Recent reviews by NetherBlade1

Overwatch could never.

Rivals has learned all the lessons of past hero shooter, presenting a cast of unique and well designed characters that come together to create dynamic gameplay. The pace of matches is fast, but characters have good sustain and relatively high TTK so it does not feel overly 'twitchy.'

I recommend joining in now while the game is fresh and the player base is high. This is a good community for causal gaming and more forgiving in comp then say Valorant or OW2.

"I don't know who this Ultra guy is, but I'm gonna kill him"

"ITS ULTRAKILLING TIME"

"So its an ADD shooter?"

"Oh, he's really just coming at you."

"That's a lot of stuff happening."

Exactly what it says on the store page, a fast-paced retro-FPS, This game has an incredible amount of depth and technical skills to master. However, the extremely fast-paced gameplay and excellent visual/sound design make the experience fun from start to finish. The game is also packed with secrets that feel rewarding to find, interesting weapon interactions to discover and provides you with all the tools to get better (including a sandbox mode and endless wave mode).

The lore is also fascinating, every enemy and weapon has some background lore which gives some insight into the world of Ultrakill.

Lastly the level design is masterful, gradually introducing the player to new enviromental elements and enemy compositions to organically encourage experimentation. I always felt like I was learning with each successive attempt and never felt totally stagnant.

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The community is also quite welcoming and there are many guides available. I recommend NOT looking at speedrun specific strategies, since they require highly specific skill sets you may not have developed yet. Also some of those strategies can make certain encounters anti-climatic (bad for a first time playthrough).

I like the idea of having a separate progression pathway through a new set of stages, it increases your options within a run and adds variety without bloating the number of stages in the main pathway.

The new characters seem well balanced, offering new styles of play which create incentive for you to grab different items. I especially enjoyed the Seeker in multiplayer, because it fulfills a support role while still having strong solo potential.

The new items are interesting, a few are notably more powerful. Only a few create new playstyles or synergy. They are good overall.

UPDATE: This review was changed from a negative to a positive following a series of bug fixes and item balance patches pushed by the studio. I am happy the game was not abandoned and hopeful the studio / producer will avoid repeating the same mistakes. I recommend RoR2 Seekers of the Storm, so long as you are comfortable with supporting a product which first launched in a poor state.

Overall this is an amazing trilogy and you are getting an excellent package deal. They haven't fixed everything though and the textures / lighting could have used more work. The Origin connection is annoying but minimally intrusive. I was aware of many story beats through cultural osmosis but I did a full playthrough being as blind as I could be. I enjoyed the journey a lot. Amazing characters, compelling choices and heart-warming moments are aplenty. This series is worth the rough spots at the end.

The games are too expansive for me to provide highly specific commentary here. But I want to drop one specific criticism. I will try to avoid major stuff but its still a spoiler for the ending of ME3. I will avoid using the names of any characters or detailed discussions of outcomes / choices.

If you are playing blind (and don't want to check my spoiler) I encourage looking up some no spoilers reddit threads with essential nexus mods for mass effect 3 specifically. Look for ones which restore cut content, improve the graphics and change the game to be more satisfying. If you want my opinion on what mods you should add, I give that in the spoilers. Otherwise check these guides I am linking below, open at your own risk there are spoilers in some of them.

Start Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/6qav4t/no_spoilers_a_somewhat_comprehensive_modding/

Its for the original ME trilogy so make sure to search for Legendary edition equivalents. Consider cross referencing with this guide below. The reddit thread is the safest to browse but the google doc contains some spoilers so browse carefully.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1amTec5yowKMoMiVpQkQ5tmsAf_kXo4HN07tIAcNbNFY/edit

Good Luck Commander.

***SPOILERS***

I had never played the trilogy before but I was aware of the controversy about ME3's ending. After playing the entire trilogy I have to say that the ending was a complete thematic betrayal and subversion of the themes set up throughout the entire journey. As a writer myself I was shocked by the stupidity of the final choice (its not a real choice), the first two games stand in direct opposition to 2/3 of the endings (only one makes sense). You are SHOWN and TOLD that peace with the villains in any form will get everyone killed, then told the EXACT OPPOSITE in a nonsensical way by an entity which has every motivation to lie to your face. But its presented as if you are supposed to take them seriously?! I do not believe the character of Shepard would even consider NOT destroying the villains outright. The controversy was NOT an overreaction, it was entirely understandable. I don't have time to explain my position in depth, but I think the writers betrayed the story they set up. A simpler 'you win' ending without a contrived moral choice and confusing mock-philosophical lecture would have been more enjoyable.

I love the games so much that I can't help but recommend them. Even with the bad ending, the quality of the trilogy overall is worth the pain. But I will never play the default ending ever again.

I strongly recommend modding the ending of ME3 completely with a so-called 'Happy Ending Mod'. I also recommend ignoring the writers / EA's statements (embrace the 'Death of the Author' mentality). As far as I'm concerned they betrayed their own story so I am not obliged to take them seriously. I strongly suggest using the mods below or something similar, the community content can repair the ending to ME3, giving you a better experience.

I only looked into modding ME3 so my recommendations are only for that game. My modlist is short and content-wise impacts only the LAST hour of the LAST game. It is as limited as it can be. My goals with these mods are to improve the graphics and to correct the writers mistake without radically changing the journey there.

TLDR (What mods?):

- ALOT + static lighting (graphics improvement)
- Take Back Earth (restore Ending cut content)
- Audemus' Happy Ending Mod (corrects the Ending)
- Community Patch (required for previous mods to function)

Just to be clear: My stance is that the writers literally betrayed their OWN story. They made an objective error and forced an illogical choice which should never have existed. Therefore the fans are allowed to fix it and ignore their interpretation of events related to the ending.

I dislike Noita for several reasons. I will attempt to break them down based on severity and why they were frustrating.

Most Severe:

Stunning Oversight - Some levels in this game feature tunneling enemies which are able to tunnel into the 'starting area' when they do so this 'angers the gods' as if you had broken the starting area. This causes a very powerful enemy to spawn and hunt you. When killed another will appear at the next level but stronger. This is a massive oversight which kills runs in the most unfair way possible.

Alchemy is Nonsense - You can mix stuff together to create useful potions which can destroy the balance if you get the healing / polymorph potions. But the ingredients are totally random each run so you will NEVER figure them out without using an external tool. The different components are just too far apart and too hard to transport for you to experimentally work out the recipes. Even if you do, they just change on the next run. So why bother? Its just a wasted mechanic.

No Progression - This game is entirely based on randomness, it is a pure RogueLike not a 'RogueLite', nothing you achieve in one run matters in the next. All the stuff you obtain is lost on death, there are no ways to improve your odds of success in subsequent runs. The RogueLike genre was almost totally replaced by RogueLites for a reason, no progression makes the time spent on failed runs feel wasted.

Moderately Severe

Overly Random - This game has a few combos which are very strong and just about everything else is too weak to survive in the later stages. This means you are often dependent on a handful of powerful options which appear randomly. Making it likely you will fail runs for no reason other than bad luck.

Least Severe

Performance - On my system this game is slow. Based on a cursory glance at the Reddit for this game it seems the game computes more than it should, simulating most of the level even when you are no where near it. This is clearly a design choice which was important to the Devs but it messed with my experience.

Misc. Factors (Not that bad)

Enemy Sprite Overlap - Enemies can stand on top on each other, so something that looks like an easy threat is instead a run ending death stack.

Enemies Kill Each Other - Sometimes enemies are hostile to each other, usually if they are of different 'types' which means you often run into areas of the map which are ghost towns with no content to engage with. The enemies (the challenge aka the 'fun') are already gone.

Stun Locking - Enemies / environmental features can stunlock you, it is very difficult to see stuff like this coming.

Instant Death - Most of the time when you lose a 'good run' it will be because of some effect which you didn't forsee instantly wiping you out. Such as a horde hiding in the ceiling or a misstep onto a bomb or into a lava pool. Not that bad, doesn't ruin the game. But it encourages a slow playstyle which some might not find fun.

Rare Good Events - I almost never had any random positive event occur in any run. Which made the whole game feel bleak.

Recommendation: Can be very fun at times, enough to trick you into playing for a long time. But looking back most of my playtime was wasted on failed runs that didn't help me progress and weren't any fun. There are so many secrets in this game that I will never see myself because it is just badly designed. I recommend you skip this game completely or save scum / mod the game.

TLDR: Typical Play Session for Notia looks like this...

You just throw yourself into the meat grinder dozens of times just to get a single decent run. Then lose it because of something you didn't see coming. Resolve to do better, fail dozens more times. Lose a run to something which is actually unfair like poor RNG or a monster tunneling into the starting area, then quit the session. I recommend save scumming or just not buying the game.

Hollow Knight is the best Metroidvania game, given its wealth of content and incredible price.

The world is expansive and atmospheric, with an incredible score that sets the mood perfectly. As you unlock more abilities the world opens up and its scale will impress you.

The controls are tight, with immediate responses and the ability to control your movement during jumps, including turning in an instant. This feeds into the challenging but highly rewarding combat.

The only cons I can bring up are subjective. The pacing can feel slow during the opening hours. In addition you may find yourself frustrated as the game goes through several intense difficulty spikes. There are no accessibility options here, so you will need to sharpen your reflexes to a razor edge.

This game is worth the full price.

Stellaris pulls you in with its wonderful sense of exploration and discovery. Then keeps you in with high replay value. The base game is best purchased on sale alongside the Utopia and Apocalypse DLCs. Since the price of these DLCs can be steep, that is why I recommend buying this game on SALE.

Pro Points
-High Replay Value
-Main Game is always being updated and added too
-Sandbox Grand Strategy (Set your own goals)
-Active modding community
-Interesting events and good writing. Creates a powerful sense of exploration and wonder.

Con Points
-Updates are often buggy or significantly change the game play
-FPS typically drops towards the end of a given game. However this is being worked on by the devs