Recent reviews by Dr. Fun

It's buggy, don't get me wrong. But given the troubled history of the developer and the fact that the country they are from suddenly became a warzone, I feel some understanding is warranted. And stalker games have always been a little wonky. At the end of the day, what matters to me is that a stalker game looks and feels like a stalker game, and this does to a remarkable degree. It helps that it's also gorgeous. You can tell the devs had a reverence for what worked about the older games, but also weren't afraid of adding a few QOL improvements. If you like stalker and can look past some bugginess (and aren't afraid of using the command console in case of game breaking bugs) then you should absolutely grab this game. If you can't (understandable) then I'd wait until it gets patched to a more stable state. I'm part of the former group, and 20+ hours in, I don't regret a thing.

Get it on sale, for $30 or less it's a pretty good value. It still has bugs, most of which amount to floating NPCs or the occasional "I spawned in a car and it immediately ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exploded", but there is a pervasive bug regarding the sandevistan that can force you to rollback your save, which is pretty annoying. Other than that, it's basically an FPS version of The Witcher 3, it shares a lot of TW3's mechanics regarding level scaling, fast travelling, perk-based levelups, etc. so if you liked that system you'll feel pretty comfortable here. The story's fine, maybe more restrictive than I imagined but it's still got some interesting themes and it familiarizes you with the world pretty well. There is a decent amount of build variety, though stealth and hacking are pretty dull here so most people will probably gravitate towards shooty bang bang or slashy slice slice, which are both pretty fun.

tl;dr it's fine. It's not groundbreaking but if you get it on sale it's solid.

Honestly, the coolest aspect of the game is character creation. I like the "switch-on-the-fly" class system in theory, but grinding skill mastery is a chore, as is farming the item to auto master a skill. There's a good degree of difference between the various classes, but some of them seem incomplete, gimmicky or just a repository of a couple good skills, which are then mastered for use on other, better classes.

Really though, my biggest problem with the game comes down to the idea that it seems to be balanced around having a partner character. You can fairly easily get through a sizable portion of the game solo (though the ambush encounters will sometimes border on ludicrous while solo) but there's a point about maybe 80% of the way through the game where it just became incredibly tedious. Even with what I'd consider to be a rather optimized build, damage numbers on bosses at this point were low across the board, and continued to only get lower as the game progressed. Combine that with the absurd damage some bosses deal out in a single quick hit, and the repeated use of a few core enemy designs throughout the entire game, and I can't really recommend this without a large asterisk. It's a pretty game, and it has some good ideas, but it really seems to ignore a great deal of what makes souls games good (thoughtful boss movesets and varied enemy designs) and focuses a lot on what makes some souls games frustrating (damage-sponge, slap happy bosses that love to oneshot you). If you don't mind the eternal shame of playing with a partner character, then the boss difficulty won't really be an issue, but the samey enemy designs might get a little old.

So I understand the complaints about bugs. I haven't encountered any particularly gamebreaking bugs myself, but for those who have I can understand the negativity, buggy releases should not be tolerated or else it encourages devs to rush games and think about the consequences later. That being said, the buzz about censorship I really don't fully understand. I suppose it detracts slightly from the game's otherwise adult-only feel, but AO games don't sell. I'm not saying that the devs shouldn't have been more honest about what was going to happen, but for people to not see the writing on the wall irritates me. Those two hot-button topics out of the way, here's what I like, what I dislike, and what I'm indifferent towards.

Like:
(+) Atmosphere might as well be the name of the game, as I hoped it would. If i'd wanted some adrenaline pumping romp through hell I'd just be playing doom, and if I wanted jumpscares I'd buy one of 1000 ♥♥♥♥♥♥ amnesia knockoffs out there, but this game goes for disgust and unease, and that's what I like in a horror game. It's dark, foreboding and grotesque, and there are some truly interesting setpieces in this game.
(+) This level design is really quite surreal, and kind of reminds me of walking through a nightmare. You're not sure exactly where you're going, but somehow you just kind of naturally find your way, or get killed. Just like a nightmare.
(+) Sound design is great, with some notable exceptions in the voice acting department. Still, some really good ambience in general, and I've certainly overlooked worse acting in games when I felt the game was worth it... *cough* RE1 *cough*
Indifferent:
(~) The gameplay elements themselves are pretty standard. Overall I don't have that much against the "walking simulator" type games, and especially this one because all I was looking for was kind of a tour through someone's vision of hell with some gameplay elements to tie it together. That's what I got, but I won't pretend that the gameplay is _good_, but I didn't find it _bad_ either, it was just average fare for these kinds of games.
(~) the AI is annoying. I didn't expect "Alien: Isolation" levels of AI ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but honestly the AI feels less developed than Amnesia, which for a game produced in 2018 is pretty inexcusable. It just patrols back and forth, only deviating when it has a bead on you, and never seems to really lose you. Or, alternatively, it's completely oblivious. Never in between. It can still be pretty tense when you hear those footsteps around the corner, and that telltale musical whine starts up indicating bad times ahead, but it's definitely quite rough. That being said, you never truly feel safe in the presence of the AI, because you never know when it's going to randomly realize you're there and apparently never, EVER forget it. So at least it's tense.
Dislike:
(-) The voice acting, as mentioned before, can be pretty grating. It hasn't especially been a huge immmersion breaker for me, but it's definitely a weakpoint that should be addressed.
(-) The soul system is the one gameplay element I truly disliked, it just felt unnecessary. It kind of felt like a cheap solution to making some of the tougher "sneak past the ai" moments a little easier, but doesn't address the core problem of the AI itself


I chalk up a lot of the mediocre critical and amateur reviews to a buggy release (which is totally justified) and hyped up expectations (which is less justified). My experience with the game is probably about a 7 - 7.5/10, which is still obviously a bit above average. For all its manifold flaws, I got most of what I expected from the game. While I understand the disappointment from the game not living up to the AO hype and adult patch drop and all that controversial stuff, I also believe that people who truly believe the hype of _any_ game deserve what is coming to them - constant and consistent disappointment. To show how much I emphasize the importance of proper bug-testing and proper release procedure, imma knock it down a grade, because although my experience wasn't too bad, from what I can tell that is just sheer coincedence, and had I that experience I wouldn't be so forgiving.

All in all 6-6.5/10, it's unique and I got most of what _I_ wanted.

Leon Kennedy is on a mission to avenge his brothers. In this game you will track down both Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan in order to find out the secret behind the valuable and elusive "Jack" ruby. Featuring a stunning soundtrack by Koji Kondo and directed by Hideo Kojima, the long awaited sequel to the beloved JFK Reloaded is a roller coaster ride of action, romance and tragedy.

"Resident Evil 4 has taken residence... in our hearts." - Kotaku

"What really blows us away is the physics engine in this game; the ragdoll physics are just phenomenal!" - IGN

"Call of Duty has a new rival in the world of FPS games." - PCGamer

And don't forget to buy the Season Pass, allowing you access to the custom "Snakeskin" handgun skin, and 3 new Mercenaries Maps!

A lot less fun than I remembered.

700 hours.

Not well optimized, completely pay2win, fanbase are mostly 15 and/or morons. If that much doesn't dissuade you, it is kind of fun, and the overall presentation is fairly well done. Not a perfect game by any means, and by some means not even a good one, but it is a game, which in this day and age is more than can be said for many others.

This was $50. 6 Months later it was $10. Now it is free. If none of that meant anything to you, play the game, i'm sure you'll love it.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is an umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive,[1][2] non-contagious motor conditions that cause physical disability in human development, chiefly in the various areas of body movement.[3]

Cerebral refers to the cerebrum, which is the affected area of the brain (although the disorder most likely involves connections between the cortex and other parts of the brain such as the cerebellum), and palsy refers to disorder of movement. Furthermore, "paralytic disorders" are not cerebral palsy – the condition of quadriplegia, therefore, should not be confused with spastic quadriplegia, nor tardive dyskinesia with dyskinetic cerebral palsy, nor diplegia with spastic diplegia, and so on.

Cerebral palsy's nature as an umbrella term means it is defined mostly via several different subtypes, especially the type featuring spasticity, and also mixtures of those subtypes.