Recent reviews by SpeedyBst

I received this as a bonus for supporting Pixel Dice, and figured it'd make a nice distraction to sit down and play for the evening. It was actually a pretty good little game, reminded me of Portal in a lot of ways - teaching you patterns for you to recognise later, the humourous little elements on the boards and the death notices being cheesy lines. I'd say you'd get about an hour or two out of it, and it had some options to make it more interesting for repeating playthroughs.

So I initially bought the game knowing absolutely nothing about it, was just a cool looking game that's on discount for release, seems pretty good. Installed it, didn't play it till three days ago. I bought the soundtrack after an hour. Last night I 100%'d the game. To state that I found this game satisfying to play would be a major understatement.

The movement was crisp and responsive; except for one instance the world was designed in a fluid manner that meant I was never searching for where to go next in a level; the enemy design made it a pleasure to learn the patterns of each of them; and finally the visuals and soundtrack came together stunningly - quite literally a few times I just stopped in a run to enjoy the visual spectacle whilst listening to a great soundtrack.

I won't say it's a flawless game of course, on a few repeated runs some small things stuck out to me - occasionally clipping through surfaces when dashing; a microwave prop facing the wall in a clear sign of dominance; occasionally grappling, wallrunning or abilities wouldn't work correctly even if the GUI was showing they'd connect; the absolute pinpoint aiming those robots seem to have if you ducked a millisecond too early. However, the vast majority of issues only stood out when I was trying to get through a level with 0 deaths, and having to restart it because i've clipped into some ground dressing and been shot, requiring you to sit through the loading screen again. During normal gameplay, other than the microwave which was more funny than annoying, most of the other bugs happened so infrequently I wasn't bothered by them.

The only things I felt the game could have used, especially for repeated playthroughs, was something like an Iron Skull mode - one life, if you die it's back to level start - so you're not constantly hitting escape and that restart level button; and it also could use a method of skipping some of the tutorial cyberspace sections, since pacing wise they bring everything to an absolute crawl. (The rotating cuboid one definitely springs to mind for that one)

Overall though, it's not hard to recommend this title to anyone. The visuals were a feast, the soundtrack lives on my phone now, the controls were tight and worked exceptionally well, and it's entered a small roster of games I enjoyed enough to complete to 100% achievement status.

I suppose He'll have to deal with being taken out by a mere tool

I've been watching and waiting for this one since I saw an announcement a few years back, followed up by that great little demo, and I can't say I've been disappointed by Carrion. It was a neat little twist on the horror genre, the gameplay was tight, succinct and just as long as it needed to be I felt, and didn't waste anything within that time. It kept up the fine balance of keeping you feeling like you were constantly gaining in power, but also still fragile enough that you couldn't just charge a combat mech without thinking a bit about how you were going to do it beforehand. Combined with the trickle feed of new powers, and ways to progress with them the gameplay was pretty good.

Occasionally, it felt like the game would make you backtrack a bunch in order to progress (one particular room with some drones in the armoured research labs springs to mind for that) but the spacing of checkpoints was on point so often that it really only served to highlight how out of place the couple of small ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it's placement were. Later on I also found the game was a bit eager to gate things behind a laser detection field, leaving you weakened before a combat encounter but again, by no means a deal breaker.

The controls in and of themselves were pretty tight for how it played out, the only things that bothered me personally with them was that aiming your movement and abilities were both tied to the mouse cursor - which made it sometimes awkward to attack and not also charge into that one cyborg with a flamer - and that sometimes (especially once your blob got pretty large) what counted as forward for movement would become a little less precise, and your overall control went down considerably overall - likely intended, but it still was annoying to accidently slide straight under a mine layer instead of cleanly into that vent before it.

Overall, damn fine experience, gameplay was solid and for my money worth the asking price, definitely a game that you'll probably only play once, be satisfied with and likely never pick up again owing to the lack of proper replayability - think of it like your Portal series, it's probably fun to play through again from time to time, but you're definitely going to know how and where to go again as soon as you pick it up, and nothing is really going to surprise you replaying it. Here's hoping for a follow up game after that story ending too.

TL;DR: Honestly, give it a miss right now if you're in it for the campaign, look into it a few months from now.

Whilst I would dearly love to say nothing but positive things about the first Halo game on PC in years now, this definitely felt like a highly undercooked port. Three levels into the game, I've already noticed a rather large number of gameplay issues, ranging from small and kinda acceptable things (crouching whilst moving doesn't work with keyboard and mouse, you have to stop then crouch, and it messes with reloading if you don't use toggle crouch; occasionally there's some input delay for things like switching weapons or activating armor abilities) to some downright infuriating things which really degraded the experience.

I don't know how else to put this but it's almost like the spectre of Fire Warrior is haunting Halo again, except this time it's Halo that's the buggy mess. AI suddenly freezing up in the middle of a battle (including some of the wildlife, such as the Moa), Jun dreaming of a world of peace and just forgetting how to fire his weapon, a lack of situational awareness to both AI factions about what constitutes cover that can be fired over/around. Watching a Hunter firing continuously into a concrete barrier whilst jittering on the spot trying to path around it until it dies, watching Cat do the same thing trying to enter an occupied passenger seat of a Warthog, all of the marines in Sword Base that just refused to progress past the first floor landing. It's a mess, plainly put. I'm considering pulling out my 360 and playing back through it on that just to see if most of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ are the result of trying to play through rose tinted glasses, or if this is actually an awful port on several levels, but somehow I think it's going to be the latter because of how glaringly these issues stood out to me.

Others have also mentioned changes to customization system, and it's frankly very disappointing. Remember earning CR for playing any game mode, single player or multiplayer? That's gone now, replaced with a multiplayer only Season system, where everything has a fixed unlock progression. So if you were wanting to customize your spartan for the campaign you are unfortunately quite out of luck unless you're willing to invest into the multiplayer.

At the time of writing this, I haven't yet tried to play any of the multiplayer games, so I can't comment on how the matchmaking and servers are for denizens of Upsidedownia, but my hopes are far from high for it. For anyone looking to get the game, I would strongly recommend first reading a few dozen of the lengthier negative reviews, and preparing for a version of Reach that feels really subpar on a lot of levels. This hasn't exactly filled me with any great degree of confidence in the rest of the PC MCC so far, but I suppose only time will tell if additional patches will help improve the state of things.

Edit 1: Ok wow, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, words can not describe the absurdity that is Campaign Co-op. Nearly 2sec input lag for whomever wasn't the host, making it virtually unplayable. And the kicker? Multiplayer (only non-matchmaker tested so far) doesn't have the problem at all, even without altering anything else. At least server stability was pretty decent overall. Additionally of note, you don't gain progress towards customization unlocks for non-matchmaking games it would seem, so unless that's of interest to you you're still rather out of luck.

There's been several times now I wish I could go back and grasp this games with both hands and dive right in again, blissfully unaware of the terrors and beauties of the deep, deeper and deepest parts of this game. Swimming through pitchblack caves as you watch your oxygen run out, fleeing from predators in the shallow reefs till you learn they really just want some fish, the ongoing search for that next clue that'll drag you on through the story, it's brilliant. I've been playing only since about the Disease update, but every major update has been a reason for me to strap into Lifepod 5 and plumet to the planet below again. I highly recommend this game if you're a fan of exploration and a well told story without a guide.

A great little distraction for during the day, and an excellent time playing 4-way on a big TV - watching the faces and the defeated cries of your opponents under the Ronin M60 barrage is always satisfying. The only downside to the game is that after a while I noticed that whilst the weapons and bodies varied, the AI itself would usually resort to the Imperial Guardsmen tactic of Victory through superior numbers, and can be easily funnelled into reflex action after a while of playing, so this is definitely a game that has more to offer as a Multiplayer game played on a TV with the maximum players.
7/10, and look, free crabs included!