Hellbound Demo - yet another "90s FPS"

Hellbound is an upcoming FPS inspired by the classics like Doom, Quake, Blood and others. There's been quite a lot of games inspired by the 90s shooters lately: Dusk, Ion Fury, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin to name a few. They all have one thing in common: retro aesthetics. Hellbound on the other hand embraces modern graphics. Survival mode where you try to stay alive while enemies attack you in waves was out for some time but the campaign demo was just released. I decided to give it a try.

Beat the demo and I liked it. Then I beat it a couple of times more cause it's short and fun. There's no depth to it nor it has any advanced movement. During fights you just gotta keep running around so make sure to check "always run" in the options. It resembles Serious Sam combat in that way but there aren't as many enemies and the areas aren't as open. At least not at this point because Survival mode showed they can spawn tons of them. The weapon feel could be improved but I like the shotgun - it packs some serious power. The lack of a bossfight at the end of the demo was pretty disappointing. The game runs well enough on medium settings with some occasional stuttering on my laptop with GTX 1050TI but I'm sure they'll optimize it more before the release. I liked it enough to want to buy it when it comes out.

 

I found the secret eventually

Death Stranding: First Impressions

I'm about 6 hours into the game. It looks amazing on my 55" 4K screen, definitely the best looking PS4 game I've played. The cut scenes are well directed and I never felt like skipping them. Maybe because they're more interesting than the gameplay which mostly consists of walking around. Hiking through natural environments should be relaxing but when you carry tons of cargo and you need to shift the weight constantly, it becomes annoying and stressful instead. The balance mechanic is certainly unique and it adds some extra tension during chase sequences. The soundtrack is nice and fits the mood. I'm only at the beginning and my bullshit meter is already off the charts but I need to understand the story better before I start calling things out.

Basically I like the presentation and dislike the gameplay (and something tells me it won't get much better) so whether I'd like the game or not is gonna come down to the story, which isn't looking great so far.

DRINK THE MONSTER ENERGY!
Ugh the Monster Energy...that's the most blatant product placement I've ever seen, even integrated in the gameplay itself. Death Stranding was produced by Sony and Kojima thinks of himself as an artist so I don't understand why would he compromise his game like that. There's also an advert for Norman Reedus's AMC show Ride but that one didn't bother me because it feels more like an Easter egg rather than an ad.

Next to play: Death Stranding

Game: Death Stranding
Release date: 2019
Platform: PS4

Conditions: Finish the story on normal difficulty

Just picked up Death Stranding. Avoided all reviews, gameplay videos and discussions. I wanna go into it as blind as possible and experience this "new genre" for myself. I'm ready for a huge letdown :D