Happy Life
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hrot
A very cozy boomer shooter set in a post-Soviet setting, running on a Quake or Quake-like engine. Due to the engine, it strongly reminded me of Dusk from the very first seconds, especially considering that the weapon on slot 1 here is also a sickle.
There's not much to highlight besides the setting and atmosphere, which are emphasized by the level design — in my deep conviction, this is arguably the most important element for a shooter, and it's a pity not all devs understand that. Apart from the pleasant moments from wandering through simplified but typically Soviet factories, courtyards, shops, and streets, you can notice quite a bit of cr*zyness in terms of details and individual gags, like the ability to kiss the portrait of the General Secretary, ride a Soviet "herringbone" carousel, catch eggs with a wolf in the authentic portable "Nu, Pogodi!" game, and so on. Particular lulz come from some enemies and bosses — for example, a giant floating head of Lenin hovering above the ground and farting plasma at the player.
You can play on the highest difficulty without much trouble — there aren't that many enemies, they don't have hitscan attacks, and they don't soak up a million shots. The arsenal is very standard, but it's well-chosen and balanced, so it doesn't feel like a problem.
I also liked the classic presence of secrets on the levels, and for the most part, reaching them isn't too difficult, except for a few specific ones.
On Steam, I saw a review saying the game is "one big slavic shitpost." Overall, that's an accurate description, but even setting that factor aside — it's a very pleasant boomer shooter, and I recommend it to genre fans.
boltgun
A meaty boomer shooter set in Warhammer 40k, and a very excellent one at that — exactly what was missing from the game adaptations of recent years in this universe, the vast majority of which, unfortunately, are pretty trashy.
Juicy, bloody, meaty, energetic, not entirely but sufficiently authentic. Not entirely, because the Ultramarine veteran in this game single-handedly mows down hundreds of terminators and even fairly powerful Chaos demons. Overall, this isn't such an unbelievable concept, recalling the fiction books in the universe, or theorizing heavily within the lore, but tryhards can nitpick out of boredom.
Despite the objectively high quality within the genre, I couldn't shake the feeling of a pro mixed with a con in almost every element of the game.
For example, regarding weapons: there are many and they are varied, but I practically found no use for some guns. This sounds like a classic problem, but let me explain. The game jokingly implements a kind of pseudo-tabletop mechanic — each gun has its own strength, and each enemy has its own toughness, and it's recommended to take out enemies with higher toughness using stronger weapons, otherwise, damage output will be reduced. I played on the highest difficulty — here it's also not a butt-clenching, except for specific moments, but a perfectly playable difficulty — and this mechanic is most pronounced here. Enemies don't take completely pitiful damage from weaker guns, but still, neither psychologically nor functionally do I see the point of using the shotgun or grenade launcher, each with strength 3 and not particularly flexible operation module, against anyone, because only nurglings and default heretic-cultists have a minimum toughness of 3, and they pop from literally any available weapon, including 1-3 shots from the slot 1 boltgun, or 1-2 swings of the chainsword (by the way, a very good solution within the setting as a melee weapon — it attacks with the right mouse button, deals decent damage, you can continuously saw into an enemy, and the character charges at the mob to deliver this attack). Most shooters have a sort of problem where the shotgun is usually the strongest/cost-effective weapon and other guns aren't used, well, here the shotgun is garbage, at least on the highest difficulty level. To some extent, this solves that problem, but in my opinion, in a far from optimal way.
Another example: there are secrets on the map, collecting which upgrades a specific gun for the rest of the level, with each gun supposedly having its own effect. A cool idea for variety, and a departure from the constant weapon upgrade scheme that's become fashionable in shooters in recent years, but no information about the effect received is given. Sometimes it's obvious — for example, the default boltgun gets +1 strength and an increased magazine, or the heavy bolter no longer reduces run speed while holding down the trigger and even allows sprinting, or the same shotgun starts to ricochet off surfaces. But in the vast majority of cases, you don't see any changes in stats, attack method, or particularly in damage. I never bothered to google info on the upgrades, and the game doesn't write it out, so for me, all of this remained a mystery.
Next, I'll lump character movement and enemy visuals/audio into one pro-con, because they affect roughly the same thing. Our pacemarine runs fast, jumps high and easily, charges with a button, and generally shows himself as a superhuman. From a lore perspective and the accessibility of movement across huge levels, this is correct, but at the same time, it deprives the feeling of control over the character. He moves too easily, as if on the moon with low gravity, which removes precision and the feel of movements. At certain moments, when you need to retreat backward from an enemy, you can trip over any corner of any ornament on the level, of which there are huge numbers; your screen gets jerked about, and you have no idea what you caught on, because the character is too unstable. Regarding enemies — they aren't always easy to spot; sometimes their sprites blend heavily into the environment, and they make almost no sounds, as a result, it's not always possible to register them until you take damage. Again, from a lore perspective, this might be justified, because for a servant of the Emperor, heretical-chaotic nothings are just dirt under a ceramite boot, but from a gameplay perspective for a boomer shooter, it's so-so.
And of course, about level design. I didn't realize it immediately, only after 1-2 levels of the first episode, but the levels here aren't something interesting and conceptual (like in the previous game), but something taken from Doom Eternal — that is, huge titanic arena-type levels, with corresponding "initiate purge" moments — when you're locked in a current area and enemies spawn. It's not as suffocating as in Doom Eternal, but it's still not my favorite type of encounter. Separately, I should mention that in such "purges," there are always some mega health packs/armor in far corners of the arena, but on the highest difficulty level, you take so much damage from enemies that you can't afford the luxury of just running under the focus of all enemies at once and collecting it. This kind of thing is discouraging. Fortunately, there are usually no more than one or two purges per level, and the rest of the time, we more or less move through imperial infrastructure from point A to point B.
And also — there are "secrets" here too, but without any frills. Usually, it's just some item a little off the general line of sight, which requires an extra three seconds to collect by jumping somewhere; in general, nothing interesting. But what's sometimes lacking is a map. The imperial infrastructure is cyclopean in scale but quite uniform in appearance — it's unclear if this was a lore-based idea from the devs, or if they were just too lazy to create more assets. Some corridors, halls, even open spaces are completely indistinguishable from one another. And the most abysmal crap in this regard was observed on one of the final levels of the final episode — just a giant hall, a kilometer by a kilometer by a kilometer (yes, including multi-level verticality), so large that you can't even see the opposite wall, as if we launched a stаrfield presentation, and somewhere, on one square millimeter of area, there are three switches for different keys, and in different ends of this hall, there are little tunnels where you can get those keys. It's absolutely impossible to distinguish any landmarks — the entire hall is a masterpiece of imperial architecture in the form of a chaotic(heh) jumble of containers, stairs, and beams. Towards the end, yet another brutal "purge" takes place in this hall, during which I probably spent half an hour, with endless loads, under fire from literally hundreds of enemies, looking for a power-up for bonus damage to take apart a Nurgle demon without spending an unthinkable amount of ammunition — and I never found it. And of course, I found it a minute after I defeated it the normal way, after it was already, well, no longer needed.
And I remembered one more thing: in many shooters from the nineties, there's a detail called one-liners — cheap little phrases that the hero sometimes utters during moments of killing enemies, taking damage, or certain other actions. Here, there are a huge number of these one-liners — probably dozens — they are lore-filled and fill the soul with patriotism... but you can only say them by pressing a separate key; the hero never voices them on his own. The result is a completely missed opportunity — who in their right mind would spam the T button during a firefight or moving through a level? At the very least, they could have added an option for automatic voicing.
Nevertheless, to sum up, I'll still say that the pros outweigh the cons considerably; it's playable and even a must-play if you're, again, a fan of boomer shooters (and you don't even have to be a fan or expert on the setting).
darkest dungeon 2
On Steam, it has a rock-solid 75% rating, which by modern standards, when even trash games often get "12/10, chills at my fingertips," can quite be considered controversial raw garbage, but I've come to the expert conclusion that this isn't the case.
The main downside people see is the changed game concept — now you don't have to build a base and develop a specific team, and the process is a run in a typical roguelike — you travel through levels on a wagon, go through encounters, then you die and use the farmed currency to upgrade heroes/unlock new trinkets and so on. At first glance, this seems like an excessive tilt toward grinding, especially at the start, when you farm little currency and spend a lot. But pretty soon you understand the game's essence, fights (which there are fewer of) and encounters become easier, imbalanced trinkets and consumables are unlocked, you farm less currency, and then you don't even know what to upgrade after another party wipe. Overall, I'll say there's actually less grinding; it just doesn't seem that way visually. People really forgot how much time they spent in the first part on the standard difficulty level farming components/gold to upgrade the base; how much time they spent skipping to treat stress/diseases/quirks on the main team; how much time they spent leveling characters to send them to another boss/DD. One run of DD 1 on standard rules can easily last 60-100 hours, and the only progress you keep is the buildings at the base, and when heroes die, you have to buy them new skills and trinkets and level them up again. Here — at a certain point, you can take a completely fresh hero and still dominate with them because you retain global progress in terms of useful items for the run. The only limiting factors with this approach here are two things: heroes don't have all skills unlocked at the start; you need to collect them at altars on the map (which also tell the story of a specific hero and sometimes give special "puzzle" battles from their past — actually, implemented quite coolly), and spend currency to upgrade their resistances a bit/unlock additional specializations. The latter point is also implemented quite well — specializations give heroes buffs to certain stats/abilities and cut others, resulting in a change in the hero's playstyle. This helps even the crappier classes from the first game, like the Vestal or Plague Doctor, reach a useful level.
What else can I add? Recalling one of the main points of whining from the butt-hurt players in the first game — the combat has become much less random; instead of random misses/dodges, many skills now have buffs/debuffs for the same thing, quite tangible, and you can manipulate them with a high degree of control. A small percentage of randomness still remains, but it's incomparable to the first game.
So, the main wisdom in this game is to pick a team that synergizes well together, with the right specializations, abilities, and consumables, and take out the right boss against whom your team has the highest chances. Nothing complicated; this approach was more than valid in the first game too, but most players ignored it and preferred to just tank with their face and heal any damage with the Vestal. Well, tough luck — that kind of thing almost won't work here anymore.
I didn't finish the game — I got to the last tick of HP of the last phase of the final boss, and he had only a few hits left when he unprovokedly one-shot my Bard, and as a result, I couldn't finish him off purely due to the game mechanics of that fight, which demoralized me and I stopped trying. (Actually, I was just a bit tired of it — I played a decent amount. When there's some content update, I'll definitely come back.)
In short, I liked this game, and to the whiners, I give a slap.
rabi ribi
Perhaps the best Metroidvania in the history of the gaming industry. If you love Metroidvanias and anime chibis, then this will be a 12/10 down to the chills, but since I hate Metroidvanias, for me, it's probably a 9-9.5.
A super-pleasant feeling from the setting, visuals, and audio, plus extensive customization of actives/passives for the character, and bullet hell boss fights, and while the actual metroidvania elements can be a bit suffocating in rare places, it's nowhere near as much as in the pure typical Metroidvanias, of which there are hundreds. Overall, for the metroidvania genre, this is a breakthrough and a step towards perfection away from its dreary nature.
aru > pandora > shina > cocoa > lilith > sharo > noa > cicini > saya > rabi > ribi > alice > ashuri > lili > chocora > pixie > niva > nisha > vanilla > miru > miriam > cotri > kek > rumi > rita
I decided to thank the developer with money and even bought the DLC to replace the main character with another with their own abilities, and the DLC for the orchestral soundtrack. As a result, these two add-ons in synthesis increased the cuteness and pleasantness of the game several times over, even though it seemed like — how could it get any better?
A very cozy boomer shooter set in a post-Soviet setting, running on a Quake or Quake-like engine. Due to the engine, it strongly reminded me of Dusk from the very first seconds, especially considering that the weapon on slot 1 here is also a sickle.
There's not much to highlight besides the setting and atmosphere, which are emphasized by the level design — in my deep conviction, this is arguably the most important element for a shooter, and it's a pity not all devs understand that. Apart from the pleasant moments from wandering through simplified but typically Soviet factories, courtyards, shops, and streets, you can notice quite a bit of cr*zyness in terms of details and individual gags, like the ability to kiss the portrait of the General Secretary, ride a Soviet "herringbone" carousel, catch eggs with a wolf in the authentic portable "Nu, Pogodi!" game, and so on. Particular lulz come from some enemies and bosses — for example, a giant floating head of Lenin hovering above the ground and farting plasma at the player.
You can play on the highest difficulty without much trouble — there aren't that many enemies, they don't have hitscan attacks, and they don't soak up a million shots. The arsenal is very standard, but it's well-chosen and balanced, so it doesn't feel like a problem.
I also liked the classic presence of secrets on the levels, and for the most part, reaching them isn't too difficult, except for a few specific ones.
On Steam, I saw a review saying the game is "one big slavic shitpost." Overall, that's an accurate description, but even setting that factor aside — it's a very pleasant boomer shooter, and I recommend it to genre fans.
boltgun
A meaty boomer shooter set in Warhammer 40k, and a very excellent one at that — exactly what was missing from the game adaptations of recent years in this universe, the vast majority of which, unfortunately, are pretty trashy.
Juicy, bloody, meaty, energetic, not entirely but sufficiently authentic. Not entirely, because the Ultramarine veteran in this game single-handedly mows down hundreds of terminators and even fairly powerful Chaos demons. Overall, this isn't such an unbelievable concept, recalling the fiction books in the universe, or theorizing heavily within the lore, but tryhards can nitpick out of boredom.
Despite the objectively high quality within the genre, I couldn't shake the feeling of a pro mixed with a con in almost every element of the game.
For example, regarding weapons: there are many and they are varied, but I practically found no use for some guns. This sounds like a classic problem, but let me explain. The game jokingly implements a kind of pseudo-tabletop mechanic — each gun has its own strength, and each enemy has its own toughness, and it's recommended to take out enemies with higher toughness using stronger weapons, otherwise, damage output will be reduced. I played on the highest difficulty — here it's also not a butt-clenching, except for specific moments, but a perfectly playable difficulty — and this mechanic is most pronounced here. Enemies don't take completely pitiful damage from weaker guns, but still, neither psychologically nor functionally do I see the point of using the shotgun or grenade launcher, each with strength 3 and not particularly flexible operation module, against anyone, because only nurglings and default heretic-cultists have a minimum toughness of 3, and they pop from literally any available weapon, including 1-3 shots from the slot 1 boltgun, or 1-2 swings of the chainsword (by the way, a very good solution within the setting as a melee weapon — it attacks with the right mouse button, deals decent damage, you can continuously saw into an enemy, and the character charges at the mob to deliver this attack). Most shooters have a sort of problem where the shotgun is usually the strongest/cost-effective weapon and other guns aren't used, well, here the shotgun is garbage, at least on the highest difficulty level. To some extent, this solves that problem, but in my opinion, in a far from optimal way.
Another example: there are secrets on the map, collecting which upgrades a specific gun for the rest of the level, with each gun supposedly having its own effect. A cool idea for variety, and a departure from the constant weapon upgrade scheme that's become fashionable in shooters in recent years, but no information about the effect received is given. Sometimes it's obvious — for example, the default boltgun gets +1 strength and an increased magazine, or the heavy bolter no longer reduces run speed while holding down the trigger and even allows sprinting, or the same shotgun starts to ricochet off surfaces. But in the vast majority of cases, you don't see any changes in stats, attack method, or particularly in damage. I never bothered to google info on the upgrades, and the game doesn't write it out, so for me, all of this remained a mystery.
Next, I'll lump character movement and enemy visuals/audio into one pro-con, because they affect roughly the same thing. Our pacemarine runs fast, jumps high and easily, charges with a button, and generally shows himself as a superhuman. From a lore perspective and the accessibility of movement across huge levels, this is correct, but at the same time, it deprives the feeling of control over the character. He moves too easily, as if on the moon with low gravity, which removes precision and the feel of movements. At certain moments, when you need to retreat backward from an enemy, you can trip over any corner of any ornament on the level, of which there are huge numbers; your screen gets jerked about, and you have no idea what you caught on, because the character is too unstable. Regarding enemies — they aren't always easy to spot; sometimes their sprites blend heavily into the environment, and they make almost no sounds, as a result, it's not always possible to register them until you take damage. Again, from a lore perspective, this might be justified, because for a servant of the Emperor, heretical-chaotic nothings are just dirt under a ceramite boot, but from a gameplay perspective for a boomer shooter, it's so-so.
And of course, about level design. I didn't realize it immediately, only after 1-2 levels of the first episode, but the levels here aren't something interesting and conceptual (like in the previous game), but something taken from Doom Eternal — that is, huge titanic arena-type levels, with corresponding "initiate purge" moments — when you're locked in a current area and enemies spawn. It's not as suffocating as in Doom Eternal, but it's still not my favorite type of encounter. Separately, I should mention that in such "purges," there are always some mega health packs/armor in far corners of the arena, but on the highest difficulty level, you take so much damage from enemies that you can't afford the luxury of just running under the focus of all enemies at once and collecting it. This kind of thing is discouraging. Fortunately, there are usually no more than one or two purges per level, and the rest of the time, we more or less move through imperial infrastructure from point A to point B.
And also — there are "secrets" here too, but without any frills. Usually, it's just some item a little off the general line of sight, which requires an extra three seconds to collect by jumping somewhere; in general, nothing interesting. But what's sometimes lacking is a map. The imperial infrastructure is cyclopean in scale but quite uniform in appearance — it's unclear if this was a lore-based idea from the devs, or if they were just too lazy to create more assets. Some corridors, halls, even open spaces are completely indistinguishable from one another. And the most abysmal crap in this regard was observed on one of the final levels of the final episode — just a giant hall, a kilometer by a kilometer by a kilometer (yes, including multi-level verticality), so large that you can't even see the opposite wall, as if we launched a stаrfield presentation, and somewhere, on one square millimeter of area, there are three switches for different keys, and in different ends of this hall, there are little tunnels where you can get those keys. It's absolutely impossible to distinguish any landmarks — the entire hall is a masterpiece of imperial architecture in the form of a chaotic(heh) jumble of containers, stairs, and beams. Towards the end, yet another brutal "purge" takes place in this hall, during which I probably spent half an hour, with endless loads, under fire from literally hundreds of enemies, looking for a power-up for bonus damage to take apart a Nurgle demon without spending an unthinkable amount of ammunition — and I never found it. And of course, I found it a minute after I defeated it the normal way, after it was already, well, no longer needed.
And I remembered one more thing: in many shooters from the nineties, there's a detail called one-liners — cheap little phrases that the hero sometimes utters during moments of killing enemies, taking damage, or certain other actions. Here, there are a huge number of these one-liners — probably dozens — they are lore-filled and fill the soul with patriotism... but you can only say them by pressing a separate key; the hero never voices them on his own. The result is a completely missed opportunity — who in their right mind would spam the T button during a firefight or moving through a level? At the very least, they could have added an option for automatic voicing.
Nevertheless, to sum up, I'll still say that the pros outweigh the cons considerably; it's playable and even a must-play if you're, again, a fan of boomer shooters (and you don't even have to be a fan or expert on the setting).
darkest dungeon 2
On Steam, it has a rock-solid 75% rating, which by modern standards, when even trash games often get "12/10, chills at my fingertips," can quite be considered controversial raw garbage, but I've come to the expert conclusion that this isn't the case.
The main downside people see is the changed game concept — now you don't have to build a base and develop a specific team, and the process is a run in a typical roguelike — you travel through levels on a wagon, go through encounters, then you die and use the farmed currency to upgrade heroes/unlock new trinkets and so on. At first glance, this seems like an excessive tilt toward grinding, especially at the start, when you farm little currency and spend a lot. But pretty soon you understand the game's essence, fights (which there are fewer of) and encounters become easier, imbalanced trinkets and consumables are unlocked, you farm less currency, and then you don't even know what to upgrade after another party wipe. Overall, I'll say there's actually less grinding; it just doesn't seem that way visually. People really forgot how much time they spent in the first part on the standard difficulty level farming components/gold to upgrade the base; how much time they spent skipping to treat stress/diseases/quirks on the main team; how much time they spent leveling characters to send them to another boss/DD. One run of DD 1 on standard rules can easily last 60-100 hours, and the only progress you keep is the buildings at the base, and when heroes die, you have to buy them new skills and trinkets and level them up again. Here — at a certain point, you can take a completely fresh hero and still dominate with them because you retain global progress in terms of useful items for the run. The only limiting factors with this approach here are two things: heroes don't have all skills unlocked at the start; you need to collect them at altars on the map (which also tell the story of a specific hero and sometimes give special "puzzle" battles from their past — actually, implemented quite coolly), and spend currency to upgrade their resistances a bit/unlock additional specializations. The latter point is also implemented quite well — specializations give heroes buffs to certain stats/abilities and cut others, resulting in a change in the hero's playstyle. This helps even the crappier classes from the first game, like the Vestal or Plague Doctor, reach a useful level.
What else can I add? Recalling one of the main points of whining from the butt-hurt players in the first game — the combat has become much less random; instead of random misses/dodges, many skills now have buffs/debuffs for the same thing, quite tangible, and you can manipulate them with a high degree of control. A small percentage of randomness still remains, but it's incomparable to the first game.
So, the main wisdom in this game is to pick a team that synergizes well together, with the right specializations, abilities, and consumables, and take out the right boss against whom your team has the highest chances. Nothing complicated; this approach was more than valid in the first game too, but most players ignored it and preferred to just tank with their face and heal any damage with the Vestal. Well, tough luck — that kind of thing almost won't work here anymore.
I didn't finish the game — I got to the last tick of HP of the last phase of the final boss, and he had only a few hits left when he unprovokedly one-shot my Bard, and as a result, I couldn't finish him off purely due to the game mechanics of that fight, which demoralized me and I stopped trying. (Actually, I was just a bit tired of it — I played a decent amount. When there's some content update, I'll definitely come back.)
In short, I liked this game, and to the whiners, I give a slap.
rabi ribi
Perhaps the best Metroidvania in the history of the gaming industry. If you love Metroidvanias and anime chibis, then this will be a 12/10 down to the chills, but since I hate Metroidvanias, for me, it's probably a 9-9.5.
A super-pleasant feeling from the setting, visuals, and audio, plus extensive customization of actives/passives for the character, and bullet hell boss fights, and while the actual metroidvania elements can be a bit suffocating in rare places, it's nowhere near as much as in the pure typical Metroidvanias, of which there are hundreds. Overall, for the metroidvania genre, this is a breakthrough and a step towards perfection away from its dreary nature.
aru > pandora > shina > cocoa > lilith > sharo > noa > cicini > saya > rabi > ribi > alice > ashuri > lili > chocora > pixie > niva > nisha > vanilla > miru > miriam > cotri > kek > rumi > rita
I decided to thank the developer with money and even bought the DLC to replace the main character with another with their own abilities, and the DLC for the orchestral soundtrack. As a result, these two add-ons in synthesis increased the cuteness and pleasantness of the game several times over, even though it seemed like — how could it get any better?
My sword, my trusted ally, unphased by my aspect.
