that admittedly is used to great effect throughout the game. The emotions you feel from other people are often heartbreaking and make it impossible not to want to help. It’s a fantastic jumping off point for building out characters and developing them over the course of the game, yet that’s exactly what seems to be missing here. While your power is used a good amount, there’s such a sizable cast of characters that each one basically only gets one scene to really shine. You learn about their trauma or whatever’s keeping them busy at the moment and then their story is… over? Of course you will still see them throughout, but any development from that point on is surface level and generally not engaging the player in any way.

One example which I’ll keep as spoiler free as possible is a lovely lady who’s dealing with a rather heavy medical issue. You help her one time when Alex feels she’s become overwhelmed by emotion as a result of it, and then that’s about the end of it. I formed an attachment to her because the game wanted me to feel for her, but then the game refused to give me any further opportunities to engage with that feeling again. From that point on, I’m simply watching her from the sidelines (understandably still) struggling with her issue, but given no agency to interact with her regarding it again. The game roped me into someone’s deepest anxiety only to make me feel entirely helpless in the following chapters. It’s busy instead teaching me about every. other. person’s. trauma while then pulling that exact same trick off again and again. Now, I’m not delusional enough to think I can fix any of these people in the short timespan this game takes place in, but to simply throw bad situation after bad situation at me with no time spent to build any of them out from their initial reveal becomes tiresome. Alex starts feeling like a simple trauma magnet, which I wouldn’t exactly say is a fun place to be in for either the character’s or the player’s position.

And yet, while this could then be developed in a way where this clearly starts overloading our protagonist and take the story in interesting turns, instead the main takeaway is just that our character is highly empathetic. Which is a good thing! That is, until you quickly realise that’s basically all the character does now. With so much time being spent on other people and their storylines, the character we actually spend our most time with starts to fade into the shadows. I described Alex Chen in short earlier for introduction’s sake, but ultimately the character doesn’t venture far beyond that introduction. She feels like almost nothing more than a vessel for you to engage other people with. Not quite a blank canvas, but one missing a noticeable amount of paint to truly get invested in. Her personality is nothing to write home about either. A sweet, empathetic gal who’s trying her best in a bad situation and doesn’t give up. She’s somewhat shy, deeply hurt… it’s just nothing that makes her stand out as a protagonist. It’s the store-brand personality they could’ve picked up off the shelf and one missing any type of identifying factors.

Eventually, we do get more information about her past and how she became the person she is today. It’s what I was waiting for! However, the downside is that this all comes way too late into the story to have any meaningful impact. If anything, I would say this is the part that is actually the worst executed within the whole game. The sequence of events where you learn more about her takes up the majority of the game’s final chapter, making the overarching narrative come to a grinding halt. Genuinely, the biggest event of the whole narrative takes place and that is the exact moment the writers chose to take a journey down memory lane and develop a character further that needed this for the last four chapters. It waits until the last possible moment and is simply too little too late. Now if this sequence was expertly crafted and masterful storytelling, maybe you could look past that. If the late addition of it served its narrative, maybe you could look past that. Instead, it’s a repetitive slog of sequences that adds nothing of actual worth to the current events and is then followed up by what is practically the ending of the game. This particular decision of the game’s pacing was absolutely mind boggling and infuriating to me. It’s not often I get this far into a game and then start begging for it to end right before the finish line, but it’s an unfortunate feat that this writing team managed to pull off.

Finally, my last major complaint regarding the game’s narrative is how utterly shoved in the romance choices felt. The game offers you up two possible options, with one very obviously preferred to the other. I’m not even sure as to why they bothered to have the second romance option when they so clearly intend for the one to be canon. Even with that though, it could be all good if you don’t make a big deal out of it and just go with the flow. But that flow felt so unnatural. I’m not usually particularly picky with my romance paths in games. If a game offers, I’ll choose whoever I feel is best for the character in their particular situation. That’s just it with this game however. Neither one feels fitting for the character in that moment. Alex is struggling with plenty of demons, experienced traumatic events even within the timeframe of the game’s narrative and is clearly trying to find herself. So why is this game’s narrative so dead set on finding you a lover? Why is one of the characters practically throwing themselves at you to take big life decisions with them roughly two weeks after meeting them? Why does a story about someone who felt abandoned and trying to find a place to belong turning into a badly written romance drama? The whole idea felt so out of place here with the protagonist they gave us and honestly made me rather uncomfortable. Even with someone like myself who is usually not picky with my romances, this is the first time I felt like I had to actively make an effort not to end up with someone. And yet, that is ultimately impossible.

The one thing I will give this game credit for is the choices they weaved into the narrative. They’re often generally very good, morally ambiguous choices with no obvious right or wrong answer to them. I definitely had to sit with a few of them a while to think through all the possibilities and consequences before I felt like I was making the right decision. I suppose morally ambiguous might be easier to write when you know both the inner emotions of the person making the decision as well as the person it affects, but it’s still a part of the narrative that is worth giving credit to. I wish they’d approached the romance subplot with the same amount of caution.

Now, while yes, I have many problems with the narrative, I did fully play through it being invested and wanting to see where the story could go. Like I said before, Haven Springs is a properly great setting that is just beautifully realised within the game. Though I have to say, I think a majority of the credit for that goes to the team behind the art of this game. It’s just absolutely gorgeous from stunning landscapes to buttery smooth graphics and design. I think it’s easily the best setting the whole franchise has offered, so it’s a shame that the narrative taking place within it wasn’t quite on that level. Speaking of, Life is Strange is well known for its hard-hitting and well placed soundtracks, but I can’t help but think this entry also fell short to that standard. I think there’s plenty of memorable moments within the previous games, even including Before the Storm, where the soundtrack just endlessly elevated the experience, but I can’t say I ever felt the same here. It’s not like they changed anything about the type of sound they were going for with this one, but the songs just don’t feel as well placed or matching the vibe as well as they did in the preceding games.

***

Verdict: I think the most frustrating thing with this game is that a lot of its potential within the narrative just feels so wasted. It’s a truly fantastic setup that is then unfortunately marred by subpar writing. Most of the issues I listed wouldn’t even be unsolvable within its current state, but it saddens me that it seems the writers just didn’t recognise them during the process to do anything about them. All in all, it’s a valiant effort to add to the franchise, but I think it’s easily the weakest of all the games so far. I hope they’ve learned some lessons from this one and that the upcoming Double Exposure will blow our socks off, but for now I’ll have to remain cautiously optimistic at best. Maybe we should be bringing Don’t Nod back into the fold if this entry is any indication of the franchise’s future.

@Tjuz this was A really interesting read! You’ve done a good job conveying your thoughts and the game’s strengths and weaknesses! You’ve painted quite a clear picture without giving any spoilers and while also giving away all the necessary details! This was quite insightful and fun to read while on a tea break, despite me having no plans to pick it up. I like reviews like this. Good day 👍

@Yousef- Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. It's a hard game to talk about without any spoilers considering how much of the game is anchored around one major event early on in the game, so I'm happy to hear you felt like I didn't give anything away.

@Tjuz Excellent review! I enjoyed reading your thoughts, even though it sounds like I enjoyed the game more than you did. I do agree with a lot of your criticisms though. In fact, I like how you’ve explained some of the issues because it has helped me understand why I did feel that Alex as a little emptier and less relatable than many of the other LiS characters. I finished True Colors a month ago so it’s fresh in my mind.

As for the issues with pacing and holding Alex’s backstory hostage until the late game, I think maybe the writers were hoping that the climax would hit harder when it’s revealed that Alex’s dad was one of the miners who died. I do agree with you that they could have carefully done the tragic backstory at the beginning and saved the piece about the father going to be a miner and it still could have had the same (if not better) emotional impact. That’s a fair observation and didn’t occur to me until you mentioned it.

I also felt the romance was a little forced, but it ended up okay for me. I did go with Steph as she seemed the more interesting character than Ryan, but seeing how the narrative goes with Jed I would have liked to see how being Ryan’s romantic interest changed how the climatic reveal plays out. As it was, I was able to keep in Ryan’s good graces and he defended my version of Alex at that reveal moment, but there’s an interesting narrative opportunity to be had if Alex and been dating the son of her dad’s killer.

As for the music, I thought it was pretty good, on par with the series. But it’s a genre of music that I don’t usually listen to and so I’m probably not a good judge of the indie music scene.

Overall, I was closer to a 7/10 for the game, or even 8/10. I think Before the Storm is probably my favorite, although they are all fairly close and parts of each entry resonate uniquely with me. Like you, I’m looking forward to Double Exposure and getting back into Max’s storyline.

@Th3solution I can't agree. I saw the 5/10 score from @Tjuz and didn't even read it then.

Seriously though, we can't all agree. True Colors is right up there with the original for me, with Life is Strange 2 being easily the weakest imo. I did enjoy Before the Storm more than most as well, which is at least partially because I actually like the Chloe character.

I guess one thing that helped is I had no issues with the romance portion of the game, but I also went with Steph. Oddly enough she was probably my favorite character in the game, so it seemed like a logical choice to me.

@Th3solution Glad you enjoyed reading it! I do think the miner reveal was a good one, but was pre-empted by the long sequences of backstory just destroying the pacing of that whole section. Like you said, I think it would've been better if they sprinkled those scenes throughout the game. Since I believe it was anyway about four scenes total, why not put one in each chapter which would then culminate in the big reveal at the end? I think it would've helped the pacing of it all immensely and given us more time to get invested in their backstory, hopefully having the reveal hit harder in the end because of it.

@KilloWertz Haha, fair enough. It seems we have just about the opposite opinion regarding the franchise, and that's all good! I think all these games (which, yes @Th3solution, much like The Dark Pictures 😉) are so reliant on connecting with the protagonist in a meaningful way, which with my personal experiences in life Life is Strange 2 managed better than any of the other entries. But that's why True Colors in particular also falls so short for me, because the character I feel like is the least fleshed out or interesting of any of the entries. I did actually really enjoy Before the Storm as well, so it seems like us three are in good company here regarding that one! Did you end up playing the Steph DLC as well? I decided to forgo it after my experience with the main game, but if she's your favourite character I would imagine that DLC to be a fun time for you.

@Tjuz I think I agree about the pacing and the overall character development. I think in LiS and LiS2 there was a better buildout of the main characters and specifically with the relationships. The interactions of the two brothers of LiS2 and the two friends of LiS are more fleshed out and feel more genuine. Although I liked Alex’s interactions with all the side characters, ultimately none of those relationships are very significant, like you say, and Alex is more of a stranger observing them with her powers. Her core relationship they kept trying to cultivate was with Gabe and their interaction did feel a little hollow for most of the game, mostly on account of the fact he dies so early in the game that they can’t really interact much, and then the significant interactions from flashbacks are held until late

As for the question, I wasn’t able to get Charlotte to stick up for me, but everyone else did at that meeting. I’m not sure what I did to Charlotte, but obviously I made some poor choices with her. Which is fine, because she was probably my least favorite character in the game. I never warmed up to her and I never really cared about her or her relationship with Gabe. She just always seemed strangely aloof and not very genuine.

I was tempted by Steph’s DLC since I did like her as well, but since I’m not a very big fan of DLC in general, I didn’t bite. I am curious how it is, so if @KilloWertz knows, do tell!

@Tjuz That's fair. I think I remember reading about how personal playing Life is Strange 2 ended up being for you. It's not that I thought it was bad. I haven't thought that about any game in the series, but it was definitely my least favorite. It didn't help that I thought the little brother's outbursts were annoying at times, at least for me.

I would've played the Steph DLC, but I bought it physically and I've never noticed the Deluxe Edition DLC to ever go on sale unfortunately. I would've otherwise of course, but not for however much the Deluxe Upgrade costs. So, sorry @Th3solution, I can't tell.

Showgunners
Rating: 8/10

***

It’s not hard to give Showgunners an engaging elevator pitch. Imagine X-Com meets The Hunger Games and you’re already well on your way to imagining the highly entertaining setting for this stylish, murderous rampage. The setup is this: you play as Scarlett, who thanks to [insert tragic backstory here], has entered a deathly reality game show to take revenge on the person who caused [reprise tragic backstory here]. This perpetrator being a regular and beloved character on Homicidal All-Stars gives Scarlett the perfect opportunity to end his existence once and for all with maybe a little extra bloodshed on the way. Who cares? The people we’re up against are anyway just criminals trying to get out of their prison sentence. Along the way, the audience will follow your antics through live-streams and edited episodes where they’ll grow to love or hate you (depending on how you interact with them) and you might even be able to get a sponsorship or two along the way thanks to them! All in all, it’s a well thought-out and incredibly interesting setting to set your X-Com-style game in… and thankfully, it lives up to its promise.

Aside from all the shooting and violently knocking about criminals you’ll be doing, the game manages to not make it feel too repetitive thanks to a strong formula where it will switch between what is essentially overworld exploration and combat sequences. In these segments, you’ll walk around trying your best (and failing) to avoid hurtful traps, figure out simplistic puzzles, hunt for loot boxes which give you money and upgraded gear, sign autographs of adoring fans in the hopes of getting sponsored and eventually get ambushed. It does a great job at adding an extra element into the game to switch up the pacing of the gameplay and engage you with the world of the show. Thanks to the ever-present announcer and your squadmate dialogue, it constantly feels like you’re being watched and helps you immerse yourself into the premise of the narrative. These segments don’t outstay their welcome, and if you’re worried about being a completionist, helpfully let you know when it’s no-turning-back-time and if you’ve missed anything worth going back to look for.

In-between the levels, or rather the “episodes” that you’ll hopefully be surviving, you’ll get a chance to rest. In this time, you can hang out with your teammates and learn more about them or walk around the resting area and hear crew chatter about the goings-on of the show as a whole. It’s a great way of letting the other playable characters be more than just fodder in your quest for vengeance and genuinely start building a connection to them. By the end, I was quite happy to have gotten to know them and invested to make sure that they would stay alive! That said, unlike X-Com, this game (luckily) has no permadeath and will be graceful in bringing your corpse friends back to life. In this area, you also have the opportunity to record your own confessionals for the show and listen to ones recorded by other contestants who you might or might not know or ever meet. It really establishes the setting as something that is way bigger than you, your friend or your personal quest for revenge. All of these segments in the gameplay come together well to build an incredibly well constructed world to be your playground and adds so much flair and charm to the game that it’s hard not to fall in love with.

As for the combat, in typical X-Com style, it’s highly satisfying to play. I personally find this type of combat to be always so engaging. The percentages to hit, the carefully thought out moves, the ways in which you’ll screw it all up and try to recover from it, getting lucky (or not) and the cutscene animations for when you finally get that kill you’ve been aiming for are just repeating combat elements that never get old for me. The game does a great job at constantly introducing new enemy types and gameplay mechanics, so that every stage truly feels unique. The level design feels generally fair and never annoying for the sake of it with plenty of places to take cover and opportunities to take out your opponents. Of course, it’s a case of vice versa, so you won’t be able to steamroll them either. I found the AI of the so-called “defenders” to be largely smart, which just helped to make me feel like an absolute genius for outsmarting them. Maybe that’s just a case of me having an inflated ego, but that’s neither here nor there. The game also offers you optional combat arenas to play in the exploratory sections that you can skip if you prefer, but I wound up playing each and every one available in the game because I simply had such a good time with it.

The skill trees with which you can upgrade your characters are probably some of the most simple in gaming. You really don’t have to think in any way about the upgrade path you’re going to take. You might feel pressured at the beginning to think carefully, but you’ll quickly realise that you get showered in XP and will be able to get all the perks without a problem. I think I maxed out everyone’s level and skill tree by the time I was maybe 2/3rds through the game, but that is assuming you do quite literally everything the game has to offer you in each segment. Thanks to making it so easy to acquire the perks, it means you end up with a high amount of abilities for each character that just make the combat feel more open-ended and encourage you to play around. Even in the late stages of the game, I was still discovering new ways in which I could use my abilities to destroy my fellow competitors, such as forcibly making them self-immolate. The one downside there is to the amount of characters that will eventually join you on your mission is that a few of them get introduced rather late in the game. For me, that made it hard to ever really include them voluntarily in my gameplay as I knew the early character like the back of my hand and knew perfectly well how to win fights with them. Luckily, this issue gets somewhat resolved in the back-end of the game when the opportunity to go into battles with all six arises.

What this does bring with it is one of my major complaints about the game. With the advent of the full character roster going to battle, the combat arenas become incredibly long and drawn-out. To compensate for there now being six fighters present, the game has no issue to just throw an endless horde of enemies at you for many turns. This issue exists earlier in the game where occasionally it will make levels go on for much longer than you think by unexpectedly adding new areas and objectives, but it gets taken to a maximum in this final stretch. It doesn’t help that after you finish the penultimate fight of the entire game, it asks you if you want to play DLC levels. Obviously, I opted into them hoping for a fun time where it utilises mechanics in unique ways and maybe adds an extra layer of story, but instead it gives you two mandatory combat arenas along with three optional ones. Each one took me 30-40 minutes a piece to complete, which you can imagine absolutely destroys the pacing of the main game putting this minutes before the final stage. The in-game excuse the game uses to justify this detour is to help one of your squadmates find an important medicine for their partner, but outside of one objective in the final combat arena which is easily completed just by interacting with the tile, this motivation is not further explored in any way. Unless you’re really aching for more gameplay after the 15 or so hours the game has already provided you, I would advise against delaying the end with this free DLC.

A few short talking points:

• I liked the way it handled the weapon progression in-between areas. You get the opportunity to buy new weapons at practically any point in the overworld and also collect them from lootboxes, and they are almost without fail better than whatever the previous weapon you collected was. It doesn’t complicate anything with weapon modding or endless bonuses/debuffs. You simply know when you pick up or buy a new weapon that it’s likely better than your old one, which I much prefer over having a full inventory of weapons that are either slightly better at this or this or this.
• Even though I enjoyed the part where you sign autographs for the fans you meet in the overworld, I did feel like it was a missed opportunity that you were somewhat railroaded into responding in a certain manner. Each dialogue choice will give you “personality points”, which are then used as a requirement to sign with a specific sponsor. Each sponsor will give you unique bonuses to either your entire team or Scarlett herself. However, because you know exactly what requirements there are in terms of personality for each sponsor and reward, you end up just picking whatever response will give you the points needed for the next sponsor you’re working towards. I would’ve preferred for the autographs to feel a bit more organic in how you want to respond to each fan by possibly hiding the rewards so that it doesn’t feel like it’s only a means to an end.
• I thought the inconsistency in terms of the way the cutscenes were handled was somewhat off-putting. The game has about three entirely different styles of cutscenes. Either fully animated ones like you would expect from your regular cinematic video game, more visual novel-style ones with talking heads on each side and a dialogue choice in the middle or entirely illustrated slideshows with a voice-over. Ultimately, the inconsistency between these is a very minor complaint, but I would’ve liked it if it was all a bit more in tandem with one another. I can imagine it was only handled this way due to budget constraints.

***

Verdict: Showgunners is an incredibly fun game that sets out to do one very specific thing and wildly succeeds in it. It brings to life its setting and ideas with verve and executes it all mostly well. While there’s some complaints I have, they don’t distract from me seeing the entire experience as a worthwhile one. I believe it does play it safe with its combat compared to other games in the genre, but when it’s so highly satisfying it’s hard to complain about the results. It’s an absolute shame that I’ve since read online that the studio has had to lay off a large portion of its staff, because this game is clearly developed by a team of spirited and talented developers who I would love to see get their chance to improve on their work with time. The studio did recently release an unrelated follow-up called Sumerian Six, which looks to be more in the style of the tactical stealth games the now-defunct Mimimi Games were known for brilliantly bringing to life. I hope it’s as much of a successful homage to that genre as this one was to the one X-Com popularised, and I’m excited to play it and see what else this studio has in store.

Banged through Double Exposure this weekend. I feel like for a while last year my entire brand on here was to write flowery Life is Strange reviews through tears in my eyes as every one of them left me as a big pile of emotional jelly at the end.

This one though, kind of left me cold.

The first two chapters almost feel like a repeat of Max’s mistakes, going back to the past and trying to redo things over and over again. Every attempt to zig or zag here so we don't literally just lift entire pages of past experiences into this one usually result in what feels like a lesser experience over what has come before.

As Max learned, there is no perfect, every choice has a price, and living with past mistakes and moving forwards is the only answer. By the end of Chapter 3 it does feel like they are starting to learn what Max learned a decade earlier as things start getting really good, taking us in enough of a new direction for the series for me to think they might be turning this one around. However, just as it feels like we hit the ground running for this to really start going places we hit a really unsatisfying cliffhanger ending. It hits so sharply, I googled afterwards to see if I’d just missed that all the episodes aren’t out yet. But apparently this is it. I guess they kinda knew you'd feel this way as there is even an achievement confirming you finished the game. Awkward.

It does seem to sort of try and address a lot of the criticisms of almost every game and maybe the idea was to create an ultimate Life is Strange package. I dunno really what the plan was here, honestly, but what I do know it didn’t really work for me.

In True Colors the powers were poorly integrated into the story and rather underdeveloped, choice became far more about flavour, than necessarily sending the game down entirely new paths like the original at least tried to pretend you were doing. Double Exposure tries to address both of these criticisms, as powers basically are the story again, like they were for large portions in the original game and the power now creates two separate timelines Max can shape through her choices.

This probably sounds great, however, what makes me love True Colors without reservation despite acknowledging its many flaws, is there is no piece of media more valuable to me than one that makes me feel something, and True Colors didn’t just make me feel something, it made me feel a lot and everything I felt while playing that game, even on repeated playthroughs where I knew the punches were coming, they were still strong enough to knock the wind right out of me.

There is no moment like that basically ever in Double Exposure. The power should create so many opportunities to make some of the most powerful emotional moments this series has ever seen, but the heart and soul in this franchise seems to have gotten lost somewhere. For some they may not mind, but to me a Life is Strange game that didn't make me cry even once? What are we doing here?!

This feeling kind of extends to everything else, as well. I liked the cast better than the original Life is Strange, mostly because most of that original cast were insufferable hipster douchebags and rarely ever well acted. However, because Double Exposure felt so emotionally lifeless to me, I never felt myself really forming attachments to any body new here. It was awesome to have Max back and have her original voice be retained. But I just missed how strongly I cared about everyone in True Colors. It is strange cause I thought the one big strength of Deck Nine over Don’t Nod was their character writing, but I just kinda feel… whatever about this cast, no strong emotions about them one way or another. And I feel like the absolute most damning thing you can say about a Life is Strange game is the most you feel is a slight shrug of the shoulders.

Visually, like all the Life is Strange games, it is kind of a mixed bag, too. Environments are gorgeous and detailed and the presentation is highly cinematic. The way they capture Max moving from one timeline to another is really nicely done. It is all just such a vibe, and it is always a pleasure when it lets you just exist in these spaces for pockets.

Beyond that, all the little details captured on peoples faces or with their body language when they talk is honestly kind of crazy, too. We are so far removed from the stiff bodied, emotionless faces, and lifeless performances from that original game. But I'd argue it even goes beyond that, like I’ve seen plenty of great mocap in my time, but I feel like there are so many additional little micro expressions or micro tells with body language they didn’t have to include here, but the fact they did just gives everything so much more texture.

However, we’re still clinging onto stylisations of the past, that I kind of wish we’d just let go of at this point. The weird lego hair everyone has especially, needs to go in the bin. I kept marvelling at how gorgeous Max looks in Double Exposure, all the detail they put into her skin, her eyes, her expressions. And then my eyes would drift to the plastic barnet clinging to her head and I was ripped right out of it.

It is also weird how jank some of this still is, years later, like they are still recycling animations from the first game. Max feels absolutely horrible to control, and her rigging and animation for moving around outside of cutscenes feels utterly ancient and pulls you out of so many moments. I also had a surprising amount of bugs that pulled me out too. People’s eyes going crazy. Facial animations going haywire. Props ending up in weird places. A huge amount of weird clipping. Low textures layered onto higher ones to create a weird flatness to things. Like they would be minor things in other games, but in a game where so much care has been put into making characters feel so real in their interactions, having a beer bottle orbiting them like a UFO clipping through their body as they speak is really distracting.

So. Yeah. I kinda feel like this maybe reads like I absolutely hated this, but I didn't. I just think for all the things it does well, it doesn't do anything to make it any better than the games which came before it and if this doesn’t do well enough to get a sequel, or DLC, or something this is going to flap in the wind as an unsatisfying, incomplete, piece of a story that has no reason to be replayed over the others in this franchise. And I just think that is kind of a problem.

If you are dying to spend another 12 hours with Max, who looks better than she has ever done before, then I think Double Exposure will be worth your time. Unless you are really strongly attached to the Max and Chloe relationship... then maybe not. But otherwise, if you were just going to pick one, play True Colors instead and get ready to do a lot of crying.

Per my New Year's resolution in the 2025 thread, I'm playing a hundred games in my backlog this year. Not necessarily finishing. Playing. This includes demos as well, although primarily actual full software. After playing for a couple of days, I'll decide if I want to add them into my rotation or pass on them going forward.

Game 1 out of 50: Amid Evil (PC)

Almost finished this one before moving on. I probably still will, since it's actually one of the best boomer shooters I've ever played. Publisher New Blood Interactive has made a name for themselves in the independent development community, publishing modern classics of the genre like Dusk and Ultrakill. This is my first experience with one of their games, but after playing this, I am 100% going back to look into the rest of their catalogue.

Amid Evil is a high fantasy boomer shooter that seems to be a sort of spiritual successor to Heretic (1994) and Hexen (1995), although there's shades of Quake here as well. You wield an array of magical weapons (primarily ranged, except for your default axe weapon) that feed on collectible mana orbs for ammunition. These weapons are not dissimilar in terms of their impact on gameplay to more modern weapons you'd find in other shooters of this variety. Throughout the game, you collect the souls of enemies you kill, and you can use these to power up a meter that, when full, can unlock ultra-powerful timed iterations of your weapons, which are useful for bosses and difficult enemy choke points. Although these powerful weapons typically expire pretty quickly, you can delay their transformation back if you're strategic about collecting more souls of defeated foes. It's a cool system that adds a nice extra layer to gameplay.

The progression structure is a lot like Quake, where you use a hub area to navigate between different sets of levels, which usually feature a boss at the end. The levels themselves are pretty incredibly designed: non-linear and exploratory, of course, but lacking in the maze-like quality you find in a lot of old boomer shooters. If I had to compare them to anything, it'd be the environments in From Software's more recent games in terms of how interconnected they are (and the lack of maps, ugh). They really are some of the most naturalistic and engaging levels I've encountered in this genre of game.

The AI is surprisingly good. Almost obnoxiously so. Enemies will hide in order to ambush you, chase you if you flee, deflect some of your attacks, etc. Par for the course for modern video games, I suppose, but very cool in such a retro-styled indie game.

Like Prodeus, which I also loved, Amid Evil utilizes interesting techniques to create a visual style that simultaneously feels old-fashioned yet weirdly modern at the same time. This is reflected in the game's strange yet awesome mixture of 3D meshes and sprites to create nostalgic yet very detailed weapons that react to environmental lighting. The game apparently has ray-tracing support as well, although, having an AMD card, I haven't played with this at all.

I could easily see myself replaying this game in the future to collect all the achievements and really explore the intricate levels. Just a fantastic game created by developers who truly love the genre and understand what makes the best boomer shooters so gripping. So this is very much going back into the rotation to beat, at the very least.

After missing a bunch of them, I finally tried out a Wilds beta. I was pretty nervous going in because Rise / Sunbreak "fixed" a lot of my pain points I had in World (and the older games before that), and I knew much of that was being removed from Wilds, to bring it back more to a World like game.

After playing the beta, while on the surface it is much closer to World absolutely, this is probably the best out of the box game feel I've ever had with a Monster Hunter game. Yeah, even better than Rise, which was often quite convoluted to control because the silk based stuff was almost like its own entire combo tree on top of your existing weapon's combos. Wilds feels very streamlined because the silkbind is now gone, but it still retains much of Rise's feel otherwise, with Wilds combat just feeling so cleaned up and refined. It is hard to really articulate, you just gotta experience it.

I ended up landing on the Lance in Sunbreak, cause the the Master rank end quests were just so brutally difficult, but Glaive was always my main before then (it is really what made me fall in love with World) and after testing both Wilds Lance and Wilds Glaive. The Glaive for me is once again the apple of my eye. It just feels like the Insect Glaive has an identity again (as in Rise / Sunbreak, everyone could fire themselves into the air with Silkbinds, making it less clear what the Glaive really offered, beyond the clunky Extract micro management, which you could just avoid if you used literally any other weapon).

Lance has always been a counter based weapon, but its really pivoted to that now being its sole identity (unless they open the option to change moves around like Sunbreak offered deeper in the game) in Wilds, with much of its most high damaging moves and much of its new features (like the absolutely epic Power Clash) really only accessed through perfectly timed blocks. You probably could do a turtle and poke style of play if you wanted, with the core combo getting this new rapid hit poke at the end, but I feel like you'd be absolutely gutting your damage potential, and the Lance has never been a particularly high damage weapon to begin with.

After struggling with that for a while, I swapped over to the Glaive and had a very similar come to Jesus moment like I did back in World all those years ago. Just being able to vault away, rather than having to perfectly time my block to land the best counter or whatever, was just a much less frustrating, way more fun, way to play.

The Lance has come really cool new moves don't get me wrong, but I really love the new Glaive combos and moves, the new Focus Mode felt somewhat tacked on to the Lance, really only serving the the base function of Focus Mode, which is popping their wounds. Whereas with the Glaive almost all of the Glaive's best new stuff is all accessed through Focused Mode, unlocking awesome new combos, awesome new finishing moves and unlocking way easier, more organic, ways to access your extracts through your combo chains.

The only real blemish I could point out right now is the technical state of the Beta, which is really really rough. I just upgraded my PC to a bit of a monster so it never really affected my ability to play the game, but the performance to fidelity ratio felt utterly borked on my machine, so I can't imagine what it is like on a worse one. They have said they have made a bunch of improvements which are not present in the beta build, but will be in the live launch. We'll just have to see what happens, but I am kinda bracing for impact this might come in real hot.

In all other regards though, if I wasn't excited for Wilds already, I'm now chomping at the bit for it.

This looks like it is going to be the best Monster Hunter yet.

@Pizzamorg Interesting thoughts. I have never played a Monster Hunter game. I may have tried a little of one back on PSP, if I remember correctly, but it was just for a few minutes. And I played the Monster Hunter World demo a few years back, which was really overwhelming.

I’ve often wondered what a good jumping in point would be for the franchise/genre. MH Wilds looks like it could be a good point of entry for noobs, based on your description. Have you played Wild Hearts? It looked like a decent MH-like.

Yeah, Wilds at least based on the beta does feel like a nice middle ground between World and Rise.

I did try Wild Hearts, it was a technical mess, I thought monsters were horribly designed and balanced (it was brutally hard right out of the gate, not having the carefully tuned curve of escalation MH has refined over the years) and while the build mechanic was a cool new spin on things, in practice it was just all quite clunky and hard to use. When a monster was absolutely smashing my doors in, pounding me with unrelenting combos, the last thing on my mind was building a trampoline for some combo move. I do remember it having some unique weapons too like a massive parasol thing, so the ideas were there, it just needed like maybe another year or two in the oven.

Star Wars: the Force Unleashed (Steam) - Always wanted to play this back in the day, so I picked it up in a Steam sell a couple years ago, and have finally gotten around to it.

• Ultimately it was nice playing a pure action game that (while it did have a simple level up/upgrade system) was neither bogged down by a bunch of skill trees/RPG systems, uber difficult (though it has harder difficulties for those who want that), or bloated out into a 50+ hour slog. Just a lean, mean, fun time zipping & jumping around largely linear levels cutting down everything in your path & using absolutely busted force powers to ragdoll Stormtroopers across levels, bring down Tie Fighters, & even brutalize the biggest names in the franchise in humiliating ways that no one will probably be allowed to do again, lol.
  
  
  
• It definitely has it's fair share of rough edges (beyond just graphically), such as the fact there's so much to interact with that your powers will sometimes target the wrong thing, it's from the era where any large enemy (& boss) must be finished off with a QTE, and an outdated checkpoint system (there are mid level checkpoints you can retry from if you die, but they are only "soft saves" and you must retry the whole level from the beginning if you shut the game off before completing it. Only hard saves are in between levels), but again it's not a frustratingly difficult game in most cases (at least on it's "normal" equivalent setting) so these weren't deal breakers.
  
  
• The 3 DLC levels (which are included by default in the Steam version) are definitely the game's best though. These are "what if" scenarios that place you in some of the franchise's most memorable locations facing off against famous faces, and they seem to have a much better balance of combat & environmental puzzles solving to break things up (the main game levels are probably a 90%-10% split favoring combat, while the split is probably more 70%-30% in the DLC levels).
  
  
  

I’m currently playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

I’ll share some of my impressions after roughly five hours of significant playtime. So far, the game is great and has incredible writing and characters. The world is fleshed out in meaningful ways, and the choices you can choose to impact side quests aren’t always so cut and dry, and do feature reactive consequences, good or bad.

I also like the RPG mechanics, similar to Oblivion, where you level up your skills based on the amount of times you do something. It creates a unique experience tailored specifically for you, the player. My Henry is a charismatic, smooth talker, but not too bright in academia.

With all of that said, the opening hours after the prologue is brutal as hell. Not only is it overwhelming, but you are thrust into a world that doesn’t care about you at all. Narratively and gameplay wise, that’s cool; but for enjoyment sake, it’s difficult.

I’m personally struggling with getting by. I completed one side quest, Bad Blood, which was fantastic, but I feel like I’m barely experiencing the game due to how hard basic survival is. There aren’t many beds around that you can sleep in without getting in trouble by inhabitants, eating food is relatively difficult because you need a pouch in order to do so (I just found one), and combat encounters are difficult because there are multiple enemies, some of which have shields.

I did find Tom Cat, and was able to learn a few new techniques, but in order to learn the master strike, I have to duel him. Unfortunately, I can’t because I don’t have any proper armor, so now I need to find some. The game can feel like it doesn’t want you to succeed, and make it quite difficult to do so.

A part of me wants to give up on the game. But I know deep down that once I get past the initial hurdle(s), I will fall in love with it. Getting to that point, however, is exhausting. And thank goodness for save scumming—it has saved my life many times, and progress too.

@Kraven I'm finding it super easy conpared to KCD1, so stick with it and you'll get what needs to be done in certain situations and what needs to be avoided. Obviously I'm experienced with it, but with time and understanding comes more comfort, and it is a lot more forgiving once you get it.

Remember, you don't have to fight enemies, you can run away. Especially if you've yet to find armour.

Keep talking to NPC's and doing smaller side quests, really listen to everything they say ti get hints and also improve Henry's speech skills. Rent rooms in Inns when possible before travelling any great distance, and craft. Saviour schnapps are your saviour when you are out in the wild, they aren't really needed in towns when you can nap at inns.

If you follow one of the two main/side quests you will earn money and get skill improvments and a new bed. And it will add to the Role Play element too, as you try to find your way in the world.

When you talk to npcs on quests there's a lot of saves just from that, so don't waste your schnapps unless it really is required.

My Henry is already starting to feel OP, and I've not been grinding or following the main quests at all, beyond the initial segments. The game will reward you, and you will start to understand how best to play it with more time.

Yesterday I had a full 10 minute fight vs 4 bandits and still just scraped by, and by that point I'd found a few helmets, arm protection, gauntlets and chauses, so was reasonably well protected. So 4 on 1 is always going to be a challenge, best left for when you are comfortable with the game, and even still avoided unless you've got a save recently so don't mind a failure.

Keep pressing the L2 button to parry and dodge, and don't always riposte if you need to regain stamina, no matter how tempting it is to try and get a hit in, a lack of stamina is what kills you, even when protected in armour.

Always try to attack perpendicular to the opponent's defence, never attack at it or opposite it unless you are confident and have master strikes unlocked.

We believe in you, Henry 🫡

@Ravix Those are some good tips! I’m going to keep playing for sure. I think I need to take advantage of some more of the gameplay mechanics. I need to get a good grasp on alchemy, and also brew healing potions.

I also think I may have done myself a disservice in how I approached a couple of quests. It’s hinted to really pursue the blacksmith first, which I did, and then tackle the quests leading from him — going to Semine — but I didn’t do that. Instead, I completed Bad Blood and now I’m currently working on finding Mutt. In retrospect, I probably should have went to Semine first and subsequently the other quests. Nonetheless, here I am and I’ll make the best of it.

I’m also struggling a little bit with my equipment. It’s hard to really grasp as to what is the best clothing - head-ware, garments, trousers and shoes to wear. There are so many stats regarding each piece that it’s difficult to make heads or tails as to what’s the best option. Maybe this will be remedied once I acquire some proper armor.

@Kraven yeah, I think that's a fair summary. I did a bunch of stuff way before I should have too, but I'm a sicko and quite enjoyed wandering about with nowhere to stay other than the herb hut as it was challenging. But it is easier to get settled in and level up a bit with easier content, carrying sacks to level strength, blacksmithing for craft bonuses etc. And then quests that aren't combat based, like one you can pick up in Zheleov.

Just think of it as one outfit for surviving, travelling and fighting, so any padding or plate armour you can scrounge to layer up as much as possible, regardless of how bad it looks. Then some regular clothes where the only stat that matters is charisma for chatting to people in towns.

Padding helps against maces, plate helps against swords, running away helps against everything but ranged weapons 😅

Finished Avowed today.

Maybe its just because of the choices I made, but I thought the game ended on a bit of a whimper. It felt like much was left unresolved, or if not unresolved just sort of not given what felt like the right amounts of closure maybe? It is hard to really articulate, but I just felt a sort of hollowness at how it all closed.

The stuff that was given truly black and white answers I thought were gonna be red herrings because its like... surely that cant be the answer, that's been obvious since like hour two, how did no one else figure this out?!

To be clear, it doesn't ruin the experience, overall. And seeing the little post ending thing where you get to see the culmination of your choices set the fires alight inside of wanting to roll a new character and do it all over again with what I know now (not that there is time until Wilds releases).

It is funny, cause obvious comparisons will be made to Veilguard, and I sort of feel like Avowed fumbles in all the areas Veilguard succeeded. Veilguard was really carried by its excellent companions and its final act which left you on a crazy high. The absolute worst part of Avowed for me were the companions. I didn't think they were well written. I didn't find them useful in battle. They weren't woven into the experience well at all. Lots of parts of the game feel a little underbaked, but this aspect of the game is probably the one area where it just feels like it truly was not finished.

And yeah, I think Avowed did the right thing in keeping the game to around 40 hours in length if you are doing a mixture of side and exploring, but not trying to 100 percent everything and along the way story works fine in the moment to moment driving you forwards. There is no 20 hour slab of filler in the middle to drag the experience down, but there is also no moment of real hype to close the game on a high.

People have kind of pushed and pulled over how much Avowed is a true RPG, and I thought some of the choices you need to make along the way are excellent. Like sit and stare at your screen for minutes on end. Dreading to hit the choice. Being haunted by the decision you made hours later kind of stuff.

Maybe a lot of this will turn out to be smoke and mirrors on repeat playthroughs, but so were like 90 percent of the choices you made in BG3, so I can't knock Avowed for that. They did what they needed to do in making me feel like I was making meaningful choices that shaped the world in the moment. Nothing else really matters in this regard. But yeah, looking at the story as a whole piece once the final parts are slotted in, it ain't like... great. It served its function, and that is about it.

I will say overall, it is a game really carried by its strong moment to moment gameplay. A couple of patches which have adjusted the upgrade curve to make it a lot less oppressive was really the missing final piece for this. I hope future patches maybe rebalance how many skill points you get or perhaps introduce some more exciting loot (or just more exciting rewards for exploration in general, to be honest). But the important part is the core game feel is refined to near perfection.

I usually don't like first person melee, but it was my preferred way to play throughout. I see so many posts about magic, and like sure your magic is cool and all, but have you tried wielding two swords?!

It is also carried by excellent art direction - the game is truly gorgeous. The showcase piece I was longing for for my new PC. And it seems very well optimised, too. I know people complained online about crashes, I had just one crash and that was after the second patch.

So yeah, come to Avowed for the promise of a new Obsidian RPG. Stay for the excellent moment to moment game feel, the choices that will haunt you long after, the gorgeous world that invites you to always explore off of the beaten path with many wonders for you to discover and rejoice it'll get you in and out of the door in around 40 hours, never staying a minute longer than it needs to.