Recent reviews by beeofdoom

BMW is a good game, production value is quite high, and it's easily the best looking of the post Elden-Ring souls-likes; however it doesn't do much to evolve the gameplay and it may be hard to connect with the story if you aren't into Chinese mythology. I would play Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Lies of P, or A.I. limit before Wukong, (probably Khazan as well). All of these show a bit more creativity in either gameplay systems or world design than Wukong.

There's a few challenging bosses, notably Yellow Loong, Scorpion lord, and the end bosses, (it's worth it do do the secret level and fight the secret boss if you're going to play through the game anyway), but the vast majority of the bosses you really don't have to practice and learn their move sets.

7 out of 10, possibly worth your time if you're a fan of action/souls-likes, but not the strongest in this genre.

Barotrauma is an easy recommendation for Gamers that enjoy deeply technical mechanics-based games. Expect to spend hours reading wikis on crafting recipes, game mechanics, and sub customization. Bot AI handles about 80% of what you would want, making single player fairly hectic, but absolutely completable. Multiplayer has the opposite problem, where human players can easily get bored with the long stretches with nothing to do. Ideally, hopefully in a sequel, they will design co-op play so that you can assign multiple crew members to a single player.
8 out of 10. Other games that you should consider if you enjoyed Barotrauma: Darkest Dungeon, Lobotomy Corporation, Stranded: Alien Dawn

Easy recommendation for fans of difficult exploration games. The game ran smoothly with no crashes nor obvious bugs. Though I do suspect their algorithm for stamina drain does have a couple edge cases that aren't well handled.

The survival elements are minimal, and mostly involve just making sure you have scavenged enough supplies before starting a difficult lengthy climb. If you miss a spot to camp or forage, it's very easy to run low on food/water. They mostly serve as time pressure, water sources are more plentiful, but food is very limited except in a few spots on the mountain, and if you take too long in between these sections you can run out.

Some quick tips to help with some of the mechanics that are not well explained:
- Turn on 'Good Grip Feedback' in the game settings, this will give you a visual indicator when you have a solid limb placement, it's very easy to *think* you have a good hold that the game didn't actually register without it.
- Switch the 'manual limb control' to something deterministic that is not dependant on the camera view, the default is not very intuitive and when Aava is mid climb and about to run out of stamina you don't want to be fiddling with the UI to select the right limb to quickly adjust.
- Heat up all your liquids at camp sites, even just plain water. Warm fluids, (or cooked food), will stay hot for 24 minutes and allow you hydrate and refill your warmth gauge allowing you to keep climbing at night or in cold weather, this is important because of my next point.
- Aava doesn't actually need to 'rest' at camp sites, and generally you shouldn't bother with sleeping/passing time as it drains your food and water gauge, and food especially is limited in large sections of the mountain. (There's a few spots where you can harvest unlimited food, but space in your backpack is limited)
- Do make it a point to find the 'Troglodyte Guardian Pitons' during your ascent. Normal Pitons have a chance to break every time you use them, but the Guardian Pitons, (there are 3 total), never break, and can be used in some of the 'hard stone' sections that are too hard for normal pitons. Once you have one or two of these you can always have a couple safe resting spots on a long climb without fear of losing your breakable normal pitons.

Wuchang is a good game, but lack of balancing in a few key areas hold it back from greatness.
The easy positives to mention first:

Graphically and art wise it's gorgeous, almost as pretty as Black Myth Wukong
Performance was fantastic on a 9070 XT at full detail, in Ultrawide resolution, but did require some fiddling around with Optiscaler.
No bugs nor crashes during my playtime.

I really liked the way they handled respec and really liked that rather than levelling up individual weapons, you slot points on your progression grid to do more damage with ALL weapons of that type.

Level design was fantastic, with tons of secrets to find, shortcuts to unlock and some pretty good environmental traps and ambushes. I died more just exploring the environment than any other Souls-like save Nioh2.

The first of the 2 biggest areas Wuchang fails at is balancing of the skills in the weapon trees. Some skills are just too powerful to ever replace, (clash is one of these), and will make your build much weaker if you don't use them.

The second biggest problem is that by around the 60-70% completion part you're able to trivialize a lot of the combat. There are a few moderately challenging bosses, and there are some 'elite' monsters that offer a challenge, there just aren't enough of them until the very end of the game.

Overall it's a good game, but ensure you have completed all the From games and Nioh2 before playing it. Difficulty wise it's pretty comparable to Lies of P, but I think P has a couple harder bosses in the DLC.

Much like 'Lies of P', a competent AA souls-like with some flaws. Combat is faster paced than 'P' and Sync gauge is an interesting alternative to the Stamina system that most of these games employ.

The biggest problem with the game is that navigation becomes extremely difficult due to the way they laid out the UI for warping around the levels. There is a LOT of optional/hidden content, which was fun to find, but made navigation confusing. I had to consult our own AI overlords to ask "I just did this, where the ♥♥♥♥ do I go next!?" multiple times to find the progression route.

Like 'P', most of the bosses are pretty straight forward for experienced gamers, with the notable exceptions of 'Hunter of Bladers' and optional boss Ursula. I enjoyed AI Limit, but I'd play the From games and Nioh2 before playing through it, unless you intentionally do want an easier game.

It's a good souls-like, if a bit on the easier side. I enjoyed playing through on Legendary Stalker difficulty, including the DLC. That said, I don't enjoy the combat enough to play through NG+ just to unlock more abilities, once I had the wrench and the puppet string arm maxed out pretty much all you have to do on most bosses is identify your 'charge R2' window, or use the puppet string/jumping attack until you stagger them.

The DLC is more difficult than the base game, and there are a couple noteworthy bosses in it. Generally navigating through the levels is the more difficult part of the game, 90% of boss mechanics can be ignored either with a summon, or just staggering them repeatedly with charged R2 attacks.

The weapon durability mechanic is interesting, and I like the fact that if you really wanted to you could learn all the parry timing and break the boss weapons; it's just totally unnecessary in most fights.

Like a lot of these single-player souls-likes, I'm not sure why they needed to add so many weapon variations when there's really only one or two that are worth using. If they aren't going to incorporate multiplayer, they may as well save on all that design time.

If you want a more challenging souls-like, play through Nioh2 before this, it's better in every department. If you want better boss fights, but not as difficult as Nioh2, Stellar Blade has much better bosses, (but is not as challenging navigating the levels). Overall I give Lies of P a 'B', I recommend it, but only if you've already played some of the better games in the genre.

In terms of the story, this is my favorite Silent Hill, (I have not played SH1, but looking forward to the remake). You will only get about 60% of the story on your first playthrough. NG+ adds about 20% additional context to the story, but in expanded cutscenes, new/expanded voice acting, and new text based lore items. It also adds additional endings, each of which grant additional context. My play time represents a pretty complete playthrough, seeing all 5 endings.

Like every Silent Hill to date, the combat is still pretty janky, but I do appreciate that they made the boss fights more interesting, and especially on the 'Lost In the Fog' difficulty you need to come into the fights prepared.

The biggest negative IMO is that the environment is not nearly as dark and oppressive as previous entries in the series. The music, enemy design, and sound design help to carry forward the 'feel' of Silent Hill, but the environmental art and lighting give it a lighter feeling tone.

For fans of Silent Hill, this is an easy game to recommend.

My playtime reflects one playthrough of the campaign, missing a few side quests. A spoiler-free word of warning, the *second* point of no return notification, is the series of quests that lead to the finale.

Warhorse is the AA CD Projekt Red as far as I'm concerned. The writing here is excellent and feels inspired by the best of GTA. There are some slight improvements to the gameplay systems in KCD2, a little bit less jank in the combat, some slight simplifications in the crafting systems but if you played KCD1 it will be very familiar.

The story here starts directly after the events of KCD1 and finishes Henry's character arc. I do NOT recommend playing this without playing the first game.

The ending here is thoroughly satisfying, but they left enough plot threads around that there could be a 3rd installment, possibly with a new character. Whatever their next project is I'll be looking forward to it.

There's a decent to pretty-decent casual-friendly action-adventure game here, but it's hampered by pretty terrible writing and one of the least likable protaganists in recent big budget gaming history. I did ultimately finish the game, but I cringed several times in the first few hours during the cut-scenes. If you make it past the point where you get to 'the forbidden west', the writing gets slightly less obnoxious from there on out, and the game play improves.

From a technical perspective, the game runs great and looks great, and gameplay is fun, hunting dinos for upgrade parts is pretty streamlined, and exploring the huge map is enjoyable. It's just a shame the writing is so bad.

I would recommend Hogwarts Legacy for a similar action/adventure that's open world, or Kingdom Come Deliverance for open world with more RPG and sim mechanics; both games have much better writing and have difficulty options to make them just as casual-friendly. Or, for a more hardcore gameplay experience, but still much better writing, Expedition 33.

Solid survival horror, but combat gets pretty repetitive and the story does not end with a satisfying conclusion that explains more than the very narrow scope of the characters directly in the narrative. Performance and visuals were great, no bugs to speak of. B-, it's a good option for fans of the genre.