Recent reviews by CrystalUnclear

You can cast Flipendo on cows.......and you get an achievement. Was it worth it? I don't know. Was it fun? Yes...yes it was.

Is Starfield the greatest thing since Halo 3, no not even close. But Halo doesn’t have over 2000+ hours as Skyrim does on my account, or 1000+ hours as Fallout 4 does. Starfield we likely be the same way given time. There are plenty of single player games that are objectively better than Bethesda games, but none that rival their return value. Once you beat Last of Us or Halo or Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War, you’ve largely seen the story and you maybe play it through once or twice more for nostalgia's sake or to get things you missed, but you seldom come back to them otherwise.

Bethesda games on the other hand have an entirely different vibe to them that keeps so many people coming back to their worlds time and time again. From my experience this is a rare occurrence for games without multiplayer. The wonderful reality is that people still play Oblivion. People still play Skyrim. People still play Fallout 3. People still play Fallout 4. And all of these titles have a loyal and loving fanbases who continue to come back to these games year after year because they have fallen in love with the world and everything in it.

Is Starfield as good as Skyrim or Fallout 4? Personally I don’t think so, but it’s not that far behind them. What makes Starfield different and unique from those two however is that instead of one single world to discover, you have a whole series of worlds to explore each which their own quirky tales to tell should you invest the time to find them. There is so much to do, so much to see, so much to listen to when you put the time and effort in, that it’s overwhelming at times. The guns are also all fun to use and have a pretty great variation in terms of type, power and looks. Although I don’t use them often, the food items are all immersive and well designed and further the world building as do all the space suit designs.

And then there’s the ship maker/ship building.

There is something truly magical about getting your first spaceship and then upgrading and tinkering with it as you explore the galaxy on your adventures. Or you can buy a new one and build it from the ground up should you have the credits to do so. Bethesda’s truly has crafted an amazingly immersive universe and exploring it with the ship as your home base is something special. I have been thoroughly enjoying my time in the Starfield and see this game being one I return to for months, even years to come. The only thing I have been annoyed by so far is the space flight controls which felt awful at first but after a few battles I got the hang of it.

So is Starfield a 10 out of 10? No, but I don’t think any Bethesda game, let alone any other game for that matter is. A 10/10 would mean that a game is 100% perfect. Flawless in every single regard. Not one game I have played has been a 10, and this includes Baldur's Gate 3. Flawless games don’t exist as there will always be something that people don’t like or a bug somewhere that breaks the game. Every game has flaws and that is okay. Things are rarely perfect. Bethesda games are no different and yet they always find success. Fallout 76 is the perfect example of this. It launched terribly and yet people still hung on and weathered the storm and still has decent sized player base.

The simple fact is that Bethesda games do well.

People can hate Starfields success, and hate Bethesda as a company, all they like. they can even say whatever negative comments they want about the company and its games. But nothing anyone says changes the reality that there will be thousands, maybe even millions of people playing Starfield and other Bethesda games for many years to come.

Stupid controversies aside, I'd give Starfield a solid 8/10. There is a lot to love if you actually make an effort to immerse yourself in the world and don't go into the game wanting to hate it. If you loved Oblivion or Skyrim or Fallout 3 and especially if you loved Fallout 4, then Starfiled might just be your next big fix. It certainly has been for me!!

I stole the inventory of a certain oblivious merchant and sold it back to him….five times and counting. 10/10

Great gameplay, challenging combat, awesome companions, amazingly beautiful world full of things to do and explore and nearly endless ways to approach situations and fights. There is no sugarcoating that the game is hard, but I have no idea what I’m doing and have been doing alright so far. It has a steep learning curve at first, but if you bother to put time and effort into experimenting and learning the mechanics, the game has so much to reward you with.

By far the hardest boss I’ve had to fight is the character creation as it took me hours and hours to beat and even then I find myself having to return and beat it again. It’s just so much fun to creat various characters even if I don’t immediately play them.

This is truly a game worth trying even If you’re a bit intimidated by the whole DnD based combat. I was in a similar spot but decided to give it a chance. It’s since earned a very well deserving spot on my list of best games I’ve ever purchased.

Thank you Larian for giving us such a wonderful game!

I freaking love this game so far despite it not being in third person. I didn't play RE 7 for the reason of it wasn't third person and that I'm not a fan of many true horror games, first person or not. RE has pretty much been the exception for me, and RE 7 took that away sadly.
I know some people do not mind this change, but I for one really didn't like it and that's perfectly fine. the game just wasn't for me.
Resident Evil Village changed that thankfully. Yeah I wish it was third person and there are a few scenes that made me feel a little off, but once you get over that, this game is actually quite fun to play. The gameplay is challenging and fun and most importantly, rewarding. Managing combat in first person is a little tough at first thanks to the POV, but I found that practicing a little bit on the first group of enemies, I was get the hang of how enemies move. (Hint: They dodge A LOT)
Some people will probably be disappointed by this swing back towards RE4, but I for one am happy with it and it should by no means dissuade you from trying the game out.

If you specifically liked the horror aspect of Resident Evil 7 and some of the early RE games, you might find this game a bit tame and probably not that scary. That being said, the game does have its moments of terror, however brief they are. Mostly though, this game is very much a RE4 style action horror game. The tension comes from interactions with several enemies at once and dwindling supplies, not horror and the potential for jump scares (though there are some). The bosses are okay, at least as far as the first boss goes. I can't speak for later boss fights but from what I've heard, they are nothing like the insanity the Wesker boss fights rose to in RE5 and they are definitely not as hard, so that's a plus. Sadly there is not a pay to win option for bosses in the form of the RPG as far as I know.

As for bugs, the only bug I have encountered so far are the subtitles deciding to take a break halfway through a few cutscenes. Other than that and the occasional FPS drop, the game has been running smoothly.

All in all, Resident Evil Village, at least for me personally, is a big improvement from RE7. I still wish they would ditch the clunky feeling first person camera. If you really, REALLY, don't like games with a first person perspective, then this might not be the game for you. But if you are willing to try and set aside your distaste of first person horror games, then there is a real gem of a game to found here.

(QUICK SUMMARY)
In short, RE Village is probably not as good as RE 7(for some people) and definitely not as good as RE4, yet RE Village still manages to be a solid entry to the franchise bringing satisfying gunplay, robust and straightforward upgrade system, great enemies, breathtaking scenery and of course, creepy but beautiful vampire ladies chasing you through a castle trying to drink your blood (though that last point might only appeal to some truly thirsty people I have seen on the internet)


As a last note to anyone who is thinking of giving this game a skip, I would say this. It is okay to not like a game. Don't pay attention to the people telling you that you're wrong and that your opinion is obsolete. I skipped RE7 cause I didn't like the tone and focus on horror, so you can skip RE Village if you choose to as well. It is okay to not like something.

I have spoken...

Boss battles are rough and combat can be frustrating and yet i have enjoyed the ride nonetheless. The games faults are overshadowed by the planets you visit, which are gripping, lushly designed and populated by some truly original and interesting creatures, most of which want to kill you. There is a decent amount of exploring involved and lots of backtracking (if you want to find all the loot boxes.) All together i have enjoyed playing as Cal and seeing the galaxy as it was after Order 66, but before episode IV.

I picked up this game a few days ago after watching Jacksepticeye play it on his channel. Its an early access build so of course its buggy and broken in certain areas, and the game has substantial frame rate drops in certain areas...

Yet somehow, despite all the bugs, this game still manages to blow Subnautica clean out of the water with almost laughable ease. Unknown Worlds has taken everything the learned while developing Subnautica and used it to create an enticing new world for us to explore! The only DLC i can remember enjoying more is Fallout 3's Mothership Zeta which is arguably one of the best DLC's ever created.

Bottom line:
Subnautica: Below Zero is a promising sequel to the original game. So much so that i believe we should all support and encourage the Unknown Worlds team to work towards turning Below Zero into a fully fleshed out game instead of DLC

If you loved Subnautica, then you will almost certainly enjoy this game despite it still being early access. Below Zero is well worth the money, if only to help support a truly brilliant development team as they craft another stunning chapter in the Subnautica universe :)


PS;
The bone sharks are back and just as scary as they were before.
Unfortunately for us however, there are also several new, almost prehistoric looking creatures stalking the waters deeper down.
I won't spoil anything, but lets just sat that the new creatures are just as terrifying and compelling as the creatures fellow Subnautica veterans are familiar with.

Simply one of the most addicting and well made survival horror games I have played in a while. while not quite as fun as the first killing floor, KF2 is still fantastic and well worth your money.

I used to love this game. I started playing years ago when the game was relatively new. Those were different times. I got back into it after a few of my friends started playing tanks again and for a few months we were having fun. I managed to get my German tech tree to 7.7 from 6.0, the British tech tree from 7.0 to 7.3/7.7 and the American’s to 6.0. I also broke into the Israeli tech tree fairly successfully and had some fun at 7.3 with their first two versions of the American M48.

But pretty quickly my friends and I hit a wall, hard. Repair cost anxiety, bad maps, abysmal team balancing and way more spawn camping and spawn sniping than I remember. It got to the point where the frustration vastly outweighed the enjoyment of playing. One of my friends quit shortly before I did saying she was so frustrated and anxious all the time while we were playing that she wasn’t enjoying it anymore. This made me take a step back and evaluate things. And you know what, she is 100% right. I quit playing just about three weeks ago and I have been so much happier.

And there is the problem the developers have. They have accomplished a miraculous feat. They have managed to creat a game that three people find more enjoyable to not play than to play. I can’t imagine we are the only ones. It’s a 90% frustration, 10% enjoyment situation. It appears the devs might be on a path to trying to improve the game, but as it stands right now, the same problems that made me quit the first time years ago are even worse and more glaring now.

The player base also has some seriously bad apples. Team killers are the most common. Players who push your tank off bridges or into the line of fire just because they don’t like you or the tank your using. Spawn killing is near constant and pretty despicable. I myself never sunk low enough to do this on purpose but the way the devs design maps, there are a few maps where its really hard not to spawn kill cause the map is literally a blank empty field with no cover at all.

Team balancing is atrocious. A usual game has one team dominating from the beginning and the other team basically target practice the entire game and unable to do anything. Maybe one or two games out of ten, your team actually manages to do anything worthwhile. And once in a blue moon, you might actually get a team with players who actually try to win and know what to do and where to go. When this happens the game is at its most fun, but sadly these games are rare and afterward it’s right back to one sided team stomping. And it only gets worse and worse the higher up in the tiers to climb. The teams start being full of obnoxious premium campers who never want to risk their tanks and just sit on a ridge far away from the objectives just sniping enemies never bothering to help capture points. The scariest thing is that I bought a few premium tanks to help grind the tech trees and found myself slowly starting to play the same way. It has everything to do with the game enabling, even encouraging the worst behavior and attitude out of players in order to maximize what meager rewards are to be earned.

The fundamental reason I quit this game for a second time is this. I do not enjoy the person I become when I play this game. I didn’t notice it in the moment or while I was still playing the game, but after three weeks away, it’s obvious how hollowed out and empty a game War Thunder is and how much the game affected me while I was playing it. The in game models for the vehicles are spectacular, the best around and really fun to drive around. But sadly, the actual game behind those vehicles is woefully inadequate.

Being frustrated at a game is great if there is noticeable, reliable and most importantly, consistent and meaningful progression. War Thunder has none of those. It’s a grinding, miserable, desolate slog up a muddy hill with no sense of completion or worthwhile achievement waiting for you at the top. When you do unlock a new tank, like any sane person would, you will want to use the vehicle you just ground hundreds of hours for right away. BUT NO. If you do this, you are entering a new BR with just one vehicle and that one vehicle is stock with no modifications thus severely limiting its performance in most cases. You will be regularly put in games a full BR higher than you with players in vehicles they have been using for countless hours. You are little more than target practice in some vehicles, unable to do anything meaningful until you grind out your vehicle. This is a feature specifically implemented to encourage you to spend money to improve vehicle modules, some of which should be basic equipment and be included as default on any tank you purchase. So that awesome vehicle you just unlocked essentially becomes a hindrance to you and can actually decrease your performance at certain BRs. This is particularly noticeable with some of the heavier tanks that are basically tubs when you unlock them and are so huge that you are usually taken out before you get anywhere.


But wait, it gets worse still. As if that module bs wasn’t bad enough, there is also the influx of premium players at higher BRs meaning that your hard earned fully modified Leopard 1 or T-54 gets obliterated instantly by a pay-to-succeed IS-6 premium player parked on a hilltop 600m away with bushes planted all over it’s hull ensuring you would never ever see them. Maybe how tanks are used in real life, but this is A GAME and that is not at all fun. There is simply no relief, no end in sight, no satisfaction of reaching a milestone because it is instantly taken away from you. If you stop for even a moment to relish the unlock of a new tank, it gets blasted to pieces by a bushed up 122mm cannon.

To put it simply, the game is simply not as fun as it could, or more accurately, should be. Certainly not as fun as it once was. The game used to be great…many, many years ago. But over the years the developers have slowly sucked every ounce of life out of their game. It’s a husk of it’s former glory and it is really, really sad to see the state the game is in now. But it’s even sadder to see it not getting better, but getting worse and worse, all while the Developers patronize and blame the player base for all the games problems.

The developers have infused just enough draw to keep new players coming in and to keep last years players hopeful that things will get better.

They won’t.

The game is the way it is for one very simple reason. To line the developers pockets with gold. They have shown they have zero interest in fixing or improving the game unless they are forced to, and have zero regard for the state of the player community. As long as the premium player base keeps giving them money, the game will stay in the awful state it is in right now.

New players stay the heck away from this game. Quit while your ahead, before you get suckered into a system specifically designed and engineered to exploit your emotions and get you to open your wallet.

Do not let the Snail win.

Simply the best Multiplayer FPS experience i have encountered. this is not like cod at all and provides massive 34 vs 34 player battles.

The only downside i encounter is that i have not found a single laptop that can run this game. RO2 requires a decent CPU & Gpu to run smoothly (for me at least)

Overall I would give RO2 a 10/10 and highly recommend this to anyone who is tired of COD and wants s great and realistic warfare experience..