Reviews - TyrannoWright

Running on a Ryzen 5 5600X and RX 6600 XT. DirectX 10, 64 bit, and 3840x2160.

I've been experimenting with configs around here to improve the vanilla presets and been disappointed with how underwhelming they were, driving the framerate too low as well as just feeling unstable with the stuttering. Here though, the game looks seamless. Using the quality config with minor preference adjustments, the game performance is comfortable high and feels buttery smooth on the frame timing. Can't recommend using this enough if you want to dive into the 2007 version when the 2021 remaster just doesn't quite deliver for you.

F.E.A.R. is a game I can never stop returning to for childhood nostalgia. It's technologically impressive for 2005 with the graphical fidelity and believably threatening AI.

The early 2000's Japanese-American horror-inspired aspect of it drew me in after having seen inspirations like The Ring and The Grudge. Yes, nowadays the horror can be stale to a grown-up veteran, but still unnerving with the astounding sound design for ambience, down to even gunfights and destruction. Pair it with the game's EAX 4 support (DSOAL supported for universal use without a Creative sound card) and you get an extra depth of immersion hearing bullets fly past you and enemy chatter bounce and reverberate off walls.

The graphics are also amazing, given you accept the resolution of certain textures that seem too low. FEAR is among the first games to utilize parallax mapping, a technique to create the illusion of 3D depth in a texture in a way that normal or bump mapping can't do. Also included is the lighting system that utilizes similar stencil shadows used in games like DOOM 3 and Far Cry, this time around including an option for "soft" shadows that redraws the same shadows multiple times over to create a softening effect. Super demanding and unoptimized, but interesting to see on a capable modern PC.

The AI of enemies for this game has to be still unmatched to this day. Although it's an illusion with the amount of dialogue and animations given to the Replicas within resource-limited level designs, they are actively deciding and working together to flank and outwit players. Even more on harder difficulties does it show how formidable they are if you are not playing aggressively with your slo-mo abilities.

Mod needs a bit of refinement to it. As of now, it's a mixed bag of art canvas textures and absent shaders. Very unoptimized as well with the AMD OpenGL driver issues when rendering so many extra self-shadows along with other possible factors unrelated to the mod. If anything, it would benefit more from a source port.

Among one of my first introductions to true PC gaming as a 3/4 year old when I wasn't playing Matchbox Emergency Patrol or Disney CD-ROMs. Among games that released beside it like Max Payne (a game I only watched my father play at his side), the photorealism of the game blew my mind and struck me with fear in its darker moments; especially the undead-infested crypts. I definitely remember also touching on the Xbox port growing up, watching my father play the co-op mode with a friend of his from work at their house. The X-Labs portion was fun to watch having the two figure out how to outsmart the lopers.

Nowadays, this is a game I come back to every so often for the modding scene and nostalgia trips. RealRTCW breathes more life into the game with period-accurate weaponry and textures while still maintaining the core atmosphere and gameplay of OG RTCW. It's a much more surreal experience when you go for a more vanilla experience by replaying with the ioRTCW source port and use upscaled ESGRAN textures.

The multiplayer protion of the game is something highly regarded to RTCW's fame, being popular for its team objective-based campaigns and generally hectic gunplay. I've only touched on it as a kid on a LAN match, exploring levels and never really playing real matches. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory would be the game I got hooked on as I got older. Playing on Fearless Assassins servers and dicking around with the modded voice commands while going on rampages with the expended arsenal the expansion introduces from RTCW.

Totally recommended to play if you're into the Wolfenstein franchise as a newcomer from the "alternate timeline" franchise or looking for a new retro shooter to settle on.

Just ReShade. Nothing to see here.

A very tasteless Spanish mod that lives up to it's name. It borrows the same weapons, sounds, and NPC's that other **** mods had that actually turned out better than this. Original jokes are intelligible (I don't know much Spanish), but I can already tell they're rather boring. Please, for the love of God himself, do not bother downloading this ten-year-old's 3D project thrown in the garbage. Play Crack-Life or G-Man Invasion instead.

A glorified piece of **** that doesn't know whether to be a worthy mod or crappy meme.

There's a good reason for the low rating...

6 years were anticipated for a continuation of Gordon Freeman's scientific journey. Even a German hacker wouldn't stop the game from reaching the limelight throughout 2003. And finally, the world got it by the end of 2004. Half-Life 2 improves upon its predecessor in many ways. From the new and improved Source Engine to power the visuals to the innovative physics that send bodies flying and props smashing thanks to the Havok physics engine. The story continues as the G-Man awakens Freeman from his timely sleep to assist his old and new friends: Kleiner, Barney, Eli, and Eli's daughter Alyx, help the people of Earth fight off a new alien threat: the Combine empire, who had enslaved the human race in a matter of hours after the downfall of the Black Mesa incident along with the old but improved HEV Mark V suit. The game takes you almost everywhere you could go with expansive landscapes and claustrophobic spaces as you fight take on the combine and familiar creatures. The visuals can still hold up to this day with some heavy modifications, as demonstrated in FakeFactory's (Juergen Vierheilig) Cinematic Mod and Filip Victor's Update. The game itself competes with the reception of it's predecessor, while in my opinion, it seems not as good with the downgrade in advanced AI resulting in repetitive fire fights. Highly recommended to play this game as well as it's continuing episodes one and two, which expand on the aftermath of Half-Life 2.