Recent reviews by Alpaps

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is one of the best Large Scale FPS games to be created, and my #1 favorite of all time. Not only is it an incredibly fun game to play, it has a charm that very little Realistic Shooters have. In the words of a friend: RS2:V has a perfect blend of satirical exaggeration & gruesome reality. One example of this is its amazing voice acting.

I can't recommend this game enough, pick it up on sale if you like Realistic Shooters that are a bit more casual than something like Arma 3 or Squad. The player base isn't large anymore but you'll find many days where servers are packed & filled with people ready to fight.

Go Home GI...

I'm not sure how to review this game since I have a lot of conflicting emotions tied to it. (If I could I'd give it a sideways thumb). So I'll keep it short (Edited: Having replayed the story, I do want to talk about some of it)

TLOU Part 2 Review: The gameplay is awesome, its tight and feels good (other than the occasional time you get stuck in animations you don't want to be in). Its a stupid fun to play game with great response mechanics & sound design, but thats not what I'm here to talk about.

The plot of this game is a very stark contrast to the first game while being extremely similar at the same time. In my replaying of this game, I've come to the conclusion that the story & its character writing on the surface isn't that bad. It's the underlying politics of Neil Durkmann & the game's underwhelming (while be it sorta understanding?) ending make me genuinely hate it. I rarely like to get political, especially in a public setting, but this game is just one of the least subtle political messages that genuinely wants me to blow my brains out trying to find out where it stands. This game screams a centrist message at you, though like even just barely looking at it from a surface level makes you notice a not so hidden pro-genocide political view, that makes Abby's entire part of the story creep me out.

Ellie's part of the story is honestly pretty good for the most part, then you meet the bloodthirsty cult of The Seraphites, nicknamed Scars. During Ellie's playthrough the Scars look just like that, a creepy cult killing anyone they believe to be a sinner. They have a cool design and are genuinely scary to go against (they're also aggressive af). Though like not even 30 minutes into Abby's part of the story, then you sorta realize what Neil Durkmann wrote them in for. I really am trying not to directly namedrop the conflict but if you know what I'm talking about then you know I'm talking about the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. From the Gecko The WLF (nicknamed Wolves) are compared to Isreal & The Scars as Palestine. I know a lot of people probably just rolled their eyes at this and probably think I'm grasping at straws. Neil Durkmann himself confirmed thats what he did. Half of this game is political-commentary of the Isreali-Palestinian Conflict, wrapped with an somewhat half-baked Anti-Revenge story. It's weird, creepy, and disturbing. The worst part is that its so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ forced, Abby's story would of been so much better if it really was just a war between a faction of survivors & people long-gone to the fall of society. Instead Neil really forced a disgusting political message that just makes him look insane, genuinely whats the point man.

Moving away from a political topic, I want to talk about the really controversial ending. Spoilers ahead obviously... On a replay of the game, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not nearly as mad about the ending as much as I am still confused by its decision. I still think its a bad ending but for a different reason than most people say. The half-baked Anti-Revenge plot is present for most of the story but is usually forgotten about seconds after its been very unsubtlely pushed. I understand the point is that Abby & Ellie are so far gone with the thought of revenge that they start losing the trust (and lives) of the people around them. Its well done to a degree but its just handled in such a weird way at times. Especially when they decide not to kill each other at the end, breaking out of the cycle of revenge shown throughout the story. I honestly don't have much of an issue with this other than the fact its still half-baked. My issue with it is that its just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ underwhelming. After all this, all the death of both character's friends & family, after everything we did, for literally nothing to happen at the end. THE ENDING IS JUST A NOTHING BURGER. I truly think this is the real reason why people hated the ending, not cause it doesn't make sense, but because they were so unbelievably underwhelmed.

Remaster PC Port Review: It runs fine, it could be better though. The fact shaders build while playing & going through level transitions means there can be some noticeable stutter during gameplay. It also leaves more room for GPU artifacting to appear, which can be an issue for older Cards. Other than that, it runs fine.

I have a RTX 3060 & I7-10700k, I get an average 70-80 frames with a mix of Very High Textures, Medium shadows & reflections, and about everything else on high. I also have FSR3.2.3 enabled with 72% scaling.

I believe my game could run better if my CPU was more up to scale, as I think its my greatest bottleneck. It doesn't help that this game doesn't play well with most CPUs as testing shows a worrying amount of spikes in Frame-Timing.

Moving on from the performance of the PC Port... The addition of No Return in the Remaster is fantastic. Its a great rougelite gamemode with fast & intense action. It really gets the blood pumping & is a great mode for TLOU 2's combat.

I don't have much to say about this game. Its a game with a pretty average story only held up by its admittedly satisfying combat, and oh boy is it a blast. The higher difficulties feel stressful, every shot feels like it counts... but then you have an insane lack of resources, to the point where your guns have more use as paperweights.

Grounded (The Game's Hardest Difficulty) is my absolute favorite way to play this game, except there is quite literally nothing to use. Theres no bolts, no pills, no ammo laying around, god forbid a plank of wood or brick is somewhere usable in a pile of rubble. I'm aware its an apocalypse where resources are seriously scarce and hard to come by, but when you kill an enemy who was shooting at you with a full mag, only to drop absolutely nothing usable... It just starts to feel artificially unfair. You spend 90% of the game praying to that hack Neil Durkman for a single 9mm round, only to be completely empty handed after a large battle after starting said battle already empty handed. Yes , the hunter shooting at me constantly with a 9mm handgun only drops a single .308 round from his pocket after being killed, MM MM MM THE BEST.

The story is fine, its really nothing special. The world feels exactly like any zombie apocalypse book from the mid 2000s, but at least the plot is pretty interesting with characters that feel real... Then they released Part 2 whoops lmao wuh oh hahahahahha oh no weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I AM DRATULA

I lika to builda da bridges and da buildings and pour CONCRETE everywhere : D

Home Invasion, releasing in mid 2024, is Void Interactive's first DLC to their game Ready or Not. Its aight.

Taking place during a major hurricane soon after the events of the Main Campaign, Los Suenos is in even more chaos than it normally is. Home Invasion includes Three new Level in a loosely connected story.

The first level Dorms takes place in an abandoned college Dorm that's been over taken by Homeless residents and drug users, the building has been under LSPD's radar for a good while now but due to the rise of homeless refugees running to shelter due to the hurricane, the police department felt right to clear it out and arrest reportedly dangerous individuals hiding inside.

Overall the map is C tier in my opinion. Its an alright map, there's nothing amazing to note about it and it plays decently. I will say it utilizes the maneuverability of the tweakers well with crawl spaces and cracks in walls for their to traverse. The Map also tends to run like ♥♥♥♥ even now.

The second level is Narcos, it takes place in an all too familiar neighborhood of 213 Park Homes. Except we aren't raiding houses filled with meth labs. Instead we're here to rescue an informant who has been compromised by the gang he was spying on: The Los Locos Del Pacificos, who used the chaos from the Hurricane to nab our Informant from his safehouse. Being the level with the most square footage in this DLC, you find yourself bouncing from house to house looking for the hopefully alive informant who is randomly kept around the level, taking out gang members as you traverse.

This level imo is B tier, maybe A tier. It has a unique layout and a beautiful presentation, its a fun (though at times confusing) map to play and traverse. Its imo the best mission in this DLC.

The Third and final level in the Home Invasion DLC is Lawmaker. The LSPD received word from a private security company that a panic room alarm was triggered, specifically from a house located at '155 Playa Vista Lane'. The LSPD figured out that admist the chaos of the Hurricane, a group of Eco-Terrorists broke into the building with the Family & Staff still inside. Your job is to gain entry, secure the family and their safety, and neutrilize any threats that may be present.

Lawmaker in my humble opinion is B tier, the set design and world building is fantastic and bring an interesting and topical faction into the midst of many in this game. The United Planet Front are a new addition to Ready or Not and appear in both Lawmaker and a future Dark Water DLC level. But man, this weirdly enough is like one of the easiest levels in the entire game. Enemies are usually spread too thin to be much of a threat and don't have the accuracy to back themselves up. Even so the precense of this faction and the home owner build up to one of the missions in Dark Water. Through-out the map you'll learn how this family can afford such a huge mansion. The breadwinner of the house hold is a major Oil Lobbyist, which is the reason for the UPF invading their home.

This DLC also introduces new Cosmetics for users who buy it, and they add some essentials that tbh feel like should be in the main game. Overall this is a solid DLC, though its hard to overlook the jankiness of its release, especially with its half hazard transition to Unreal Engine 5.

7/10

This game stinks honestly, I was surprised to find out I don't like playing it at all. The gameplay is weirdly enough the clunkiest in the entire series, even with yakuza 3 existing. If I could I'd give this game a sideways thumb, its generally a mid game thats carried by its moral and Character-Writing

The Story is also genuinely boring. I know a common theme with Yakuza games is that the actual plot takes a backseat to Character Writing and Development, but this is a little extreme. Yakuza 4's story is just bad but 5's is just a snoozefest. The only thing that carries it is the fantastic characters surrounding it. The inclusion of Shinada single handedly made me actually like this game and carried me into actually wanting to finish it. Shinada & the common theme of a life's dream was beautiful, actually carried this game heavy.

It look like more than a year to actually coming around to finishing it. I started in Jan 2024 and finished Feb 2025. I'm extremely happy to have finally finished off the Remastered Trilogy of games because I have almost zero intention of replaying any of them anytime soon. Yakuza 3 may have had my favorite story in the entire series but the dated gameplay is too much. Yakuza 4 has fantastic gameplay especially with the addition of Tanimura but Saejima's section is a suicide-inducing snoozefest. Also the story is hot garbage with the worst plot-twist in the entire series, which once again is carried by amazing character-writing.

Either way, Shinada is handsome and awesome and cool and epic and aweomse sauce and cool and epic and coawem awesome anegi njaejae igjah raa r ar

She Murkoffs my Trials 'till I Outlast

At the time of review, I've [STORY SPOILER] The SIRCAA Lab has exploded and all Noontide residents have returned into their brainwashed/monolithian state (Around 40 hours in) So far the story, gameplay, writing, and atmosphere are beautiful. This review is purely about the overall performance of the game and the rocky release.

For now I'm going to leave my review negative as the performance and stability is abysmal, but its to be expected of Stalker, no STALKER game has had a stable launch. I am in no way taking shots at GSC and I'm going to be extremely patient as they roll out patches and fixes, but the god awful optimization is too much for me to recommend to people with anywhere near lower than high-tier rigs. There is no reason for a game to run at an average 60-70 fps on medium with both DLSS and Frame Generation turned on.

So far amazing game, just a real rocky start, give GSC sometime and it'll be fixed right up.

Unity Asset flip game that was fun for a few months around launch, then got boring quick as the game itself never changed or got anymore interesting than it was 4 years ago. No matter how many updates they made it never made it anymore interesting. Get chased and hide while you get violently breathed on.