What are you Playing Now? - the man sez Video games are bad for you - fight the man!

[Hawke64]

Finished Signalis. A very pretty game with a lot of irritating design choices. 

The game successfully replicates everything I dislike about older console games - the unrebindable controls, the limited inventory, the severely restricted saving, and obscure ending requirements. Additionally, the most labyrinthine section misses the map. The combat system, with the combination of reviving foes (because zombies), limited ammunition, and the damage dealt depending on the time spent aiming (i.e. the longer you aim at a particular opponent, the higher the damage), is unpleasant, but this is expected and the least irritating of the design choices.

If one can tolerate it and does not care about the outcome, it might be an interesting survival horror in a sci-fi setting, with a strong critique of communism in general and the Soviets/PRC in particular. The puzzles and bosses are easy enough (on the default difficulty) to keep the pacing consistent. Arguably, for the right-handed players with the QWERTY keyboard layout, the control scheme should be comfortable enough.

The system requirements are adequate, the art and sound design are gorgeous (excluding the foes' screams upon noticing the protagonist, which get old fast), and 5-button mice are supported (the 4th and the 5th buttons are used for reloading and using the equipped item). Finally, the game is mostly VA-free (there are some spoken lines in German, but they are in the background).