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Subnautica has been in development for over four years, and has been in Steam’s Early Access program for nearly as long. With it, Unknown Worlds Entertainment, best known for their Natural Selection series, has moved away from team-based shooters and into the survival genre. Released into early access when a glut of open-world survival games were flooding the market, I dismissed it as “just another” survival game with a water gimmick. I usually despise “water levels” and a game that forces you to be aquatic didn’t seem the most appealing. How wrong I was. Unlike most other games in the genre, Subnautica has no multiplayer. Instead Subnautica focuses on solo survival, base building and braving the deep – which holds many terrors. You are the sole surviving member of the Aurora, a 22nd century corporation’s spaceship sent out into the furthest corners of controlled space only to be hit by an energy pulse, crash landing on a planet that is almost entirely covered in water. This fact is made clear when you emerge from your escape pod to see nothing but the wreckage of the Aurora and open water. You are forced from the very beginning to dive in and brave an ocean teeming with life, and rife with danger. Subnautica takes a lot from the survival genre, but puts you in an environment which no other survival games capitalized on: open water. Luckily, your 22nd technology makes converting surrounding matter into useable resources in a way that feels reminiscent of Star Trek. In fact, the sci-fi technology in the game helps to remove the suspension of disbelief most survival games require when combining items, or constructing buildings. The array of tools you have at your fingertips is also impressive, but not always useful. I found myself skipping over some early game items entirely for their more useful counterparts. The base building in Subnautica is fully realized, and can be a massively fun part of the game. I challenged myself to build a huge, underwater dwelling that could provide fresh water and renewable food for myself. The base building features are extremely robust, and allow for you to build in almost any environment – even the most hostile. I found a challenge in building habitats in the most inhospitable locations I could find – just to see if I could. Sometimes base building can have its frustrating moments – pieces not connecting easily, and some inconvenience with having to (very rarely) deconstruct entire buildings if you misplace a foundation or wall fixture. But these problems were few and far between, and I found much joy in just building these habitats and taming the most inhospitable undersea biomes. Oxygen is ever a concern in Subnautica, as your initial O2 tank holds less than a minute of oxygen. Soon, you’ll find that you’ll need to leave the shallows and dive deeper and for longer periods to explore the real depths of your environment. Luckily, in addition to o2 Tank upgrades, you can construct vehicles to help you get around. You’ll probably start off by building a handheld device to help glide through the water, eventually graduating to a fully-fledged 178 foot submarine that you can dock smaller vehicles in. And while you have some tools that can also be used as weapons, your role is mostly that of a passive observer. Even with a submarine at your disposal you’re still at the mercy of the larger, “leviathan-class” creatures that inhabit deeper waters. The amount of creatures in Subnautica is impressive, and makes the ocean feel like it’s absolutely teeming with life. Some creatures are passive, but others definitely want to eat you. Some can be fought and killed, but most can only be scared away or avoided at best. This definitely makes you feel like you are low on the food chain, and makes diving into Subnautica’s depths a terrifying experience. Even with my now extensive playtime, I tense up when diving into dark, murky waters – especially if I can hear the bellows of a Reaper Leviathan nearby. There are multiple different biomes you’ll find yourself in : kelp forests, sandy dunes, grassy plains, deep underwater caverns lit by bioluminescent flora and fauna – among many other marine environments. Once you outfit yourself with a Cyclops submarine or the mechanized Prawn suit, you can upgrade your maximum crush depths to see the extent of Subnautica’s underwater world. There is a lot of verticality in Subnautica, with a good amount of this alien world to explore both in shallower depths, and in the very deepest parts of the part of the ocean you inhabit. There are multiple different play modes to experience Subnautica. While in all modes but creative you have to manage health and oxygen, “survival” mode is perhaps the “default mode,” adding in hunger and thirst. There's also a hardcore mode which makes player death permanent. “Freedom” mode removes the need for food and water, and a “creative mode” eliminates the story, hunger, thirst, etc. and just lets you build and explore as you wish. There is no conventional “sand box” mode, as the story is woven throughout the experience (except for creative mode). You can pay as little or as much attention to the story as you’d like, but you’d be absolutely remiss to ignore it. It is one of Subnautica’s best features. A lot of survival games force you to find your own fun, or make your own objectives. Subnautica’s story goes hand-in-hand with your need for progression and exploration making it the absolutely best-paced, well told, and amazing story I’ve experienced in a survival game. It really is that good. I’m intentionally not spoiling any aspect of Subnautica’s story – I went in totally blind, and I feel like it really is best experienced that way. This speaks to another of Subnautica’s strengths: everything felt so intuitive, I never really needed to look anything up. During some survival games, I’ll find myself looking up recipes, or how to obtain a certain item, but Subnautica’s in-game database is so comprehensive, it’s hard to completely miss out on information – especially with the dry, sometimes funny AI apprising you of unique or new situations you may encounter. The pacing of the story is nearly flawless, and it’s always pushing you to the next thing and out of your comfort zone. The excellent pacing of Subnautica’s story, and the story itself, makes it feel like an absolutely complete game – something that most games leaving “early access” struggle with. Unlike more cinematic story-telling, Subnautica’s story is given as short audio/text snippets, or through exploration. The pacing is excellent, ensuring you’re never really stuck. It’s true that you may not know exactly what to do next, but there are always clues being left to guide you (sometimes subtly, sometimes not) to the next point of interest in the story. Of course, you can always ignore this and work towards survival in your own way –but the clever part is: you often find that working towards your own survival happens to move the plot forward on its own. If a game has a story I will complete it to review a game. Sometimes with open world survival games, the story is something that grounds the player and adds context. Subnautica’s plot was an obsession. I didn’t want to find out what happened for completion’s sake: I was absolutely compelled to finish it, even at a detriment to my own health. Subnautica became an obsession. There is some of Subnautica that doesn’t always feel completely finished. I’ve run into a few bugs that, while not game breaking, were certainly annoying. Some of the most obvious lack of polish also happens towards the end of the game, but by that time I was so invested in it that I was able to forgive these small issues. Subnautica is a surprise, and easily the best game I’ve played so far this year. Go into it blind if you can, but even with spoilers there is a ton to experience for yourself. Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment has poured lots of love into this game and it shows, with its polished gameplay and great story told in an amazingly minimalist way. The Steam version is full release, with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions destined to reach full release eventually, with no dates set. Either way, Subnautica is available to play now on Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is also compatible with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets for immersive, submarine terror. This article was originally published on 02/01/2018 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2018/02/01/game-review-subnautica/

I know that Sons of the Forest is out right now in Early Access. But there’s still a place in my heart for the original, The Forest. My first experience with it was one of the most memorable horror game experiences–and I talk about that a bit in my review. It balances survival horror with storytelling that is all held together by a mystery and the impetus to find your son. But don’t let your child’s fate stop you from building a multi-story dwelling. Minor spoilers follow: Developer Endnight describes The Forest as a “terrifying first person survival horror simulator” and it is certainly all of those things. In development for four years, The Forest originally started life when open world survival was the next big thing. Now that everyone has moved on to the battle royale genre, many of these survival games are finally hitting version 1.0. Those with patience, and a love for the genre may find this to be a pretty exciting time, as games like The Forest and Subnautica are taking the open world survival genre and successfully adding a compelling story to discover along with the challenge of day to day survival. The Forest fully embraces its horror nature, and also like Subnautica, can be pretty scary. I vividly remember my first experience with the The Forest: I thought it was visually impressive at the time, and the premise was extremely exciting. You are flying in a commercial jet with your son, only to crash land in a forest. You wake up as a survivor only to see a creepy, primitive looking person taking your son away. Not only did I have to survive, I needed to get answers and to find my son. And there is, of course, the immediate danger of another visit from creepy tribal guy. Later, I found myself hanging and bound in their cave and discovered that creepy tribal guy belongs to a group of cannibal mutants pulled straight from the 2005 film The Descent. I somehow freed myself and fought my way out of the cave, killing cannibal creatures indiscriminately with my axe until I emerged, covered in blood, knowing I had something special on my hands. I put it down to wait for its “official release,” and four years later, I’m not disappointed with the results. Like recently released survival game Subnautica, The Forest has a story with a beginning and end, featuring narrative bread crumbs that help to move the plot along. Unfortunately, The Forest is not as well paced as Subnautica, and its breadcrumbs, by the game’s design, are harder to find. There are no waypoints on your HUD in The Forest holding your hand to the next major plot point, so you may find yourself searching repeatedly for the way to proceed. The answers that you find in The Forest are actually pretty compelling, I think, and worth the long searches through dark caves—though don’t feel too guilty if you resort to a guide, for time and sanity’s sake. The Forest, at its core, is an open world survival game. That means worrying about things like hunger and thirst, as well as building shelter to save your progress and for safety. In survival games, making a safe place to rest is a matter of luxury, and a source of fun. Don’t get me wrong: building in The Forest can be fun, but most of the time I didn’t build for fun, but out of necessity. While nighttime can be dangerous, hunting parties, monstrosities and other horrible things prowl the daytime as well. Since you will be beset upon day and night, the best defense is a sturdy wall, but you have a bunch of options at your disposal. You can build shelters big and small (which also serves as a place to save your game) as well as custom buildings, and tree houses that would suit a Wookiee. Amusingly, you can also build rafts to paddle around the peninsula on which you’re stranded, as well as a house boat—a floating home away from home. The way surviving works in The Forest relies heavily on shameless video game logic—with improbably fast building and an inventory that is impossibly large. While building a structure requires nothing more than placing its blueprint and adding materials to it, gathering those materials can take a really long time. Building in The Forest can be fun, but it can also be exceedingly tedious. Chopping down trees with most of the in-game axes can take a little bit of effort. Crafted items are also often more powerful than some of their commercially manufactured counterparts, you may discover. How a skull on a stick is a better weapon than forged steel is beyond me, but skulls on sticks are pretty fuckin’ metal, so I’ll let that slide. Hunting is simple. Often chasing down deer and clobbering them on the head suffices. Some animals (and creatures) are skinnable, and yield crafting supplies or, in some cases, you can wear their skin directly for a bit of armor. Crafting tools and other items isn’t the most intuitive at first, and can be a bit unwieldy. But once I got used to the system, I was able to use it with ease. Inventory management is interesting, as what you carry isn’t determined on the max load you can carry, but how many of any single item you can. You can only ever carry five sticks dynamite, for instance, and that’s completely independent of how much of whatever else you’re carrying. Exploring the island is a treat, and can be simultaneously awesome and terrifying. Horror movie tropes abound as you come across camp sites whose inhabitants have come to grisly ends, and you stumble across the splayed and mutilated corpses of the other passengers and other unfortunate people that came before you. Not only are the scenes, settings and clues horrifying for their own reasons, the cannibal mutants themselves are both simultaneously horrible and amusing to fight. It’s strange to admit, but there’s something satisfying with the extremely gory, visceral combat: to fight these barely human, horror-movie cannibal creatures was quite cathartic for me—almost therapeutic. Instead of feeling bad for killing them, I reveled in hacking away at these laughing, screeching, barely human abominations as they climbed trees to leap over my walls or surrounded me as I was out hunting. It was like “Facing my Fears of Mutant Cannibals: The Game.” (I mean, who doesn’t have a healthy fear of being cannibalized?) You can eat them for sustenance, hack off their limbs to create effigies, or use their bones to make all sorts of tools, armor and other stuff. “Throw another body on the fire” and “bones for the bone basket” became oft repeated phrases between my partner and I, which brings me to one of The Forests’ most compelling features: multiplayer. The Forest has extremely fun, yet extremely buggy co-op. You can play with up to eight players on a server, paying as much or as little attention to other players as you’d like. Most of my experience was playing cooperatively with my fiancée, and sometimes managing to survive together presented its own challenges. Whether an item will be persistent, existent, shared (or not) within a play session is sometimes baffling to me. Items will inexplicably respawn, despawn, or just not work correctly while in multiplayer. But as buggy as the experience seemed to be, it was never broken, and often hassle-free. It was definitely my preferred experience with The Forest, and I’m curious how a small group working together would fare. Alas, I didn’t have a chance to try that for this review. The Forest is a sometimes horrifying, sometimes tedious, but mostly fun survival game held together by a compelling story. Its sometimes buggy nature and janky systems didn’t dampen my time with it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to those who either aren’t sick of the open world survival genre, or just want a different spin on it. This article was originally published on May 14, 2018 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2018/05/14/game-review-the-forest/

There are so many things I wish GTFO was that it isn’t. Somehow, that might make it a better game: it’s sticking to its original vision. Which, apparently, is super bleak sci-fi horror with a huge difficulty curve. It’s also one of the first successful group stealth games I’ve ever played besides Payday 2–and that game allowed you to “go loud.” You can’t really do that in GTFO without lots of planning or lots of luck. I’ve played a lot of GTFO, just not recently. When GTFO went into early access, my group of friends and I played the hell out of it. We really loved sneaking around its vast underground facility, planning our next move, and watching it all go wrong as we scrambled to survive. Also, sneaking and bopping mutants as a group had never looked better or been more fun. But then, one day, we just stopped playing and never looked back. When GTFO was surprise released last week or so, I figured it was the perfect time for my group and I to get back into GTFO’s enigmatic and terrifying Complex—and while it definitely is, losing the novelty certainly made GTFO lose some of its luster—but its 1.0 release brought some interesting new reasons to keep going deeper. GTFO is a first person cooperative horror survival game. In it, you play as one of four hapless people, forced by the enigmatic warden to go deep into an underground complex to complete various tasks, sometimes retrieving an item to bring back. The only problem is, the complex is overrun with horrible mutants. Most of mutants are sleeping, but waking them up can cause a horrible day for you and your crew—so stealth is important. Also, resources are scarce, so those teams that go in guns blazing might find themselves out of ammo before long. While a lot of cooperative games offer various degrees of difficulty levels, GTFO is meant to be difficult—with things getting harder the deeper you go. Saying GTFO doesn’t have difficulty levels isn’t entirely correct. Instead, each level deeper you progress, the harder things get. Enemies become more abundant, and new, harder threats start to replace familiar enemies. Security doors you pass through start to become harder, too—with more potential waves of enemies coming to meet your team. And while I can appreciate a good challenge, I find GFTO’s form of difficulty to be incredibly tedious. If you die near the end of a level, that often means lots of gameplay that has to be retread. There have been checkpoints added for the full release—but even with checkpoints, going back over parts of the facility you’ve already cleared can be mind-numbing, and sometimes for our group that led to even more mistakes. While I appreciate the hardcore nature of the game, my group just doesn’t have the time required to dedicate to replaying long missions multiple times—no matter how fun they are. Besides its punishing difficulty, GTFO is a blast. I’ve never played a game quite like it. It’s simultaneously scary and exhilaratingly exciting. Seeing something new is always a treat—but that’s partially because so much of GTFO’s complex looks similar. While that sounds bad, that’s okay, because it lends to the labyrinthine feeling. Also, fighting enemies in GTFO feel great. Weapons feel fun to shoot, and bopping enemies on the head (or dispatching them with the new melee weapons) is one of the most satisfying stealth mechanics I’ve experienced. GTFO is just damn fun to play—and it also manages to be great to look at, too. GTFO does have a story, but it’s not told through cutscenes or long lines of exposition (outside of terminal audio logs, that is). Instead, lots of GTFO’s story is told through environmental clues, terminal logs, and witnessing the horror of the complex. Throughout the Early Access period, lore was drip-fed in an almost frustratingly slow fashion. The question always was, “why does this giant underground facility exist, and what the hell were they doing here?” But with the release of 1.0, the veil has been lifted in some spectacular and surprising ways. While GTFO doesn’t have procedurally generated levels, developer 10 Chambers have been releasing a new set of levels every few months called “Rundowns.” This type of release schedule should continue past release ensuring that there will be new content to dive into. While Rundowns do feel a little bit more handcrafted than other procedurally generated content, you will see chunks of levels you’ve seen before, making repeated excursions in the Complex feel repetitive. While 1.0 does release a few new visuals to make things interesting (I don’t want to spoiler them here) it’s not enough to make GTFO feel new again—so if you’ve been playing GTFO for a while, don’t expect the 1.0 release to be full of new things to see and do. But there are a few surprises in store. Different Rundowns also mean Rundown specific weapons. While GTFO does have a base set of weapons and gadgets to choose from, each Rundown tends to have a new set of weapons and even a few new gadgets to try out. While it can be a bummer to lose your favorite Rundown specific weapon, there’s also new things to try—and you might even find a new favorite. One of the biggest new additions for GTFO has been bots. While I definitely recommend playing GTFO with other human players, especially friends, playing with Bots primarily—or even as supplemental teammates—isn’t as impossible as it might have seemed a few months ago. Bots aren’t perfect when it comes to carrying items, or even pathfinding—but they’re great at fighting. Bots have crazy good aim, and a team with myself and three bots often feel more capable of handling harder threats than me and my friends do. While GTFO is one of the best stealth games I’ve played, and definitely one of the best stealth-based co-op experiences out there, its difficulty is oppressive. It’s definitely not for casual players—and if you’re older, with a job and other obligations, it’ll be harder to find the time for the hard and long lower floors. If you want to play solo, there are bots that are capable—but don’t expect them to carry you through the hardest challenges, though they are surprisingly good fighters. I’m glad GTFO has finally reach “1.0” and look forward to see what horrors my friends and I will uncover in our next expedition. GTFO is out now on Steam. This article was originally published on 12/18/2021 at this location: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2021/12/18/review-gtfo/

Signalis kind of came out of nowhere. It was just another game in a sea of review keys that didn’t do much to stand out–that is, until I played it. It was a surprisingly novel take on the survival horror genre. If you are a survival horror fan, you have to play Signalis. I’ve been replaying classic horror games a lot lately, and there’s something about their low polygon, low resolution nature that makes them scarier than a lot of modern games. But Signalis isn’t a game that leans on nostalgia in any obvious way. It doesn’t even really bill itself as a retro experience, because while it has those elements, it’s more than a game that’s just banking on nostalgia. Signalis is a survival horror game mostly played from an isometric perspective. In it, you play as Elster, a synthetic person who is looking for her lost partner who is trapped on a frozen planet, in a facility full of walking nightmares. There’s an extra layer of horror as you uncover that the society in which you live is a fascist, totalitarian regime. Replikas work and live among the normal populace, serving as guardians and workers—not quite human, but resembling them. In classic survival horror fashion, you have to explore the facility uncovering the truth, while fighting off enemies with a variety of weapons, bypassing locked doors and other obstacles to progress. It’s very Resident Evil-like, but with a retro-glitch veneer and a little bit of anime flavor. There are puzzles to solve, and enemies to avoid or fight—ammo is scarce. And unlike some games that claim ammo scarcity, there were some moments in Signalis that I had to choose to avoid enemy encounters rather than use what precious few bullets I had left. While Signalis dabbles in both traditional horror and psychological horror, it’s more effective towards the latter. I just didn’t find Signalis to be a very scary game overall. There were parts that were definitely unsettling, but that was mostly despite its setting and environment instead of because of it. Signalis also relies heavily on horror tropes—but mostly uses them well. However, despite its attempts at a scary atmosphere, I was never so much scared while playing Signalis as intrigued. But Signalis does use its environments well, and uses shifting perspectives even better. Occasionally, you will shift into a first person view, usually to interact with a specific object, or to solve a puzzle. Sometimes, usually during flashbacks, there are entire sections played in first person. These parts really helped to amp up the psychological horror aspects of Signalis. There is an underlying mystery throughout Signalis, and you’ll get glimpses of it as you progress through each area. But at first, you start off with little information on the what, who or why of anything—and you won’t even be sure that if what your character is experiencing is real. Sometimes new clues will unlock new memories, and adventures into these different memories can even yield objects that you can take and use in the waking world, which deepens the mystique. While you can avoid much of the fighting in Signalis, there are times you will be forced to fight. Combat in Signalis works almost identically to how Resident Evil established third person horror combat way back in the 90s: aim your weapon to ready it, and then fire. There are tools to help you avoid combat, or survive if your HP hits zero. Which is good, because Signalis using a bit of an archaic-made-new-again save system—you can only save at certain checkpoints, in safe rooms, much like Resident Evil. The equipment that you carry in Signalis can actually be pretty powerful—and I found that the game was pretty generous with how it gives out items. To combat this, Signalis gives you an incredibly limited inventory space of only 6 items. You don’t have to play inventory Tetris to get everything to fit, however. In addition to the simplified inventory, like items stack to a certain number. However, weapons, tools, and consumables all take up inventory slots per item type. Therefore, you will have to pack carefully. If you want to bring extra health, you might not have enough room for extra ammo, too. And since ammo can be genuinely scarce, sometimes inventory management is where the real horror of Signalis comes in. Despite how familiar Signalis is, it does a few things differently, and the things it apes from other games it does very well. Signalis is an unexpected hit, and my favorite new survival horror game this year. It’s a little light on scares, even despite its limited ammo. But it has an intriguing mystery and excellent sci-fi world building. If you are looking for a survival horror game to play this Halloween, Signalis should be towards at the top of your list. Signalis will be available 10/27 on PC via Steam and is also available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox One and Xbox Series S|X through Humble Bundle. A Steam key was given to us for this review This review was originally published on November 2, 2022 at this location: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/signalis-is-a-great-throwback-to-classic-horror-with-lots-of-new-ideas

If you asked me 10-15 years ago about scary games, I’m sure System Shock 2 would have been brought up. It’s a classic that genuinely scared me in a way its sprite-based predecessor didn’t. Now we have the superbly remade System Shock, lovingly crafted from the ground up by Night Dive Studios to bring Shodan’s original terror spree to contemporary gamers. Not only was it great at launch, but the developers have been listening to feedback, and it's still getting updates as of August of this year. GLaDOS is perhaps the most famous rogue AI in video games, but long before I played Portal I was facing off against an antagonistic AI that absolutely terrifies me in a way that GLaDOS doesn’t: Shodan. While there is some humor in GLaDOS’s horror, Shodan is a terrifying megalomaniacal AI that revels in genetic experiments and creating cyborg monstrosities while demanding her subjects worship her as a god. System Shock is a first person adventure game that has been painstakingly recreated by brilliant retro resurrectors Night Dive Studios. In it, you play as a who is hacker forced to fight their way through Citadel station after the station’s AI went rogue. In fact, you’re the reason Shodan’s leash is unhooked. It’s your job to undo this damage as you find yourself trapped on a Citadel Station that is controlled by Shodan, with its cramped corridors filled with mutants, cyborgs, and robots bent on destroying or enslaving you. Body horror abounds in high definition. Before the denizens of Citadel Station were depicted in highly pixelated gore, you can see the fruit of Shodan’s carnage in a whole new way. Despite System Shock’s graphical overhaul, Night Dive Studios left a bit of pixelated retro feel in their art. If you get really close to an object the textures are pixelated in a way that feels like a deliberate art choice by the developers. It helps maintain that retro feel. But you also have all of the modern graphical bells and whistles you’d expect. While the graphics changed significantly, there has been obvious care put into System Shock’s gameplay. It feels like a modern game, but it’s surprisingly faithful to it’s the original’s design. And that means this is a true retro adventure. There is absolutely no hand-holding, so you have to pay attention to dialogue and the environment to find your next task. There are no waypoints. You can reference dialogue snippets that you find as you explore Citadel Station and discover audio logs left from the deceased crew. There are also little to no explanation on the game’s mechanics—if you’re not familiar with this type of game, the learning curve might be frustrating. Especially because there’s a real possibility you can play yourself into a corner. If you don’t save often enough, or lose track of an important game item, you can lose chunks of time. I found myself going back to my old habit of saving frequently, and creating a new save file each time I saved so I could go back and undo anything that might get me stuck. System Shock comes from an age of corridor shooters, and feels only one step removed from a grid-based role-playing game. What I mean by that is: most of the game takes placed in cramped environments. You could argue that this is appropriate for a space station, but it does make System Shock feel labyrthine and claustrophobic—but more in a hard to navigate way than in a scary way. In fact, despite the Shodan’s threats and the prodigious amounts of gore, System Shock isn’t a very scary game. It does achieve a cyberpunk sci-fi atmosphere, but the hacker you play as feels very capable of handling the threats that Shodan produces. Once I got a lightsaber (sorry, laser rapier) and boots that let me run super-fast and nearly fly, I felt like Shodan should be afraid of me. System Shock is definitely one of the most authentically cyberpunk games I’ve played in a long time. Even the original game’s infamous cyberspace hacking segments are created in bright neon colors that invoke the feeling of flying through the ‘net and compromising systems in a way that 90’s popular media promised us. While System Shock contains some frustrating elements for the uninitiated, fans of the original will absolutely love this remake. It’s even more accessible to modern audiences, if they possess a little patience to weather the 90’s video game design. This is my favorite game of its type since 2017’s Prey, and an absolutely worthy remake to a 90’s sci-fi video game classic. System Shock is available today on PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review This article was originally published on May 5, 2023 in this location: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/system-shock-is-a-brilliant-remake

So--we’re about halfway through the fourth season of Lower Decks, and we finally have an episode that’s all about the show's newest Lower Deck regular T’Lyn. It also has a few throwbacks (of course) and some surprisingly poignant moments while fleshing out Trek lore. Honestly, this intro is completely unnecessary, because I’m essentially just describing the show at this point. Most of this season has been fantastic, and “Empathalogical Fallacies” has some genuinely great Trek moments. In Empathological Fallacies, the USS Cerritos is tasked with transporting three Betazoid diplomats. As I would have expected from Betazoids, these are real party aunt types–loud, boisterous, and flirting constantly and openly. You know, like three Lwaxana Trois, except drunk and (surprisingly more) disorderly. T’Lyn, the Vulcan addition to the Lower Decks crew, cannot stand their behavior, and finds it extremely off-putting. Soon after, the crew begins to experience heightened emotions–something Captain Freeman thinks is being caused by the Betazoids. It’s always hit or miss when you have a Star Trek episode that revolves around characters losing their inhibitions, but “Empathalogical Fallacies” does a great job riding the line between satire and parody, while staying true to Trek’s spirit. There are also some interesting lore tidbits that popped up in this episode, especially the fact that Caitians used to hunt Betazoids. Seeing T’Ana feverishly looking for the Betazoids to hunt was hilarious–but it’s hard to find a scene with Doctor T’Ana that isn’t. While telepathic hell is breaking loose on the Cerritos, Boimler is somewhere deep in the ship during a B-plot with Shaxs and the security crew. Boimler is hoping to learn some moves to kick ass, but instead is invited to play board games and listen to slam poetry. I love how much of a Papa Bear Shaxs is, and the whole episode turns out to be a sort of Karate Kid moment for Boimler. I wasn’t sure where “Empathalogical Fallacies” was going at first (despite its title hinting at the truth) and I thought T’Lyn was being set up as a villain. Thankfully, that’s not the case, as I’ve really grown to like her character. T’Lyn has turned out to be a great addition to Lower Decks crew. In fact, it’s strange to think that she wasn’t there acting as the “straight man” all along. Certain characters took that role every now and then, and I think Boimler may have originally been meant to occupy that space, but all of the Lower Deck crews are quirkier and more enthusiastic than any straight man can be. “Empathalogical Fallacies” ends with some hints towards the season’s big mystery. While we’re not given any answers, we’re brought a little closer to the truth. I’m hoping they’re not saving the reveal for a two part ending, and that we’ll get a few more clues to its purpose and who is behind it before any finale.

This isn’t exactly a horror game, but it isn’t NOT a horror game. While there are a few things in this deckbuilder that are unconventional (and lots of surprises for those who managed to avoid spoilers) and sometimes horrifying. Either way, it’s a game that had unsettling moments that left an impression on me almost three years after its release. This review strives to be as spoiler-free as possible. It’s hard to write about Inscryption. It’s a game that’s full of surprises—and those surprises are part of the fun I’ve had while peeling back Inscryption’s many layers. But writing about it proves problematic because of spoilers—and while I know my efforts will be in vain, since spoilers will be on the internet once the embargo lifts, I don’t want to be the reason that you are spoiled for this amazing game. Inscryption is a darkly atmospheric deckbuilding and puzzle game. If you’ve played games like Slay the Spire, Inscryption may look familiar to you—but that’s surface level. Inscryption’s brilliance is hidden within multiple layers of compelling mystery. To start the game, you find yourself a hapless victim in Leshy’s cabin—an insane hermit who is forcing you to play a deadly game of cards against him. If you lose, it costs you your life. The gameplay of Inscryption not only requires you to build good decks to defeat the challenges you’ll face, but to also solve puzzles to reveal secrets, and uncover its mysteries. Screenshot: Inscryption My first impression of Inscryption was that it was a haunted game—like it was something I discovered, but wasn’t meant to. It uses its dark atmosphere, and scaled down retro style graphics to set the tone of a game that feels like it was plucked straight from creepypasta. It’s not long before you start to realize that things aren’t necessarily as they seem, as the cards begin to talk to you. Get up from you seat, and you can explore the cabin, finding secrets including hidden cards, and information that reveals the truth of Inscryption. As far as deckbuilders go, Inscryption takes a whole lot of bold and exciting steps, and is one of my favorite card games in recent memory. Card duels in Inscryption are extremely fun, and very high risk—with decisive moves making duels over in only a few rounds. It’s set up a bit like Magic: The Gathering: cards are played opposite one another in a number of lanes. Cards that attack with no card in the opposite lane will instead do damage to the other “player.” There aren’t conventional hit points. Instead, if you’re hit, a scale is weighed down in your direction—if the scale lowers too far, you lose. This makes health dynamic, and sometimes duels are a tug of war, trading blows back and forth. Screenshot: Inscryption There is a lot of room for crazy, unconventional, or just plain overpowered cards in Inscryption. There are a few methods of upgrading or modifying cards, with certain combos of abilities that make for fun synergies. Cards have health values and damage values—but they also have sigils that determine their behavior. Inscryption’s style of card dueling rewards high risk behavior and sacrifice. In fact, especially to start, sacrificing cards is necessary to even play them, though new card mechanics are added (and removed) as you play. There is an underlying mystery in Inscryption, and to get to the bottom of it, you’ll need to explore everything you can. Nothing in Inscryption is as it seems. It creates an incredible atmosphere of dread, propped up by the amazing soundtrack by Jonah Senzei. Screenshot: Inscryption A major part of Inscryption is interacting with its environments. There are many puzzles and other unexpected things to interact with and discover. While some of Inscryption’s puzzles are easier than others, none of them had me stumped for long. There are so many things to discover, that I felt like I was hardly ever stuck—and always moving towards the answers to Incryption’s secrets. Inscryption pays homage to video games in many ways. It uses meta narrative in a way that reminds me of what was so exciting about Undertale—and while I can’t predict if Inscryption is destined for such massive popularity, it deserves to be. Inscryption is easily one of the best games I’ve played all year. Inscryption is available tomorrow for PC via Steam. This article was originally published on 10/18/2021. The original article is located here: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2021/10/18/review-inscryption/

31DoH is our 31 Days of Horror series, where we will post one horror game review every day for the month of October. Enjoy! To start off this 31 Days of Horror games I wanted to highlight one of my favorite horror games this year: Amnesia: The Bunker. I was a little bummed by the direction of the Amnesia series after Rebirth–it was a solid game, but it pulled the curtain a little too far back. The Bunker, however, takes the series in a different approach. Developer Frictional seemed to be channeling their earlier works–like the Penumbra series–as well as a bit of Alien: Isolation (among other titles) to bring an experience that is genuinely terrifying. I’ve been a fan of developer Frictional Games since I played Penumbra: Overture. In fact, I heartily recommend their game Soma to anyone who might ask me for game recommendations. But Frictional Games is best known for their Amnesia series. While I thought their previous entry Amnesia: Rebirth might have pulled the curtain back a tad too far, Amnesia: The Bunker is a return to form for Frictional Games, with gameplay that calls back to the Penumbra series. It’s also damn scary. Amnesia: The Bunker is a first person survival horror game. In it, you play as a World War I soldier who has recently recovered from a wound only to wake up to a horror: trapped alone in an underground bunker with a bloodthirsty creature. The officers escaped, and collapsed the tunnel behind them, so you have to find a way out of the bunker while avoiding the creature. It won’t be easy, however, as you also have to find your way around obstacles, through locked doors, and around traps left by the soldiers who have died before you. You have to do all of this while trying to keep the lights on at all costs, because the creature prefers to hunt in the dark. But the generator loves to gulp down fuel, and you’re either forced to use your noisy wind-up flashlight, improvise a light source, or attempt to survive the bunker by groping around in the dark. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker When you first start up Amnesia: The Bunker ( or The Bunker) you’re forced to play through a clumsy beginning that establishes the setting, and works a bit like a tutorial. It’s an unfortunate first impression, but it’s quickly forgotten as the game immediately creates a tense atmosphere that only gets more intense as you continue to play. Once you’re on your own, there’s a message that informs you that “if you think it’s possible, it probably is” in regards to what The Bunker’s physics-driven interactions can be. While there is definitely some possibility for emergent gameplay, I found this mostly means finding creative ways to break down doors, and sometimes clever ways of warding off the creature. Doors are your main obstacle in The Bunker, and while some can be smashed open (or blown up, shot, etc.) others will require you to find keys or combinations to the locks that impede your way forward. Most of these keys and combinations can be found through careful exploration, but also by reading the various notes left around. This is how the story is told, and gives you an idea of what happened in the bunker leading up to its current state. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker There’s always a sense of dread in The Bunker. There’s the constant time pressure of the generator and its fuel consumption, and the pressure of item management: inventory space is limited, so you have to decide what’s important, or what gets left behind in your stash. There’s only one “safe” room in The Bunker, and one save point, meaning you’ll have to explore outward from there. The further out you go, the more intense the pressures can be. And of course, there’s the constant dread of knowing the monster is actively hunting you and may be lurking just around the corner. The creature itself never quite invoked the same childhood induced trauma levels of fear that the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation caused me—but it comes pretty damn close. While most games developed by Frictional Games have you helpless and unable to fight, you can actually fight back against the monster in The Bunker—but anything you do to it will just slow it down. While the creature is repelled by the light, you aren’t safe just because you’re in a bright room: once he sees you, unless you can fight back you’re dead. While the monster isn’t the only enemy you’ll face in The Bunker— it will be a constant threat through your entire playthrough. Screenshot: Amnesia: The Bunker Even after you’ve played through The Bunker the first time, new playthroughs can have their own challenges. Certain elements in The Bunker are randomized. The codes you find in your playthrough are randomly generated, and even sometimes randomly placed. Resources are randomly generated and placed in different locations on each new playthrough. Even traps are randomized by placement and type. There is also Steam Workshop support, which opens up the possibility of being able to play user made content—and I can’t wait to see what the community comes up with. If you find that The Bunker is too difficult, there’s an “easy” mode that allows you to explore with a little less pressure from the monster. Conversely there’s a “hard” mode for those who want an increased challenge. Amnesia: The Bunker is a fantastic game. It’s easily the most terrifying game I’ve played since Alien: Isolation. It instills a sense of dread and its intensity ramps up until the very end. If you’re a fan of horror Amnesia: The Bunker is one of the best and scariest games out there.  Amnesia: The Bunker is available June 6 for PC via Steam and on the Epic Games Store. A Steam key was given to us for this review This article was originally published on 6/5/2023, and was originally found at: https://www.culturecombine.com/post/terrifying-and-brilliant-amnesia-the-bunker-is-a-return-to-form

Riot Fest was back again in Douglass Park with its classic carnival atmosphere. The stage set ups remained similar to previous years, with headlining double stages and cascading secondary stages, which led to some heavy trekking for some trying to see multiple artists in a row. Nonetheless, the Chicagoland crowd showed up in droves for such headliners as Foo Fighters and The Cure but how did it fare comparative to its previous years? The answer is found in its fine tuning of the formula. The stage design has always been an interesting one. It manages to remove a lot of cross sound but is just far enough away to be annoying. At the same time, their bathroom situation has improved with rows and rows of porta potties placed in strategically convenient spots. Rarely did we have to wait in line longer than a few minutes, which is a breath of fresh air. The prices for most things remain on par with what you’d see at concerts, overpriced but not out of the norm. The food was also an improvement with lots of variations of tacos, and burgers but with style. What did stand out were the bands. The Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age and the Cure are definitely some bigger pulls but snagging the rare appearance of the defunct indie sensation Postal Service was a massive drive for many. Considering Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie share singers, it was nice to see them as a double bill. Throw in the cult followings of ICP, Mr. Bungle or 100 Gecs, and we have a jam packed festival with something for everyone. Another staple of the festival scene in the last decade has been full album plays, and that was in no short supply here. We had The Breeders, Braid, Quicksand, Rival Schools, Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, and Gorilla Biscuits all bringing replays of their classic albums. The rain couldn’t stop the crowds or bands alike, with many bands continuing their sets throughout. Riot Fest 2023 is another one for the books. In many ways, it was a classic Riot Fest, but the slight improvements of food options and bathrooms plus a first class line up made for a much easier experience.

It’s been over three years since Animal Crossing: New Horizons brought cozy games to the mainstream. I’ve been enjoying the trend, even though I end up playing more bad cozy games than good ones. Some cozy games are resorting to what seems like gimmicks to make them stand out. While “cozy game, but with dinosaurs” sounds awesome–I’m sad to report that I just couldn’t find the fun in Paleo Pines. Paleo Pines is a third person adventure game with some farming sim elements. It follows one of the very worn tropes that (I believe) started way back with 1997’s Harvest Moon: you own a farm, but it’s run down and you have to fix it up. While you’re fixing it up, you have to farm, meet the quirky townspeople, etc. The only main difference here is the introduction of Lucky. I have to admit: I would die for Lucky. Lucky is a parasaurolophus (no idea how to pronounce that) and she’s possibly the last of her kind. You’ve had her since she was an egg–and you’ve actually come to this island to find the others of her kind. While Paleo Pines’ premise does set it a tad bit apart from other games of its ilk, there really isn’t anything groundbreaking here–most of the gameplay checks the boxes of other games of its type. With, again, the main difference being the ability to collect dinosaurs. You do this by communicating with them through your musical flute. Also with you is your trusty companion Lucky. She’s not only your BFF, she’s also your ride. However, as you get more dinosaurs and tame them you’ll not only be able to ride them–but you can use them as farm equipment to take some of the tedium out of your daily chores. It’s a living, right? Paleo Pines is extremely charming at a glance, and looks good in short snippets or screenshots. However, it hasn’t endeared me with its floaty controls and strange baby people. While I can get over bad character design, having a game that doesn’t feel very fun to play–even if it’s supposed to be a “chill” game–kind of ruins the whole experience. The more you explore in Paleo Pines the more people you’ll find–and the more people you end up helping, the more of Paleo Pines opens up. There are a few distinct biomes in Paleo Pines, each with its own wild crops to forage and dinosaurs to discover–and tame. There isn’t a lack of things to keep you busy–but whether that busy work is fun really depends on your tolerance. I’m not saying that Paleo Pines is a bad game. In fact, it checks all of the proper boxes and does what it sets out to be: a bright colorful cozy game with dinosaur friends. If that’s good enough for you, than Paleo Pines should be good enough. But if you’re looking for something to replace Animal Crossing: New Horizons or you’re chasing the next best thing: this ain’t it. Paleo Pines is available today on Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch A Steam key was provided to us for this review

After playing El Paso, Nowhere I was pretty excited to see where El Paso, Elsewhere would take the story and gameplay. It’s a cool idea, and an awesome visual style that’s a nod to retro games – specifically looking like something you would play on Nintendo 64. It has a lot of good things going for it – unfortunately, it suffers from mediocre gameplay. El Paso, Elsewhere is a third person shooter that’s a strange melding of Max Payne and retro action horror games. It’s oozing with style, has a fantastic voice over and an awesome soundtrack that lends itself to mowing down hordes of vampires, werewolves, biblically accurate angels, and other supernatural creatures. You play as a hard-boiled protagonist that fell in love with the wrong woman. And she turns out to be the Lord of the Vampires. One day she decides to rip a hole through reality, and one three story Texas motel is turned into a trippy (and crumbling) labyrinth full of monsters and people to rescue. To get through these monsters you’ll need stakes, guns, and lots of ammo. And also painkillers that you gulp down prodigiously in one of many nods to Max Payne. There’s even a “bullet time” (we don’t call it that anymore, right?) style slowdown effect you can use while diving all dramatically. It’s all very cool. It’s just not very fun. If I could recommend El Paso, Elsewhere on style points alone, I absolutely would. However, it’s just not very fun to play. I remember after my first session I looked at the playtime expecting to see hours played, only to be surprised to find out I’ve been exploring El Paso, Elsewhere’s trippy motel for only 30 minutes. Oh man. There are a laundry list of things wrong with El Paso, Elsewhere, but I want to start with its enemies. There was a time when enemy AI in video games seemed to be getting better, but now I play so many games where enemies’ most sophisticated behavior is to run right towards me. Sometimes developers can get away with that, especially with satisfying gunplay. However, guns in El Paso, Elsewhere just don’t feel very impactful. To make it worse, early on ammo is extremely scarce. I spent many levels just running away from enemies. Why the hell can I do all of these cool dives if I don’t have the ammo to kill things? This gets better once you start getting more guns, but it leaves a bad first impression. The level design in El Paso, Elsewhere is just awful, too. I don’t mean just aesthetically, but in layout. It’s intentionally labyrinthine, but in the worst way. There is also too much reliance on having to collect items or find keys to progress. All while shooting enemies that (mostly) run at you in a straight line. It also doesn’t help that most of the floors in El Paso, Elsewhere look almost identical with little change. I get it–it’s the same, nightmarish location. After its initial shock value, though, it's extremely boring. I might seem to be overly harsh about El Paso, Elsewhere. This one hurts me. It’s just so damn cool. I wish I could recommend it just for the voiceover work done for the main protagonist, and the great soundtrack. However, a game is only as fun as its gameplay–and El Paso, Elsewhere also felt like a chore to play. El Paso, Elsewhere is available today for PC via Steam and on Xbox. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

Lower Decks Season 4 Episode 4 “Something Borrowed, Something Green” is a bit of a surprise. There were some hints at D’Vana Tendi’s backstory, but this episode removes all mystery, and lays bare Tendi’s Orion heritage–also giving us a unique glimpse into Orion culture that other Trek shows haven’t quite touched on. First of all–I love that T’Lynn has become a regular Lower Decks crew member. They really needed a “straight man” to act as a foil against all of the cast’s enthusiastic energy. Because let's face it, there’s not much these guys aren’t enthusiastic about, especially when it comes to science or exploring new cultures. That’s so damn wholesome, and so very Star Trek–and that’s what make Lower Decks great, along with its ensemble cast that has such great chemistry. I really dig what T’Lynn brings to the group. It’s been hinted at through the last few seasons that Tendi’s Orion background is a little bit cooler than she wants people to know. This entire episode is essentially all the juicy Tendi backstory you’ve wanted to know–and yeah, she’s totally badass. (I’m a huge Tendi fan, so I’m biased). In this episode, Tendi is summoned back to her home planet to help her sister, D’Erika, who has been kidnapped. Bridal kidnappings are a normal Orion custom, apparently, so she isn’t too worried. However, Mariner and T’Lynn insist on Tendi going on the rescue mission–and taking them with her. “Something Borrowed, Something Green” does reference a few previous Trek episodes in regards to the Orions, but this episode surprisingly stands on its own, and even manages to have a few poignant moments. Also, I can’t help but find Tendi’s embarrassment about her badass prowess to be incredibly endearing. She just wants to be a scientist, dammit! While Mariner, Tendi and T’Lynn are on Orion, Boimler and Rutherford enjoy a predictable and funny side plot that involves them having disputes as roommates–and hashing it out via holodeck conversations. In character. The same character. Yeah, it’s weird. There’s also a throwback to a semi obscure alien called a Chalnoth–this race originally appeared in the TNG episode “Allegiance.” Lower Decks doesn’t stop with the obscure throwbacks–and I hope it never does. As a huge Trek nerd it’s not lost on me that “Something Borrowed, Something Green” takes some huge leaps in revealing the Orion culture and home world. In fact, I think this is the first time the Orion homeworld has been depicted on screen–which is pretty awesome. And while the enemy that’s been hinted at since the first episode makes another appearance, there is little revealed. However, it seems closer than ever to running into the Cerritos and its crew.