Recent reviews by Vanom

Truly the Battle Network clone we all deserved

Now give us Kao 1 and 3 please, for the full set.

Long story short, I'm way too lazy to write a proper review, however for the sake on maxing out the badge I will say only this.

NieR: Replicant ver 1.22 is not only an amazing game by itself, but also one of the best remakes I've ever played. Be sure to play this before Automata for some context on few things.

I don't have much time, so I'll make this short and quick. This game is so damn good.

What should I say, must have for all fans of Mega Man, Gunvolt and Inti Creates.

Dope game

(Writing it just to increase my boost limit on Grand Prix event so don't take that text seriously)

Special thanks to Diamond Heart | ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for buying me this game, you are the best my friend.
Dead Rising 4 is a Third Person Perspective Survival-Horror game made by Capcom Vancouver, released in 2016 December 6th on PC, Xbox One and on PS4 a year later.

Story Mode takes place during Christmas 2020, 3 years after events of Dead Rising 3. Frank West, photojournalist who was a protagonist of original Dead Rising and and one of second installments' DLC receives a proposition from an agency specialised in supressing zombie outbreaks to once again visit city of Willamette which is infested by zombies...again. There he has not only to prove who was responsible but also to find a former student of his who applied for this task. Quite cheesy if you ask me but at least Frank and loads of his black humour make it better, sadly everyone else are dull and boring (And no, I am not reffering to zombies).
It is obvious that gameplay is the focus of this game, things go crazy in this one. Just as in previous installments we need to break through hundreds of zombies on one screen using improvised weapons with limited endurance, vehicles thay can be merged woth each other to make them even more deadly and from now on also upgradable exoskeletons but they are time limited. Frank thanks to his experience can merge things in any place if he has right things near him or in the inventory, but he needs to find schemes first. Nevertheless this skill makes zombies and hostile survivors an obstacle instead of danger which is dissapointing but actually gives much pleasure from dispatching enemies and getting highest combo as possible (For me it was 2518 in a row). Clearing story missions, side activities and slaughtering enemies are rewarded with XP and skill points that can be spend to expand our inventory, boost Frank's abilities or add new finishing moves. Not really original but id does a good work. If you want to start the game all over again your abilities and colletibles you found will be carried over making second run much easier. At least you can pick up things you have missed without frustration.
Later on because DR4 was too easy Hard and Blackest Friday difficulties were added, also with new mode called Capcom Heroes. It allows to start the game once again but this run is completely different. Frank cannot merge weapons but instead he has to collect Capcom stars that unlock new customes based on characters from Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Megaman etc. Every outfit gives him skills of particular character, these can be ugraded by clearing challenges scattered around Willamette. In background you can hear remixes of soundtracks of other Capcom games, for example there are Bass theme, Ghost's and Ghouls, Central Highway or Guile theme. In overall, quite decent.
Not only the world is big, but very detailed. Filled with easter eggs, mostly from Street Fighter and Megaman. Cannot argue about that.
Now let us mention soundtrack to base game, many climactic Christmas themed songs and some for intense battle scenes. Nothing great but will suffice, at least for my taste.
The worst part is optimalisation, it is not terrible but I have seen newer games running much smoother and with better graphics. 45 frames on Middle setting are satisfactory, some players could get angry though.
If you ask for bugs, there is only one. Sometimes frank cannot move for 10 seconds after being throwned on the ground.

Clearly there were better games in this franchise, but still I have enjoyed this one more than annoying Dead Rising 2. Plot was not creative at all, gameplay compensated it quite well and soundtrack made good job. In my very humble opinion Dead Rising 4 deserve 7/10.

Chrono Trigger is a classic jRPG game made by Square Enix originally on SNES in 1995, then on Playstation in 2001, Nintendo DS in 2008, Playstation 3, Portable and IOS in 2011, Playstation Vita and Android in 2013 and FINALLY on PC in 2018. Kept us waiting,huh? Anyway our Steam version was basically a mobile port but with cut content and preety rough launch. Now after all the content was restored and most bugs were fixed I am about to share a personal opinion based on my 100% playtrough.

Let us start with story, our main protagonist is the young boy named Crono (you can change it on the start though) that wakes up in the morning and goes to meet his best friend Lucca who is a genius to help her with her newest invention shown at the Millenial Fair. At the party he meets up with Marle, the girl who volunteered to use the Lucca's machine. Something of course goes wrong and they unintentionally open the time gate. To not spoil anything all leads to an epic quest full of dangerous enemies from different many ages. At least epic in my humble opinion.also there are total of 13 endings (good, bad, secret and 10 joke ones) to find, achievement hunters are forced to get them all, neat.
About the gameplay, there are total of 7 playable characters (One is optional but very powerful), only 3 of them can fight at once with tour based (almost real time) battle system, all of our party members can use physical and tech attacks plus items however how fast their next turn can be used depends on their stats. There are total of four: Speed, Strenght, Magic and Accuracy. They can be increased by using capsules scattered around the world or obtaining new gear. Mostly you will do main quest, only in the later part of the game a few sidequests and optional dungeons unlock including one that unlocks new game+ after finishing the game. All of it look simple, but require some skill, also nobody tells you where to find something you need to push the story forward, only by deep exploration or seeing internet walktrough you can reach your target.
Now here comes the art style, every comparison to Dragon Ball is accurate because the character designer is no other than Akira Toriyama, which also explains why Crono resembles Son Goku and Lucca looks like Bulma. Yet the most impressive part is how every age is different, it is preety much the same map but with different color schemes, music and feelings accompanying them. It may only look like lazy color swap though.
Music always was important for me in games, here we have about 2 hours of quite nice soundtrack, it really differs in style but shamefully some locations just recycle tracks heard before. That does not make them worse because they always fit the climate, but after 35 hours they get very repetitive.
Optimalisation Is NOT THAT BAD, but not perfect either. There are HD textures excluding cutscenes, framerate is fluent. The only problem I have are keyboard/mouse controls, they are not terrible but using gamepad makes everything much easier.

There are games simply remembered by history, Chrono Trigger may not be amasing but from the time perspective serves as a true classic of jRPGs, one of those that should be played just to say "I have play that game". It deserves a strong 9/10.

Revelations is the only story DLC for Lords of Shadow 2, so basically the only one that I was interested in, anyway, it was released on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC of course. I bought it for 7,25 PLN which is about 2,5$. It was hard for me to expect much content for that price but suddenly it turned out positively surprising.

Plot of the DLC focuses on Alucard, son of main game's protagonist. The story connects prologue with the rest of base campaign by explaining filling a few plot holes, at least those who did not get what was the entire game about can get more straight anwser and that is really cool. Despite that it took me only 5 hours to deal with story mode they were rather enjoyable, eventually you can enter New Game+ or just free roam after completing it to get achievements or missed stuff, cannot say about even a while of boredom.
In terms of gameplay it really makes the difference, first of all there is no stealth sections (what a relief!) and much more puzzles to solve, the sollutions are not obvious and require careful observation of envinroment as much as right usage of powers we are given (Nice touch Konami). As it comes for combat instead of whip we now use a sword with both healing and damage magic unlocked right on the start, attacks and controls are the same as in base game so they are rather easy to master. Still, that does not make the game easier. There are new enemies that can easily take us down even when we have much experience and upgrades unlocked, even 2 new bosses woth completely new animations. Careful observation of enemies' moves is the key for victory in every situation. I do not think the conbat is decent, but at very least satysfying.
Developers even cared to make new climactic locations, we all know that this company suffers from Recycled Assets Syndrome so there is no talking about any lazyness.
Do not excpect any new music though, same forgettable notes except continoue screen (this one sounds awesome). A shame because the classic canon games had much more enjoyable soundtack.

To sum it all, Konami made something more like DmC Vergil's Downfall but much better, but it is also a prove that Konami they can still make something good if they want to, it's overally better than the entire game in my opinion. I am sure both the gameplay and climate will satisfy Hack'n Slash enthusiasts. 8/10.

The Evil Within 2 is a Third/First (Thanks to FPP mode added with an update) Person Perspective Shooter Survival-Horror game made by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks in 2017. It was released on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4.

Story takes place 3 years after events of The Evil Within, broken by death of his daughter Lily and terryfying experiece from the nightmare he survived Sebastian Castellanos left the police and decided to drown his sorrows in alcohol. His ally/enemy (hard to determine) Juli Kidman that accompanied him during incident in Beacon Mental Hospital find and offer him a help in saving Lily who turns out to be alive but has been used as a core for STEM (The virtual reality machine that caused all the trouble in the first game, who dies there dies really, Sword Art Online fans would love it) but something has gone wrong. Our protagonist enters the phantasm once again, but everything complicates even more. The plot is quite crazy but it makes perfect sense, every character fits it perfectly plus the ending for instance can be really satisfying.
Developers decided to give us similar gameplay to the first game but with many visible improvements, first of all Sebastian can still handle things by force, but there is no feeling of possessing enough power to deal with it easily, shooting gets very risky slmetimes because bullets are priceless and too rare to waste, however melee attacks are weak and have no guarantee to incapacitate the foe fast enough. Thanks to newly introduced crafting system we can make ammo or healing items on the run, there are also hideouts where we can stay for a while, save the game, drink coffee to regenarate health or buy new skills, this time level progression at least works more accurately (getting green and red jelly for skills, parts for weapons) because let us be honest here, does putting green jel into our brain to increase the size of our pistol's bullet clip like in the first installment makes any sense? Back to the basics, the locations are now more or less sandbox, we still have classic linear chapters but we also have big maps filled with content such as side missions (Not much but well executed), collectibles, weapons, refferences to other Bethesda games, documents and enemies to deal with, also there are much more weapons than previously, thanks to new and better inventory system Sebastian can carry a few variants of the same weapon types with him so you can adjust to any situation. Various types of enemies force us to use the environment as much as it is possible so making use of waters (plus electricity) or oil plams is highly suggested, not every one can be killed that way though, sometimes the key is to sneak behind someone's back or not let to be detected. Traditionally there are boss fight and oh my God how intense they are! Not only challenging but so satysfying, so fair, so balanced. At one point of the story we can also enter a shooting range bringing back the memories from Resident Evil 4.
In The Evil Within soundtrack was really good but music in the sequel is a real masterpiece, it can be calming when we are in safe place, the classic sounds when we proceed through halls and empty corridors improve the creeping atmosphere and these epic yet keeping the feeling of danger boss themes, it is all an eargasmic experience that effectively drives you to go further, gamers who appreciate great video game music can be at least pleased.
Despite making the graphics more photorealistic I could say that optimalisation is better than in The Evil Within 2, the framerate even on high settings is really stable, besides even on lowest setting everything looks decent. The only bugs I have met were: sudden loss of intellect by enemies (haha) and that if you kill the enemy near the wall the jel he drops lands behind it (I hate walls since the first time it occured, such a waste), nothing more.

The game can be quite different from the first one but at least in my humble opinion every aspect of it surpasses what we saw previously. The plot is great and it ends decently, gameplay offers much more variety than ever before, the locations remain climactic and even our protagonist became much more likeable than before, props for Tango for finally adding some character development. Photorealistic grahics and great optimalisation provide us with fluent experience and the soundtrack is freaking awesome. The only bad thing is just one annoying bug with walls. It is hard for me to believe that such a mediocre (at least in terms that really matter to me) games like Skyrim have the DLC and great games like this one do not, we can still believe though. 9,8/10. The second best game of 2017 I think, still, NieR:Automata remians the finest.