Recent reviews by Therm0z

A new instalment in the game genre of 4 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ teaming up in space & fighting demons with little to zero training and we’re so ready to dive. An intriguing concept and the game does the genre so extremely well with all the world building and design. The intro alone is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece of propaganda while introducing you to the world.

Gameplay, while not complex, still feels excellent and thought out. You have freedom over how you play the game as the overall gameplay state is dynamic with how things play out. Everything from making noise or calling in things from orbit will attract enemies but unless they specifically hear/see you they won’t aggro so you can sneak away. Enemies feel like they're separate entities which makes stealth very satisfying and distracting incoming patrols with nades viable. With procedurally generated maps littered with incredible fauna and planet environments most drop-ins feel unique which lessens the burnout. So while the core gameplay loop is simple with just a dozen mission types and POIs everywhere it’s still a great experience spreading democracy to everything (including your friends) in your path after 200 hours.

One of the best things about this game is the community with even developers joining into games and convos to really interact with and take ideas from the community. It really feels like a unique experience in the gaming scene. From the community weapon concepts and features being added it’s clear the devs are very down to earth even if they very often misfire and make something worse. Arrowhead clearly has heart in the game as shown with the pushback of the “Sony wants to force PSN accounts” situation and really just standing with the community instead of the publisher. There is just a certain spirit in the community when it comes to how the game is talked about both inside and outside of the game itself and with people referencing it or roleplaying it’s just a great experience overall. Joining a random game you will likely see people having really fun and acting as if you’re all part of a real war going on and it’s a great experience. But with the sense of community being so high there arises a few problems, the game very much becomes a “you had to be there” experience. With a community that will eventually dwindle to a fraction of what it once was, newer players will have a hard time getting into the game. So sadly one of the games strongest points might also be its biggest weakness when it comes to longevity. The game has already made an insane impact and hopefully for the industry as well.

The art direction is brilliant with how they choose to display elements of the world, the over the top propaganda is a great way to introduce people to the world and it’s clear where inspiration has come from. Even things like tips are very much in-universe while loading into missions and have gotten me and my buddies to laugh while we watch clearly the best loading screen this decade. Combined with the absolutely slapping soundtracks infusing you with managed democracy throughout your body while dropping in. All while the only world progression we get is what war overlord Joel himself decides and though having a dedicated story master is a great way to keep people invested It's hard to not see it as a liability long term.

All this without even getting into weapon/gameplay design which is great when it comes to different utility for different moments and team composition. The armor itself with differing perks/stats made for different roles in a team means it balances itself out neatly even if there is armor that is clearly better for situations, same goes for stratagems and weapons. This however I’d argue is good as it gets players out of their comfort zone to try new ways to tackle objectives and discourages people from running the same build for everything. Balancing changes are often heavily criticised, and understandably so as in many cases there seems to be no clear direction of how Arrowhead wants stuff to work. Though the whole stratagem system in itself is quite balanced with the game rewarding you for memorising the DDR style inputs as you become overall much more effective of a weapon when you can call down a hellbomb in half a second.

Weapon handling, from staged and team reloads for the more powerful weapons to the damage system with body parts. All which is in my opinion brilliant and thought out (more so than the balancing). Ammo is almost never shown, only a small visual on how much is left in the mag which means to be effective you might have to count ammo which is just a neat design choice. The insane attention to detail like the bullet in the chamber being tied to the gun or the angled backblast of rocket weapons. It’s very clear that the game is built up on co-op aspects from the very start as all loadouts have weaknesses and playing specialised loadouts with a team just works so great. It's truly best to play with 3 friends as communication is often key and it’s just better with friends, but randos are fine. Just like some objectives that become much quicker if you have people in different spots. Though as always, self sufficiency and knowing which fights to take is ultimately the key to extract and win consistently.

Just like knowing it’s not always necessary to kill as enemy behaviour is dynamic and changes if they’re hurt etc. Automatons will limp or change behaviour when body parts are missing and smaller bugs will jump at you but ultimately retreat and call for help if alone as it realises it can’t handle you. That or you can take help from the weather or day/night cycle as it can change visibility and use it as a window of opportunity to make a ditch by blowing a few nades in the same spot and let the enemies pass.

The progression system is balanced with missions where you gain XP, credits and medals, currencies which are earned by completing missions or found inside of missions. XP levels you up which unlocks new stratagems that are bought using credits while medals are used for weapons, armor & cosmetics inside warbonds. These come monthly and never expire while you can choose what you want inside them. So while there is no time pressure, warbonds do cost supercredits, a currency that can be found inside of missions, bought with medals or bought by real money but since you need medals to unlock the stuff inside the warbonds it’s not really p2w and honestly a good monetization model for consumers.

Now to the bad and ugly…
Enemy spawns have since the start been broken, sometimes fixed but broken again. The same goes for objectives and extractions. The anticheat is known for being problematic and causing countless bugs and BSOD (which I’ve had many of). Combined with the endless and rapidly coming balance changes which can make the game extremely frustrating and I understand why some people left the game. Performance has been a problem and each update almost exclusively makes it worse though considering the proprietary unsupported engine it’s amazing the even runs this well. That’s not to say they don’t fix stuff, the friend system, fire, Crashing/dying servers, non-functional game summary & so much more has been fixed. Also, nerf hunters pounce ples -w-

A clear GOTY candidate, just the art direction and music alone is top tier and the game is stupidly fun at times. Spreading democracy with friends & randos is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a bit and the only problem I have with the game is that it’s moving too fast when more work should be done on bugs and base playable content. But overall an amazing and unique experience which I truly recommend.

Managed Democracy states that only 4 people can enter a mission

This user is being investigated for treason on
account of spreading unmanaged misinformation
- Super Earth Ministry of Truth


We dive together or not at all

This is a long one... settle in

Genuinely feels like a fresh breath of air for the FPS genre. With the arcade style gameplay and quick respawns leading to low amount of downtime compared to roundbased games. Something that combined with the insane movement you can pull off and good respawn mechanics leads there to be nearly zero "running to objective time" as most of the time you spawn quite close and can enter a fight on the objective in less than 10 seconds.

All of that is good game design, the highlight however is the versatility you get in terms of tackling objectives and other players especially with the completely destructible environment and map perks leading to unique plays. With the 3 very different classes you get lots of options of how you want to play with tons of differing weapons, abilities and gadgets which can be combined in a plethora of ways to suit just your playstyle. Be it a highspeed invisible man with a shotgun, stun-gun and nades that disable your abilities or a heavy with the destruction power of demolition crew on steroids combined with the power of the US government when it comes to firepower. You can basically play all TF2 classes with the loadout options and while some weapons become metas I still see many people play what they think is fun which is great and possible since the weapons balancing is quite good with a few exceptions though most have been patched at this point.

The overall game is very fast paced, roughly in the same class as Hyperscape was and with all the movement related gadgets and map design it feels a bit like it aswell. Especially with the very low time to kill and chaoticness of the whole game. It's safe to say I really enjoy it even though it's quite repetitive, though the solo experience is not that good. With the game focusing around teamplay and DTFO (do the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ objective) it's hard to get good team synergy without queuing together, something which isn't helped with the voicechat not working sometimes and there being no normal text chat. The heavily objective based gameplay also means going solo without your team will be useless unless you are very successful at it and pick your fights correctly, something I feel is fine but discourages people to play solo and something that could be filled in with other gamemodes like TDM or similar which would be nice as I feel like the game overall needs more gamemodes to accommodate all types of players and playstyles. When playing solo it's an absolute blast just putting on some high BPM music and dashing around killing people at high speed but it's not that effective since the game is objective based, therefor we need TDM.

The lack of gamemodes is not the main problem now since there are other more important fixes that needs to be addressed, like overall game performance which is quite shaky depending on what's happening in-game and sometimes just out of nowhere. This even with well above average hardware (5800x3D + 3070TI) means that for competitive play you might need a better computer to perform at your best currently. But with how good the game looks even on low graphics I can't fault them since they've already done a good job and just have a few kinks to sort out.

The server stability is also a bit all over the place currently with the game sometimes slowing down or you getting rubber-banded but that could just be back-end stuff and not something related to server functionality. Something which is though is the matchmaking which has gotten better since launch but it still feels like it's complete random if you get steamrolled or if you steamroll. I know most people don't like SBMM but having some kind of system would be nice since you can get put with 2 people who's on their first game against pros/cheaters with above 10 in average k/d.

Pros I can handle but people blatantly cheating is a problem and while I've only had 2 blatant cheaters who knows how many more there could be. Same with people using Aim-assist with MnK though this should have been fixed now according to the devs but I'm sure there is someway to still do it. But since the most offending weapons have had their AA removed it's mostly a non-issue even if people are using it but before it was straight up aimbot. And while I haven't found that many cheaters I also haven't played ranked that much but that system definitely needs changing since what it is now is just a mess.

The UI design is quite clean and somewhat resembling OW but might need some redesign when it comes to cosmetics as currently it's a pain with the sub-menus. Cosmetics saves per profile meaning you have lots of cosmetic freedom but it also means it's a pain if you want to have symmetry between your saved profiles. Something like a textfile or similar that you could save/load would be quite nice to have. That being said the UI also needs a few changes/fixes. Mainly in-game when teams are depositing it should show the teamcolor on the objective marker instead of just red and also fixing the UI bugs related to cash. These consists of not showing teams are depositing, showing a deposit that never actually happens so it backtracks and remove the points, saying your teammates have/don't have money when it's false, the status updating extremely slow on the cash bar so you think they didn't get the cashout as examples.

On the topic of cosmetics they are quite unique, not anything revolutionary but they try to stand out with how they design them. At the same time the ones you get for free for leveling up ain't too bad either but it stops at level 40 which is the level-cap for some reason. And while there is a battlepass that costs 10€ it's got quite a few things in it that you get for free that are cool while not being in your face all that much and if you decide to buy it once you get it's cost back in in-game currency by a factor of 2.5x so you won't have to spend money again. Just like any battlepass it's gonna be a bit grindy but after 66h I was at the max tier with not much thought of the weekly challenges, so I'd say it's quite manageable. And for all weapon/ability unlocks it was roughly 40h which compared to Apex when a single character can take upwards of 30h of it felt like an okay amount of time.

When it comes to the AI stuff I wasn't stoked at first but seeing how the VA's were in on it and how it can evolve in the future to be more integrated with playernames being broadcast as if in a tournament match with custom team names and many more types of voice lines it can definitely be a big part of the game. Cause for what happens in-game now with the lines is kinda underwhelming for it being AI when it could be so much more.

The game is still in it's early days and some stuff like cashouts might need a bit of a redesign along with all the gadget tweaking like turret health (they are a pain to deal with). But with how much has happened in the last month and how the devs actually listen to the players I can really see this game going far and I really hope it does. The gameplay is solid and the full on team fights are often thrilling, achievement difficulty and catalogue is great and quite unique which I appreciate. And hey it's free so why not try it out :)

Great game to play with a couple or a dozen of your mates. Lots of hours worth of laughs and funny clips of them screaming and dying in fun ways, overall it's just a blast of a time as you scrape by to serve the almighty company or die trying. While it might be a horror game it's not that scary but with the main way of talking to others being a proximity voicechat and some monsters triggering on sounds it can definitely spice up the horror elements. Also proximity VC in games is just a great element and adds lots to the experience.

While the game is fun and has a quite good and satisfying game-loop there are some problems with the game that while they fit the narrative and design of the game feels quite unfair. Like entering a building through the fire exit and getting blown up by a landmine directly or having a bracken aggro directly, these while usually not game ending can still be a pain but I'm sure it'll be fixed (Landmine thing has been fixed :3 ). Due to the quite simple game-loop the gameplay does get stale as it's very repetitive but the change in environmental factors, the people you play with and randomized insides of the facilities means the game stay fun and challenging. Though some factors of this randomness is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like lightning storms where they strike at random and can be end of a run or bad combo of enemies where you're screwed either way.

In the end the game is all about a race against the limited time you have per moon, you can strategize and stuff in between each moon but the decisions you make on the surface is what really can make or break a run. More knowledge is gonna get you further but if you can't make decisions fast that may as well be your doom in some situations. With that said the enemy design is great and can be seen quite clearly where inspiration has been taken from when it comes to a few of the enemies, though some combos of enemies will have you being unable to do anything as their weaknesses gets covered by the other enemy.

The game has a certain style for the graphics side which I feel like help make the experience whole and gives it some charm, it might not look the best but it gives a perfect feel for the game and is also very easy to run hardware wise and an the sound design is ingenious. That combined with the modding scene that has exploded means the community can easily make content if they so choose. Lots of mods for QOL etc has been released including stuff like increased player cap, cosmetics and new quirks for enemies. This is really great to see for longevity of a game if/when Zeekerss decide to be finished with the game. Though this shows a few flaws if you can call them that even clearer, the game incentivizes more players as you just get more hands and angles to tackle each moon with as there is no difference in gameplay from playing alone compared to a group. This could be seen as more of a challenge other than how you're supposed to play the game as most things are game-ending at that point.

Overall great game and with the updates we've been receiving it shows very great potential and our singular dev over here is doing a fantastic job, keep it up Zeekerss!

Great software for those of us interested in overclocking or actively tuning our hardware. While rather expensive normally It's a great deal during sales as this program has helped lots in doing standardized performance and stability tests after OC and for new hardware.

There are other alternatives which are free but 3Dmark has it all in one place with scores easily available on the website with built in sensors so you don't have to use other applications during your benchmarking. Overall great software if you know what you're doing and considering it still gets updates in forms of new feature tests like the recently released VRmark (Demo) I'm happy with the software.

I also got to teach myself to use and configure a virtual machine to get one of the achievements. Some might see it as a downside while I see it as a challenge. So may our frames be high and temps be low my fellow hardware nerds.

Weaponized toilet building simulator but with Cave Johnson and Aperture Science.

Probably more useful for developers to find what they can take vantage of while creating games. But considering the special hardware and input isn't on many controller types I doubt most input methods won't be used unless the game is specifically made for the deck like this title.

Just like 'The Lab' it's a great showcase and demo of what's possible with the platform, and while a fun little sequence it is rather lackluster in gameplay. Though considering it's free and there are lots of fun little references to the portal universe it's clear lots of love went into the little tech demo.

Both played and reviewed on the exclusively on the Steam Deck.

wawa :3

not done with the game yet, but love is so far

Generally a good game, the slightly faster gameplay compared to other battle royales makes it more interesting though time to kill is still in my opinion a little too high. The legends are quite balanced with all their unique perks but considering you either have to play around 25h to unlock another one if you don't decide to purchase them for real money the game does get a bit stale when it comes to picks as almost everyone uses the ones you start with or meta picks. As with all battle royales, a fight or game depends on lots of RNG of spawned loot, zone movement and other things outside of your control in situations leading to not so satisfying results in moments though this is generally not a problem. This can however get a solution through the fact that you can respawn teammates with relative ease, so fleeing can be an option.

When it comes to skill and learning the curves are quite long and steep at times with all the ways you can play and the very differing weapons. The most relevant skill being a steady aim and tracking ability of course but also movement skills of varying degree like tap-strafing and abusing other stuff related to the source engine. Fights are also heavily dependent of people close to you as 3rd partying is extremely effective in this game with the high movement and special abilities. The only real gripe I have with this game is the UI design which is unnecessarily cluttered in many places leaving you to search for things that should be intuitive to find but isn't with so many sub menus and the design language of the game.

Performance wise it's quite good, I'm getting relatively stable 170fps @1440p max settings across all maps with a RTX 3070ti / R7 5800x3D combo. Though fire close extremely close to you do give a few frametime hitches, something probably related to running on a modified Source™ engine as CS:GO and CS2 both has had these problems as well. With the game being run by EA you need an account on their platform even if nothing else have to launch when playing. And with the game being run by EA means lots of monetization which is very prevalent in the menu with there being shops, lootboxes, battlepasses, characters you have to either grind hundreds of hours for or buy them directly combined with stuff like ads for the battlepass and shop in-game makes it a VERY monetized experience.

Overall the gameplay feels good and like a meshed together experience from other genres, with it being a battle royale, hero shooter, fps with fast movement for a BR but in the end it comes together quite satisfyingly. Though with there being no solo mode I'd have to recommend only playing with other people as going 1v2 or even 1v3 and then getting backstabbed even if you win the first fight makes the game feel unfair.

Due to recent events in tournaments and the cheating problem still running rampant with no-one taking the blame even though it has been years combined with what looks to be remote executable cheats through holes in the anti-cheat means I just can't support this game any more. All while EA is pushing for more and new cosmetics and other micro-transactions just makes it seem this game is rotting away from the inside.

As someone who've only seen and hasn't played the original Half-Life™ games I can't really compare the experience. But generally it's a well made game with great attention to detail. Visual fidelity and the sound/music design I would definitely say is the games best highlight with the opening theme of Xen as a great example of what the team managed to create. It's most often obvious where to go and the few puzzle elements that exist are not too hard to figure out with well thought out design to make it easier for the player to make connections. Generally I would also say the NPC interaction and pathfinding worked great and was well integrated into the story to make the world feel more alive though sometimes they bugged.

I got Black Mesa™ to get to know the Half-Life™ story better before play Half-Life: Alyx™ and I felt the story was well presented and easily digested, so if this is your case then you have another reason to play the game.
When it comes to achievements they were quite the fun challenge though very annoying at times especially in narrow ladder chutes or when the achievement items could drop of the map or clip into places the player can't access, though it gave a fun photoshoot with the hidden hat cat around the game.

As for a suggestion I would say the game a better difficulty curve, some areas are super easy and some easily brings you down to 5hp. The problem is that it's not consistent with where these areas are, some endgame areas are a piece of cake and some you are really on edge on. This makes the difficulty a little all over the place which I'm personally not a fan of. It's unfortunately the same with the bosses as most "hard" areas are much harder than the bosses.

It's not all good though, there are massive flaws that happended to me multiple times starting with Z-fighting, inconsitent hitboxes for items and players, ladders being completely broken, items getting stuck and/or turning into hypersonic murder machine, crashing at interloper (many threads mention this), many softlocks meaning reset a chapter due to an event not happening, Items getting stuck and making the engine cry with 2 fps, NPCs getting stuck (as in chapter reset needed). While I really like the game these things made my first playthrough way longer than needed and just gave me frustration.

So while I do recommend the game and had quite the fun time you have to be prepared to crash or lose progress, so save often. I think the developers and designers did an amazing job but more polish is definitely needed as it felt like a heavily flawed experience at times.

A phenomenal puzzle game with Portal™ like puzzle elements. You can often see the end of a puzzle and your job is usually finding out how not where. The level design might not be that complex at times but the games aesthetic and theme/setting is very pleasing and the puzzles are fun to solve. It's quite a unique puzzle element to use perspective as a tool but it both fits with design and story.

As for the polish of the game I have to say I did get glimpses outside the playable area a few to many times and once saw Z-fighting in a place but overall it's very well made and it's quite hard to get softlocked. The overall graphic and music design is absolutely incredible though and if you want to know more about it they even have a developer commentary mode. Also just fun hunting after secrets or creating your own levels as you now can do.

Overall just a great puzzle game that makes you see stuff from a new perspective, so if you see on sale sometime I'd definitely say it's worth a go.

Terraria might be old but such a good game when you get going. Combat is a little chaotic but it scales very well with all the different bosses and items you can use as well as difficulty. One thing I have against it is that you have to keep the wiki up to be able to progress effectively as it often isn't clear what your next goal is if you wanna finish the game or just to look up crafting recipes. I'd say the same about Minecraft but that game has a crafting book now which immensely help newer players who have no idea how to do most things.

This is something that becomes less of a problem and more of the norm as you learn and have to use it less but the amount of stuff in the game makes it hard to remember everything. It's definitely a game I recommend people play at least once, It's not for everyone but those who are willing to put in the time I feel will enjoy it. Also got to point out that it has amazing modding support known as Tmodloader and cloud saves that makes it easy to switch between devices.