Recent reviews by SkunkWerks

I'm not normally a fan of "difficult" games- mostly because I feel like the way a lot of them achieve "difficult" is arbitrary and not very engaging.

This game is a notable exception. It draws me in with both engaging mechanics and beautiful atmosphere.

Christian Whitehead did an amazing job porting this game. I'm a little dissapointed that the soundtrack fromt he version I had doesn't quite make it into this version, but other than that? Great buy.

Great game.

It has enough of the original source material to be nostalgic, and is packed in with enough new stuff to be quite fun and engaging.

So far it's just about everything it promised to be and more. Cheers to the developer, Christian Whitehead, this is a thing of beauty- as was your port of Sonic CD.


I've updated my Review of this game as of 3/13/2019.

When I'd originally delivered it, I gave it a vote of no confidence because Sega had "forgotten" to tell a lot of people who'd already pre-ordered this game that it was coming with a little something extra that they knew a lot of people wouldn't want. Denuvo. It was an underhanded, stupid, petty and selfish move.

And I'm of course reversing that decision based on the removal of Denuvo from the product- finally. Though I'm fairly sure this was done as a calculated decision on their part, and if they had this to do over again they'd act just as petty, stupid and selfish.

This isn't for them, though. This is for a good developer who made a great game.

I'd love to give a deep and detailed review of this game, but I can't because, well: Xigncode.

If you don't want to read much further (I'm wordy), basically I can't play this game because a piece of software included with the game that- while it's intended to prevent cheating- probably goes WAY too far in attempting to do so- looking at installed software in your computer that has absolutely ZERO chance of ever interacting with the game.

Principally I have no issue with game devs wanting to discourage cheating, but there is a balance to be struck, and this is a bridge too far. I can't reccomend the game as such.

If you do want to read further, I'll go into great detail about it- and in no small part because it seems hard to get much if any information out of the developers about what exactly Xigncode does. I'm aware of the discussion posts, but even they are pretty vague and general- probably to some extent by necessity.



There's a lot of claptrap about this in the forums and such- that it's malware, a rootkit, it spies on you. I'm not exactly a subscriber to all that (though the last one is ~kinda~ true).

The "truth" is that- like a lot of MMOs from this corner of the world, the priority is placed largely on grinding, and as such, some folks not really keen on grinding- or perhaps not too keen on doing the legwork involved at least- might feel inclined to automate tasks they feel are mindless and beneath them.

Xigncode is anti-cheat software, to put it simply. It's intent is no more (and no less) malicious than that.

I don't get the allure myself- cheating, that is. Why pay for a game you're not planning on experiencing? And if the experience is grindy and that's not your thing? Well... the game's probably not for you.


So why then would I write to apparently call out Xigncode- if I don't principally have an issue with game devs not wanting people to cheat at their games?

The answer is... complicated. But to sum it up: False Positives


I'm an IT guy, someone who by trade deals in- if not a lot of exotic software- then at the very least a wide variety of software- any of which might be installed on my machine at any given time. Some of it might even be designed for the task of automating other software- and for perfectly understandable reasons.

So I fire up the game, and eventually it crashes with a message from Xigncode that very obliquely and indirectly tells me "you've been naughty".

My thoughts immediately head to the wealth of software I have on my machine- some of which might edge close to this category of "forbidden"- and I think to myself, "Gee, I'd sure like to know if that's the problem, for sure (again, IT guy, I'm used to self-diagnosing my computer issues).

And hey, the game helpfully directs me to this file (xigncode.log) where it's suggested I might find that verification. So I go have a look, and well, it's a lot of this:

í»!ó«@^ËÓróg¥Û;‹¡ÞÛŸiy/…>š;±‹h4¬Œ+íXtöôxÏë(K/Ñ•1ÕßR÷E´†€"òØÅ¿z¤Ö&÷H<Ñ„—HHLfååRåõ¢n<Àsñ[0Š²Y&´\œv¬¯ž{5™F°w¾±I½¿‘&¹ç¯hŒBŠÚŽi€Õ¥¸2}´9 r
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This is either unicode characters my computer can't read (the game is after all, foreign), or it's encryption. Good news for the malware conspiracy theroists (or maybe bad news if you really WANT to believe this thing is evil incarnate), the latter possiblity would probably represent evidence that Xigncode is in fact keeping the data it collects safe on your machine from just any schmoe reading it...

But it'd be bad news for me, the guy trying to figure out exactly what tripped this thing.

They of course invite you to send this to them, so I guess they can decode that mess. I could do it, sure. But the truth is: I haven't done anything wrong here.

Even if there's some piece of software present on my machine that Xigncode thinks is the devil- it's not running in the background, and so there's no way it's in use on the game itself. So exactly what measuring stick am I being evaluated against here? Not knowing is kind of aggravating.

Going to the discussion forums on steam here for the game to ask questions seemed like a good avenue- but they appear to be locked. So that's a one-way prospect.

They're either more interested in soapboxing than they are interacting with the community, or there's been so much hate and misinformation and frustration being vented there over this Xigncode thing that they just got sick of it all and locked the forums.

A mixture of both is also possible, of course.

In any case in the process of looking at what player posts were already there, I got the sense that Xigncode does at least marginally more than look for active background software- it seems to look for software you may have recently used, or maybe is just present on your system- and if it finds anything it doesn't care for, shuts the game down.

So you know, it could be a matter of simply having a piece of software installed that it finds objectionable. That'd be something of a pisser because, again, I'd have to go uninstall that piece of software- which I might be using for other, perfectly legit purposes.

False Positives are funny things. My antivirus routinely pegs several Steam games/apps I have as malware for... whatever reason (I'm a technical sort of guy and even I can't figure it out- best I can do is: "dunno, heuristics?"). But the difference there is I can look in my AV log, find out what it's having a fit over, and then set an exception.

Hard to tell what Xigncode is having a fit over here because, yanno, encrypted log file. And in cases like this, companies rarely want to tell you what "the rules" are. If you were intent on breaking them, you might use that information to get around Xigncode.


And that brings me back to the principle of the thing: far as I know, I've done nothing that amounts to cheating, and if this isn't some sort of false positive, then it's probably that Xigncode is just being WAY too overzealous in it's search for even signs I might be inclined to cheat- e.g.: searching for installed or recently accessed, software, rather than stuff that's actually in the background- and actually capable of affecting the game in real-time.

I guess that's the Game Dev's prerogative- if they want to be overzealous, they can do that.

Thing is, it's my prerogative to choose NOT to get involved with that mess. Or at the very least to choose not to play because my ability to play has been been made far too onerous.


A short cautionary tale on the anti-virtue of over-protectiveness:

One upon a time there was a little piece of Desktop Publishing Software called QuarkXpress, made by a company called Extensis.

This underdog, no-name Little Engine that Could very breifly managed to accomplish something that most people in the graphic design industry would have thought impossible: it breifly unseated the mighty Adobe (whose own flagship Desktop Publishing software was Pagemaker, at the time) as the industry standard in desktop publishing.

And it did so by being way more innovative- offering features that Pagemaker at the time sorely lacked.

But Extensis- perhaps feeling vulnerable after having taken the limelight as dramatically as it had- decided that QuarkXpress needed a metric butt-ton of Digital Rights Management Protection- to, yanno, "keep dem pirates from keelhaulin' yer software, ARR!".

In principle, I can understand the desire to not have ones' creation pirateded to infinity. That said, there's a balance to be struck.

In a very short period of time, the DRM protection they had in play got so onerous that it wasn't uncommoon for even legitimate owners of the software to be completely unable to run the product they had purchased. Users pretty understandably became frustrated...

...and then along comes Adobe with a nifty little product called InDesign. And that's why no one knows the name QuarkXpress any more.

I've waited a while to post a review for this. Wanted to collect my thoughts on it. After having watched the drama of this game's release unfold, I'm convinced that there are in fact, three No Man's Skys.

1. The game 'the hype' promised- and never delivered
2. The game that fifty-thousand raging neckbeards can't seem to stop despising
3. The game it actually is.

As I wasn't on the hype train (I bought the game shortly after the Foundation Update), and I'm not especially prone to groupthink or fits of unreasoning rage either, I'll try to address that third game- because I do think gaming journalism is messed up.

I just happen to also think that the primary dysfunction has essentially become a difference of extremes.

Which is another way of saying: "trying to buy a game amid all these histrionics is like driving drunk."

Not- mind you- that I don't think that what happened with 'the hype' isn't reprehensible. It is.

On the other hand I also think it's unfortunate in the sense that there is an audience for a game like this. It's probably a far smaller one than the hype generated, but it's also probably larger than the wave of hate that followed it's release (that continues to follow the release) allows for.


So what is that third game? Well, it's an atmospheric exploration game with crafting and some survival elements.

It has some action, but it's not an action-oriented game.
It has some survival elements- but this isn't "hardcore"in that regard and I don't see it ever being.
It's got some crafting elements- but the list ins't tremendously expansive and the flow isn't necessarily... optimized.
It's set in space- replete with different races, lore for those races, factions and so on- but it's not a free-form Mass Effect, no.

What it does well is it's sense of ambience and atmosphere, while giving you a little of all of the above things. Some might find this boring (and even I tire of it from time to time), but I don't think that the mere fact that you can be bored with a game necessarily makes it a bad game.

This isn't a game for everyone- as I think I said above. But if you think you might find the idea of exploring a vast-feeling universe for a bit, while occupying yourself with gathering and cataloguing things, you might enjoy playing this game.

I know I have.

One thing I will absolutely agree with most of this game's detractors on is the price (at least the $60 one used at release).

This is a $30 game- at most.

That puts it in a similar category with a lot of other games like it.

So, if you do get it, wait for a sale- definately. But again, keep in mind that there's a lot of nonsense surrounding the game's release. It's easy to avoid the over-hyping of the game nowadays since it's out and we've got plenty of it's features catalogued and we know what the game is and isn't.

But it's still easy to fall victim to the rage train still following the game. Make your own decision. Don't let anyone else (including me) tell you what to buy.

The claim of course being that the port's been improved- that it works. Not seeing it, frankly. Exploding mesh pretty much from the intro on in. Can't say I'd reccomend the game as it is- and I'm speaking as someone who bought it on the cheap during a sale. Don't think I'd even risk that if I had it to do over again.

I'm not normally a huge fan of Survival games, though this game's ability to play in various "modes" helps a good deal towards letting me play it as I like.

I'd say the two things it most has going for it- at least for someone like me is:

A) You can build- a lot and creatively.

B) It is ~immensely~ well done in the atmosphere department. As I've remarked elsewhere in forum threads around this idea: even with damage turned off (I know I basically can't get hurt), standing on the edge of a potentially endless and unknown abyss is really, really forboding.

This game captures a nice blend of sandboxy-goodness and awe-inspiring environments. You can relax and go all zen while you put things together and create your masterpiece, or you can sally forth into new 'worlds' to witness the beauty and the terror of it all.

Highly reccomended.

A must for anyone who remembers this era of gaming. Goofy, fun and very self-aware. I'd also reccomend this for Mystery Science Theatre fans...

Spent many a day hunched in front of my TV playing the Genesis port of this game's predecessor. 6 grueling levels, hack-and-slash, beautiful graphics.

This game pretty faithfully reproduces the experience. If that's what you're looking for, give it a go. You won't be sorry.