Starts off great, but the longer you play the more tedious ALAN WAKE 2 gets. It's got major problems with pacing due to awkward balancing of survival-horror action and clue-finding segments (ie. The Mind Place; absolutely destroys the intensity of the game as you constantly pause the action, go into a "mental assembly board" section to piece together clues and profilings in order to progress the game). I feel this game gets good ratings because it's a narrative-heavy "writer's game" like Heavy Rain rather than for great gameplay.
Charming old-school Action JRPG featuring gameplay that consists almost entirely of fetch quests & grinding. Graphics is reminiscent of the HD-2D style seen in the Octopath Traveller series (2D sprites on lush 3D backgrounds). The look of the game goes some way towards alleviating the tedium of the endless backtracking & the aforementioned fetch quests & materials farming. Thankfully, at about 20 hours if you do everything, the game is not a time-sink. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising isn't a game you will remember much after completing - grab it on a deep sale if you're just looking to spend a few days of stress-free gaming.
Having played almost every AAA and AA Soulslike released for the PlayStation, I join the chorus of praises for Lies of P being one of the very best of the genre. It's one of the few Soulslikes that doesn't expect players to quickly adapt to high difficulty while still learning the game mechanics. A lot of thought has gone into designing the early gameplay to ease you into the combat system before gradually ramping up the challenge. This difficulty balancing applies to almost all the boss fights, which give you the option of summoning a "Specter" to join the fight. These Specters are resilient and many can even last through multi-phase boss fights! It's like an Easy Mode option if players just want to keep progressing the game and not get stuck on bosses for hours. The story of Lies of P is clearly presented, eschewing the Fromsoft formula of vague, ambiguous lore. NPC sidequests are conveniently tracked via icons appearing next to certain fast-travel points if a sidequest happens to be active there. Graphically, this is one of the best-looking of the genre, on par with the Demons' Souls remake and the 2023 Lords of the Fallen. The game remains gorgeous even on Performance Mode with stable 60fps throughout. All-in-all, a near-perfect Action RPG - no lie.
A decent, simplified but technically flawed addition to the beast-hunting genre of RPG's pioneered by Capcom's Monster Hunter series. Wild Hearts streamlines a lot of that series's tedious mechanics: no weapons sharpening, faster stat-boosting food preps, more monster parts drop, less-extensive ingredients & materials farming. Players can get hunting & progressing faster than ever. But for all these great quality-of-life improvements, Wild Hearts doesn't get a lot of things right. The camera with no wall-recovery feature is absolute hell. Once you get near walled surfaces during combat, the camera goes haywire & zooms in right behind you, causing your body or head to obstruct the view of the monster you are fighting. Expect a few deaths & plenty of rages from this. Many of the monsters fall victim to artificial difficulty as well. Area of Effect (AoE) spamming, ridiculous tracking attacks & the worst of all - attacks that hit you from off-screen. The game has trouble reading button inputs around 10% of the time, causing occasional problems in building karakuris & executing button-combo movesets. The framerate drops when too many attack animation effects are on-screen don't help either. Wild Hearts' area designs, while impressive, also makes using the in-game 2D map a little confusing due to lots of area verticality. Unfortunately, it seems the devs are no longer supporting the game with patches & updates. Despite my many gripes, Wild Hearts' combat is as addictive as Monster Hunter's, while the weapon & armour materials farming felt way less grindy. For veteran hunters, Wild Hearts is still a solidly playable game. It might even be a good game to introduce new players to monster-hunting RPG's.
No problem with this PC game's PS5 console port in terms of performance or controller controls. As for the gameplay, not so good news. This 2007 shooter has received almost no QoL improvements & its gunplay feels infuriatingly clunky & almost intentionally difficult. The game doesn't seem to register aiming well, with enemies able to avoid even a point-blank shotgun blast. Couple that with 2007-era bullet-sponge adversaries & I can see many FPS players accustomed to modern shooters dropping this game after only a few hours. Let's be honest - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s atmosphere was always the main reason why many remember the game fondly. It was unique for its time. Now, games like the Metro series has replicated the atmosphere while modernizing the FPS gameplay. Still, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl might hold some appeal for retro-gaming enthusiasts wanting to experience what an FPS from 17 years ago plays like... warts & all.
Having only played Version 1.5, I find LotF to be an exceptional Soulslike with good PS5 optimization, graphics & challenge. It manages to avoid huge difficulty spikes between level traversal & boss fights, ensuring consistently intense gameplay. While the game's bosses are overall OK (some good, some b.s.), the level designs are great as is the concept of Umbral Realm, as more & more enemies appear the longer you stay in Umbral. Having an online guide or walkthrough handy is crucial; most NPC questlines have vague or arbitrary progression triggers & there are too many easily-missable secret items, areas & endings. On NG+ though, the difficulty balancing is way off, with endgame bosses having ridiculous health pools. This is the only Soulslike where I advise players not to do NG+ until the difficulty is rebalanced (you can restart the game on NG+0 as often as you like). All-in-all, a hard but pretty enjoyable ARPG.
Whether you will enjoy this game or not depends on 2 things: how much can you tolerate wonky combat & padded-out, backtrack-heavy sidequests? Let's talk combat first, since this is an Action RPG. Because you play as an automaton battling automatons, all fights have slow, herky-jerky movements that look clunky & feel janky. Enemies mostly attack in groups & frequently knock Aegis off her feet (you get really tired of watching her get up after the umpteeth fall). Even after levelling up & maxing out weapons, the combat never achieves any sense of flow or enjoyment. Also, levelling up is the slowest I have ever experienced for a Soulslike, with little EXP gained from normal enemy kills & sidequests. The sidequests are the definition of tedious: talk to long-winded NPCs, backtrack across already-explored districts to find clues or items, go back & report your discoveries to the NPCs, listen to them ramble some more & repeat the whole process 20+ times. All the save points you've unlocked in each district? No fast travel between them. This reeks too much of padding out the length of the game. Steelrising's one saving grace: cool world-building. Might still be worth experiencing if you can get it on a deep sale.
Review after 41 hours: probably the most obvious homage to Dark Souls there is. Game almost plays like a Dark Souls 0.5. Decent fun to be had if you like a moderate challenge, not too many boss fights & lots of exploring. Some levels are quite confusing to navigate due to many areas being indistinguishable from each other (especially in the DLC). Things that will get you killed: the janky lock-on when there are a few enemies on-screen and the slow healing speed (like Dark Souls 2). The (weak) humour doesn't get in the way of gameplay, thankfully. Overall, definitely worth a buy (on sale) for the Souls-like fans
Those expecting a "Shooter with Spells" may want to be wary of the game's other mechanics, some of which really test the patience of gamers using controllers. These include tricky platforming in a few areas (main game + side quests) & puzzles requiring precise aim with unforgiving time limits. My God, there are a lot of timed challenges. Minibosses & bosses become bullet-sponges near the end & in the fane side-quests. The worst might be the endless backtracking as many areas are sealed off till later in the game, but give no indication. A decent shooter, but does require a healthy degree of tolerance.
ALERT, DO NOT BUY ON PS5! Far Cry Primal freezes frequently, forcing you to restart from previous checkpoint or autosave. Materials gathered and animals skinned do not trigger autosave, so you have to collect all over again. Multi-stage bossfights with a lot going can also cause the game to freeze, so you'll be forced to do the fight from the first stage once more. Reinstalling the game does not help. No other game on my console causes this, so it's definitely unique to this game. As Ubisoft will likely never patch an unsuccessful game from 2016, don't risk the purchase or the time sink.
