Reviews by Daniel Steven Oles

Through the Darkest of Times
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Boring, Repetative, Ugly, Petty

'Hitler says 'Fake news!'

Get it? Because Trump is Hitler? Do you get that? Becasue if you don't every cutscene in this game will try to remind you of it.
'How did they let someone with stupid hair rule?' your character asks at one point? I'm not sure anybody thought Hitler's hair was stupid...but then again it all ties back to SOMEONE ELSE. Get it? Children in cages? Trade wars?
It's all that subtle and all that stupid. It's like standing on someone's grave to whine about your politics.

Aside from this the game's aesthetic is dull and goofy, like lifeless marionettes. The gameplay is entirely based on dragging your people around to increase a possibility of accomplishing missions: the entire game in RNG.
Between the interminable map sections there's a choose your own adventure mode in which you can make dialogue choices that don't effect anything.

What a waste of money and time.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Jan 30th 2020

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
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Very Charming Mystery!

I was warned this game wouldn't work on my computer, but it does just fine even after the update!
Whoever made this game was clearly very familiar with the books and television show based on Hercule Poirot, the belgium master detective. This game is by no means dififcult but it does reward you for being observant and literally putting clues together. The voice acting is decent and the music appropriate and I like the painterly cell-shaded artstyle.
It has a bit of a mobile game feel here and there (lots of acheievements and trophies) but it's written smartly, gets the characters, and it just feels good to puzzle out a murder scene.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Nov 28th 2019

Serial Cleaner
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Great Art Style, Frustrating Gameplay

This reminds me of Hotline Miami in good and bad ways. Like Hotline, the game is gorgoeus graphically and has a kicking soundtrack. Instead of playing the killer now you play the guy sent to clean up the evidence and bodies left behind by other killers.
But, inexplicably, you are trying to do this cleaning WHILE COPS ARE IN THE BUILDING.
And therein lies the problem for me. I was looking for a cross between Hotline Miami and Viscera Cleanup. But this is less about how well you clean something but instead how fast you can accomplish a bunch of requirements without being caught by vision cones. Annoyingly, if you do get caught you will lose ALL YOUR PROGRESS. No checkpoints within missions. Also every body and evidence item RANDOMLY PLACES when the mission restarts. Every single time. Strategy is pointless: it's more about frantic outrunning vision cones and cursing when you've collected all the bodies and evidence...and get caught cleaning up a puddle of blood.
There's real heart here, but for me the game just wasn't that fun.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Aug 24th 2019

Dying Light Enhanced Edition
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Incredible Upgrade For Dead Island!

I LOVE Dead Island, so much I was skeptical about getting Dying Light even though it was from the same company. A zombie RPG is fantastic fun but I didn't know how well it would work in a city versus a moody tropical island.
Now I've played it and Dying Light is like Dead Island on steroids. Everything good is still there (except the ability to throw weapons which I miss) but there are also additions which really make it all the more fun. The parkour system is incredible! If you've ever wanted to play 'the floor is lava' with zombies, this is your game.
You can know build and repair items anywhere, not just at repair stations. You can fight humans as well as zombies. There's more to explore, more to do, more people to meet. An excellent upgrade in graphics too with a lot of nifty lighting effects.
It takes a heft rig to run this game, but it's worth it.
The DLC is a little silly, but the main game is solid!

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Aug 20th 2019

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
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Great...up till the quick time events

I loved the atmosphere, the story, the characters, the choices...this game had it all!
It only dropped the ball for me at the 'quick time events' that requires a series of button presses at certain moments to accomplish things. This system only obscured what was going on (because you're looking at the buttons instead of the game), arbitrarily makes you fail some tasks of have to restart, and the buttons pressed themselves have very little to do with what's going on.
A beautiful, moody detective thriller with a supernatural twist would have been excellent. I guess I just have to 'git gud' at all those darn button presses....

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Aug 20th 2019

Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive
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Takes a LOT of Patience

This is old school difficulty real time strategy. The scenario, the atmsophere is excellent and the gameplay is entertaining but this game is not forgiving. You mess up once you're looking at a LONG replay of an extended stealth sequence. 'Gitting Gud' takes way more time than I'm willing to spend on this game. Maybe it's my oldsterness but I just don't oftentimes have the sheer amount of constant situational awareness, or the technical know-how to cheese the system here. Still, worthwhile if you can invest the time or you enjoy lots of slow speed strategy.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Aug 18th 2019

Fright Collector's Edition
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Great Casual Adventure Game

Excellent horror atmosphere. The puzzles are familiar if you've played any hidden object style graphic games, but it has a great spooky sensability to the artwork, music, and storyline.
The only real problem is this series concludes on a hard cliffhanger, and it's still not clear if they'll release a sequel.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Aug 18th 2019

Unexpected Journey
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Fun but Broken

This might only be my problem but although I enjoyed the setting and story and gameplay this game continually freezes and crashes on me unfortunately.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Jul 27th 2019

Enclave
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Metal Graphics, Lots of Content, Fun Time!

Enclave is an unjustly forgotten third person fantasy action game with several classes to choose from, diverse maps, and a real sense of love poured into the style here. If you enjoy Warhammer, Lord of the Rings, or Dungeons and Dragons you can't go wrong. The engine is a little dated but it helps it to run smoothly on less than top of the line computers. There's a high difficutly curb, but challenging doesn't mean bad. It's a steal at the price: two campaigns, dozens of characters and armor combinations, you travel to an underwater wizard sanctuary and climb a bone fortress...I enjoyed it anyway.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Apr 19th 2019

Hidden World of Art
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Great Casual Hidden Object Game

It's a fun little 'find the object' game that does mix up the forumla every level or so by having some lists of objects represented only by outlines, some with words, there are challenges for extra money so you can buy new cosmetics for your hub...etc. It's all fluffy and not very important but the game makes no bones about being a sturdy time waster with frills. Heck, in the menu you can draw on a little note pad! Cute and entertaining.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 21st 2018

DOOM 3
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Spooky Scary Imps

Good creepy fun! Not exactly as fast paced as you'd expect Doom to be but they tried something new here, and yes, that includes the choice to make it impossible to hold your gun and flashlight at the same time. Top notch voice acting, graphics cutting edge for their time which still ooze menace, great soundtrack. Sticking point really is sound design: guns sound underpowered and monsters make SO LITTLE sound they can actually sneak up on you. Still, great corridoor jump scare limited ammo horror shooter :)

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 21st 2018

Mount & Blade: Warband
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Giant Sandbox

Between the core game, the expansions, and the mods this is a toy box of adventure. I wish for some kind of more solid single player specific campaign, but some mods take care of that too at least. A good mix of complex controls for specific actions and easily accessible controls for mundane actions, you really do get a simulated experience of riding a horse, firing a bow, using a spear, swinging a sword...etc. For an older game the graphics are quite decent and atmospheric with a pleasant soundtrack. No voice acting (beyond grunts and shouts) but this makes the game easier to play in other languages.
If you don't mind some repetition of tasks and basically having to choose your own journey (do you want to take over a castle? be a merchant? fight bandits? join the army? Become king? Woo fair maidens? Get lots of gold or the best armor and weapons?) this game will keep you mighty busy even without the still strong community adding bizzarities like a Star Wars mod, a Lord of the Rings mod, a mod for every time in history...etc. Check it out! On sale or not it's worth it.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 21st 2018

Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition
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Use the Force to Kill Everything

A rare Star Wars game nealry entirely from the 'bad guy' perspective, this game does make you pretty near overpowered but that's part of the fun. There's tons of fun ways to dispose of jawas, robots, jedi and gigantic monsters. Nifty story and characters I found. The stumbling block is the really finicky jumping puzzles and it runs a little shaky on anything less than a good sold system. Still you might forgive it when you're using lightning to fry Stormtroopers or hurling wookies off cliffs.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 21st 2018

Dungeon of the Endless - Crystal Pack
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Great Single Player, Excellent Multiplayer

If you want a solid single player experience and a multiplayer game you'll go back to again and again this is a fantastic choice. The controls are a little bit wonky but you can start playign quickly when you realize this game is less like controlling a character then strategizing choke points, managing resources, coordinating manuvers and taking risks versus rewards every room you explore. You move only room by room. Time continues only when you open a new room. Abilities recharge with every other room...so forth. Evertything depends on rooms. It's an unusual hybrid of tower defense and dungeon runner but once the hurdle is over it's a swell time with friends. And if you'd prefer to play by yourself you get the added bonus of characters talking to one another and undergoing a little story between missions based on which you took with you before beginning a campaign. I'd love to see more innovation like this!

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 21st 2018

Rencounter
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A Cross Between X-Com and Let It Die Killed by RNG

I wanted to like this game. The aesthetics are nifty, I like turn-based strategy games, and it seemed like a dungeon crawler with a more futuristic veneer. The problem is it is entirely too random. You can't easily plan a strategy if ever aspect of a room and encounter is randomized and too often you find yourself in situations you simply cannot win through. This is not a 'dark souls' situation where situations are fair but tough, some times things were simply unjust. I still play it on occasion, but I do have to be in a masochistic mood.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Jul 9th 2018

Knights and Merchants HD
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Charming and Soothing For an RTS

Runs fine on my Mac, looks perfectly fine. This is a slow burn game for fans of games like Settlers and Stronghold who like to watch their little minions run about and construct buildings in stages. It's old school in a lot of ways (no selecting multiple units: characters go about their programming with little interaction once trained) but it does have strategy and the calm music, surroundings, and easy pace makes it a lovely time killer.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Jun 25th 2018

Beckett
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An Uneven Nightmarish Journey

I want to love this game, but perhaps by design it doesn't quite allow this. The sound effects start to get to you. It only saves right before big chunks of 'gameplay' which mostly consists of clicking on and looking at things. There's no real puzzles I could find, it's more like a visual novel with elements of point-and-click to find more information about the world. But beside the hands-off feeling and irritating quirks there's some weird and wonderful ideas, some living metaphors and really catchy haunting music. It's an undeniably cool world to explore, but you can't go in expecting either an adventure game (it isn't) and you have to have a high tollerance for sucking noises.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - May 1st 2018

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
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Old School Gameplay, New School Graphics

The Secret of Monkey Island is NOT an easy game, coming from another era which involves a ton of trial and error, timed actions, and flatout moon logic (one puzzle requires you to do something so obvious and yet so impossible you can forget to try it). The graphics are very pretty and stylized in a fashion by now synonomous with the series with a few short cuts (characters in cutscenes don't move their mouths) which is by no means a deal breaker. The only issues I found were a few inherent in the orginal game which were ported faithfully to the new version: LOTS of backtracking, massive maps with not a lot in them sometimes, and some pixel hunting. Still excellent humor, full dialogue, great music, and a satisfying experience!

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 30th 2017

Breach and Clear
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Short Bursts of Intense Gameplay

Decent graphics, high degree of customizability based on mission sucess (more money means more options for improving loadout and identifiable costumes). There's a few hiccups sometimes (enemies firing backwards) but for the most part it's determined by YOU whether you enter into a tactical situation and emerge wounded and crippled or take out the bad guys and accomplish the objective. It's turn based: each movement playing out and then each new phase tallied at the end of the mission to determine money and experience. Lots of missions and although the objectives tend to be similar and the sessions also similar (choose your door, check the rooms, kill the bad guys) each session is different because of randomized factors like enemy placement, choices for where to breach, equipment, abilties and so forth.
Great time killer that presents a lot of suspense when you kick in the door and hope you didn't miss that one guy always hiding in the corner!

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Dec 30th 2017

Medieval Battlefields - Black Edition
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Deceptively Simple, Quite a Lot of Strategy!

The trailer doesn't do this game justice. It's a simple game on the surface but with a lot of little details to make your strategy. Part Turn Based Strategy game, part chess it's an intriguing tug-of-war between sides choosing to build tons of trash units or expending wealth to improve battlefield tactics such as weapons/armor or gathering more gold.
The animations are charming. The voice acting is unobtrusive and said with enough conviciton to support the atmosphere. If you don't mind a slower paced game with customizable tactics this is a fine choice.

by Daniel Steven Oles, USA - Nov 25th 2017

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