Reviews - TheUnbeholden

Game Review on Apr 24th, 2013

This is a real mixed bag but ultimately worth playing.

+6 planets
+Moderately free roaming, as in big maps that only have certain points that allow you to pass to another map (STALKER style)
+Many factions
+Dialogue is usually good, in that you can talk your way out of alien/bandit/drug dealer encounters

-Bad translation, often the text is jumbled or words feel out of place. Thankfully theres a unofficial patch that fixes 99% of this.
-Bad audio, it has synching and skipping problems
-To many duplicate human models
-Spaceflight is a bit meh and your actions determine little during flight

Game Review on Apr 21st, 2013

Shadow Warrior provides a mixed bag, on one hand the levels are suprisingly realistic, more so than its distance foreign relatives: Blood and Duke3d. But its got a distinctively shorter campaign, smaller modding community, and bosses that really lack power against the unstoppable Lo Wang.

The weapons are pretty cool, a sword, shuriken, 2 severed demon limb/organ weapons, 2 modern weapons, 1 high tech weapon and 3 explosives that I found myself using alot which also made the game alot easier except the explosions have quite a big radius so you also have to be equally careful.

The humor is double entendre's (fortune cookies), **** jokes & some pop culture references which are all appreciated with Lo Wangs accent. The main reason to play this is for the level design (even though I did get stuck alot, many of the keys and keycards are hard to find).

Game Review on Apr 16th, 2013

What the game has going for it

+Cute
+Bosses to kill
+A fair bit of legendary weapons and armor to find
+You can upgrade your health
+Moddable

-+Can't upgrade any other part of your character. You'd think 2D Rpg's would have learned from CV:SoTN by now. We need some kind of character progression.
-+Little variety in enemy types, fact is enemies get repetitive early on and it takes awhile before you find the new areas where you get different enemies
-+Randomly generated worlds aren't that different. Its supposed to provide replayability but you end up just digging, mining through more rock into more slightly different looking caverns. The weapons/items you find aren't all that random. You can find chests but what find is usually very limited and barely what you call "random". Potions seem to come in ~20 varieties but thats about as far it goes

-Building... very limited what you can build. Even for people who love building, you'll get bored pretty quickly.
-Characters all look the same. Sure you can change the colours but they are the same character model wise.

-No recognizable story. It just feels rather lonely and you don't really know how to proceed even once you find the "important structure". So you spend a very large portion of the game merely mining.
-Multiplayer is rather limited, the options to prevent other players from joining and so forth is quite strict.
-Movement is rather painful, you have to jump all the time, even for 1 block. So stairs are something you must jump over?
-No way to reverse mouse wheel, for some people this can be really annoying.

Mod Review on Apr 15th, 2013

It's got a good idea, as Portal has shown.. minus the teleportation gun. On execution I think its pretty good, it gives us unknown reasoning for tests, unknown selection criteria and murder for those that fail or those who pass who do not meet the criteria. Problem is it sort of just ends without giving us any answers, without giving us an escape, it just sort of ends after 20-25 minutes.

+I liked the level design as its more bright & more colours, like yellow than Black Mesa, and obviously no monsters.
+I like the concept
+I like the voice acting
+I like the general black government security guards but
-+ Fairly easy fights
-Test are pretty hard after the 2nd one
-Sort of just ends without giving us answers or a conclusion

Mod Review on Mar 31st, 2013

Short but sweet. Though it was a bit head scratching to have the aliens appear behind you silently in beginning, it wasn’t at all hard.
There where some invisible walls, one of which was pointless, the rest merely would have trapped you so I understand why he put them there but I am always against them, Players punish themselves for jumping down into a pit that clearly has no way out.
Its very much like a part of Black Mesa, with the low light storage area grey walls, with the catwalk, pipes and electrical systems making it look like a industrial area.
8/10
I always like having to fight with knowledge of a way up to the surface.
Some backtracking is used well to make the map last longer and its never to long, and I liked the beginning how it builded up to the enemy encounter, made me pay attention to level design and feel the tension it gives off.

Game Review on Mar 22nd, 2013

One of the best uses of lightning I've seen, everything about this game makes you feel paranoid. Like your being watched, what doesn't help is the hints at something sinister happening but a large part of the beginning is basically some subtle sounds that get you nerves on edge. It can establish tension wonderfully I hope that the scares and story can match it.

Mod Review on Mar 15th, 2013

The mod takes voice acting to enhance the experience. You find the 2 people you read about in the beginning. Lord harris and your wife give you instructions on how to free them (I was thinking finally we get to see some people for once), once you get back disassapointment.
Due to the fact that there is no NPC support in this the game the mod takes a ridiculous route and says that they where "never alive" & that it was the machine mimicking their voices... personality. Eh... okaahhhh

But the mod more than makes up for it with the level design being above and beyond what we usually see, even the sewers feel new and unique to the place you are in. Probably more like a real sewer. I found the ritual and other puzzles where better than what we've seen in other custom stories. Although for some people the puzzled seem way to "trial and error" when the puzzle triggers weren't working.
I found the general story to be intriguing at first with a small twist ending which I liked. Overall it was quite a good mod.

Game Review on Mar 10th, 2013

No review provided

Mod Review on Mar 9th, 2013

Trapped has a unique sense of foreboding around it, it establishes the danger and keeps you intrigued. Its use of jump scares isn't exactly the best way to present horror, but the jumpscares are unique and they come when you least expect them. Only in some cases is it predictable but the monster or thing you see is so unique that it in those cases it doesn't matter. It's frightening and with Amnesia's tense atmosphere (strengthened by custom music tracks and new monsters) its really hard to keep yourself calm. Using more subtle cues it does do a little like the whispers or something falling in the distance.
The level design isn't anything spectacular though, it was made to scare not to be thought provoking or give anything beyond the gameplay.

Mod Review on Mar 9th, 2013 - 1 person agrees

Has a really good set up and has logical placement of keys that doesn't devolve into item hunting. It's got good pacing and pretty good level design. The scares are good, half of which are original the other half unique. So its got things going for it. The story is fairly simple but keeps intrigue so its a trade off. There are some small number of jump scares but nothing out annoying.

There is a sequence that requires button pressing that merely makes you explore well. There is one part that really drags out however, with a monster that does not despawn and you must collect 5 pieces of coal. Its a bit to hard and repetitive in what was otherwise a good mod.

I give it above average for doing everything except story exceptionally well.