Recent reviews by GRIMM

SNK vs. CAPCOM: SVC Chaos is a fighting game that came out initially way back in 2003. If you live(d) in North America like me at the time you had to wait until the next year to grab it. And in an odd choice for those in NA, the publisher decided to release it only on the original XBOX. It's not like the XBOX wasn't popular. But it definitely was not a popular choice for fight fans. So in North America at least this game remained an obscure title. And to be honest, for most fight fans, you did not miss much. Of all 4 released SNK/Capcom crossover fighting games, SVC Chaos was and still is the weakest of the bunch.

Gone from the 3 previous crossovers are teams, which was an odd choice considering this is coming from SNK themselves, notable for the King of Fighters series. Instead matches are played 1 on 1. You have a special gauge which allows for super specials and also for cancels. And also an exceed special move which can be performed when health is cut down to 50% or less. It's pretty standard and does not do anything really to push the crossover series forward. Instead it takes several steps back. This is one of the reasons this particular game is often looked at as bad. It's not really a bad game. It's actually decent as far as fight games go. But it definitely feels like a letdown in comparison to its predecessors all the same.

What's really neat about this entry though is the roster. It's not a big roster mind you. It comes in at over 30 characters, with 36 in total unlocked from the start in this version. Several of whom are hidden and selected by using an alternate button on the main roster page. What's cool about the roster though is how wild and different it is than what you'd have expected from an SNK/Capcom crossover title. I mean on one hand you have your normal standouts: Ryu, Kyo, Ken, Mai, Guile, Iori, Vega, Mars People... wait, what? Yeah, you have some absolutely odd characters thrown in the mix in this entry that you did not really see in the likes of in the previous crossovers. Mars People, Red Arremer, Mega Man Zero, Princess Athena (not to be confused with KOF mainstay Athena Asamiya) and others. Violent Ken was also a standout oddity. Kind of like Ken's version of Evil Ryu. Violent Ken only ever appeared in this game and would never be in a capcom fighter until roughly 14 years later with the final Street Fighter II game, Ultra Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for the Nintendo Switch, which added Violent Ken to the roster. All in all, SVC Chaos has a pretty funky roster that might intrigue some of the older fans of both companies, but for most people it won't really make a difference.

Code Mystics being the developer who handled the port is nice. I mean they're no Digital Eclipse, but they seem to handle fighting games decently enough. You have your online with lobbies, but sadly it looks like these are more for fun, as there is no ranked matches for the more serious players. The game comes with rollback which is a nice bonus and expected these days. Offline play has a single player arcade mode, 1 on 1 , and a practice mode. Speaking of practioce, there is an option for visible hitboxes. But extras are minimal. You get over 80 pieces of artwork scans, and not much else. There's no real deep dive museum to see in this which would have been a welcome change from some of their other ports. You're essentially buying this title for the game, and not the extras you might find in other retro ports. With that said, it might be wise to wait for a sale on this one.


Yeah, that thing that has some people going a little bonkers right now. The censoring. Well guess what. There is no censoring in the game. Like literally none. Unless you maybe want to turn off the blood that is. Which might have even been an option in the original version. I don't remember. But none of the characters or backgrounds or anything have been censored.

"Oh but wait, there's a disclaimer!" Yes, there is indeed a disclaimer at the beginning of the game that is shown as a splash screen that you only see when you boot up the game. And that's it. Yes the disclaimer warns about some of the stuff in the game saying it is a product of its time. But it also states nothing was altered in that respect, and they are correct about that. But why have a disclaimer? I see no issue with this, and you should not either. Disclaimers have been present in movies and TV shows for decades now, and even in some video games long before some people started treating it as something political.

That said, enjoy the game for what it is, and if you play it and don't enjoy it, I hope it's not for what you think was cut. Because nothing was.

As for my overall assessment of the game, I'm giving it a soft recommendation. It's one you might want to wait for to hit around the 50% off mark, or maybe from a future bundle. While it might be the black sheep of the CAPCOM/SNK crossover universe, it's not a completely bad game. And for those who are seriously wanting future ports of CAPCOM vs. SNK 1 and 2, showing interest in this might also show that you have interest in those. Vote with your wallet they say.

I'd also recommend checking out SNK vs. CAPCOM: THE MATCH OF THE MILLENNIUM which is also on Steam.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is a collection of Street Fighter games ranging from Street Fighter to Street Fighter III and the Street Fighter Alpha series in their arcade forms. For Street Fighter II and III you have several different versions of each game to choose from. It's a pretty comprehensive list of games all things said and done. You also get some extras in the form of a museum of soundtracks, documentation and artwork from across the included games. There's online multiplayer for 4 of the games which include Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Street Fighter Alpha 3.

It's a good collection, but not without some issues and bad decisions from Capcom. Capcom dropped the ball early on by accidentally releasing an international version of the game to everyone which included both the NA and Japanese versions of all of the games, and then learning of their mistake and within days removing this version from everyone's library except in certain regions. Basically, NA users got screwed on this. The international version is a much better version of the collection, so removing it felt like a slap across the face. On top of this, people wanting the original versions might be a bit disappointed as Capcom has used edited versions of some of the games that include censoring. And some issues with difficulty in games like Super Street Fighter II Turbo where the game is insanely difficult against AI no matter what difficulty you have it set at. And lastly only including online multi for a few of the games and not all of them is an odd decision to say the least.

Cons aside, this is still a good collection for Street Fighter fans. I'm just still very salty about the issue with the international version.

Starfield is Bethesda's first attempt at an open world space epic. And it is completely stacked with things to do. So much that I actually had a really long fleshed out review set up for this title, but hitting the character limit after several rewrites I decided to simplify the review with some basic pros and cons to make it an easier read.

Pros
- It's a Bethesda game. So it has that Elder Scrolls and Fallout DNA baked right in.
- Since it's a Bethesda game, it's ambitious. It's huge. There's tons to see. And since this is a space epic, it's literally the biggest Bethesda game ever in terms of what you can explore.
- Many different ways to approach the game. Main questline, side quests, free exploration. It's all there. Just, well, bigger.
- Many different ways to role-play your character. While you do have some suggestions at the beginning of the game when creating your character that end up giving you some bonus stats based on what you pick, you ultimately can play the game any way you want in terms of how your character behaves. You can be the hero, or the anti-hero. You can be a law abiding citizen, a ruthless outlaw, a space pirate, a smuggler, and more. It's really up to you how you want to play.
- It's a space game! And you get to fly in outer space. It's no Elite Dangerous, but there's still a bit to do when aboard your starship. Exploring the galaxy for starters. But also getting into various interactions with other ships and even space stations. And yes, you can board them. In the case of forced entry it will require disabling their engines and shields. And this requires some dogfight action!
- Reworked overencumbered system that instead of forcing you to walk slowly will rather penalize you with faster loss of oxygen, which can be recovered. It's a bit of management here, but far better than walking like a sloth the entire time. Luckily you can not die if you deplete your oxygen too fast, but instead it just drains your health down to a small fraction. This basically means as long as you are in an area with little to no hostiles, you can go nuts on looting items and still move around quickly.
- Ships can be upgraded, fully customized, and for those not willing to put in the creative work you can even outright purchase or even steal new ships.
- Weapons can also be customized in many different ways.
- Speaking of weapons, there's a ton of different variations. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, automatics, laser guns, guns that shoot electricity, melee weapons, mines, grenades, and a lot more. Each class of weapon is loaded with different types also.
- An overwhelming amount of quests in the game! Without the main quest you can still get lost in the insane amount of quests from various factions (which you can also join) to various NPCs with missions, to bounty boards, and more. There's a ton to keep you busy.
- You can build bases, buy houses, and more in the game, and even hire people to run tasks at your own outposts to help out.
- Speaking of people you can hire, you do get your own crew throughout the game which you can partner up with on missions and more. Some of them you can even romance and get married to.
- Visually it's a gorgeous game. Object details are top notch. Everything from weapons to even the most random objects found in the game have a high attention to detail. Makes you really appreciate the model viewer in your inventory all the more. Aside from the objects, the environments look really nice. Indoors look the best in terms of detail, but also when standing outside you can really appreciate the vast horizons and the vistas all around. Looks really good especially from up high in some areas as the game has a really good draw distance.
- Most NPC models look clean and well detailed, with your own model looking the cleanest. Important character models also look really sharp. Random NPC models however... Well, you can read about that in the cons.
- Audio is top notch. Great orchestrated soundtrack that ranges from epic to soothing. And all dialogue is voiced with some top notch voice acting. No complaints here.
- It's just overall really really fun!


Cons
- It's a Bethesda game. So it has that Elder Scrolls and Fallout DNA baked right in. In this case, that means there's the usual release bugs. It's not as noticeable this time around though. In fact, this is one of the cleanest Bethesda launches I have seen in, well, idk if there has ever been one this clean at release. Regardless though, you will find some bugs and glitches here and there. Nothing I have seen that is game breaking luckily. Some that people might even find a little hilarious. In my case just the occasional NPC going haywire with physics or the way they move. But unlike other Bethesda games, it will take a while between instances of this as the game seems a lot more polished from the get go. Someone at QA must have gotten the memo before release this time I guess. So while I do have this listed as a con, maybe I should have actually listed it as a pro?
- Compared to Skyrim and the Fallout games, this game is a lot tamer on violence. There is no gore like in those games, and instead just has blood. Anyone expecting a symphony of gibs when you hit an enemy with a well placed shotgun blast or explosive might be a bit disappointed here.
- No land vehicles. And you can not fly your spaceship across the surface of planets either. So on a planet, everything is pretty much either on foot or via fast travel.
- NPCs have bad AI in how they react to weapons being drawn, and even fired around them. This includes authoritative AI. Firing a gun right next to someone does not send them in a frenzy. This includes firing from your spaceship. However, hit 1 person and you become public enemy number 1.
- Huge FPS drops in major cities. Drops down to 50s-60s on my 4070ti even at low settings. Mileage is going to vary in this, but the FPS drop in those areas seems to be happening to everyone I have talked to who has also played this. Luckily though the game still runs smoothly even in those areas. While the FPS is indeed lower it's not erratic enough to where it has caused anything such as major stuttering issues. In other words, it looks fine.
- Planets will tend to look and feel a little samey after a while.
- Random NPC models look good for the most part, but their eyes! Oh my. The eyes! Yes, it's kind of creepy on some of them to say the least.
- No DLSS since Bethesda partnered with AMD for this release. I'm hoping this is either a temporary partnership, or that at least FSR3 is added later in as FSR2 in my experience does not do much in this game. Though this may not be the case for everyone and FSR2 may work wonders for others. *shrugs*

To sum things up, this is a Bethesda game. Anyone looking for the next Elite Dangerous or No Man's Sky might want to stick with those games first. But for fans of games like Fallout and Skyrim, who also have an appreciation for space games, this will be right up your alley.

Ultrawide owners rejoice! From Software has finally come around. Also 120fps is sooo nice.

edit: Also supports ratios beyond 21:9. After someone confirmed it supports 32:9, which is great, I got curious and set up stereo on both my ultrawides, and ended up with this!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3025409018

Super duper ultrawide! Triple monitor setups also confirmed to work. Go nuts!

Etrian Odyssey is here! Another great classic Atlus RPG.

I had played this when it originally came out on the DS. At this time, Atlus was also pumping out gems for the handheld left and right. Etrian Odyssey was probably one of the most cherished among handheld RPG fans at the time. It made great use of the DS touch screen, and also offered one hell of a challenge in its combat. In fact, it might have been a bit too much of a challenge for some people. Luckily Atlus decided to open up the gameplay a bit on this version by adding in 2 extra difficulty modes, where the easiest is called Picnic, and the hardest difficulty is essentially the difficulty that was in the original version of this game. So if you had trouble the first time around, this might be the ideal time to grab this and give it another go.

For newcomers, Etrian Odyssey is a first person grid based dungeon crawl RPG where you build a party of different characters from different classes and explore various locations, and of course get into battles. The battle system is your traditional turn based combat system, so its not too difficult to grasp.

One of the really cool features of Etrian Odyssey is its map system. In a lot of RPGs you uncover the maps by just exploring, and in some they are outright given to you. In Etrian Odyssey you do the entire map yourself. You lay down the paths you've explored, make walls, and more such as placing markers for various areas of importance you might need to come back to, and other objects of interest. It makes things a lot easier when navigating and puts you in control. The easy part is not really just the fact that you have a map, but how you control making the map. You can do it simple or get wildly creative with how you place the markers. It really goes back to the old days where you literally had a pen and pad laid out to make your own maps. And don't worry about the transition from touch screen to not having one. Having tried out the first area of the game as of writing this up, the controls seem excellent and making the map is a breeze. Also if this sounds like a bit much, they do have map building assistance in the options with the automap feature.

Anyway, the game is playing fine without any issues so far, and it looks like a great update too. The environments look fantastic, portraits, enemies and text look super clean too.

Hope to see Atlus bring us some more of their interesting RPGs in the future. Hows about some Dark Spire next time?!

Oh, the storied history of cross platform titles. You know these games. Those games that appear on multiple platforms. There was a time when big name companies just did not care about the PC versions of these cross platform titles. I mean some companies did. But these were companies that primarily developed games with PC in mind. But for several of the biggest companies, PC gaming was just an afterthought. Console first, with PC gaming getting the scraps. You got games that came out much later than the console counterparts being rushed, and sometimes with even missing content. Never really up to their true potential.

Then the renaissance came. This was a few years back. Why? PC gaming exploded. Developers actually started to care now. Games that were cross platform were actually starting to end up delivering that greatness they failed to achieve before. Sure, there were still some here and there that had issues. But for the most part, developers started to give a ****. Then, not so much. Developers stopped caring as much. Developers basically became lazy. This is more recent. And Jedi Survivor is the latest example in this trend of laziness. And this is a big shame. We're talking Respawn Entertainment here. The guys who pretty much made it okay to like EA again. they gave us Titanfall 2. They also gave us one of the best Star Wars games in ages with Jedi Fallen Order. And Apex wasn't too bad either. Hell, it's still going strong today. So what happened? I honestly have no idea. But it's safe to say 1 thing... EA and Respawn both crapped the bed with this one.

It's really a shame too. Because underneath all of the issues, Jedi Survivor is not a bad game. But the issues outweigh anything positive I can say about this title.

For a few people they will experience issues including crashing, the game refusing the load, or other issues that can make the game unplayable. However for most people the issues don't necessarily lie in the game being unplayable, but rather the game being rough to play. And this can lead to the game not being enjoyable. I'm talking about the #1 issue being brought up being the framerates. And it's no joke. When you start the game up and make it past the initial splash screens which for some may seem oddly choppy, and then past the shader compiling which seems to be hitting the game with every launch, you'll finally make it into the main menu, and notice a pretty decent framerate. Then you'll start the game and be taken into a lengthy introduction where again the framerate might seem pretty decent. And then the shackles are taken off and you get full control of Cal Kestis to start his journey in the first area of the game, which is Coruscant, and that is when the problems start for most people. That decent framerate at that point just goes down. No matter what you choose. Be it 4k, or the lowest allowable resolution. Be it max settings, or the lowest. It just does not help the issue. This is not an issue of hardware. It is an issue of poor optimization. The GPU not being utilized properly by the developers when making the game. It's a trend that has been happening with a lot of developers who seem to be making games with consoles in mind first, and forgetting they are also supposed to be developing the game to run on PCs as well. It's pure laziness.

Does this mean the game is unplayable? Well, for the latter issue that is impacting more people with the game, I'd say no. The game is still 100% playable in that regard. Does that mean this is acceptable? Hell no. First impressions matter, and EA and Respawn both dropped the ball on this one. Yes, the lower framerates do not make the game unplayable. Yes, the game can still be enjoyed by some even. But at the same time, I really regret spending $70 on this title. It's not a $70 title in its current state. It's far less than that actually. I can not in good faith actually recommend this title as it is right now. I would not call this a polished turd, but more like a diamond in the rough. That is to say, there is actually a good game underneath but it's going to take a hell of a lot of cleaning and polish before this is a true gem.

There's potential here, but until EA and Respawn do something.... just no. Avoid this one for now.

Rusty Lake Hotel is a point & click puzzle adventure game that takes place in the Rusty Lake universe. A group of 5 guests have been invited to the hotel to stay and enjoy various meals made from various meats and other ingredients. Harvey, the main character, has been tasked with getting ingredients for these meals that are "to die for" if you catch my drift. And each night he will do just that.

So the basic flow of the game is start the day, feed the guests, then at night visit one of the guests rooms and kill them. You can not leave the room until they are dead. This makes the game play out sort of like an escape room puzzle title. Though in other escape room games you usually want to get out to save your own skin, hence "escape". But here you just won't leave until the job you are tasked with is finished, which is you murdering the guests.

The tone of the game is a mix of David Lynch inspired macabre and humor. And honestly it works well to keep you engaged throughout this puzzle title.

Others have mentioned the puzzles to be somewhat difficult at times, but I honestly never found that to be a problem. This is mainly since the puzzle that use hints have the hints themselves located in the rooms you are in at the time, And the solutions are quite simple if you have played other point & click adventure titles, though some may seem a little bizarre. But since the tone of the game is already bizarre, they don't feel out of place in the slightest. The only thing you need to focus on are some items you may want to grab to get certain achievements, or get the best possible meal. These are optional items and can be skipped, usually by accident, so pay close attention and experiment with your surroundings!

Overall the game is not too long, and you could easily go through it in an hour or 2 without a guide. 100%'ing it for all achievements will probably still leave you right around the 2 hour mark too if you miss anything and need to replay a section.

This is the first Rusty Lake game I have completed, and if the others are anything like this I am looking forward to trying them out.

Fun tangram meets tetris style puzzle game with a Resident Evil 4 inventory system inspired twist.

Like a tangram game, the objective is to take pieces and fit them into an area with no overlapping pieces, and no pieces left over. Tangram usually uses various geometrical shapes to do this, but a few have used pieces similar to polyominos that look like they could pass as terominos. Save Room goes for the latter. This is mainly due to its heavy inspiration from Resident Evil 4's own inventory system. While Resident Evil 4 is not the only game to do this (I've seen this type of inventory system in plenty of other games), Save Room is definitely pulling from the RE4 style. Its pieces are all comprised of various weapons, ammunition, healing items and more. You even have a few other things from the RE games like the ability to combine items, and also a health system.

The latter 2 features are what really makes this a unique twist on the tanrgram game. In your typical tangram game, you are given just the right amount of pieces to fill the space with nothing left over. However in Save Room, you will sometimes be given too many items, and you can not complete the level unless nothing is left over. So because of the this you have to think about combining items, managing hurt/heal items and also loading weapons with ammo. For example you can take 3 different colored herbs which take up 2 blocks each, and combine them all to make one object that also only takes up 2 spaces., There are some other requirements for level completion, such as all weapons needing to utilize ammo, and also having full health.

Anyway, it's a fun game, and also easy to get 100% achievements for those who like that sort of thing. My only real complaint is that the game is a bit on the short side, with only 40 levels of play. I would love to see new levels added, or even a level creator added with workshop support.

In any case, this is a fun little game that should not take you more than an hour or 2 to 100%. Also definitely good training for RE4 fans on the inventory system!

Okay, so we have a game that was originally released as a cross generation title for both the Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 9 years ago using an older engine predating the dragon engine. Instead of remaking Ishin in the dragon engine, the developers opted to do this one in the Unreal Engine due to issues with lighting in the dragon engine that worked great in the modern looking cityscapes of the Yakuza games, but caused problems with Ishin due to its wildly different aesthetics. So there's the reason why you won't be experiencing Ishin in all the glory seen in the later Ryu ga Gotoku titles.

In any case, the updated visuals do look impressive compared to the original versions of Ishin. Character models look far more impressive. Lighting and shadows look immaculate. Textures have been bumped up immensely.

However there are still some glaring issues with this update that hopefully will be addressed before long. 1 of them for myself and others is absolutely immersion breaking and has left me not wanting to play the game further until it is fixed.

For the drawbacks that can be overlooked for the time being it boils down to a few things:

- Cutscenes are locked to 30fps. This one is odd. The game is essentially being re-engineered on a new engine. They used a mix of old and new data to render the cutscenes, so it was not just a straight dump. So this one is a head scratcher as to why they opted to keep the cutscenes locked as such. It's noticeable, but luckily does not take you out of the game entirely.

- It appears the gameplay outside of cutscenes is capped at 60fps. Not as bad as the 30fps cap for cutscenes, but still it would have been nice to have the actual gameplay uncapped.

- Ultrawide kind of supported? You see typically when a dev doesnt care to add ultrawide in this day and age, you get these nice little black pillarboxes on the left and right of the screen. Just empty space. But in this case, RGG Studio actually added artwork for the borders. It seems like a nice gesture, but it feels more like a slap in the face. Like they only half tried. But wait, it gets worse...

- Ultrawide actually broken! Now this is the part that made me decide to stop playing and give this a thumbs down until it is fixed. For people with ultrawide monitors take notice: If you play with an ultrawide monitor, there will be instances in the game where text is actually cut off on the side making some things unreadable. This involves certain segments in cutscenes and also some mini games. This not only breaks immersion, but can make some instances nearly unplayable.

I really hope that RGG Studio addresses these issues, especially the latters ones before long. As a big fan of the Ryu ga Gotoku titles, this one was a bit of a disappointment.

Notice: I will edit and change my review once the latter issue with text in ultrawide is at least fixed since that one is not a slight issue, but rather a massive one.

Pros
- Tons to do
- Great variety in combat
- Visually impressive
- Overall great audio and sound mixing

Cons
- Hogsmeade performance
- No morality system
- Lack of real interaction with random NPCs
- Too many repeated lines by your character

To see the full work in progress review, check here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/4yancyst/discussions/0/3773490215224836318/