Serge
Ulankin

Stupid rats, plague. Could the city get any worse? Chances are very good. Since you have to cut or sneak your way through Dunwall filled with guards, assassins, and weepers with no time to pause for whisky and cigars. Never doubt it – Dishonored is a great game that constantly keeps you wired. Speaking about level design, weapons and spells, enemies, this is one of the best games I have ever played. Everything is well thought-out, and as a result you get much freedom when it comes to ways of accomplishing the missions. The game doesn't teach you much, it just explains how this weapon or that spell work and lets you use them as you please. So you can stop time, fire bolts and attach bombs to them; you can possess anybody and casually walk to a safe place to choke the poor guy down; you can acquire Shadow Kill ability (which makes bodies of those you kill turn to ashes immediately) and just kill everybody you see leaving no traces of a bloodbath behind; you can blink your way over the roofs without setting foot on the ground, coz, you know, the floor is lava! [minor and major story spoilers below] Although I don't understand the praise the storyline got (to me it was clichéd through and through), I can't deny that the characters and the setting are well-made. Even minor characters have background stories and hidden desires and fears that can easily be revealed with the help of one particular device. The world is a solid mix of dark fantasy, zombie post-apocalypses, and well-known dystopian novels with a bunch of retrofuturistic and steampunk elements. Although I'd say that there are some unfinished storylines within the game: like you'll never truly understand who the hell Granny Rags is. Sure, she is the old scary witch that could earn some respect even from The Witcher's Ladies of the Wood for her creepiness. But given how detailed some parts of Dishonored is, you always wait for some kind of an explanation and Granny Rags gets none. The same goes to Daud, the leader of assassins. When you manage to ‘neautralize’ him in a ‘non-lethal’ way by stealing his pouch, you kind of wait for his reaction to be ultimately revealed. Was he scared to death that you had got so close but spared his life? Did he shit some bricks? Was he furious with his bodyguards that couldn't stop Corvo coming? My biggest resentment comes from the thing that needs a bit of explanation for those who haven't played the game. Dishonored lets you choose you own way to complete missions – that's true – but how you tackle them affects the course of the story and the ending. As the game puts it, killing lots of enemies will cause more rats and more weepers in the streets, while adopting a stealthier approach will lead to a happier and lighter outcome. At the same time, if you decide to neutralize Campbell in a non-lethal way (which is ‘good’), you'll find him later as a weeper, living the last days of his life in some swampy dump. So I think killing him in the first place could be actually more merciful. Fates that are worse than deaths will await at least half of your targets if you choose the ‘non-lethal’ way, so at the end of the day you feel like a true monster. And in the end, when the game counts all chaos you caused in the city, you expect something more, since the game told you in the very beginning that it would affect the finale. But all you get after you rescue Emily (or let her die) is some stop-motion scenes of Dunwall citizens ranging from dark to happy with Outsider narrating what will happen afterwards. To me it was very unrewarding, it actually killed any mood to replay the game with a different chaos-level. And what was more irritating – I never learned what had happened to Havelock since I just rendered him unconscious like I always did with my targets. Did he go to the prison? Was he executed? Was he pardoned? Did he manage to escape? We'll never know. [spoilers end here] All in all, this is truly a great game. I can't put an ‘exceptional’ for everything stated above. But I do recommend it to anyone who appreciate solid stories, interesting characters, an inventive gameplay, and stealth games in general. It's the best game about an assassin with a creed, and it's too bad an appropriate title was taken long before.

The game gave me hours of terrific challenging gameplay dotted with emotional spikes of the story. I wouldn't lie if I said this is one of the best games I played this year, and I am both sad I haven't played it earlier and very happy that I played it only now, because Moon Studios is releasing the sequel soon—so it's not long to wait for it! The game is a must for Metroidvania lovers and those who like platforming challenge. If you are not really into this kind of stuff, I'll try to explain why you still need this game. ———— Ori and the Blind Forest has a rather small scale, its story is epic, so to speak, but on a level of just one magical forest. You play as Ori, a small white spirit, accompanied by Sein, an even tinier spirit that helps Ori master new abilities and guides the protagonist through the murky woods. If I wanted to retell the story I would finish it in one minute and wouldn't be quite able to tell why it's so expressive and captivating. But when the story is matched with such great art-style with painstaking attention to detail—it's known that every object in the game is used just once—and a wonderful soundtrack, you won't notice when you need some tissues. Random comments will give you the idea that many people were devastated by Ori and the Blind Forest. My favorite thing is to see how people change the title to make it more “accurate,” such as Ori and the Bucket of Tears, or Ori and the Onion Forest (Because onions make you cry. Well, it's a complicated one but still…), or just Crying Simulator (Stimulator, I say). And yes, it's a rather short game, I completed 100% of the Definitive Edition in 14 hours, and if you are better at platformers than me, you can beat it even faster. You will fight forest inhabitants but you probably won't feel like they are bad, because they are just living predatory creatures of the forest, and you have to survive them. (Not the green-barfing pigs and stony fireballs, those guys are assholes.) When you progress further through the story, you will understand that Ori and the Blind Forest doesn't really have antagonists—both Kuro and Gumo, whom you oppose during the game, do what they can to save those who are important to them. Gameplay-wise, it is a solid Metroidvania with tight platforming sequences. Platforming is a dangerous “enemy,” but the motion is fluid and buttery-smooth. Ori sticks to ledges, flips between platforms and glides in the wind just the way you want. Ori has one of the best feelings of being in control of the character—along with the controls scheme itself. If you, by any chance, have already played the game or completed Ginso Tree, enjoy this thoughtful video about the philosophy behind this level particularly and the special ability “Bash” which is the hallmark movement of the game that lets you gain speed from projectiles and enemies throwing them in the opposite direction. Speaking of moves, the level design is top-notch for a Metroidvania, and when you gain a new ability, it doesn't just let you go to places you couldn't reach before, but entirely changes the way you move through most of the rooms. There's plenty of backtracking in the game, which some gamers found tiresome as I understood reading other reviews, but for me it was not an issue. On the contrary, the backtracking is quite enjoyable here! You get new moves, you can try a different approach to the places you've seen before, and also collect some power-ups and whatnot that were inaccessible before. Major alterations in some areas after you complete certain parts of the game make it even better. Finally, in Definitive Edition, there are portals that let you travel between them instantly—I used them only three times, if I recall correctly, but again, I saw that, for some, that was a real godsend after the base game. Other differences in Definitive Edition is that you can get two more optional abilities, they are not too much to change anything dramatically in the gameplay, but are nice to have. Then, there are a couple more levels with some unique mechanics and puzzles where you get to learn Naru's past. People complained that it was too expensive on the launch day and the owners of the original game should have received it for free, but a few years have passed already, so I don't think this matters now. I can just say that I loved those additions and they didn't feel out of place, try to get this edition instead of the base game. ———— All in all, Ori and the Blind Forest is a unique game, I doubt anybody will feel disappointed after playing it. It is on the same level with some of the best Metroidvanias of the recent years including Guacamelee! and Hollow Knight, and, in some respects, such as controls and motion or visual detail or music, one might say it even surpasses them.

«Constantly dying and enjoy it»

«OST on repeat»

AER is a simple exploring game with cute low-poly graphics. The puzzles are quite simple and I can't say that exploring the world is very exciting. To me, there's just one thing the game gets right—flying and the feeling of speed and the wind in your wings. If you want to experience something close to flying as a bird in a video game then this title is for you. Otherwise, don't bother buying it.

After 20 hours I am so tired of Assassin's Creed: Shadow of Arkham that I am uninstalling it. I have no intention to return to the game and regret the time I spent with it. Gameplay Gameplay-wise, Shadow of Mordor is an exhibition of achievements of game development of the past few years. Roughly speaking, it's 49% Assassin's Creed, 49% Batman Arkham series and 2% of its own. The Assassin's Creed part is effortless parkour, climbing towers and “synchronizing” for fast-travel and stealth with a few ways to distract and eliminate foes. Although I must admit that stealth here is more inventive than in AC, it's not just whistle, wait, one-button kill, rinse and repeat. At least later in the game you'll be given more tools to assassinate: such as poisoning the beverage and controlling uruks. If you fail at stealth, here comes the Batman Arkham part. The combat is a shameless copy-paste and works like this: counter every time you see a prompt, attack every time no one is attacking you, perform a special attack every 5 blows, rinse and repeat. Nevertheless, I must give credit that the combat is actually fun and made me stay with the game for so long. It feels good to chain combos, the killing animations are satisfying and varied and there are quite a few special moves that you are going to like to perform. But when it's the only thing that makes you stay, it starts feeling repetitive after a while too. I can ruin this for you before you play, just watch the 404 hits combo below and you'll know just about everything the combat has to offer. Story The 2% come in the Nemesis system, the gimmick that journalists went on and on about and that actually made me play the game. It generates random uruks for each playthrough, bestows unique strengths on them and cripples them with unique weaknesses. These uruks have been fighting for power and will always be, and you act as a disrupting force which shakes up their hierarchy as you please. The problem was that I didn't want to. I read dozens of nemesis stories on the web before playing Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and all claimed what a unique experience it was to gain a mortal enemy that kept coming back from the dead to face you once again or to bind with an uruk and stay in this love-hate relationship for hours. Perhaps I was too good at the game, was I? I never had an uruk to live long enough for me to get to know him. They all were just expendables, and I cut through the cannon fodder of Mordor with ease. To be honest, I died more from the deadly fauna of Mordor than uruks. At the same time, bumping up the difficulty seemed strange as I understood that more hit-points would not be likely to breathe in more personality into random-generated uruks. What's left from Shadow of Mordor if you remove the “make your own story” gimmick? Not much, I must say. The characters were uninspired, the storyline was hard to follow and slow to progress, and the twists were simply not there. The story is pieces of Tolkien fan service scattered around the dull bloody cursed land. The first major character you meet is, of course, Gollum with the exact voice, moves, and looks of that from the film. I completed more than half of the storyline and Shadow of Mordor was a parody of Tolkien which distorted every stylistic or narrative trope of the source material. It's not necessarily a bad thing and I, in fact, have never been a fan of the Lord of the Rings universe, but it was a weird mix of fan service and negation of Tolkien at the same time. Atmosphere Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a very stressful game. It has no ups, the music is always tormented strings and dark ambient effects. It makes you paranoid, you scout for safe places when you start playing but soon you realize that the only places where you can rest are forge towers (fast-travel points) and the pause screen. Does it make you FEEL like you are in Mordor? Yes, and this is a good thing. Does it make a game enjoyable? No. This was, perhaps, the main reason I am dropping the game with no intention to play it. I don't mind repetitive and plagiarized gameplay, after all, there are only so many things you can do in action-adventure games targeted at a wide audience. I can tolerate the dull story and even no story at all in an action-adventure game. But I can't play something that is so hostile, unwelcoming and unrewarding. You can't conquer this world, you can only make a dent in the army of Sauron, which will soon be replenished by new random-generated uruks.

«Waste of time»

It's interesting to recall the first installment of The Witcher saga after playing the second and the last part with all the expansions. I remeber how excited I was when the game came out. To be honest, I was a long-time fan of the witcher and had read all the books twice by the time, watched the shitty Polish movie and was craving for a new story in the universe. So if you are a fan of the source-material, then you will be delighted by the game, because it picks up where the books left. It throws a bunch of recognizable characters together. Sure it is kind of a fan-service but well when you ARE a fan, you just don't care about it. The storyline, the choices, the charaters are extremely well-made. As for the levels/maps/areas, I think their design could be improved a bit, since there are some places where there's no content, it's just a place for grinding by killing monsters. But the overall quality is still very good. I loved the combat system a lot: there are three basic styles: (1) to fight a group of enemies, (2) slow but strong, (3) fast but weak. You have to keep the rhythm of the fight in order to commit effective combos. It goes well with descriptions of fights you usually read in books, so to me it felt very natural and at the same time quite innovative as I had never seen something like this in an RPG before. The signs (i.e. spells) are also here but, to be honest, I am not into magic much and it wasn't until The Witcher 3 where I started to use the signs heavily and loved them. Overall, it is a great RPG of that time. It perhaps can't be compared with the third installment but it laid a sound foundation for the following parts. If you enjoy RPGs, this is definitely a must play. If you are a lover of the witcher books or other dark fantasy stories, you'll love this one as the most solid fan-fiction in any form you can get.

«Time-tested»

Yonder is a simple game with lots of mindless crafting and grinding for resources. It is also not very polished and looks half-finished at times—like if you save and do something like launching fireworks and then quickly load the latest save you are about to see the very fireworks that you launched *after* the save and also some other things like this. The localization is terrible—I looked some other versions apart from the English one, half-hearted translation and some chunks of English texts left here and there. So why do I ‘recommend’ Yonder? There are some things that the game gets awesomely right. First, it's the world, plants, creatures, and overall visual style. Overly-cartoonish, too cute, and vivid, the game is inhabited by some of the funniest animals I have ever seen in-game. The sunset is a joy to watch, and the map is fun to explore. Second, since the worls is so cute, you actually want to help those tiny humans, and flowers, and trees, and ever-pooping groffles. Third, it has this “one more thing” feeling in Yonder that makes games addictive in a good way. So grinding for resources feels like something meaningful as well as crafting or trading. All in all, if you want to really relax in some game, I recommend you playing Yonder. This might be a good game before going to sleep too! Tested on me and my wife.

«Just one more turn»