AnomanderRake

Do you miss the days or fixed camera angles, janky combat and bad voice acting? Then this may be the perfect game for you!

Alisa is a love letter to classic survival horror games with a focus fixed camera angles, tank controls and obtuse puzzles. If you like the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill games this what you're looking for.

Alisa has a rather unique setting taking place in a large doll house full of creepy dolls, clowns and more monstrosities that I won't spoil here.

The gameplay has you exploring a large doll house (see: mansion) full of monsters and puzzles where you have to find the right key or item to progress. Ammo is somewhat scarce, however enemies drop currency upon defeat which you can use to buy upgrades and ammo. The upgrades include various dresses which give you different stat boosts such as taking less damage, or faster movement. You have to decide how much ammo you want to use to clear a room and whether it's worth the exchange as enemies don't respawn. After you finish exploring an area you will fight a boss, which upon defeat will give you access to the next area of the game. The combat can be quite difficult however the game has has some options to make the game easier with things like an auto-aim toggle,

The level design is quite good and the different areas of the game all feel unique with different enemy types, visual styles and music, and as you progress you'll find shortcuts linking the areas together for faster travel.

The develooper has continued to add support post launch and the patches have continued to add content including new areas and endings. There won't be any more content updates for the game, so now is the perfect time to jump in and experience everything. It takes about 8 hours to beat on your first playthrough, but there are 3 endings to unlock and New Game+ has additional features, so there's good replay value with bonus costumes and the like.

If you're a fan of old school survival horror pick this up you won't regret it.

If someone doesn't know what Shazam is, it listens to music playing on the radio or TV and identifies it and helps you find the name/artist.

I was wondering if there open source equivalent, I tried searching google and AlternativeTo but only found Linux desktop apps.

I'm looking for getting an RSS feed up and running for tech news on my phone and was hoping for suggestions for some good feeds that aren't clickbait garbage, I currently have BBC News and Ars Technica, does anyone have any other website suggestions which are worth subscribing to?

I've recently decided to switch out my Playstore apps for Open Source Apps as they're usually Ad Free and much less bloated. Can we use this thread to help people find open source android apps?

I'll start

K-9 mail, a great email alternative that let's you have multiple users logged in

Red Moon - A customisable night light app which lets you adjust the colour and settings including Colour, opacity and Darkness

Swift Notes - Note taking app

Silent Hill 2 was the first Silent Hill game on PS2 and it's a massive step up visually from the original game on PS1, and it still looks great today! The cutscenes look a bit dated but not awful, and generally the in engine cutscenes look quite good.

The story of Silent Hill 2 follows a man named James Sunderland who receives a letter from his dead wife telling him to come to their special place in Silent Hill. James quickly heads to the town to investigate the mysterious letter and find out if his wife Mary is still alive....

The story is definitely the strongest part of Silent Hill 2 and the mystery of Mary's letter keeps the game engaging for the appropriate run time of 6-8 hours. I think the story continues to get better as the game goes on. Having a small cast of 4-5 characters was a smart choice as you get to see them go on their their own adventure around silent hill independent of your actions. It makes them feel more real and "alive". Rather than just being there to give you quest objectives, or point you in the right direction they all act independent and don't take much interest in your actions.

I think the only way I can describe the voice acting in this game is weird, I know a lot of people love it, and some people hate it. I did enjoy the voice acting but I've seen a lot of people say the "bad" voice acting is an intentional design choice which I disagree with. I think it's just very hit and miss. James is pretty bland and monotone but Maria is great, her anyway outburst is one of the best parts of the whole game.

One interesting feature Silent Hill 2 has that I haven't seen in any other franchise is there's difficulty settings for "Action" and "Puzzles" independent of each other. I definitely think this makes the game more accessible to people who might get frustrated with puzzle games, or don't have the technical ability for action games as you can choose their ability independently.

On the topic of replay value this game has plenty, the game is relatively short if you know what you're doing. There's a total of six endings, 3 Main endings, a secret ending, and two joke endings. Unlike most games which take you to the end of the game and let you pick ending red blue or green the endings are Silent Hill 2 happen naturally and are unlocked depending on how you played the game. There's no "good" ending or "bad" ending, there's just three alternative endings which all make a good conclusion to the story, the joke endings aren't very conclusive but they are quite funny.

Some "Directors Cut's" versions of the game have a short extra gameplay mode or sub story where you play as one of the other characters and lasts around an hour but it's nothing special. It doesn't really add much to the plot but just helps slightly explain this character's origins.

Overall Silent Hill 2 holds up really well and is definitely worth playing if you can stomach the controls and overlook some shoddy voice acting. This game is a classic for a reason and is probably one of the best Survival Horror Games ever made.

Unfortunately as far as I'm aware Silent Hill 2 is not available on modern consoles. I think the most accessible version would be the PC release, as the game is very old so any toaster can run it.

There's a mod called Silent Hill 2 enhanced edition which adds a lot of Quality of life enhancements and I'd generally advise against the HD collection on Xbox 360 and PS3 unless you have no other option. These versions of the games are very buggy and visually were arguably worse than the originals. It has brand new voice acting but I couldn't comment on the quality as I haven't played it.

How do you feel about the second game being a standalone story and unrelated to the Story of 1 and 3 (3 being a direct sequel to the first game), do you think this is a strength or a weakness?