Recent reviews by Theipe

I thoroughly enjoyed this one! Rough around the edges, but the game kept me on the edge most of the time. The atmosphere is haunting, but thankfully it doesn't rely on cheap jumpscares.
Some things to note:
* Animations are janky. In VR you'll notice jankiness better compared to flat-screen gaming. This wasn't that big of a deal, until I found myself missing headshots because enemy animations weren't smooth.
* Spiders. You can disable them if you don't like them.
* Item handling can be iffy. There's so many specific spots where you take or interact with specific items around you. This is doable, but under a heavy stress it's not that common to use wrong hand to take the backbag, completely empty your magazine by an accident or grab a grenade instead of new magazine.
* Railroad shooting. In my opinion, this had way too many of those. Those moments are intense, but they can grow really stale the further you get in a game.
* Weapon handling is top notch. Especially during intense shootout its important to keep your head cool when you operate with weapons or you can easily waste a ton of (precious) ammunition.
* The only noticeable bug I experienced was one event, which started to loop over and over again, making my character gasp shockingly for the rest of the level.

All-in-all, rough around the edges, but great and tense VR experience in the world of Metro. I completed in 5 sessions, because my shoulders would tense too much after few hours.

A worthy sequel to The Talos Principle. The same old way to solve puzzles, plenty of new puzzle elements and even more philosophical thoughts than before.

One of the best rogue-lite co-op loot'n'shooters.

Definitely one of the best workout games for VR! Slowly stumbling over first easy levels and then all of a sudden playing maddening Expert+ custom levels like it's (almost) nothing. If you have a VR set, this is definitely one of the "must have" games!

By far the best sniping game delivered by CI Games! It's nice to see that they took the best parts from SGW 3 and made much more compact game. No driving around, no huge and heavy open world. Every area is now much more compact, which appears positively during loading times. They've also done better job slicing every location into smaller pieces. Whereas with 3 there was a lot of enemy popping, there they've done much better job hiding it. There was some instances where enemies were appearing from thin air, but that's only a minor complaint.

Sniping is just great! Watching bullet to fly through the air never gets old! Bullet-cam effect can be rather long time to time and I wish it would be a bit faster, especially on those parts when it slows down even more. Shaving off half the head with precision shot was satisfying every time. I can't help but imagine how glorious it would be, if they could combine this kind of damage models with X-ray shots (from Sniper Elite games).

It was rather easy to abuse checkpoint system. You could kill enemies around an area and run back to trigger checkpoint. Now, when you load this checkpoint, bodies of enemies you killed are gone, thus they won't cause alarm anymore. It also resets the alarm state. And not only that, but each enemy will start from their original locations. This also happens when you go too far to another area and previous area goes to "hidden" mode. When you come back, every enemy appears in their original position. This can also be abused on some levels. This effect was the most notable during last location and especially on trainyard. I wish they could get rid of this "spawn back to beginning when player re-enters to already visited area". I'd like to see the whole location living all together and not when player is nearby. Sure there can be player triggered events, but it ate a bit of immersion when I could just back out and in to reset the current area.

Enemy AI is smart enough. The biggest challenge is to make it challenging enough to track down the player, but at the same time stupid enough to limit its vision and reaction times. It works, but it's not prefect. It has its own little quirks, but I'm quite happy how it works. AI bases their observation level based on alertness level, like if they know someone is causing a problem or if they know the exact location of player. Obviously it can be abused in specific ways when you know how it works, but that's how it is with every game.

Challenge system was great as it encourages player to play location multiple times for all the rewards and also presents quite notable challenges, like beat a whole location and all its contracts using only knife! Skills and abilities made sense, since you are wearing a high tech mask with all kinds of cool things in it. Sci-fi, it just works!

I like this system similar to Hitman: You are given rather large, but not huge, location to scout around and do missions. Also challenges spice up the things and appearing special bounties will make you to explore unexplored territories. I'm not a fan how limited ways to move from area to area are, but I do understand it had to be made this way so that they can easily disable previous area until it's visited again.

Some minor nitpics:
- Hacking a turret and its deactivation had no sound effects.
- There was couple of spots I accidentally found where I get stuck and couldn't move. This required checkpoint loading.
- You can immediately use fast travel points on a new location. I kinda wish they would've made them to be activated, but then I didn't use them until I had completed the location, so that wasn't taken away from me.
- I witnessed 2 interesting AI hickups:
-- AI gets stuck in a small loop and just ping-pongs between 2 points.
-- AI just dies. No response even if I stand right next to their noses. I suspect this has something to do with flashbangs and maybe C4s?

Overall, I highly recommend this game to everyone who likes sniping and stealth. During the 29 hours of gaming I managed to 100% every location. I'd say the value is just right. This game also respect my time, meaning it won't force me sit through long sessions or drag endlessly. There's no manual saving, but it checkpoints quite often (not during a combat) so it should not be a problem.

If you are looking for handcrafted, linear and somewhat short experience, look no further! To 100% this game it takes roughly 23h, but if you just want to beat it, it's more like from 4 to 6h. Puzzles are rather simple, but there's few boss fights where you have to think a bit more. All-in-all, this game doesn't have heavy RNG and opening all the achievements is rather simple as you don't have to wait event X to start or anything. There's tons of hidden locations and most fun I had was trying to 100% each location.

At the beginning you are in unfamiliar place. Torch is running out and you are desperately seeking the next checkpoint. After initial playthrough, panic and rush are starting to fade as these levels are not that big to figure out.

This is not an RPG, where you level up your character as you go (however, there are few shops). It's all about experience, going through dark passages, finding secrets, discovering lore and whatnot.

It's rather simple, really. Well-crafted, highly atmospheric little game. Not completely satisfied with the combat system and pushing rocks in few parts can be tedious, but those are just minor complains.

Small and cute little game, which is quite easy to play through in under an hour. And if you aim to 100% this game, in its current state you can achieve that easily in 1h or so. Short experience, but it does have a level editor, endless mode and workshop support. Price isn't too bad, so if you are looking some quick game to kill time with or are interested in similar action puzzle games, do consider giving it a go. It's a solid experience and does what it promises.

If you liked HITMAN (2016), you'll like this one as well! Basically the same with some new mechanics, but if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Highly recommended for everyone who like sneaking and assassinating their targets. Easily hours and hours worth of content, as long as you accept that this game is meant to be replayed over, and over, and over, and over again.

One of the best, if not the best, co-op shooters against hordes of enemies! Seasonal events, "constant" flood of new content (about every 2-3 months or so) and tons of custom maps and mods... Can't complain.

Simple mechanics, beautiful art style, easy-to-track challenges and collectibles. Short, but lowers the ramp to try 100% the game. Worth the money, worth the time.