I did not like this at all. It pales compared to the best Amnesia games and to Alien: Isolation, from which it takes clear inspiration. You are a French soldier trapped in a bunker in WWI. Pretty much everything else is dead down there. Oh, except for a hulking monster that murdered everyone and relentlessly stalks you. It sounds cool! In practice, I found most everything that was supposed to be scary about the game irritating instead. Once you get out of the "tutorial" area of the map, you can head in one of four directions, exploring the bunker and collecting what you need, and solving required puzzles in order to escape. After the tutorial, the monster activates, and boy does it. Everything seemingly triggers it to come looking for you and it looks for a long time. I spent a lot of my partial playthrough sitting in the dark waiting for it to go away. It moves through the walls, emerges from holes, and can break down doors. It feels like it teleports to wherever you are after you perform basic actions like running or cranking your flashlight.
This is all kind of fine though, right? It's a survival horror game. The monster is supposed to stalk you. Of course it's attracted to noise. Well, yeah, but it's so ever-present that the cat-and-mouse game feels less like any battle of wits (you can't "outsmart" the monster), but rather a waiting game. Cat-and-hide-in-a-corner-for-5-minutes. And chances are, after 5 minutes of hiding, the monster will magically detect you in the corner, break down the door you carefully locked, and kill you anyway. Then it's back to the Administration Room when you last saved.
You will HAVE to crank your flashlight; making noise is unavoidable. Typically, though, you want to fill the generator with gasoline so the lights in the bunker come on. The generator guzzles the gas, and you have a handy pocketwatch that you can sync to tell you how much time is left till the gas runs out. But you'll still need to crank that flashlight to illuminate where lights don't shine. And when the generator runs out, the only light you've got is the flashlight, which only lasts like 30 seconds on a crank. So, as with Amnesia: Rebirth, much of The Bunker is spent squinting in the darkness trying to open doors. The Bunker to me was less about avoiding a scary monster and more about navigating a maze of locked doors with a stupid flashlight that I have to crank every 30 seconds. It just so happens that the monster slows my progress through the maze to a snail's pace, what with all the stopping and waiting under tables.
The monster, the darkness, they're not scary! They don't build tension. They're annoying!
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Binged the rest of this today, after dabbling in it a couple weeks ago. I didn't really know what to expect from Vampire Survivors, went in blind, only knowing that it was an indie hit. If I had to describe it in genre vocabulary that I'm familiar with, I would say it's a cross between a hack-and-slash game (like classic Gauntlet), a bullet hell game, and a roguelite. You will eventually win due to the persistent unlocks, and it's a fun ride to get there.
You choose a character (and will unlock at least a dozen more) and enter the first stage, a garden full of bats and skeletons. Your character is in the middle of the screen and enemies appear all around, always moving toward you. Your goal is to kill them (to accumulate experience points, gold, and items) and avoid being hit, surviving as long as you can. The more enemies you kill, the more experience gems you can collect. The more experience gems you collect, the faster you level up. The faster you level up, the more powerful you are at any given time in the level's set time frame. Enemy waves change every minute, and if you aren't killing enough (maybe you're trying to explore the stage instead), you'll fall behind and become overwhelmed. Even if you are keeping up, some waves will catch you off guard or are especially challenging to deal with given your character's current build. But generally, if you're keeping pace with the timer, you'll last a long time, and perhaps clear the stage (typically at the 30-minute mark).
Each character starts with a specific weapon and sometimes other stat bonuses or penalties. The weapons and other items offer tons of variety. In addition to your character's starting weapon, you can find and equip up to 5 more (6 total) plus 6 passive items. If you collect the same item again, it levels up. Further, each weapon has a "matching" passive item (unknown to you until you figure it out). When you have both items in a pair, and you level one (or maybe just the weapon?) to the max (level 8), any minibosses you kill have a chance to drop an "evolved" version of that weapon. Evolved weapons are very powerful, and you'll eventually figure out that to excel later in the game, you should plan "builds" that involve evolved weapons, and adhere to them as best you can.
Depending on the level, the enemies you face, and your character, some weapons and passives will be more desirable than others. In the narrow tower stage, for example, the Song of Mana is badass. It shoots wide rays of energy vertically in both directions, perfect for a narrow stage. Choose the character who starts with that weapon, Poppea. She also has a bonus to the "duration" stat, which affects how long weapon effects, like the Song of Mana rays, last. So, ideally, you should go for other weapons that are affected by duration, like the King Bible (bibles rotate around you dealing damage to anyone nearby) and Santa Water (bombs of holy water land in the area, sizzling whoever walks on them), and go for the passive that increases duration, the passives of the other weapons you get (so you can evolve them too), or other passives that provide nice bonuses, like more XP or damage bonuses (always useful!).
Vampire Survivors features a ridiculous amount of unlockables, achievements, and secrets. I had fun aiming for many of these, until they started getting really difficult or grindy (e.g., achievements for reaching level 50 with each character, each of which unlocks Arcana, which are buffs for your run). You will want to go for some of these unlockables, not only because they are useful in and of themselves (new characters, special menu options, new weapons that will drop, etc.), but because many come with gold, which you use to purchase persistent upgrades like increased damage, a free resurrection per run, or faster experience point gain. The faster you acquire gold for such persistent upgrades, the stronger you are in each run and the farther you can get.
One thing I became confused about was how to “beat” this game. The devs have added tons of content since release, including an additional regular level and an ending where the credits roll. I ended up considering completing the final regular level as beating the game. Getting the “true” ending is a long and complex process! First, you have to collect all 11 relics from regular stages. Some of these involve unlocking other secrets (like to get the yellow sign). I ended up with 10 of them, but couldn’t beat the challenge stage called the Bone Zone to get the 11th. The Bone Zone was added after release and is a big spike in difficulty with a boss that gets harder the longer you wait to kill. I never managed it. But, in theory, after I collected that 11th relic, I would have unlocked some other stage, then had to do something else to trigger the final boss fight and see the credits.
Anyway, Vampire Survivors appears so simple, but is surprisingly complex. It exceeded my expectations and scratched an itch for some grindy leveling up with constant rewards. This is one, because it has so many achievements and, I assume, will continue to be added onto, that I probably should have bought on Steam instead of played on Game Pass. Maybe I will buy it on Steam anyway and replay it someday, especially if it comes with a lot of DLC.
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Slow-paced narrative game with an interesting premise. You are a person in a car teetering on the edge of a cliff. You're scared, obviously, and questioning how you came to this point, contemplating whether life is worth it. A wise deer appears and guides you through a philosophical conversation about life, death, and nature.
The dialogue barely held my attention though. I didn't like a lot of the main character's dialogue; the attempts at humor fell flat. I think that she and the deer could have had a deeper conversation, without her saying things like "PUPPIES!" in response to a serious question from the deer like, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than this storm?". The thunderstorm was mesmerizing, the highlight of the experience for sure.
The camera is fixed looking out over the ocean, behind the car and the deer. Occasionally there is some camera movement, whether it pans to look at the stars, or to look at the car from the other side. But generally, you're just looking at the car and the deer, listening to the wind and the nice music, and reading what they're saying, clicking on some dialogue choices for the person in the car. Very non-interactive. There are far more engaging and better-written games exploring life and death.
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