Centralia: Homecoming Reviews

Refunded. After 45 minutes gave up. This game has so much motion blur you will go blind. Did you say you wan't to turn it off? Well no can do, since this game has 0% options for customization. No hotkey controls, no graphics options. Absolutely nothing. Did you get stuck in one of the security cams and can't back out of it.. well good luck. Did you accidentally hit a key while going through the non-skippable cut scene in the beginning and now you are in free cam mode. Cool right? Except good luck getting back to the 1st person cam to play the game. This dev is lazy. Honestly lazy. No options, relies on UE's super hardcore awful post process effects. He took some games he loved as a kid, tried to mimic them and did a less than sub-par version. Should be ashamed of himself but has probably made enough money from people who won't refund to squeak by.

Wow. this is a first for me, after 20 minutes I had to finally stop giving the game the benefit of the doubt. 1st red flag: Lack of a settings option on the main menu. You want to force the player to get right into the game without messing about? I'm down, but just have a "push any key to start" menu screen that, if no saves are found, launches right into the game. Any game i play for the first time, I like to check settings, controls, and resolution just to double-check. Only in the last few years do games start off exactly where they should, settings-wise. 2nd red flag: The opening voice acting is poorly done as far as audio quality, no one likes to wince when someone's sharp speech blows out the recording. I use a $6 headset mic that could've delivered the same, if not better quality. The acting by itself was good though, to be fair. 3rd red flag: Not every game needs a tutorial, some games need nothing at all. But a game with a map,inventory, and journal could, at the very least, have a message when the game starts "To access everything you'll need press tab to get to the menu". The "tutorial" is on the journal tab for some reason, with a super brief rundown of the controls. It's 2019, its pretty standard, as far as I've noticed (even for small studios) to AT LEAST have a picture of a keyboard and mouse with controls labeled accurately, not just some lines of text on a journal tab. And since we're speaking of tab... 4th red flag: The Esc button does nothing. Tab is the only way to access the menu (which is where that pesky settings menu was hiding). This seems like something trivial, but it's this kinda stuff that puts "invisible polish" on a game. Once again, it's 2019, stuff like this is pretty standard. 5th red flag: First building I enter, small set of stairs straight ahead, before moving I instantly notice a monsters head clipping through the door at the top. Like a fool i walk up and open it, I got a flash of zombie and a bit taken out of me, when it fades the zombie is gone. I re-open the door, and get bit again. Cool w/e But then i noticed in the next building that the zombies target and follow you through walls......which basically kills any fun to be had from the suspense of exploring, and gets switched to impending action. 6th red flag: There's more but this one is short enough to summarize. I've been gaming for a looong time at this point, and I have made a realization over the years. Games that start off with a flag selection (for the games language) are almost always not good. Either lacking in substance or hastily thrown together assets. There are certainly things in this game that were given a loving, caring touch in their design , but these things are vastly outweighed by its other shortcomings Hopefully this game continues to be updated and polished but I for one wont' be waiting around for it.