Recent reviews by quack quack quack

One of my favorite games, and one of the best in the "terraform a planet" genre.

You crashland in a tiny pod on a barren airless world and must slowly terraform it, through many stages, into a lush paradise with lakes, trees & animal life. You'll spend your time gathering resources, exploring/looting wrecks, unlocking tech, and building on your base. Very satisfying stuff, the visuals pop and the DLC planet is well worth the price, although I'd stick with the base game planet for your 1st playthrough.

10/10, lots of content & watching the world around you slowly transform is so satisfying!

Look at how they've massacred my boy....

Doom 3 BFG is an inferior copy of the original Doom 3 for one main reason: the audio is a severe downgrade. Sound volume is weirdly low-quality with inconsistent volume, for example the guns are very quiet, which makes shooting them very underwhelming. Another example is the shuttle that brings you onto Mars, it barely makes any sound at all when its hovering there, just horrendously immersion-breaking stuff. Ambient noise is also misbalanced badly, either being too quiet or way too loud to the point of drowning out other sounds. This absolutely ruins the game for me, since the outstanding sound design was such a huge part of why I loved the original. Also there are no audio options AT ALL in this, like you can't even turn the music off, just sheer laziness to leave out such basic audio settings. At bare minimum the sound should have been as good as it was in the OG, but for some unfathomable reason they've gone & made it far worse.

Video settings options are not much better, basically you have very few options beyond resolution size. Again a major fail by the devs to neglect these.

It runs alright and looks the same as the original from what I can tell (that is to say it hasn't aged all that well), but the horrendous (and downright broken in places) audio prevents any sort of immersion, and it's missing many basic audio/video options that basically every other 3D shooter game from like the year 2004 onward has. Also the default control scheme was the strangest I've ever seen in a PC game (left control fires your gun and right click makes you jump, why not?)

If the sound quality is so bad that it's like hearing loss simulator, the game is ruined. 4/10 do not recommend, give it a whirl if you don't care about the broken audio or think you can fix the sound issues.

Game is riddled with bugs, runs like dogwater even on powerful gaming PCs, and crashes/disconnects are a regular occurence.

The devs break something new with every patch, and fail to fix very old bugs while introducing new ones. Game performance has also gone down the drain, more so with every update. Crashes happen to A LOT of players as well, just check out the support forums on Steam.

A brilliant game concept RUINED by rushed sloppy updates and lack of optimization. AH need to do a serious bugfix/ optimization/ stability update, the buggy jank and low FPS have become too much for me to withstand.

5/10 right now. A damned shame, since it would be 10/10 if the above issues were fixed.

I love the concept of a highly detailed car mechanic sim, however it's marred by a few severe issues:

-awful clunky controls (at least on mouse+keyboard), I was constantly making mistakes with simple things like picking up/ dropping items and mounting parts. For example, the key to pick up an item and the key to put the same item back down again AREN'T THE SAME KEY, leading to constant mistakes with a basic function. Also, there didn't seem to be a way to manually assign different items to different toolbar slots, or at least the game doesn't indicate how. Manual mode on the ratchets simply doesn't work as well, there might be a way to make it work but again, the game doesn't indicate how. They tried to approximate full VR controls on mouse/keyboard and it's just about the clumsiest control scheme I've ever used in any game.

-they went overboard with the "realism" when you're pouring oil. It's a tremendously clunky process and it's really easy to spill lots of oil everywhere even with a funnel (not really an issue in real life for anyone without severe brain damage), which is a problem since you need to meter it out accurately to do the job right. Like why can't I just hold the oil near the funnel and click and have it pour automatically (like in CMS)? Having to rotate the oil bottle to exactly the right angle and then activate a pouring animation (which is victim to lots of physics-based jankiness) is a painfully slow error-prone process, a real battle with the physics & camera system. I can't overstate how much this one thing put me off the game; it turned what should have been a simple beginner operation into a hair-pulling frustration.

-Items bugging out, vanishing, general buginess

-Very very basic (butt-ugly) UI. This game has been out for over 3 years and it still looks like this?

-The game straight-up doesn't tell you important stuff, for example how to actually use the oil jug + hose combo. There's a manual for the various jobs but even that is sparse on detail sometimes (for example it says remove X plug without saying where to find it). This is a very unhelpful game. This combined with the unintuitive controls makes for a frustratingly steep learning curve even to do simple things.

I recommend steering clear until they add some QoL features & polish, as well as better controls if you're a mouse/ keyboard user. If they ever do, considering it's been out since late 2018. I understand that it's early access but ffs, after this long in development and for this price, it's hard to believe there's such a blatant level of unpolish.

One of my favorite games of all time, this simple-looking 2D colony survival game is a masterpiece. At times it seems unfair, however the game gives you a lot of ways to avert catastrophe (especially in the late game when your tech is advanced).

Here's an example of a Rimworld story. A herd of killer robots appears on the horizon that you're not prepared to deal with, and you desperately consider your options. You could batten down the hatches and use the com array to call for help from an ally, or just gather your colonists and flee the map while your herd of Yorkshire Terriers holds off the robots. You decide to flee and sacrifice your dogs, the robots would be through your flimsy doors in an instant, so you frantically form a caravan and pack a few essentials. As you're packing, that's when you remember that 1/2 your colonists have the plague & others have food poisoning (how the one competent cook got killed is another story), what would normally take them an instant is instead taking eternity. The Terriers are cut to shreds immediately, even faster than anticipated. The sick & therefore slow colonists are caught by the relentless machines as they hobble towards the edge of the map, along with the pack Donkeys. One traumatized survivor escapes (having learned a harsh lesson in robot preparedness) to start anew in another map tile. That's Rimworld, baby

Once you get tired of the base game there are a million mods out there & many of them add tons of new content (for example, check out "Save Our Ship 2" mod).

10/10

Still in development but already an excellent game. Bar none, the most in-depth zombie apocalypse simulator that exists today. This game does not pull its punches, but when you figure out how to survive the zombie hordes/ build a base it's quite rewarding.

PROS:
-Many in-game systems to help the player survive (crafting, building, 1st aid, electrical, ect..)
-Huge, detailed map
-Vehicles + in-depth vehicle maintenance system
-New weather system looks great
-Multiplayer!
-Good soundtrack + sound design
-The modding scene for this game is alive & well

CONS:
-New updates, like the zombies, come slowly but they do come.
-Your general fitness / strength skills level up far too slowly in my opinion. Ain't nobody got time for that.
-No NPCs (Yet) The devs promised this ages ago, did a decent amount of work on NPCs & then shelved it to work on other things. Hopefully they get back to that at some point, but who knows?
-Somewhat steep learning curve. This game can seem a bit unfair to new players since the zombies are so numerous. Surviving for a long time takes a lot of trial-and-error

A decent start on a successor to Warband with some issues, but they're still patching it regularly so it will probably improve. I'd recommend it if you're really into the genre / want to do the multiplayer, otherwise wait for more content / mods.
PROS:
-Much improved graphics over Warband. The battles look very good indeed & the engine can handle many more units at a time than Warband.
-Better sieges, including the option to arrange units / siege equipment before a siege (Like in Total War games). No more rushing a single ladder with all your units.
-New tactical options in battles, including formations
-More in-depth diplomacy system, including the option to have children / heirs.
-Huge overworld map
-Proper modding tools
-New multiplayer mode where you can fight army vs. army against another player. (Not sure if this is in the game yet, haven't played the multiplayer). Sounds very cool.
-Great artwork & music, some truly epic stuff here.

CONS:
- Many of the earlier perks are so weak as to be useless (1% party movement speed increase during the day only, absolutely trivial). I also hate having to choose between 2 perk trees & being forced to lock out entire playstyles/ strategies for my army. At least give us the option to switch between the 2 perk trees, having entire skill sets / useful abilities locked out forever just sucks.
-Many skills level absurdly slowly, even with the annoying 'focus point' system they have. You also don't get nearly enough focus points. I honestly don't ever see myself leveling a skill to anywhere near max before getting bored with the repetition, even with full focus points in that skill.
-Your companions gain experience so slowly they basically don't level up. I went from level 1-17 with Tochi the Mad in my party, and Tochi gained not a single level during that time.
-No skill points on level up. You want to gain skill in persuasion? Then they only way is to ferret out persuasion attempts like 10,000 times, well past the point of tedium. It makes sense realistically, but makes the game way more grind-y and therefore less fun.
-Unit variety. There aren't enough different units in the game overall, & there are too few troop tiers. It takes very little time to fully upgrade raw recruits, should there not be another tier or two that takes a longer time to reach?
-Maybe not a drawback to some people, but your character ages. I don't want to pour tons of time into making a badass (especially at the glacial rate of skill gain) only to have him keel over from old age. Again, realism over good game design. At least give us an option to turn off aging.
-Tournaments are laughable. You get a mediocre piece of armor & like 1000 denars (which is basically nothing) if you win, and you only get the denars if you bet the max on each round. That's right, there is no money reward for winning a tournament without betting. They're also waaaay too easy to win, but the reward is so paltry that I stopped bothering after the 1st few.
-1v1 combat is far too easy. I set the difficulty on max & was still easily landing blows on the most elite opponents & winning tournaments as a low level scrub. The combat AI seems braindead.
-Some bugs (nothing too major, a couple crashes though).

Overall, the game doesn't yet feel fully fleshed out; it's a decent foundation with some flaws. The biggest issue is the leveling/ perk system; I got bored of the grind before I got to level 20 & went back to modded Warband, which has its own problems but is way more fun.

7/10

After a rocky post-launch period, I can finally recommend this game, at least as far as the single player goes. The audio problems on Reach are patched & Forge is coming soon-ish. They did change the sounds / soundtracks in Halo 1 and 2 though, which is a travesty. Worth noting that I haven't installed Halo 3 yet.

PROS:
-Runs quite well
-Halo 2 Remastered looks absolutely gorgeous & stays true to the atmosphere/ graphical style of the original. The cutscenes are also Blizzard-level quality CGI, excellent stuff.
-Basically a pretty good port of the original games on PC (except the soundtracks). 'Nuff said.

CONS:
-Some missing features, including Forge (although that is coming soon according to the devs).
-Halo 1 remastered looks kind of weird in places (Captain Keyes looks rather odd & Cortana looks hideous compared to the OG game). They also didn't really stick to the atmosphere / original graphical intent. For example, they made the swamp in the level '343 Guilty Spark' way less foggy / spooky. As a result, you can clearly see the flood forms in the distance, whereas in the Original they were grotesque half-seen shapes in the fog & therefore way more spooky. In the Remaster it's just like "Oh, those are definitely mutated humanoids because I can see them clearly"
-New sound effects in Halo 1 / 2 Remastered often don't sound as good as the originals.
-Halo 1 / 2 Remastered soundtracks were just not as good as the originals. Some tracks are just remastered versions of the orignals, which is fine. Unfortunately, some of the most amazing tracks were not in the remasters & replaced with inferior music. In particular, the awesome guitar riff in 'The Silent Cartographer' was swapped out with some lesser song. Tragic. Could they not have bothered getting rights to the OG soundtracks?

PROS:
-Excellent combat system
-Lots of armor customization options
-High quality voice commands
-New ranking system
-Wide variety of weapons

CONS:
-High ping for some players on official servers
-Optimization could use some improvement on certain CPUs
-Small # of maps (more are being worked on)
-Some balance issues between weapons (nothing too horrendous though)
-Some players find the community too toxic, at least in some regions (haven't experienced much of this one personally)

OVERALL:
Recommend 100%. This is my favorite game. There are definitely some issues left to be resolved, but the game is being patched and it's already a blast.

Despite launching in a somewhat half-baked state, the devs are patching it regularly and it has come a long way. Some bugs remain, and better optimization would be nice, but overall it is an engaging experience. I recommend this game to anyone interested in the genre.

8/10