Recent reviews by [GWJ] Sylvar C.H.

"Above Snakes" takes a simple isometric survival title and pushes it into new, unique areas by allowing the player to create their own open world. The cartography mechanic is unique and allows players to create either a realistic world around them, or something that looks a bit more patchwork. Even the loop of exploring and earning what amounts to XP to get more map pieces allows the creativity to run wild with more than just base creation.

Overall, for a zombie survival set in the wild west, I find this game to be a wonderful zen like experience and lose hours exploring, and progressing through the story.

Pros

Transport Fever 1 was interesting. The basis was alright and it took a lot of digging to find something I enjoyed so when Transport Fever 2 came I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to feel playing it. The first had left me kinda not sure if I even wanted to play more but with the gorgeous trailers and discussion of revised and better industries I gave it a chance.

Any issues I had with Transport Fever 1 were resolved with 2. The ability to get lines up and running and to start turning a profit early on felt nice and very quickly I fell in love. This is a transport tycoon game where I lose track of time just going: " Oh just one more thing," "Oh if I do this it'll help my new deficit," "Just have to increase the amount of good being delivered there, to increase demand, to allow my lines to be better utilized."

In Transport Fever 1 I would feel like sometimes I would have no idea why a line would fail, here I could see why and could work to fix it and that balance of fixing, and pushing forward has lead to a lot of enjoyable experiences. The graphical upgrades also really help to fill in some of your down time where you can get up nice and close and just watch the detailed movement of goods which, if you start out early, it becomes a beast by the 1920's and you're juggling a ton of lines that could in a few minutes go from large profits to large deficits if you over extended one line over another.

Cons

The downside is, the worlds are bigger, but still feel like they could be... well bigger. I have this amazing feeling of scale with my current world but it still feels as if I had a bit more map I could make even bigger and more interesting transport networks.

Another is that even with mods, early on your bridge types are limited, after I built my fourth similar wooden bridge, I was kinda begging for a wooden bridge with a new design, just to make my railroads look a bit better. I get this is a cosmetic issue so I'm not that upset.

What I am upset with is, with this graphical upgrade we got better deserts that look like the western US, and tropical themed maps, but mountains, while better, still feel... off. I'd love to play on a Colorado or Washington State inspired maps, with large mountain ranges, a variety of different landscapes from green valleys to deserts, and the challenge of designing transportation through mountain valleys. Seeing railroads and roads winding over rapids and past waterfalls, airplanes attempting to navigate flying up and over in the early days of aviation, and then the wonderful birds eye view of said transportation networks winding through the valleys below over time.

Overall (TLDR)

Transport Fever 2 does really well of getting the transport simulator aspect down, this is a far superior game over the last and I can't help but recommend it to anyone with an interest in transport tycoon titles. But now with the simulator feeling so good, I wish they would push themselves graphically and push themselves size wise more. worlds with changing landscapes, larger worlds, more detailed river and fluid simulation, could go a long way.

But those are just now wishes for the future, for now, I am quite happy to spend a few hundred hours watching my transportation network become an incredible beast of delivering goods.

I am not happy that Ubisoft took Anno 1800 off steam for a year, but I also recognize this is a good game. With Epic having earned their name as a sleazy platform I will ignore this games being yanked and talk to the game itself.

I heavily enjoy Anno 1800, it is a wonderful blend trip back to the age of sail boats, and honestly, it plays wonderfully. my only issue is late game can sometimes seem like everything is profitable and then suddenly your in the red. Which is frustrating because I am not sure if that is my own fault or the fault of the games.

Sadly that is all I can say as the DLC and additions are locked elsewhere so I can not speak to their quality. The only thing I really wish is that trains could be utilized beyond delivering oil. I figured we may get passengers as a commodity and that stations could be used to extend a small portion of markets radius and otherwise but that was not the case. Mods have added in passenger stations and a few other uses but in the end, I kinda wish Ubisoft had done that from step one.

Overall, it's fun, it has some issue, but I keep playing it and recommend it to anyone who likes Anno set and those who enjoy the Victorian era.

I put off playing this for a long time and, I regret doing that. I absolutely get where this game is coming from, the story it tells and both sides of the story are very emotionally charged. If you have ever dabbled in game creation, or made something artistic, pick this game up, go in blind, and then read up on it afterwards. It really hits home with a creator.

Bright, brilliant, disgusting decay. Dishonored 2 takes the bleak and drab world of Dishonored and essentially moves you to Florida of their world. Karnaca has everything a Floridan could want, larger more evil mosquitoes which have a habit of bringing the dead back to life ala zombie ant. Creepy almost dictator like leaders, and repression of the working class to the point of poverty. This game pushes Dishonored right where you didn't know you wanted it.

With the option of Emily or Corvo you may think the choice is obvious but the twists and turns of Emily's story felt more natural too me and Corvo felt a tad... same old. He gets the same powers with some new twists and his dialogue with the Outsider is interesting but in the end I love playing as Emily in this title.

This is also by far some of my favorite puzzle, stealth, solving around, there are complete levels that boggle my mind and deliciously haunt me way after having finished it. This is a bright, bloody, and brilliant game that I will return to in the future.

Frustration, anger, pride, dispair, hope, these are not words I would normally use to describe a city building game but FrostPunk is different, it give you the bleakest future in a steampunk world where their industrial revolution gave way to the next ice age. It's also a city builder with a story, from incidental dialogue you get from your citizen to journals your scouting parties find while exploring the wasteland for supplies.

The main part of this game is heat, you're building a city in a circle around a large steam generator, and the temperature keeps dropping, meaning you need to build and research better buildings and more ways to create heat and gather coal to keep your furnaces alive. Moral choices are abundant, child shelters or child labor, attempting to treat the gravily ill or putting them in care houses. Even such things as the choice between religion, or security are filled with potential moral dillemas. The developers are very good at pulling at what makes a person tick and tries to give everyone a challenge and question their own ideals.

Overall, this is a splendid game and I can't recommend it enough to city builders and people looking for a good steampunk story. It takes hours to play but in the end so do most building games so it fits right in. The developer keeps updating and adding new updates for free and I'm curious to see how this game will look in another year, where it will have gone and how much more depth it will have been given.

The screenshots, nor the trailers, could prepare me for how upsetting this was. Not even an hour in and I just want it gone, if it wasn't for the fact I picked it up during the Summer Sale I'd be getting a refund. Her Interactive are known for publishing good mystery games, with a good balance of puzzles and story. That will not be found here. Odyssey starts out giving you a note book, and then giving you page after page after page filled with text, don't worry though only the yellow is relevant to the puzzle, doesn't mean it'll always help with some of the puzzles, but they attempt to keep the needed info in there. Sadly instead of learning anything or even wanting to continue, my hour long gameplay has left me utterly wishing to leave this alone and never come back.

Maybe it's just me but so many of those pages would have worked much better as audio logs of added to a seperate note book as additional text to read at the players desire, forcing it and the puzzle info together made things more confusing and stressful then needed.

Overall, I just can't recommend this, there might be a good game in here, but compared to this publisher's other titles, and what the trailer and pictures lead me to believe, this isn't the game I was expecting and it's overhanded usage of journal pages feels like it's weakest part of what could be an interesting puzzle game.

I have given this game multiple chances, I want to like it, I wanted to like Train Fever too, but both games leave me going month without playing them or even wanting too. When I sit down to play either Train Fever or Transport Fever I know I'm going into an impossible game, the game of supply and demand is diffucult to get going and sometimes to trains you depend on to help you expand to be able to earn more, their maitence costs ramp up too fast to be useful. I think I may have finally figured out a way to beat this but at the same time it frustrated me it has taken two games to figure out what works and what doesn't.

What also hurts my opinion of this title of the anti achievement stance they have taken. If I so much as add one vehicle mod or change it so I get a larger amount of vegitation on the screen, I can't get achievements. Where as other similar titles handle achivements and mods much better. City Skylines allows new buildings, new vehicles, and color correction mods without turning off achievements, but if you want to be able to do a first person camera, or something that the game actively wasn't meant to do, it turns off achievements. Why can't Transport Fever do that? Seperate the mods by type, vehicle and stations mods that don't go above or below certain settings don't turn achievements off while ones that created hundreds of people, or cost nearly nothing do?

What I'm saying is the hardline stance is rediculious and is upsetting, and if it wasn't for the fact there are amazing models our there I probably wouldn't have cared and would have just been disappointed that the game has other issues.

One other large issue I have is in fact the lack of vegitation, and lack of greenry with the USA map. I get the feeling the USA theme was based on Nebraska and a tiny bit of Colorado but to get any sort of Eastern US map I have to combine the US and EU map themes. Why can't the USA map theme have more color too it? I'd love to try and build up a transport empire in a northern rockies local, dealing with tunnel construction, and building roads/rails on cliff sides.

Overall my current gripes and issues lead me to not really wanna recommend this to others, if you want a good Transport Tycoon in 3D game, give it a try but be ready for a few headaches and a hard learning curve. If you want a Railroad Tycoon type game, maybe hold out for Railway Empire, not sure how well it's gonna do but each time they show it, it has progressively looked better. At the end of the day, I'll probably keep playing this, I spent the money on it, but I doubt I'll ever get achivements or ever buy the sequel/DLC.

I'll never trust Dovetail again. I wasn't a fan of the DLC centric nature that Rail Simulator turned into, and I took years to accept they wanted the model railway route, buy what you like, don't buy what you don't, I can accept that. At the same time when they announced they were moving to the latest Unreal engine I got a tad excited. I had seen plenty of demo videos created by other people out there that a train simulator in Unreal was possible. My hope was that this would become a landmark game where the graphics hit a level for train sims we never seen before.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment at launch when I found out the ballest is just a texture, buildings that aren't landmarks are barely detailed or created, roads are even more of a background object than before, barely any cars on them in highly dense cities, water has no/barely any reflections or even looks like real water, and all the freight cars look new and barely any variation between them. That's just the texture and model related issues.

Other than that game has included various bugs in the physics engine. When there are mutliple videos of hoses going crazy, or train cars falling through the world it might be time to do some heavy debugging.

Besides bugs, for 40 bucks the content is lacking. You get one partly made route, you get an okay, but clean railyard that will remain 80% empty most of the time, the only positive I can find is that the challenge level for learning how to drive each locomotive is actually challenging and entertaining. Otherwise, this game gives you a whole lot of nothing, for a big price.

With new DLC coming in August with a price tag of 30 bucks with no discounts I can't help but wonder if the novalty of using Unreal was just a cash grab. CSX has many bugs from game breaking to immersion breaking yet to be fixed, and the lack of content updates to support and show they care for those who forked out 40 bucks for an experiment is upsetting.

By the way, that DLC, comes with one route, three locomotives, and a new passenger mod. If this was another big company who cared bout their fans, this would be free to those who supported the title early on and would become bundled with the main game to make it closer to being worth that 40 dollar price point, but instead we see them going the Ark route and charging out the gate for DLC which, considering the lack of updates and fixing CSX world, will launch and break the game even more. Those suckered into getting it for British DLC will join the loads who had given Dovetail a hope they may create something absolutely amazing, only to be let down.

Do not fall for this companies ruse, till the main game contains more, higher quality routes, and more rolling stock, with all modes from missions to a level editor, I'd suggest staying far away. Maybe get it on a sale in 10 years when the price is more like 10 bucks.

A city builder with an easy soundtrack, traffic management, power management, sewage, water physics, transportation networks, bus lines, and a Twitter Parody named Chirp that is a useful and unique way to update news updates and give the player advice on how to advance one's city. This is a game I highly enjoy and feel anyone who has ever played other city builders needs to give a try. In fact the company put so much love into the product their still releasing new content and updating the game with new features. For years to come City Skylines will be a staple for my city building needs and my excitement and ancitipation for the next expansion pack leaves me giddy and happy.