Recent reviews by Maindrian

Frequently beautiful, sometimes haunting and oppressive, gorgeous soundtrack and most importantly, an extremely satisfying shotgun. POW.

Aside from a few slightly annoying platforming sections and moments where the way forward isn't immediately clear, it's a dreamy head trip I wouldn't mind taking again. A game obviously made with passion and love. I think it might be in among my favourites of 2020.

Deserves to find a bigger audience.

While quite short, it's a tad more substantial than Lost Coast and is a fun little journey. Well worth your time.

Chunky and satisfying, oh yes.

All in all, I enjoyed this from the playtest and I'm enjoying it now in early access, my one complaint (weedy rocket launcher splash damage) feels like it's been addressed. Hulshult's music is top notch as you'd expect. A gore soaked chuckle, great fun. Can't wait to start messing about with the level editor.

A gorgeous looking mess.

Hitman: Absolution is the first in the series that I flat out gave up on trying to play it the proper way and started playing like a cover shooter. The good levels are few and far between, lost in a mess of "cinematic" events and linear boredom. This is a crying shame because the mechanics of the whole thing are a treat and when they work, they do work wonderfully.

The problem with this one is story. It gets in the way. You'll score perfect headshots on targets and then immediately get launched into stupid cutscenes where they'll deliver huge soliloquys before spitting their last breath. All of the characters are obnoxious cartoon idiots, ala the GTA series.

"YEEHAW, I'LL DO A LITTLE DANCE NOW BECAUSE MY MOTION CAPTURE ACTOR WAS TOLD 'GO BIG'! YEEEHAAAW!"

The worst of that is, we're never really given any reason to take this fools gallery as a serious threat. They're just a bunch of pathetic, bumbling clowns in the face of Agent 47's stone-faced murder master. There's also a little girl, who's got no personality whatsoever, but you're supposed to care about her because... Well, who cares. There's a guy with a weird robot hand, possibly because they couldn't think of any other way to make him even remotely memorable.

I think the moment I snapped, the moment my brain decided "Hey, you know what, crack out the guns, let's end this as fast as possible"? The latex bondage nuns. A level that, if you removed it from the game, would have no impact whatsoever on the story. It's just there because... Latex bondage nuns, I guess. Ooh, edgy.

If you skip from Blood Money to Hitman 2016, you will miss out on nothing. This is Hitman as designed by and for those with head injuries.

It's still very pretty though.

So much Barry Burton goodness. This is basically the game I've been wanting since 1996 and it didn't disappoint. Can't say much for the episodic format since I decided to wait it out until all four episodes were available, but I could imagine it being an annoying wait. Taken as one nice big lump of weekend gaming though, solid fun.

Would it be redundant to call it the best in the series since 4? Very probably. It's hard to top something that includes a seqence devoted to agitatating a midget, but just having Barry spitting out old lines at JUST the right moments makes me a happy boy. The combat is as solid as an RE game needs, the puzzles and locations are great and even the characters I thought would be irritating are fine. Claire has a little personality now!

The extra episode The Struggle is a surprising tearjerker as well.