Recent reviews by arctiican

The base game was already fantastic and this expansion only improves it. The setpieces and puzzles are excellent and consistently of great quality, which given how some of the scenarios in the main game were overly simple and with seemingly rushed art, puts this DLC among the best stuff in the main game too.

The beauty of the gameplay here, much like in the original, is that the design values and rewards above all else intentional and considered actions on the part of the player. If the player is unwilling to meet the specific type of challenge that this game is creating, or are expecting the game to be something that it is not, then they're going to have a rough time.

In Shadow of the Ninja, you're not a hacking and slashing maniac bouncing around mashing buttons. You're a ninja, your every move is carefully considered and executed with intention. Your enemies are very well designed and behave in ways that can be exploited or avoided. Once you become observant of what is happening around you and act with intention, jumps that perhaps felt awkward at first now reveal the graceful finesse of their design in carrying out your attacks. Once you begin to really observe your enemies and surroundings, areas where you have failed many times before will become just a walk through your living room.

The great strength of Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is in its consistency in applying a very purposeful vision for design in 2D movement and action gameplay that greatly rewards players who engage with it. Any frustration one might feel in failing to its difficulty are just in feeling frustrated at one's own dexterity and coordination, as the game's design is so admirably fair. Any time I ever fell to my death or got knocked off a ledge by an enemy shot, I never had the feeling that the game had dealt a cheap shot, I only knew that I had been punished by being too hasty or unobservant.

Truly a masterclass in game design, which combined with the beautiful visuals and incredible music make for an unforgettable challenge.

Deceptive business practice. Sells you a great base game and then releases more good content you can't help but purchase. How do these people sleep at night

Kentucky Route Zero is a work of art, abundant with thematic meaning for the player to interpret freely.

It's clear very early on that you likely will never reach your destination in this game, which turns the focus to what the intention is behind that creative choice. The magical realist storytelling puts in question what the nature is of the reality you find yourself in. Route Zero itself is a loop in something of another dimension, reached and navigated by preternatural means. The first thing you find in that surreal place is an odd bureaucracy carrying out the vague and mundane work of "reclamation" of disused places. The other tangible point of interest on the route is a massive storage facility for their paperwork. And yet there is wonder everywhere, small bends in the fabric of reality. What are we supposed to make of all this?

Thematically it is about the search for meaning-- that is, the search itself. Many characters enter the story, and the game at a critical point untethers you from who you think "you" are, from that point having you control and select dialogue options from an array of present characters across its many setpieces. Who you are, who they are, the nature of reality itself, these things are always in flux, and due to your ability to choose from an assortment of contradictory dialogue options at certain points as well, the nature of the individuals themselves and their motivations are even subject to fluid change and interpretation. So what is constant here? The presence of these people, the presence of motivation and destination, the presence of their pasts they carry with them as they go.

It's a story colored by a profoundly deep sense of loss, yet dulled in the way only those who have experienced great loss can know. An almost throwaway line in the last act stopped me in my tracks, "Wouldn't it be nice to be around at the start of something, for a change?". I felt it summarized the whole experience, of people always in the middle of something or picking up pieces in the aftermath.

Though the purgatorial themes of the story are clear and present, the more I played the more I came to a message that put a different perspective on it. See, there are throughout the game ends that are not ends, continuations that are not continuations, explanations that can't be satisfied and satisfactions unexplained. Very much a purgatory, but the other side of it is that there isn't abject misery. Even if the conditions for misery are expressed by the characters as something they've experienced or that exist within living memory, it's not here. A thought started forming for me as I neared the end of this experience, that this really is something of a paradise, and for paradise to exist you don't need the presence of heaven, just the absence of hell. That there may be endings, but as long as these people continue onward, as long as they have something in their sights and experiences to have, there is a future, always a single unbending beam of hope.

System Shock is a game that immerses the player by setting them loose in a space station with little idea of what is going on or what to do. Because the player must explore the station in order to gain that information, and since the station has been overrun with horrible cyborg mutants, there is a real tension and physicality to the player's interaction with, and understanding of, the game world. There's no glowing marker telling you where to go next, and as such the player must learn the world intimately and keep their eyes open and mind engaged, likely even keeping a notebook while playing.

The System Shock Remake is visually an incredible game, not only doing justice to the original game's design but also just being one of the most stunningly cool and beautiful looking games in modern times. The sound design and music have gotten mixed reception but I personally really liked it and thought the music was great.

In terms of gameplay an approach was taken that kept a lot of the essence of the original game while updating it with what 30 years of game design development in the industry could aid the aging game with. The inventory system is snappy and intuitive, with additional options added in the remake to lighten some headaches and make once useless items more useful.
The story is compelling and the method in which it is told has been made almost a standard for story-driven isolated experiences ever since.

While my enjoyment of the game had its ups and downs throughout, in many of my play sessions I found myself having a total blast and thinking to myself "I am LOVING this", doesn't that deserve a high rating?

Fair price for more great content and great story with some very engaging and interesting puzzles. I think they could maybe go a bit further in difficulty/complexity in the future, personally. The new music is awesome as well!

The Case of the Golden Idol is a well written, engaging, and clever mystery game, with satisfying and intuitive gameplay mechanics to solve its puzzles. The art style and music are excellent as well, same with the humor to its writing. The game is very fair and can be beat reasonably without the use of its hint system (I never needed it) and without needing to backtrack to other puzzles (though you're free to do so to refresh your memory on newly relevant details)

Really creative and beautiful!

Game rules, very creative!

Vampire is a video game adaptation of a tabletop rpg, so it has a lot of great implementations of that style of game mechanics and giving you many ways to react to and shape situations according to how you want to play. The main story/mechanics of the game are as follows: the "masquerade" is what vampires call keeping knowledge of vampires away from humankind. Because vampires are vastly outnumbered, it would be a death sentence if ever it became known to humans at large that they exist, so violating the masquerade is dealt with harshly. You can get 5 strikes before it's game over (there are a couple times in the game where it is possible to redeem a violation). Also being a vampire, you need to drink blood to live, which is also sort of like your Mana for your special abilities. You also have a mechanic called Humanity, which all vampires must keep high or their beastly nature takes over. Practically what this means is as it falls you will lose control of your character at times and they will attack others, risking retaliation or even Masquerade violation.

When you start out you can either answer a stylized "questionnaire" that will pick a Clan and assign your skill points for you, or you can do it yourself. Clans are different types of vampire with different special abilities, strength/weaknesses, and traits that make their playstyle unique and even affect how others interact with you. For example the one I picked was one of the most "human-like" ones and sort of seductive in nature, so I could drink blood out in the open from people I had seduced without consequences (just looks like we're necking I suppose) and all my humanity losses and gains were doubled. Which makes sense, if I'm the most human-like type then it would make sense that being more human was easier, and doing inhumane things had a harder impact on me. So it really incentivizes me to play to my Clan strengths.

The cool stuff:
About blood-- it's a really well implemented rpg mechanic because it's an extremely useful resource and also not very easy to get, so without realizing it I was starting to think like a vampire while playing, taking note of when npcs would turn down dark alleyways alone so I could sneak up in the shadows and get a little refill. So simple yet really well executed.

The world is not really "open" but more of these individual little hubs that you get access to as the game progresses. What the game does really well, and which is one of my favorite things in games that pull it off, is in making every place in the world matter and having you familiarize yourself with it. When you get a quest there's not an icon or a marker or even a map menu, your quest description just tells you what the name of the place is you have to go to and in which "hub". If you need to go to the Lucky Star Motell, you're going to scan your surroundings and see the star sign down the street and start heading that way, and you'll be checking out and making a note of the places you pass on the way. Since all of these areas are small, like maybe a small city block, it never feels overwhelming at all.

There are a lot of places where your skills and playstyle allow you to progress in a mission or solve a problem in a way that you find satisfying, you can hack computers and sneak your way around an area or you can go in guns blazing, you can bypass places by having a high lockpick skill, you can notice a hidden key or environment detail if you have the perception skill for it, etc. You can have the persuasion or intimidation chops to peacefully talk your way out of a conflict or you can sometimes even turn down entire missions if you just don't think your character would go along with them.

The vibe of the world rules too, it's kind of bare at first but the music and sound design rule and make this very unique environment where you're walking around a world that has traffic and city nightlife sounds happening while you're fully aware that cars never drive down the road in the game. You just don't care because it somehow just all meshes. The voice acting also rules, sometimes it's really well done and even when it's not it has this exaggerated and almost cartoonish style that very much feels like the voice actors were having a blast just going ham on these characters.

The not cool stuff:

Like a lot of games, the devs didn't have a lot of time to finish this game, so certain rpg aspects especially towards the end were neglected and a higher emphasis on combat put in their place, which was not the intention to begin with. Since my character wasn't cut out for that I ended up kind of having to do a simple cheat towards the final hours which made me invisible to enemies. It kind of sucks to have to do that to keep enjoying it, but it honestly doesn't feel too bad to skip the unfun stuff so you can do the fun stuff instead.

Combat itself is also not great, think that this game came out 4 years before Fallout 3 and was made on a much smaller scale. It's not always awful but clearing combat areas never feels fun, more like something you're relieved you got past.

The unofficial patch is mandatory p ,much, and even adds a way to skip the worst level in the game and possibly any game, the Warrens, which is extremely long and convoluted and just sucks the life out of you. There's another bs level you can't really skip with a very unbalanced enemy that you have to somehow defeat in a very inscrutible way, that's worth looking up how to deal with the werewolf as well. It's a very small part of the game but unforgivingly brutal. I almost failed it even with invisibility!

----

The game is really good overall, and with the little tips I mentioned it's very enjoyable and replayable. Games like this might be showing their age but really they don't make em like this much anymore, and it says something that this game still has a very active and dedicated cult fanbase to it. I also like the variety in playstyles, there are two REALLY different Clans from the others for example which you shouldn't pick at first, one called the Nosferatu where you basically have to live in the sewers and eat rats because you look to horrifying to pass into human society like the others, and one that is like some kind of insane clairvoyant type vampire that gets a ton of unique interactions and dialogue options because you can kind of see things from the future you don't really understand.

If you like games like New Vegas for their roleplaying and being able to make decisions and steer the outcome you want in the game between different factions, definitely give this a try. Think of it as NV on a small scale. It's not very long, even while taking my sweet time and taking care of a baby while letting the game run steam has me at 26 hours on it.