Recent reviews by Deus_nsf

I really tried I swear, but I just couldn't get into it.
The problem with this game, is that as opposed to some narrative driven games, in this one I feel like gameplay is just tedious and adds absolutely nothing to the experience.
It would have been better as a Visual Novel or a Netflix show at that point honestly, but then you'll have to be put against stuff like Steins;Gate and then you'll realize that Life is Strange's story really isn't that great.

It's a good casual rogue lite with a cool concept. It's a very simple and easy game but has quite a lot of content and is pretty fun to play, I would recommend it as a good time waster or a soft introduction to the rogue lite genre.

I can definitely see the opportunity of a good sequel or imitators, with procedural generated environments, more dynamic music during stages, more bullet hell dodgy gameplay, and more challenge in general (clearly the hardest part of the game is the first 5 hours, after you start unlocking stuff it's GG).

One of the best hybrid of FPS and light Survival Horror to date. It still plays extremely well and still looks incredible.

It's a shame that this version of the game (the classic one) cannot be bought digitally anymore.
It is the best game 4A has ever made in my opinion, better than last light (which is already pretty good), and better than exodus (which was a letdown).

Try to get a copy of the original, it IS better than the redux version (redux has cut content and questionable design choices), don't let anyone make you believe otherwise. It also looks better than redux because the lighting is much more grounded, animated, and detailed, and the game has actual lossless anti-aliasing (MSAAx4) instead of FXAA. Put everything to the maximum except advanced DOF (because it breaks some shaders).

Ranger easy is the best difficulty, challenging and immersive, but far from impossible.
Play with Russian voices with subtitles of your choice, even if not everything has subs, other voice overs are really bad sadly.

Okay, I spent the necessary time to get good at the game, and completed both routes fully in 5BC (classic one with true last boss and Queen DLC, never used custom mode). And well, it's super frustrating for me to come up with this conclusion, but I still can't recommend the game.

There has been many great things being done, and the accessibility features are a super nice step in the right direction, but compared to what the game expects from you, and just some basic game design flaws and straight up control issues sometimes, it's just not enough.

In the old review I talked about my fear that the devs would be focusing their efforts way more into adding more cool stuff compared to deep polishing, and I was sadly not wrong, they did exactly that, and it seems like they just can't stop.

So I suppose I can recommend the game but with major warnings, to people that are extremely patient with games in general. That, or honestly just enjoy the ride for what it is and enable assist mode, I never used it once, but I would recommend everyone who's starting Dead Cells to start with assist mode just to avoid coping with the game's BS.

We'll see how it goes in a year, if the controls work reliably, if the weird game design is improved (unable to cast spells during animation frames, spell cast on key release instead of key press), and if you don't need a state of the art CPU to hold 144 FPS+, then maybe I'll finally be able to switch the review to positive.

Until then, avoid or cope or enable assist mode if you value your free time unlike me!


------------------------ OLD REVIEW BELOW -----------------------

This game is fantastic, but I'm going to not recommend it for the time being.

It's a game that has so much going for it, but it has arrived at a state where, while the content is definitely there, the polish definitely isn't, but it's a bit unfair to say that since the game is more polished than 99% of other indie titles so let me elaborate.

The problem with Dead Cells right now, is that it's a game that asks a lot from the player, and it's fine, I love skill based games, that's why I'm definitely going to continue playing this, but when you've got such a skill based game with challenges like not getting hit once, you've got to prioritize game mechanics polish and optimization over content.
Right now for example a lot of things doesn't work too well in the movement department, and it's an unfair reason to get hit more often than I'd like to report, examples being grabbing chains/ladders instead of jumping down, auto clamber that works against you more often than not, character hitbox that falls into acid or spikes despite clearly visually being out of it, skills that works on key release instead of key press (why? ...)
Some later levels also have a lot of weird lags, despite me playing on a quite high end machine up to date with pretty much everything.

So, great job on the content, fantastic content, now please stop adding content and focus solely on polish and optimization. When the game will reach a state of satisfying polish, I'll be more than happy to change my review to positive.

Okay after having played 2 full nights, despite some fun I absolutely had thanks to some cool sandbox elements and Jeff Steitzer always on point (and also much more wins than loses hehe, ex H3 player what can you do :p), I cannot recommend this game in it's current state, and probably at all, at least for Halo fans.

I know it's a beta, so jank is to be expected (like horrible stuttering despite high framerates, horrible netcode, etc...), but my criticism isn't there. This game feels like the best and the worst Halo multiplayer at the same time and it's a really really strange and unsettling feeling, which I ended up disliking in the end.

It's not that it's trying to attract a new audience or whatever that is bothering me, but more the fact that many decisions in the game design seems to have been taken without care nor consideration and 343 seems more or less clueless about what they're trying to accomplish. For example sprinting and sliding just adds more bloat (especially sprinting) and are absolutely unnecessary.
Why taking a full key/button to sprint when they could have just enabled always run as the base speed like in all the best Arena FPS games in existence?

3/4 of the weapons in the sandbox feels unreliable and cryptic to use, the sniper has to be the worst in the entire franchise, even worse than Reach sniper, and hitting with the BR feels completely server based instead of client based. People die with insane delay despite ping showing 26ms on fiber gigabit wired connection (which is nothing it's almost comparable to a badly configured LAN party lol).

It's really hard to explain, it feels like Reach, but worse and better at the same time, but with Gearbox CE's netcode.

Also I'm sorry but there's just no defending on the HUD, it's an absolutely terrible HUD. Not only things are not well placed and bloated in the same corner, but they are super little and hard to see. I always mix up things like the dynamo grenades or spike grenades, they look the same to me in the heat of action, same with some equipment, and the number of things you have too.

I really wanted Halo to grow, and I'm happy that this thing got some attention, but I'm not sure I'm playing Halo, and I'm not sure 343 wants to make a Halo game either. This will probably become a solid sci-fi shooter with light sandbox elements in a few months or years, but I don't see myself returning to this honestly.
Maybe in a year if it's still popular, we'll see.

The best 3D casual computer role playing game ever made in my opinion. Only problem is the performance of the engine because it is still 32 bit and mostly single core. This needs a Special Edition in 64 bit and multithreaded ala Skyrim so badly... Like, same game, but 64 bit and multithread, we don't need more.

I'm recommending it, but this is a close one.
I've been enjoying this game at a stable 120 FPS at 1080p, thanks to Special K, so kudos to that.

First there is something I need to tell right off the start, NieR: Automata is absolutely a better game than this one.
So if your enjoyment for Automata was average, skip this one, as it is basically kind of the same thing, but less enjoyable to play.
Second, just like Automata but even worse, route B is an absolute waste of time as route C is basically the same but with the stuff you really care about.
Third, use a guide during Route C and afterwards, don't be a crazy stubborn s.o.a.b. like myself trying to do the game legit, use a guide and you'll thank yourself, because this game is significantly more grindy than Automata to complete the main endings.
Fourth, don't play the game in hard, hard makes enemies 4x more resistant and that's all, 2x more resistant and you take 2x damage would have been so much better but I guess not. This makes some sections, where your magic is more limited than usual, an absolute chore to play.

What you'll get is an interesting game, with a very good main quest, but absolutely horrible sidequest design that is almost to the meme level. Just do the absolute minimum of them if you came across them and focus on the main story, they are just a waste of time.

If you're willing to get through all of the main endings, I'd say the experience is pretty cool, and quite unique. But get it at a discount price, and use a guide. And if you are really short on time to spare to play games, just play Automata, not this one.

I am very hard on this game because it is actually nice, but it's not a very good beginner frendly touhou, plus in my opinion it kind of fails as an EoSD remake, especially in the music department.
The extra stage is really great though.
In my opinion FDF 2 is much better and people should jump straight to FDF 2, skipping this.

I feel bad for putting a negative review on this, this is kind of a meme, a failed kickstarter project that went into the abyss.

The art design is pretty cool but the performance is abysmal, Chapter 4 has pretty cool level design though.
However some things can't be forgiven, for example, the sprint stamina limit. This is a game design choice and a bad one, you can't sprint more than 5 seconds and by sprinting I meant walking faster.
Also the music is very clearly placeholder stuff, better not have music in this case and just let the sound design do the job, especially since it's pretty cool, except the horrible raw voice recordings lol.

Honestly I would have put a positive on this just for the meme and to give an incentive to people to try this anomaly of a project, but the horrible performance and the bad design choices are a no go.

Well, I didn't like that game when it came out, it has interesting ideas and I respect the heavy simulation that is going on in this game, but the game content and map compared to other entries in the series is one of the worst. It doesn't feel like an open world game where you can explore everywhere in a free way like GTA 3 or San Andreas, it feels like a succession of linear corridors put in a grid pattern to create a "city". It's difficult to explain but people that played 3 and SA knows exactly what I'm talking about. Plus, the game takes itself way too seriously and lacks that "raw fun" of the previous games which doesn't help the case.

But well, that was back in the days, so I wanted to give it an other shot with my much more powerful modern PC, to enjoy the story and the cinematic presentation and dialogues.

And here we go: DRMs, removed content, bugs, downgrades, horrible CPU performance (apparently the game is multi threaded up to 4 cores so I guess there is that) I get sub 40 FPS in the city at max settings (but normal car traffic) on a Ryzen 3800X !! I know the simulation is complex in that game, but Kingdom Come is MUCH more complex and runs better !! Same goes for Flight Simulator 2020.

Visually it holds up pretty well, and the dialogues are still good. But the game just feels horrible to play by modern standards, it has horrible native non tweakable FOV, insane mouse acceleration on and that can't be disabled in the options, and cutscenes stutters like crazy despite RTSS showing high framerates.

I know all of those problems can be fixed by mods, but I don't care, Rockstar is a very very wealthy developer, and they actually updated the game last year only to make it worse! They have 100x the resources to update the game in a way that benefits the game!

So... well... maybe GTA 4 was great when it came out, and on consoles (because the PC version always had horrible performance no matter the hardware) but as an open world game it has aged horribly in everything but the dialogues, the graphics and the complexity of it's world simulation. There are just much better games to play today in the same style, even older ones in the same series. Except for historic/cultural reasons, I don't see why anyone should play this today.