Recent reviews by oldskoolgool

Fun if you like brain rot or are a die-hard fan of the SCP universe. The game itself is fine, its mostly the community that drives me away. Most servers are full of loud, obnoxious teenagers who just gaggle around screaming memes at each other. Yes, you can mute people, but then the communication part of the game is gone and you might as well just go play SCP: 5K.

This is more of a "Meh" then anything, but since its leaning toward the negative I'm giving it that.
Very fun if you have enough friends for a private server, but most people don't, so don't bank on that.

Probably the most addicting deck-building rogue-like game I've played since Slay the Spire. These two games are by far my two favorites in the genre, with very few others even coming close.

I've only played 11 hours of Balatro, but I already know that I'll be playing this one for a while yet.

The game is super rewarding for that small part of our monke brains that likes watch the funny number get big. It also has a great amount of progression based rewards, mainly in the new jokers you unlock. Every time you win with a new set of conditions, you're most likely unlocking something. Just playing the game unlocks things over time too, with different milestones also unlocking new jokers and ways to play.

Fanstastic pick-up, and when it's on sale it's almost like you're stealing. Absolutely worth it if you like this style of game.

You want to play Chess? Chinese Checkers? Risk? Basically any other board game in existence? This lets you do it.

In-person DnD keeps falling through? Bam its got that too.

You like Warhammer but are poor? We got Warhammer at home!

Seriously the best platform out there to play tons of board/card/tabletop games. You must buy.

Very fun if you have a private server you can play on or know someone else who also plays. That being said the community on public servers can be pretty hit or miss. Most people are cool and will help you learn if you're new, but like any game there are some people who won't.

Highly recommend if you have friends that will play or can find a community to join.

Due to the fact that this game costs over $1000 dollars to fully experience I'm telling EA to completely F-off. Best game was Sims 2, they've only gone gradually downhill since then.

My wife loves this game and has purchased a fair amount of packs over the years, but I won't recommend it to anyone ever just due to the price alone. The base game is "free" but it's as free as going into a grocery store and getting the free samples in the food section, or as free as playing the demo games in the electronics area is. I don't normally recommend sailing the high seas, but this is one case I can advocate for it.

This needs a lot more time in the oven.

Has amazing potential, but I can't recommend this game in good conscience unless you meet the following criteria:

1) You have at least one friend with the game and you both WILL play together often enough to ease the suffering. This game is just objectively not fun alone.

2) You enjoy sneaking around hiding from on-rails AI that don't see you from 5 feet away, but spot you behind cover from 100 feet away 5 minutes later. Oh and some of them can walk through doors and spot you in complete darkness for no reason other than they can. (Futuristic war setting yes I know, but its horrifically inconsistent between enemies of the same faction/type.)

3) You like over the shoulder shooters with janky movement, gunplay, and very little room for error, but less room for personal improvement. The movement is incredibly sluggish and unresponsive. I could forgive it if there was more snappiness to certain actions vs others, but every action feels like you're underwater with weights on. This makes it so there's less skill involved and more dumb luck or simply more bullets than the enemies.

4) You prefer an ARMA level of AI Hivemind behavior paired with noob tubes and SAW machine guns. If you alert one enemy, you've alerted at least three more, sometimes as many as twenty. Now this isn't a complaint if the above point wasn't true, because there could be a chance to outmaneuver or out-think the enemies. Not happening at this current stage of the game.

5) You like the "randomness" of a world that is actually exactly the same for the first 6-10 encounters and probably beyond. (That's all I could stand) The only variety this game offers is loot locations and enemy squad compositions. Now this isn't a complaint, more of a critique. If you're going to have a AI game director decide what enemies go where, it should have some kind of continuity or flow but also be randomized enough that people don't notice it. I went into the first area probably 5 times and it was never the same enemies in any given sector of the map, but it was also not different. Confused? Let me explain. You will always encounter a squad of enemies on the first area when you walk around the large rock formation that hides spawn, usually grunts or cyborgs with no guns or light weapons near the large bunkers. You will always see a group of randomly selected Medium-size units (tanks, drones, or small mechs) come in from the left area over some sand dunes. You will always meet a larger squad of enemies fighting the initial group you met after coming around the rock and running towards the first bunker. Always the same patterns, but different enemies. Ok, it's early access, they're still working on it. My suggestion is stop locking the enemies to the same patrol paths and set more than five spawns for enemy groups. I figured this out in five runs and then the game immediately lost all difficulty. Before anyone says it was dumb luck or I'm seeing a pattern where there isn't one; go try it for yourself if you own the game. Run the first area, Cemetery spawn, and just observe. It's the same every time with very small deviations.

6) You enjoy a kind of BS survival system measured by a resource that depletes in real time. Water. Water is measured in "days left" and that is real time, not in game days or raids. If you have 6 days of water in-game, you have 6 real days to come back and get more water. Kind of cool, honestly. Now the not cool part, if you run out of water, your character is wiped and you start over. Doesn't matter if you've maxed out a character or just started, they are gone. I'm sorry, but as someone who will play a game for a few days and then leave it sit for a week or two, this is incredibly alienating and unappealing. This reason alone is why I refunded. I am sick and tired of developers trying to find ways to force players to play. How about you fix the bugs, make it fun and exciting, and don't force people to play based on FOMO? Horrible design choice that will probably end up killing the game for most people. Change nothing but this if you want your game to succeed.

Don't get me wrong, this game has phenomenal potential. But don't buy it unless you're ok with essentially being a guinea pig for a very early access title. This is actually more of a Pre-Alpha, if you ask me.

This game is great, even without all the planned features being fully implemented yet. Scratches the in-game collectable itch as well as the management/sim itch.

Very few issues or bugs that I have noticed aside from AI buying very random amounts of things that doesn't make much sense. One example would be five sets of the same dice or six copies of the same play-mat or comic.

Another thing I noticed is the AI tend to get a little weird with single card tables/displays; for example empty or partially stocked ones actually end up cutting your profits by about 25-30% early on. Additionally, from the little bit of testing I've done its not worth it to sell cards under about $50 (value after 20% markup) at any point since the AI will sometimes grab one card and then check out instead of shopping the rest of the store. When I was selling every card over $5 early on I would rarely break 1k in profit per day. After putting away my card displays and only selling bulk items that number shot up to over 2k the next day. A few days later after I had built up about 10-20 cards over $100, I sold all of them and made 3k just off the singles as well as 3k from everything else (6k-ish total). Its something to do with how the AI process purchase decisions on single cards vs bulk items. With singles there isn't a stock of 6+ items on the same shelf to pick up multiple of, so they will just grab one card and dip vs maybe three of another item and continuing to shop. Hopefully this can get fixed or balanced later on. One easy way would be to have the AI process single card purchases separately from bulk items, giving each type of item its own set of probabilities and checks before the customer checks out or leaves. Its really not a big deal, since you can work around it by doing what I said above, but it does make cards between $5-$50 basically worthless since you can't turn a consistent profit with them at any point. Along with that, the selling of single cards is entirely manual and time consuming. Best strategy IMO is to collect 10+ singles over $50, price them 20-30% over market value, let them sell out, and then store the card table(s) until you have 10+ more to sell. This way the AI quit checking the table and leaving. Also you're not wasting entire days just restocking single cards. Other than that minor gripe, I have very few and enjoy this game a lot.

The card art is well done in 99% of cases (The Trickstar and Princestar cards are a little cursed) and the amount/type of card modifiers is very accurate to real card games on the market like Pokemon or MtG making it actually fun/rewarding to open hundreds of cards packs.

I think with a little polish, balancing, and the implementation of all the planned features listed on the main menu, this game will be one of the best/most popular Simulator games on Steam. This game is definitely worth the money, speaking from experience. (I put almost 30 hours into the game in 5 days, which I haven't done with a game since the original CoD Black Ops.)

Combat is on par with RPG's from the early 2000's and the balance is horrendous. The AI enemies are cheeseable with a little practice, but real players will absolutely nuke you every time. I never extracted in the 10+ games I played, but mainly because every time I would get to an extract it was already used. Long story short, if you like horrible combat paired with the extraction-shooter formula, go right ahead. I'll pass on this one.

Sony reverted the change for PSN accounts being required on PC, however countries that don't have access to PSN are still banned from purchasing the game there. Sony fully intends to try this again later, maybe not with this game, but other games absolutely.

With the reversion of some of the most questionable nerfs I have ever seen I am switching this to a thumbs up. This game is good again, albeit kinda frustrating sometimes with randoms who might do a little trolling. Definitely better with friends, as most games are.

Meh