Reviews!

Talk about video games here
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XSI
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:41 pm
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Reviews!

Post by XSI » #104055

Because I made a bunch

So I'll post them, or links to them here. Why not? Comment if I fucked up somewhere or whenever
Will post new reviews I make, and then you can call me an asshat for not liking your favourite games

Full list:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... commended/

Currently counting 44, but one of them is DLC so that doesn't count

Among them:

Xenonauts(Good game)(Real x-com, get it)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/223830/
Spoiler:
Xenonauts. It's greatest strength is that it's X-com. It's greatest weakness is that it's X-com.

If you're an older gamer, played the original X-coms, and just wanted them to get a graphics update and maybe some mods on being able to better organise your units and maybe a few updates, look no further. You've found it.

If you don't know what this "X-com" business is about, both X-com and Xenonauts are tactical and strategic games where you defend earth from an alien invasion through a specialised organisation and squad who deals with the aliens.
You'll respond to the aliens by shooting down the UFOs using regular human fighter aircraft, and then landing a squad of soldiers with just plain old human guns near them to clear out the survivors. After that, you'll begin to research better technology. Laser rifles, faster aircraft to take down the UFOs, armour that protects from the alien weaponry, and so on.

You will meet several different kinds of aliens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and figure out why they're invading. But most importantly, you're going to stop them. You're going to take all their technology and make it your own, and you will end up with several bases across the world to find, and destroy any intruders who push into your atmosphere.

As for the changes between this and X-com, they are mostly good. You have an airstrike option on alien crash sites so that you don't need to do everything or have them expire when you've been too busy dealing with other sites, though it will provide you with far less rewards than if you send in a squad of soldiers. There are new pieces of equipment, such as the shield. You'll no longer need to micromanage every last clip or laser battery in your arsenal and order the construction of small things like two laser batteries - Just keep track of the ones you bring into combat so you don't run out. There are now more involved air battles, along with air terror sites. And cover, along with range, now actually provides a bonus or penalty to your shots. You don't have to worry about this turning into a chest high wall simulator though, it works out well and you don't have to stay in cover. It's just a suggestion that increases your soldiers' lifespan. There are some others but they are mostly positive. One I'd say is slightly negative is that you can not land on a UFO and blast a hole in the ceiling to enter it as you could in the original X-com, though if you never played that game(And even if you did), you might not even notice that option isn't there.

Mechanics wise, it works out very similar to X-com, with an isometric view and tile based map. I've found some maps had too little vertical space sometimes but often this wasn't a big problem, the controls are pretty good, mainly just using your mouse to command your units. It's turn based, with a world map to place your bases on and do your air battles, and a base overview where you can build out your base by modular rooms.
Interestingly, I've found that the difficulty settings actually changes AI behavior, rather than the lazy way of just giving the AI more armour or damage. I'm not sure if it also gives the aliens more stats or makes it more difficult to get money for the player, but the fact difficulty settings actually improve the AI is something that many AAA games completely fail at.

In the end, it's X-com. It has most of the strengths of X-com, but it also has the flaws of X-com. You may need to restart several times if you're new and you might get discouraged. A random lucky shot could kill off your best soldier and send the nearby rocket launcher guy into a berserk panic state right into your own squad. If you're not used to it, you'll wonder just how long the campaign keeps going and it may turn into a game of 'whack-a-UFO' for you with slow or barely noticable progress. Or you may simply not have a clue what's going on until the aliens are already in a better position than you.

Even then, it's a very good game. I would say it's worth grabbing it at some point if you want to see what the fuss is about, or because you want some more of the X-com from long ago (Without looking at Interceptor or Enforcer for now)
This War of Mine(Also good)(Neat survival thing)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/282070/
Spoiler:
This War of Mine has an interesting take on survival games by putting the player not against zombies, or the wilderniss, but against human nature. You begin with three survivors in a city under siege during a civil war, supplies are running low and they just arrived at an abandonned building. This will be their holdout for the war.

You will then manage their daily lives, making workbenches, chairs, beds, and everything else they need to get through the war. Of course, with supplies low, you need to prioritise. Do you really need a second bed? Maybe that material can best be spend on something else..

At night, you go out to scavenge supplies. You bring one (Only one per night) of your survivors to a location that you hope has supplies you can use. Once there, you can encounter many things. It could be an abandonned building with nothing there. There could be a friendly (But well armed) trader, there could be civilians like you just trying to survive, or you could be shot on sight by the locals. Or there can be any other event... Or nothing. There is plenty of variation to be had.

Personally, I went to a church, unarmed, as I had nothing yet. The priest told me about how the place was robbed, and asked me not to disturb the refugees under the church. So I went on to the ruined building behind the church. Scavenging up supplies, when I notice there's sound outside the door. It's just standing there, so I creep to the door and look through the keyhole. Just then, a man with a pistol turned around and made for the door. I looked for a place to run and hide and set off, just as he opened the door.

"Oh, Hello there. Don't worry, I'm just looking around"

He seemed pretty friendly. So I just went on my way to pick out some more nails and wood for my own business. It went alright this time. But plenty of people are less friendly than this guy.

Combat, which you will at some point get into, is not explained in any way. So you will likely have to take a bit to learn about it, and stock up on bandages as you do so. At the same time, the stealth system is not explained, but easy enough to understand.

With all this, you are tasked with making your group survive the war. Or at least as long as you can. It can be easy, challenging, or at times nearly impossible. But that's war, and neither the government nor the rebel forces will help you there - You're not their problem.
And once you've gone through the game, you can ask yourself if you really did win. Did you end up stealing from old people to let them starve? Did you rob a priest for fuel? Shanked a doctor for a bandage? You can ask yourself what winning really means in war. And if just surviving is all you should try to do.
Children of the Nile (Good, citybuilder)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ded/17100/
Spoiler:
Children of the Nile is the more modern version of the old citybuilders like Pharaoh And Zeus, allowing you to build a city in ancient Egypt. Some of the more modern things are, aside from the obvious graphics being different, that you no longer need to worry about intersections sending your supply and maintenance people entirely the wrong direction. You can now actually focus on building a city, rather than having to puzzle out the most efficient way to place buildings without them collapsing, catching fire, and starving because the food vendor doesn't show up there.

Citizens in your city are in a class society. From top to bottom, they are the pharaoh. That is you, and your family. You have a palace, and your family goes out to collect any sort of material, be it luxury goods or a humble pot to store things in. You are the state. All food belonging to the city also belongs to you, but you will always have a nice supply of food stored away in your palace. Pharaoh gets first pick, and a percentage of all food farmed in taxes.
Just below you are the nobles, who live in large houses and get their income from the farmers under them, and in order to support a large farming population, you will need nobles to guide them.
Under the nobles are the educated elite. Priests, scribes, overseers, and commanders of the military. They have similar demands as nobles in terms of luxuries, but they are paid by the government for their services. Only the sons of nobles and luxury shopkeepers qualify for education. These are the doctors, the administration, and the tax collectors. Because nobles will try to dodge paying taxes, a scribe can catalogue how many fields have been sown so that you know exactly how much belongs to Pharaoh.

Under them still, the middle class. Entertainers and shopkeepers. These earn their bread through their services and the goods they sell. Simple, but neccesary for society to function.
Below them, the peasantry. Farmers and servants. The farmers work the land and earn enough food to last until next harvest in doing so, and the servants do the shopping for nobles and collect resources for luxury shopkeepers - So they don't have to mingle with the common folk.
Separate from them all are government workers. They fit somewhere between the middle class and peasantry, and are paid generously by Pharaoh's bread. They are the brickmakers, the construction workers for bigger buildings(Small buildings like a servant's shack are made by the servants themselves), and anything else government wants from a papyrus maker up to the military.

If at any time your system fails and the people are without food, they will leave their jobs to scavenge for it. Dates, pomegranades, fish and so on are plentiful, so you need not fear you'll ruin your city and have a ghost town.

The game starts slow every map, as you have 10 bricks(Enough for one baker, brickmakers huts don't need bricks), and only one educated person in your city at the start. So you will want to build a school and several brickmakers more to ensure you can keep growing. Before you know it, you've spend several hours building. There is no immigration either, from what I can find. You start the map with 200-300 citizens living in huts, scavenging off the land. After that, children will be your main population growth. This becomes an issue when you want a big military, as military men don't get married - They live in their barracks-tent with two other men.

Some things that are bad, there are a lot of shrines out there that will take a bit to figure out which goes where and which are popular - If you even have room for them. Sometimes your citizens or a merchant may get stuck on a corner, and sometimes you may find your labourers can't figure out which limestone block they want to pull, and manage to fail to move any of them.

In the end, it's still a pretty and somewhat relaxing game where you can spend hours getting your city just right, and then decide to change it up again because you have a new idea. Cosmetic things like gardens, plazas and trees are free to place too, so you can make it look good without having to worry about your workers spending ages watering the plants and not farming.

Worth grabbing it if you like citybuilding, it's good at what it does
And Guild Commander(Bad, waiting game)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/337220/
Spoiler:
Guild Commander is a game with an interesting concept, that sadly falls flat in the execution. While I will insist that the concept is pretty good and can work to become a very good game, full of interesting interactions, intrigue, and many enjoyable hours, this is not the game that will do justice to the concept of managing an adventurer's guild.

While the graphics are pretty good looking, and I am a sucker for isometric stuff that also manages to look pretty decent, there are a few too many problems with this game to make it worth spending time, money, and effort on. To continue on with graphics, your entire gameplay area is your guild hall. No, you can not build the building itself, you only have the rooms there which you can fill up in different, but still pre-determined ways. Characters do not move around in your guild either, they merely teleport to their destination. You can not zoom out to see your entire guild hall at once, and to find anyone in it is a pain due to how close the camera is. This is less about being a guild commander, and more about being the guy who rents a pre-made guild house and then just waits for something to happen.

In short, there is no interaction.
You can send out your adventurers to other regions, but at no point are you shown any of this. You do not even have a map of the place, and the explanation on how to do things has basically shown you the entire game. There is only so long that you can look at a building in which nothing changes before you become bored, and while the vaguely humourous adventurer names and tooltips help you dull the monotony of not doing anything, they do not solve the problem.
I was reminded of Progressquest, the game about waiting. Except in this game your adventurers do not even level up. Aside from their equipment, nothing about them changes.

The list of things that could have gone so much better just goes on and on. Equipment is useless, especially if you consider making some yourself. You have no control over your adventurers aside from sending them out once or twice a month, and even that takes 3 or more clicks if you want to send them to some place that can actually use them. Adventurer's stats recover both too fast and too slow, depending on the situation, and it overall just lacks gameplay.
This is more of a waiting game, or perhaps an interactive screensaver, which requires that you keep clicking it or it will give you a gameover.

Interesting concept, but sadly it is all just squandered potential. Guild Commander is not something I would recommend to anyone. Not to people who are fans of strategy, nor to simulation fans, and most certainly not to anyone who wants to build or be creative. This game does not offer that - though I am still not sure what it *does* offer.
Currently also curating at Only Correct Opinion
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/onlycorrectopinion

Also, recommend me stuff to review
Last edited by XSI on Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Stan_Studnick
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:39 am
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Stan_Studnick » #104057

Review Unturned, please. I think it's pretty alright, and it's free-to-play.
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Timbrewolf
Rarely plays
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Timbrewolf » #104076

Shed Wolf Numero Uno
NSFW:
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ThanatosRa
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Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Re: Reviews!

Post by ThanatosRa » #104077

THE ARROGANCE.

Fucking New Yorker!
my forum gimmick is that no one knows who i am

gender is irrelevant NO UR IRRELEVANT
u a bish
y u heff 2 b med
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Timbrewolf
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Timbrewolf » #104079

The recommendation percentages don't lie.

Also I put in some effort to write all those /tg/ curator reviews fuck you mang.
Shed Wolf Numero Uno
NSFW:
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XSI
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:41 pm
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #104087

Didn't even notice there was stuff like that at the group

The whole /tg/station steam group is sort of under the radar for me as it never seemed to do anything whatsoever except collect people who have at one point played SS13

Feel free to curate with my reviews on it though

And maybe we can figure out a way to do reviewing together, I seem to be doing it a lot and having an active group to do it for helps. The current one I'm using was set up by Urist and it's been pretty quiet

Edit: Just checked your reviews and found that I already approved with the thumbs up on most of them
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Ricotez
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:21 pm
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Location: The Netherlands

Re: Reviews!

Post by Ricotez » #104102

MimicFaux wrote:I remember my first time, full of wonderment and excitement playing this game I had heard so many stories about.
on the arrival shuttle, I saw the iconic toolbox on the ground. I clubbed myself in the head with it trying to figure out the controls.
Setting the tool box, now bloodied, back on the table; I went to heal myself with a medkit. I clubbed myself in the head with that too.
I've come a long ways from asking how to switch hands.
Spoiler:
#coderbus wrote:<MrPerson> How many coders does it take to make a lightbulb? Three, one to make it, one to pull the pull request, and one to fix the bugs
Kor wrote:The lifeweb playerbase is primarily old server 2 players so technically its our cancer that invaded them
peoplearestrange wrote:Scared of shadows whispers in their final breath, "/tg/station... goes on the tabl..."
DemonFiren wrote:Please, an Engineer's first response to a problem is "throw it into the singulo".
tedward1337 wrote:Donald Trump is literally what /pol/ would look like as a person
CrunchyCHEEZIT wrote:why does everything on this server have to be a federal fucking issue.
Saegrimr wrote:One guy was running around popping hand tele portals down in the halls before OPs even showed up and got several stranded out on lavaland.
The HoP just toolboxes someone to death out of nowhere, then gets speared by a chemist who saw him murder a guy, then the chemist gets beaten to death because someone else saw him kill the HoP.
Tele-man somehow dies and gets its looted by an atmos tech who managed to use it to send two nuke ops to lavaland, who were then surrounded by several very angry people from earlier and some extra golems on top of it.
Captain dies, gets cloned/revived, lasers the guy holding the disk into crit to take it back.
Some idiot tries to welderbomb the AI hiding out at mining for no discernible reason.
Two permabans and a dayban, i'm expecting a snarky appeal from one of them soon. What the fuck.
ShadowDimentio wrote:I am the problem
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XSI
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:41 pm
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #104240

Card Hunter

http://store.steampowered.com/app/293260
Pretty sweet game, also multiplayer and free so check it out

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ded/293260
Spoiler:
It's already been 6 hours?

Card Hunter is an excellent tactical game in which you play a pen and paper game(Much simplified and game-y-fied of course) where you have a party of 3 heroes in a medieval/fantasy style setting. You go through questing modules and collecting loot to of course upgrade your own equipment and play through the storylines presented.

It's a charming game with simple but good graphics, a solid foundation for gameplay, and plenty of quests available. You do not seem to be hampered or stopped by paywalls, which seem to only be there to allow you access to more loot, cosmetics, and at times to unlock some new adventures. Not that you -need- those adventures, you can do just fine without them, but it does seem like it would be a good idea to get them at some point.
In game, you will find the movement and combat to be intuitive, with all moves being detailed on cards you play it is easy to look up what something does, and you won't find yourself blindsided by surprise gameplay changes. It's all about knowing your tools and using them well.
For the looting fans, you can spend your gold to buy extra loot chests, and for those who love to optimise everything there is a good variety of equipment available that is sure to get you exactly what you need to build your dream team.

While it starts a bit slow, it builds up quickly and gets in full swing fast enough to be comfortable without any moments where the difficulty hits you on the head.
I haven't even tried the multiplayer yet, but with the solid base this game has, co-op, and ranked play I seriously doubt I would be disappointed.

As a summary, Card Hunter is a great tactics game with good atmosphere and as opposed to many 'free' games, this is actually a game you can play for free and enjoy. It is certainly worth giving a try
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #106180

I know, low hanging fruit and all that

But I reviewed another PD2 dlc.
Feel free to join in at beating the dead horse

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/259381/
Spoiler:
Another mod review, Gage Mod Courier lets you gather packages to get more things for your guns.

This fixes the problem of not having things like a scope, laser or silencer for your guns, a problem that is only an issue thanks to the way gun mods work. It is essentially selling you the solution to a problem that they could have easily solved otherwise, but decided to ask money for.
And you need to work for it too. You paid for these things, but you won't actually have the mods until you jump through enough hoops to get them.
Essentially, it's a paid fix for a problem they could have prevented in the first place, that also makes you have to spend time on getting your solution.

Luckily, since side jobs are a thing now you no longer need this 'dlc' to get your neccesary mods, just enough days and some luck. As such, this dlc has changed from being a fix that you would need to get any gun to top condition to just an extra that you can skip without any problems as it doesn't really add anything.

Perhaps if you're an achievements collector, and crazy for optimising and customising you may get some mileage out of this.
Otherwise, buy it on sale or skip it, it's pretty much at the level of an extra skin for your gun/scope
callanrockslol
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Re: Reviews!

Post by callanrockslol » #106742

I think I might have to some quality reviews.
The most excessive signature on /tg/station13.

Still not even at the limit after 8 fucking years.
Spoiler:
Urist Boatmurdered [Security] asks, "Why does Zol have a captain-level ID?"
Zol Interbottom [Security] says, "because"

Sergie Borris lives on in our hearts

Zaros (No id) [145.9] says, "WITH MY SUPER WIZARD POWERS I CAN TELL CALLAN IS MAD."
Anderson Conagher wrote:Callan is sense.
Errorage wrote:When I see the win vista, win 7 and win 8 hourglass cursor, it makes me happy
Cause it's a circle spinning around
I smile and make circular motions with my finger to imiatate it
petethegoat wrote:slap a comment on it and call it a feature
MisterPerson wrote:>playing
Do you think this is a game?
Gun Hog wrote:Untested code baby
oranges wrote:for some reason all our hosts turn into bohemia software communities after they implode
Malkevin wrote:I was the only one that voted for you Callan.
Miggles wrote:>centration development
>trucking
ill believe it when snakes grow arms and strangle me with them

OOC: Aranclanos: that sounds like ooc in ooc related to ic to be ooc and confuse the ic
OOC: Dionysus24779: We're nearing a deep philosophical extistential level

Admin PM from-Jordie0608: 33-Jan-2552| Warned: Is a giraffe dork ~tony abbott

OOC: Saegrimr: That wasn't a call to pray right now callan jesus christ you're fast.

OOC: Eaglendia: Glad I got to see the rise, fall, rise, and fall of Zol

OOC: Armhulenn: CALLAN
OOC: Armhulenn: YOU MELTED MY FUCKING REVOLVER
OOC: Armhulenn: AND THEN
OOC: Armhulenn: GAVE ME MELTING MELONS
OOC: Armhulenn: GOD FUCKING BLESS YOU
OOC: Armhulenn: you know what's hilarious though
OOC: Armhulenn: I melted ANOTHER TRAITOR'S REVOLVER AFTER THAT

7/8/2016 never forget
Armhulen wrote:
John_Oxford wrote:>implying im not always right
all we're saying is that you're not crag son
bandit wrote:we already have a punishment for using our code for your game, it's called using our code for your game
The evil holoparasite user I can't believe its not DIO and his holoparasite I can't believe its not Skub have been defeated by the Spacedust Crusaders, but what has been taken from the station can never be returned.

OOC: TheGel: Literally a guy in a suit with a shuttle full of xenos. That's a doozy
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #107436

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/387850/

Airport Madness 4

It's a flash game. For 10bux.
Why steam? Why?
Spoiler:
Airport Madness 4 is an arcade-like game about airplane management that is, at best, alright.

You are put in the role of the airspace controlling whatever it is called(I can't really remember the name of the job) at an airport and you have to manage your aircraft to let them land and take off without making them wait too long or crash into eachother.

And that's about it.
You'll occasionally find yourself getting a helipad added to your entrusted airport, and in level 1 even an extra runway, but it doesn't change or become more complex in any way after you figure out the basics.

It's a simple concept with decent replayability, but it is incredibly repetitive and shallow as far as a full game goes.
It's just a slight bit more than what would be a succesfull flash game one would find on games sites, but not much more than that. It seems to be about the same size as one would expect from a flash game, and has about the same animation(Very poor explosions). A price of 10 euro is then very, very steep for what you get.

Coupled with the simple gameplay comes a few issues. The resolution is tiny(The steam preview pictures? That's almost full size, almost.), full screen mode will stretch everything if you're on a widescreen monitor, and your area of operations is tiny to the point where you can not even see the aircraft before they're starting their landing on some of the maps.

To say it's an amusing way to spend a few hours is correct. But to call it a full game and worthy of 10 euro? Not even close. If steam had a neutral recommendation, I'd give it that - Get it if you're a fan of this sort of game and it's on sale, otherwise it's probably best to avoid it.
For now, I'll give it the thumbs down, since it's definitely not worth the price. But if you can pick it up really cheaply it is probably a good idea to give it a shot.
Maybe at a 90% sale or something similar

Also still have Unturned installed and waiting. I should get on playing it sometime
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #116288

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/344850/

Big Pharma
Big promises, small game
I recommend the dev for this one goes on to apply for a marketing job instead, they're clearly much better at that than they are at game design.
Spoiler:
Big Pharma is a ...Well, lets just say it outright, it's not a game about being a large scale megacorporation producing a massive amount of drugs and cornering the market. It's not a simulation of medical pills and pharma companies, and it certainly is not a game about the overall management of such a company or the simulation of such a thing.

It makes promises that it can not keep. You will get little strategy, severely abstracted simulation, and very limited management. 'Big Pharma' is not about anything big at all.

Instead, it is a small scale game that is essentially a puzzle about optimising chains of machines to produce a desired output, in a randomised building area of random size, with random ingredients that have random effects. If you like that, then good for you. You will probably enjoy this one, but for the rest of us who are after the other 'features' it proclaims to have..

The simulation is basic to the point where I wonder if it is a simulation at all. Diseases have a set number of sufferers or a set cycle/increase of sufferers and your management is limited purely to the supply lines, machines, and conveyor belts. Everything else is abstracted to the degree that I wonder why it was even included in the game, and many times adds nothing except a timer you need to wait on before you can continue working your belts.

The challenge, and main gameplay is more alike a puzzle.
Fit machines in the (random) building you have to have your (random) ingredients produce an optimal effect for maximum profit. Nearly all the gameplay is about optimising your conveyor belts and machines, which will be frustrating to you because the machines come only in one form with 4 facings. You can not make a symmetrical and effective supply line, and conveyors can not go over or under eachother. You get a limited amount of (Randomly placed) input/output areas to connect to, and often you will not have space for just about anything more than a basic machine.
Employees never have to walk in, out, or do anything in your building, they are merely an animation that is part of the machine. Research and exploration happens somewhere else. You never see your scientists or explorers except in a menu where you send them out.

If this game was only purely the production tab, was honest about its size and content and somewhere between 5-10 dollars, then it would be great. But as it currently stands I just can not reccommend it for its price.
The conveyor belt optimising puzzling is nice, and I will likely play it a few more times just for that, but that is all there is to the game. There is no 'improving the lives of millions', there is no 'getting rid of disease', there is no real management or simulation of a 'pharmaceutical conglomerate' here. The challenge scenarios are jokes, the rival corporations are jokes, and the whole 'business sim' part that it talks about in the "About This Game" part of the store are jokes.

There is a conveyor belts puzzle with shiny graphics, get it for that if it is ever at a 75% or even 50% sale, but as long as it stays above 10 euro/dollar, I recommend avoiding it.
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #117693

Reviews!

Fate of the World. Old thing by now, but it was amusing. Surprisingly complex. And doesn't tell you anything about this complexity, so good luck trying to figure out what exactly does what!

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ded/80200/
Spoiler:
Fate of the World is an interesting simulation of how to deal with global warming, to say the least.

You are given the role as an underfunded leader of a global organisation set up to handle climate change and global warming. To do so, you are given a whole lot of options and a large chain of potential tasks you can tell your lackeys to do.

The first problem then is obvious, you have no idea what these tasks(Displayed as cards) do until you try them, and often only a vague idea of how they'll effect the various things they're supposed to effect. This will be frustrating, and may lead to you just restarting several times just to see what your policies are actually doing, and what they're effecting. Trial and error gameplay will be the first thing you notice, but that is only after you have spend a turn building offices all over, which you need before you can even see what policies and programs you can enact.
There is no real tech tree equivalent you can find that shows you what exactly you can do after building one of such offices, or what leads to what other things.
A real shame is that the game is excellent at hiding your options from you, and that it also hides the data behind a small tab in the top right. You can see practically everything you need to know about an area, but how your politices will effect it, or how these things interact with eachother is left completely behind the scenes. Only a few things you can do actually tell you the full extend of what they're going to be doing with the limited money you're spending on them.

In short, frustration. However, once you get over that and learn roughly what policies go where, you will find the game opens up to you, and lets you actually play it. And it is a much bigger game than it seems to be at first. Sure, it deals with global warming, and your goal is technically to stop it, but to focus purely on that is not going to help you. It's your end goal, while your organisation does not only have the authority, but also the responsibility to prevent wars, establish healthcare and education systems, manage economic growth, and fund technology. And all of these things are not told to you, and neither is it explained to you how to do them, you have essentially become the New World Order and everyone more experienced than you has died or quit. Indeed, one can ask what actual governments do in this game, and I so far haven't seen them bother with anything yet.

When they said it was all up to you to stop climate change, they meant EVERYTHING. Make the middle east a stable place, prevent the global economy from crashing, fund space missions, create anti-flooding and drought systems, establish healthcare all over the globe, stop deforestation, ease the use of fossile fuel, and many, many more things.
And to do this, you get barely a cent.
And even if you do know what you're doing, even a little, you will have trouble. There is very little margin for error, as a few mistakes will send Africa into a continent-wide civil war(As opposed to how it is right now with only parts of it being at war all the time), and you might start nuclear conflicts in Latin America if you don't personally check up on them every turn to make sure they aren't getting ready to use your nuclear power plants for weaponry. Fate of the World is difficult in part because there are a lot of factors involved, and you are told about none of them until shit has already hit the fan.

Make no mistake, it is a difficult game, but it is a great simulator. It simulates production of fossil fuels, transport, energy generation, industry, agriculture, economy, disasters and so much more. But it just doesn't tell you about any of this.
Aside from that, the moral lessons it tries to teach are questionable at best. As the only way so far that I have found to get close to succeeding every time I try is to start a genocide program targetting China, India, the Middle East, and if they keep complaining South Asia too.

Fate of the World teaches you(Or at least, me) that the only way foreward is to kill the asians(Except Japan), and to wipe the Middle East from the map. Africa is to be policed at all times and forcibly kept poor(but educating them) until technology exists to create emissions free power and industry for them.
The Americas and Europe are to be converted to renewable power, with media campaigns focussing on distracting them from the rest of the world. Japan and Oceania are pretty much empty as far as global population is concerned, so just give them a few defences against floods and occasionally some other protection if they need it.(To switch over ALL of Oceania's transports to electric instead of oil based costs the same as all of Europe or North America's for some reason)

Fate of the World is an interesting game that I would recommend for people who enjoy detailed simulators, and don't mind having to figure out everything themselves. But I would certainly not give it to kids.
Worth 10 bucks? I'd say so, if you are one of those people into simulators, or if you've seen someone play it and think you can do better
Good game, but frustrating
I thought about saying that the only solution it offers is The Final Solution, but that may be a bit much. Plus it does offer others
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #127535

Planetbase
Good idea, bad execution

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/403190/
Spoiler:
Planetbase is a great, if simple concept for a game. Yet flawed in its execution and sadly not in what I would consider a release ready state.
The game as is (A few days after release) seems to be more akin to an early access of a game, there are some parts of the game that are there, and the idea and gameplay is good, but there are too many flaws to consider it a good game.
Most breaking of these flaws is, as seems to be standard for games, the AI. Your colonists do not have any self-preservation instincts whatsoever and also have no clue how their machinery works. Nor do they have any idea of prioritisation (And there are only VERY basic options to give them a priority). They will happily stand in front of a filled food vendor while they starve to death, because the food vendor has had a task queued by some guy on the other side of the base looking to grab a snack. They will also head to the canteen for a drink, return to work and then decide within a minute of arriving that it's time for a meal.

The second big flaw is in the interface and controls. You are very limited in how you can control the game, there are near no prioritisation buttons, you can not pause the game except by going to the menu, and there do not appear to be any graphics settings of note(Only 'high' 'medium' 'low', anti-aliasing and a resolution? Seriously?). There are no ways to prioritise one building over the other, nor any way to prioritise for example your doctor making a medkit to treat the injured over hauling some vegetables to the trader. Nor can you tell when someone has just started work or when they're going to stop working. In general, there just is no structure to the base. Your crew just does what they feel like with no regard for the consequences while you have no way to tell them what to do.

The base itself is empty, and yet there is not enough room. Every single dome needs a long corridor that goes only from it to one other part of your base. There is no way to split from a corridor, and corridors need to have a minimum length, thus making sure you have long travel times no matter how you build. This of course means very little work gets done when you expand, with less and less getting done the more you build.
And then if you somehow manage to get through all this, your colonists will stop working anyway. Why? Well, that's simple. They'll stop working because they're dealing with malnutrition!...What's that? You give them 3 kinds of meat and 6 different kinds of vegetables? Doesn't matter. The game makes every kind of food ingredient into a generic 'basic meal' unless your unthinking colonists just happen to load the right combination of ingredients into the food making machine to make a nutritious meal. But they're not smart enough for that. I've personally witnessed one food maker filled up with beef and only beef, and right next to it one filled up with only maize. Those two could have made burgers, nutritious delicious burgers, but instead I could do nothing but watch as the game turned them into generic 'basic meals', and soon found my entire colony collapsing since the malnutritioned refuse to work and just stand around doing nothing. You can only cure it with a medkit as well, so they could not simply eat a nutritious meal. That, or none of my meals ended up nutritious over all that time.

This game needs a lot of work before I would consider it viable, and as much as I was looking foreward to it and was hoping to just relax, sit back and build myself a base, I found myself unable to do anything except fast foreward as my base slowly died off. It's a good idea, and a good base for a game. But with the interface, options menu, and the AI as it is, I wonder if they bothered playtesting it before release
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Maccus
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Maccus » #127551

Spoiler:
Image
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #132509

Wrote something after playing a bunch of this
A pretty good one, with a very obvious flaw

Clandestine
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/290530/
Spoiler:
Clandestine is a unique experience with good writing and a somewhat poor graphics and performance attached to it.

Let's just get right to business with the bad. Yes, it looks like it came straight from the Playstation 2 era and this is not at all encouraging to modern gamers. It even has some occasional issues with the performance, bugs that are somewhat obvious, clunky movement and controls, and it definitely does not look like it brings much new to the stealth genre.
But then why the positive recommendation?

Because where the graphics and performance are questionable, the gameplay itself is solid, the writing is great with excellent attention to detail, and the co-op is a good way to spend time with a friend working things out together. and getting through the story. Which, by the way, changes based on what you do. If you kill everyone because dead men don't tell tales, then you will have a different experience after a few missions than if you went through as a ghost, unseen and unheard.
While some things are easy to see coming from far away, the story as far as I've experienced it makes sense and is intriguing enough to keep you coming back for more. As for the co-op gameplay, it does exactly what many people wanted to do for their stealth games. As the spy, you will rely on your co-op partner to hack into the computer net, get you the information you need to play your undercover role out, block cameras from seeing you, and mess with anything electronic that needs messing with. As the hacker, you will be multitasking to hack into their system in one screen, check the cameras for guards approaching your partner from behind, and work with a map to make sure your partner doesn't get lost in the facilities you're infiltrating. Both roles are rewarding, and working together as a team makes for a unique experience that so far I've not been able to find anywhere else in a game.
(I have not played single player, so I can not mention much on that)

Clandestine can be a real hit, something you will remember for years to come and will hope to see more of if you can see past the obvious flaws and outdated graphics. If you can, I can certainly recommend it.
But if you are big into graphics and are easily frustrated it may not be your kind of thing. Clandestine is a flawed gem. If you can look past the flaws you will have a great time.
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PKPenguin321
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Re: Reviews!

Post by PKPenguin321 » #132561

http://steamcommunity.com/id/An0n3/recommended/45100/
damn son did you actually play SotMC or are those hours idled because i am just cracking up over the image of a bearded man playing this pony game
i play Lauser McMauligan. clown name is Cold-Ass Honkey
i have three other top secret characters as well.
tell the best admin how good he is
Spoiler:
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ShadowDimentio
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Re: Reviews!

Post by ShadowDimentio » #132599

Anon...

Are you pony trash?
Spoiler:
"Clowns are different you can't trust those shifty fucks you never know what they're doing or if they're willing to eat a dayban for some cheap yuks."
-Not-Dorsidarf

"The amount of people is the amount of times the sound is played... on top of itself. And with sybil populations on the shuttle..."
-Remie Richards

"I just spent all fucking day playing fallen london and sunless sea and obsessing over how creepy the fucking dawn machine is and only just clocked now that your avatar is the fucking dawn machine. Nobody vote for this disgusting new sequence blasphemer he wants to kill the gods"
-Stickymayhem

"Drank a cocktail of orange Gatorade and mint mouthwash on accident. Pretty sure I'm going to die, I am on the verge of vomit. It was nice knowing you guys"
-PKPenguin321

"You're too late, you will have to fetch them from the top of my tower, built by zombies, slaves, zombie slaves and garitho's will to live!"
-Armhulen

"This is like being cooked alive in a microwave oven which utilises the autistic end of the light spectrum to cook you."
-DarkFNC

"Penguins are the second race to realise 2D>3D"
-Anonmare

"Paul Blart mall cops if they all had ambitions of joining the Waffen-SS"
-Anonmare

"These logs could kill a dragon much less a man"
-Armhulenn

">7 8 6
WHAT MADNESS IS THIS? POETIC ANARCHY!"
-Wyzack

"We didn't kick one goofball out only to have another one come in like a fucking revolving door"
-Kraseo

"There's a difference between fucking faggots and being a fucking faggot."
-Anonmare

"You guys splitting the 20 bucks cost to hire your ex again?"
-lntigracy

"Wew. Congrats. It's been actual years since anyone tried to make fun of me for being divorced. You caught me, I'm tilted. Here is your trophy."
-Timbrewolf

"I prefer my coffees to run dry too *snorts a line of maxwell house*"
-Super Aggro Crag

"You don't have an evil bone in your body, unless togopal comes for a sleepover"
-Bluespace

">Paying over a $1000 for a lump of silicon and plastic
Lol"
-Anonmare

"Then why did you get that boob job?"
-DrPillzRedux

"You take that back you colonial mongrel"
-Docprofsmith

"I don't care whether or not someone with an IQ 3 standard deviations below my own thinks they enjoy Wizard rounds."
-Malkraz
ColonicAcid
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Re: Reviews!

Post by ColonicAcid » #132645

>anons pony name is still in his name history


Fuck I remember that like it was yesterday my god.
crack is whack but smacks got your back
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Maccus
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Maccus » #132673

#PoopiePieIsMyFavorite
Spoiler:
Image
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #133941

Dropping more stuff here because I wrote about an old game

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/324680/
Spoiler:
Impossible Creatures is an old(2002) RTS with a twist- The player creates their units by combining animals together, picking and choosing what parts(And powers) to use. This of course leads to a lot of variety and options in your units, while you put together units to fit roles you choose and build the kind of units you want to see.
If you want a large amount of cheap swarming units, you can do that.
If you want a small amount of high quality units, that is possible too.
Mixed force with a few builing destroyers, some artillery, a front line and some ranged? Design them.


The rest is about as one would expect from an RTS. Gather resources, build (a small but functional) base, and use your army to control the map's important locations(Mainly more resource points), and then destroy your opponent.
There are only two resources, coal and energy, of which energy is renewable, but that is all the game needs. It doesn't overcomplicate things by asking for several different resources, that's not the focus of this game.

The focus is on the creatures, and allowing you creativity and customisation far past the standard for RTS games, with what is honestly an interesting campaign with humourous moments, a pretty decent storyline and good progression overall, it will not disappoint. Unless off course you focus purely on the graphics and other minor bad things to be found. As can be expected from a game of this age, the graphics are not exactly the best you can get today. But they are still functional and they do not look awful. They have aged fairly well.
The interface, and some parts of the design may be annoying as well - 'Your animals are under attack!' A very important thing to be aware of, and as such the game will tell you about it. About three or four times a minute, actually. When you're told them to attack the enemy base and are fully expecting them to be attacked. The camera is at times a little clumsy, and you may need to move it a bit to find an optimal viewing angle, but again, this isn't a huge problem. Just something of the time it was released. And of course you might have some issue with defensive structures. Namely, before you get walls they may as well be made of paper and shoot pressurised farts for as much as they do to higher level creatures. Except the anti-air towers, of which three or more will single-handedly destroy entire airforces with only minimal damage to themselves.

I am getting close to 10 hours on this game, and I can't say I regret a single one of them. It is a great game for RTS fans, and a good game for those new to the genre as well. All of the good being good, and most of the bad being small stuff lands this one firmly in the recommend catagory. Go ahead and grab it, you'll probably like it
It will be on sale until the 18th, 40% off at steam
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #134026

Double post

Three of my friends have suggested that I apply for a professional games reviewing job.
None of them have given any suggestions whatsoever for where, how, or with who.

So Ill ask here:

1. Do you actually like/read my reviews
And
2. Where would you suggest I throw them? Might be able to spread them to people who are interested
And finally
3. Do you actually read games review sites other then this forum?
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Steelpoint
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Steelpoint » #134027

Is your avatar the symbol of House Ordos from the Westwood Dune games (and the later books)?

On topic your reviews seem succinct and on point, for the most part. Though my opinions more based on reviews of games that I've played.
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #134037

Steelpoint wrote:Is your avatar the symbol of House Ordos from the Westwood Dune games (and the later books)?
Yes
Yes it is
I still haven't set it as forum avatar here because the thing refuses to accept it for some reason
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Steelpoint
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Steelpoint » #134040

Likely cause the only image I can find of it is 300x300 pixels, you need a image set to a minimum of 175x175 pixels.

Here's that image.

Image
Image
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #134041

And it works, thanks!
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #146341

Wrote a review
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/287980/

Mini Metro
Spoiler:
Mini Metro is a subway themed puzzle game. Not a true simulator, although it does have elements of simulation in it.

A very simple game that lets you focus entirely on the puzzle without anything you don't need to pay attention to, the goal is to connect the stations and get the people to go to a station that matches their shape in an ever expanding city which just keeps getting bigger and bigger until you can no longer handle the influx of people.

There are three basic shapes- The square, triangle and circle, and you begin your game having to ferry passengers who each are one of these three basic shapes to a station with the same shape. Square passengers to square stations, triangles to triangle stations, and circles to circle stations. You then get more stations to connect, you have water you need to tunnel under with limited bridges, and eventually you will get unique station shapes to connect up to your lines.
While any triangle station is good enough for a triangle passenger, a plus sign passenger will only go to the plus sign station. This means that you will need to keep your lines connected to each other as well as to the three basic stations, and that you will need to figure out where and when to transfer passengers.
Losing a game happens when the waiting line at a station is too long, which will slowly fill in a circle around it to show you how close it is to being a game over.

Passenger AI is rather simple, but it doesn't need to be complex either. They go to their nearest matching station, using as few lines as possible. An trains pick up passengers as long as they get them any closer at all, even just a single station.
Of note is that when a train goes both ways, passengers will not get in on the one that heads away from their destination, instead waiting for a train that heads the right direction.

And once you're done with most of this, there is extreme and endless mode. Endless mode is a game without losing, so you can relax and build your subway system without worrying about losing. Extreme mode is similar to the original game, but where you can move and remove tracks and trains at will normally, they are locked into place in extreme mode.
On losing a game you can continue playing in endless mode.

In the end, it is a simple but worthwhile game to play. It doesn't have a lot of special mechanics, flashy explosions or incredibly detailed environments, but all it does have works towards the same goal - An enjoyable puzzle game you're sure to get plenty of hours out of.
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #181433

Hey, I'm alive

I wrote more reviews
Now with fancy pictures!
http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/05/c ... eview.html

Covert Action, a game almost as old as I am. Just a bit under half a year younger than me.

No spoilered version this time because website
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #184013

Small review
For a small game
Turmoil

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/361280/
Link with pictures http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/06/t ... eview.html
Spoiler:
Getting right to it, Turmoil is a time-constrained pipe building optimisation puzzle game. Your main goal, and main problems will resolve around getting all the oil in a level out of the ground and sold within one year. It does what it does and it does it fairly well. The pipe building is intuitive(Simply drag the mouse to where you want it), and everything makes sense. Oil only flows as fast as the smallest pipe, thus you need to make sure you don't have a bottleneck in your system. And if you pump oil up faster than you can carry it away then you spill it, incurring a fine. The game explains mechanics well and there are enough upgrades and level varieties where it does not become a chore or too similar to other levels.

A solid foundation, improved upon by hazards such as rocks and natural gas which can be used for profit as well, with the right upgrades, or just by adding it to your regular oil pipes so the pressure brings the oil up faster. As before, you may spill some if you bring oil up too fast, so be careful about what you drill.
To further the gameplay there is a solid campaign that last just long enough to be a good experience without overstaying its welcome. You need to buy the upgrades, lease land you think has a good amount of oil in it, and compete with 3 AI players trying the same. Eventually leading to auctions for shares which allow you to win the campaign once you have a majority share. Even if you are not into optimising things, the base gameplay is well enough and the game forgiving enough that you can get away with a profit just drilling for oil, though you may have difficulty making large profit margins.

Turmoil is a simple but solid game, build on a good concept with good execution at a competitive price. If you're looking for a few days worth of entertainment, Turmoil is a good choice at a good price.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #186767

Another review

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/397390/
http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/06/s ... eview.html
Space Food Truck
It's alright, but expensive for what it is
Spoiler:
Space Food Truck is a game about traveling the universe cooking food and staying alive. This is as is usual with games something that involves a lot of risks and dangers. That said, it is doable on a first try if you're somewhat experienced with risk-management games.

You play as a crew of four, each with their own job on the ship. The engineer to repair and upgrade the ship, the chef to cook the ingredients, the scientist to research, and the captain to pilot the ship. You can be one of these in multiplayer, or all four in singleplayer. Either way, you're going to have to work together to get through things safely. With that said, it's not actually that hard, at least on normal difficulty. It's very forgiving and you can handle most things just fine unless you've messed up your card deck building.

Speaking of which, you handle your options through a card based system, with cards being your available actions and the fuel to use on these actions. In some cases litterally, with the captain's card to move the ship taking cards with power points to fill up the FTL engine. At the end of your turn, you have to buy a new card to add to your deck. As such, it is important to find ways to trim your deck, or you will be left with useless or lesser quality cards. Several ways to do this exist, and as such you can usually keep your deck under control.

Then there is the actual cooking. Gather ingredients, have the chef cook them up and then deliver the dish to its destination. It seems easy, but it can get a bit more complex. Some ingredients are much more rare, some need to be unlocked by the scientist. And then you have to actually get them cooking too, which again costs you time to find the right cards.

After some time though, it begins to feel like everything is the same. Very few things will ever change and in one or two playthroughs you will have likely seen everything it has to offer. You can stabilise safely and last almost endlessly as long as you have the right cards and did your deck work right. Science becomes mostly useless after they finish researching, and engineering turns into 'play all your cards to fix everything, end turn'. Especially if you play multiplayer, it may begin to feel like your turn is automated where the rest of the crew actually does things.

With a fitting graphical style, simple but functional animations, and what I would definitely say is above average humour with simple but not unthinking or boring gameplay, Space Food Truck rounds out to be a decent game with some replayability troubles. While I would certainly recommend it if it were half price, 20 euro is pretty steep for what you get out of it.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Zilenan91 » #186811

Is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic any good?
Spoiler:
Zilenan91 wrote:
Just replace both their arms with chainsaws.

HAVE FUN ESCAPING NOW WITH NO ARMS
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DemonFiren
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Re: Reviews!

Post by DemonFiren » #186829

If you like kicking people into walls, sure.
Image
Image
Image
ImageImageImageImageImage

non-lizard things:
Spoiler:
Image
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EndgamerAzari
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Re: Reviews!

Post by EndgamerAzari » #186841

DemonFiren wrote:If you like kicking people into walls, sure.
You say that like there are people who DON'T like kicking people into walls.

Also, XSI, your reviews are very professional and informative. I enjoy reading them.
Spoiler:
Shaps wrote:I never thought I'd see the day where someone tried claiming the moral high ground on drinking a bottle of cough syrup
TechnoAlchemist wrote:dumb baby boo boo "i wish I enlisted then mom would be proud" ballistics.
Saegrimr wrote:
Wyzack wrote:Remove players 2016, they ruin everything they touch
IM TRYING
Saegrimr wrote:
yackemflam wrote:It's like dish washing, someone has to do it.
MAYBE IF YOU'D QUIT SHITTING ON THE PLATE WHEN YOU'RE TOO LAZY TO GET UP TO GO TO THE RESTROOM AND JUST PUT THEM IN THE FUCKING SINK WHEN YOU'RE DONE
FantasticFwoosh wrote:Zip ties are best applied on assistants and other nobodies because of the exact reason they are disposable (applies to both).
An0n3 wrote:Azari for headmin 2015
He's an admin you can trust because nobody remembers to involve him in their conspiracies.
Drynwyn wrote:hbrahlrlahrlharlahr FEATURE CREEP
ShadowDimentio wrote:Instructions too complex, spaced the clown
Akkryls wrote:I mean, we are rightfully pissed off, but let's be pissed off for the correct reasons.
Falamazeer wrote:I am sufficiently outraged for you
Maccus wrote:You look like the dad every teenage boy doesn't look forward to meeting at his girlfriend's house
nsos wrote:When I was a teen and did the inevitable trying to suck your own dick thing I managed to get the head in my mouth and I feel like the rest of my life is me being punished for that
miggles wrote:is that supposed to be a trick question or just a dumb one
cedarbridge wrote:My first idea is that everyone just stops being faggots to each other but that's not going to happen, obviously.
Not-Dorsidarf wrote:Most soap operas could be improved if every scene had a greyshirt in the background hooting "GIBE DE POOSIE BOSS" all the time
Not-Dorsidarf wrote:classic style is "shit on everyone from the greatest heights, so they cannot climb high enough to shit on you"
Super Aggro Crag wrote:you can't just use meme to mean "thing I don't like" you goatherd
Saegrimr wrote:"lel just go explore make YOUR OWN fun wow do you have NO IMAGINATION back in MY DAY we used to shove twigs in our urethras and PRETENDED WE WERE KNIGHTS"
An0n3 wrote:Fucking crystal ass wind chime lookin' bitch.
Saegrimr wrote:It should be common sense but this is /tg/.
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #186852

Zilenan91 wrote:Is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic any good?
Yes

'The adventure of Sir Boots McKicksALot in the Land of Conveniently Placed Spiked and Pits' is a very worthwhile game. Not for the multiplayer, that's kinda crappy really, but the singleplayer is very good

EndgamerAzari wrote: Also, XSI, your reviews are very professional and informative. I enjoy reading them.
Thanks! I've set a goal to reach 100 before the end of the year, but I'm okay with not making that goal if I can't deliver quality. I'd rather miss the goal than just put out bad reviews
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Timbrewolf » #186853

My review of Senran Kagura is a hit

http://steamcommunity.com/id/An0n3/recommended/411830/
Shed Wolf Numero Uno
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XSI
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #194853

Got another review

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/07/e ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... nded/3720/

Evil Genius, good game, though I feel like I ballsed up the review this time

Oh well
Spoiler:
Evil Genius is an excellent, if old game that is not without its flaws. Players are the Evil Genius, leader of the evil organisation that is planning world domination. The evil genius builds their evil lair, on their evil island. He brings in evil minions to do nefarious deeds and generally just manages the organisation's island lair. And he's evil.

You begin by building your base, designing corridors and rooms and placing the neccesary furniture in them. A place for work, a place to let minions relax and recover, a power plant. And then you gradually unlock more rooms and more items, expanding more and more until you've outgrown the small first island. But that will be a while.
During your growth, you're going to deal with agents of the forces of good, investigating your base for wrongdoing, and sabotaging, stealing, or outright assualting you. And for you to defeat them there are varying kinds of traps, misdirection, and just plainly having them taken care of by a minion with a gun(Or indeed, multiple minions)

The basic gameplay is solid, and while it has a few annoyances in the minion and agent AI, it is still very enjoyable. Base building tickles all the right spots for those who want to be creative, and managing your evil base is even immersive in some ways a

The graphics may be a little out of date, but they are still perfectly fine in most cases. It is true that characters viewed up close don't look as shiny as they may be able to with today's graphics, but when zoomed out and inspecting your lair you will not notice much of this, with an artstyle that matches the game's theme. It remains even today a nice sight to see the corridors and rooms with your minions walking around in them.

Sound design is well done, with the music being the best fit for the theme that I could imagine. All other sounds are very much what one expects of them, clean and clear so you can tell what's going on, and the only sound that becomes annoying is your blaring alarm. When you're dealing with a base under attack, you're going to want to keep the alarm on. But your ears will want it off after a while because it is loud and repetitive. More reason to finish off those intruders then!

The game happens to also be laden with humour, as after all, you are a cartoon style villain of sufficient evilness, I highly recommend taking a look at interogations and reading the fluff text of your nefarious deeds on the world screen, almost every part of the game fits seamlessly into the others, with a unified theme that never seems to fail or fall apart except for technical reasons.

But then, there are issues too. As there are always issues with games that will lessen your enjoyment. Luckily for Evil Genius, these issues are few. Specifically, they are twofold, though other flaws exist.
Super agents, and the AI.
The AI is the simplest to find, and simplest to complain about. It is incredibly simple, and even without resistance it will not go deep into your base, or pose a threat to your evil genius avatar. A little planning and you will always be safe, though you may lose all your minions as they too don't think about things. You will see a horde of minions happily run into an attacking army to repair the door that is being broken down, or to use a fire extinquisher on an item that is still being actively attacked.
The agent AI is not much better. For the 'forces of good' they are remarkably bloodthirsty, with some super agents and soldiers shooting everything that moves on sight. They will enter a hotel and shoot all the valets, bomb the tourists' bedrooms, and declare their mission a success. They will destroy a cardboard target and explode the pressure plate triggering it, then get injured by their own explosion and go on alert because they took damage. The AI is, sadly, incredibly simple and completely incapable of making sense or anything resembling planning.
That said, it is still functional, though the killing spree and indiscriminate destruction these agents cause will be most annoying as you can not tell a few highly trained minions to sit back, thus almost guarranteeing that you will be spending the next 30 minutes recovering from AI sillyness. And recovering is a slow thing, as everything is expensive, and income is low.

As for the super agents, I won't spoil them. But I will say the complete anticlimax that is the final super agent is a shame. Instead of an interesting ability like the other agents, the only thing this one has is boosted stats and an interface screw. The best way to deal with his ability is to pause the game and fix what he messed up, which can take a while with bigger bases, and manually set everything back to normal.

In the end, there is a lot I can say about Evil Genius, but even with its flaws it remains a very solid game capable of hours of enjoyment, unique and interesting with all the right things to make you feel like you are, indeed, the evil genius.
s you get to be the big boss cartoon villain for a change. It provides you with every tool you may need to feel like you're in charge, with systems that are neither too complex, nor too simple to enjoy.

No pictures this time, instead, here's a link to a few of the things
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... appid=3720
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Re: Reviews!

Post by Comrade Leo » #194871

XSI wrote:Got another review

Evil Genius, good game, though I feel like I ballsed up the review this time
It's a classic, loved that game.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #194878

So did I, but there's bad sides to it that I forgot from when I first played

>Secret agents/soldiers attack and bomb hotel
>Get caught in their own blast and go on alert because they got hurt
>Nearby tourists caught in blast panic because violence
>Secret agent then stays in the hotel to pick off every last valet I have as the valets run out to extinquish the fires
>Secret agent leaves, having shot up a hotel, killed all its staff, and never sets foot inside the evil base

>Somehow, these terrorists are supposed to be the forces of good
The world deserves every last evil genius it gets

Even worse if a tourist dies out there from being shot by the 'forces of good'. Your personnel will go out one at a time to pick up the bodybag, and get shot one at a time too.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by DemonFiren » #194925

Which is generally why I let henchmen do cleanup and build a freak-triggered übertrap as sonn as possible to prevent any more hostiles from spawning.

Also disguised sentries. Disguised sentries everywhere.
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non-lizard things:
Spoiler:
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #194966

Get the mod that lets you put sentries in your base

Seriously, I don't know why they're outside only in vanilla, but it's a must have.
Apparently an Evil Genius 2 is in the works by the team that made it, but it's all still without any information so take that with a cartload of salt
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Re: Reviews!

Post by DemonFiren » #195009

XSI wrote:Get the mod that lets you put sentries in your base
Um. I didn't mod the game at all (though I do have the GOG version), and there's two sentries guarding my genius plus one for each armoury, watching the prison cells and entrance.
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Spoiler:
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #195021

GoG versions are known to include the occasional quality of life mod, and mods the creators say they wanted in but didn't have time to do themselves

I'll praise GoG for that, they do a lot of work to bring those old games in a way that people can more easily enjoy. And they do it in ways that doesn't change the experience
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #196988

New review

Of an early access title. Expensive for what it is, but solid gameplay that amused me for a good while

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/07/b ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/371520/
Spoiler:
I don't usually review early access(2016-7-19), but for Bounty Train, I figured I may as well

Bounty Train is a game about running a train through the not-so-wild eastern coast of the USA right in during the civil war, trading in the cities and ferrying small amounts of passengers around. It has several ways to make money, and plenty more ways to lose it. But in the end every part of it works great on its own, but is still not really working together as a single whole game just yet.

You can trade, you can customise your train with carriages and historical locomotives, you can do combat when the bandits try to take your money, you can level up, and you can have a chase scene almost straight from a western. It is already entertaining and a pleasant experience, with the base gameplay being solid and simple enough to understand even for someone new to the game. At the same time it allows you enough control to remain interesting after you learn the basics.

The graphics and sound are pleasant, with the world map being a well made stylised view. That is where my first complaint lies. Specifically, with the transition between your train view to the world map. Every single time you do this you get a loading screen, which slows down the game by a lot as anyone who doesn't know US geography will need to go check the world map every time they see a place name to see where it is, and even those who do know will need to check it regularly to see if there is an indian camp or army position at the track they plan to take. This is quite harsh on the flow of the game, especially if you need to switch back and forth multiple time before actually moving your train.

Other negatives are balance issues. As it is early access, I'm not weighing them as much since they are mainly numbers that need tweaking, or things in need of more explaining. For example, the ability to escape from bandits is fun to have, with the chase being interesting and very good at engaging you as you have to control your train. But what it doesn't say is that you have only old trains, and you are not going to go fast enough to escape from anything at all unless you've left most of your wagons at the station. Any train that has enough cargo to make a profit is better off just stopping and shooting the bandits until they stop coming, simply because of the weight of your cargo slowing you down enough to make escape impossible.
At a similar note, often you do not get a chance to escape at all. When the army engages you(Which they will, both north and south will en up hating you for no particular reason other than you existing) you are only given the option to attack them, with no way to escape until time on their barricade runs out. The barricade they have lasts long enough for them to completely destroy your train before you can move on, which will feel like the game just said "Okay, you encounter this event. You lose", rather than it being your fault for your loss until the late game where you can defend against a small army group.

Another balance issue is the weaponry, some of them are just plain better than others, and when the bandits attacking you have these stronger guns and you don't, you do not have a good chance. What is worse is that you can not loot their weaponry; Loot is randomly generated after combat is already over.

While Bounty Train has a lot of potential, it is still unfinished as the Early Access tag says. Even then it is certainly worth keeping an eye on for when they tweak the gameplay and finish adding the rest of it. The price is a bit steep for what is in it at this point, but there is a promise for more, and if you are sceptical about that then there will be a sale for it at some point.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #200857

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/08/t ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ded/443810

This is the Police. Pretty good game, but don't expect loads of deep gameplay or sandbox type stuff.
Spoiler:
This is the Police is a mostly story based game in which the player takes control of a police department as Jack Boyd, chief of police and on the path to an unwanted early retirement.
You will uncover intrigue, mafia plots, a serial killer, and many criminals trying to hide from the law during a playthrough, interspaced with regular calls for the police to respond to.
As it is a mostly story based game, the mood and setting is excellent, with perfectly fitting music. excellent voice acting and a story that makes you want to keep going through the days to see how things go and what will come of them. As such I would recommend playing it blind, and without prior knowledge of the plot past the basics. The story does not disappoint, though you will have to accept that the game is telling you a story, rather than giving you a sandbox or deep gameplay experience if you are to enjoy it.

During your 180 days before retirement, you will be able to deal with the mafia, sketchy business owners asking for some questionably legal help, and the regular crimes happening in the city of Freeburg. All this while you are given a motivation of collecting half a million. A number you will likely have to do some less moral things to achieve.
Most of the gameplay is simple. I can not call it great, but it certainly isn't bad either. You dispatch officers to calls and occasionally get a multiple choice about how they should proceed while at the scene. While these are some of the more interesting, the results of a call are always one of a few options. The criminal can escape or be captured, the cops can get killed or survive, and a bystander can be killed or survive. There is nothing in between, it's dead or alive without any injuries or details on how many civilians got killed.
Further, there is an investigation minigame, in which your detectives find photo frames and you have to personally arrange them in the right order to unlock the next step- An arrest of whoever did it. I've found this personally to be incredibly difficult, with vague frames and sometimes missing information. This is sadly to the point where I have now stopped playing the game as I can not solve investigations without help from someone else. While I applaud the idea of this puzzle, I personally just can not enjoy it.

A disappointment was the gang and mafia system, which appears at a glance to be an interesting net of people to combb through, but in truth is just a straight line up to the top where if you fail once, the entire gang becomes off limits to you and you can't continue an investigation or try to arrest them. At a glance there is depth to the gameplay, but this illusion is quickly dispelled once you play.

In short, This is the Police is a great game if you accept it for what it is. A story-driven game with some basic gameplay to hold you over in between story segments, not a police simulator and certainly not a detective game. You hire the detectives, you don't go out with them. It is priced appropriately, and well worth what it asks as a good story and overall pleasant experience.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #212209

Wrote another review. Sadly it turned out negative. Already know what I'll review next, and it will be a positive one

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/09/t ... oming.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/409910/

The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming
Spoiler:
The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming is an interesting mixture of many ideas brought together in a single game, yet combining many good ideas is not always a good idea itself.

I find myself conflicted, since I want to like this game, but I am considering to refund it while I still can. Nobody will see the screenshots and go in expecting good graphics, but I will say that the graphics and animations are actually quite decent. Though the screenshots featured put them in a good light, in game you will find that most models are less pleasing to look at close. That said, they aren't why I was considering refunding.

The reason for that is that for everything this game does, there are other games who do it better. Nothing here is very bad bad, but nothing is exemplary or exceptionally good either. During most of my time playing this, I thought back to other games who did as this does but arguably better. Sure, none of those games combine all the features offered in The Storm Guard, but they focus on making those few that they do offer great.
There is a village and narrator, Darkest Dungeon style. But less interesting to listen to, and the village appears less complex and with some interface quirks that are not very intuitive.
The combat itself is interesting, but ultimately it just doesn't offer that much depth past 'Put the guy with a shield up front'. Maybe this will change further into the game, maybe not. I can't say I'll make it that far when it takes more than an hour to gain a single level on a hero, and with them potentially dying I would certainly hate to have to re-train them.
Another thing you will quickly notice seems to be directly from Darkest Dungeon as well is the dungeon map system, except it simplifies it even further. Move from encounter tile to encounter tile, eat food along the way. Dungeons are simply encounters connected together through minimal narration- Like a DnD game ran by a newbie DM, rather than actual dungeons and a world full of story it feels like a string of random encounters, followed by a semi-random boss fight that often may as well be a regular random encounter.

As a whole, and in individual parts, it just doesn't have the complexity to justify the overal average-ness of the game. It's certainly not bad, but I feel very much like there just isn't anything for me to do aside from positioning. Deciding what hero goes onto a mission didn't feel very important, and then there is no inventory for me to bother with either, nor complex armour or weapon management. The interface is slightly clumsy, that's not really an issue- You can learn the quirks. But one of the big things in a tactical combat game is that you need to see, at a glance, what's going on. You can't do that as there does not appear to be much of any indication that for example your hero's movement points are reduced until you get to his turn and find that he can't move as far. All the combats appear very similar, with no significant changes outside of scenery. Outside of combat the repetitiveness doesn't fare much better. All missions appear to be of the 'move to tile and kill stuff' variety, even if their description and reason for killing these things are different.

In conclusion, I had expected a somewhat quirky turn based tactical combat game, one with interesting maps and a lot of interesting combat scenarios. In the end, I didn't get any of that. While I can see the potential, The Storm Guard is most alike a string of fights generated by a random encounter generator, with some narration about why this is happening and sometimes a choice which encounter you want to fight.
Perhaps if it goes on a sale it's worth it, but there is no way I can recommend this for 20 euro.
I think I just convinced myself to refund it.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #214576

Another one
A positive, strong positive even.
80 Days

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/09/8 ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ded/381780
Spoiler:
80 days - To travel around the world, west to east from London to London. In what is a story based game about adventuring, route optimization, wondrous stories and relaxing rides through an alternate 1872 as the valet to a well known gentleman who has made a wager.
Along the way you will need to manage funding, items, packing, and selecting the routes to follow. It sounds simple, but it is complex enough to keep you busy.

To get it out of the way, yes, this is phone game. Do not let that scare you off, all it truly means for you as a PC gamer is that even your most outdated toaster can run it, the controls are simple and they do not need to be any more complex to do what you need to do. Game mechanics themselves do not suffer either, with a great majority of your options being simple choices in dialogue. Choices that actually do matter many times, with stories to tell you that I found surprisingly pleasant and interesting to read.

You can embark on an adventure and enjoy a richly filled world while balancing your own interest at exploration and your task as valet to keep monsieur Fogg in good condition and comfortable, on track to win his wager. It is not difficult to make it in 80 days if you try and plan things out in advance, but often there will be opportunities and potential rewards just a little off your chosen path. A lot of tempting things can drag you out to somewhere you didn't intend and it can both be a great boon to your funds and travel time or a disaster. With every city and most travel lines in the game having their own or connected stories, you will need multiple playthroughs to see them all. And even then it may not be likely unless you actively try.
Losing is alright as well. The wager won't bankrupt you, and you will be able to just try again. After all, why bet only once? A playthrough will take about an hour, perhaps a bit more or less depending on how much of a rush you are in.

But then there are some things that you should probably not get very hyped about either. Racing other people? Live multiplayer feed? Unless you actively go looking on the map for them, you likely won't find others except near the start. Even then, there is no interactions with them and I have yet to notice any sort of multiplayer feed. At best there are some icons on the map of where others went before you, and some things you aren't told and have to find out the hard way(Leaving a train at a midway stop when you have a ticket to the final destination of the train voids your ticket. You aren't allowed to get back on with the next train passing by. Some routes don't let you resume at all if you buy only a partway ticket, and so on)
The game is surprisingly easy to break as well, crashing or freezing if you try to do too much at once. A good autosave system helps with this, so you likely won't have issues- Just start it back up and you're back to where you were.
But in the end, these are small issues that don't actually hold it back.

80 days is a great game that tells you a story, while giving you full control over the story it tells, with excellently fitting graphics and amazingly done mood setting. Its flaws are few and easily forgivable, with a very competitive price to make it definitely a worthwhile buy.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #218739

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/10/h ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/227940/

And from strong positive, to strong negative.
Heroes and Generals.
I had a review for this before. I recommended it because it was free back then.

Now I recommend you just skip it. It's gone from 'potentially great game that will be heralded as amazing for years to come' to 'Shameless cash grab that shits on its players and encourages you to play something else'

The only reason I could be bothered to play it is because I already had my new guns unlocked. If I had to start over, I would not have spend 10+ hours to grind my way up in it.
Not to mention that it essentially hasn't changed since early access. It's unfinished still.
Spoiler:
Heroes and Generals is now out of early access, so lets take a look!

Excellent foundation, Good technical achievements, incredibly poor design choices and missing management.
That about sums it up. But lets elaborate on that.

The foundation of the game- The battles themselves as infantryman are good. Vehicles are well done and fighting over the objectives tends to be pretty big a deal. The physics and gun system are good, once you get past the poor rifle you get at the start of the game, and it becomes more enjoyable when you can actually use a gun that shoots more than spitballs. But then there are things missing, and the game is not really set up for big encounters like it has the maps for. Prepare for a profound feeling of emptiness as you go through a city that is supposedly under attack but without anyone defending anything except one building that has been marked as the objective, and battles happening almost exclusively on a line from your point to the enemy point.
Flanking works well, you can stay still and let your camo make you near invisible even with the default uniforms, but this is not really used that much. You can use it all, be the ultimate soldier, and you will likely still not do as well as the guy who just camped the attic of the capture point and shot four guys who tried to dislodge him by making him run out of bullets. There is no penalty for dying- Not for you at least, but more on that later, and you don't really get rewarded for anything you do either. You play to play, and you win because you want to win.

Then lets get right to the poor design choices. This game is not just pay to win, but pay to progress. The way it is set up is to encourage you as a new player to quit and find an other game. Do you want to group up with a few friends? If there's more than two, then you have to pay for that or you need to spend some time grinding the 'skill' of having a group. After that, prepare for a lot more grind, as you will need several hours just to get the basics for a soldier. And if you want to do anything other than carry a basic rifle and maybe some grenades, you're going to need to grind hard just to afford your own ammo and gun modifications, because every single bullet shot, grenade thrown, mine placed or vehicle you use will cost you a lot. This leads directly to the playerbase adapting to the mentality;
Life is cheap. Ammo is expensive.
If you shoot someone you should pick up their gun because 9 times out of 10 it will be better than yours, even if you've spend 50+ hours on the game.

Of course there are other issues, mainly around balance and the 'generals' portion of the game. I'll spare you the complaints on balance- It's the usual for pay to win games, but more on that other bit later.

That said, if you don't mind the grind, and are fine using subpar weapons for most of your starting hours(10+) the basic infantry combat is good stuff. Moving along to tanks you will find that they're not amazing, but certainly entertaining and useful. Your view is a bit limited when using them but you can generally work them quite well. Airplanes are a joke and they likely always will be, do not even consider getting a fighter because you will be less useful to your team than if you had nothing but a pistol and the idea that you might surprise the enemy if you drive your car right at them. Controls are awful, planes don't do anything, and you take up a valuable spot on the team that could have been used by someone useful. Prepare for a long time of flying around not seeing anything and not doing anything.

And then on to the big complaint with this game, when you're not accounting for the fact that you may as well just be playing a basic trial of the game unless you pay them lots of money. The generals part.
It may as well not exist.

The game may even be better if it did not exist.
The entire generals section is deeply flawed to the point that it is literally unplayable.
First you need to slowly grind your way up to being allowed to use it. Then you will need to spend 3+ days to wait for a small squad of the absolute lowest tier divisions to spawn so you can use them. They will die in about 5 minutes and they will have gained no experience. Everything except infantry is essentially impossible to afford unless you pay the devs money for it, which will last only a few days at most and then you lose them. The map is incredibly poor and you will never have anything resembling a strategy- Merely people throwing their units around hoping it works. Sometimes it does work too, but this is never because of any skill at command.
It all comes down to the people playing the war battles. And they don't care. People will spawn in expensive tanks so that they can drive up to a building and get it blown up by AT. Because they don't have to pay for those tanks. The guy who got the tank brigade does. Same for airplanes, infantry spawns and vehicles. Why would they care that you've waited 3 days to get your infantry squad filled? They will run into machinegun fire and then respawn to do it again until you lose your squad. They will spawn every single vehicle available when they have 1000 infantry spawns and 300 vehicle spawns and they fight 160 infantry and 10 vehicles. And because these vehicles despawn after use, they are gone and they remain gone. The only thing here for you is frustration and poorly designed mechanics, a map that does not work properly and ideas that died before they were put into the game.

And that is most of what you will find when you manage to progress past being a basic rifleman with stock gun. A game with great ideas, pretty good technical achievements, but a team that does not understand even the most basic of design and doesn't care either. Greed above all else, and a complete lack of awareness.
Long ago when this was an early build I gave them a small bit of cash because they had a great concept, good basic gameplay, and claimed to have plans to make it better. I wanted to support them, since they were a small group that seemed to be making something great.
I regret that.
I could have burned that money and it would have gone to better use. The game isn't better than it was back then. It's worse, and it's showing no signs of ever improving.
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Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #222968

Quick casual, short review that everyone here already knows
Helldivers

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/11/h ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/394510/
Spoiler:
Helldivers is a surprisingly well made semi-casual game (You can pick it up, do a few runs of 20 minutes each and then drop it, or play for hours) that allows for a decent amount of optimizing. Mainly group based, it has a good matchmaking system that lets you literally drop in on someone with a drop pod and get right into the action. Or you can make a pre-made group and plan out your entire mission before launching. All this, for Super-Earth.

There are a large amount of weapons available, most well balanced and almost all viable, useful, and easy to use. (Point the loud end at the enemy), with plenty more called in 'stratagems' which range from defensive turrets to airstrikes, to supply drops. There is plenty of variety should you feel like playing with a different style for a change, and it's all viable. The only thing is that you may need to upgrade your items a bit before they reach their full potential.
Upgrading items is easy enough, with the upgrades clear on what they give you, and not too hard to get. You find samples during missions and 10 of these become one research point. It's fast enough to be noticeable progress, but also slow enough that you don't get to just unlock everything and then ignore it.

There are three different kinds of enemies, all with recognizable themes while their mechanics are different enough to be interesting in their own ways, requiring slightly different tactics or loadouts. The game's theme is excellent, with some small bits of humour in the over-the-top Super-Earth and the player character's zeal in spreading democracy. A few very well made one liners and a great overall wholesome fitting theme works well for pulling you in and giving the game a great identity that is worth coming back to.

With missions seeming to be randomly generated, the ability to drop in on any game or to team up with friends while using a varied, well balanced arsenal puts Helldivers firmly in the category of "Good games". Without any noticeable flaws and gameplay that keeps you entertained, it is certainly worth it.
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XSI
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:41 pm
Byond Username: XSI

Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #227407

A game that doesn't know how to be a game, that doesn't understand world building, but has an interesting gimmick at least.
Beholder

http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/11/b ... eview.html
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/475550/
Spoiler:
Beholder is an interesting game that pretends to be more than it is. A simple gimmick of spying on people and surveillance, but with a minimum of actual interaction to go with it. After the first few hours, most of the game is about finding out what the developers planned for you to do and then following the story they wanted to tell you. If you wanted to just spy on people and have a few renters to keep an eye on, you're in the wrong place.

Mostly, Beholder tells you a story. And this story demands that you are a dou-che to everyone and extort them until they have no money left to give you before forcibly evicting them so you can steal whats left of their stuff and pawn it for spare cash. If you do not do this, you will either be given a game over or your family will die. Multiple times at that. In my one playthrough so far my son has died three times and my wife twice, forcing me to pay for five funerals for two dead family members. Through all this, people still threaten me with hurting my family which already died, and there is a good chance that if I don't go along with it they will dig up the body just so they can kill it again and force me to pay for another funeral.

There is not a lot of choice to be had, there are a few stories, and you have to just follow them. Some stories appear to have multiple paths, but in the end only a few seem to have any effect on others at all. Coupled by a world that appears to be intended seriously but comes off as a satirical joke where people try to one up eachother on cynicism, dialogue options being vague ("Tell me" -200 reputation- Could mean threatening them, right? Nope. It's asking nicely.) and the fact that you don't really get to do that much for most of the time except wait for people to leave so you can rummage through their stuff makes this more suited to something you can watch someone else play rather than something you can play yourself.

Aside from all this, I've found there to be some serious issues with Beholder, family members dying multiple times, the game not recognizing them as dead, the complete lack of manual saving, barely functional tutorial that doesn't even explain the basics right and very harsh penalties on what is essentially trial and error gameplay makes for a sadly unsatisfying experience where I found myself deciding that I was done and got the good ending after a bomb killed everyone in the building.

Graphics are simple, but they are pretty good at what they do. Renters are different enough to distinguish between them and the music works well for most of the game. I don't think it was entirely necessary to hear the basement stove turned on nearly all the time though.

There are good things to be had in Beholder, but it feels very much like they had a story and a single game mechanic planned, and then just jammed them together hoping it would work.
It doesn't, or not very well at least. The start of the game is fairly well worked out and entertaining, but then after that it mainly becomes a hunt for finding the right thing or dialogue you're expected to find while at the same time bringing in renters just to extort them for money. A routine that encourages you to not care about any of your renters, your family, or the game as a whole. And all throughout this everyone will stress how everything is bad without ever having anything good happen.

The game claims your choices have consequences, but the only choices and consequences are "Do as we intended for you to do or you and/or your family will die" with nearly no room for error. Even if you accept the loss of one or two family members you do not have many meaningful choices, seemingly by design.

Take that as you will, but I can not in good conscience recommend it to anyone but those who are the most hyped about spying on people while also being a fan of passive gameplay.
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XSI
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:41 pm
Byond Username: XSI

Re: Reviews!

Post by XSI » #228403

Fuck it, more reviews!
Maybe this one doesn't count since it's just a beta

Steep Open Beta
Pretty good, really.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/550040/
http://tocopinion.blogspot.nl/2016/11/s ... eview.html
Spoiler:
Simple open beta review!

Steep- It's honestly pretty good. Yeah, you need Uplay. Yeah, the multiplayer system has issues for some people. And some parts of the map are not quite finished looking just yet. But that's what a beta is for.

It's difficult to do the tricks on jumps until you figure out exactly how and the timing for them seems to be a bit rough, but there are plenty of good places to practice, and a large open world with a lot of varied and good rides down the mountain. Plenty of time and amusement just going around and finding things, with a lot of good places and tracks if you put some effort into it, and you can just ride or glide down with friends to relax and mess about as well.

I can't say much on the physics, as I dont often do these kind of sports myself, but I can say that controls often felt difficult. Not in a bad way, but more like you have to get used to them. The camera is often pretty poor- Mostly inconsistency and being in the exact wrong spot for what you're trying to see, but this can be fixed with a different camera mode so it only annoys until you find what works for you.
Multiplayer is sadly limited to only 4 people in a group, very clearly not many with how big a world it is, but you can share your challenges(Which you can make yourself) with as many people as you want.

Customization appears good, though I found myself not really liking most of the options. A little more variety would be nice, but it has enough to be functional and fun as is.
Worth 60 euro fun? I don't know. I feel like I need to get a bit more out of it before I'd feel comfortable with 60 euro. But as for someone not usually into sports games, I can say that Steep's Open Beta looks like it promises good things for the full version.
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