Recent reviews by EVERGREEN

Dead Island: Definitive Edition is a remaster of the original Dead Island released in 2011. I’m familiar with Techland’s Call of Juarez and other games using their proprietary Chrome engine, but I never played the original Dead Island before. It looks meh, runs fine for the most part, but it’s still pure euro-jank at its core.

As for the gameplay – if, like me, you’re playing DI for the first time after playing Dying Light, you’re in for a disappointment. The gore system is neat, and the crafting system allows for some fun weapons – but there’s no depth to the combat system. Button mashing is always the optimal strategy.
Dead Island is obviously meant to be played in 2-4 players coop – so I did give it a shot both with friends & randoms. It didn’t make the game any less boring.

It looks dated, it feels dated, it’s buggy, movement feels bad and laggy, every quest is a fetch quest, the story is utterly boring, voice acting is terrible across the board…
Dead Island just feels like an unfinished product that didn’t get enough time in the oven.

I can’t recommend it – Dying Light does everything Dead Island tried to do but with way more polish, more content and is often on sale.

Zone of the Enders 2 is a PS2 classic, directed by Shuyo Murata (Writer for the MGS series) and “produced” by Hideo Kojima, whatever that means.
In other words, it’s a side gig from the MGS dev team. It pushed the PS2 to absolute limits, and is one of my favourite PS2 titles ever.

Gameplay-wise, ZOE2 is a 3rd person, lightning-fast mecha action game. You could think of it as a mix of Armored Core and Devil May Cry, sort of, though not as complex as neither of those.
If you are into anything mecha – Gundam, Evangelion etc – this game was essentially made for you.

ZOE2 already got a remaster on the PS3/360, along with the first game, in the ZOE HD Collection, and it was a bit of a disaster.
Surprisingly, Konami decided to give ZOE2 yet another chance with this PS4/Xbone/PC release: a great port, a new engine that looks great and is faithful to the original, with VR support.

For once, Konami everything right and delivered an almost perfect remaster. And yet, nobody – except me and a couple of other nerds – took note of that.

It's a crying shame, because this game is an absolute gem, it has a lot of fun to offer, style for days, a fast and kinetic combat system, and a sweet little story with endearing characters. It has to be one of the most underrated games I’ve ever seen.

Please – I beg you – give this game a chance! You really don’t need to be a fan of mecha stuff or anime to enjoy this one. It really is a blast, and doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. It’s often on sale for 5.99€, which is definitely worth it. I can’t recommend it enough!

That massive battle on the way to Aumaan is the coolest set piece of the entire PS2 library.

And yes, I can fix it myself by downgrading & hex-editing - but that breaks the Steam Overlay. I shouldn't have to hex-edit anything anyways.

If you were there in 2007 – especially on Xbox Live – you’re an OG, you’re already in the know. You’ve got that Mile High Club on Veteran achievement no doubt.
If you weren’t there – this game changed the gaming the industry overnight. Great campaign, banger multiplayer that every other shooter would try and often fail to imitate.

As far as the campaign is concerned, MW Remaster is the exact same as the original with a 2017 coat of paint. It’s tastefully done, it looks and sounds great, it plays just like it used to, if not a little better. The campaign itself still holds up, and this remaster only makes it better.

But of course, Activision had to screw it up and milk their fanbase.
At first, MWR was only sold as a bundle with Infinite Warfare’s Deluxe edition. It’s now available as a stand-alone game for 39.99€, with a historical low of 19.99€. Talk about overpriced.
They also messed up the multiplayer by adding micro-transactions, and the DLC maps are not included. Said DLC costs the same price as the original DLC.

I couldn’t find a single multiplayer game, it’s absolutely dead these days. If you want to play some MP, you should get the original release and install the CoD4x mod.

So should you buy this remaster? Well - be aware that the multiplayer is dead, so you’ll be spending at least 20€ just for the campaign, which is pretty bad value for the money.
Disregarding the price and value however – yes, MWR’s campaign is worth playing. It’s one of the very best CoD campaigns, it’s just a shame that it is so pricey.

Quake 1 is one of the most important games ever made. It kick-started the 3D acceleration revolution and it also has a huge legacy in terms of online/LAN multiplayer gaming.

I’ll be honest though: I never was a Quake 1 fan for I was born a bit too late for that. Still, I was always curious about it – is it as good people said, or is it just nostalgia?

The release of this Enhanced version, from Nightdive Studios, gave me just the excuse I needed to try it out. No need to tinker around to get it running anymore – it just works out-of-the-box. This release includes the two official expansions pack, as well as two brand-new mission packs developed by MachineGames. It also includes a Horde Mode and a fully functional multiplayer suite.

The original release of Quake is still included – just in case you want to play an old mod or something. Speaking of mods, this release has semi-official modding support. From classic community-made campaigns, to new creations and even a port of Quake64, it's all simply available from the main menu.

I’m not done with the solo campaign just yet, but I can safely say that yes, Quake is a really fun game that’s still worth playing! There are many boomer-shooters competing for your attention out there – but this is the OG, and the Enhanced version makes it that much more accessible while staying true to the original. It’s easy to see why people fell in love with it in 1996 – and why they still love it to this day.

I also played a bit of multiplayer, since it’s very much alive. I got my ass kicked, of course, but it was also very fun. There are few games as fast and chaotic as Quake 1 MP.

There’s no reason not to recommend both Quake itself and this Nightdive remaster really – it’s Quake, it’s cheap, it has a ton of content, and it’s easy to get into thanks to the Enhanced edition.

Also, that super shotgun? Absolute peak.

Severed Steel is a bit like SUPERHOT (on crack), with Max Payne's shoot-dodge mechanics, and some light free-run mechanics. It's great, it feels amazing to play. Truth be told though, describing its gameplay doesn't make it justice so you're better off watching a review than reading one.

Its got style, there's voxel-based destruction, and the soundtrack is full of really good breakcore/DnB stuff. Surprisingly it also has quite a bit of content.

It's one of the very few games that can put me into "the zone"as they call it - you know, that fabled state of hyperfocus where the only thing that matters is the next kill, the next headshot, the next move. It feels great.

I highly, highly recommend Severed Steel - especially for the 2.09€ it's currently sitting at.

SOMA is… Fine. A bit overrated if anything.
Now don’t get me wrong – many people love it, and I absolutely understand why. If this is one's first exposure to the cyberpunk genre’s tropes, I get why one would fall in love with it.

But that’s the thing: its cyberpunk theme is – alas – very much skin-deep and if you’ve ever read or watched the classics of the genre – Phillip K. D., William Gibson & Isaac Asimov come to mind – it will feel underwhelming, underdeveloped and will leave you wanting more.
As a result though, it may actually be a good entry point to said cyberpunk works, that are much deeper but also more difficult to get into.

As for the horror aspect, it goes for body horror with a tinge of psychological horror. Amnesia’s chases are reused wholesale, and it’s just cheap. SOMA's horror simply doesn’t work, and although the atmosphere is very strong and well crafted, the lack of any real threat turns the parts that are supposed to be spooky into a rather chill walk through its stunning environments.

With those criticisms out of the way – SOMA has an absolutely stunning design language and art direction overall. The audio design is great, better than Amnesia that already set the bar pretty high and the voice acting is quite good also. Almost all of the puzzles flow pretty well and are well designed. Those are the parts of SOMA I genuinely enjoyed.

I do hope that Frictional Games give this type of game & vibe another try someday – but as for SOMA, it didn't do it for me.

If you’re intimately familiar with the cyberpunk’s genre tropes and classics, this is not for you. If you’re in for something as pants-pooping as Amnesia, it’ll leave you disappointed as well. I cannot really recommend it, but I can’t say it’s a bad game either. It’s just surface-level.
I genuinely wanted to love SOMA, I wanted it to impress me and explore the nature of human consciousness, one of my favourite themes – and it never got to the level I expected it to. That said, I do not regret giving it a shot, so there's that.

This is my childhood. The MGS & Splinter Cell games are responsible for my love of the stealth-game genre.

I got it for the Xbox when it came out all the way back in 2002 - those dynamic shadows were simply mind-blowing for the time, and the overall art direction & vibe still hold up 23 years later. Michael Ironside's incredible voice-work is just as good as it was back then.

It does require a bit of elbow grease to get it running on modern machines, with those beautiful buffer shadows & in widescreen - a quick visit to the PC Gaming Wiki is recommended.
Also, it doesn't have proper controller support, although KB/M controls are surprisingly smooth and well thought-out.

Now yes, Chaos Theory is better in every conceivable aspect, but SC1 is still a real, pure stealth challenge. And it's not like there's a too much of those these days.

Oh and also - why oh why is it that every storefront simply refuse to sell Pandora Tomorrow? It's also very good, maybe ever so slightly better than SC1 even, but it's pain to get and to get running too. Just, why?

Make no mistake: although this is MachineGames’s first outing, the studios was founded on the ashes of Starbreeze Studios – responsible for the Riddick games & The Darkness. Both are FPS games with a very interesting and unique take on the genre. They’re no rookies. Lemme tell you: this is a cult classic in the making.

Wolfenstein: The New Order does exactly what you think it would: you basically shoot nazis for 14-16h often with extreme prejudice. The gameplay, and most importantly, gunplay shares a lot with Starbreeze’s previous games – except way faster. By extension, TNO also has decent stealth mechanics which allow you to approach a fight in a couple different ways, it almost feels like an immersive sim at times.

TNO also shares a lot of qualities with Doom 2016 – not just because they’re both iD franchises mind you: they’re both incredibly fun, they’re both “boomer shooters”, they both share a composer (The now legendary Mick Gordon) and they’re both a successful reinvention of their respective franchise.

I’m gonna say it like it is though: I enjoyed the hell out of Doom 2016, but in my opinion The New Order just did it better, hands down.
The reason being that I did not expect a Wolfenstein game to have a great story. I did not expect to actually care about its characters. I did not expect it to be thoughtful, let alone thought-provoking. Doom 2016 on the other hand played it safe, and its narrative is a joke. Don’t even get me started on Eternal that tries to do more or less the same thing as TNO narrative-wise, and fails spectacularly.

Simply put, Wolfenstein: The New Order is an absolute banger – amazing gameplay, story, characters, writing, music & sound design, voice acting... The whole nine yards.

There is but one blemish: the iDTech 5 engine. It looks good for the most part, but iDTech 5 is known for its very own technical quirks and TNO sadly suffers quite a bit from those. I could not achieve a stable 2160p60 on a 5800X3D & 3060ti, though I later upgraded to a 3080ti that can do it no problem. iDTech 5’s Megatextures are also on the menu, and if you’ve played Rage then you know what it means – texture pop-in is unavoidable.

I only jumped into the “new” Wolf games recently, and I can safely say that I’ve been missing out for just about ten years. This is now one of my favourite FPS games ever.
If you like Starbreeze previous games, alternate-history, fast-paced shooters and/or a good story to go along with your Nazi-killing – give it a shot. Very strongly recommended!

I would like to thank a certain Neato for being an absolute German nerd unit and recommending this game to me. Let it be known that I hold no grudges about that little 6 weeks debacle, as long as we can massacre Nazis together, like true bros do.

Far Cry 2 is a sequel in name only, as it doesn’t follow up on the events of Far Cry or the Ubisoft-developed console spin-offs. Put simply – Far Cry 2 is still unique both within its own franchise and Ubisoft’s output, as it is a very experimental game. Open world games existed before FC2, but there was no blueprint on how to actually make it work, let alone how to make it fun.

And that is why Far Cry 2 still stands-out from the very crowded open-world FPS genre: they intended to make this work by making its gameplay entirely system-driven. Almost all of FC2’s gameplay beats are emergent in nature. Very little is scripted, it’s all just a bunch of systems interacting and reacting to the player’s input, leading to a totally unpredictable output.
This should sound familiar if you’ve ever played any of the STALKER games – and that’s because they both share the same design philosophy.

The issue with that is – how can the devs make sure that it’s fun, if they can’t curate the experience for the player? Well – they can’t. Sometimes you trigger a chain of events that feels incredibly fun, sometimes the AI has a mental breakdown and it all feels like a clunky, broken piece of software held together by duct-tape.

Furthermore, Ubisoft opted to make FC2 as immersive as possible, and that also came at the cost of “fun”. One infamous example is that guns found on the field are used and rusty – they won’t be very accurate, they will jam, they will blow up in your hands eventually. You can buy brand new guns but that will cost you, and you’ll have to visit the gun dealer – by driving there, no fast travel – every now and again to freshen your arsenal. Immersive indeed, but also quite tedious.

Far Cry 2 is absolutely worth a playthrough for those who enjoy games like STALKER, and can appreciate the commitment to immersion & emergent gameplay – flaws, jank and tedium included. It still looks great for the most part, and much like STALKER it has a pretty active modding community that allows you to tailor the experience in a very granular way.

For those who expect “Skyrim with guns” but in Africa – this one isn’t for you. You might want to check out FC3 or FC4 instead.

I fell in love with Far Cry 2 back in 2008 and this hasn’t changed one bit. I do recommend it, though it’s not for everyone for sure.

Look, the Malaria mechanic is a non-issue. It's nothing compared to FC4's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ eagles.