Recent reviews by Goblin Queen

I can already tell this is one of those games that really goes for immersion. The game focuses on making a tactile believable world you can just settle into like a warm bath. If you're a sucker for that kind of experience and the concept of this game appeals to you it'll definitely be worth a purchase.

While there are maintenance and survival/resource management aspects if you don't want that experience difficulty is highly configurable.

Controls are fine on a pad tho I would like some more direct control over your vertical movement. Not having re-bindable controls on launch is a little unfortunate in this day and age. Especially as it can effect the accessibility of the game for those with disabilities. But that alone not worth a thumbs down especially as the devs have said this will be addressed in an update. Seems an odd game to choose to die on the hill of m&kb controls over

There's a podcast I love called 'Beef and Dairy Network' which has the same kind of absurdist and very British humour.

This game is like a really bad episode of that. But whereas I love the podcast I just didn't find the game funny :(

Outside of the humour there's not a lot of complex gameplay or anything so make sure the humours for you before buying.

The world is drowning in microplastics yet I can't find enough plastic to easily make a storage crate.

Early impressions are great.

Makes me feel dumb for spending money on Early Access Survival games when this grows wider and deeper with each and every update. I don't know what about the game finally clicked after 8 years of trying to get into it, but clicked it truly has

I'm enjoying carving out my own little queendom in the stars and setting out to do one thing then getting distracted by 78 other things and returning to base having still not done that one thing.

It's still early doors at only 16 hours in, but so far I am having a blast. It's very much the first game with a fresh coat of paint, jank and all. I do recommend it, despite the performance issues. The MTX items are all very easily acquirable in game and completely unnecessary I really don't understand why CAPCOM bothered to be honest.

My system is a Ryzen 7 5800X3d, a 10gb VRAM RTX 3080 with 32GB of DDR4 ram at 3600mhz. My drivers are up to date, I'm running at 3440x1440 21:9 ultrawide HDR on and I have the game loaded on a Western Digital Blue NVMe SSD. With DLSS on quality and everything maxed out, ray tracing on I get between 70-80fps in the wilderness, 60-70 in small towns and villages and 40 in the big capital city.

While the performance issues are unfortunate and there's no way CAPCOM wasn't aware of them pre-release I still find the game entirely playable and it does not really impact my enjoyment. Perhaps owning a steam deck where 40fps is often the sweet spot to aim for in terms of frame rate vs fidelity, so your mileage may vary.

Don't go in expecting a souls-like. In fact, if you haven't played the first game you won't have played anything that feels like Dragon's Dogma 2, it is a rarely unique experience that sticks steadfastly to it's own ideas which I'll elaborate on further at a later date.

Nice to see how my ancestors survived the early days

Just gets better and better, the new custodian team seem to be really on top of things

Scarlet Nexus is one of those sorts of games that is so close to being truly great it's almost frustrating.

Combat in the first hour or two is clunky. Some key things like quick recovery to knock downs are locked behind the talent tree, as are so many key parts of your combat toolkit and this can make early fights feel awkward and ungainly. I think this was done to give you a real sense of progression; from rookie to bad ass elite psionic warrior but in practice this means the game puts it's worst foot forwards.

Likewise the opening story could be lifted from any number of popular anime over the last few years and I'm sure non-anime fans would have their eyes rolling so hard that they'd come loose from their eye sockets and flee down the street, although why someone who has little patience for anime would buy this game in the first place is a mystery to me, in any case rest assured the story and characters pick up and get more interesting without the usual 50 hour JRPG time investment.

Just like the story, after a few unlocks the combat comes alive and you'll be throwing subway trains into packs of enemies and chaining the deceptively simple combat mechanics into gloriously satisfying combos. I find myself chuckling with glee and getting a real rush out of a good fight and when it all comes together it feels quite unlike anything else. Except when you fight other psionics. Fighting monsters is great! Fighting other psionics sucks and is thankfully fairly rare.

Graphically all the love has been put into stellar character art and design, animation and bad ass combat effects. Enemies are an assorted mix of creative insanity, from flying electrocuting torsos to bunches of roses running around on legs that wouldn't look out of place in moulin rouge. Environmentally the art is more of a mixed bag however. Some of the backdrops are cool, atmospheric and eye catching but a lot of your immediate surroundings are marred by muddy texture work and the limited palette of a fairly typical ruins-of-the-modern-world type scenario. However a special shout out to the projected/neon/AR stuff that does bring back a certain life to the world, especially in the populated/unruined urban environments.

In conclusion then Scarlet Nexus is the sort of game I will happily complete and given how few games manage to keep me engaged through to the conclusion I can't think of much higher praise than that. However it stops frustratingly short of going from cult hit to truly remarkable.

A short, meditative and contemplative 3 hour journey. You and your machine vs the desolate world. Just interactive enough to be compelling, without being overly complex and potentially drowning the atmosphere the developers have so carefully built.

Stunning sound design, with a particularly evocative soundtrack.

An easy recommendation.

Me: I'm not going to buy anymore games for a bit.

Knucklecracker: Yo. Creeper World 4.

Me: ...

Me: ...♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ *clicks buy*