Recent reviews by Conrad Zero

Make sure you turn on HDR for the best black and white, low res, 2D experience.

Hells to the Yeah! So much fun that I played it a second time through and had a blast. Would love to see a season 2...

Game crashes more than a high-school bumper car tournament, but its SO F-ING FUN, I don't even care. If you know ubisoft games, then you ALMOST know. Far Cry crossed with Star Wars FTW. Save early, save often and update your graphics drivers even more often. It's the game I was hoping for when I bought Starfield.

Preordered this without a second thought, because... Bioware. Games like this are why I play video games. 135 hours of awesome. Amazing story. Great worldbuilding, level design, characters, choreography, lighting, combat system, skill system, customization and on and on and on. They certainly learned their lesson from Mass Effect series, (maybe they read my blog post) this game contains heartbreaking decisions that mattered, that had an actual effect on the story, the world and your companions lives. Were there some cringey moments? Of course. But nothing so bad it could remove even a single star from this gem. Definitely earns its place in the Top 10 of all the videogames that I've ever played since Dungeons of Daggorath in 1983.

Hell yeah! Sam only with mohr pixels. And a kindofsortofplot.

Wanna be a Jedi?

Stop reading reviews and buy this game! The lead character is excellent, the powers are amazing and easy to use. the weapons are cool, the story and writing are fantastic, level design and enemies are fun/challenging, the interface is a dream, the voicework, direction, soundtrack and score are all top notch, (Porcupine Tree ftw!) and the graphics are the cherry on top, esp if you can pull off the RTX. Definitely in my top 10 favorite videogames of all time.

Great FPS game. Characters and story are fantastic. Level design is top notch. Gameplay is same as original Metro:Last Light. Highly recommended.

A strange mixture of touching teen drama, horrific murder-mystery, paranormal action and choose-your-own-adventure, steeped in Seattle Grunge. You play as the POV heroine, Max Caulfield, who returns to her hometoun of Arcadia Bay to attend college as a photography major.

The standard college-teen cliques and stereotypes abound, but Max soon discovers her ability to "back up" time, which gives her interesting dialog options, including the ability to "unsay" things, and try various dialog options on individuals, or decide retroactively that it was better not to talk to someone altogether, and retract entire conversations.

Max connects with her childhood friend, Chloe, who is searching for her missing friend, Rachel Amber. Max and Chloe investigate Rachel's disappearance, the bullying of local 'nice girl' Kate Marsh, and the ubiquitous Vortex Club.

While the story starts out mild and innocent (Max is truly the most kind and honest character I've ever known.) the story grows darker and more disturbing until episodes 4 and 5 which are straight-up psychological horror with a dash of sci-fi.

The venerable Unreal Engine shows it's limits, but the Dontnod team have wrung out every pixel they could. Easy-to-understand game mechanics make Life Is Strange a joy tp play. But the real joys here are the writing and atmosphere. It's rare that a story is able to engage me so much that I have trouble putting the controller down, or engages me so much that I tear up at the tragedies. The writers deserve high kudos along with the voice actors. Whomever directed the motion of the camera through the cut scenes did a fantastic job. Every episode had scenes in it that were so beautiful, I could hardly stop taking screenshots. The soundtrack of light-indie-alt-rock (Bright Eyes, Amanda Palmer, Sparklehorse, etc) fit not only the mood but the time and place of the story.

The violence in Life is Strange falls into torture/death categories, with implications of sexual assault. There is no nudity or sex in the game, but drug use abounds. Dark as it is, L.I.S. is milder than your average TV episode of CSI-Whatever, However, the progressive darkness through the episodes (which I found engaging) other reviewers had a hard time with.

Starting from the wholesome, west-coast college and our doe-eyed hero, there are constant reminders of darkness just below the surface of everyday life in Arcadia Bay including bullies, unsympathetic authorities, and supernatural events (animals dying and strange weather patterns) , When the full darkness reveals itself in ep3 and 4, it's pretty bad. Then it gets worse. Judging by some of the reviews, some people simply aren't able to process this pendulum-swing from such innocent, naive characters to such insidious evil in ep4, and beyond into ep5.

The first episode of L.I.S. is free, and I highly recommend trying it out.

Analogue: A Hate Story is an interesting story experience. On a deep-space salvage mission, you unravel the story by digging through ship log files (similar to emails) and interacting with the two AIs (Artificial Intelligences) on board the ship. As you try to unlock all the log files and save the ship from destruction (curse nuclear reactor cores!) you will unveil a wealth of cultural knowledge, lies, sins, cosplay and more before reaching one of five possible endings. A quick and satisfying interactive story experience.