Recent reviews by BaronDrake

This is a very good game but it is unfortunetly very prone to crashing randomly which can make it very frustrating to engage with.

This game is the big cringe.

Worst character in the game gets more content that makes her a worse character.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a game I long intended to play as I had been recommended it on several occasions.
Unfortunely following getting used to the game's combat and finding how much the game handholds the way through it's puzzles all the way through the end of the game I found myself less and less impressed with it. Now maybe the combat isn't as bad on lower difficulties but unless the camera being extremly close to the player character is part of the Hard difficulty and it has less of a tendency to spawn enemies behind ones back which is does a lot as the game nears it's end (though to be fair the voices in the player character's head does warn you if you're getting attacked from behind or from off screen). The enemy varity isn't great with there being 6 enemies (one of which is an easier version of a boss) and 3 bosses of which only the final is more than just adequate and which from a gameplay perspective serves as the game's best challenge to see if you understand the combat mechanics with everything post that serving as a ending more fitting to the game's tone rather than the triumpant feeling that beating a good and well designed challenge might give the player.
The puzzles as states above never stops holding the player's hand robbing any sense of accomplishment in solving them and they thus never really come out of the same kind of simplistic solutions. Calling them what they are is filler, the combat is apart from the third boss is very token. Exploration in the game rewards one only with some telling of stories from Norse mythology which seems to be there to contextualise some of the things that the main character is doing. Going to kill a certain boss and the stories told relate to that particular boss in Norse mythology, they are admittedly well voice acted as is the game in general with exception of when the main character is screaming at someone.
The best the game has in terms of gameplay is a certain navigation challenge with is meant to convey the feeling of trying to find ones way in pitch darkness for which it does use limited vision of the envoirment (though so little it is not helpful by itself) the controller's vibration, sound before adding the need to "stealth" ones way past enemies that insantly kill the player. There is also a feature of the game that the game claims to have but this is a lie: You do not have to start the game over again if you die enough.
Point is that most of the gameplay is not enjoyable or challenging in a fun or interesting way leaving the game's story to hold up it's weaker elements. Unfortunetly the story is among the game's weaker aspects, the voices in the head of the character just cannot leave anything understated or allow a quiet moment to think over what has been stated about the main character's past. Entering the afterlife of those who killed her boyfriend to try and take him back to the world of the living and suffering the consequenses while being haunted by vision and voices from her broken home is an interesting premise. Now given we are talking about the Norse afterlife I was initally very confused by the look of the main character though that is explained that she is of some Celtic religion. The narrator is stated to have been a worshiper of the old Irish Gods and the main character is presumably from the Orkney's in Scotland which would explain the blue war paint.
For much of the rest of the story I have little to say other than that I think it is allegory for moving on from loss given the ending narration and I can't exactly praise that the last thing that happens is the main character looking into the camera and telling me there is going to be a sequel.

Now I never have to play Destiny 2 again.

Irrational Games’ (then 2K Boston) BioShock is the critically acclaimed 2007 first-person shooter. And I think the game is quite good, so why is my review saying “Not Recommended”, there are several reason, firstly the port isn’t that great but it is playable. But I’ll be completely honest I didn’t like the game past the first hours, let me explain why this is.

Let me start by saying that the story is fantastic and with exception of the way it ends, and of course the lead up to the end. The story explores the ideology of objectivism in a setting where it was allowed to thrive and how it was brought down by it’s own flaws, as well as a substance called ADAM. And if the game is worth going through it is for its story. BioShock is also known for having one of the best if not the best plot twist in a game ever, I won’t spoil it here in case you don’t know what the twist is (somehow). The setting and visual style is also made the most off, I really love Rapture, it is a wonderfully bleak reflection of its own Golden Age as learn throughout the game and Andrew Ryan, the founder of Rapture makes for a great antagonist and philosopher.

I also have quickly mention the fact of the horror aspect of the game, it is pretty much non-exsitant, as a rule I say that if a game cannot porperly scare or horrify me it should not be classified as a horror game, why me? Because I am extremly easily scared, the first few hours of the game are tense and suspenseful but the game never achieves being scary, if it was then I could forgive some of the clunkyness that is in gameplay in order add some more stress during the combat but now it doesn't and so it doesn't get any kind of free pass for that.

Now the gameplay of BioShock consists in 2 parts, first is combat and the second is looting and so each ties into and is important for the other, now the game features 7 weapons and 11 Plasmids, now Plasmids are genetic modifications that serve as “magic spells” created through the usage of ADAM. I don’t have anything against the usage of weapons and plasmids together in order create your own builds and tactics but the problem is that it wasn’t handled as well as it could have been. You the weapons and plasmids are separate, you hold all your weapons in your “inventory” at the same time while you have a limited amount of plasmid slots, of which you can buy up to a maximum of 8. The problem is that say you use your LMB (Left Mouse Button) to fire with say the Revolver and then you have to use the RMB (Right Mouse Button) to switch to your equipped plasmid, you can use the hotkeys though, and there is a hotkey for each weapon 1-8 and plasmid slot F1-F8 but the real problem is that they are separate meaning they can’t be used at the same time. The other problem is that the shooting is unsatisfying in pretty much every way and the aiming is not good at all. The shooting is also due to these reason prone to becoming ver repetative very early in the game.
Now the looting consists of searching for ammo, audio logs and other resources which helps you survive Rapture, there is something else you’ll need to survive Rapture and that is ADAM. And ADAM is something that can only be obtained 1 way and that is from Little Sister who are protected by Big Daddies who are the hardest enemies in the game, and then once you’ve defeated the Big Daddy you either get to rescue or harvest the Little Sister for the ADAM inside of her. Rescuing the Little Sister doesn’t give out as much ADAM as harvesting her but rescuing her lets the girl live while harvesting kills her, I’ll come back this a little later.
Now I said that the game had 7 weapons, those are the Wrench (of Death and Destruction) which is overpowered as hell, the Revolver, the Machine Gun (which is useless, don’t waste upgrades on it), the Shotgun, the Grenade Launcher, Chemical Thrower and the Crossbow. There are also weapon upgrades to find at Power to the People stations wherein you get to choose one upgrade for a weapon, which I find that I don’t like, I much prefer finding the upgrades hidden in the level which this sort of is but you get my point. Now those who were paying attention will have noticed that I mentioned that there are 8 weapon hotkeys but I’ve only mentioned 7 weapons. [Waiting for people to check]
Done? Good, the last one isn’t actually a weapon, it is a Camera which you use to take photos of enemies, alive and dead in order to increase your damage against that specific enemy type and well as learning their weaknesses and this serves as your way of “leveling up”, just don’t forget to use it which is very possible, I do like it though.

Now previously I mentioned that the game has a really good plot twist (still won’t spoil it), but I will say that the game should have ended at that point instead of going on for 2 more levels and having the lead-up to the finale being equivalent of self-inflicted torture after which it has a anticlimactic boss fight and a horrible ending. Now the ending is horrible, or rather the endings are horrible, both of them. And the reason they’re horrible has to do with the morality system, you remember previously I mentioned the rescuing and harvesting of Little Sisters previously, and that is what determines which ending you get, if you rescue them all you get the good ending if you harvest them all you get the bad ending. Now the reason that they are horrible is that they go so far to show how good or evil you that it is ridiculous. it goes to the point that might as well have a halo or devil horns. Now technically there is a third ending, which you get by rescuing some Little Sister and harvesting some, but all you get is the bad ending but the character narrating it has a sad tone instead of an angry one.

Lastly there is the second to last sequence in the game, now I will completely spoil this sequence so if you don’t want to read it just jump down to the last paragraph.
Within this sequence you are put into a Big Daddy Suit and you are made to follow a cured Little Sister around as she leads you to the final boss, this sequence is horrible! The girl moves so slowly I could have ran back and forth to the room the boss is in three times over, could have but can’t since she stops all the time and is constantly attacked. The sequence is also so linear it is unnecessary to even have the girl there, now there are similar sequences in BioShock 2 wherein you carry around a Little Sister and protect her while she gathers ADAM for you, but you carry her around on your shoulder then, and BioShock 2 didn’t make me want to kill the Little Sister which I have the option to do in BioShock 2 but I can’t do it to this one and if I could have I would have.
After that there is the final boss which is anticlimactic as all hell, not fun and … the most I can say about it is that it isn’t the worst part of the game, that goes to the Big Daddy sequence, it is merely the third worst thing about the game, second being the ending. So here is my advice if you play BioShock and get as far as the plot twist but were already starting to get bored by the game then just stop there and let that be the ending.

And there is my opinion on BioShock, and while I didn’t like the majority of people out there do and it might just be so that I have no taste whatsoever, as I’m sure I will get told by someone out there. Anyway, I hope that this has at the very least been insightful and will help in your decision on whether or not to purchase this game, anyway ciao.

Prism Studios’ Portal Stories: Mel is a free standalone mod for Portal 2, which is my favorite game of all time, which leaves it with quite the expectation from me. So did Prism succeed in recreating the Portal experience?

Well did they? Yes and no, while their puzzles are most definitely Portal-like just harder (I’ll came back to this soon), however it almost completely lacks in the humor that was a staple in the first two games, I count maybe 3 times I laughed at something funny the characters said compared to the innumerable amounts of time I laughed in Portal 2. That isn’t to say that the writing is bad, it is quite good just not Portal good if that makes sense.
The voice-acting is something I have to criticize since, it’s not that good, Virgil’s is okay but Cave Johnson’s was just awful and AEGIS nothing to really complain about in the voice-acting department but it doesn’t really come across as having any sort of personality whatsoever.

Now the story, the story is entirely okay, nothing fantastic but nothing cringe worthy either I enjoyed the story but as I said the writing is lacking humor wise. Now you play as Mel a Olympian who was in some unspecified sport during the Nuremberg Olympics in 1940. The game begins in 1952 but the majority of the game takes place quite some time later sometime before Portal 2 (which takes place an unspecified amount of time after the original). The story feels like fanfiction, but the best kind of fanfiction wherein it instead of glorifying the existing characters it choses to make a story with a little relevance to the canon but has all new characters and in this case barely mentions anything to do with the two main games.

And now we come to the biggest problem with the mod but I’ll bring this into contrast, in my review of the first Portal I argued that the games biggest flaw was that it was too easy and that I would like to see some harder puzzles, most of the puzzles in this mod goes way too far to the other side of the spectrum. Mean that it is too hard, now there are plenty of good puzzles too, the ones in the beginning of Chapter 4 were fantastic and some in the beginning of Chapter 3 as well and then there were the odd very good puzzle with well balanced difficulty. Most of the puzzles however had way too contrived solutions, like one of the earliest chambers in Chapter 3. So I will say this, if you already found Portal 2 to be too hard for you then you should NOT play this. I’ve seen other reviewers say that this could have been made by Valve, and well that isn’t true, Valve knows (for the most part) what difficulty balance, Prism (for the most part) doesn’t.

Now the final boss I have to criticize as well, not for how they choose to do it because that I had no problem with but rather it was something that I picked up on rather early is that the feature which allows you to hold on to object like cubes works rather badly, I don’t know why that is, but you have a tendency to lose “grip” of the object without doing anything which was the only reason I barely defeated the final boss, since it uses the usual Portal boss in that you have a limited time to defeat him and when I beat him he was just about to start counting down from 5.

And if there is one final little thing I have to say the it would be that the game is very bad a directing you to where you should go when you are outside of Testing Track and sometimes even inside them.

Overall though Portal Stories Mel is one of the best mods I have ever played through, the only I can think of being better is Interesting NPCs for Skyrim, and it is free which I would say leaves no harm on you trying it out just be aware that there are issues with it. I hope those of you who play it have an enjoyable time with it, ciao.

Valve’s Portal 2 is the 2011 sequel to the original Portal which holds my shortest review to date and that was because it was a game of few flaws.

I am going to be honest, as of 2015 I still haven’t played a game that surpasses Portal 2, it is my favorite game of all time. It has a lot more puzzle elements in the form of gels which does different things and also added gravity lifts. The dark humor is excellent, the writing is absolutely amazing through the entire game, the “tutorial” if I dare call it that is quick and introduces the story of the game nicely and within a couple of minutes you can start solving puzzles (unless you want to stand around listening to what the AI Wheatley has to say when you do nothing).
I had a few problems with the original Portal but only one really big one, and that was that the game was too easy, the first puzzles in Portal 2 are very easy too but as you get farther into the game it gets harder. Everything past chapter 7 is harder than the hardest chamber in the original which was Chamber 18, and several chambers before were harder than Chamber 18 as well. The Final Boss fight is also vastly improved requiring careful Portal placement and timing rather than the extremely easy fight at the end of the original.

But what problems do I have with this game? 1 issue, and it’s what would probably be considered a nitpick, that is that they tried to recreate the feeling of “Still Alive” from the first game by doing a very similar song, that is my only problem with this game.
The online co-op maps, what about those? I don’t have a single complaint there, not one. They require teamwork to beat and trying to figure it out with a friend is great fun, I recommend using voice-chat though.

There is no such thing as objectively perfect, but this is probably as close as a game is ever going to get to perfect for me. And that doesn’t mean I think puzzle games are the best genre, rather the game is perfect in what it sets out to be except for that one little thing. But since it is to me subjectively perfect I cannot promise that it will be for you, however I believe strongly that the vast majority of people out there will find enjoyment out of this title. Have fun, ciao.

I will keep this one short because there isn't so much I can say about this game. I found the game to be great, brilliant and fantastic. The puzzles all focus around the same innovative mechanic, the Portal Gun, and you use it to solve the puzzles. The black humor the game presents is funny and I either find myself laughing or smirking because of the statements. I only really have 2 critisims of the game.
Critisism Number 1, the game is too easy. When I play a puzzle game it is to set up a mental challenge that I wish to overcome, this game doesn't really do that. The puzzles aren't bad at all, just not nearly challenging enough.
And the second critism is the final "boss battle" with GLaDos at the end isn't really a challenge either, it is funny as hell to walk around with the Emtion Core and they speak at you (and no I won't tell you how to win).

So thats it really, it too easy. Other than that I think the game is nearly perfect and it is a must own, if you havn't played this you've done yourself a disservice, so buy the game, there are no excuses on this one.

When I bought Republique I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the game, what I knew came from the description of the game on the page. That it was a topical point-and-click stealth game made by people that had separately on Halo, Metal Gear Solid and F.E.A.R which means we have people from Bungie, Kojima Productions and Monolith Studios. These are all good games in their own way but I wasn’t sure what this game would be.

The first episode began with a minor interrogation of a Pre-Cal known as 390-H or as we came to know her Hope (H-093) after which her cell phone is delivered to her via a security guard simply called Cooper who will help you and give you advice via messages as well as comment on indie game cartridges of his that Hope with your help finds throughout the episode (and presumably in future episodes as well).
You however don’t play as Hope, you merely guide her, you know how in some games there are invisible people who help you and guide you but you don't know who they are, well in this game that is who you play as. You are an unknown person who via Hope’s phone has infiltrated a facility, this république, for some reason. You hack yourself into the cameras that are all over the facility and look around after guards and scout head to learn the patrols of guards and with this information you guide Hope from hiding spot to hiding spot.
There are certain cyber-abilities that you can purchase with information you find throughout the very large level to use to your advantage, I purchased 4 out the 5 available but only ever used 2 of those, 2 of those was the abilities which allowed me to get more information just because I wanted to read all the emails and listen to the audio messages. One of the other abilities I had I forgot I had and the other I never risked to use. Hope can also find pepper-spray, tasers and screwdrivers to help her, screwdrivers to get into air-vents, pepper-spray to temporarily disable guards and tasers to permanently disable them. As for them all of them are useful and help but I didn't have to use more than 2 of both pepper-spray and tasers and I believe 3 screwdrivers.
The stealth is quite easy, apparently if you get apprehended you get escorted back to a cell but that never happened to me so I can’t say that is the case for certain that is only what I’ve been told, but it felt tense and I was constantly afraid of failure which kept me on the edge of my mind for the 4 hours it took me to complete the first episode. The story and atmosphere are both exceptional and interesting and it is a very good start and I look forward to the rest of the episodes, I will not say more on the story than I already have since I don’t wish to spoil it to anyone who think this is enough to buy the game already.

Review on the way ...


Review on the way ...


Coming Out Soon ...


Coming Out Soon …


* Each review for each episode are written shortly after their completion.