Recent reviews by Wayward Son

A thoroughly mysterious adventure at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, one which is horrific, hopeful and poignant all in equal measure, SOMA remains, at least in this author's opinion, Frictional's magnum opus. This is the stuff of legend in more ways than one; not only does it stand on the shoulders of a very special giant but it plays, reads and sounds like any of the best TV horror shows of the last couple decades. It could easily be counted amongst the likes of Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, David Lynch's (requiescat in pace) Twin Peaks and Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story. Seeing the hapless, puppy dog-like Time Traveller being pursued by the hideous, sightless form of Terry Akers would not look remotely out of place in a Love, Death & Robots episode. This being said - because it is a video game after all - SOMA can count on its own unique characteristics to help drive it to that legendary status.

Attempting to resolve the mystifying terror that stands at the heart of the game is our hapless Canadian protagonist, Simon Jarrett, who is plucked from a relatively comfortable exam room chair in the 21st century and transposed into the 22nd century underwater hellscape that is Carthage Industries' PATHOS-II installation. Naturally, as one is when one is unknowingly sent forward through time, Simon is full to the brim with confusion, pestering the only other life form he can even remotely perceive as friendly, Catherine Chun, with questions and complaints at every swipe of our ubiquitously useful Omnitool, whilst simultaneously accepting her instructions because he really has little choice.

As the story progresses, every pitch-black corner and dimly-lit corridor of the facilities that make up this installation is a new journey, birthing new horrors that defy our imagination. Those that walk cannot be fought off or destroyed because the player character is not trained in martial arts or the use of weapons and in any case, being a civilian research project, there are no weapons to be found in PATHOS-II. Those that simply lie around, waiting to die alone in their mechanical misery, can only be looked upon with a mixture of pity, disgust and sorrow, with the possibly vain hope that disconnecting them from their power sources will finally end their suffering. Functionally this game is certainly a walking simulator, however it's a walking simulator that keeps making you want to continue walking and, in the case of beings like Terry Akers and Jin Yoshida, run.

In the event, it's not actually our imagination that gave rise to these horrors but that of one of our creations: the Warden Artificial (Intelligence) Unit. Responsible for maintaining certain mechanical functions throughout PATHOS-II, critically, the WAU is not truly an antagonist in this story. Unlike HAL 9000, it is not sentient and cannot think for itself, at least not in the way that we would perceive "thought", and therefore is not truly responsible for the misery created in PATHOS-II. In fact, because it's a machine that is merely following a protocol it was programmed to follow, the WAU is almost as hapless as Simon is. The moulding of the WAU in this anti-villain archetype is a deliberate, game-defining developer decision in order to drive to the surface the following core question: what does it mean to be Human?

The answer is, as one would hopefully expect, left completely up to the player. There is no real hand-holding or agenda-driving here, beyond the bare minimum necessary to accelerate the plot to its inevitable conclusion, a conclusion that's left with only one version rather than multiple as some other games of this type offer. There are no dialogue options either, primarily because our role as Simon means we have a fixed, fully pre-determined character, secondarily because the game is actually directing every facet of itself towards that inner voice behind the monitor - the one that grimaces at the sounds in voice logs and the horrific descriptions of events in e-mails littered throughout the environment. Thankfully, the lack of choice in the game does absolutely no harm to its conduct.

There are no genuine complaints I can level at this work of art. It remains excellent to look at and wander through, achieving frame-rates well over 120 at the highest level of quality, at basically any resolution and refresh rate. Nor is it a particularly difficult endeavour to complete, with my play-time at 20 hours representative of my choice to explore thoroughly and at a fairly slow pace. Certain players might take umbrage with the substantial chromatic aberration that occurs when Simon's health states are damaged, particularly if they suffer from visual issues, however, quickly finding what I can only call a "healing tunnel" (in preference to a somewhat ruder analogy) which are proliferated throughout the game, is a very simple method of resolving this.

Ultimately, SOMA is a deeply satisfying adventure with more profound meaning attached to it than most games one might play throughout one's lifetime. It's constructed from the same narrative mould that powered Amnesia: Dark Descent to fame and yet it does so with a life force and method all of its own account, convincing the player with powerfully persuasive arguments to see through the grim journey of Simon to its end. Whether that end is one of light or one of darkness, well, that's up to you to decide.

Set against the backdrop of a Nordic land plunged into darkness through the actions of a grief-stricken King, the game is as a fable told to the player via gentle narration as we guide the hapless Olle through multiple trials on his quest to save his sister. The loop of play is simple enough: move from one area to the next, wisely avoiding various traps, pitfalls and trolls as you go. Lightweight boss fights serve to break each bite of the story into chapters; from confronting a drowned musician who insists on trying to yeet us off the rocks and preventing a deranged midwife from entreating rituals that result in deceased infants to repeatedly stabbing a very naked witch without a prompt to stop, as well as being forced to avoid the sharp ends of very large pieces of cutlery ourselves, it's fair to say our Olle is having a seriously bad case of the Mondays.

While it's not a triple-A product in the conventional sense of the term, I guarantee you Bramble looks every bit as good as one. The environment is, in stark contrast to games such as Little Nightmares, Limbo or Inside, full of colour and life. Verdant grassy meadows sway around Olle while sombre notes ring out and gnomes adorned with red pointy hats struggle in the surroundings, sometimes joyfully, more often fearfully. Indeed, sweet and peaceful downtime emerges between the horrors of Olle's tale but it is short and ultimately uneasy. Importantly though, it serves to highlight what Olle is really fighting for: not just his sister's salvation but peace for himself as well as the other creatures and beings who inhabit this strange land. Far from actually being a caricature of an anxiety-ridden child, the very journey he embarks upon proves that he is much more alike his sister than the narrator initially lets on.

The only complaint I can reasonably level against Bramble is that it's a very short game with little replay-ability: I personally would do perhaps two play-throughs at most, three tops, even that much would likely only be for streaming purposes. However in my view this is worth the cost of purchase, especially so if you enjoy playing adventure games of this style.

We've come a long way, haven't we? From sniping Russians in St Petersburg to strangling drug pushers in Chile, from recovering idols for a South American tribe to burning a man alive in the sauna of a Budapest hotel, from infiltrating a BDSM party in a meat production factory to assassinating the Vice President of the United States. Yes we've come a long, long way. Truth is there isn't really any other game like Hitman. Yes, there are games that have you shoot and beat and kill but there is essentially nothing to compete with this. Thankfully, IOI consistently pushes out what are incredible games revolving around the murderous world of quite possibly gaming's best anti-hero. Except Absolution but we don't talk about that.

Before we go any further, I'm-a say one thing: I still consider Hitman Blood Money to be peak Hitman. The combination of mission setup, the complexity of the hits themselves, the varied environs and the way the story is told makes it simply the best game in the franchise, in my strong opinion.

But boy oh boy, does Hitman 2016 come a close second. First of all, this is the most polished Hitman ever. It's no surprise to see this game being used as a standard in multiple GPU benchmark systems; it looks absolutely beautiful. Whether you're gazing land-ward at the lush green hills on the Amalfi Coast, marvelling at the crowds busying the alleyways of Marrakech, their eyes glued to TV screens or watching paper 灯籠 soar up into a snowy Hokkaido sky, it's abundantly clear that IOI spared no expense on graphical fidelity.

It's also smoother in other, more subtle ways. AI is significantly improved over previous iterations. You do not, for instance, have an all-access pass anymore and you will be noticed much more readily by other individuals who can ostensibly tell whether you're supposed to be wearing a particular disguise or not. Targets are responsive and will become suspicious if you stay in their presence for too long without good reason, and they will go into outright lock-down if it becomes apparent that their safety is threatened.

As ever, the freedom of how you choose to go about the art of assassination is entirely up to the player and you can be as ruthless or as professional as you deem fit. Mission environs are not particularly big - not as outrageously horizontal as Bjarkhov Bomb or as vertical as Traditions of the Trade, for just two examples - however they are very finely focused and the system of opportunities means there is never a shortage of methods by which your targets may be killed.

Of course, there are the usual ways of killing targets you will likely be familiar with; strangling, poisoning, suppressed gunshots and so on. However the game challenges you and encourages you even, via mastery levels, to apply ever more insidiously creative methods to ensuring those red crosshairs don't get away with the bad things they've done or will do. The mission-unique mastery challenges can be particularly fun - I never thought I'd see the name Cottonmouth uttered in a Hitman context.

Agent 47 (although it's difficult to tell whether he's really an agent anymore) is also more capable than ever. The initial review season comparisons to Jason Bourne are apt: 47 can engage in close-quarters combat now, even faking surrender if compromised only to spring into action with a couple of dull thuds to the stomach and face. He's also more athletic than ever, vaulting all manner of obstacles and hanging indefinitely from ledges and pipes. In addition, non-lethal knockout via stranglehold is an extremely useful mechanic and he can throw objects with pinpoint (some might say lock-on) accuracy, for example by forcefully re-locating a scalpel from its natural position on a clinical gurney to the cranium of an unsuspecting individual.

Where Hitman 2016 is concerned, game performance is sometimes cited as a con and sometimes cited as a pro. All I will say on this apparently subjective matter is that using a R5-1600/RTX 2070S combo with a mix of high and ultra settings I get upwards of 60fps, usually flitting between 90 and 150, at 144hz on a 1080p monitor. The DRM is...there. It's neither a pro nor necessarily a con it's just an unfortunate part of the game. Put it this way: if you don't have a reliable internet connection, you may well run into problems. Really the only main con I have with the game is that it's too short and I didn't particularly enjoy its episodic nature. I would've preferred to have a few more missions and for all of them to be released at once, which I suppose is asking a fair bit for a niche game but it's fair all the same. Other than that, it's a solid thumbs up.

This is not the Fallout game you're looking for.

Hard to believe it but the hype, exemplified by an absolute wall of "let's go pal" comments during the Twitch reveal stream all those years ago, doesn't match the game we got in the end. It's important first to establish that this really is not the Fallout game you were most likely looking for.

For starters, it's absolutely not an RPG; Bethesda have opted for a very open-ended progression system where the player isn't tied down to one particular skill set. There's power creep galore because it's incredibly easy to level up and because of the lack of a hard level cap you can basically collect every single perk and max out your attributes. Skill-checks are gone, for those same reasons.

Your choices don't matter whatsoever because the quests - both main and side - are surprisingly linear and offer no differentiation. Part of the reasoning for this is completely absurd: you only get four dialogue options at any one time and, perhaps more insultingly, these are usually confined to some variant of "yes", "no", "tell me more" and "persuade". The character customisation options, a staple of any RPG, are deeper this time around and your character even speaks instead of being a mute their whole life but the lacking dialogue simply ruins this novelty completely.

It doesn't end there, there are other frustrating aspects to the game. One of the game's factional plot-lines revolves around you being the leader of the Minutemen, a militia interested in the defence of the common man. There's just one problem with this: you're asked to babysit every single settlement that you take under your wing, so much so that it's now become a common meme. There's no interface for sending a squad of Minutemen to a location to defend it, the game just wants you to either defend every one of the settlements yourself or beef up their security systems, making the whole exercise feel like you really don't command ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Speaking of plot-lines, all the quests are utterly boring and the characters poorly written. I actually can't think of a memorable quest, not in 30 hours of play-time on Steam nor in another 30 on my console. I suppose there is the Museum of Witchcraft with the game's solitary moment of horror but even that was an opportunistic set-piece that's got nothing to do with any quest.

One of the game's main features is settlement building, though why Bethesda headed in this direction I have no idea. I mean, it's kinda fun at first I suppose, being able to plug together different pieces of walls and roofs and sticking some ornaments all over them to add to the aesthetic beauty. But it's ultimately a chore, as you have to go foraging for vast amounts of materials in the first place in order to build this crap. I just can't see what it's added to the game and more to the point, I can't see why the developers spent so much time and resources on implementing it when the previous method of purchasing existing properties which you could modify was satisfying enough.

There are pros, they just don't come anywhere near to cancelling out the cons. Gunplay is faster and more tactical since the AI has been vastly improved from the utterly stupid enemies in previous games, i.e. they use cover and no longer slowly walk at you firing away, plus the display of firepower is deeper with a ♥♥♥♥-ton of customisation options for weapons even without the aid of mods. Combat is difficult at first, in large part because the game won't hold your hand if you walk into an area full of higher-level enemies. But because of the aforementioned power creep, there comes a threshold where you will end up trouncing anything and everything the game throws at you. Right at the start, for instance, the game gives you a suit of power armour and a minigun...

Power armour, oh boy. It's actual power armour this time, as in not only do you need a means of energy to keep them fuelled up (fusion cores) but it actually feels like you're wearing an exo-skeleton, sound design and all. The first time you step into one it will feel pretty epic. But Bethesda even managed to ♥♥♥♥ up here as well. See, power armour suddenly doesn't require any Brotherhood training and consequently everyone and their mother can step into a top of the line, sweet as cherry pie T-45. They're dotted around the world in numbers, either being worn by NPCs or abandoned, so they lose their lustre very quickly indeed. It's also unfortunately another part of the power creep, since once you step into one you just won't die unless you kill yourself or otherwise act stupid.

It's sad to see this is the Fallout we got, wide as an ocean but deep as a swimming pool.

If you're clued in to gaming news much, you'll have heard the absolute fiasco that No Man's Sky started out as in 2016. Features were promised in the game which did not materialise and people were understandably annoyed. However, the team at Hello Games worked to resolve the issues with the game, releasing update after update and feeding content into it over the following three years. You might be wondering at this point what the hell Rome II has to do with NMS.

Well, three years earlier, Rome II released to much fanfare (the first Rome was a highly acclaimed game, widely praised) and fell far short. Optimisation was a serious problem, which plagues the game to this day, while graphically it struggled to hold a candle to the timeless classic Shogun II. However, much like Hello Games, Creative Assembly remained engaged with the game, updating it with new content both free and paid as well as upgrading it to look smoother and more realistic compared to the games that followed it.

Unfortunately, the practice of releasing a lot of DLC with every game they create is an ongoing problem with CA. A lot of people will say that they need to make money with such limited games (the fundamental Total War formula has not changed since Shogun I and CA has only recently started to expand into developing other games) which is a fair point.

But it's the scope of the DLC that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth; at least with regard to historical titles I would personally prefer more campaign packs and fewer faction unlock packs, which I believe should be rolled into multi-faction packs instead of singular "culture" packs. The overwhelming majority of the time these packs will not offer anything substantially different between one and another, with the biggest change coming with starting position.

For all the flaws that plagued it, Rome II is at least as fun to play as any other current Total War entry, certainly with mods at least. The family tree is a well-worked, if relatively simplistic, mechanic and diplomacy is fairly strong, if unintelligent compared to Three Kingdoms, while you can expect the usual satisfaction of wiping enemy stacks in tactical combat.

There is considerable unit variety if you install the right mods, such as Radious, which definitely indulges the idea that not all hoplites are created equal, and there can be some very intriguing campaigns with mods that alter the game in more radical ways, such as Divide et Impera. Overall this is a solid TW entry. If you can look past the DLC offerings, none of which are critical, then there's a good game to be played here.

When you set foot in the game and play your first two hours, you can see pretty quickly why Post Scriptum can only scrape together about a thousand or so players at the weekend during a global pandemic. I've previously reviewed this game through both a negative and positive lens but unfortunately I think it's finally time to put down my canteen, so to speak, and tell the truth as straight as it comes.

And the truth is, PS is too hardcore for its own good. Whether it's having to rack the bolt after every shot or having to go through pretty extensive reading material to figure out how everything actually works, the game just isn't fun to play. And I mean that in the most literal sense: it is not entertaining to do any of the activities in this game. I don't feel exhilaration when I start slinging shots downrange out of my M4's barrel at enemy armour. I don't feel giddy when I've set up my MG-42 on a tripod to establish overwatch across the Café Normandie capture zone. I don't feel satisfied when I hose down an enemy with a Grease Gun in close-quarters, house-to-house fighting.

Why? Honestly, it feels like a job. It just feels workman-like, rather than entertaining. Ordinarily this might not be problematic by itself but when you are stuck at loading screens half the time because of extremely poor optimisation, it simply becomes a chore. Some people clearly get off on this kind of simulation of warfare but I don't, and I'm definitively a military history buff. It's pretty clear that Periscope and Offworld have tried to replicate their Squad formula in a WWII setting. It's worked out mostly well I'd say. But Squad is not actually that popular itself and enjoys only a similarly niche following, not least because it's been in early access for so long it's already had its heyday.

At this point you might ask "well, what exactly are you expecting then?" Well quite a lot actually. Has it occurred to anyone that we still don't have that wide-ranging WWII warfare game we all seek? That in 2020 we still lack combined arms warfare in the holy trinity of the Western, Eastern and Pacific fronts, within a single game? Nowadays, when even EA's mighty Battlefield has completely and utterly failed, abysmally given the sheer amount of potential content, to deliver on its promises, the door could not be open any wider for a hot new piece of ass to take the floor right out from under every other WWII game out there. And yet.....

If this and the likes of Hell Let Loose and Verdun are any indication, it seems all developers are interested in is some kind of authentic recreation of WWII. This is fine but it doesn't necessarily mean they need to go balls-to-the-wall hardcore with every piece of the game's mechanics. All that succeeds in doing is ensuring that huge proportions of the potential player base end up staying well away from the game. If they were to look at combining the best bits of both genres, you would have one hell of a best-seller on your hands. But I'm certainly not holding my breath.

So what is actually positive about Post Scriptum? Well they've done their homework, that's for sure. The guns all sound incredibly authentic and the audio on the whole is done to perfection. Ballistics, again, is incredibly authentic and done to perfection. The maps, being largely true to life, are constructed wonderfully and contain a mix of wide-open fields with farms, concentrated urban neighbourhoods and, with the latest update, a near-perfect replication of Utah Beach and Carentan. It all comes with adequately European architecture.

Section and class select is implemented just fine, obviously you will need a microphone to communicate or you risk getting kicked from the server even if you're contributing to the fight. It's not at all fun to be booted just for lacking a mic but them's the breaks and there are no official servers so you will always have to play by somebody else's rules.

Graphically the game's nothing to write home about. It looks nice enough but there's no equivalent to "levolution" for example and all manner of obstacles are completely resistant to weapons fire. There are also, in a bizarre but almost certainly performance-related twist, no windows on anything at all. No windows on shops, no windows on houses, no windows to be found anywhere. Yeah I know you might not care about that triviality but it's terribly immersion-breaking because it causes this drip-drip feeling that you're really playing some old Source game to come through.

I take no pleasure in saying that Post Scriptum isn't the game you're looking for to satiate your WWII hunger in the aftermath of BFV's downfall. But it has to be said because we need less of these games and more attempts at reaching for the sky; we need to finally bring the gospel of WWII to the modern gamer with outstanding graphics but more importantly outstanding mechanics.

A thrilling metal beat will assault your ears while you're dishing out punishment at breakneck-speed to a very familiar roster of demonic bastards. The weapons are familiar too, whether it's the hefty kick of the double-barrelled shotgun or the spine-tingling, post-reload whine of the plasma rifle, you'll find no shortage of pleasure in deploying the arsenal of The Doom Slayer. There's a healthy growth of lore to the adventure this time too, delivered via grizzled voice-over by some demonic scribe or another.

It's hard to find any true faults with Doom. Its plot is nothing special and, grafted on like a Cyberdemon's arm cannon, it serves more than anything else to add flavour and break up combat scenes. One might miss the "true" BFG, its room-clearing singularity unmatched by the modern version's slightly meek chain lightning, but one will have fun none-the-less.

Twice I've reviewed this game negatively and twice I removed it in the hope that the game was about to prove me wrong. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. The bedrock for a great tactical shooter is there, from the powerful feeling of weapons fire to the ingenious method of weighted equipment selection all the way down to the extraordinarily accurate audio, however the developers are approaching the whole post-release process of updating the game in such a lazy manner that it's actually shocking this game still has a very positive overall rating. I can understand players wanting to overlook the game's lack of content injection, such as new maps and weapons. I personally cannot, given the small number of maps and weapons to begin with. But content aside, I can't understand players wanting to overlook bugs; the game is still rife with them despite being out of early access for quite some time now.

They are fairly wide-ranging and intensive bugs as well. We're talking about things such as invisible enemies in co-op here (which is only funny the first time you see an AK-47 wandering through mid-air like Mary ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Poppins told it to), collision detection issues which lead to guns getting stuck in doors and walls, issues with the player joining games and having the class select screen break completely, the player getting stuck in the environment and being unable to jump or scrape out, weapon mod textures sometimes take too long to load in (meaning you could use your zoom function and potentially not actually see the scope itself nor crosshairs). The list can and should go on but I get the feeling it won't really convince people to go back and change their reviews.

I think overall Sandstorm is a bit of a failure of vision. This game isn't all that different to the original, it has to be said, and although there is admittedly a little more than just a change of scenery I don't think it's enough to justify being a whole separate game. The lack of bug-fixes and slow drip-feed of additional content is kind of proof of this, in that they are struggling to actually bring us an enhanced Insurgency experience. Like I said, the bedrock of an excellent tactical shooter is definitely there. But it needs a lot of work, which I'm not entirely convinced the developers even want to put in.

Bearing in mind I am definitely a historical-leaning player and would gladly take Medieval III before another fantasy entry, it's impossible not to feel a sense of awe as your armies march across the plains towards the enemy in Total War Warhammer. Monstrous infantry. Flying beasts. Doomfire artillery. We're quite literally a whole world away from the trebuchets and scorpions, the hoplites and levy spearmen of that 'other' Old World. This is undoubtedly a must-have game for fans/players of the tabletop game and if you enjoyed Medieval II's Third Age then you'll be right at home here too.

Environmentally-speaking, the map is beautiful. It's faithful to the art trotted out for the development of the tabletop game and the written words of the Black Library. The White Castle of Couronne stands as a shining Bretonnian beacon in the West and from the East spreads the never-ending corruption of the Vampire Counts, while beyond the Sea of Claws, fierce Norscan tribes battle among the blizzard-blasted crags of the Chaos Wastes. In battle, you'll note the pleasant Gothic architecture of Altdorf as you march on it, marvel at the great stone walls of Everpeak as your Dwarven gyrocopters sally forth and glare with caution at the tendril-swathed natural fortifications of Athel Loren.

Mechanically, too, they've struck a deft balance between the many varied units available to deploy. Spearmen are the ever-steadfast answer to the vile beasts of the Old World, while armoured infantry equipped with great weapons can deliver destructive armour-piercing damage. Hellfire Batteries, Great Cannons and Blessed Trebuchets offer no shortage of long-range options. Vanguard cavalry are fast and excellent for harrassing the enemy- just don't let those deadly Warhounds close in...at least until your flying Pegasus cavalry get there anyway!

Heroes, which come in the form of such entities as great knights, shamanic spell-casters and scholar-warriors, replace the old line of champions and spies, offering some fascinating gameplay options. Do you deploy your hero to gain a much-needed provincial bonus, thus keeping them out of play? Or do you embed them with the army about to siege Mousillon, knowing they can dispatch to Sigmar a great many of the endless zombie horde before mortality beckons? They could perhaps be better balanced, as just like Rome II's champions they tend to be more dangerous with unit assaults than would ordinarily be possible. Otherwise, they're excellent additions and fit in well with the lore.

There are still some balancing issues with the game, sure. Siege battles could do with some work, in terms of zones of control. It does feel like some factions such as the Norsca and Wood Elves verge on OP at times. Diplomacy is, as with most of the franchise's entries, more troublesome than fun. But overall there's an unforgettable experience to be had here. And on a final note, if you find yourself in possession of both current Warhammer games, Mortal Empires is the "classic" Total War experience in Warhammer form. Gone are the missions and quests of ages past, replaced with the raw deathmatch conditions of faction against faction, god against god.