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Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Completed Leon B scenario.
Playing Leon B scenario I can see that the two pistols with different ammo exists here as well. This scenario feels like the toughest yet, I haven’t been running out of ammo or being limited by inventory as much in my previous two runs.

The biggest issue are the lickers. Even upgraded Magnum can’t get them in a single shot, so dealing with two at a time is a problem.
The only improvement is that I learned to fry the plant zombies in the Lab to a crisp, so I don’t waste ammo on them later. Still, I had maybe a clip for Magnum left by the time I reached the train, and no shotgun ammo at all.

Unlike the original, there are less differences in cutsenes. The only major difference is who stabs the final form of Birkin in the eye. With Leon it is even more hillarious, as he blows half the train with a rocket launcher before doing so.

With that, I don’t see a point in playing Claire A, I think I’ve seen enough of that.

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PC Gaming

Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Completed Claire B scenario.
I’m ashamed that it took me so long to understand that those zombies are Dead Space necromorphs, basically. It’s often more efficient to cut their limbs off that to go for a headshot.

I also understood the logic with the .45 and 9mm ammo: it’s the same for grenades. You can only find flame rounds, and you can only craft acid rounds.

In the original, Sherryl pendant contained the vaccine. In the remake, it’s a key to open the vaccine locker.
As I mentioned in the original, Mr X was only chasing Leon, and Birkin was only chasing Claire. In the remake, they actually added a scene where Birkin tears Mr X when he tried to kill Sherryl.

Before the penultimate battle with Birkin Claire is given a minigun. This isn’t explained (in the original minigun was a bonus weapon for New Game+), and Claire doesn’t even seem to be surprised about it.

Finally battle on the train is made much more dramatic, thanks to 20 years of technological advancement and dynamic camera. But it’s still funny (common tropes, I guess) that Claire fires dozen Magnum rounds into monster’s eye, then poket it with a sharp stick, and that’s when the eye explodes.

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Resident Evil 2 (2019)

The way the story was structured, I thought they would leave out the B scenario, but no, it’s there. Time for Claire B scenario then.
Confusingly, Claire has two pistols, both of them revolvers, though. One of them has ammo laying around, but it can’t be crafted, while for the second, it’s the other way around.
Lickers were giving me a lot of trouble with Leon, as unless you have a Magnum, they can’t be killed quickly enough. With Claire’s grenade launcher, it just takes a single grenade.

Betrayavous police chief Irons is introduced in a completely different manner. Instead of killing his daughter so she doesn’t turn into a zombie, he kidnaps Sherryl, and that’s how she loses her pendant.

We get to play as Sherryl in the orphanage. This is a classic stealth episode.
Actually, Claire has 3 pistols! 3rd is an automatic one, with an extended magazine. An the obsolete second revolver doubles as Magnum, which doesn’t make any sense, but is a cool idea.

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Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Completed Leon’s scenario.

Once you get the upgraded Magnum, it becomes far easier, as before that it’s very hard to tell how many bullets a zombie will take. With Magnum, it’s just one.
There are plant zombies, making the same sounds as mushroom zombies from Last of Us. You need to shoot their weak spots, just like in Resident Evil 4, and you need to burn them down or they will come back again, just like in Resident Evil 0.

I enjoyed both final stage of Birkin and Mr X. I must say, probably one of the most enjoyable bossed in Resident Evil history. The only problem I have with them, same as with zombies, actually, is that it’s not clear if they are damaged based or just weak spots based. Think it’s the latter, and you can beat them even with a regular pistol, as long as you aim.

The most major part they changed is that in the original, Leon throws the sample after Ada’s “death”. In the remake, Leon drops it trying to save her from the fall.

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Resident Evil 2 (2019)

I like the approach to Leon’s pistol. In the original, you could find an upgrade kit for it, with a stock that enabled burst fire. Here, you find an extended clip, then later the stock as well.
I made it harder on myself as I took the wrong turn to meet Claire and missed the shotgun key. So by the time I finally got back, I was running out of ammo and healing items.
They have a very interesting solution of how Leon is able to carry his arsenal. Since he has only 3 guns, they are rendered all the time: shotgun on the back, one of the pistols in the holster, and another at hand. The only thing the game doesn’t bother to render is the oversized stock, because it would probably clip through everything. Same goes for the cutscenes.
When I replayed the original, although it was a long time ago, again, it surprised me that Leon actually never met Tyrant. Here, you get to face both Birkin and Mr X. I guess they didn’t want to waste all the stalking tech. Fighting Mr X doesn’t seem to bring any benefits, just waste of ammo.
The alligator in the sewers is pretty standard by modern standards. But it still made me smile.
After Leon saves Ada he falls uncouncious, and we get to play her chasing the Evil Female a bit. She plays like Batman Arkham, able to see cables through walls. The episode is not too annoying, but I’m still glad it’s over.

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Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Ironically, I planned to play Resident Evil 2 Remake after I finished Resident Evil 2 on Dreamcast. Then… I got distracted.
First amazing fact that I have to admit: real time graphics from 2019 look better than CGI from 1999.

Calling it a remake though is probably incorrect. It is it’s own game, that shares some of the key characters, but changes everything else. From how Leon and Claire meet at the gas station, to Leon exploring the part of the police station that was boarded in the original. This also includes RE4 style controls: over the shoulder camera, aiming, fast reload, no need for typewriter tape (unless you enable it) and autosaves.

The only other bit they kept from the original is a very small discrete inventory, that can hold only 8 items, no matter how small (a single key) or big (bunch of planks) they are. But there are now multiple inventory expansions available instead of just a single one.

Rules for zombies have also changed. In the classic games, I would always trade health for ammo: I would prefer a zombie to bite me, if I knew I’d pass it only once, instead of wasting half a clip on it. But now they are much quicker to grab you, and you go down in a couple of bites. Knives are now Last of Us shivs: you can use them up to 3 times to escape a grab, but then you need to find a new one.
Another interesting change: Lickers, the eyeless monstrocities, are actually blind now. They were always eyeless, but other than that, it didn’t affect gameplay of the original.

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Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 12, 2025
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Completed all 5 original campaigns of Age of Empires 2.
Expected a lot of trouble from mission with Germans in Poland, since you don’t have any villagers, and fully depend on your allies to send cash. But no, it was rather easy.

One major problem I have with how the game plays is that’s walls are important, but it’s very hard to tell if they are blocking the enemy or not. Many times cavalry would squeeze between a wall I built and a gap which I couldn’t see due to isometric perspective.

After completing the game, I think that the Mongol missions are the most difficult. German might be large scale, but they are the Protoss of Age of Empires 2, with the best buildings, best infantry and some of the best cavalry as well.

It’s interesting how each campaign tells a different story. The German is the best in this sense, with Henry the Lion betraying you not once but twice over 6 missions, then with the final reveal that he’s also the narrator.

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PC Gaming

Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred

In Diablo 2, 3 and Immortal I always like to play as Paladin/Crusader the most. So I was obviously disappointed, but not surprised that this class was missing from Diablo 4.
This is finally will be amended:

Also, I like how this trailer is full of toxic masculinity and basically about a black guy beating an asian guy, while the previous trailer was all about GenZ asian girl struggling with her internal struggles:

Jokes aside, someone did their homework, with the hammer flying in circles, just like Diablo 2.

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Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 11, 2025
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What I like about Gengis Khan campaign is that again, you are tasked to recover a relic, but in fact there are two: one is held by a hostile tribe, and another is hidden away.
Other than that, it’s pretty similar to Saracens campaign, except instead of building camel riders and camel throwers you build horse archers and more horse archers to make a porcupine impression out of anyone who disagrees with you.
The first mission that really annoyed me is the Great Chinese Wall one. Not because Chinese are actually a great counter to the mongols with their rocket carts, arbalests and lance cavalry. But because you’re never told that one of the 4 AI opponents is building a Wonder, that triggers a timer until mission fails (go figure the logic behind it). And that opponent is on an well protected island, so you really need to know what you’re doing.
I ended up using the French strategy to beat this mission. Instead of building a base behind the wall as intended, I transported all my peasants to the island, then fast-teched into Castle Age and built a castle: islanders don’t build rams or trebuchets. Once Wonder was not an option anymore, I moved back to the mainland. Still, it probably took me a good hour to beat the other 3 factions into submissions and hunt all their villagers. Who. Would. Not. Relent.
After this mission beating Russia and Persia is easy, despite the supposed need to control two camps at once. And I expected that the final mission for holding the bridge will be the toughest, because in previous one you are tasked with building three castles, which is a lot, and on my first try Bohemians actually destroyed all of them. But this mission is the easiest, Hungary barely attacks, and then you are given a ton of legendary units.

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Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 8, 2025
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Second campaign I play is for Barbarossa (Teutons).

It plays exactly as you’d expect: toughest buildings in the game and toughest infantry, so you just overpower your opponent as long as you have the Castle to build your Teutonic knights.

It felt too similar to France campaign, though, so I decided to try Saladin instead. The story is a strange propaganda how Saracens are so much better than Norman crusaders, but anyway.

For some reason, camel riders are efficient against cavalry. And the special unit is a camel rider tha throws swords? But it’s a simple game plan: you build a lot of fast camel cavalry and destroy your opponent that programmed to use cavalry as well.

The only interesting bit is that in the last mission Richard Lionheart deploys unique trebuchets against you, called Bad Neighbour.

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PC Gaming

Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 5, 2025
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As a kid, I played a lot of Age of Empires, but for some reason despite marvelling its graphics, I never played Age of Empires 2 enough to understand its mechanics.
Here I am, with the remaster, humiliated by its new tutorial.
The original tutorial for Celts and Joan of Arc campaign, which I remember, are bearable. The amout of campaigns in Definitive Edition is ridiculous: more than 25?! I plan to do only the original campaigns, called here Age of Kings, and even in that I’m not sure.
What I like about the French campaign is that you’re given an objective to destroy 3 castles, but there are 4 castles, actually. So you can not only pick the order, but also which of them to ignore. What I don’t like is that the castle objective is a bit repetetive, as you aren’t allowed to build trebuchets, your only way is to mass rams.
I also didn’t understand that scorpions weren’t a siege weapon. They’re more of a support weapon.
Speaking of siege weapons, once you get trebuchets, it’s over for AI. The only response to them is to build your own trebuchets, or to deploy bombard ships, which AI micromanages with suprising efficiency.
Completed France’s campaign, which, I must say, was chaotic, as you’re usually pitted against 2-3 enemies, and due to the number of alerts you get, you can sometimes miss that a band of rainders is killing your peasants.

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PC Gaming

Crimson Skies

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 27, 2025

Completed Crimson Skies.

I stopped enjoying the game by Hollywood. First you need to beat a ton of though enemies and pick up a car with time limit. Then you have a mission where you need to fly into a tiny hangar and blow up its doors, while there’s still a chance you will be killed by debris. Then you have a race through the same hangar.

Planes in this game have ridiculous number of guns. In MechWarrior, having many hardpoints made sense, since you could combine weapons into firing groups. But without those, extra guns is just extra ammo, which means there’s no point into putting anything but the highest caliber. Same goes for the turrets, as those have infinite ammo, it seems. Speaking of ammo, explosive ammo is the best ammo type, with no downsides, which makes all the other types of ammo pointless.
Downing a zeppelin with torpedoes sounds cool, until you try. First, the torpedoes fly slower than your plane, you can literally overtake them. And they are armed only after 300m , meaning you can’t use them too close. The real problem? There’s no distance meter in the game, as far as I can tell. So I had to take the heaviest bomber, just to make sure I have spares.

I was sure that the mission in New York where you need to destroy a warehouse is bugged. You need to destroy 6 beams, which are tiny, and I’m not sure if they were made to withstand multiple rockets, or if rockets splash damage isn’t big enough.
The only way I managed to beat the warehouse mission is to create a plane specifically for it, with maximum armor possible, because all enemies focus on you, and multiple guns, because I was literally running out of ammo by the end.

The game has a bug where it sometimes would load key structures at wrong coordinates. The problem with that I discovered that the New York Police Station is basically not in Manhattan, but beyond map limits, half way through a mission where I had to pick up yet another tiny person.
It’s ironic that the final mission is one of the easier in the game, as there are plenty of allies and not that many enemies, and the final boss is just a regular plane, so it’s basically a joke.

What didn’t work out for me in the original game, compared to High Road to Revenge, is how unpredictable some of the mechanics are. I already mentioned that during the firsrt half of the game, most of my deaths were due to my wingman ramming into me. But even during firefights, the hit detection seemed pretty random. Sometimes enemies would destroy me within seconds, sometimes I would finish the same fight unscated. Only to bump into invisible geometry. It’s incredible how many times a game with such an unforgiving collision detection would either make you fly through very narrow spaces, often at 90 degrees, or give you a single try to pick up a tiny moving object.

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Crimson Skies

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date November 26, 2025

From the 3rd mission, you already get a Balmoral bomber with two turrets, front and back. And plenty of missiles. Also interesting that you have not just one, but 5 wingmen, although only one is configurable. Unfortunately, it also means more planes to ram you as you about to complete the mission.
Using just the keyboard is suprisingly simpler than I expected. One thing the game loves you to do, though, is pick someone up from a plane/zeppelin/train. Almost every second mission makes you do that. And that requires matching speed. This is pretty annoying to pull.
What’s strange is that you can’t refit your plane. If you want another gun arrangment or armor distribution, you have to sell one plane and buy a new one.

Storywise, first few missions are about hunting after Drake’s treasure. Then we rescue our scientist friend from russians, and his daughter from Americans, alongside an experimental plane.

Maybe I don’t understand some mechanic, but the first Hollywood mission is brutal. You have to hit tiny police cars, then fight off two waves of superior enemies, then pick up a tiny car risking hitting the ground. Not fun.

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PC Gaming

Crimson Skies

Original Crimson Skies for PC is a very different beast from its Xbox sequel. The tone is immediately set as a pirate treasure hunt. There are no cutscenes, instead we have radiodrama-like briefings. And the biggest difference is the plane setup. Like in Mechwarrior games, you have weight limit, and you can chose the type of your engine, distribute armour across 4 regions, and most importantly, choose weapon for each of the 6 hardpoints. And for each weapon, you can even pick multiple ammo types.

Bullets have trajectory, indicated by tracers, and aren’t infinite. Missiles are even more finite. I complained that missile stock in High Road to Revenge was much lower than in Ace Combat games, although it could be refilled during mission with pickups. Here, you have 4 missiles, and that’s it. You can also see them on the aircraft belly, which is really cool.
The enemies go down quickly, though, and are few in numbers, so I’m yet to feel need for ammo.
Collisions are quite deadly. I died a few times at the very first seconds of the mission simply because my wingman flew out of the airship right after me, and rammed my plane. And 2nd mission requires you to follow a bomber, which I rammed by mistake as well, downing it and failing the mission.

The game uses Mechwarrior 3 engine, which is obvious to anyone by it’s quite unique picture-in-picture mode, that’s used to track enemy aircraft. That’s pretty neat, as you don’t only get to see their relative direction, but also which way they’re facing. That’s the only good thing I can say about those visuals, though. The lighting is flat, and so are the textures. There’s 3 years difference between Crimson Skies and High Road to Revenge, but the technological gap is vast.

I didn’t manage to make my Xbox One controller work with Crimson Skies despite multiple guides. And I had to use RivaTuner in order to limit FPS, otherwise the game runs at 4x speed with 240FPS.

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Blood West

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 22, 2025

Completed Blood West.
Third episode bumps the stakes again. Enemies are so “meaty” I have to buy the unique revolving buffalo rifle, and gunpowder horn that saves 40% of its very expensive ammo. The whole idea of the episode is that you descend into this “radioactive” canyon (at least you don’t need gas mask filters, but you do need to craft a “gas mask” sort of), towards the huge demon skeleton that carved this canyon.
One episode I didn’t enjoy much is raiding the indian village for one of the totem figurines. It’s swarming with invisible enemies called Broken Screams. Since they are invisible, it’s hard to sneak past them, and I ended up almost running of ammo. Had to use the chain revolver that holds 28, so I don’t need to reload so often.
There are nasty enemies called Boo Hags, skinless women that can only be killed with a instakill or fire. One of them is talkative and asks to bring her skin back. She also mentions that the night is endless, which is never explained.
There’s very little explained in general. We climb the mountain, summon totem of souls (which was previously a ram head on a stick), which is a bubble, that turns into a dragon. The boss fight is fine, but least inventive out of the three bosses: it telegraphs where “mortars” will land, and has a “flamethrower” pattern attack. You shoot it with buffalo rifle until it dies, which doesn’t take long.

Despite story being lackluster, I enjoyed this game immensely. One of the best experiences of 2025.

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Blood West

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 19, 2025

I mentioned that if you die 3 times, you get cursed, and to remove a curse you need to complete a miniquest. Some of those are nasty, though, despite not sounding so. “Kill 5 enemies with fire”? But the fire in this game is extremely weak, a Molotov doesn’t kill a basic zombie in the second act, while shotgun fire shells are too strong, and enemies die from the shell, not from “fire”. Easier to use or buy one of the anticurse “purple” potions instead.

Speaking of purple potions, second act introduces cursed items. They usually have strong benefits, like -20% to all shop prices, but to unequip them you need to die or use the purple potion. Since the way I play this game is by switching weapons and trinkets constantly, it makes sense to limit this.

Another new element, which I’ve seen in MMORPGs, but don’t remember in games much, is world boss. A huge monstrocity shows up half way through the act. You can try and attack it, but you’re supposed to sneak away past it, until you complete the quest to weaken it enough.

Speaking of quests, there’s a very vague sidequest where you need to find a cure for the plague, and both Priest and Madam are after it. It is guarded by three gunslinging wraiths, which are extremely dangerous. Unless you find an amulet that makes wraiths ignore you.

There are no “sets” in this game, but a combination of a pistol that grants 5$ for each headshot and a cowboy had that recovers 5HP for each headshot sure feels like one. And every 5 consequitive headshots also remove a curse, which is great, considering how annoying those are.

Second boss is not bad, but I wish the pyres worked differently. It seems you need to light them with Molotovs, and they burn only for a short period, weakening the boss, but Molotovs aren’t stackable, so you need to drag each into the hotkey slot. I ended up shooting it in the head until it died.

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PC Gaming

Blood West

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 15, 2025

By the end of the first chapter you become quite formidable, all thanks for interesting design of skills and items. You get a knife that restores HP on backstab, you get a bow with infinite arrows that uses HP, but you can regenerate HP with wendigo heart. And also crowmen trade bullets favorably: 2-6 bullets for a single headshot.
How do you make a boss in a stealth game? You leave an option to crawl around to weaken it! It’s a tree-boss, that attacks you with roots (the AoE is vicious!), and you either wait for a literal opening or shoot the tendrils to force it to open.

The second episode is set in Lousianna swamps. My problem with enemies in this episode is that they are too tanky, most can survive a headshot, and that’s not mentioning the butchers, that have a helmet on.

The good bit is that the authors remembered volcanic pistols, with a tube instead of a cylinder. Wild West arsenal shouldn’t be limited only to revolvers.

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Blood West

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 13, 2025

Was very excited to find a unique version of the Prodigal Daughter enemy, VIP Daughter, tucked away in a cave. Later discovered that she’s part of a quest which I ruined. And since there’s only a single save in this game: no reward for me.

There’s a really fun quest that predates this one where you need to find and talk to cacti. There’s a seniorita cacti, miner cacti, sheriff cacti, and they are all voiced. You can only talk to them while drunk. I wonder why…

The drunk game is very strong in this game in general. As a reward for this quest you get a bottomless flask. Before that, you got a knife, that has a bonus damage while drunk, but drains your life while sober. With the bottomless flask, though, it’s not a problem anymore. And there’s also a rifle for drunkards, that has bonus damage while being drunk.

Wendigo are like local version of Deathclaws. They are terrifying, but fair: they will chase you, but won’t fit in small caves, where you can snipe them from. The most annoying enemy are the flying skulls. They pass through walls, hard to hit, take multiple shots, and relentless.

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PC Gaming

Blood West

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 12, 2025

It starts like Blood and looks like Hexen 2, but it’s neither. You have a stealth system, with a full fledged visibility and noise meter which I haven’t seen in ages. And an inventory system. There’s also money, with multiple traders, and experience, with skills and multiple upgrades. The loot is fair. If an enemy has shotgut, it will drop shotgun once killed. At this point, I’d like to say it plays like a Deus Ex, but honestly I don’t remember how Deus Ex plays.

You cannot save freely. Monsters respawn, but I couldn’t figure out when. Not when you rest, or die. When you die, you don’t need to pick up your corpse to recover stuff, but you do get a curse every time, lowering your stats. And if you get cursed three times, you need to complete a miniquest to remove the curse: do 5 headshots, stealthly kill 3 enemies, or something like that.

The start is quite brutal, until you get the lever action rifle. It holds more bullets than revolver, and unlike it is actually able to deliver headshots. Also, ammo is plentiful, since it’s the same as the revolver one.

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Deathloop

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date October 9, 2025

Completed Deathloop.
I thought that the sniper rifle shown on the promo art is not in the game. But you get it in a very Hitman 47-like twist, where Eternalists set a package for you, then snipers ambush you from all sides. By that point, though, I had a Metal Gear Solid-like stealth, that is infinite, as long as you don’t move, which is crazy.

So the main plot twist is that Julianna is not your disgrunted lover. She’s your daughter.

At first I was under the impression that I needed to figure out in which order to execute the Visionaries. But turns out there is just one order, and it’s all explained to you, no missing it
Overall, executing the plan is fun, with one exception. Maybe I spent too long, but most visionaries stopped dying from a single headshot. Power creep. So what was supposed to be an elegant kill turned out to be messing firefight.

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