Recent reviews by Proxykon

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"Papers, Please", developed and published by Lucas Pope (3909 LLC) in 2013, is a political point & click simulation with branching narratives depending on player choice.

As a newly appointed inspector, you are ordered to check documentation, question all entrants, and detain possible illegals with the utmost diligence at Arstotzka’s border — lest conscience gets the better of you.



(Scoring range: Poor (worst) - Bad - Average - Good - Superb (best)

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[PERSONAL NOTES REDACTED ON SUSPICIONS OF COLLUSION WITH EZIC TERRORISTS - SIGNED OFFICER 3492-B █████ STATIONED AT ██████████]

Arstotzkan Directive 101-A regarding East Grestin Checkpoint:

All arstotzkan workers presenting themselves at the East Grestin checkpoint are to be commended for their service in safeguarding the border against illegals, terrorists, and diplomatic deceivers. The strength of the glorious nation of Arstotzka rests upon the vigilance of its tireless workers. Work hard, work diligently, and the state shall reward you.

Any collaboration with hostile groups or lapses in judgment will be recorded and punished swiftly - without exception. The rigorous enforcement of border mandates is absolute. Compassion is weakness. Obedience is strength. Believe in the state, as the state believes in you.

We are listening. We are watching. We are your future.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Glory to Arstotzka!

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Developed by CC Arts and published by Hyperstrange, "Empty Shell" is a top-down, third-person survival horror shooter released in 2023.

Shipped off to a remote japanese island, a group of faceless volunteers is tasked with retaking an experimental research complex gone dark, fighting off absurd spawns of a horror not yet understood and carefully managing their condition and inventory for whatever lurks ahead.



(Scoring range: Poor (worst) - Bad - Average - Good - Superb (best)

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Empty Shell is truly the simplest form of horror. Scene - a faceless, ruthless corporation enlist a couple of unknowing volunteers to retake what they've lost. Your colleagues complain that there isn't even enough weapons to adequately arm everyone for the horror up ahead. People don't dare speak up because they know they'll just get ethically "removed". You aren't being told anything, it's need-to-know only. You go here, you turn on this generator, you advance and you realign this, signal your position, then progress until they tell you to stop. If you die, you will be replaced. You are expendable. They don't care how many they have to send - what comes first is their mission, not your survival.

The camera is low quality - no time for better equipment. Audio is muffled. The game wants you to believe you are the person in charge of this operation. Suddenly, a dangerous dance between you and the unexplained horror begins. You learn that many enemies rush you but can't hurt you from afar. You melee them. Some enemies can shoot you - best to dispatch them with a long range rifle. Is that an... oversized SPIDER? Managing your small inventory space becomes a task in and of itself. No ammo left? Best know how to swing that axe until you find more of it. You complete your tasks, you press on until you fall. Another volunteer takes your place. The mission must continue. You are expendable. You are a tool. You are a means to an end. You are an EMPTY SHELL.

Demo bugs out after playing for five minutes. Attempts were made to communicate this to the developer who seemingly ignored the request for the rest of the Next Fest. Very unprofessional behavior. Can't develop a favorable opinion on a demo that refuses to let you play.

Update: The developer received additional information and responded in regards to this gamebreaking glitch and is attempting to fix it. Until this issue has been addressed, this review will stay negative.

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Released in 2023, Turbo Overkill is a fast-paced arena-shooter FPS developed by Trigger Happy Interactive and published by Apogee Entertainment.

As Syn, the worlds most advanced AI, is threatening to take over cyber-metropolis "Paradise", Johnny Turbo, half man and half machine, cleaves a bloody path through hordes of grotesque amalgamations of corrupted flesh and twisted metal.

DISCLAIMER: Turbo Overkill originally released in early access and took approximately 16 months to fully release.



(Scoring range: Poor (worst) - Bad - Average - Good - Superb (best)

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Turbo Overkill has everything going right for it. The setting, the music, the gameplay - everything just clicks. Controls are tight, action is high-octane and the enemies just die left and right. A power fantasy for all shooter fans with the right amount of gumption, guts and gore.

And then episode one ends. Issues start showing. Levels become larger. Too large. Many more enemies appear. Too many. "The pacing is done for", I start to think, as episode two finishes with double the clock of episode one. Episode three turns into a drag. Turbo Overkill suddenly turned into Serious Sam on speed. Bossfights now start to force me to constantly restart. The chainsaw leg has power creep issues to the point where other weapons just become useless. Visuals start to become overwhelming - ending up annoying me and tiring me out. The soundtrack starts to fade into the background as it becomes increasingly cacophonous. After finishing the game in a grueling die-through because of the final boss (which you have to fight three times with at least three phases... with close to no checkpoints) I start to realize that Trigger Happy Interactive probably took too many ambitions onto themselves. It feels like the game lost focus at some point around episode two and wanted to be something increasingly bombastic, impressive and powerful with every level they added. Unfortunately, increased effort does not reap increased rewards... at least not this time. The charm of the demo I immediately wishlisted and early access game I supported seem gone. Yet many players seem to enjoy Johnny's adventure and I don't want to sour their experience in any way. Turbo Overkill is definitely not for me, even though I am a big boomer shooter fan and heavily supported the early stages of it. Guess I judged wrongly on what this game was going to turn out to be. Shame, but maybe you'll enjoy it.

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Published and released by CD PROJEKT RED in 2020, Cyberpunk describes itself as an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the year 2077 of an alternate technologically-advanced timeline.
Met with a terrible fate after a failed heist, full-time merc V has to fight for their street cred, friends and survival in Night City - a fictional megacity on the US west coast that swallows hopes, dreams and people alike.



ꜱᴄᴏʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴɢᴇ: ᴘᴏᴏʀ (ᴡᴏʀꜱᴛ) - ʙᴀᴅ - ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ - ɢᴏᴏᴅ - ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀʙ (ʙᴇꜱᴛ)

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As much as Night City feeds on humans, their dreams and aspirations, it also feeds on my mind - never satiated, never tired. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that never completely left me. From the fantastic worldbuilding to excellent character development, over interesting side characters and morally ambiguous decisions the player faces, it all feels completely in-world to me. Realistic, palpable and genuine. Dedicated street slang akin to works such as "Clockwork Orange", good pauses in dialogue, characters believably doing small gestures or facial expressions while talking to you and so on. Night City sucks you in, tooth and nail - thanks to its impressive level of detail. Immersion is key in games like these and even though Cyberpunk never attempts to be an immersive sim, it's doing a damn fine job at trying to be one. Side characters are beautifully written, believable and quirky - everyone in their own way. I praise the narrative element of Cyberpunk for its courage to try to not go for the tired "happily-ever-after" tropes. Things never work out in Night City and definitely not for the people living in it. A successful attempt was made to have no clearly defined good or evil, just many shades of gray. Moral dilemmas around every corner. Are you an idealist? An empathetic street vigilante or a heartless merc? Listen, I could gush on for hours about how much I adore and cherish this game but it's time to start the final paragraph.

Cyberpunk isn't so much a story about saving the world. It's a story about coping with loss, impending death and the human condition - a story about how to save yourself; what it means to lose yourself, losing what makes you "you". In an age where gods are printed on silicon boards, liquid nitrogen running through their veins, rich feeding off of the poor and zealous mercs becoming legends by trying to shoot for the moon and paying the ultimate price... who would you rather be? Someone living the quiet life or someone going down in a blaze of glory? Wake the ♥♥♥♥ up samurai, buy the game and burn the city to find out yourself.

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Hunt: Showdown, released and published by Crytek in 2019, describes itself as a tactical PvPvE FPS set in 19th century Louisiana.
Silence is golden as hunters need to find, banish and extract bounty targets while fending off the infected and other greedy adversaries.

DISCLAIMER: My playtime is not representative of how much I enjoy a game. Unfortunately, Hunt: Showdown is one of the only games my friends are able and willing to play with me on a regular basis.



(Scoring range: Poor (worst) - Bad - Average - Good - Superb (best)

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Hunt: Showdown is visually and aurally impressive. I'm genuinely surprised by the fact that not more developers have picked up the crumbs left by soundengines like the original Thief and done something with it. Crytek did and it works beautifully. Locating noisetraps or other players works very well (most of the time) and the game has a very unique setting which distinguishes it from other extraction shooters. Hunt's gunplay and tactical approach work well together and let the western fantasy setting come to life - in a rather pseudo-realistic fashion.

Shame that the rest of the game just doesn't work like it's intented. Regular server issues plague the game. Players can headshot and kill each other at the same time too easily. Selecting a weapon and then interacting with a world object suddenly changes your weapon. Third person animations are laughably bad. The game refuses to offer you ways to learn what you did wrong. Lots of fights depend on who saw who first. Aiming down sights is supposed to be more accurate but even with your sights on hunters, you'll still miss. Other times, you are convinced you just missed your shot and it's a headshot... for some reason. Cover isn't cover in Hunt. You can get killed by explosives through SOLID OBJECTS (e.g metal boxes or stone walls). I always feel like this game has a ghost inside it, deciding whether or not you get lucky today or not. I can't improve on luck's whim. Given all these issues, the game is very barebones. The development doesn't focus on improving the already flawed gameplay loop of "chasing the win" (i.e. dying again and again until you can extract the bounty once) leading to sessions where you have to be killed nine times to win once. Not something I would enjoy. Prestiging is not rewarding. There's an alienating amount of cosmetic DLC, giving me Payday 2 vibes. Finally, the game has massive issues with player toxicity - people in queues AFK intentionally or even at the start of the game. They insult you via voice chat, ingame chat or on your profile simply for "not playing their way". This reaches levels of League of Legends community toxicity. People die once and immediately leave the team and forteit. The ingame report system is worthless, you can type anything in there and it'll fall on deaf ears. In conclusion: can't recommend this game and I'm glad I got it gifted, because I will continue to refuse to pay a single penny for this mess.

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Developed, published and released by Bohemia Interactive in 2018, "DayZ" describes itself as a multiplayer zombie-survival game set in the fictional region of Chernarus.

As a survivor of a deadly zombie outbreak, you loot and fight for your survival - hunting (or evading) zombies and humans alike.

DISCLAIMER: I bought this game during its early access phase in 2013. It took the developer 5 years to release this game out of early access.

DISCLAIMER 2: Be aware that you might encounter a Windows Bluescreen every 2 hours of playtime with the stopcode: KERNEL_MODE_HEAP_CORRUPTION. DayZ support was unable to fix my issue and simply replied with "Update your drivers." Duh.



ꜱᴄᴏʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴɢᴇ: ᴘᴏᴏʀ (ᴡᴏʀꜱᴛ) - ʙᴀᴅ - ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ - ɢᴏᴏᴅ - ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀʙ (ʙᴇꜱᴛ)

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The potential of DayZ was great. The standalone released at the peak hype of the mod to ArmA 2 and the peak of zombie shooters at the time. A game with a big world to explore, loot , hunt zombies and players in? Me and my friends were hooked. Chernarus was copied off of the region Povrly in Czechia - a great design idea to work with and it all translated very well. And this game was only in early access - there was still so much more to come. Bohemia even made a roadmap to show players everything they had planned.

It took Bohemia Interactive, what, 4 years to make the game run smoothly? The developers were clearly struggling. But today, 9 years after initial early access release, not much besides the ingame renderer has changed. Most updates added more items, guns, interactions or stablized the game experience. Not for me though, I get bluescreens in regular intervals now.
Much like Bohemia Interactive can't fix my bluescreen issue, they also couldn't adjust the terrible concept and iron out the gameplay loop. "Find-your-own-adventure"? I call that lazy and uninspired. Every run is the same. DayZ is a game about looting, running and dying essentially. There's no fun to be had in these activities. I occasionally return, trying to see the value in my investment only to realize that looting is still a chore, you walk or run for most of the time playing and die to some glitch or someone who saw you in the corner of their eye. I wouldn't describe this as fun.
Everything about DayZ rubs me the wrong way. There's no vision, there's only adding more loot. Run around our large-scale map, look for loot spread out on the floor, meet a player and die. Sounds fun to you? By all means, go ahead. Everyone else who wishes for their time to be respected while playing a game - do not touch this. DayZ is a timesink with no redeeming qualities and I deeply regret having bought it and played it for so long.

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"Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown" is an arcade flight and combat simulation game developed, published and released by Bandai Namco Entertainment in 2019. As callsign "Trigger" is plunged into the depths of an all-out international conflict, they come to realize that silencing your foes is considerably easier than fighting against the deception of war.

DISCLAIMER: Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is the seventh entry to the critically acclaimed "Ace Combat" series and the canonical sequel to Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. I am a complete newcomer to the series and this entry was my first time experiencing an Ace Combat game.



ꜱᴄᴏʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴɢᴇ: ᴘᴏᴏʀ (ᴡᴏʀꜱᴛ) - ʙᴀᴅ - ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ - ɢᴏᴏᴅ - ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀʙ (ʙᴇꜱᴛ)

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It's hard these days to impress me. As I grow older and more cynical, I long for the times when things felt fresh, exciting and new. And Ace Combat 7 gave me a piece of that feeling back. It was definitely an uphill battle to get the controls to click with me, but after just enough practice, it felt like second nature to me. "Why is this so fun all of a sudden?" I asked myself as I splashed bandits left and right before my squadron was done explaining my mission objective. I guess the rookie just went ace. And by god, does the story love you for it, since the narrative uses the silent protagonist trope effectively. Trigger and me became one. I felt engaged in the narrative. It's been a long time since that happened again.

The arcade elements of the game are what makes it so fun to play. Break-neck, unrealistic speeds? High-G turns that would turn any human into pulp before they would notice a greyout? Post-stall maneuvers? Dogfighting? Eviscerating every ground target with an attack run in your A-10? Accelerating while you and a bandit are barreling towards each other only to evade by rolling in the last second? I don't even think a word can describe the levels of excitement I get out of these. Theres only so many words I can type in this review but they will never come close to that feeling of excitement while in the air. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is an amazing game. It's great for newcomers, a love letter to fans of the series and people who have experience in jet combat simulations. The gameplay is outstanding, theres a great variety in jets to fly and the soundtrack is flirtatiously asking to make love to my ears. Did I already tell you how fun this game is? I'm starting to repeat myself. Look, just buy the damn game already! Some bandits need to be splashed and your squadron is waiting for you!

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Developed, published and released by Flow Fire Games in 2018, Synthetik is a top-down, roguelite twin-stick shooter. Overcome impossible odds by fighting against endless hordes of robotic forces standing between you and your mission to destroy the Heart of Armageddon.



ꜱᴄᴏʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴɢᴇ: ᴘᴏᴏʀ (ᴡᴏʀꜱᴛ) - ʙᴀᴅ - ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ - ɢᴏᴏᴅ - ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀʙ (ʙᴇꜱᴛ)

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An attempt was definitely made with Synthetik. Game's a unique shooter that stands out because of its complex way of handling the boomsticks. Manual ejection, deviation, recoil, manual and timed reloading of magazines. Makes the rest of the gameplay more hectic as you're also dodging incoming fire and fast movers trying to grab that chunk of your health. The soundtrack is definitely special too, reminds me of RUINER at times - definitely has that cyberpunk feel. Lots of variety in the weapons fights off the tedium and the different variants available are a nice addition making you change your battleplan every run.

Unfortunately, a lot of things sour my experience with this game. It was recommended to me by one famous youtube video and I was probably too starstruck to realize the rough edges. Lots of problems remain unfixed: the UI is not updating properly, items spawn outside the playable area, AI rushes in the most braindead way. Next to dying to inexplicable explosions with zero shieldgating and immediate dead runs because no good weapons dropped, this game can be really frustrating. Frustrating to the point where maxing out certain classes becomes a chore. It definitely doesn't help that some of them have better survivability. And a lot of them are squishy and need to be played in the most careful way possible. I was getting stuck on level geometry far more than I liked even though there was clearly enough space to walk through. Also, why hide the legit banging OST behind music players put randomly in rooms that only play one time? Really weird design choice. Ultimately, Synthetik is too dependent on luck when you are opening the next weapon crate - some weapons will rip & tear everything to shreds but 75% of the time, you get a Fallout 3 BB gun, immediately ending my run. You can call me too impatient for that, but in comparison - playing the weak weapons in Hades was way more fun, even if my run felt doomed to begin with.

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UPDATE 1: VR Support appears broken since Update 1.7.0 (as of July 1st, 2022).

UPDATE 2: Post-release EOS addition. Crossplay with EGS now possible, requires linking an EGS account. Skipping to play "offline only" possible. Redout communicates with EOS regardless (third-party monitoring by Glasswire proves this). Caveat emptor. I have personally decided against changing my review to negative based solely on this decision. Still, I think this is a terrible decision and tarnishes my previously good impression of 34BigThings.

"Redout", a futuristic & hyperspeed racing sim, released in 2016, was developed and published by 34BigThings and co-published by Nicalis & 505 Games.

Set during the Solar Redout Racing League (SRRL) competition, the player needs to show to the world how well they can handle supersonic speeds by racing not only against their opponents but also against the circuit itself.



ꜱᴄᴏʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴɢᴇ: ᴘᴏᴏʀ (ᴡᴏʀꜱᴛ) - ʙᴀᴅ - ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ - ɢᴏᴏᴅ - ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀʙ (ʙᴇꜱᴛ)

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I adore racing games making you feel the thrill of the race, every turn you take, every split-second decision you have to make in the heat of the battle for a place on the pedestal. Redout is such a racing game. I've been a total newcomer to the supersonic racing genre and never played previous games like F-Zero, Wipeout or Rollcage - but Redout made me a fan of them all. Never has it come to my mind that the circuit itself could be a wall itself. Bumping into guardrails is actually part of the turn (in certain circumstances, that is). Counterstrafing and drift-turning, steering and leaning - all these mechanics are so fundamental to effective and fast handling of your ship that it came naturally the moment I grasped the concept. The music... oh my god the music. It's fitting, it's iconic, it's blood-pumping. It's awesome and I love it. Different race modes help break up the monotony of just racing the usual 3 laps. It teaches you the intricacies of every ideal racing line on the diverse amount of circuits to drive on. And learning the circuits is a must if you want to perform well! It all culminates in endurance races which are 10-15 minute races which test your knowledge of the racetracks, patience and skills. Did I say that I love this game?

There's very little that actually requires improvement. I take slight issue with the function over form approach when it comes to the graphics, but given the high speeds ships reach, this is to be forgiven. Other racers seem to have encountered bugs still that remain unfixed, luckily none of that for me. In conclusion, why are you still reading this review? Go buy the damn game already! It's fun, it's thrilling, it's even fun just thinking about playing it. It's everything I want out of a racing game. BUY IT!