February 2023 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2022

Mad Experiments: Escape Room (Q2 2020) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Escape Room
2h | 5 of 13 (38%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- It works?

The bad 👎
- Really basic puzzles on small maps
- There are 3 short levels, and one of them focus on mathematical calculations instead of something interesting
- Object manipulation is stiff and awkward

Conclusion:

It is playable but feels like an extremely basic single person-made game. It even has an option to report bugs in a prominent spot in the main menu... We Were Here Together also costs around 15 USD and is way better than this one.

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Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs What can I say. We solve 3 extremely short rooms and learn that mad scientist (look on the title!) transferred consciousness of Hildegarde into PC? There is a loose connection between this "story" and rooms theme. But nothing interesting.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive We start the room by picking a mask (this is the only thing that distinguish players, there are no bodies). Then we walk around, pick random objects trying to find clues and solve simple and not really interesting puzzles.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Slow walk, picking and rotating objects. Jumping (that is useless and never used).
🎮 Controls ☑ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Even the highest mouse sensitivity feels sluggish. There is forced "snap" on interactive objects, which means that if we hover over one by mistake, mouse movements are stalled.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Extremely simple. Literally just open game and pick level. There is no inventory, we can carry one item at a time. Which is annoying.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☑ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

Anthem (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Action
23,5h | 16 of 77 (21%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Flying mechanic that could be used by more games

The bad 👎
- Plot is shallow and not interesting
- NPC animations are stiff
- Combat is simplified version of ME3 mechanics
- Majority of quests are simple fetch quests

Conclusion:

I bought this one for like 4 pounds so don't really feel like money wasted. But I do feel like time was wasted on this one. Flying is nice gimmick but there is nothing more to this game. Small hub where quests are taken from 4-5 people. Go to x, kill everything, move to y, kill everything. Repeat. Loot is scarce and hardly an actual upgrade over what we already have. World map is small and mostly deserted, apart from filler time trials and random encounters.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs I don't even know the proper background, as nothing is well explained. Game starts with us (Freelancer) going to the Heart of Rage - magic storm created by misuse of some artifact. Our task is to silence it. But we stumble on a titan and whole squad is killed. Few survivors are scattered in disgrace. Turns out world is filled with artifacts left by some magic beings, and only thing that those artifacts are visually doing is going haywire, opening rifts and releasing enemy creatures. In theory artifacts can control Anthem of Creation (which is magic force that allows creation from nothing) but no one knows how they work. Majority of game focus on going to some bandit or enemy camp, find artifacts and silence them. To do so we need to find random artifact bits that are scattered around and then artifacts disappear. Yay. Not. Rest of game is loosely connected plot where we find our old companions (that went with us to previous failed expedition into Heart of Rage), learn how to safely enter storm and silence the artifact that's there. There are some rather bland NPCs along the way, some typical betrayal-redemption theme, and anticlimactic end. Obviously they thought that game will be best seller, and people will run for DLCs that were already planned before game was released.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Go on mission, end mission, go back to fort. It's not possible to start mission from the map. When mission is complete (even when it was simple fetch quest) we always end up teleported to the hub area, and on mission summary page we can decide if we want to pick another mission or actually load the hub area. It makes whole gameplay feel chopped and on rails.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☑ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☑ Crafting Game gimmick is flying and it's done really well. It's what saved the game from being scrapped by EA execs in the first place after all. Everything else is meh. Combat is copy-pasted from ME3 and have even more limits. Each class have one throwable item and one ultimate ability, that charges with enemy kills. I played as Storm which is Biotic equivalent from ME. Abilities work either as primer or detonator, but as we have only 2 abilities we're forced to use the same simple combo over and over again. On top of flying we can swim, hover mid-air to attack from above. Crafting is meh. We need to look for generic crafting materials sources in the wild and gather them. Afterwards we can go and craft weapons that are not stronger than our actual level. Which means it's never possible to craft something really good. Item tiers (green, glue, yellow etc.) are also gated. Common gear has not extra perks, uncommon has 2 passive bonuses, rare has 4 bonuses etc. The more we use specific gear the more points it gets, and unlocks higher tier blueprints of this particular gear. Which in theory sounds cool, but means that we can't swap from using assault rifle into shotgun, without finding one in the field. We did not use this weapon type before, so all we can craft are common level items. Which puts us on disadvantage of missing passive bonuses. There is no actual skill tree, everything is gear based.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Controls themselves are good. No weird animations, no unprecise input.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	☑ Made for gamepads ☑ Hard to navigate Menus are abysmal. Total focus on "form over function". Layered tabs that take half of the screen, and leave not much space for actual content. Big buttons that are put in unintuitive places. Huge list positions that need to be scrolled to check inventory. Plus someone thought it's modern to put menu lists diagonally, so all lists are tilted.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons Copy of ME3 combat. And ME3 was already simplified over ME2. There are basic weapons like handgun, assault rifle, sniper, shotgun etc. They all feel samey and uninteresting. Plus there is strong auto weak point aim for snipers. Abilities are on long countdown, and ultimate is good to kill swarms of mobs. But not good enough to take down even semi-bosses. It is flashy but also feel like grindy bullet sponge.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☑ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies are okay. They will try to walk behind us but can also run towards us through near choke point like idiots. Some enemies have extra abilities, but majority are simple meat fodder. Bosses are also simple and can be taken down quite fast. There are no companions.

💸 Microtransactions ☐ None ☑ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☑ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☑ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

Costume Quest 2 (Q4 2014) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Adventure
2,5h | 0 of 18 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Cute game for kids

The bad 👎
- Repetitive "collect costume" simulator
- Combat is really simple and tedious

Conclusion:

Too repetitive and tedious for adult. But works as something simple to give kid to play, without worry they will empty bank account with microtranzaction purchases.

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Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Evil dentist wants to destroy Halloween, as it makes kids eat too many candies. We travel back in time to prevent future where candies are banned and evil doctor rules the world.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive We walk around, solve some extremely easy puzzles and gather costumes. We sometimes run into simple turn based combat. It's impossible to avoid damage in combat or heal fully during, so there is need for long useless trips to healing stations.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Walk on map with WSAD and use one button to interact and other to use costume special ability (if it has one). Like pterodactyl can "wind away" piles of leaves and clown can wake up characters. In combat we have basic attack and special ability.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are good enough. Inventory has form of journal that list all costume parts we gathered so far.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☑ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons Turn based against generic enemies. We spam basic attack until we charge up special ability. This one can heal us, do damage to more than one enemy etc. But it's not OP ability. If we time attacks right we deal minimally bigger damage. Attacks animations are too long and waste of time, plus they are unskippable. It's possible to find special cards that give some in-combat perks but they are destroyed upon few uses.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies patrol router on pre-determined paths. In battle they always try to kill tank first and then deal damage to rest of squad.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Walking Simulator
6h | 10 of 63 (16%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

☑ The good 👍
- Crafting and "walking" are well made
The bad 👎
- Plot is all over the place
- Whole game is basically one long fetch quest
- Menu navigation is so clunky and annoying
- So much time is wasted on unnecessary animations
- Why monster drink is so pushed on people in this sterile post-apocalypse word? It feels so out of touch

Conclusion:

I played it for around 6h and all I did was deliver few boxes between 4 locations. I read in reviews that it gets better in late game... I'm not going to sit through another 20 or 30h to see that game is better in the end. I did beat Fallout 4 that way as it at least had ok story and more involving gameplay. But I will not spend so much time walking around with boxes. Watching on slippery river banks, sneaking past some creepy floating invisible enemies and fighting with terrain where mother nature had problem with plains, so everything is some form of hard to reach hill. I see how this slow basically walking sim can be relaxing for some, but for me it would be just wasted time.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs World went through some apocalypse, and now when you die you explode within few days, so all bodies must be burned. One of our first jobs is to move corpse to incinerator. Which goes bad as we're attacked by ghost-levitating enemies and it causes half of state, including the capital, to evaporate in huge explosion. We are fine though, as we're immortal. Lol. Then we talk with some NPCs that want to reconnect the America through hiral network, and it's supposed to solve all problems. We are not explained what this network is. Just told that we are extremely important, as there are no roads or delivery systems, so whole country must depend on amazon delivery guys, who haul ridiculous amount of cargo between "Settlements" which are basically just piece of concrete sticking from the ground. Because we don't see or interact with any humans. Just settlers holograms. NPCs we can talk in person have just cringe unnatural dialogues and our character is not likable as well. I wonder how they want to "make America great again" while relying on people carrying hundreds of kilograms on their back to support economy 👍

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive It's so boring and repetitive. 6h of walking through slippery terrain and watching really long weird cut scenes. Get some dialogue from NPC, go to accept order, arrange gear so weight is balanced. And then walk from start to end hopefully not dropping cargo. Sneaking through huge patches of enemies that just make whole delivery part unnecessary long. Put ladder or even a bridge to speed up passing rough terrain, just to realize game also has corrosive rain, that ages anything it touches, so everything we build will crumble sooner than later. Also look on all those boxes that need to be carried on the other side of map, randomly dropped by devs in dangerous spots to add even more padding to the gameplay. If you like really slow gameplay where not much happens then fine. But not otherwise.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Hyper realistic walking. You can trip and fall and damage cargo. If you start to trip over grab opposite backpack strap to stabilize. And maybe put ladder here and there to make walking easier.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Over complicated walking sim. Don't run too fast down the hill or cargo will get damaged and no bonus for you. Don't walk too fast on river bank or you will slip. Don't try to walk across river or you will slip. Best is to press both LMB and RMB to keep balance and slowly walk around. Maybe there are some upgrades that make it less tedious but having to play another hours to get to this point would be too much for me.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	☑ Made for gamepads ☑ Hard to navigate Menus are so bad in this game. Menu inside menu inside menu, and then you need to confirm that you really want to optimize load on back, and then press "accept" in another part of screen as otherwise changes will not be saved. Default key bindings that are weird on keyboard, and some counterintuitive ones can't be changed. Game is also obviously made for gamepads, as even navigating map with a mouse is counter intuitive.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons I've read there is combat later on, but only part I saw was brainlessly spam "V" to attack enemies equipped with spears to win, and spam the same button while being pulled in by the ghost enemies to shake them out.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☑ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Disappointing month. I tried Costume Quest 2 and Death Stranding as they were free on Epic. And I’m really happy how DS turned out. I thought I may not like this game, but now I see I would feel like I wasted money if I’d go after hype and buy it. That’s why demos were nice. And why devs don’t give demos anymore. Make hype, persuade people into buying pre-orders, allow reviews to be released only on or after game release (best if they can show only dev-supplied footage to cover bugs and crashes). And know that average person will spend in game only few hours, so why bother about them. Fans will go and praise game anyway.

I did beat Mad Experiments and Anthem but those were at least “playable till end”. I would not want to pay more than few eur for Anthem though.

I’m playing Encased and damn, this feels like trash bin lurker simulator. At least I found it’s possible to enable cheats, so with 2x game speed it’s easier to forgive time wasted on long animations and slow walking.

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