Recent reviews by Tiro

The z-shooter genre isn't dead.

Go fast. Grapple your way up into the sky at highway speed. Find some dudes. Pull a sick shot. And another. And another. Reload. Miss the entirety of your next mag. Faceplant at some 150kph into a stone pillar. Get obliterated because speed is you only defence.

Fast forward two hours, the amount of enemies has doubled and you're so on edge you're somehow hitting every single shot despite your average speed being triple what it was. You're higher off dopamine than you could ever get from street-sold drugs.

Welcome to Echo Point Nova. If you'd like a more claustrophobic and explosive version of this, Severed Steel is from the same dev and a certified banger.

Doesn't get much better than this as far as single player goes. Amazing writing (every single secondary quest is worth playing, they never feel repetitive) enthralling world, wonderful graphics, top notch gameplay. Hasn't been equaled in 9 years, if you're thinking you just might like it then definifely get it.

I personally recommend playing on Death March as you otherwise have no reason to use the wonderful alchemy system. Potions are expensive to make the first time around, but all, i repeat all your potions and bombs replenish for the cost of just one bottle of a strong alcohol when you meditate, meaning they're basically free as you both run into alcohest all the time and can buy it nearly everywhere. I've been popping potions like a druggie and i've never needed to buy alcohest.

It was one of the best FPS games, with a clear vision and beautiful strategy in the form of a complex rock/paper/scissors gameplay between breaching, hard breaching and protecting against roamers. I had so much fun in R6, bought it on two different platforms, made great friends. The game taught me a lot about game design and balancing in an asymmetric PvP environment, and how to make the best of the renunciations that are necessary to rise up to such a challenge.

Then, Ubi refused to stop when it should have. The game now currently has 65 operators. Everyone does a bit of everything, nobody is unique. The game tries its hardest to orient your excitement towards what it's spent the most of the 4 last years expanding: lootboxes and microtransactions.
The playerbase has gone.

The game is wonderful.

Ship combat is amazing. Very slow, but that's just how it is.
Ballistics are super well modelled, you get to try so many different ships and acquire them in combat, as rewards or just from puchasing them, giving the campaign I played (the british one) a very nice sense of progression.
You're only minding your funds, officers and fleet, which is a very nice way to keep it all manageable (looking at you, UA: Dreadnoughts and HOI4) and approachable by beginners.

However, this game features land battles.
They are poorly designed, at least for someone who is used to Total War games of the last two decades, and an absolute slog. I understand that they're meant to transmit the real purpose of these ships in carrying troops and projecting land forces, and that the devs have done what they could, but they're so slow and painful that they're the one reason I've abandoned my playthrough, and certainly why I won't get back into it.

I recommend UA: Dreadnoughts if you've got a naval combat itch to scratch, because this game is just too expensive for the player to spend half their in-battle time in such a state of boredom.

Literal best vehicle library ever made, ruined by predatory economic system. Down with the evil snail!

Just play this if you like story-driven games and good characters, you'll have a truly unique experience. A very good time. Play it in one sitting, and suffer emotional withdrawal as you have to say goodbye to these characters.

I played this with an online friend through remote play, which worked really well. Because they did not have to buy the game, they cannot review it, so this counts for both of us.

First of all, the theme and gameplay:
As a space nerd, i just absolutely loved it. We played on "newtonian" moving difficulty, so the only way we could move in 0G is using the laws of physics. The game's really cool puzzles were a plus, but yeeting each other into deep space just never got old.

Multiplayer:
This game supports local co-op, and online through remote. Me and my playmate live on opposite ends of the continent, and their internet infrastructure dates back to the Stalinian Era. Hence, lags lasting multiple seconds often happened, but given the relative slow pace, they never really were an issue, only causing one of us to slowly drift away.

Difficulty was fine, and more forgiving movement modes are at your disposal if needed, which you can even pick differently for each player.

This is one of the best multiplayer games i've ever played. Short but sweet, leaving you yearning for more.
If you're interested in space and know someone you'd enjoy spending the time with, it's a must buy.

This is an early access review, that i'm only posting after reading the full list of what will come with the full release of the game: the last story chapter, minor balancing tweaks, and apparently optimisation.

This game is, as the early access trailers let you know, a SANDBOX. You're dropped into a hangar with a ship and some tools, some O2 and fuel to manage, and 20 minutes to do it all. Your goal is to scrap enough to cover the lease of your equipment. Once the 20 mins are done, you can choose to go back at the same remains for the same cost, and maybe get a bonus for scrapping the same ship, or move on to a ship that still has the juiciest parts.

The core gameplay loop is as follows: dismantle that ship arbitrarily, and learn from that experience. Learn what was worth the most and the least. What has the best time to extract to income ratio. From then on, make your own method for working that ship. And move on to the next design.

This game has such a great concept. My 30h of playtime are a tribute to that. The many creative competitions that led to incredible creations from the community are a tribute to that. But the developers have chosen a path that we, the players, simply aren't interested in.

The game's core, shipbreaking, is the gold in all this. It's incredibly fun. The issue is, it's lacking in content. It's lacking in tools and ship designs. In 2 years of EA development, I believe we've had one too and 3 ship designs. Imo, that's a bit on the short side. As mentioned above, the real fun is the discovery, so once you've learned all the ship designs.. it just becomes a big grind.

So what has been added! A story. Characters. Voice acting. Not bad, eh? Well, it's more complicated. To be fair, i've played all 30 of my hours before the story even was a thing. Why? Because i'm not interested in cutscenes. Sure, the conversations from the tutorial were cool and welcome, but just getting emails and messages completely separated from gameplay is disjointed. The devs invested a lot into developing a new aspect to a game that wasn't suited to it. It's not that the story is bad, it's just that i have no doubt the resources it took would have made the game way better than it is today.

This is a positive review if you're interested in the core gameplay loop. The story is a non-factor. Beware though: the heart of the fun here is space, zero-g, real 3D movement, and spaceship exploration.

Love at first sight for me. A metro-ey vibe to a game taking place in a retrofuturist soviet afghan war gone wrong. Technologically advanced airships shooting naval cannons at each other. A bajillion ways to customize your fleet, with an in-depth (and optional) ship builder.

A rugged, glitchy aesthetic to crown it all.
By all means, if the game's premice sounds somewhat appealing, dive head first into the desert!

SUCH A BLAST!

Pleasant (imo) and very readable artstyle, fun and coherent player tools, challenging dodge mechanic, progressively difficult missions, quite extensive aircraft modification combinations..

This game could be compared to Luftrausers. It might not have that game's sandboxyness (at least not in the campaign menu), or its peculiar atmosphere, but it more than makes up for it.

I tend to wait till I get at least 10h on a game to review it, but this is love at first sight for me.