Recent reviews by Pÿthon

I quite liked the concept of having to play through this game in one session. You can easily finish the game in under an hour but I played it twice to get all the achievements.
Great story, great visuals, great soundtrack and most of all, it's free.

Back when Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was released, I probably checked the internet on a weekly basis for rumors of Episode 3. Every once in a while a fake screenshot would emerge but after about three years I had made peace with the fact that HL was done and that there wouldn't be a next installment.
Obviously, I was pretty excited when that announcement trailer appeared out of the blue. The only thing was... VR-only? Really?

So, yes, I'm one of those crazy people who bought a Valve Index just to play Half-Life: Alyx. Luckily I ordered one just a few days before it went out of stock after the announcement trailer dropped. I received my Index back in December and that gave me some time to get into VR before Alyx was released in March. To be honest, I didn't really do much with it, though. I tried Arizona Sunshine but gave up after I encountered an annoying bug. I did spend an hour or two playing Superhot VR but in the end, Alyx was the first VR game that I played from start to finish.

The game does a pretty good job of teaching a VR newbie like myself how to move around and handle the controls. Diehard VR gamers will probably find things not going fast enough but I thought the pacing of the game was perfect. You start the game on a balcony somewhere in City 17 and I was left speechless instantly. This is how City 17 is supposed to look like and this is how you should experience it. I probably spent about half an hour on the balcony before moving on. Throwing bottles at bikers down below, trying to hit birds with empty cans and just enjoying the awesomeness of actually being in City 17.

After this VRgasm the actual game begins. You can interact with basically everything: pick up a marker, write on a window with it and then erase it again. Crush an empty soda can in your hands. Set up a domino track with books from the library. Play music on a grand piano... This is not a shooter, it's an experience. Sure, you can probably rush through the game in a couple of hours but then you'll miss most of the experience.

There are three modes to move around in the game. The default mode is teleport and this allows you to move to a (nearby) spot instantly by indicating where you want to go. If you easily suffer from motion sickness, this is probably the way to go. The other extreme is to let you actually walk around by using the thumb stick on one of your controllers. The third method is something in between: you indicate where you want to go to but instead of teleporting to that spot, you fluently move to it. I had made up my mind beforehand to play in teleport mode but I was afraid this would take away from the VR immersion. However, once I was actually playing the game this never bothered me at all.

This is a Half-Life game, so obviously you're going to fight Combine soldiers, Head Crabs, Zombies and Ant Lions. However, one thing that's missing is everyone's favorite Half-Life weapon: the crowbar. In fact, melee attacks are entirely missing from the game so you'll be fighting those enemies with guns and grenades. Now, while I had only played Arizona Sunshine for about an hour, one thing I liked very much was dual gun fights. One gun in your left hand, another one in your right hand and fire away! I was a bit disappointed that this isn't possible in HL: Alyx.
Something that becomes pretty clear after encountering a few enemies, is that the number of enemies is much lower than in previous Half-Life games. However, if you had emptied your gun when playing as Gordon Freeman, you had to press <r> on your keyboard and you could quickly continue to mow down hordes of Ant Lions. Not so in HL: Alyx. After you've emptied your gun, you need to manually remove the empty clip. Pick a clip from your backpack, insert it in your gun and finally reload your gun. All these manual actions obviously take up much more time than simply pressing <r> so not having too many enemies to worry about at the same time a good thing in my book.

Alyx is conveniently wearing gravity gloves. These allow you to pick up items with a flick of the wrist. This way of picking up items is quite a nice touch as you don't have to bend over to pick up something from the floor. Again, after only having played Arizona Sunshine for an hour or so, this is quite an improvement as you're not very likely to smash your rather expensive VR controller into the floor.
After a while you acquire a flashlight, which you can fit in one of your gloves. The flashlight will turn on automatically in dark areas and I found this to be pretty creepy at first. Unlike in the original Half-Life, you actually have to point to the area you want to illuminate. Now, combine this with a gun fight where you run out of ammo. You're holding your gun in one hand and your flashlight in the other. When you reach for a new ammo clip, everything goes dark because you have to reach over your shoulder with the hand that has the flashlight attached to it. All while enemies are still charging at you... I honestly had to stop playing a couple of times because I found these scenes to be so intense.

As I said, this is not just a shooter. One chapter in particular doesn't require any shooting at all and this was my favorite part of the game. Trapped in an area with a blind alien that will rush towards you when you make a sound, you need to figure out a way to escape from there. I've heard quite a few people who dislike this chapter but I found it to be an incredible experience, one that wouldn't have been possible without VR. Once again, as we're used to with Half-Life games, great storytelling leads you to a satisfying ending of the story.

So was this game worth buying a Valve Index for? Well, yes, for me it was. I've added a bunch of other VR titles to my library in the meantime so I guess I acted exactly as Valve had hoped I would have. But now it's Valve's turn again to come up with another great VR title. Let's hope this is a return to the series and not a farewell.

I will try to write an unbiased review of Hero-U. The emphasis here, is on try. Since I backed this game for $200 on Kickstarter, I'll probably fail. Furthermore, as a teenager, I spent countless hours playing the Quest For Glory games. So yeah, I'll definitely fail at writing an unbiased review.

When the Coles announced their Kickstarter campaign for Hero-U in 2012 I was pretty excited about the prospect of playing a new game set in the world of Quest For Glory. Because I had some money to spare (and probably because I felt guilty for pirating the first two games as a kid) I backed the campaign for $100. As the deadline for the campaign drew closer, it looked like they weren't going to make it so I threw in another $100 to get my personalized headstone in the game's catacombs.

Unfortunately, it took another five and a half years for the game to be released. To be honest, I wasn't that excited anymore when it was finally released. I did launch the game on the release date just to see if it worked and how it looked like. I played it for about twenty minutes or so, but it didn't immediately appeal to me so I put it aside again. Then another year and a half later I figured I should at least give the game another try. After all, I had paid $200 for it so it would have been a complete waste of money not to give it another try.

I have to admit that I had to drag myself through the first hour of the game. But then, one by one, the Quest For Glory references started to sneak in and I began to notice the same humor and storytelling that made me fall in love with the Coles' games three decades ago. The game definitely has a Quest For Glory feel to it, yet it's different at the same time. In Quest For Glory you could choose between three characters: Warrior, Thief or Wizard. This aspect of the games was a guarantee for replayability. Hero-U doesn't let you choose your character but it gives the player choices later on in the game that will affect the way you play it. In addition to those choices, the games also has a couple of achievements that require you to replay the game if you're eager to get them. Obviously, you're not going to be able to achieve Defeat every boss in combat and Complete the game without killing anything during the same run.

In Quest For Glory you had a lot of ground to cover. Hero-U is more limited in that aspect. In essence, you never leave the castle the story takes place in. Luckily, there are caves and catacombs below the castle full of vermin to get rid of. This brings me to the combat mechanism of the game. Just like Quest For Glory, Hero-U requires you to practice certain skills in order to defeat enemies in combat. The big difference here is that Hero-U's combat is turn based. At first, I was very reluctant to try out this new mechanism. After all, I was expecting another Quest For Glory game and those games have real time combat. However, after a while the combat mechanism started to grow on me and now I actually prefer it this way. In contrast to Quest For Glory, you have quite a variety of options during combat and because the combat is turn based you can actually think about what your best next move will be.

The entire game takes place in a school, so obviously, there's going to be classes and studying involved. This is where the game became a bit tedious for me. On the one hand, you want to increase your skills and that requires fighting in the dungeons of the castle. On the other hand, classes are mandatory, you can't skip them and they're often important for the story line. After a while you get the possibility to attend elective classes and those take up even more of your precious time. I guess this is my biggest problem with the game: the time management. There's quite a lot to do in the castle but you'll find yourself rushing from the dungeons to class, to the dining room, back to class.... This started to get really annoying; especially the mandatory lunch. Granted, occasionally important story line elements are triggered after lunch but I feel the designers could have found another way of triggering those without forcing you to leave a dungeon fight just to go grab a meal.

But apart from the time management, I enjoyed this game very much. It's full of small details, funny jokes and it contains a ton of Quest For Glory references. While Quest For Glory forces you to take another approach if you chose a different character class, Hero-U lets you decide for yourself if and how you want to achieve certain goals. You can basically skip every quest in the game and still finish it - that's what I did on my second run in order to get the Complete the game without killing anything achievement. Apart from the achievements (which unfortunately didn't exist yet when the Quest For Glory games were released) it's the elective classes that will probably make you want to replay the game. There's three classes to choose from: Science, Magic and First Aid. Depending on the class you take, you will gain additional skills which you can use later in the game.

Hero-U was supposed to be the first game in a new series, but since the game didn't do very well commercially, chances are slim that a second installment will ever see the light of day. That's a real shame because some story elements for the sequel are introduced near the end of the game and without a sequel, this makes Hero-U look unfinished. The Coles clearly put their heart and soul in this game so it's a real pity it didn't do that well commercially.

I played through this game three times so far, taking a different approach to things every time. I've gotten all the achievements in the meantime but I'll probably do a fourth run since I haven't taken the First Aid classes yet. Also, I really want to try and seduce the school secretary this time.

If you liked the Quest For Glory games and you're not put off by turn based combat then I can wholeheartedly recommend this game. You might have to drag yourself through the first hour of gameplay but everything that follows is very rewarding. The attention to detail is incredible and the endless possibilities give the game great replay value.