Recent reviews by DarkLustre

You just can't be my friend if you can't appreciate the AMAZING qualities in this game from 2006. Try to keep in mind the basic programming back then and maybe you'll appreciate how incredible this game really is. Forget the great voice acting, super storytelling and ability to develop your character as a rogue, mage, fighter, or something in between. Where this game really excels is in the variety of fighting, the ability to interact with your surroundings and the truly incredible attention to detail. Want to throw an oil flask on the ground and set multiple enemies on fire? Do it! Want to kick them into spikes and impale them? Do it! Pick up items and brain them. Break poles and collapse shelves holding heavy barrels and crush them. Use different weapons. spells, stealth or a combo of each. This game has so many options.

Ok, all that aside, the graphic details are breathtaking. You can go into a house and see these "bottle-glass" windows. As you walk up to them, the distorted view becomes clearer and you realize you're seeing outside! You're not just seeing a simulation of outside, you're seeing outside in realtime which you can test by opening the door and waiting for the guard to walk by. You will see him through the windows. Did I mention this game was released in 2006?!! These windows are breathtaking. There is a bird flying around in a cellar. There are these extraordinary things you will miss if you're one of those questionable gamers who blast their way through every game because they somehow think they are winning by missing half of the details of the game they bought.

Take your time to smell the pixels on this one. You'll find a deep appreciation for a game that could still kick Skyrim's butt in so many ways.

BIOSHOCK meets DISHONORED, with a lovely hint of FALLOUT 3 thrown in for good measure. You might also reminisce about the good ole days of Halo 2 while playing this. This game is for all the people out there who can't get enough of these games and want to vibe on them again. I can't believe I got this game for only $5.99 on sale. If I had known it would be giving me these vibes, I would have been happy to pay $20 for it.

But that's just me, as there are some downsides too. It is a short game, but nothing like the people who claim it is only a 4 hour game. Who buys a game with such depth and immersive feels and powers through it like the daily grind? Let me ask you, do you rush through every moment of the life you have been given just to get to the end of it sooner? Then why would you rush through the life you've chosen to buy and experience? Something is seriously wrong when someone says this game took them 4 hours to complete. I took about 12 because I stopped to smell the pixels a lot. This game really took me places. Another downside is the terrible ending that left far too many questions unanswered. The biggest downside for me was the really horrible enemy AI. It's SO BAD. You can crawl under a breakable wooden board blocking a door and you're completely safe. You can simply shut a door and they don't know what to do. You can jump up on the metal congregates and they can't reach you. It's like enemies were added to draw the game out longer and were just an afterthought.

There were some other positives too. The voice actors were really great. Especially the voice actor of Nora. She conveys true stress patterns in her voice and her acting is superb as a result. The Library is a totally unique experience that gives you such an eerie feeling. I haven't experienced anything like that in a game before.

Give this game a try. I don't think you could possibly be disappointed if you love the above mentioned games like I do, and are able to get it for $5.99! I might hesitate to suggest it for other people at anything over that, simply because of the shortness and terrible AI.

I'm absolutely disgusted with people who buy an early access game for a fraction of what it would release for, and then trash the game because it's not up to their demanding standards (WHILE BEING DEVELOPED!!!). You must have some level of Narcissism to trash a game in development because it's not finished enough for you. Shameful.

This game is AWESOME. Survival is my thing and I haven't found a game that really fits the bill, until this one. I've played Subsistence, the Long Dark, Ark, the Forest, 7 Days, etc. This game has a lot of similar elements to these games, but made them even better. It's not perfect, but it has great dynamics, amazing graphics, a pretty damn big map, and really interesting concepts. There's a cart you can construct and then manually drop stuff in and cart it around, instead of just transferring items to another inventory. The rain degrades items. You need food and water and running degrades your stats faster (I think?). I even noticed the street being shiny wet after a rain (though it hasn't rained again for me to be certain, don't blame me if I'm wrong). The dev is actively working on the game and there are updates. This game was worth the $10.99 I paid in the first hour. I can't wait to see how the game develops.

I was really disappointed the first time I started playing because so much of it was just like the original game. I had hoped that it would be entirely different. There are a lot of elements I really dislike, such as the stupidity of the temperature system. You can be freezing to death on land, and then jump into the water and heat up in seconds. You can also heat up by going into abandoned structures with no electricity, no heat and even no windows! If that doesn't work, you can jump in a steam vent, sulfur pond, or warm up to a heat lamp flower. Honestly this was so stupid it broke immersion.

All that aside, this game really impressed me. The voice acting is great, and they really did an amazing job with the scripts and the dialogue. Bringing Maida back was essential. The music for the jukebox was all very professional and really well written. The plot was way more interesting and involved. The ending was FREAKING EPIC! After completing the game I had to come and completely change my former review. This game is way better than the first!

I really wish the designers would give you more options. I liked the graphics option in the first game that let you set it to Filmic and make it more eerie. I wish there was a way to select the AI difficulty and actually have a game you can die in. It's way too easy to survive leviathan attacks, even on Hardcore. Nothing really poses a threat. This game really needs more options for gamers.

I can't wait for the next game!

This game was remarkably boring and pointless. It looked like it could be a Bioshock/Fallout-type hybrid, but the only interesting part of the game was the intro to the LEAF suit. After that, you fly through the pointless terrain (that is designed to keep you on a straight path through it), at incredible speeds. Running endlessly doesn't seem to drain the energy. Jumping and falling are kind of fun, but that about the extent of the fun I had. I didn't think reanimating a dead animal, (that should have been rotting and decayed) in a split second, with it getting up and running away, very immersive or realistic. There was no point to the game other than running through the landscape to get to the next pointless area, where you find an impossibly-hard (ha ha) puzzle of having to give life to three trees to be permitted to move onward. Yes, that was the extent to the difficulty of the puzzles I encountered. There's no need to eat, drink or sleep. No survival. Just running from one pointless area to the next. Hopefully you like your games to completely lack any immersion and realism, because as soon as you see the Pac-Man ghosts called 'sprites', pop up out of the ground and fly around at incredible speeds, you're going to be so happy to feel completely non-immersed in an area that is supposed to be in the United States of Earth.

This game wasn't even worth the $4.80 I paid for it.

This game was truly terrible. I wanted an RP homeless survival story and this was nothing more than a glorified copy and paste. Forget the fact that the graphics are comparable to cheap early 90s games. You spend all your time walking down an endless street of copy and paste buildings. This game is truly pointless and boring. Hobo, Tough Life looks like a much better game, with actual graphics, 1st person, RP and character development. That's the route I'm going.

Don't jump into this game. There are much better ones out there.

I love this game. It needs more options though. It would be great if the designers opened up world creation to the public so that we could get some really great custom content. It would be awesome if you could set the random world generator to your specifications. I'd love to be able to set the biomes I wanted, the amount of cities, buildings, cars, zombies, bodies of water, etc. Then you could have a really customizable experience that would exactly conform to your tastes. This game gets way too easy. It's so much more awesome when you can't find water anywhere and your survival revolves around finding extremely rare sources. Hopefully this kind of option selection is something they will add in the future. But for now, with almost 1400 hours- I really recommend this game as it is!

Absolute garbage. Whereas Penumbra: Black Plague was a freaky, atmospheric story-driven game, with some puzzles to solve- this game is nothing but an endless maze puzzle. It's the typical "moving crates" type of game that requires little skill more than timing jumps well. You have to find two portal keys in every level. What a waste of time and money. Halfway through I've had all I can take of this crap. I wish I had just bought Black Plaque and left it at that.

I wanted to love this game. I started out playing Black Plaque and I loved that. But this was terribly monotonous and didn't strike me as creative. The solution was honestly so convoluted I had to rely on a walkthrough for most of it. And I hate that. This one was just lacking the creativity that Black Plague had. I don't think I'll play it again. Right now, I'm just desperate to reach the end and be done with it.