Recent reviews by NPY

I have some thoughts about this game. Mostly good, but I also have a few negative points.

The concept and idea of the story are unique and very intriguing to me, especially for the time the game was released. You play as a freshly recruited agent of F.E.AR., a task force designed specifically for handling paranormal or extraordinary situations such as the aftermath of a government research gone wrong. The story keeps you engaged for almost the entire game, but you can very easily lose track of it a few hours in. It has believable characters who are supposed to have their own roles, but they have very little impact on the game, and the only characters with any significant roles in the story are the main cast, such as the protagonist, the antagonist, and a few others.

The main character is your typical silent protagonist who’s overpowered and goes through entire armies with insane reflexes and gun skills, saving the day single-handedly. The real star of the show is the antagonist, the mastermind you encounter towards the end of the game. You get hints about them throughout the game, so you can see it coming through all the lore bits you discover in the form of laptops scattered around the experiment facilities, but those hints still don’t take away the shock of what happens in the last few chapters, and oh do the things go down towards the end. Those last few sections don’t pull any punches and things get pretty wild the more you get close to the end, and the game ends in a way that clearly sets up the second game. But again, I think the ending sections could’ve elevated the experience even more if the story had been easier to follow. That is one of the few complaints I have about the narrative and the overall experience.

The gameplay is really fun and has aged well, considering the game came out more than two decades ago. All the guns feel different, and almost all of them shine in different scenarios and are fun to use. The slow down ability is quite handy and fun to use, and it being the gameplay equivalent of showing the character's insane relfexes is really smart. The movement feels like it’s taken straight out of a Valve game; the same goes for the physics and sound effects. Another thing that really impressed in terms of gameplay is the enemy A.I., which is surprisingly smart, even by today's standards, where the enemy squads use covers and, real calls and tactics like flanking and suppressive fire, and even react to your every little action like sprinting, using your torchlight, etc.

The music is hauntingly beautiful. Especially the background ambient music, that has a rusty vibe that sounds like Silent Hill music without feeling like a direct copy of it. Going through certain quiet and dark sections with the same haunting ambient music playing in the background can be a chilling experience, and overall, the music plays a big role in slowly building up tension and then smoothly transitioning to a different tone upon the reveal.

But the biggest negative aspect of the game that degraded my overall experience has to be the repeated level design and the pacing. The game starts off really well, and the last few sections are personal highlights for me. But the middle section just pales in comparison in my opinion. You go through two different areas that, aside from a few small changes and the introduction of some new enemy types, feel largely the same because of the very similar and lackluster level design. I beat the game in 8–9 hours (I was AFK for roughly 1–2 hours, hence the 10 hours on record), which is kinda short, but the pacing still felt off because of that dragged-out middle section that ended up hurting the overall experience significantly for me.

I personally didn't find the game to be much scary. To me, it felt more action oriented than horror (largely due to the middle section where it's mostly run and gun, or strategize, then run and gun), except for the ending sections where the action took a backseat and horror became the main focus, but even then I'd say you'd barely flinch at most if you're used to playing regular horror games.

When I weigh the positives against all the flaws I felt during my gameplay, I’d still recommend this game and say that I had a good time playing it.

This game always fascinated me with its unique premise, and having rolled credits on one of the better endings after almost 6 hours, I'd say the journey was well worth it. You are selected as a border control agent in a fictional Communist country called Arstotzka, and while the game starts as a simple passport inspection simulator, things quickly start getting crazy and out of hand, both in terms of story and gameplay.

The game has two modes, a story mode and an endless mode, both of which are self-explanatory. It follows a main narrative where you have to keep making active choices to either side with the oppressing communist government or help the rebel party in their goal to overthrow the government. Based on the choices you make throughout the game, you can get either of the 20 endings the game has to offer. You'll encounter multiple interesting characters with their own side quests and you'll need to balance their interests with your own and those of your family. So the story always keeps things fresh with different situations arising every step of the way.

Coming to gameplay, it starts out with you having to inspect everyone's passport for correct information and you're given a rule book to make sure that everything checks out. But as the game progresses and you're required to check for multiple documents and different rules for people of different countries, things quickly start becoming a lot more stressful and after a certain amount of time, it becomes a test of your presence of mind. You can't keep screwing up because then you will start getting penalties for your mistakes in the form of pay cut from your total salary of the day. The game makes sure to keep introducing variations in documents, rules, the method of checking, along with other unexpected additions which can really make the gameplay overwhelming, while still managing to be fun.

Papers, Please is a unique game worth experiencing for yourself to really understand it. The gameplay involves lots of reading and paying attention to minor details, along with a grounded story, which makes a complete package you wouldn't find anywhere else.

Oh man. Where do I even start? One of the best co-op games ever. The silliness, the gunplay, the characters, the level design, all of it, is just top notch fun. Get some friends to play this game with you, and you got yourself one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences. There are a number of zombie types and they never get dull to fight against. Different zombies present different challenges and it requires a different approach to beat them. Witches are super strong and charge at you, smoker pulls you towards them from distance, boomers blow upon impact inflicting damage and blurring your vision, and so on.

The guns have some variety although they are still somewhat limited in choice, same goes for melee weapons, but honestly, you never notice this while playing. All of the levels are divided into three chapters with last chapters ending in a climactic escape.

The game is full of content. It contains all of the story missions and DLCs of Left 4 Dead 2 AND all of Left 4 Dead 1. It also features some of the community made missions. The game also has different game modes like Versus where you and your friends are divided into a group of Survivors and Zombies, which provides a completely new perspective on the game.

The game is surprisingly difficult even in medium difficulty, and even with friends. And I'm not ashamed to admit it that I finished it in easy mode but still died more times than I count but it was still super fun at the end.

In summary, this game rocks. With the price you get it on sale, the content you get is more than worth it and most importantly all of that content is fun, especially with friends.

Note:- This was my first Forza Horizon game.

Review:-
Probably the best Car game to play with friends. Its semi-sim, semi-arcade nature makes it accessible to new players while also maintaining a level of challenge that you can adjust with various difficulty options provided by the game. It has a very, very wide selection of cars to choose from, including super cars, hyper cars, rally cars, you name it. There is also a very in-depth tuning mode, allowing you to tweak options like adjusting tyre pressure for each tyre, which can almost give it a sim-like experience. The open world feels rich and varied and if you ever find yourself getting bored, you can just choose a car of your liking and cruise through the beautiful vistas in the world, and the setting of a fictionalised Great Britain is just beautiful to look at.

There is a lot to do in this game. You can either do your normal Horizon festival races, you can do street races, rally races, etc. But you can also do other non-racing activities like finding barns that have rare cars, get in a Car Battle Royale mode which is surprisingly fun, star in a Top Gear episode, do movie stunts, and the list goes on. The content in this game seems almost limitless and it's easy to get lost in it for hours.

Now let's get to the multiplayer. Yes, it's very fun to play with friends, in-fact, most of my time spent in this game is with friends. You can do almost everything you can in single player, with friends, which just amplifies the fun imo. But... The connection problems are so apparent in this game, with people disconnecting mid-game being a common occurrence. And the fact that you can't invite friends directly through Steam overlay is also bothering.

Overall, it is one of the best Car racing gaming experiences I've ever had, and I totally recommend it to anyone who's looking to get this game before it gets delisted soon (which is very unfortunate). And especially if you're looking to play it with friends, just keep those connectivity issues in mind, which are not game breaking, but are there.

Just like most of the reviews here, it was kind of a mixed bag for me. The 4 campaigns they have are short and decent in terms of story, nothing stand out and kind of forgettable, except for the last one which felt emotionally touching. The mission layouts are structured as open-level/semi-open worlds for each campaign, and having to navigate between one objective to other felt like a chore. Combine that with the fact that the missions are primarily stealth focused, which is not the strongest suit of the game, makes the game significantly more challenging and somewhat frustrating. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not great at FPS, but even then BF5 gave me a significantly harder time than other games I've played in the genre. I'm also not ashamed to admit that I switched to easy for the later 2 campaigns after doing the first two campaigns on medium difficulty, and I honestly enjoyed the game a little more after that.

As for multiplayer, it doesn't even work where I live. Combined arms is just broken and wouldn't start, and it's next to impossible to find players in any pvp mode. All of my friends who bought this game to play the multiplayer with me have refunded it.

After all this, I'm leaving a positive review because first, there is no thumb sideways button, and second, I got this game at 93% off, which for the overall quality of the game, is good. So my recommendation is you can buy the game for 90% off if you want to experience the campaign.

I waited 14 years for this game to come to PC, and after finishing my 1st playthrough, I only wish I had played it sooner.

Red Dead Redemption 1 follows the story of a formal outlaw named John Marston who is tasked by US Government to kill his former gang members in order to earn freedom for himself and his family. You go through fictional Western America and Mexico in your journey while meeting many memorable and well defined characters who have their own struggles and goals.

The mission structure follows typical Rockstar pattern, where a set of missions are available to you, and you can tackle them in any order you'd like. The missions can get fairly exciting at times, like racing horses, shooting at enemies in slow motion while riding at high speed, etc. But after a point, they get very repetitive, where you have to do the same thing, or a combination of the same thing. It only gets worse towards the ending, where you have to do chores for missions, and even though I get that they're supposed to reflect a different part of John's life, it ends up feeling boring and disconnected. I didn't do a ton of side missions but the ones I did to unlock some outfits, were surprisingly engaging story-wise.

However, the real charm of this game comes from its story and its characters, especially the main character, John Marston. John is an interesting protagonist. He's not exactly a good guy, but more like an anti-hero, who has the interest of himself and his family in mind. But regardless of his past, he's now an honest man. He holds up his end of the bargain and hope people would do the same, even though he somewhat knows that wouldn't always be the case, and that's why he doesn't seem like a naive person, but somewhat a hopeful one. I didn't expect it at first, but by the end of the game, I became quite attached to his character, and I can confidently say that he's one of the best and coolest characters I've ever encountered in a video game.

Surprisingly, the gameplay still feels good for a game that is more than a decade old. The shooting feels tight and responsive, and even though the selection of weapons is somewhat limited, they are more than enough to serve the purpose of killing your enemies in style. Although, my favorite feature is dead eye, where with the press of a button, everything around you will slow down and you can mark multiple enemies to shoot at once, and it feels really satisfying if done correctly. The game makes sure you don't exploit it by giving you a meter that gradually feels up while in combat, or with due time. Movement is fine and your sprint is not tied to an invisible stamina meter, unlike other Rockstar games, which feels so much better. Although, whenever I take a turn in the opposite direction while sprinting, John runs in a semi circle, like he's turning a car, which feels very janky and has screwed me multiple times. Horse riding is fine, nothing extraordinary. It just serves the purpose of navigating from one place to the other, although you can't revive your horse once they are dead, unless you load a previous save file, so be careful of that, I learnt it the hard way. The only means of fast travel in this game are stagecoaches and trains, which are not available in every town, and even in the places where they are available, if you spend too much time getting to them, they might disappear, and then the only option to travel to your destination will be getting into a stagecoach in a different town, or ride your horse to the destination, which can be very tedious.

The PC version is not a remaster so it definitely looks its age. Although, the vistas in this game can surprisingly look beautiful, at times like sunrise and night time. I also encountered a fair bit of minor glitches and bugs, but nothing obstructive or game breaking. Although, I did watch my friend encounter a glitch which almost soft locked the mission, but we luckily found a way around it.

In conclusion, this game felt like a very special experience to me, one that I (hopefully) will never forget. Entering Mexico riding my horse while Far Away by Jose Gonzalez is playing in the background will forever remain one of the highlights in my gaming memories. The game is not without its flaws in terms of both gameplay and story, but I'd say it's a masterpiece nonetheless, and should be experienced by everyone who enjoys story games.

Props to the dev for making something out of their comfort zone. While the game has some interesting visual and enemy designs, and combat options, they all become repetitive by the time you reach the middle part of the game. This might not be a homerun for the devs, but it is a good starting point and a showcase of their potential in this genre.

Naked people kidnapped my kid

The only time my character spoke throughout the entirety of the game was just to say "sh*t" in a classroom full of children.

"The Nutcracker - Sweet!"