Joanna Nelius's Reviews
Hell is Empty was satisfying in the sense that it delivered something out of the pages of a crime drama, but as far as keeping continuity with itself and with the original game, the episode left much to be desired. These first two episodes leave such a strong emotional resonance that stick around long after they end and, unfortunately, episode three isn't on par.
It could be my own fault for not preparing well enough, or maybe I’m an awful player, but I would not recommend – at all – playing through Automatron at level 15.
Tarahumara mythology is fascinating—just the break I needed away from the Skyrims and World of Warcrafts of the fantasy genre. I might never have learned about the Tarahumara and listened to an indigenous language for the first time. But, Mulaka stretches a bit too long for my taste.
Using various narrative and visual devices, The Town of Light serves as an interactive historical textbook. With roughly 2-3 hours of gameplay, it covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time, yet its execution seems to cloud its intention.
But your immediate problem is not an angry client who did not receive his plasma cutter on time; a ship crash lands on your property. Inside is one broken robot and two surprises that throw your entire view of the world into chaos. Police immediately surround the area and close in to disintegrate you — you have seen too much. An EVP grenade falls from… you’re not sure where, overloading the circuits of the police and yourself. What follows is a surprising turn of events that sends you on an impromptu investigation to explore different parts of the city to help a small band of rebel robots whose primary function is to discover “the truth.”
Instead of headbanging gleefully as I progressed from level to level, I found myself banging my head on my keyboard.
You’ll navigate your way through twisted hallways of heavy machinery, elevators, and a few monsters and monstrosities. What little glimpses you get of the world above, they are nothing more than big teases. You want out? Nope, sorry. You’re stuck in a quarry. Oh, you really want out? We’re going to lock every single exit to the surface. It would be appropriate to place a placard at the entrance to the mine that read “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
The overzealous difficulty of Fallout 4′s DLCs is no exception this time around; the Nuka World radio signal won’t auto-trigger until you are at least level 30. Don’t start at level 30. Just don’t. If you haven’t hit at least level 50 by now, take the time to get there; the unbalanced level-scaling that gave Automatron and Far Harbor their “quirks” is back to kill your stash of stimpacks and ammo. Combine that with a narrative that lacks depth and meaningful decisions, Nuka World might fall below your expectations, but still provides many hours of game play to unlock a plethora of secrets and rewards.
Without a central idea to fall back on, Past Cure is just an unorganized mess.