Recent reviews by RafsterMC

If you are willing to accept that the game will occasionally stutter regardless of your PC and how low you set the graphics settings, this is a pretty okay game.

Maybe I've just gotten better at this type of stuff since the first game, but it seems like this game has matured away from the souls-like obsession that plagued Fallen Order. I completed everything in this game on default difficulty with only a small amount of manageable rollslop BS. This game respected my time a lot more than the Fallen Order.

The game only crashed once in my 70 hours of playtime, and the stuttering was only really bad during a few points in the middle of the game, so it runs fairly well.

The story is okay, but not particularly deep or life-changing. The combat is fine most of the time if you're willing to parry a lot. Is this worth full retail price? Not at all. Buy it when it goes on sale for $20-$30 USD.

Arzette is a pretty good game. Worth buying if it's on sale for under $20, I'd say. The game isn't very complex or difficult, but the story and presentation are charming and enjoyable.

One thing you'll notice is that this game is pretty short. I'd recommend going for 100% even if you're not the type of person to do that, because it only took me 6 hours to get 100% completion on my first playthrough without looking anything up. You could definitely blow though this game blind in 2-3 hours if you wanted to.

Getting all steam achievements requires 3 separate playthroughs, but if you look up the any% speedrun record for this game and follow its route (while maybe taking detours to get some convenience items that don't mess up achievements), you can casually finish subsequent playthroughs of the game in a little over an hour each. That gives you about 9 hours worth of content total.

Overall, it's fun and doesn't overstay its welcome. Would definitely recommend giving it a shot.

There's a weird bug with mouselook at low sensitivities that makes slow/tiny mouse movements do basically nothing until a certain speed threshold is reached. It is VERY annoying to play with, to the point where I just gave up at the second save station. There's probably a few ways to fix it (I'm not the only person to notice this; it's a known bug) but I don't really want to play this game bad enough figure that out.

If you play on a low mouse sensitivity (~1.5 or lower in Doom/Apex/Source games I'm guessing), you will have this same issue. In that case, it's up to you to decide if its worth putting up with the annoyance and/or finding a way to fix it to play this game. I didn't think it was worth it.

This game's pretty ok.

Jesse's (your character) monologues are sometimes cringey (think Marvel), but I became numb to it after a while. The story, atmosphere, and setting are probably the main draws of Control, and for the most part the game nails these fairly well.

The gameplay, though? ...eugh.

The gun is probably the worst part of this game. There are like 6 different gun modes you gain access to during your playthrough, and all of them have significant downsides that make them equally unsatisfying to play. Baked-in weapon inaccuracy and damage fall-off almost completely remove skill from the picture from half of your options, and long cooldowns or limited DPS ruin the rest. Until you get special mods in one of the DLCs that make a few of the weapons usable, you're pretty much always better off using your jedi powers. If this game didn't have guns and just let you use the force with fewer limitations, I probably would've enjoyed it more.

As far as achievements/collectibles go, nothing in this game is hard; its braindead easy to complete everything. It's just that there's a LOT of stuff to find, achievements to collect, etcetera. Nothing's missable, but if you're the type to obsess over finding everything the first time through, it'll really detract from the experience.

There are connections to the Alan Wake games or whatever, but it wasn't until the DLC parts that I found myself completely and utterly confused on that front (My friends and I had literally never heard of those games until the Epic Games Store started advertising Alan Wake 2 like it was the second coming of Christ), so you can treat this as its own thing, pretty much.

Is this worth 40 bucks? Nah. I waited until it went on sale for 10 to buy it, but I'd say go for it if it's around 20.

For the first 4-5 hours of this game, I wasn't really enjoying it. Coming right after finishing Doom 2016, it felt like Eternal was a messy sequel cluttered with too many additional mechanics. Once the game finally bothered to inform me about some of the essential techniques needed to play it well, though, I actually started to enjoy it. There are a two things you don't figure out until like halfway through the main campaign:

- You don't need to wait for the scoping-in animation on the rifle to finish to get its effect (also that the scope mod is OP and the missile mod should never be used)
- Swapping from one weapon to another cancels weapon cooldowns (swap speed upgrade is the best in the game)

The game becomes infinitely more enjoyable once you start taking advantage of these mechanics. It leaves me asking, however, why the game doesn't bother to tell you these things right at the beginning? Why does the missile upgrade exist? Why even have a weapon switch speed upgrade if the game is worse without it?

For reference, I played through the main campaign and DLCs on Ultra Violence difficulty (second-hardest of 4 difficulties, seems like the standard Doom Eternal experience).

That being said, Doom Eternal becomes a much more enjoyable experience around the time you face your first marauder, and the game really forces you to figure this stuff out if you don't want to get crushed. The last third or so of the main campaign is great. The boss fights are also fun, save for the final boss, which is absolutely awful.

The first DLC is where this game really shines, though. It's first mission is probably the hardest in the game, but at this point I'd gotten good enough that the added difficulty actually made it more enjoyable. By the final boss of DLC 1, though, things really felt toned down again (maybe it's an Ultra Violence difficulty thing? Maybe I just got better?) and that carries through to DLC 2, which gets new wacky enemies (which are cool except for STONE IMPS AAAAH I HATE THEM I HATE THE AUTOSHOTGUN MOD AAHH) but is more or less the same. The final boss of DLC 2 sucks--it's not hard, but it sucks.

I could keep going on and on about the little things that are good or bad about this game and its DLCs, but It's better to just experience it yourself. I'd personally wait for the game+DLC bundle to go on sale for $20 again (it does that pretty often) before buying it, but if you're one of the weirdos who thinks 50+ dollars isn't a lot for game in the first place, feel free to purchase at full price.

Kiwami 2 is good--not as good as Kiwami 1 or Yakuza 0, but good nonetheless.

The game feels great and looks great, but the story is mediocre compared to its 2 prequels. Yakuza 0 and especially Kiwami 1 felt like they MEANT something, like there was something I could take away from it all in the end. This game's story felt more like a soap opera; there are lots of twists and turns to shock you, but that's all they did. By the time the credits rolled, I felt hollow; Kiryu didn't grow and change in this game, and the cop lady that's half his age was basically sidelined or relegated to helpless love interest for most of the game, and this was HER STORY more than anything.

The minigame selection is also weaker than the prequels. I love the cabaret part and Majima construction isn't too bad, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MAHJONG AND SHOGI. That and the casino games seemed thrown in at the last minute. This game is by far the easiest to 100% complete, though.

Oh well, onto Yakuza 3 Remastered. It can't as bad as people say it is, right?

...

Oh no.

This is probably the best game in the series.

Yakuza 0 has a lot of content and variety, but most of that content feels rather unrefined at times. Kiwami 2, on the other hand, looks good and plays well, but lacks in the minigame department and combat variety. Yakuza Kiwami is the perfect median between these two extremes.

The story definitely peaks in this game, rivaled maybe only by Yakuza 0's Majima storyline. The fact that Kiryu's transition from the three styles in Yakuza 0 to his classic dragon style coincides with his maturity as a person really enhances the story that much further.

The sidequests in this game really seem to fit in with the rest of the game this time around too; many of lessons learned support the central themes and ideas of the main narrative. It felt like these were the types of experiences that shaped Kiryu in the man he is by the end of the story, rather than some random BS that distracts from the rest of the game.

TL;DR if Yakuza 0 is messy, then this game is squeaky clean. Everything about this game works together beautifully to support its the central themes and messages the game is trying to instill in its players.

If you're planning on buying all three Bioshock games and banging them out one by one, I'd actually recommend playing this game first before you play the other two games in the trilogy. The stories are only loosely connected (and this is a prequel), and it's definitely the weakest of the three.

This game is... disappointing. If you liked the previous Bioshock games, you'll probably be underwhelmed. It has the same mechanical gameplay as its predecessors, but let's be real here--that's a mere fraction of the reason why Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are so great.

This game is not really an immersive sim.

The story is good. I really like the story, and I really like the protagonist, Booker. In saying that, though, I've highlighted the main difference between Bioshock infinite and the previous two games: I am not Booker DeWitt. I sympathize with Booker and the guilt he feels, but I don't actually feel that guilt myself. Booker has a whole backstory that he knows and talks about throughout the game, but I don't, despite playing as Booker.

The game's setting, Columbia, is also not as oppressive as Rapture, but is visually striking. Still, it sorta feels like the devs wanted to go a different direction with the series, but failed to recognize what the true essence of Bioshock actually was. They should've just made this it's own game.

The DLC (especially the second one) is the best part of this game. Way better than the main campaign.

Even so, this game's probably worth playing, even if you'll end up feeling a little bummed in the end. If you haven't played Bioshock or Bioshock 2, you won't have expectations and you might actually enjoy this game. Buy it on sale, it's not worth full price.

If you liked Bioshock, you will like this game. It is better than Bioshock in pretty much every respect except for the story, which I'd say is still better than its predecessor overall but lacks the big memorable moments that the first Bioshock had.

If didn't like Bioshock, you won't like this game. They are pretty similar.

If you haven't played Bioshock, go buy/play that game first. You won't regret it.

I know there are a lot of people who say "[insert old-ass game here] still holds up today!" when the game clearly doesn't, but I am definitely not one of those people, and this game amazing even by modern standards. The Story and atmosphere are outstanding and the gameplay has its flaws but is pretty solid. It definitely leans more towards survival horror than action movie for the combat loop, but even that doesn't fully describe it.

You should buy this game. It's worth the full price, but you should probably wait until it goes on sale anyway, since it does so all the time. Also, customizing controls is awful, and if you want a low sensitivity to actually aim accurately (which you should) you'll need to fiddle around in the game's config files because the sensitivity settings in this game SUCK.