watsonCHAMP

It was better but in the beginning it was the 10/10 extraction shooter for me...

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Very good gameplay (even after all the changes), bad story. Far too many bugs for making it a live service game, sometimes even game breaking. Bad for a now 5 year old game... Good varied game world, albeit with small quirks. Graphically okayish, performance could be better but is also okay. DLC seems good, but found it squishy to play. Side quests are surprisingly good, but some fetch quest series are much too long. Modsupport in the main menu is a good touch, real money shop with skins and weapons is not, this is total shit in a single player/coop game. Overall 7/10 The villain says game names and names from the first game within four sets as the last interaction in the game 10/10

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[copied by Steam] Goodbye Volcano High is, at first glance, a teen drama Visual Noval. At second glance, a tiny (and relatively unpretentious) rhythm game hides within the game. There are many things that GVH does right but also a lot of things that go into your pants. A neutral recommendation would be appropriate for this game again. First of all, there's the obvious -- queer, anthropomorphic teenage Dinos sponsored by the Canadian State Media Fund. Male men, Grifters and YouTubers who cull on a 1992 Mega Man, and hold 2D 8bit Sidescroller as the peak of gaming, will immediately roll their eyes and see another Wokes game - you know what? Just don't play it. GVH was (again) criticized (only by alt right Twitter) for being funded by taxpayers’ money. However, it is obvious that the state rather promotes harmless dino coming-of-age stories than, for example. Doom. Okay, if that were out of the way, now I can write about the story. This is, unfortunately, quite shallow and not particularly creative and at the same time weakly written. We follow Fang, a teenage Dino Dame, who plays in a band with her best friends Trish and Reed and wants nothing more than to get big with them. One possibility would be the annual caldera festival, a festival for young and up-and-coming dino musicians. Were it not for the news that a meteorite is moving towards Earth and the dinosaurs cannot stop it. The story describes a classic teen drama with all the classic tropes that go with it. Intrigues, lovestories, music, friends, etc. GVH neither reinvents the formula nor rewrites it particularly strikingly. It is simply a simple and low-turn story, in which our decisions unfortunately have very little influence on the overall course. In the end, Fang naturally asks himself the question "Who am I?" and "Is it worth giving up xyz to reach zyx?"... You've seen everything somewhere before. Nevertheless, most of the characters are sympathetic and written quite funny. However, it often seems as if the story was written like a Taylor Swift song and was a millennial at work and had written a story from a teenage perspective, with the author already nearly 40. Overall, however, the "cringe factor" is low, most dialogues seemed realistic, albeit directly taken from the theater class. The only really annoying thing about the story was that there was a one-hour pen-and-paper one-player in the middle, where you had to participate (ergo play along and make "decisions"). This was 1. much too long and 2. little interesting and unfortunately did not contribute anything to the story, so I was surprised that it was 2x. Personally, the story didn’t really speak to me. However, I can imagine that another target group can be touched by her, I am thinking of women read people between 14 and 24 years old. The voiceacting is completely in English and unfortunately very weak. Not only are they mixed differently, the overall quality of the speakers is simply not good. You notice that most speakers have not yet gained much experience in the field of video games. Since it is a Visual Noval, the gameplay, if you can call it that, is very shallow. Unlike in other "choose your own adventure" games, the choices and frequency of these are very flat. In few cases (to be honest, none at all) does our failure or decision have a direct impact on the story, as the characters usually refute the episodes themselves or, against the player's will, change decisions or even say something completely different than in the decision possibilities. From time to time, in the passages where the band meets and plays together, you can play a kind of rhythm game. You simply have to tap in the respective direction from which points appear or press the right button at the right time. These passages loosen up the game a bit and offer minimal variety, but are very simple and basically impossible not to pass. Finally, it can be said that Goodbye Volcano High and a Visual Noval with heart, but almost 30€ are simply too much for the bid. The game has hardly any bugs, looks quite cute and speaks to important topics for growing teens but the flat story, the weakening writing with partly amateur voiceacting and the little gameplay still strike an immense notch in the wood, so I can recommend GVH only conditionally. The thumb up is more of a middle thumb between top and bottom. .

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(copied by Steam) As so often, not everything is gold that shines. Zero Parades is a title that I would actually have to evaluate negatively due to its objective shortcomings, but which still convinced me absolutely. Unfortunately, there was bad news right after my first review. After about ten hours I had to give up my score and start completely new, as a bug made it impossible to get ahead without Savefile editing. Apart from these technical problems, however, the story of the game is fantastically and literally heartbreakingly written. Many side stories run in the sand and serve purely the world building, but still exude enormous charm. Of particular note is the protagonist Hershel (aka Cascade). Personally, I found her even more appealing than Harry from DE. The game gives us just enough information to grab her personality, but does not necessarily push us into the role of absolute failure, even if Hershel often indirectly portrays it as such. As players, we have less freedom to shape their character the way we want, but this gives us exciting and new perspectives that you didn’t have with Harry, as he was more of a blank slate. Their struggle with their own past and the attempt to break out of old patterns and strip the invisible hand of third parties appealed to me very much on a personal level. Once the bugs are fixed, I will definitely take a second pass with a "different" Hershel. Unfortunately, this strong immersion is repeatedly disturbed by substantive blunders. A lot of excitement gets lost for a spy game when seemingly everyone in town knows who you are and what you do. In addition, there are irritating logic gaps; NPCs wish you a "goodnight" at 9 a.m. or talk about characters as if they were dead, even though the event did not occur during the game. My biggest criticism is the quest structure. Too often it was completely unclear what the next step should be. Some quests simply did not start or end due to bugs. In addition, there is a partly extremely vague formulation of the quest goals (at least in the German version), which offers neither temporal nor local context. This disturbs the flow of the game massively, because you constantly wonder if an event, or the absence of an event, is wanted or if you should just take it cum grano salis. The fact that the German and English texts often do not agree with what is actually spoken is also negative. Very sad! Here I hope that patches will be improved soon. All in all, I can highly recommend Zero Parades to any fan of CRPGs and Disco Elysium. For this, the spy story, the freedom of choice and the excellent writing are simply too strong. I can hardly understand the criticism of some players on the script. Of course, the criticism of the "techno-fascist" or hyper-capitalist system is sometimes very "on the nose" and in some inappropriate places somewhat confused. In its entirety, however, worldbuilding is at least as consistent as its great model. I enjoyed my time in Portofino, albeit with a weeping eye. Zero Parades is at least half as good as DE. And half of a masterpiece still makes a very good game, even if it has corners and edges.

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The Division Resurgence is the mobile version of The Division 1. The story is giga quasch, the gameplay is initially well-known and very moody, but later very grindy (and that means something for division) and the graphics are okay for a mobile game but also not outstanding (worse than Div 1 from 2014). A few hours you can put in, but I think if you have Division 1 and 2 to choose from, just the second part gets regular updates, then you do not really have to play this game on Steam. The looter shooter part is not too close in Resurgence, but everything else. Story missions are partly the same as in Part 1, collectibles do not really exist and the world is not open. As far as there is no real Darkzone, as you know it from the main games, but a reduced PVE Extraction Zone, which is not related to the rest of the game. I played it on the phone about 10-15h and found it a good pastime, but on the PC, as I said, there are more than enough better games. In addition, the PC version is extremely buggy. The game is crashed twice in my almost 30 minutes and the UI hardly reacts to inputs. As you would expect, Resurgence is fully monetized until it goes no more. Dailies, Battlepass, Fomo missions, skins, gambling, real money shop - everything must not be missing. Up to a certain level, the game is playable without real money (until you have chapter 1 through, so about 15h). If you really don’t get enough of The Division and classic monetized mobile games, then Resurgence is for you. If you play well, then not. No more, but no less. That’s why there is a thumbs up – it’s just what you expect from a mobile game. It’s a pity that Division Heartlands (basically Division 3) was scrapped for this game. Heartlands was developed for 5 years, this mobile copy came out within a year.

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Double Exposure exactly on the fine line between "okay" and "well don't have to". On the one hand it is great that Max returns and you get to know a lot of new and interesting characters, on the other hand the game experience is easily spoiled by lousy performance and story droppers. Max is now, more or less, in life and teaches art and photography at a fictional university. The ghosts of the past still hover over her and don’t want to let go of her, even though her new group of friends from other teachers (and students) are doing a lot to make her let go. Each person in the group gnaws at their own problems, be it Max's best friend Safi, who wants to publish a book but is rejected, or the receptionist Vinh, who does not quite know whether he is going up or down the career ladder. LiS 4 cuts many interesting stories, but does not continue any really satisfying, so that all characters end up with a medium-sized question mark as to how their CV will continue. The whole background is often mentioned but rarely executed so that the last 10 years of Max and the other people somehow remains only a side note, but often seems to be of great importance. You notice that the story wants to work towards another part (which appeared recently). Especially the most important part, the story, falls down at LiS:DO somehow. Pacing is all over the place. The ending comes out of nowhere and raises more questions than it answers. Before you have to plague yourself through partly very long sections, in which almost nothing worth mentioning happens. Also the places to which the game leads us, bring little variety into the overall picture. Basically, you are only at university and in a bar. All the characters know each other and have a distanced but somehow friendly relationship, which seems extremely set up so that the story makes sense in the whole. These strange dynamics disturb the storyline even more in my eyes. Max's new power to switch through two parallel worlds is interesting but has been chewed through too often in film and play in recent years and (once again) only opens up to advance the storyplots. A missed opportunity, especially since it turns out that there are apparently many people with powers in the universe of the game and the second power of the game, which has another character you meet, is much cooler than Max's but so on. Graphically, LiS:DO takes another big step compared to LiS True Colours, which already looked really good. The facial animations are really photorealistic and challenge great AAA productions in their accuracy. Really impressive. The game world is also quite detailed, but compared to the character models a bit drier and worse textured. Occasional texture loaders, clipping errors and pop-ins ruin the otherwise harmonious overall picture. Unfortunately, this graphical progress also brings its big bugs. The performance is the bottom drawer. Aside from a 60fps lock, the game, even on low settings, makes my (and many other) PCs sweat. Only with an accurate setting of the Nvidia 3d settings could I achieve stable 60fps on high settings without running the PC on 99% load. This should not happen in a game like LiS, because everything is already pre-rendered and relatively linear. 1440p 60fps would have to make every PC in 2024 loose and LiS should not be the gold standard. Away from it, the audio slipped frequently, so that it came to unsightly and loud crackling. Twice the game crashed with Unreal Engine error messages. All in all, LiS:DO is a good game but not comparable to all predecessors. The forces are quite barren, the story confusing and badly packaged and the performance hellishly bad. For 50€ it is still very expensive. In the sale, fans of the series can strike for 20€ or less, otherwise I would not recommend the game. Playing Part 1 and Before the Storm is required to understand many parts of the story. LiS:DO is a nostalgic game with a great atmosphere, but it falls short of my high expectations in terms of narrative and technology. Let’s see if the new offshoot (LiS Reunion) becomes more than just fanservice and concludes the series well.

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I played RDR 1 for the first time and overrated it. Comparison is the thief of joy, but if you have other R* masterpieces like RDR 2 and GTA 5 and 4 in mind, it is very flat in every respect. The world just seems so empty and superficial, there are hardly any sights that are actually interesting. In terms of gameplay, RDR 1 feels very clunky and outdated, even with a controller. The story is great and even better with the knowledge of RDR 2, but the pacing is unfortunately completely unbalanced. The side missions are for the most part not really captivating, but the only part I find better compared to the successor. Even if they are mostly only fetch quests, they are at least relatively funny and often show a good story, while I felt the stories in part 2 rather mau (with few exceptions). Ultimately, it was a 6/10 experience for me, nothing to think about for a long time. The performance also leaves much to be desired. That much better than playing the Xbox version with an emulator is actually not. If you can just keep the 144fps with my PC, then it is probably really due to the lean optimization. Nevertheless, Red Dead Redemption 1 is a good to very good game that I can absolutely recommend - it was just nothing for me personally.

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Automate and mine in a small space; is fun, is relatively easy to understand and implement and is also very well optimized. Good game for in between when Satisfactory, Factorio and co. are too complex. Currently quite a lot of content, for the fact that the game is only 1 1/2 months out. In any case, you always feel on your toes through new quests and recipes. Exploring is quite monotonous but not in focus anyway. This is simply about dismantling and transporting.

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State of Mind is Daedalic’s attempt to enter a new genre, the narrative 3D adventure, presenting an unfamiliar, independent low-poly graphics style. The central question that illuminates my review is whether this ambitious genre change has succeeded and to what extent State of Mind is fun. The storyline of State of Mind is thematically very interesting and focuses on the dystopian city of the future Berlin in 2048. The world is dominated by smouldering resource wars and a sophisticated technology that makes everyday life easier with androids. A development that is deeply rejected by Richard Nolan, our protagonist. The player assumes the role of Richard, an irritable and rather unsympathetic star journalist. The story begins at a low point in his life: After a mysterious accident, he suffers from massive memory gaps, and his wife and son have disappeared without a trace. The central narrative engine is the search for the truth behind these events, which leads the player deep into the abysses of the digital dictatorship and the lure of the virtual utopia "City 5". History plays skillfully with the identity and value of human consciousness. The game forms an ambitious construct that addresses central issues of transhumanism, overcapitalism and the value of human emotions and can be located thematically between Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Detroit: Become Human, both of which coincidentally were also released in the same year. However, the story would have benefited from a longer run length, as the resolution unfortunately seems over-hasty and loses depth. Nevertheless, the characters, especially the deliberately unsympathetic protagonist Richard, are intelligent and multi-layered, which still gives the bittersweet epilogue a stronger emotional impact. On the gameplay side, State of Mind is designed as a classic telltale-like adventure (sic). The player moves through limited areas in the third-person perspective, interacting with objects and following dialogues. My main criticism lies in the irrelevance of decision-making possibilities. The dialogue options rarely lead to significant narrative consequences beyond a mere deviation of the dialogues, which reduces replayability. This is complemented by very simple sliding puzzles, which are primarily used for stretching and in one case were even affected by a bug and softlocked me. Technically, State of Mind is based on the Unreal Engine 4. The game impresses visually with a characteristic low-poly style in combination with high-reflective materials. This aesthetic approach generates a stylish, harmonious cyberpunk feel through the use of high-quality screenspace reflections and targeted glare effects and compensates for the lower detail density of textures and the sometimes crude facial animations. The performance is consistently good; The game runs smoothly and stable on almost any hardware. The acoustic backing shall be considered as good to adequate. While the soundtrack does not offer a wide range, it feels limited to about six main tracks, but these are memorable and support the atmosphere effectively. The German synchronization is mixed; Some speakers of "old school" tend to overact and a not always scene-appropriate intonation. Despite the weaknesses in the gameplay and the hasty ending, State of Mind is an entertaining, exciting and gripping narrative adventure. The playtime allows play through in one or two intensive sessions, which benefits the density of the story. Given the current very low price, State of Mind offers a high return and is a clear recommendation for fans of thematically demanding sci-fi stories. It is the visible proof of passion and ambition in a new format for the studio and a successful game.

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[copied by Steam] We gambled Dispatch in a session on Discord. After the Anthems of praise on the net and a steam rating of a proud 97% were our expectations accordingly high. The conclusion in advance: It is a solid game, but definitely not the flawless masterpiece as many celebrate it. In principle, Dispatch is a classic narrative adventure in Telltale style. The highlight: As "hero dispatchers", we send superheroes to missions and juggle team chemistry. We play Robert, a hero with no real powers, who, like Tony Stark, relies on his mech suit. After this is destroyed early in the story, we have to reorient ourselves and end up in the Dispatch program. The game mechanics around the mission center make fun and brings a pleasant change in the story-heavy everyday life. Graphics and animations are excellent. Dispatch is one of the most beautiful games in the cellshading look of recent years. Technically, it works perfectly. Until the fourth or fifth episode, the game picked us up properly. The writing is creative, often very funny and the characters are excellently set through the bank. Fans of Critical Role will definitely have their fun here. Unfortunately, the story runs out of breath in the last third. Irrelevant decisions: In the last two episodes, our decisions felt increasingly meaningless. Lack of Consequences: Even when we tried to deliberately spoof Quicktime events or hacking passages, the story continued almost unchanged. A real "game over" or serious deviations are missing. The finale: The end was unfortunately a disappointment – predictable, plagued by logic gaps and questionable retcons. Apart from the great characters, the story resolution and the promised freedom of choice unfortunately cannot keep up. For us, Dispatch is therefore not a 10/10, but rather lands in the range of a 6 to 7. For the current price of 26 € and measured by the massive hype, the experience was a bit sobering in the end, even if we were well entertained at times. If you love the genre or are into the writing of Critical Role, you can look in – everyone else prefers to wait for a sale. The replay value is unfortunately minimal due to the small impact of our decisions. Nevertheless, Dispatch is a good game.

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