This ranks as the hardest "No" I've written, Pathologic fights you in equal amounts to how much it encourages you to play and uncover its secrets...and eventually you just get utterly sick of the whole thing. I've never come to hate a game quite like this before, and I hate even feeling this way about it.

The story is entirely unsettling, yet really captivating. Playing the first character, the Bachelor, just makes you feel like a total slimeball who really has zero interest in helping anyone but himself. I was given a list of people to keep alive at the start, but no matter what I do I lose at least one of these boogers each day to the Sand Plague so I'm sure my ending won't be pretty...provided I don't die of hunger in my sleep first, that is.

Now for the reasons this whole thing is a Not Recommend. Pathologic is loaded with weird bugs, the most irritating of which is my recurring issue of not being able to use my weapons - you can get by with your fists, but even those have not worked before and twice now I've restarted the day to recover my lethality. The water dispensers located throughout the town love not functioning out of the blue, meaning my easiest source of income (full water bottles) is gone for the day, as is my ability to rehydrate my guy for free. The most common bug would be the weird lag I experience all through town, which can be bad enough you'll have trouble timing weapon swings when fighting off a bandit or two late at night - I've had this lag from the start, a fresh reinstall, and on three new saves so I do not know what's causing it.

The bugs detract from it, but the worst part of Pathologic? One of its intended, much vaunted features - the survivalism aspect. While the basic idea on paper sounds good, in reality much of your time is spent rushing around the game world literally dumpster diving each day in hopes you'll gather enough trash to sell and buy just that little bit extra of food to stave off death by hunger until tomorrow. You have side quests, but no time for them. You have unexplored areas, but no time to look around. Sure you can bypass this by robbing houses, but good luck succeeding at that when a witness can one-hit you to oblivion. The above is supposed to make you more in touch with the serious, sombre plot of the game I guess, but really it's just fricking irritating and takes away from overall enjoyment to the point I dread even booting up Pathologic now.

Skip this one, or barring that find a no-commentary Youtube long play to sate your curiosity instead.