Recent reviews by Kippu-Kun

I saw this game on sale a few days prior, and since it was only a buck, I decided to buy it. I also noticed that a friend on my list had this on their wishlist, so I bought it for them too. I also asked a few others if they wanted a copy, so I got them that as well. Anyhow, I've had a lot of fun with this game, and I feel it has the right balance of difficulty and skill ceiling, since it forces you to adapt to the game's mechanics early on, unless you wish to keep getting beaten on. Plus the game has upgradable stance and technique "mixtapes," and these carry over in the New Game+, definitely increasing the game's replayability. However, it is not without some issues, as I will detail below.

I bought four copies of game, although it was on sale for a buck. I want to say "Sorry WayForward!" but the game has two technical issues that make the game into a royal pain, and have never been addressed. Typical of a "dump and forget" console-to-PC port. One issue that's quite common is the game suffering from memory leaking, which in turn causes the game to stutter a lot as time goes on. Since it is a 32-bit program, I've decided to use Large Address Aware and make it use more memory, should it start leaking again, and buy you some more time. Alternatively, just exit the game and restart it, as inconvenient as it may be.

The second issue is that the game can and will randomly freeze at certain points of the game, in my personal experience it was in Stage 9, when the arrows were falling from the sky. One fix people used was to open task manager as the game was running, and setting CPU affinity to only use one core. I did this and encountered no freezing, though it could've also been a coincidence.

I've also heard issues with the netcode/online multiplayer aspect, but I cannot comment on this since I have not played co-op with anyone yet. And this game, while it supports keyboards, plays MUCH better with a controller, preferably an Xbox controller.

All in all, do I reccomend this game? Well, considering these issues, I want to say "wait for a sale" since I can't guarantee what I did will also help others who may experience these issues. But if the game had no issues, then this is easily worth the 10 bucks they are normally asking for it.

edit: gimme reward pl0x

I can't compare it to any other horror games since I haven't played many, but from what I played, I've had fun with the game. Enough to play through the game one more time in an attempt to max out all my stats.

So I was going around Wal-Mart and I saw this peculiar game sitting on sale for $20. I also heard bad things about the PC conversion, such as being locked at 30FPS, and when unlocked, it could barely keep 60 on an i7/980 combo. It was also the only one left at the store, so I figured I should buy the game and try it out myself. One thing to note, the version I bought from Wal-Mart came with "the fighting chance" pack, which consists of 5000 skill points, a double barreled shotgun, one health kit, one poison bolt and one incendiary bolt for the crossbow. The weapons don't seem to be available anywhere else throughout the game, so it's something to look for.

After installing four disks and downloading a 31.2GB update, I can finally run the game. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game not only was no longer capped at 30FPS, but could hit and keep 60FPS on a i5/970. The only times it dips is when there's a lot of small particle effects (such as the fire, flies flying around, dust in the room after you save Joseph), or when there's a huge body of water, such as when Sebastian falls down a chute into a room full of blood and bodies.

However, there aren't many graphics options you can change. You can choose four anti-aliasing settings (which STILL produces jagged edges), three shadow quality presets, turning on/off motion blur, turning on/off ambient occlusion, and choosing your FPS cap between 30 and 60. Even at 60 FPS, the game looks like it runs a bit choppy, so what you'll need to do is use a command to uncap the FPS and then cap it with nVidia inspector (nVidia control panel's V-sync won't work, strangely enough).

You can also adjust film grain, but doesn't seem to impact performance much. There's also a console command you can use (r_skipglare 1) which removes some post processing effects (such as the ugly DoF), brightens the palette, and dramatically improves performance. One issue I wish they could address would be allowing an FoV slider as Sebastian admittedly sits WAY too close to the camera, and can barely see what's going on. Thankfully, Flawless Widescreen can fix the FoV issue, and the game becomes much more pleasant as a result.

It would be nice if the game could be optimized further, since some researchers found that the game uses just under 2GB of VRAM with 1080, meaning a 760 or equivalent should handle the game just fine. A budget minded PC can and will provide a console-like experience, if not better due to the aforementioned changes, so it's not entirely botched. Can't expect every game to run like DMC4, though. Also, KB/M controls are pretty good for a bog-standard console port, so I strongly recommend KB/M.

In conclusion, if you have strong hardware (or if the performance has been optimized further), and see the game for cheap (such as at Wal-Mart, which also included the Fighting Chance pack), I definitely recommend you buying it. After all, Monkey Island taught me to never spend more than $20 for a PC game, and that I did. 8)

A fun timewaster, worth the asking price. If you are a fan of neon coloring and the classic Namco sprites, this is for you. Be wary though, as this appears to be a direct console port that's locked at 720p, and you have to use the mouse to navigate menus that should be otherwise be done with the directional arrows.

LAG

LAG EVERYWHERE

SPIES

SPIES EVERYWHERE