Recent reviews by Echo Blakely

Great game, great port to PC + all DLC included. No complaints :)

I really wish I could recommend this in current state. As a diehard fan of the original AOE and AOM series, I was really looking forward to this coming out.

But in its current state it feels unfinished and is a bit of a mess with bugs and technical issues. During my hour test play session, game crashed 3 times for me. At one point, I saved a single player skirmish, reloaded the game and it disappeared, reloaded the game and it came back again lol.

That said, if you can look past this I appreciate the sleek modern looking visuals and the gameplay looks like fun.

In summary: if you are looking to scratch that RTS/AOE itch, play AOE2 Definitive Edition currently

A huge step up from Sniper Elite V2. Big expansive settings, improved "slo-mo" kill cams, and improved stealth addressed many of the weaknesses of SE V2. Unfortunately, my recommendation of this game is marred by technical problems, with frequent crashes occuring on Windows 10 (as reported by many users) making the game barely playable :/

Date reviewed: 30/07/2016
Genre: Indie minimalist puzzle/casual game
My overall score: 9/10 Strong recommendation

Overall summary: HOOK is a very interesting indie puzzle game. Built on a simple premise of manipulating switches in a network to uncouple hooks (without any conflict between hooks), its a game that appears simple initially but will get complex quickly. While I believe there is no replayability, and there is a bug from getting you the only achievement, I was left satisfied by the experience.

Things I liked about this game:

+ Easy to learn concept, but not too simplified - as I mentioned, you will have to use your logic to uncouple/retract hooks without any contact between them. While I personally found the first 30 or so levels to be fairly straightforward, the last 15-20 levels will seriously test your logic/puzzle skills.

+ Very minimalist, quick into the game - I was happy that the game didn't include any tutorial and let me figure it out for myself. It makes you feel clever and is very rewarding when you solve the puzzles (kinda like the feeling of completing Sudokus)

+ Aesthetic & music design - I liked the game design, and I thought this was complimented by the simple, but relaxing, music. The music is never annoying, and seems to encourage you everytime you solve a hook correctly.

Things I disliked about this game:

- No replayability - after 50 total levels and 2.5 hours of playtime, I would probably never play it again. While this is ok for $0.99 price (or your regional equivalent), I can see for some people this might be a problem.

- Achievement bug - There is only 1 achievement in this game which is supposed to reward you upon completing all levels. While this might seem a little nitpicky, I was not happy that after 2.5 hours I didn't get this achievement because of a bug.

Lookin so fly...

UPDATE: (2/3/2015) - As of the 3rd of February, a lot of optimization problems have been sorted out. Still not quite 100% though

I do recommend this game, HOWEVER I recommend holding off from buying it until they fix a few optimization problems.

I am currently running the game on my Alienware Alpha:
Intel® Core™ i7-4765T Quad-Core processor (8M Cache, up to 3.0 GHz)
Alpha chassis with NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5
8GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz
2TB SATA 6Gb/s

And despite this, my framerate tanks every time I encounter a zombie. Therefore Ive had to lower settings in the game to play it smoothly (which is bs because my Alpha should play things at max settings)

DESPITE this, the game is a lot of fun. A brief tutorial gently introduces you into the parkour aspect of the game (which is very helpful because you need to parkour to survive). Afterwards, the ability to move anywhere in the world of Harran is a lot of fun and very enjoyable.

The crafting element of this game is very good as well. While traversing Harran, you can scavenge for materials which can be combined into other things (e.g. medkits, firecrackers, lockpicks etc). This adds to the sense of survival in this game - you will not be overpowered against the zombies and therefore you need everything to survive (in fact the first weapons you start out with our basic pipes, which mainly function to keep zombies off of you).

Also - this game is coop, but coop is optional. You can play the entire game SP if you wish.

My Verdict - 9/10. This is a lot of fun and despite a few problems, you can play it very well.

As of 30 August 2016: Unfortunately, I have to go back and change my review to "not recommended". The latest update, meet your match, while adding competitive mode (which is very broken and seldom works), got rid of many things that people liked about tf2. Even now for a casual game, you might have queue up to 5 mins to play 1 or 2 rounds on a map, before the game ending, and forcing you to disconnect and queue again. While its still fun, it can be very irritating and in some cases, makes queue more than you actually play (which tf2 was never about).

GG TF2, it was fun while it lasted :/

Original review: Get it! Its the best online multiplayer game out there - and guess what? ITS FREE!