Recent reviews by DethStrobe

Took about 23 hours to beat.

It was funny and emotional. Great story telling, fun platforming. A over all wonderful game.

Highly recommended.

I love Fallout: New Vegas. I love Obsidian.

For all intense and purpose, this really is a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas.

While Bethesda took Fallout 4 in a very different direction, it is extremely comforting to see Obsidian go back to follow up on the New Vegas formula.

While extremely refreshing to see, in the sea of mediocre story telling of modern first person RPGs, I can understands people's slight disappointment in this game. It really feels like there is SO much more that can be explored in this game's world and narrative. Because we only scratch the surface, and I just want more.

Now with that said, the Outer Worlds is executed extremely well. A lot of choices with a lot of exploration of the narrative through dialog and the ability to be a suave Face able to talk your way out of most any trouble. Interesting weapons and combat choices. Able to usually have pretty meaningful consequences for player decisions.

Like it's really nice to be able to broker peace between warring factions rather than being a binary choice on who gets to control a town. Like wise, it's kind of cool to be able to join the "bad guys" and explore the narrative on that side.

It took me about 60 hours to beat the game on my first place through, attempting to exhaust all my dialog options and do a bit of save scumming to make sure I could talk my way out of something; this was due to the fact that the bonuses to dialog skills while being drunk count while you're actually talking with people. Meaning, you got about 1 minute and 30 seconds to get to the skill check.

Anyway, TLDR; 10 out of 10. Highly recommended. Super cool game. Would play again.

TLDR: This game is good. Buy it.

If you are at all in to game critique and understanding games as an art you've probably heard of a term Ludo Narrative Dissonance. To explain it simply, it's when the gameplay and the narrative of a game are at odds with each other. Like in Bioshock (1) the narrative says you are stronger if you kill the Little Sisters, but in reality if you leave the Little Sisters alive you actually end up getting a lot more atom over the course of the game and end up WAY stronger.

So lets talk about the exact opposite of that. Ludo Narrative Resonance. When the gameplay and narrative work together.

This game is basically the personification of Ludo Narrative Resonance. In the Aliens universe, Xenomorphs (aka the aliens) are terrifying killing machines! In this game, yes...they are in fact terrifying and unstoppable killing machines.

So, what makes this game great?

1. You are not a soldier.

You are not a killer...(though you probably will kill a lot of things during this game) You are Amanda Ripley. An engineer.

You know one of the funny things about role playing shooters, like Fallout 3. There is no reason to holster your gun. Like realistically, it's actually pretty tiring to keep your gun out and ready all the time. This game did a brilliant decision to represent that in gameplay. You have to hold a button to keep your gun out.

In fact, that's one of the beautiful things about this game. The controls are complex. Not terribly complicated, but complex enough to make a tense situation with a Xenomorph more intense. You'll have to hold a button down to pull out your motion detecter. You'll need to press another button to make the background in focus, so you can see just what that blip on the radar actually is. Oh no! But what's this! The blip on the scanner is actually something hostile, you need to stop pressing that button so you can pull out your gun! Oh no, it's the crappy ass revolver and you didn't reload it! Hold down a button to open your inventory! Oh ♥♥♥♥, no time for that, you got to hide! Just so you have enough time to find the flamethrower. God this game's controls are stressful. And its all the better for it.

2. The Xenomorph are immortal.

It's very fitting for the Xenomorph to be immortal. After all, it was effectively unkillable in the first Alien movie too. But makes it work in a game context is that it's now no longer about defeating it, it's about managing resources to get around it.

Ever play Resident Evil 3? In that game there is an immortal monster that chases you around Raccoon City. Its an amazing game, but Alien: Isolation here takes it to a more logical extreme. So Nemesis (RE3 monster) can appear at any time in the game and will follow you from room to room. However, in this game, running is a terrible idea, because the Xenomorph is faster then you. Also, do to the limitations of the Playstation 1, you couldn't really hide from Nemesis. In Alien: Isolation, you have to hide. But don't be stupid about it.

When I first encountered the Xenomorph in a non-scripted way, I ran straight to a locker to hide from it. The alien clearly saw me, and promptly murdered me. So you have to break line of sight, and sometimes just go for the quickest hiding place, like behind a box and then just pray the Xenomorph doesn't find you.

It does get a bit annoying as sometimes the Xenomorph is relentless, and you just have to wait. Or sometimes you have another enemy in the area, then you get placed in to an impossible situation. And at that point, you need to use your resources to distract your enemies, so you can GTFO.

3. Just when you think you've won, you're dead wrong.

There are so many false signs that you're almost done with this game. But then it keeps going. Not only does it keep going, but it keeps getting worse. Every time.

Some people don't like that about this game. But screw them. Because it captures the feeling of the movie to the nth degree. Its insane how close you get to victory only for it to be snatched away from you. It makes sense, and it fills you full of dread. It's wonderful.

All in all, the game took me about 22 hours to beat. And I definitely missed a lot, and only beat it on normal. Honestly, I had so much fun, I think I might come back to this game on the hardest difficulty and see if I can't take on the challenge of beating the game with a more aggressive Xenomorph, and it should force me to use my resources smarter. The game was really fun despite how stressful and frightening the game is.

It's all of these things that come together to make the game absolutely amazing. Whether it's feeling like you just outsmarted an android trying to kill you, or maybe the shock and horror of dying because you didn't take the time to look around. It really does feel like you're in an Alien movie and you need to survive.

Just buy this game, so Sega can make us a sequel.

The game isn't perfect and it's not as in depth as, say the table top game it's based off of. But it is basically a very simple turned based strategy game with multiplayer. It's surprisingly fun. And I've had a blast playing it with my chummers. I'd recommend it if you can play it with some friends.

As a huge Shadowrun fan, this book is awesome. There is a lot of information to be used with Shadowrun 5th edition.

Aside from the obvious, that this is a Boston Sourcebook, there are also a few other fun surprises inside, like new exotic range weapons (microwave gun and lasers), cyberware suites, new drugs, and a lot of NPCs (helpful for GMs).

If you play the tabletop game or just want more context and background for Shadowrun Chronicles, you should definitely pick this up. Its also a steal for only $10. These books usually cost $25.

This game is wonderful.

I grew up on Tim Schaffer's games. Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion, and other Lucas Arts titles like Monkey Island and Sam & Max. This game is a continuation of those games.

Some people complain that those old school graphic adventure titles had illogical puzzles that only made sense to the developers. And I'd say those are people with no imagination. Puzzle solving in these games are puns. There are clues that make them perfectly logical for the world that they're in and often require some degree of familiarity with tropes and cliché followed by subverting them.

Act 2 has some very obtuse puzzles, but if you take the time to look at your environment, you can solve them.

Players are so used to instant gratification. That is not what this game is about. Its a much slower game. That requires piecing together clues and exploring your options. Adventure games are not designed to be fast. They're designed to be clever.

This game is very clever. To get everything it has to offer you need to take it slow. You need time to reflect. There is so much narrative packed in to this game that's just hidden in plain sight. If you were able to plow through this game, you'd never notice the little details hidden in the background that helps tell you the story.

It's possible that people don't appreciate experiences like this anymore. But I for one do.

I love the hell out of this game. Its a nice balance of arcady dog fighting action and pseudo simulation space combat.

You want to feel like Luke Skywalker fighting off the Deathstar? Fly in to the enemy ship take out their shield generator, then hit their core and by the time you finish that off the enemy carrier is about to go up in smoke.

It has a really interesting hit and run mechanic. It takes time to repair your ship, which can mostly only be done in the docking bay of your own carrier. Also burning through ammo happens pretty frequent. So it really encourages you to go back to the dock and swap out your ships to repair/reload your old one.

The ship customizing is a lot of fun. There are a lot of variables to take in to account to customize your fighter. Slow ships seem like they'll be better at defending your own carrier. Fast ships with light payloads seem better for hit and run tactics on the enemy carrier. But if you're to slow at hit and running the enemy carrier parts may heal up your damage. So, maybe its better to take more ammo or higher damaging weapons, but then it'll slow you down and make it harder to run away in a dog fight. So many things to consider, and so much fun to be had.

Its also nice that fighter parts aren't 100% better upgrades. You can level up parts to make them stronger, but they come at the cost of requiring more energy, heat, or weight. So sometimes it is better to go with a lower level part just so you don't weigh yourself down and can boost for longer and faster. This also means that low level ships when you first start do have some small advantages over higher level ships. While you don't be able to stand toe to toe with the highest level guys, you still won't be completely screwed either.

Also, unlocking and leveling up parts is at a very steady progression. When you first start the game you'll have more credits then you know what to do with. But after that you won't have enough credits to get what you really want, but it only takes about 2 games to get enough credits to unlock what you want. So it never feels too grindy.

The current game community is really small. But I personally have been having a lot of fun still just playing against Bots. I've been in one game with 4v4 and the game completely changes. Suddenly those hit and run tactics aren't so effective against players (because bots are stupid). But I assume its still viable, just need to rethink it a bit.

I feel this game is the perfect level of space sim and arcade dog fighting action. For example, it's really satisfying to fly past an enemy fighter, do a quick 180 degree maneuver, cut out the engines for a sec to continue to drift forwards and blow your enemy to ribbons as they attempt to do the same thing. Some real epic space combat there.

I highly recommend this game. Its awesome. Buy it so I have more people to play with.