The last few games you beat and rate them IV

[aleshemsky83]

I found the enemy attacks in Nioh super cheap. They were all like 2 frame animations with no telegrapghs that were super difficult to read. Also, too much useless loot.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

I found the enemy attacks in Nioh super cheap. They were all like 2 frame animations with no telegrapghs that were super difficult to read. Also, too much useless loot.

That is fair. I think it was Sakon Shima that had a one hit kill like that which was ridiculous. The game's approach to difficulty isn't as interesting as From Software titles and I have no intention of returning to the game, but the great combat mechanics kept me coming back and having fun.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Star Wars - Jedi Fallen Order

7/10

A mishmash of Uncharted, Sekiro/Dark Souls and Metroid.

Competently made but uneven and still a bit sloppy in parts. The sequel, if Respawn get to make it, could be something really spécial.

 

[Warden of the North]

Rage 2

Probably a 7. Mindless shooter but well made as long as you dont want anything other then shooting. The leveling system was far too complicated and detracted from the experience.

 

[mouser]

My Time At Portia 8/10

A Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley-esque first person game. Good variety of things to harvest and build. As you progress a good amount of resource collecting can be automated, leaving you to focus more time on the newer and innovative aspects of the game. Lots of charm in the NPC's. Anyone who enjoyed Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley is guaranteed to like this game.

 

[mouser]

Obduction 6/10

From the creators of Myst. A very beautiful world, mix of different puzzles. Enjoyed it, but something just felt lacking in the game. Maybe its the times where the game felt like a walking simulator, or that some of the puzzles are quite non-intuitive. Took about 10 hours to complete.

 

[Shareefruck]

Hollow Knight - 4.5 (Brilliant)

Okay, so I'm finally at a pretty comfortable stopping point with Hollow Knight after taking my sweet time with it (currently at 109% & only having completed the 3rd Ending). It's incredible and I love it, but is also kind of a difficult game to rank and rate. There are some basic flaws that hinder the experience somewhat, but mostly everything is masterfully done and they also go so thoroughly above and beyond and absolutely nail each of those additional aspects in a way that other games don't. On the other hand, many of the game's biggest charms and ambitions strangely magnify its otherwise minor weaknesses.

For the most part, I would say that the core metroidvania map traversal and progression design of the game is where most of its weakpoints lie. Pretty much everything else about the game is absolutely beautiful and perfect. In contrast, its Souls influence seems to be where most of its strengths come from.

1. Fast travel and rest point placement on the map are poorly considered. Backtracking in this game can sometimes be inelegant, and putting half a dozen screens between many rest points and boss fights was a questionable decision. These issues are further magnified by the ambitious size and scale of the map, the Souls-esque trial-and-error difficulty of the boss fights, and how tedious and unforgiving the loot system is (these are strengths in isolation, though). Another minor problem with the map is that entire areas get filled out the moment you touch anything, making it impossible to know whether or not you've ACTUALLY thoroughly explored the area that the map labels as explored.

2. The game has a problem with walling off essential necessities as items/abilities to collect later on. You start the game by wandering around aimlessly with minimal abilities and without a map, and a not entirely unlikely possibility of wandering off and getting lost in a completely different area without even realizing that you need one. In the event that you do find the map guy, you then have to grind for gold and return to the beginning simply to buy a location indicator on your map, as well as seperate pins that indicate landmarks. To me, these are poor design choices that were a pretty crummy way to start the experience off with, IMO. Compare this to Super Metroid where the first few areas of the game are an absolute masterclass in naturally, wordlessly, and unambiguously communicating to the player exactly how this game will work moving forward.

3. Very minor general gripe, but I do not for the life of me understand why modern games like to use the "when you die, return to where you died to collect your loot, and if you die on the way there, it's gone for good" system (Shovel Knight did this too, and it sucked, IMO). It's not a big deal, but it seems strangely regressive to me.

4. Other than that, the game is absolutely masterful. The sound and visual design and art direction are absolutely flawless, the hands-off minimalistic storytelling style is perfect, the depth of the lore is bottomless and is communicated in very tasteful, thought-provoking, and powerful ways (all the hints regarding the way void, essence, and soul operate is fascinating), the moment-to-moment atmospheric/personality quirks and charms are wonderful, the general movement and battle mechanics are a blast to work with, and the charm system is a lot of fun to endlessly play around and experiment with. There are also tons of individually striking and memorable moments of unsettling somberness, tragedy and humor peppered throughout it (like the banker moment, everything to do with Zote, seeing friendly monsters slowly turn, the outcome of the grubs, Quarrel, etc).

5. In my opinion, aside from the lore, the greatest part of the game is the individual boss battles and boss rushes, in particular the colleseum and pantheons. They're all very uniquely designed, interesting, challenging and satisfying to figure out by recognizing patterns, reacting to start-up animations, planning charm combinations around them, and executing a counter for each sequence. Even the ones that are tough as nails and seem intially impossible to overcome become manageable with a bit of practice and thought. I had a ton of trouble with Zote the Mighty and the Watcher Knights, but now I can get through them without taking much damage.

Overall, I would say that in terms of game design, Hollow Knight is overrated as a pure metroidvania (it does not in any way outclass Super Metroid in that respect, not even close), but as a Souls-like game (right down to the way that it handles mechanics, reward/punishment systems, lore, and world-building), it is an absolute masterpiece. Worth noting that it starts out pretty weak and picks up momentum as it goes before finally snowballing into something incredible.

The crazy thing is that, as mentioned, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Silksong's easily my most anticipated game right now.

Favorite Games
1. Super Metroid
2. Earthbound
3. Celeste
4. Inside
5. Super Street Fighter II Turbo
6. Tetris
7. Into the Breach
8. Downwell
9. Hollow Knight
10. Super Mario World

 

[Ceremony]

​

Soma (PS4, 2016)


Soma is a first person horror game from the same people that made Amnesia. You are Simon Jarrett, a Torontonian who starts his day off by going for a brain scan. He sustained brain damage in a car crash (not enough to stop him doing... anything, by the look of it) and has been offered experimental therapy by someone who isn't a doctor who's renting a room from an office block that hasn't finished being built. Hmm. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss his apparent brain damage.

Simon sits in a chair as a screen is lowered over his head. He then wakes up ninety years in the future, in a mostly destroyed underwater research facility at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. He spends the rest of the game figuring out where, why, and what he is.

It's hard for me to review this as a game. I'll come to why later, but if I were to be harsh I'd describe this as a walking simulator. I like walking simulators, provided they're interesting. The important thing is that they're engaging enough, either through story, dialogue, setting, or a combination thereof, to keep you interested and almost forgetful that you're physically controlling the progression of the narrative.

Soma absolutely does this. Consistently, from beginning to end (I want to say 5-10 hours, but I'm not sure) you are interested in what's going on, where you're going, and what's going to happen when you open the next door. I don't want to spoil too much about the story but it's a piece of classic existential sci-fi, almost timeless with how relevant the question of human interaction with artificial intelligence will be in the future, as well as the fate of the planet itself. There are times when the game can be slightly heavy-handed with these things. It's pretty relentless, and if you get stuck on a puzzle or a section for a bit too long it can be frustrating to return immediately to your existence being questioned. In terms of thoughtfulness however, there's no question that there's basically no wasted moments throughout.

Coupled with the actual themes and content of the game is the setting. The Pathos-II underwater research facility is split up into various sections which you have to navigate. Any game which is influenced by the setting of BioShock is going to score favourably with me, but the underwater stations here are all beautifully designed. In proper horror style they're all confusingly empty as well, as you gradually discover why this is the case as you progress. The sense of isolation is compounded by your guide, a woman named Catherine who worked at the facility but now talks to you through a digital equivalent, and only when you reach terminals in the facility where you can plug her in. Going back and forth between Simon being alone and Simon being guided is especially effective as it imparts a sense of abandoned responsibility on the player, who now has to navigate an area without someone who would know what they're doing.

The usual drip feed of information as you progress is perfectly paced as well. Audio messages and assorted items that you find gradually uncover the story of the people who worked at Pathos-II and why it ended up in the state it's in. It can get confusing at times with the sheer volume of names that get thrown at you with little other distinguishing information, but for the most part the reveals are in sequence with you uncovering the story.

From a technical perspective, the audio and visual components complement what I've just described really well. The game itself isn't technically very sound. You know how games auto-save, and have done for years? You know how occasionally when a save icon pops up you might notice a frame or two of lag? Soma looks like it's about to break when this happens. When you load your save game the loading time is genuinely horrendous. At least thirty seconds, and even then on several occasions you're stood for a time waiting for a bunch of stuff to finish rendering. However, when everything is loaded and working properly, it looks great. There are several sections that look like a perfect cross between something staged for effect and a genuine outcome of a struggle, or something being damaged. There are lots of striking moments, and I think playing this in the dark with headphones on would really accentuate these.

There's one sequence in particular I need to mention on its own. Towards the end of the game you have to dive down a lot further from your starting point, into 'The Abyss.' You're lowered down in a diving cage. This stops part of the way down and you have to climb up, on to the top and flick a switch to continue. You're on top of this box in pitch black darkness. The lights, sounds and voices that were guiding you down have stopped and you're given a stark reminder of how precarious your position is. It's a fantastic setpiece that really compounds the possibilities of the setting.

This is eclipsed once you're actually on the sea floor. There are a few buildings dotted around and you have to trek quite a way to the next full station you're trying to reach, with some lights stretching ahead of you and a warning to not deviate from them. While you're here, there's a storm of some sort causing massive currents to slow your movement and the sound of rushing water to drown out everything else. The screen is also blurry at this point and I spent the whole sequence thinking I was going blind. It's some achievement for a game to genuinely make you realise what it's like to be walking around at the bottom of the ocean, but Soma definitely managed it here. Everything I've described, plus the threat of who knows what if you stray from your precarious course, is about as real as it gets.

Sadly, on that note it's time for me to get to why I can't really review this as a game. I've mentioned that it's a horror game, I've mentioned there are a few puzzles, but you might have noticed I've not mentioned any gameplay. There are monsters dotted around Pathos-II. There's something of an explanation for them which gets tied up towards the game's conclusion. They all have a similar effect on you that the enemies in Amnesia: The Dark Descent had in that your movement and vision is impaired, but there's no comparable health or sanity bars that are affected. One enemy in particular ties in quite well with the notions of humanity and consciousness that are central to the game, making you question if it's really there.

The problem with these enemies is that there's no purpose to them. I think there are two sections where you have an area with various rooms, or a destination you need to reach with one of them in the way. You get around it by looking for it and moving when it allows you, or distracting it by throwing an object. These moments are few and far between however, and they don't serve any meaningful purpose from either a gameplay or narrative perspective. What are they? I don't really know. Why are they here? Don't know that either. Why are they trying to kill me? That I really don't know. There are people left alive in the facility. There are people in the facility that have had their consciousness transferred on to robot bodies. These aren't the enemies. To bring up another BioShock comparison, it feels like these creatures were included out of some sense of obligation with this being a video game, and needing an enemy for you to avoid. Rather than describe Soma as a horror video game I'd say it's a game with horror elements, but they included some that didn't really fit with the rest of the gameplay.

With that in mind, Soma offers a Safe Mode in which you can play the game without the enemies going after you. I played it on that, though still mostly trying to stay unseen, and I don't think I lost anything in the experience. I think I would have been frustrated to an unreasonable degree if they'd actually been threatening.

In terms or other criticisms, there are a few. Although most of the puzzles are pretty basic, there are one or two which are thrown at you with little explanation. This is mostly fair enough because Simon would be confused and out of his depth in this situation, but this doesn't make the gameplay any easier. There's also one section which basically amounts to trial and error busywork using two computers in the same room, and I'm pretty certain it was only there for padding. For the most part though the puzzles are complex yet straightforward, and fit in well with the overall tone of the game.

I'm not sure my comments about the enemies really count as negative criticism, so I'll throw in one. Aside from the audio messages and one or two remaining Pathos-II workers, there are only two characters in the game - Simon and Catherine. Considering the relative humanity of the pair of them, the writing and voice acting has to be very good between them to carry the game both when they're talking and when they're not. Simon isn't. Simon accepts everything he's hit with just a bit too matter of factly, and never really seems to panic, or struggle with the fact his last memory is of going into a "doctor's" "office" in Toronto a century ago. Even when he discovers why he is the way he is, it's almost nonchalant the way he carries on. I criticised the protagonists in Outlast for being silent and illogical, Simon seems to have gone too far in the other direction.

At the start of the game you're in Simon's apartment before he goes for his brain scan. If you look around you find a newspaper tearing in one of his drawers. The story-relevant article on the front describes his car crash and brain damage. If you turn it round however you see half of a headline and story with the words GAME ENDS IN A SURPRISE written at the top. I took a screenshot of this intending to share it as my opening image, but the ending was so jarring I haven't. I still don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't played it, so I'll quote the Zero Punctuation review which raised the same issue:

"At the end when the THING happens and he's surprised by the THING even though the THING happened already and was explained to him."
(I paraphrase, I watched it a few days ago.)

Basically, I went into the ending knowing what was going to happen. It happened. It had happened before. It had happened to Simon twice in the space of a few hours. It happened again, and he was outraged. Shocked. Despite everything that came before, this made the ending feel very anti-climatic to me. It's not often I'm left with a feeling of "is that it?" and certainly not from something that contains everything I've just described, but I was seriously underwhelmed here. Considering everything that came before, I was especially disappointed as a result.

So there you have it. Soma. A horror game that isn't really a horror or a game. Something that spends its time questioning and answering what makes humans human, only to end with an inexplicable misunderstanding of what we've had explained to us. Myriad philosophical and literary influences. Despite all of that, an unforgettable and essential experience, one with thoughtful and well-delivered ideas well beyond what you might expect from a video game. I pretty much can't fail to recommend this.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

MO: Astray - 8/10

This is a puzzle/platformer with some action elements. You will control a blob as you jump and stick to walls/ceilings and take control of creatures to solve puzzles. The jumping mechanics may feel a little strange at first but you get used to it quick and it fits the theme of the game very well. The story takes place in a sci-fi setting and is surprisingly good although bare. There aren't many cutscenes but the story that is displayed during the cutscenes is really interesting. The story always feels like it sits on the backburner a bit while the platforming takes precedent.

Overall, the game's really fun. Some of the platforming sequences require really quick reflexes and are really satisfying when you do complete them. The game isn't overly difficult but it's not easy either. If you're looking for just a casual experience, this isn't the game for you. I wouldn't say it's the kind of game for players seeking the most difficult experiences either but it's definitely more on the difficult side than the easy side. I definitely recommend this game if that's what you're looking for.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

American Fugitive - 7/10

American Fugitive is a pretty fun casual old school GTA clone. The controls feel a bit slippery. I personally couldn't stand shooting in the game but fortunately there's not much of it, it's mostly driving. The driving could have been better but wasn't that bad. The missions felt a bit repetitive and the story was fairly lacking.

But with all those negatives, the game had a bit of charm to it. It has been a long time since there was a top down GTA-style game like this and it's still pretty well done considering it's by a small indie team. It's definitely a casual experience. Missions are usually only 5 minutes long so you can pick it up and play real quick.

There were some challenges that were OK, just standard stuff. Burglarizing houses was pretty fun though. You would have to sneak up, inspect every window to see if the house is occupied, and break in to steal as many valuables from each room as you can.

Overall, if you're looking for some nostalgia of old school GTA, pick this up. Even if you want just a more casual action title and like the top down or GTA theme, at least put it on your radar and grab it when it's on sale.

 

[mouser]

Miasmata 7/10

An interesting first person exploration game, with survival elements. Your character is a scientist who wakes up on a deserted island sick with the plague. Exploring the island you'll find dozens of local flora that can be investigated for use in crafting a cure for the plague. Like most of these games the story is revealed to you in piecemeal as you find notes from the disappeared former inhabitants. Added to the mix is an ominous creature that will appear at times attempting to hunt you down, the only solution to which you have is to hide and dodge it.

Took me a little while to get into the game, but once I got a couple hours in it became very compelling and I really enjoyed completing the game. Features an interesting mapping system, where you only clear out fogged areas of the map by triangulating your position based on previously identified landmarks. The landscape environment is very well designed, and can be challenging to navigate in many areas. It's quite easy to get lost or off path. You can only save the game at pre-defined map landmarks and it's quite often fatal to be wandering about after sundown, so there does tend to be some planning in scouting out locations and planning ahead on save/sleeping points when traversing the island.

Expect about 15-20 hours to complete a playthrough if you're not using spoilers. Well worth the $7.50 I spent on it last holiday sale.

 

[Shareefruck]

Downwell - 4.5 (Brilliant)
Didn't notice that Downwell had a hard mode until now and finally beat it. Brilliantly designed, deceptively simple, wildly satisfying game with a ton of charm and depth. Easily the best mobile game ever created, IMO.

 

[Unholy Diver]

God of War (2018) 8/10

I had never played the old ones so this was pretty much all new to me, I enjoyed the story and interaction between Kratos and Atreus and Mimir quite a bit, and the game was a lot of fun hacking and slashing everything to death.

 

[mouser]

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas 4/10

Played on PC, might have appreciated it better with the limitations a few years ago on a smaller platform like an iPad. About 12 hours to finish. Lots of things to like about it if you're a Zelda fan. The graphics are nice, many similar Zelda style mechanics.

Having said that, almost none of the "puzzles" feel challenging. There's a good bit of voice work in the game, but most of the voiced dialogue comes off an monotonous and uninspired. The travel between islands shooting at things mimics recent mechanic additions to the Zelda line of games, but feels even more pointless and a waste of time versus something that adds to the game experience. I wanted to like this game more, but at the end simply couldn't.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

Nioh: DLC Packs
Played on PC, also available on PS4

Since it's almost New Year's and I'll have to talk back out soon, here's my mini-reviews for the three DLC packs that came with the Complete Edition of Nioh.


1. Dragon of the North
-Immediately noticed the annoying re-use of old yokai enemies again, a part of the base game I got bored of quickly.
-Two new Yokai of note are the Rokurokubi, an enemy with a wide range of attacks include an annoying instakill head wrapper, and the damage sponge Namahage who can be tricky and are a welcome addition to the fold......and yes, they both get overused as well.
-First main mission is a bit bland, second mission is pretty well designed with good pathway execution.
-Bosses aren't fun, especially the final boss of the main missions. Maria may be waifu material, but she ain't fun to mess around with. At all.
-Sub-missions are trash, and Hands of the Dragon is an affront to boss design.

Score: 4/10


2. Defiant Honor
-Right off the bat, the first main mission has a fun design revolving around a war trench that has seen a ton of combat already. Navigating its maze while staying away from arrow fire is a nice touch.
-Second main mission is more traditional but solid, though I do not love its heavy mini-boss focus.
-Bosses are a slight improvement here. Sasuke is good but too easy (barely sweated on try one), while Yukimura returns to the boring, cheap design of the first DLC pack.
-Ninja Dogs are annoying all dog enemies, but they're tolerable and easier to understand than the Spirit Foxes.
-Overall, pretty average collection of side missions, though the Date Masamune redux boss fight is infuriating.

Score: 6/10


3. Bloodshed's End
-I found the initial mission's design to be rather confusing at first, but it eventually started to make sense.
-Again, mini-bosses aplenty, and the level's boss is a pure retread of one of the game's best characters but run of the mill battles in Yukimura (and Sasuke), though having the latter come in near the end was a rare case of good multi-boss balancing for once.
-Second main mission is a fun romp with some friends of the Date clan. Managing the battlefield with their support is actually really fun.
-The game's final level is very traditional and the least interesting to talk about, but it serves it's purpose as a boss-a-thon (with a lot more recycling).
-Outside of that, I LOVED the new bosses. Toyotomi is the least interesting, but his pauses between moves feel fair with his high potential damage output. Nine-tailed Fox isn't super hard, but the aesthetics of the boss itself and arena are superb and fight itself is highly enjoyable. Onmoraki has a diverse attack set and is by far the toughest of the new bosses, but it's also my favorite as its tells eventually become clear. Probably the best boss in the entire game.
-Side levels do their job for the most part. Some repetition in environments and bosses (as per usual), but they really pulled all the stops for anyone looking for a challenge encompassing all of their combat knowledge.

Score: 7/10


I'll give Team Ninja credit for salvaging the DLC and producing some of the best content in its latter stages. As part of the complete game I have no issues with what I paid, though the abundance of re-skined bosses are pretty sad when compared to what FromSoftware does with their DLC.

 

[Unholy Diver]

Rage 2 - 6.5/10

Very run of the mill shooter, story and missions were pretty weak. Overall probably one of the bigger disappointments last year

 

[Soedy]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider - 8 / 10
Really liked it, took me ~ 16 hours inluding all Tombs and some side missions. I really liked the exploration and the tombs were wonderful. Not a fan of the later enemies and thought it was a little bit too much gun play in the end (like all other newer Tomb Raiders or Uncharted games). I really loved the landscape, liked it more than RotTR.
There are still some shortcomings, Story wasn't for me and some weird animations.

 

[Soedy]

God of War (2018) 8/10

I had never played the old ones so this was pretty much all new to me, I enjoyed the story and interaction between Kratos and Atreus and Mimir quite a bit, and the game was a lot of fun hacking and slashing everything to death.

You would not have said the bolded part, if you played the old games

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Just beat Windscape on the Switch.

It was a decent game. Fun even. But with zero polish and the most abrupt ending to a game I've ever seen. As in I thought I was on maybe the penultimate boss, beat it, and then immediate end credits and hard exit to title screen.

Shame, though. A few tweaks here and there and I'd easily be able to recommend it. As it stands now, it was a ghetto FPS Zelda that was worth beating in a couple of days, but I'll never come back to it. Archived already.

 

[mmalady]

Final Fantasy 15
5.5-10
was my first(and last) ff game and i played it shortly after DMC 5( similar combat) so perhaps that is why I found it underwhelming..
Long, Repetitive , glitchy, overly difficult "boss" fights (near the end) and couldn't wait for it to be over

AC origins
8.5/10
Big game but didn't feel like it...a few glitches and got a bit grindy when trying to upgrade gear/ap but it was worth it...enjoyed it very much and will eventually try Odyssey

 

[Ryuji Yamazaki]

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night

8.5/10

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

Getting close to beating Sleeping Dogs, also decided to dip back into Sekiro. Definitely got rusty, but it's still exhilarating as hell.

 

[Ceremony]

​

Outlast 2 (PS4, 2017)

I've been putting off writing a review of Outlast 2 for a while. Despite finally finishing it several weeks ago (00:14 on December 25, if you're interested) I've not started this for a number of reasons. As I think about it now, I don't know how sum this game up. I have a lot of things to say about it, but none of them really affect my overall opinion of it which is easily distilled into a single sentence. It's bad and I don't like it.

Similar to the first Outlast, you are an investigative journalist with a video camera who ends up in a secluded location where something bad has happened. Similar to the first Outlast it initially seems deserted, but it turns out it's filled with lunatics who want to kill you. You have a night vision mode on the camera to help you through the dark bits. Unlike the first Outlast you can collect bandages to heal you when you get injured, and unlike the first Outlast you don't have unlimited stamina, so you can't run full speed constantly.

The game opens with you, Blake, and wife Lynn on a helicopter somewhere over the Arizona desert, recording an intro for a piece on a news website about a heavily pregnant girl who stumbled out of the vague direction they're heading. The helicopter crashes, Blake wakes up alone, and hilarity ensues. Within two minutes of controlling him you'll find Lynn gone and the pilot tied to a tree having undergone some vivisection. Some more exploration reveals you've landed in the middle of a psychotic religious cult led by a fat man named Knoth. You find Lynn and are just as quickly separated from her again, and you spend the rest of the game trying to find her again and get away.

The gameplay is pretty much as described two paragraphs ago. There's a bit less emphasis on hiding in or under things in this game. There are barrels and things dotted around but the stealth in game is a bit more organic. You don't 'use' objects to hide in terms of interacting with them, you're generally best doing it manually. Night vision on the camera acts in much the same way as before. It's the middle of the night and there aren't many lights in or out of buildings, so you'll be fairly reliant on it. For a first person horror game this remains an effective mechanic in terms of increasing and maintaining suspense, although you're never really in any danger of the battery running out.

Running is the biggest gameplay change. Before, you pressed sprint and you were at full speed until you stopped. Now, Blake takes time to build up momentum and reach top speed. Blake also starts blowing out his arse after about ten seconds of this, at which point the screen goes blurry and starts pulsing, while his movements get slower and jerky and his breathing gets louder. This might sound realistic and immersive, but it's a complete nightmare. It takes too long to go fast. He gets out of breath too quickly. It takes too long to stop and recover this, especially since you need to come to a complete stop (and make sure you don't start again too quickly, otherwise you're not regaining anything) to do so. Despite his protestations nothing bad actually happens if you keep going when he's struggling, so it ultimately doesn't even mean much. What I do know though, if I was in his situation I would be able to sprint for as long as I had to if I was being chased by any of the enemies in this game.

From a technical standpoint the game is okay. It's functional. The music feels less generic than the first game and is more appropriately situational. Although the game is very dark throughout there's some decent atmospheric use of light, and now that I think about it this is probably the best aspect of the game. Not any of the actual content, storytelling or gameplay, but the way it looks and feels is thematically solid. If you sit and analyse the layout of the various levels it really doesn't make sense though. I think I saw a comment on a youtube video I watched about it that said the game feels like something that was planned to be open world but got changed after most of the areas had been made, and it feels right. For a seemingly self-sufficient religious, inbreeding cult in the middle of the desert, the amount of space you cover is huge. There's a section mid-game where you go down a river on a raft for fifteen minutes to reach the mine where the game ends. The amount of space you cover is so large and dark it ends up feeling mostly meaningless, but you could argue this is appropriate given Blake's disorientation and general sense of useless panic.

Now that the game's few positives are out of the way, let's get to the good stuff. I'll start with Blake, since I just remembered him. When I reviewed Outlast I mentioned that I felt it suffered because the charactres you played as were silent save for some notes they recorded upon seeing certain events. Blake talks, and is much worse off for it. He's a whiny, useless idiot. Useless might be a bit harsh in fairness, he's good for exposition when stuff happens that you can't identify. For instance, at the start of the game he quickly finds Lynn after the crash. She was being probed or tested or something by some of the local residents, before Knoth was proclaiming over a loudspeaker that she was pregnant. They all naturally believe this is the anti-christ come to fulfil his prophecy, or something. I quickly stopped paying attention on my first playthrough and wasn't motivated to care later on.

Anyway, shortly after being reunited with Lynn you're both caught and some people come and take her away, leaving him. This is where Blake farts out some explanation for what's going on. "There's two sides," he tells us. "It's not just the Christians, there are others... Heretics they called themselves." This is useful, because you had a blocked, unclear, badly lit view of what was going on. You turn up at the mine at the end and emerge into a cross between The Wicker Man and Eyes Wide Shut as a bunch of naked people covered in mud and wearing animal masks made of twigs are going on about bodies and pleasure and whatever else. Whenever there's confusion about which side is chasing you at any given time, Blake's there to explain it in vaguely disgusted tones when he gets the chance. I'll give a free tip to any budding storytellers - of any medium - out there. If something happens and you need to explain what happened in plain English five minutes later, you've f***ed it somewhere. This happens more than once.

It's also worth pointing out that any nuances in the enemies you face are pointless. The game's mostly too dark to see any of them, and you're being chased too violently to see any of them even if it wasn't. Great stuff. Even the few boss encounters follow this pattern, with one suddenly appearing and you running and hoping you don't get hit.

When I wrote about the first Outlast I mentioned that its DLC was overly focused on gore and shock value at the expense of atmosphere. This game is worse. You can speedrun the entire thing in about two hours. Maybe that's 4 or 5 if you do your first playthrough on a lower difficulty and struggle with getting lost. I checked out very early on. Aside from the helicopter pilot I mentioned earlier, the first time you see anything nasty is a random pit of bodies inside a hut you pass through. Blake is shocked, of course, but he just passes on with no meaningful alteration to his personality. This transports itself to the player, to the point where nothing is scary or unsettling. Blake gets crucified in this game, and I don't care. He just rips himself off the cross and carries on.

Despite this, I've just realised there are occasions where the game doesn't show gore. In one section you hide in a confessional booth in a church while a woman is tortured in front of her husband. She's on a rack being stretched while they try and get information from him, but the camera's positioned in such a way you can't see her. I don't understand why. Is it because she's alive, and not just a corpse? There's another part earlier too where you're hiding under a guy's floorboards while he gets impaled. If anything this just emphasises how meaningless the rest of the 'shocking' content is, because you know you're not seeing anything fresh. Piling up the body count and doing weird stuff to them doesn't mean anything on its own. It certainly doesn't mean anything when you're lining the walls with them.

The biggest problem I have with this game isn't anything I've mentioned before though, it's the distinct impression that it thinks it's more intelligent than it is. When I first played it I wondered why they had bothered calling it Outlast 2. Aside from the gameplay it seemed to have little connection to the first game. Then when I was getting all the collectibles, it does. If you're unfamiliar, the first Outlast is set in an insane asylum taken over by an evil corporation who perform mind (and body) altering experiments on its inmates. It actually turns out the same corporation's influence is at play in the sequel.
I mentioned before there's a section where you travel on a raft. Across the lake where this area begins there's a huge refinery-like complex of some sort which periodically emits a massive burst of light and noise. If you travel round the edge of this area, in the opposite direction to where you're supposed to go, partially through the lake you're not supposed to swim in, you find one of the notes the game has lying around. It's signed by someone from one of the early notes in the first Outlast, talking (very vaguely) about the place across the water giving off the light and noise. That's it. That's your connection. The entire religious cult, compound, whatever, is caused by some factory or other across the water firing out death rays.

If I had still been paying attention on my first playthrough here I would have been quite angry. The game starts with the stated reason for Blake and Lynn's investigation being a young pregnant woman suddenly appearing out of the desert. Lynn remarks that she had high levels of mercury in her blood. Are you telling me that something as large as what's across the water is unbeknownst to the entire world? f*** off. The notion connecting the two games isn't that unreasonable in theory. It's arguably actually quite clever, if there was an appropriate reveal that the same villain's actions were affecting people but in a different way. But they tried to be too coy, too clever with it and the whole thing falls flat when it's revealed.

You see, the suggestion is that all of the religious fanaticism is a result of these blasts of light. Each of them accompanies a 'plague' of some sort - birds falling from the sky, locusts, blood raining from the sky, that sort of thing. The big guy in charge of the cult, Knoth, has his own gospel centred around killing and f***ing things (you find it dotted about, it reads like a 14 year old thinking they're edgy so I stopped reading them) and all of this seems tied in with the experiments or whatever's going on across the water. Again, it's a reasonable idea in theory, but the execution is so amateurish at times that I just don't care.

All of this pales into comparison with the flashback levels. I'm not going to go into these in extreme detail unless you want to play the game (probably a bit late, sorry), but at certain points when going through buildings or areas, Blake will suddenly be in his old school. Sometimes he'll be an adult, some times he'll be a child. He has a friend there called Jessica. The early signs say Jessica killed herself, but then you start to think something else happened to her. It's a Catholic school too by the way, because there needed to be some religious connection.

Without spelling out everything for you, there's a suggestion as the game's ending ties into these flashbacks that the entire game was an allegory for guilt and repentance. The very end in particular seems symbolic, and to me it feels like the rest of it might be a self-imposed delusion on Blake's part for what happened when he was younger. Maybe they're running concurrently, I don't know. Either way, the game clearly sets up its ending as some sort of miraculous moment of hope and redemption relating to these flashbacks. The problem is everything else I've described has completely numbed you to it, so it's rendered meaningless. The entire way the religious angle is approached in this game feels really immature and as a result ineffective, considering what they were seemingly trying to do. That's why I said it feels less intelligent than it thinks it is. There's no subtlety, there's no intelligence, then the end tries to do all of the symbolism at once in the space of about five minutes. I don't care at this point, and I don't care even having gone through the game several times and coming to the conclusion you put me off of reaching naturally.

I think that's everything. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and it's bullshit. I'm not even exaggerating, several sections are blind luck whether or not you get through them. Unless you're a lunatic like me I wouldn't recommend it. Although I suppose that's fitting, in a way. Outlast 2 was an off-putting, infuriating and underwhelming way for me to spend ~30 hours of my life. As a horror game it's underwhelming because it relies completely on shock value and gore rather than atmosphere or anything cerebral, and gameplay which feels over-simplified on a situation by situation basis. As an intelligent story it fails on pretty much every level, coming off as immature and even more gratuitous than the horror elements. I think there was potential here, but I don't think any of it was met.

 

[Mantis]

I downloaded a bunch of cheap games on my PS4 a while ago

Dragon Age Inquisition 6/10

Farcry New Dawn 5/10

Battlefield Hardline 5/10

Fallout 4 8/10

Doom (2016): Way better than I was expecting. 8/10

God Of War (2018): A lot of the game feels like a chore to get through but still decent. 7/10

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster: I used to play FFX back in the day but never beat it until yesterday. It is still the last good Final Fantasy game. 8/10

Blazing Chrome: Good if you like Contra or Metal Slug etc. 7/10

Goat Simulator: was free on PSN. WTF/10

I downloaded Bloodborne and Nioh for free a while ago. Might try them next.

 

[John Price]

I downloaded a bunch of cheap games on my PS4 a while ago

Dragon Age Inquisition 6/10

Farcry New Dawn 5/10

Battlefield Hardline 5/10

Fallout 4 8/10

Doom (2016): Way better than I was expecting. 8/10

God Of War (2018): A lot of the game feels like a chore to get through but still decent. 7/10

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster: I used to play FFX back in the day but never beat it until yesterday. It is still the last good Final Fantasy game. 8/10

Blazing Chrome: Good if you like Contra or Metal Slug etc. 7/10

Goat Simulator: was free on PSN. WTF/10

I downloaded Bloodborne and Nioh for free a while ago. Might try them next.

Hardline is terrible. Get Battlefield 5.