Recent reviews by The Gaming Hamster

During the course of Parliament of Knives, I become paranoid about the motives and machinations of the game's various characters.

For a Vampire: The Masquerade game this is all I could ask for. I would likely recommend this game if you are into the Vampire: The Masquerade series.

Is gud. Is spooky.

Game of the year, more like game of the century.

Deus Ex has to be the most engrossing game I have ever played. The environments really give off a sense of place which I haven’t really experienced elsewhere. Paired with an open ended gameplay system where the player has multiple options, this makes Deus Ex a game which respects the player and often reacts to the player. Even exploiting game mechanics (using LAM ladders) past their breaking points is acknowledged and allowed.

However, I do feel the need to warn about the fact that Deus Ex does have some jank, and that its introduction on liberty island can be a tough sell. I would say that the game really only endears itself once you make it to the hell’s kitchen levels.

One of the major selling points of Deus Ex to me is the sheer scale of content available. There are at least 6 major total conversion mods which follow the Deus Ex philosophy, and each of them are worth it. (Note: most of these mods are out of the steam client, and as such I have played more than 42 hours of Deus Ex.) The most affluent of the bunch is “The Nameless Mod” (TNM), which has to be the biggest inside joke ever constructed. It is literally a game about a digital construct of an internet forum which serves as a discussion board for Deus Ex. Even if you don’t like the mechanics of Deus Ex, playing TMN is worth it out of curiosity alone. There is nothing else like it.

Orwell: Stasi simulator

A fun and short arcade platformer. Plus it is free too.

Good content and presentation, mediocre gameplay.
Overall I would recommend on the basis of its interesting premise.

Best mod downloading simulator 2018

TL;DR Just play Bastion or Transistor – they have art-like visuals while still having engaging gameplay, something which Jotun fails at.

Jotun is when a game aspires to be art in the traditional sense. It pours all of its energy into artwork and its accompanying soundtrack while forgetting what makes games important – the gameplay. Sure, its got a story about Norse mythology and its amazing to look at, but it isn’t fun.
Usually a game which isn’t fun has a good excuse or trade-off, but the thing is Jotun doesn’t have one (at least in the foreseeable early stages). While it has its art aspect to fall back on it becomes stale quickly due to poor gameplay, which involves one of two things: Exploration and Combat.

Exploration
Basically, explore a vast (but empty in terms of interactivity) map in hopes of finding a rune for a glorified fetch quest which is the narrative. To make things worse your character’s walk speed is slow, which doesn’t contrast well against the large map sizes and zoomed camera. The devs tried to make amends of this with the map function, which can only be opened by pausing the game. Not only does this destroy the remainder of the not existent pacing of the game but the interface is tedious to use when studying all the one-way paths. (Did I mention that the levels are mediocrely designed, while sometimes bordering on the terrible?)

Combat
The bosses are basically hit point sponges which are able to decimate your health in two hits. Your combat isn’t any better, with your standard attack doing abysmal damage and your secondary taking forever to deploy – good luck hitting anything when it isn’t stunned. While this isn’t a huge issue of a lot of games dubbed “the dark souls of blank” – the fact that the combat gameplay is repetitious and for the most half a time waster completely removes any remaining potential of enjoyment from the game’s mechanics.

Overall it felt like Jotun was more of a university art experiment than a game, because of that I cannot recommend this for any person interested in gameplay which just happens to includes the majority of steam users.

This game was nominated for "The Whoooaaa Dude"... worst game ever

Steam really needs a Maybe button.

After finishing one of the endings of Deus Ex: invisible war one feeling came to mind: regret, while at the same time I was confused. Was this a good game? Was this a mediocre game? Or was this a bad game?

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the answer was none of the above.

At its best, it felt like the original Deus Ex.
At its worst, it was nearly unplayable (I'm looking at you: escape from Antarctica levels)

The game itself is broken from a Deus Ex standard: the levels are broken, the freedom of gameplay is limited, the sound design is worse than Deus Ex GOTY and many functions which made the original fun are reworked so that what made them interesting in the first place was gone.

Bearing this mind, the game (obvious down grade from the original) still surprised and even impressed me in certain points, and occasionally managed to capture the original's atmosphere.

Pros

-interesting story which follows Dues Ex.
-Contains many of characters from the previous Deus Ex game such as: Tracer Tong, JC Denton and friends.
-HUD, either you like it or you don't. I liked it.
-during the first acts: morality was actually tested and decision making somewhat mattered - I would go as far and say it was a slight improvement over the original

Cons
-Level design, unlike the original game which featured open levels suiting for every style of play. Deus Ex: invisible war only really suits guns-blazing gameplay. Oh and also the levels are mostly cramped corridors, so expect rocket spam in the later levels.
-Gameplay: it's just guns-blazing. So no stealthily ninja melee only (melee is broken) moments. Nuff said.
-worst jump ever.
-Voice acting: bland and uninteresting for the most part.
-music: bland and just a single cord been pressed for a minute. However, there are some interesting half-decent tracks present here and there.

-Simplification of mechanics: honestly expect the worst. Even after thoroughly researching the downsides of this game. I was still disappointed on so many levels. This is something you have to find out yourself.