Recent reviews by Emilio

In a lot of ways The Surge 2 reminds me a lot of Borderlands 2 and how I feel about that game.
They did a good job removing some of the most annoying parts of the first game, but losing something along the way.
There is just something about this game that didn't make it anywhere near as good as the first game.

The world is simultaneously more colorful but also more drab then Surge 1, you see graffiti everywhere and the commercial signs are super colorful, there is even a whole forest area. But look through the cracks of color and it's just grey concrete everywhere else. The lighting, bloom and gamma are beyond messed up and I had to resort to using Nvidias built in reshaders to try and tone down the overly bright bloom literally everywhere.
Even with trying to make the game a little more easy on the eyes the game from a graphical standpoint is a major step below the original overall.

There are fewer unique bosses compared to Surge 1 and of the few new types that isn't just a human variant; only the first boss comes close to anything Surge 1 did.

I might be remembering wrong but the size of the average area in Surge 1 felt way larger then any given area in Surge 2.
The world here just feels super small and it get's even smaller the further you get despite taking place in a whole city. (compared to the single facility in Surge 1)

While Surge 1 had a very small selection of npc's, the few that was there where pretty memorable and often a big driving force in the story.
Surge 2 has so many new npc's but not a single one feels anywhere near as impactful compared to a single other person in 1.

On that note the worldbuilding sucks in Surge 2.
Surge 1's story was played very seriously and the npc's where also very serious (not counting the dlc which where as silly as 2) which made the world feel very real and believable. Surge 1's world in essence is a very depressing sci-fi world not too far in the future which made it stand out and I still remember it years later very well.

Surge 2's world is filled with nothing but jokesters who don't act like real people or seem to have any sense of self preservation. Seriously everyone acts like a complete psychopath and it is very hard to get invested or take anything serious.
The story aswell just pales in comparison to Surge 1.

Lastly just wanted to say the build variety is just awful, there is way fewer implants and implant slots. (it's seriously like less then half of what Surge 1 had)
The armor bonuses are also so much worse then Surge 1 and you'd be very hard-pressed to find a set that matches your preferred playstyle with bonuses that have any meaningful impact on gameplay.
The only improvement is more weapons and weapon types (double duty is super fun)

Overall it being near identical in gameplay to Surge 1 means it is still fun to play and all.
But it just feels like a soul-less version of Surge 1 every step of the way sadly.

The last time I saw this many freaks in one place was at P Diddy's.

So Days Gone is pretty much just pure fun, straight up.
The shooting is fun, the stealth is fun.
The fact that you can so easily go into stealth in the middle of combat to get the drop on enemies is fun.

Just great combat against humans and freakers that stays fun throughout as you progressively get stronger and stronger and can kill more enemies at a time.
The game's mantra is pretty much always that many weak enemies is more fun to fight then fewer strong ones and that shows in the fact that only like 2 enemy types are bullet sponges.

The bike is also a lot of fun to ride on, you have to be conservative with your fuel and make sure it doesn't break so you don't get stranded in the middle of nowhere.
And the bike feels important being your source of ammo and where you can actually save your game in the open world.

The game also adapts a similar random encounter system that Red Dead Redemption had but turned up to 11 and you will regularly run into things like random hordes, marauder ambushes, survivors that need help and tons of other things that makes driving from A to B a hell of a lot more fun then using fast travel.

The story was very similar to the Mad Max game but a lot better imo.
You play as Deacon St John who is a gruff biker man with pretty obvious signs of PTSD.
I really enjoyed his character and how much he evolves over the course of the game.
The supporting characters are also a joy to interact with even if a few of them can be a bit one dimensional at time.
I swear half of them are the biggest bro's ever.

Overall as far as open world games go the developers over at Bend Studio really just knew how to make it fun to traverse a world and make pretty much every single house; down to the last cave an area with loot to gather or enemies to fight. Either from main/side missions or for random encounters.

Shame we're not getting a sequel cause this game deserves one.

Overall as a package this is well worth it.
The new remixed soundtrack is amazing.
But since there are so many games/expansions I will make a small review for each.

Doom 1 and Doom 2: These two are classics and I can't say much that hasn't been said before, well worth playing and very fun games to this day. (except Thy Flesh Consumed, I didn't enjoy that episode)

Doom 2 Master Levels: This is the worst expansion by far.
Required secrets in some maps that are so obscure no other map used them before and non do after. Just pure torture and not fun getting lost for 20 minutes secret/switch/key hunting.

TNT Evilution: I really liked it tbh, the level design was incredibly solid and probably felt the most like a modern shooter using special enemies fairly sparingly but always managing to create memorable set pieces when they do.
I don't understand why this seems to be so hated everywhere I read.

Plutionia: Cover shooter simulator, chaingunners and revenants as far as the eye can see and traps every two steps.
I didn't enjoy this one as much but the much shorter levels helps not making this as tedious as it could have been.

No Rest for the Living: The best expansion in this entire game, nothing comes close to how fricking good this was, if you only play one thing from this game then do yourself a favor and play this one.
Beautiful maps that are just masterfully designed and incredible cohesive story where every level's end leads right into the next maps start *chefs kiss*

Sigil: I can appreciate using the more simplistic Doom 1 weapons and enemies, it makes this feel like a proper Doom 1 sequel and would have been a much better ending then Thy Flesh Consumed to be honest.
Solid maps, well designed.

Legacy of Rust: It starts really good, honestly one of the best early starts of any expansions.
Towards the middle it kinda loses the magic sauce but regains it again towards the end.
A really solid send off to the games with hands down prettiest looking maps.
New enemies where cool too and helped round out some new gimmicks and kept the experience fresh throughout.
I also loved the music and new weapons. I much preferred the flamethrower to the plasma rifle.

I have heard a lot about Crosscode over the years and truth be told I never paid it too much attention despite hearing so much praise.
Now that I have had the chance to beat the game and it's dlc I have to say I wish I got around to playing it sooner!

The game is a journey worth experiencing with really fun puzzles and combat and phenomenal sound design that just makes the act of playing the game super fun, heck just hitting enemies and bushes just feels great to do!

My only two issues with the game is that depth perception is a common issue while exploring and solving jumping puzzles which comes from the nature of it being isometric and it is very difficult to properly convey what is a different elevation from the player from that perspective.

Also the actual in-game... game I suppose you would call it?
Crossworld the in-universe MMO they are playing.
That story is not as inherently interesting and creates a disconnect from the actual story in my opinion just by always having that knowledge that everything is make belief and it sometimes is a bit hard to differentiate what is the actual story of the game and what is the story of the in-game MMO.

The story of Lea and the rest of the supporting cast is just brilliant and I really learnt to love pretty much each and every character.
I think it is a really touching story and I got pretty emotional at times while playing.

From a gameplay perspective the game is fairly simple and never really goes too in-depth in terms of forcing you to grind or engage with the RPG mechanics outside a surface level build.
Which I think is good as it is not really supposed to be as grindy and just by doing side quests I was always more then prepared to face the next dungeon and side bosses.

Where the game does go very in-depth however is the puzzles.
In terms of the three big pillars of gameplay.
That being combat, exploration and puzzles; then puzzles are by and large probably over 50% of the entire games content.

Now reading online this does seem to be the biggest point of contention in the community.

Personally?
I really enjoyed the puzzles!
They where not always perfect and I am pretty sure I accidentally sequence broke a handful of them by overcomplicating it haha.
But they where really well made and I always felt very accomplished after beating them!


Overall as a whole package Crosscode is without a shadow of a doubt one of the better indie games I have ever played and I can recommend it to pretty much everyone!

Also how the heck did you guys manage to create this whole game in HTML5!?!?!?!

Well that was an experience I suppose.
Starting off on nightmare difficulty the start of the game was miserable being one shot by everything and doing little to no damage and having no healing.

Then once you get a few guns and level up you very quickly become so powerful you practically become invincible and the game kinda becomes a bit fun but a little boring by how few guns actually are that effective or helpful, you pretty much main the shotgun 80% of the game and use nothing else.

Then once you go to Ultra Nightmare the enemies become such bullet sponges that one shot you yet again that you have to optimize all the fun out of the game by only using the highest like 3 DPS weapons since using anything else would lead to you dying long before you killed anything.

The world of RAGE 2 is also nothing like RAGE 1 and you might aswell pretend it isn't since apart from a few shared characters and themes there are no real similarities.

1 being this cold and harsh desert/urban post apocalyptic world where people fight against bandits and the regime of the authority and mutants to survive.

While in 2 although similar in enemy structure there is no harshness to the world and everyone is super nonchalant, joking constantly, using hashtags in normal conversation and generally not really acting like real people but rather just one off joke machines for the player character to riff on.

The quality of the main missions is a big step below even the side missions in RAGE 1.
It is actually pretty impressive how low quality this game is from a cinematic point of view.

In a vacuum the combat is really fun even if it is much too simplistic and forces such an aggressive playstyle that you have no real use for much of your equipment.
But when the difficulty selection is between
"Everything is so easy you could easily melee everyone and win"
and
"Everyone insta-kills you so quickly you realistically have 2 guns to choose from to win"

It makes the game a very hard sell unless you really are just looking for a quick and simple 5-7 hour long main campaign (yeah it really is that short, 7 short missions total) to play through once on easy and never look back.

Tons of glitches, bugs and softlocks also really dampen the experience and I really recommend you look up a guide just so you know where the infamous softlocks that makes the game unbeatable are so you can avoid them.
The dlc's are also very meh and I can't really recommend them or for you to 100% the game like I did.

Overall I did have fun with the combat for a few hours but I didn't really enjoy much else about the game.
It is not worth it in the slightest.

RAGE's story isn't the best and by the second half of the game with the rebels the story really drops the ball into what became one of the most infamous worst final levels and endings to gaming in modern times.

That said, the gameplay is nothing short of amazing.
Shooting enemies with all their highly detailed animations and the way they react to your shots feels nothing short of masterful and makes this game a pleasure to play and replay all these years later.
Although even on Ultra Nightmare difficulty the game is way too easy in a similar way to Crysis.
Just accept how easy it is and take it as a fun power fantasy game.

It's always so satisfying when the last enemy shouts
"HE WIPED OUT THE WHOLE SQUAD"
at the end of the combat *chef's kiss*

The racing isn't as good but apart from the "rally" races it's pretty inoffensive and can sometimes be fun even if the AI doesn't know how to drive.

Overall for the low price this game often goes for it is well worth it for the short and cinematic experience of the fun combat. Made even better with the combat scenario's extra mode to just skip to the combat and nothing else!

Did I enjoy it despite it's flaws?
Very much yes.

Would I recommend you buy it at the insane 30€ price tag for what is a 6 hour long glitchfest?
No.

Don't get me wrong the movement is super fun and I really did enjoy spending some extra time just flying around and doing parkour.
The story also has some cool set pieces and although no boss fight itself was all that amazing the scale of them and the spectacle was cool.

But the game is incredibly short, the game is very glitchy and will regularly softlock or send you flying out of bounds.
The combat is also so braindead easy even on hard difficulty that I went through regular enemies so fast I barely even know what their actual attacks looked like.

I really think the movement was so well done that if it was a parkour focused game about doing tricks that didn't have combat it would have been better for it.
As it stands now the shockingly large amount of cutscenes and bad combat that constantly takes you away from doing the fun movement is doing the game a major disservice

All in all if you get it at like 90% off it can be a lot of fun, it's actually a pretty fun game.
But it has too many issues that makes it very hard for me to actually recommend you buying it.

I will admit the core gameplay was fun, like a faster paced Mario Kart but slightly more skill based.

However there is a lot of issues that makes me not recommend this game.

Firstly. Being a failed live service game you will get f-all in terms of rewards from actually playing the game, you more or less only get money to spend in the store along side a few really ugly characters and cars/boats.

The game constantly begs you to go to the shop to spend your in-game and real life money to buy new things.
Seriously every 20-ish minutes the shopkeeper advertises the store.

There is also 4 battle passes in the game and of course even if you paid for them you don't get xp for all of them at the same time. You have to pick one to activate, so you will not get what you paid for without a few hundred hours of grinding the same 24 races over and over and over again.

So you get little to no rewards for actually playing the game outside of battle passes and buying stuff with money.

Now comes the really funny part.
Say you buy a faster car, well the AI in the game has the most aggressive form of rubber banding I have ever seen so no matter how fast you go; you will literally never outspeed the opponents no matter what.
Making buying new cars and boats ultimately pointless and I used the same car for 95% of the game cause there was no point in switching.

The story was incredibly uninteresting and unlike the racing has no twists or turns.
Plus 99% of the jokes fall completely flat, you can't just sit there and make snarky jokes and remarks about capitalism while also being a live service hell designed to squeeze as much money out of kids as possible.

The game is also super glitchy and you will often get stuck on the smallest of geometry during maps.
But even that doesn't matter cause if you ever fall behind the AI will do a hard stop to let you win regardless so the campaign is not difficult in the slightest.

Overall getting 100% in this game was a miserable experience for the most part and I really don't recommend getting this game for yourself or your kids.

TL:DR Live service hell paid for game that feels like a free to play game with all the negatives and non of the positives.

WOW, Just wow.
This free prologue is more feature complete and better designed then most paid games.

The gameplay: On point.
The graphics: On point.
The music: On point.
The UI: On point.

It's near perfectly made, no seriously it's that good!
It's been years that a game has captivated me this much.
So please do yourself a favor and play this amazing game now!!

What a great game, it's has an incredibly charming book aesthetic where you reach points in the story that you can flip back to at any time to change key events and it will actually flip through a physical book with page numbers and all.

The narration is wonderfully done as the narrator will flex her vocal range to suit the mood of the scene and it really feels like the narrator is just as invested in the story as you are as the twists and turns unfold.

Alongside an incredible musical score that both helps accentuate the deeper mysteries of the small town and it's citizens.
But also a really brings to life a wonderful sense of childlike exploration as the main characters play around and live their lives.

I was so invested that I actually could not put the game down and finished it in two sittings over the course of one day just because of how compelling it was.
It's not the longest game in the world, but every branching path somehow managed to tell an equally engrossing story that together paint the whole picture.

All in all I don't actually want to go into any details about the actual story as it is better experienced than explained.
Bravo Hiding Spot you've created a truly special game and I hope you'll continue your magic again!