Recent reviews by SkunkWerks

My right and left shoulder buttons didn't break a year into use. Dunno why (maybe I don't press them in with sledgehammers?).

Anyway, the only real hardware problems both my controllers primarily suffer after a year or so of use is drift, and that's really a problem with most analog sticks on the market... though if they used hall-effect sticks, they would be less subject to that wear and tear.

That said, the only truly terrible thing I have to report is that valve decided to stop making them (thanks patent trolls?) and is instead making some silly mobile platform product I have zero interest in.

Okay, so, I have just realized now that I never wrote this game a review.

Was I overwhelmed? Was I so stunned that it just slipped? I dunno. I'll stop gushing now because I know you're not really here for that.

The thing you probably should know about the reviewer is: I grew up with a learning disability (and among many others with similar or more severe problems), and some of those I count among my loved ones are themselves, suffering with different forms of mental illness in the here and now.

So when I say, "this game tackles the topic with a level of finesse I would not have thought possible", I say that from some experience.

Superb storytelling, wonderful character acting. And while it might not necessarily deliver quite so much in the action mechanics department, if you appreciate story-driven games this is a hard one to fault.

I can't recommend it enough.

Obvious stuff out of the way:

Yeah, I don't think it's finished. I don't think we got everything we were promised. And yes, I do think it especially unfortunate that console users seem to have suffered worst (though I play this on PC myself).

I'm not pleased with the way the game got released, overall. The reported development "crunch" was especially disappointing and I'd have been overall happier to have seen it released later, for this and other reasons. And yes, I did preorder, roughly two years back, but I don't regret that, because...


That said:

I do think this is a great game, still. It has the right theme for a Cyberpunk game, it feels right atmospherically. The gameplay will draw you in- assuming your preferences for difficulty aren't "hardcore".

If you like a story driven game, if atmosphere is as important to you as mechanics and challenge, this game offers a good mix of those things, even in the state it's in.

It's my hope we'll see not only fixes, but enhancements to the game over time. I would completely understand if you wanted to give the game a miss, given it's troubled release (and in particular if you're settled on getting the console versions), but otherwise, I would not hesitate to recommend this game.

Haven is a different kind of game, and I admit that's what interested me in it. It's a bit runner-y, a bit craftsy, a bit visual-novel-y, very story-centric... it's an interesting mix.

And while I've heard some complain about resource gathering being "monotonous" I dunno, I don't really feel like it's painful. Even the Appledew Stew with Appledews is breathtaking in its own way, you know?

While you can play this solo, you are missing out on a LOT if you're not playing this with a partner- and maybe in that regard this isn't destined to be everyone's cup-of-tea... or Applebrew, or whatever.

My wife and I game together quite a lot, and we enjoy the synergy the game promotes. It's a niche, but it's our niche, so it's cozy, cute, and fun.

If you think this is the sort of experience you and someone special might enjoy? I highly recommend it.

Lessee...

1. Art style like Mike Mignola.
(that's Hellboy comics for the uninitiated)

2. Voice work by Ron Perlman.
(that's the guy who played Hellboy in the Guillermo del Toro Hellboy films)

Yep. Sold.

This wholly unnecessary 1-year delay brought to you by Sweeny Tim's d***-measuring competition with Steam.

Now in apple flavor!

PARTIAL UPDATE: There is a certain kind of black irony in the fact that- in waiting a year to play this game because no-Sweeny-Tim-you-can-actually-eat-my-ENTIRE-a**- I have in fact (without really intending to do so) dodged the other cynical fashionable Business Ghoul practice that 505 games pulled with the Ultimate Edition.

You know, the one where they make up a BS excuse for why you cannot has a free upgrade to next-gen platforms like most other publishers offer for basically free and have to buy the game and all it's expansions all over again if you want that shiz, and then you go do that?

Which comes full-circle on me only when you realize that I don't have a console, and therefore never gave a damn in the first place.

Anwyay, game recognizing game here.




...Oh, and the game's (still) good too.

So, there's a badge for "Reviewed this game for free" and "Early access review".


What about one for "Bought the game on launch day, and it doesn't do the one thing you'd expect it to do on launch day: launch"?

Or, "bought it but can't play it due to a crash to desktop bug that occurs immediately as I launch it"?

Or, "It's a week later, and all I have to show for the purchase price I paid is a game with a bug that apparently dates back to the release of the publishers last game- that they aren't fixing in this one"?


Yeah, people make mistakes. Games don't always work out on launch day and might take some time to stabilize, sure.

But it seems apparent the development team is under a directive to polish the microtransaction system (you know, the most popular game mechanic present in modern games that almost no one that actually plays games wanted?) rather than fix a bug that's preventing a LOT of people who dropped money to purchase the game from actually playing it.

If you contact support, the responses are canned- frequently ignoring relevant spec information you've sent and wasting your time. And while I wouldn't normally be this cynical about products or practices, here I am assuming this delay is to keep you distracted until the refund period has elapsed.

So while they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, anyone unlucky enough to have this bug- which appears identical to the one that stopped a lot of folks from playing The New Colossus when that launched- gets to watch the Keystone Cops run around and not solve problems people actually care about, then thank you "for your patience" while they do so.

If that's a potential outcome you feel is worth $30, by all means, buy this game. If not, you may want to hold on to your cash.

As I've come to expect from this dev team, a complex and rewarding narrative born out of simple and fun premise.

Not all the way through it yet, but so far I've had some impressions and I may alter them as I press on.

To start, and here I somewhat look to my sides among the other reviews, I feel the need to clarify- though I am not certain "whose fault" it is that this sort of dull, bullet-points summary is necessary. Hype is a thing and sadly it does make the act of buying games these days very angsty and perilous.

What the game is:

• Story-driven
  
• Atmospheric
  
• Historically-influenced
  
• Reading/detail intensive

What the game is not:

• A stealth/infiltration title
  
• A hack and slash extravaganza
  
• Skyrim in early-1900's London with vampires
  
• A good surrogate for Assasin's Creed

What the game could still probably stand to do better with:

• Camera managment
  
• Free-roaming, or maybe the illusion of free-roaming

So yeah, I'm seven hours in as I write this. I rarely rush through games, and I feel like I can offer some decent conclusions still. As you might guess I feel like it's really good at being what it is.

The atmosphere is immersive, voice acting is fine and brings you into the narrative quite handily, and the game has made a great effort in really trying to give you the feel of a city balanced on a knife's edge.


All that said, if you were expecting Thief, Shadow of Mordor, a fully-fledged victorian, vampire-themed RPG, and so on, you're probably going to be dissapointed. It has elements of these things, but it's pretty clear it isn't the focus of the game.

That's either fine- if you, like me, love all those games/genres, but don't feel like this game has to be like them in some or all respects- or terrible if maybe you bought it and just can't quite get over the fact that it's not doing all the things you feel it must.


But, to be fair to the negative opinions here, there are some things I feel like the game could be doing better- even within the bounds of what it is.

One is the camera. Most people complaining about this have it dead-on. The camera reminds me a LOT of games from the early 2000's (games I also loved, incidentally). The problem here is this is almost 20 years later and there's just no excuse for a camera that doesn't stay pointed at the action at least most of the time.

Another is what I'm going to hesitantly refer to as "free roaming" or "exploration". This is kind of a dubious thing to me- and I don't just mean how it's presented in the game and its advertisements- I also mean the concept of free-roaming itself, as it applies to gaming.

I say the concept of free roaming is "dubious" because it's almost like that old expression about art: "I don't know what art is, but I know what I like". In the same vein, the perception that one can freely roam the game world is often the only valid measure of this quality- because there's just no game where you can freely go everywhere you want. It's not practical.

But does this game give you enough of that perception to make you feel like you can go just about anywhere? And yeah, I'm going to say hearing Reid posit five variations on "it's locked" on something like eight out of ten doors destroys that illusion pretty quickly and handily.

If you don't want folks going through those doors there's a much better example in all the doors you simply can't interact with. And if you're intimating that maybe there's some future power or item that's going to open it, maybe try hinting at it instead of saying "NOAP, FORSOOTH CANNOT GOEST I!" constantly.

Make it a mystery you can solve (which is another theme the game does well), or shaddap about it, in other words.


But, depite those flaws, I'm going to say: I like it.

There's a distressing lack of games like this (since about the time cameras that don't point at action was still a problem to be solved from a technical perspective). Story-oriented games that attempt to convey a feeling as much as they attempt to give you stable game mechanics. I'm glad this one got made, and I'm glad I own it.

Will you be glad you own it? Well, I'd hope yes, but you're not me, and maybe you like different kinds of things- which is why I started this missive with "what it is" and "what it isn't". If you can tick more "I like" boxes on the former side, and some of the flaws I've mentioned are overlookable? Yeah, maybe pick it up.

But I'd also say: wait for a sale.

This doth feel verily like a title that ith noth worth thy sixty dollarth. 40 maybe. 30 sounds more ideal.

Pros: I am going to ignore reviewing this specific game and instead tell you about how much the MMO version of it objectively stinks- because I have an unreasoning smiting hard-on for MMOs as a genre of game and because Relevance is a concept I find hard to follow in critique.

Cons: It's brown.*




















*They were OUT of blue ones.