Recent reviews by dannad

Собираешь билд на ядерные ракеты.
Одна наносит больше урона, чем среднестатистический ДПС.
Стреляешь залпами по 20 ракет.
Убиваешь боссов на спавне, зачищаешь любую волну за выстрел.
Умираешь из-за столкновения с астероидом так как не вкачал ХП.

Собираешь билд на таран.
Поджигаешь всё в радиусе половины экрана.
260% урона огнём.
По ошибке берёшь улучшение которое разделяет урон по корпусу и щиту 50/50.
Умираешь из-за того что буквально плавишься от своего-же урона.

Собираешь билд на конструкты.
Огромные баффы к защите, увеличивающиеся от количества туррелей и союзников.
Щит занимает треть экрана и отражает все снаряды до того как они долетают до построек.
На поле боя стабильно больше своих дронов чем врагов.
Умираешь от того что слишком близко подлетел к краю экрана и появившийся враг толкнул тебя прямо на босса в рывке.

Собираешь билд на вторичный урон через щит.
Можешь спокойно торчать прямо в АоЕ боссов.
Любой противник столкнувшийся с тобой превращается в пыль.
Улучшение высасывающее ХП из врагов позволяет танковать кого угодно.
Умираешь из-за того что на протяжении пяти волн не заспавнилось достаточно жирных кораблей чтобы полечиться.

Spoilers. This is the only warning.

I love Rain World.
If you'll refer to a classical game design guide, Rain World does almost everything wrong in a polar opposite way. Its movement feels clunky for a newcomer, it's unfairly difficult at times, it's tutorial barely covers the basics, its story is so obscure that actually learning it without outside sources would force you to take notes.
But it does all these wrongs so beautifully right. Paired with other numerous design tricks, Videocult has created a game that barely feels like one, and the most important part of which for a continuous experience is immersion. Which is absolute, there's nothing that breaks or interrupts it.
The synergy of the player and protagonist is on such a high level that you don't actually feel that you're playing a videogame. Not a single other platformer has made me physically gasp when i almost miss a difficult jump. Not a single other story-driven game actually invested me into lore so much, that i would spent hours running around the map and looking for collectibles just to hear a tiny sliver of dialogue. Not a single other RPG, or a videogame for that matter, has managed to convince me that pixels that i see on screen are an actual characters, with their feelings and emotions.

Downpour is... Not the experience i’ve been looking for. You can say that it's not Rain World, for that matter.
Where Downpour adds in gameplay, it hurts in immersion and continuality. New abilities are cool, sure, they're mechanically fun. But, how do they fit the world of the game? Do they work in a finely-tuned experience of the original without distorting it? Do they help the game to convey it's ideas to the player?

The answer it "No" to all of these questions, I'll go over them:

Almost none of the new characters have in-game reasoning for their powers, which in term hurts believability greatly. The most glaring example of which is Gourmand's crafting mechanic. Slugcats are established to be small and nimble omnivores with a fairly low level of intelligence. They can build simple nests or make use of weapons like spears, but they aren't shown to be intelligent enough to create their own tools. And they fill their ecological niche, which would probably be comparable to some monkeys in real life.
I could've got behind Gourmand being able to craft some simple items, like lanterns, which is just a bioluminescent mold stuffed into a shell. However, it's capable of creating objects which logically do not have any relation to their ingredients, animate life itself and create ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapons of mass destruction of a long-gone, highly advanced race. Like, imagine if you were playing a game which would pose itself as a chimpanzee simulator, and you could create ammunition for an automatic rifle from a bunch of rocks and a funny looking flower. Yeah, that's pretty much how it feels in Downpour.
Not even going to mention that it also can create absolutely new items by regurgitating at a cost of food.
A a single note in a developer commentary(!) mentions that Gourmand's campaign is not actually real, however, this is such a terrible move for a game which has been absolutely continuous in the original. Everything that was in it had a reason to be there, and you didn't question existence of creatures or characters in the slightest, it's just composed so naturally, but if Gourmand is not real, what else could be not real?
And no, "They were all genemodded by iterators!" is a very lazy excuse which also falls out of the scope of the original. I could believe in Hunter's story and its modifications were way, way more lax and believable.

Original game is designed in such a way to never let player feel powerful, and it makes sense in the context. You are a lost animal near the bottom of the food chain, you've lost your pack and are barely old enough to be able to throw spears, which probably also means that you don't have much hunting experience either. You and protagonist are in very similar starting conditions, both of you have very little knowledge of this world or actual applicable skill. The integral part of your journey is to learn how to survive, the hard way. Because there's nobody who could teach you. Luckily, neither of you have a time limit.
Downpour characters make vanilla experience a complete joke, since their powers are so strong that they can easily avoid most of the situations which would be fatal during a Survivor campaign without proper movement tech knowledge or survival experience. Game attempts to counteract this in numerous ways, mostly by throwing tons of very dangerous creatures into vanilla regions. It doesn't matter how many red centipedes there are in the room if you are capable of avoiding all of them just by running in a straight line or grappling to the ceiling. There's absolutely no suspense in combat if you can modify any spear to oneshot anything it hits.
You are no longer a part of an ecosystem, all creature spawns just become and obstacle on your fetch-quest for one of the iterators. You don't actually have to put any thought into process of survival, you don't have to observe because you can either leave a dangerous area extremely quickly and easily or kill the threat by dropping on it/oneshotting it with an explosive spear/lobbing dozens of spears which quite literally grow on you.

As i mentioned it before, Rain World puts player and protagonist in the same boat from the beginning, as your motivations never differ. This makes both an amazing story drive and a great way for developer to deliver the message, since everything which is presented to the character in-game will also interest player in the same capacity.
This is often used during narrative to increase impact of some of the story elements, but arguably the most powerful twist in the plot happens during climax of the second act, when you meet Five Pebbles. Most of the loose ends are tied there, and the most obvious story elements are explained, then, he tells you to ascend. It's his purpose to do so, he was designed to assist you. But nothing in game forces you to do that.
If you, as myself, "was tied in your own animal struggles", and actually enjoyed exploring and surviving on this beautifully broken planet, then there was no big plot drive for you to finish. During my first Survivor playthrough, i didn't ascend just because i loved the world so much, and game doubles down on that by encouraging exploration, as all extended lore can be obtained only by visiting a single very particular character with a set of very particular items, which you had to find and figure out what to do with them, so i did.
The only way to learn more about the world in Downpour is to progress though mandatory quests, since most of new content is locked behind these, which makes most of campaigns extremely linear, limiting your exploration options quite a bit. There's not really much to the sense of discovery since most of these areas only exist to advance the plot, which feels alien. Examples of which are: Submerged superstructure, which somehow not only remained fairly intact after a catastrophic collapse; Metropolis, which is just an enormous scavenger-filled arena with a bossfight; Rubicon, which absolutely demolishes the whole mysterious aura around depths, making it yet another bossrush-esque filled arena with questionable lore implications.
Either way, if Rain World has left you to decide how you should act and, ultimately, live your own life, Downpour puts you in extremely limited plot-constraints of specific characters.

In conclusion: Downpour is a good *game*, but it doesn't even attempt to deliver same experience as the original. You can argue that an expansion doesn't have to do that, with which i can partially agree, however, when i buy DLC for Rain World, i expect to get more Rain World, not Rain-World-Themed-Platformer.

Great game about rebuilding your spaceship with a near limitless modding potential and large amount of content.

Стоит своих денег.

Спасибо отличной экономической модели парадоксов, за то, что чтобы поиграть в полноценную игру, легче скачать пиратку. Отвратительный лаунчер, работающий через раз, и огромное количество длс, без которых в игре не будет 60% функционала

Одна из немногих выживалок про мертвяков, которая концентрирует геймплей не только на бездумном кромсании толпы, но и на менеджментe ресурсов, укреплении и поиске подходящих под твои нужды убежищ, планировании вылазок, чтение книг перед камином, постоянные перебивки на молитвы после очередной царапины и конечно-же смертям.
Да, играя на стандартной сложности, по неосторожности вы будете умирать в разы больше, чем от гнилой толпы. Отравиться несвежим куском мяса - потерять в скорости и силе, значит меньше мародёрствовать и получать меньше еды. Сидя дома, персонаж начнёт скучать, что ещё сильнее скажится на самочувствии и статах. И вот перед вами дилемма: выбраться на улицу в полудохлом состоянии, рискуя быть сожранным, или продолжать сидеть дома, тоскливо смотря на пустеющие полки.
Так-же есть: огромное количество настроек мира; хорошая система перков, сильно влияющих на игру; разнообразие оружия ближнего боя.
Из минусов отмечу: после двух-трёх месяцев становится слишком просто, после нескольких месяцев выживания из убежища выходить почти не нужно; сомнительный баланс, по типу копья создающегося из мусора и катафалков с вместимостью больше, чем у железнодорожного вагона; если играть осторожно, станет невероятно скучно, но это самый эффективный способ достичь успеха; иногда чудящие анимации и хитбоксы, ударить топором насквозь и потерять персонажа - так себе.
Если хочется экшона, ставьте хрупких зомби с большими толпами, много лута, побольше мета-эвентов, и вперёд в торговый центр, пробивая себе дорогу на грузовичке насквозь.

A pretty neat turn-based fighting game. Reminds me of ITB, but with faster progression and multiple storylines.

Слишком скучная, ожидал большего. Врубил максимальную сложность, даже не заметил. Введение слишком растянуто, а если катсцены смотреть, то тушите свет. А так и получил комиссию за возврат.

Положительный отзыв только за кампанию. 30-40 часов чистого веселья провести можно, однако если вас интересует только онлайн - насторожитесь. Если вы пришли кататься на крутых тачках, разносить всё вокруг и угонять танки, дорога вам именно туда.
Мультиплеер - основная прибыль рокстаровцев. Для того чтобы зарабатывать самому - готовьтесь гриндить. Сначала гриндить на офис, потом гриндить на склад, гриндить ещё на один склад, на клабхаус, затем уж на всякие там ночные клубы и казино. Учитывая скидки и всякие там акции, чтобы дойти до автосклада вам придётся потратить 70-100 часов своей жизни, благо на это есть гайды. Думаете, потратив столько времени, вы сможете заниматься тем, что собственно и хотели делать? Это только начало, ведь для того чтобы прикупить крутой летающий мотоциекел - зарабатывать нужно как на три офиса. А затем и грузовик с автомастерской. А, ну да, ещё и ночной клуб. В сумме получается около 6 миллионов долларов, при условии что вы будете идеально, используя лучшие и самые проверенные метода гринда, без потерь в эффективности, нужно потратить около 30 часов полного отчаяния, возя машины на склады. А в худших вариантах, и по 50-60 часов. Ладно, вот есть у вас этот невероятно крутой, полностью прокачанный опрессор. Думаете жизнь теперь будет сахаром? Ожидайте огромные волны читеров, которым собственно побоку на то сколько у вас бабла, ведь умрёте вы точно также, как и умирали будучи новичком.

Oldschool procedurally generated top-down racing with notes of roguelikes. Most of content in game is autogenerated, including mini-cutscenes, vehicle livery and of course other racers and tracks themselves. Enjoyable driving physics and car/track editors.
Got key from early-beta giveaway, spent most of my time in compagn mode. Evey other opponent is a virtual racer, that has all the abilities you do. Nice game to spent few dozens hours in