Recent reviews by RapidLeopard

Project Borealis is ambitious. It seeks to imagine what Half-Life 2: Episode 3 could have been like had it actually come to fruition. The development team is small and their effort and commitment to such a goal is commendable.

Attempting to truly capture perhaps the most anticipated and demanded video game sequel of all time is no small task. It is a very unenviable position for the developer. There is a great deal of expectation of what the final product should look and feel like. Whatever choices are made and however good they are, there will still be places where the game doesn't play how people expect it to.
They chose to undertake this monumental task, for no charge.

Taking all of this into account, I still feel like this demo is a letdown, for a few key reasons.

It feels that priorities and effort have been put in the wrong places. Making the game look good, wind physics, snow deformation, etc. are all *part* of the overall feel of a video game, but not central to it. Despite being in development for about *7 years*, the gameplay feels clunky and generic. I would have much rather seen time spent refining the gunplay, introducing new features, or even simply working on adapting the leaked story.

From the looks of things, it seems that the game has hardly progressed in this regard since the initial game-play teasers 6 years ago. This is concerning. The game screams Unreal Engine at you while you're playing and feels unrefined and janky.

I believe that the commitment to Unreal as the engine of choice was a mistake. In these last 7 years, it seems that they've only succeeded in making a semi-competent replica of Source engine.

Not only have they bit off more than they could chew by doing this, but it also demonstrates a lack of forethought about the expectations and direction of the game. You would assume that if they're going for a different engine, they'd be differentiating this from the original. The fact that they're attempting to make the game look and feel like it's still source (down to the menu!) makes this change hard to justify. If they wanted to make a game look and feel like source, they should have picked source.

This development hell has resulted in this game being in a weird limbo. Game technology has progressed, Half-Life: Alyx has released, and this game is still stuck in early development.

It feels sad to say, but this demo has quite significantly killed my optimism for this project as a whole. I wholeheartedly want to see it succeed. I hope that there is more going on behind the scenes than just this demo. I hope the devs stick with it and do what they can to see it through, lest we get stuck with yet another canceled Half-Life 2 Ep. 3.

A masterpiece combining engaging co-operative game-play and an immersive atmosphere, Barotrauma is a must play game for a group of 3+ friends to play.

Honestly, I'm disappointed,

When I saw the announcements for a remaster of one of my favorite games of all time, I was thrilled to say the least. In short, this is a purely graphical remaster that often makes the game look even worse than the original. It's not polished at all. This is something you would expect a free mod to pull off.

Perhaps I'm being harsh, when you set out to make a remaster of a masterpiece and charge 30 euros for the thing, you'd expect it to be built from the ground up, something that could compete with 2020 graphics while staying true to the original. This remaster completely fails at that. It's literally just Mafia 2 with some mild adjustments.

I honestly really hope they fix it, and I really really hope that this doesn't reflect how the Mafia 1 remaster is going to turn out in any way, this is a joke.

If this product was free to get I wouldn't be writing this review, even better, if it was a mod I wouldn't be writing this review. The fact you get this product for free if you have the original Mafia 2 does NOT make this any more acceptable.

If you want to play Mafia 2 with better graphics, install a mod and save yourself the 33 GB download and the 30 euro price tag if you don't already own Mafia 2.

Everything in this game clicks.

The world building is incredible

The dialogues and characters feel real

Each character has their own personality

The progression of the game feels natural -

- and so much more

This is one of those games you think about for hours after completing it.
I can't wait to see what the full game has to offer.