Recent reviews by Murph

Good game, add a lobby system. A game like this being built entirely around matchmaking is a recipe for frustration. With this kind of game, it is absolutely necessary to be able to filter which kinds of people I'm joining up with. Because when you do find a group that actually clicks, and those people have mutually aligned objectives, the game is phenomenal. It's just that the other 80% of the time is a nightmare. I do not want to be forced into a random group of people of varying skill levels and goals. If somebody wants to go and complete a personal objective that is only marked on their map and nobody else's, they should be able to make a group specifically for that purpose instead of being lumped into the same massive pool as everybody else. I do not want to be matched with a duo that barely pays attention to the game while they suck each other off in a VC. I do not want to be matched with people who have no experience on a boss that relies heavily on being aware of it's mechanics and weaknesses in order to succeed.

This is why games like this usually include public lobby systems, not just matchmaking.

I get that none of these concepts are things that come naturally to FromSoft, with this being a major departure from the classic Souls-style online system, but they chose to enter this space. As much as I'm a massive fan of the unconventional online mechanics of past Souls games given their own context, it's going to take more than slapping in matchmaking and a rudimentary ping system to accommodate a shift in genre as major as this.

Everything looks worse than the original. Goes totally overboard with lighting effects, which can blow out your entire screen with their intensity at times. Upscaling can barely figure out what to do and turns everything into a blurry smudged mess that looks like it got shat out using stable diffusion. Turned a chain link fence into a swarm of black noodles and makes bricks with shadows passing over them look like they're undulating. Textures glitch out and flicker. Turning off DLSS makes the game impossible to run. What the game does actually look like underneath the layers of upscaling, framegen, and RTX looks like an incomprehensible grainy nightmare that you glimpse in 10fps increments.

Hieronymus Bosch called, he wants his Humans back

Game is fantastic, improvements all around compared to UNICLR.
Give them some time to work out the netplay issues. Launch was a mess but I can at least get some matches in now.
Also set your default frame delay to 0 in the settings, it defaults to 2 which makes online feel sluggish as ♥♥♥♥.

This game came out of nowhere for me, and yet a couple hundred hours later it's somehow managed to cement itself as one of my favorite games of all time.

Spelunky 2 is deceptively simple. The basic actions have hidden depth that you have to discover over time, and you'll realize very quickly that the game isn't going to pull any punches even at the start. Yet in spite of the games utterly ruthless and unforgiving nature, in the beginning the feeling of constantly making progress will reward you enough to keep you playing, learning new tricks and mechanics, and improving at the game without even realizing it at times. You'll look forward to each new discovery with equal parts anticipation and dread for how it's going to end up getting you killed. And yet as you play you'll realize that nearly every single one of your deaths were entirely avoidable, and you'll usually know precisely how you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Spelunky 2 makes it abundantly clear that the only barrier to success is your own knowledge and mastery.

To compliment this idea, despite having randomly generated levels, Spelunky 2 is very consistent, reliable, and mostly avoids common trappings of games that rely heavily on random elements. In the end, while getting good luck on items is desirable, no matter how well your run is going you can still die to many of the same mistakes that you could die to at the very start. And yet looking at the other side of this coin, the game can always be somewhat reasonably completed front to back without ever picking up anything at all. And while the levels are random, you'll inevitably start to understand and anticipate the world gen for each area. Anything involved in chains/quests will always spawn in the levels you expect them to, and hell, you can even skip entire quest chains if you're good enough to pull it off.

I'm writing this recommendation having just finished acquiring every achievement in the game. The process of learning and mastering this game is one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in gaming. Even when hitting roadblocks, sometimes taking weeks to get by in the case of some achievements, the feeling of pushing past made it well worth it in the end for me. I'd even go as far as to say that this is a game I wouldn't mind forgetting everything about, just so I could experience the thing again.

At this point, the only concrete goal I have left in sight is making it through Cosmic Ocean to 7-99. I don't know if I'll ever get there, but damned if I'm not gonna keep coming back to this game to try.


Oh, and if there's one bad thing I can say about it, it's that having one music track for each area does suck quite a bit after you've listened to the Dwelling theme 1500+ times. Compared to Spelunky HD having 4+ tracks for most areas, not to mention having generally better music overall, it can be a surprising drag on 2 at times. Doesn't take away from the rest of the game though.

Outer Wilds features some of the most phenomenally well executed hands-off storytelling and mystery solving of any game I've ever played. At no point does the game forcefeed you plot points or railroad you into a bottleneck before the story can proceed. Instead it leaves it entirely up to the player to explore and understand the game's incredibly unique and well-crafted world.
Retroactively it's easily one of my favorite games of 2019. If you've managed to avoid spoilers, go into this game as blind as possible.
Also as a cool note, the game sort of rewards you for doing crazy/stupid ♥♥♥♥ that most people wouldn't think to do by having achievements that you actually have to go out of your way to find. Getting an achievement almost feels like finding an easter egg. Do yourself a favor and play around a bit.

This is one of my favorite shooters of all time, It's on Steam now, and you should play it.
You've probably already heard good things about it. It's a fast-paced movement shooter with a high skill ceiling and mechs. It runs on a modified version of the Source engine and still carries over a lot of the movement mechanics from other Source games. The only things you really need to learn first are how to airstrafe and slidehop. I'd also recommend learning Grapple mechanics if being a militarized spiderman moving at the speed of fast sounds cool to you.

The maps are generally well balanced for both Pilots and Titans, and Pilots have plenty of options for dealing with Titans thanks to increased agility and thoughtful map design. Lots of room for wallriding, vertical mobility, and flat spaces to slidehop and keep your momentum up.
On top of the multiplayer, the game also has a surprisingly high quality campaign with decent gameplay, writing, and pretty amazing visual and level design.
Overall one of my only major gripes with the game is that hitscan is relatively overpowered, and makes a stationary, campy playstyle too easy to get away with.

As far as Origin goes, Origin integration means that I get to carry over my game progress and keep my Origin friends list intact, so really anyone complaining about it can fellate my greasy ♥♥♥♥ and balls. I can understand wishing it were optional, though.
Also I haven't tried installing the Japanese voice patch[syampuuh.github.io] yet, but the game directory seems mostly identical to the Origin version so my bet is it still works fine. Trust me, it's good.

This review ended up being a bit longer than I originally intended it to be. But yeah, play game, it is good.

Pretty good game
Simpler than most anime fighters but actually adds mechanical depth and varied options to make up for it
DLC model is about what you'd expect from a modern ArcSys game
Needs rollback netcode
Narmaya is a cow
Get it if you're into it I guess

After beating the game on Evil difficulty I can say that while far from perfect, this is a very good game that keeps on giving right up until the credits. Each episode has it's own unique set of enemies you'll be going up against, capped with a boss at the end. The combat is generally well designed, with lots of enemy variety that pushes you to switch weapons often depending on the situation. A bunch of outlandish, yet on some level familiar weapons that when powered up exhibit new properties. Overall, pretty solid.
It does have some quirks to it, such as the somewhat slippery movement, and oddly, the FOV supposedly effecting rocket jump efficiency. The level design is creative, albeit maybe a bit too much to the point that it doesn't always compliment the game's core mechanics (platforming being a focus of some of the later levels for example). But overall it's a great game with solid core gameplay, a unique art style, and overall creative design, that while being hit or miss at times is definitely a breath of fresh air.
Pro-tip by the way, you can completely avoid rocket jump damage if you time it well, so go ahead and use that ♥♥♥♥ a lot.

It's like dark souls with guns