Recent reviews by MaxRavenclaw

Another well done remaster to fill you with nostalgia. What more can we ask?

Bomber Harris, do it again!

I decided to finally pick this up while I waited for STALKER 2 to get more time in the oven post-release, but I’m honestly disappointed to say that this game is, sadly, a disappointment. And I’m not saying this as someone coming in expecting a STALKER or Metro experience. The game is clearly intended to be an exploration and crafting centered experience with a notable narrative focus and some horror elements, which is fine. If you go in hoping to run around some great environments, gathering resources, occasionally engaging or sneaking around enemies, and slowly building up your base, recruiting companions, managing their needs, etc. you’ll probably enjoy it. However, the inevitable narrative bits are going to throw a wrench into all that: the game forces you into unskippable walking-simulator levels riddled with exposition dumps often enough that it becomes annoying. I suppose these might be tolerable if you’re really invested into the story, but I don’t see this being any fun on subsequent playthroughs. Of course, the bigger issue is the writing. The writing is extremely ham-fisted, with plot details being revealed three times each. First you find clues on the various maps. A good game would let you put them together and leave it at that, but Chernobylite has you put on a technology-indistinguishable-from-magic exposition device that does it for you by somehow reconstructing scenes you never witnessed from the past (an attempt at a scientific explanation is made in another unskippable dream-like exposition dump scene, but it honestly makes no sense). And if that’s not enough, our voiced protagonist proceeds to explain it out lout to himself one more time. I have no idea who thought this would make for a good narrative experience.

Overall, not a great game. I can excuse the lackluster gunplay and other gameplay flaws since that’s not really the intent behind the game, but the writing cannot be excused.

Grind for the final mission. Spend all your money on improving the ship. Train every single one of your precious crew to skill level 12/12. Start the final mission. Fight your way to the final boss. Game: "Hit the self-destruct button". You do it. Ship explodes. Big boss explodes. Game: "Mission failed. All crew KIA." SuprirsedPikachu.jpeg.

Get a new ship and new crew, final mission is not complete. Grind some more. Train the crew again. Get to the final boss again. This time put them in escape pods. They all die anyway, but at least this time the game registers this as a success, somehow... Wanna play some more for achievements? Tough luck, you get a new ship and new crew again. Hope you like grinding some more. Sucks to be you.

Who the hell came up with this? Bomber Crew wasn't like that. You add QoL improvements for the Sequel In Space (TM) but then do this?!

In any case, even ignoring all of the above, this game Bomber Crew ain't. Go play that instead. It's better in every way except the QoL/difficulty options.

Depending on the scenario, or if the stars align, Talisman: Origins can be a fun and relaxing singleplayer experience. Sadly, more often than not, this is not the case. Between the bugs, terrible design decisions, and infuriating RNG, you might end up having to retry scenarios countless times just to finish them, not to speak of getting achievements.

Some tasks require you to draw cards that are so deep inside the deck it takes hundreds of turns to get to them. Others require very specific dice rolls in succession. And even if everything is just right, you might just be glitched out of an objective.

Many objectives are badly or insufficiently described, and there really aren't any guides out there to help you. Game is also excruciatingly slow. I played it at x2 or even x3 speed with a speedhack, but speeding it up too much risks triggering a bug where the game stops to think for increasingly long periods of time. It can even end up never finishing this process.

All in all, it can fun at times, but overall I can't recommend it. At best, get it on a big sale like I did.

The conclusion of Larian's growth as a developer and another entry in the short list of recent games that legitimately respect their players. We need more games like this.

Thought provoking, touching, moving, poignant is how I'd describe Slay the Princess. It is reminiscent of DDLC and Undertale, a must play for anyone with a heart and a taste for metaphors.

Finicky but fun.

One of the most beautiful games I've ever played. Still gets me emotional to this day.

As of April 2022, I can't recommend this game. I've played early access games before, and I know they can be buggy, but this is the first time the bugs actually irritated me. My first issue was with how the game handled progression, which IMHO is inconsistent, but I suppose that may be subjective so I won't insist on the matter. However, what isn't subjective is the multiplayer performance. I don't know if it's because of the network code or something else, but I've never experienced so many connection issues in a gaming session. Never mind not being able to host a dedicated server, playing Grounded with your friends will have you struggle with desyncs, crashes, disconnects, and rubberbanding. One of the more frequent and irritating issue was getting water droplets from grass. It bugged out like crazy. And as one final note, the achievements are also very buggy, often either not unlocking at all, or unlocking at a random intervals after you actually do what they request. All in all, I had my fun, but I can't in good faith recommend it. Wait for them to polish the game, it's too unpolished right now.

P.S. It's fine to use crappy textures and placeholders in areas that are in development, but if we're going to have to go through them in the current version, maybe put in a bit more effort. I admit this is nitpicking, but it did irk me when I had to go take a long detour through an area that was clearly not implemented and had low res textures to get on top of a chair and collect the collectables there.