Recent reviews by Muzzles56

I think there's a good idea here, but some serious flaws make this a complete chore to play and needs a lot more work

The zombie spawns totally ruin this game. Zombies will spawn in areas you've cleared, areas you're trying to move into and and even out in the open close to you. I had an instance where I was physically unable to enter the room with my objective because I would kill zombies coming out of the entrance, only for more to spawn in the alleyway beside me and occasionally they would spawn in the car park behind me. They would spawn as fast as I could kill them making it literally impossible to progress. Having zombies constantly on your ass doesn't make the game tense and keeping me on my toes, it makes matches a complete slog.

Progression sucks. Matches are long and will take you roughly 1 hour to complete provided things go pretty smoothly the whole time. The only way to improve your starting gear is to grind player level, which will allow you to purchase some weapons and items to spawn in with. Levelling and earning the currency for these unlocks appears to be so tedious that they just shouldn't have bothered with this and made starting gear based on your character and loot you exfil with. Why this isn't already a thing astounds me. After a 1 hour match I went from level 1 to level 1. Only 1/2 of my XP bar filled up. To start with a set of bandages you need to hit account level 8. So that's going to be at least 16 hours of game-play assuming you exfil every time without fail. Have fun.

I queued solo and in my first match I was able to exfil with only 2 of us alive at the end. I got a lot of resources, but when you exfil everything you had just disappears. Weapons, ammo, health items etc cannot be brought in to subsequent runs even with the same character. These resources aren't exactly rare, but it means that the only thing you exfil with is player and account-level XP. This isn't a looter game, but the lack of any kind of persistence here is just incredibly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dumb. It just feels like they added a grind because that's what all the other live service games do these days.

At the end you're left with NMRiH1 but with less level variety, where matches take 10x longer than they should and nothing that feels truly new. I think this can turn around, but I see no reason to play this over the first game right now

So long as you can withstand a ton, and I mean a ton of backtracking this is one of the great survival horrors out there. It took me 12 hours for my first playthrough without reloading for any deaths

An excellent, fresh take on the genre with familiar mechanics, and some unique twists on mechanics you've seen before. Travelling merchants, burning bodies and limited saves (if you want) are all here and are balanced very well.

The only issue I have is the sheer amount of backtracking, and the level design starts to go downhill when you reach the road, and especially at the town. You will spend ages running around these areas, and once enemies are killed you will be running back and forth with empty streets, with so much visual noise you can't really tell what is a path and what is blocked off.

Other than the visual noise in these areas the artstyle is super. Important items like notes or generators don't stand out garishly, but their design is prominent as to draw attention to them which is done to a gold standard.

Combat is fine, but pretty easy to exploit due to enemy movement behaviours. It's fairly easy to slowly move from an enemy, have them swing their melee attack and quickly aim and pop a shot, then string them along again. The inclusion of a dodge roll is interesting, but I feel this is best used to clip through enemies to leave an area without fighting, provided you have the stamina. Over time combat gets harder as you become more and more inaccurate despite upgrading weapons more and more which I thought was a neat idea to avoid the player becoming an unstoppable powerhouse (Although a double barrel shotgun in the pocket cannot be beaten)

It is respectful to the time period it takes place with visuals, tone and endings. I think this is a great entry in the survival horror genre for existing fans to try to see that not every one needs to be full of zombies or other monsters. Especially when the most horrific things ever conceived are very real acts of man

Perfect survival horror if you find the likes of resident evil a bit too much

Less emphasis on inventory management while leaning more into exploration and puzzle solving fits into a good niche in the genre. A great little story that, while fairly predictable about halfway through, is still delivered well.

Emulates the ps1 aesthetic while keeping the advantages of modern game design. It's been executed just perfectly the whole way through. You wont regret this one

In a nutshell: It's "We have Alan Wake 2 at home" (but endearingly)

This is a solid game with a little jank. A nice psychological horror with less emphasis on dark and dreary environments, jumpscares and gore, and more focused on the bizarre, occult, and atmosphere. Despite having two big celebrities act as the face of the product, the game has a nice personality of its own that I enjoyed. It has a rich 1920s theme across a variety of totally distinct environments and locations, with pleasant music, gorgeous visuals, some interesting characters and a plot I found interesting. Seriously the environment artists knocked it out of the park with this one.

There's a fair bit of dialogue going around about how this game flopped and how they should have put the money used to hire Jodie Comer and David Harbour towards more solid gameplay and mechanics. I think there's some merit there but personally I think having these two people act as the main characters is pretty cool. While they are great actors, I feel like they fall a bit flat at voice acting most of the time. I'm not sure if this is just a lack of direction or experience (Acting and Voice Acting are totally different ball games) because there are a few moments where they put on great performances. The other voice actors in the game do alright, but nothing to write home about imo.

The gameplay focuses around third person shooting and melee combat with dodging, while including items like bricks and molotovs that you cannot carry, but throw at enemies in close proximity. I think this is a nice system that allows you to conserve resources in a few different ways while not being an inventory-management based game. I felt like the shooting was a little off, but overall works just fine. Melee combat is floaty, lacks weight and was just unsatisfying however. The item throwing is a nice idea that I think works well. I didn't really find myself bored of the combat throughout.

I felt the puzzles were pretty straightforward, with a few more puzzling ones in there but I felt those ones were perfectly balanced in their difficulty. I wish that clues and solutions to puzzles could expand beyond the room they are in, especially those that take place in Decerto. This would have shaken them up a bit

I'm mostly writing this review because I think this is a quaint little gem of a game and that the studio deserved better. Because they made something good

This game set itself up with great horror and fell on its face at every single turn. All that's left is a walking simulator that throws constant, predictable, cliché jumpscares at you.

This game fails to be horror and instead acts as a digital ghost train. To me, a ghost train is not horror, but a lazy man's attempt at it.

In the first horror chapter, The Beast Inside throws jumpscare after jumpscare at you. Even jumpscares as obnoxious as pots and pans flying around with a loud boom in a random kitchen corner, or a ghost figure crawling towards you through your legs with a cliché violin screech. It even has your wife act as a jumpscare several times and each one is more predictable than the last.

Straight away this tells me that I am in no danger. There is no reason to be scared. And I was 100% correct.

There are no threats, no item management, no reason to be cautious. With infinite stamina I was able to sprint through the levels without a care in the world because there was nothing to actually be scared of. I just had to be ready for my ears to be assaulted, and with the predictable jumpscares this was incredibly easy.

At one point you get a gun. An actual weapon with ammo you must find in a forest. I really thought this would be a turning point as an actual "threat" presented itself. A ghost in a foggy forest that pursues you as you run to a hotel for shelter. And once again, it falls flat.

When you shoot this ghost, it disappears for 10 seconds, removing the fog and then returns. Using ammo for brief respite is a fine idea, but when my character has infinite stamina so when I run the ghost cannot catch me. Once again, all tension and potential has been completely deflated as I just run to the save haven with zero issues.

In the next chapter, I am in the hotel which has cramped hallways and many doors. Threats could appear from anywhere and there ARE things in the hotel that you see walking in the distance. But AGAIN this falls flat

Your gun has been removed. Gone into the ether. The enemies in the hotel are setpieces, except for one that walks between 2 points acting as a "stealth" section. This section literally lasts 3 seconds as you have to sprint past him when his back is turned and then it's over. The ghosts in the hotel exist for scripted chase sequences that are super short. Why couldn't this section have me defend myself with the gun I just got?

The only beast inside this game is the disappointment

Apparently an incredibly faithful remake full of interesting places to explore and get immersed in. Lack of hand holding is very refreshing, while not being too obtuse

The ending sucks but apparently its getting changed. Probably when the console versions come out (date TBD)

The best one they've made yet. Lots of viable builds, interesting areas, gorgeous visuals/aesthetic, great progression path, excellent world design, great sense of progression. You already know why this is great

Pretty neat action-horror game. If you liked resident evil 4 or dead space you'll probably like this. It's not as good as either, but still worth your time imo

It has a LOT of navigating back and forth to progress, and there is no map or anything. They tend to block off doors to prevent you from getting lost and honestly I felt like the levels were designed pretty well. It took me about 6 hours to beat, and the game is in 2 locations so it is probably best to play this in two 3-hour sessions to minimise the risk of you getting lost. In the off-chance you do get lost just use a guide idk

Ambience is cool throughout, but the first half of the game in the boat is the best. The boat rocking throwing off your aim is really cool and I found it a lot easier to remember the boat's layout more than the oil rig. It also had the best use of the fixed camera

Don't expect a good story lol

Absolutely incredible DLC to an utterly phenomenal game. Lots of beauty and parts where you get mindblown just like before. Feels like a mini sequel

The game starts with a warning letting you know that there are scary segments and I absolutely love them. They are very very spooky and I'm glad they did it.

Underrated as ♥♥♥♥ tbh. Especially with RTX on

This game is full of fun, unique ideas and gorgeous visuals. Each weapon works distinctly from each other and can be more effective than others against certain enemies. They're also pretty unique weapons in their designs. It's not a shotgun, its a mace that bursts crystal shards and pins enemies to walls. It's not a machine gun, it's a trident firing electricity that can chain to other enemies if you shoot it enough to rupture an enemy. It's not a rocket launcher, it's a magic claw that fires entire planets and suns

Level design is top-notch. Each episode feels totally distinct, especially with the different enemies. The themes in each level are pulled off very well. Some levels can be pretty big and sprawling, but I never found myself getting lost. The game always designed levels in a way to keep me moving in the right direction without it feeling like a set of linear corridors. The final episode definitely has the best theme, feeling truly alien. However I found it was the least fun due to a difficulty spike caused by relentless enemies with high damage and small platforms that i could easily fall off from. Falling doesn't kill you, it teleports you back to a certain spot, but it is disorientating when it happens

Boss fights are set up to be super cool duels, but soul form completely trivialises them on hard difficulty. Simply popping soul form and holding fire with the orb-firing staff will kill a boss with 0 effort in around 30 seconds. So I recommend not using it because it makes the fights much more interesting