Recent reviews by Case

The Callisto Protocol is a beautifully looking game that hates its player a fair bit and also is pretty badly optimized.

It looks great in videos and on screenshots with raytracing enabled, but playing it, it's a slog that is annoying more than enjoyable. It is very single-threaded to the point where even on a 5600X (which I would still consider a fairly fast processor) coupled with a 3070 and with FSR on Quality, seeing your GPU utilization and your framerate plummet (a clear sign of a CPU bottleneck) is perfectly normal and common. If you want stable framerate, your only option is go with 30 fps, even on such PCs, which is just not good enough in 2022.

The controls are also very clunky and unresponsive to the point where you might need to press an action several times to finally trigger it quite often, meaning you can never really tell if your action will even come through and/or when. Dodging, healing, climbing over obstacles, sprinting and especially switching guns...I've had various and frequent issues with all of that over the course of the game.

And to top it all off, the game seems to really hate the players time by way too often placing its checkpoints (the only real way of saving the game, since after manual save you're just put at the last checkpoint anyway with the rest of your progress since erased from existence) at really annoying and illogical places for no good reason. You go through a door, encounter a vending machine, buy some upgrades, walk through another door (involving an unskippable cutscene), find a room with several chests, stock up on ammo, trigger a switch, another cutscene plays, an action setpiece starts, the clunky controls cause you dying...and you respawn at the last checkpoint, right before the vending machine...and get ready for possibly doing the same series of events several times over still...I mean why? What's the point other than to annoy the player?

So yeah, as a visual showcase (I almost wrote "audiovisual", but then I remembered many instances of sound cutting off when stepping over a room boundary for whatever reason) at 30 fps, it is excellent. As a game, though, it needs a lot more polish, and even then it's unlikely to ever become a perfect game, that would require way too many core changes.

I give it "Not recommended", but realistically I'd give it something around 4-5/10, so you might see it as "not recommended, but with some redeeming aspects". It's not a complete "avoid at all costs", despite how it might come off from the description above, but at the same time, I just can't recommend it for anything other than its visuals.

I obviously haven't played the remaster a lot so far, but as someone who spent quite a lot of time playing the original game with DSFix and DSMFix (because yes, I do play Dark Souls games with mouse and keyboard, deal with it) and who was quite pesimistic of the remaster since it pretty much seemed like the original game plus DSFix, I can already say the remastered experience is much better than what I was able to get out of the original DSFixed version. The overall changes are fairly minor, yes, but they do add up and give you a significantly improved experience overall. The game just looks and feels a lot "nicer", and as far as mouse and keyboard controls are concerned (especially mouse), it actually feels more responsive, likely due to the much smoother mouse controls, which were never that great, even when using DSMFix. I was also able to set up the controls exactly the way I want them, which includes using Alt as a modifier for left click/right click. And the quality of life improvements are very welcome as well. It is certainly worth the 20 euro (though it could be a bit lower, yes) you pay for it if you own the original. And if you don't own it and haven't experienced Dark Souls yet, this is definitely the version to get.

I can only see two cons here. First, the delisting of the original is not a good move IMO. I understand they need to sell the remaster and avoid confusion (see the Scholar of the First Sin mess we got with about 50 different versions of the game available, each slightly different), but there should still be an option to get the original for those who would like to experience the multitude of great mods that exist for the original version. I guess some might get updated for the remaster (presuming it's possible), but there will still be many that won't be, and that's a shame, as mods are a fairly important part of the extended Dark Souls experience.

And the second con is...there are already well known hackers ruining the game for everyone. Not sure what can be done about that, but it's certainly not a good thing. In fact I've seen many people already discouraging others from getting the remaster simply because they're likely to get hacked and possibly softbanned.

But other than those two things...yes, definitely get this. It's the definitive Dark Souls experience (sans mods, at this time).

So, first off - I do recommend this DLC, but I'm giving it a thumbs up mostly because there's way too many thumbs down for reasons I don't feel are entirely fair. No, I don't have a problem with length - it is kinda short, yes, but it's not as bad as some people would have you believe. I don't have a problem with price either - yes, it could be lower, but it's not insanely overpriced either. And I certainly don't think this DLC is too easy - even though it might have something to do with the fact that I'm playing it on NG++. Had I played it on NG with end game level character, I'd probably felt different about this - I don't know.

What I DO have problem with, and the reason why I don't feel very strongly about this DLC, is its focus on mindlessly flooding you with enemies. It's very rare that you encounter an enemy you'll be fighting solo - most of the time you'll have groups of enemies to worry about. That, to me, is lazy game design. The bosses are pretty disappointing as well - again especially in the way the fights are structured. It just doesn't feel enjoyable to me. And, worst of all, there's very little incentive to actually keep playing - even by Dark Souls standards.

As far as the PvP part of the content goes, I have nothing to say. Didn't even try it. I really couldn't care less about PvP, so I'm not taking that into account at all.

So yeah - I give this DLC thumbs up, but it's very close to thumbs down. If we were talking percent scores where 0-50 % would be thumbs down and 50-100 % would be thumbs up, I'd give Ashes of Ariandel 60 % at best.

Is Lords of the Fallen a good game or is it a bad game? Well, it depends. It's most certainly not a terrible game. It's not that great either. It's like if you took Dark Souls and played it on 1/3rd of the speed, and the game (including the uninspired and monotonous bossfights that hardly ever present a challenge) is mostly pretty easy and boring/tedious. The visuals are pretty nice, though, even if the artistic direction is kinda generic (as is the disjointed and bland narrative and lore), but rather demanding from a performance point of view.

My bottom line would be – if you try to make a clone of Dark Souls games (which is what this game clearly and undeniably is, even if some people get really mad when you mention this), changing things here and there just for the sake of not being a direct DS clone without really understanding what really makes Dark Souls such a great series might not be the best idea. I would very much like to see a Dark Souls game with the visuals of LotF. I'd rather not see LotF game with the visuals of Dark Souls, if you get what I mean. Nice graphics really isn't the most important thing to look for in a game.

In the end, I give LotF recommended, but an unforgettable instant classic like Dark Souls it ain't. Take it as a 6/10, if you will.

(You can read my full review at http://english.edgeoftheworld.cz/2015/08/23/lords-of-the-fallen-review/ if you wish.)

It's Early Access, which means it's far from complete, there are issues and things are going to break from time to time.

Even in this unfinished state, though, it's also the best rally game since Richard Burns Rally. A must for any true rally sim fan. Just the Pikes Peak Pack alone is worth it, and there's quite a lot more, even at this stage of development.

Go get it.