Recente recensies door Therm0z

The old but very iconic rhythm game, what more is there to say. So simple a child could play it but with a skill ceiling so high that it takes people weeks of constant training to be able to complete a single level. The time put in may seem a lot for how “little” you accomplish but that feeling when you’ve spent 15h on a level and finally beat it is just on another level of relief and sense of power and then the cycle repeats for the next level. Though some of those hours are spent in absolute frustration and makes this game very much a love/hate relationship at times, even if it totally is my fault every single time.

The base levels with accompanying music tracks feel like a smooth difficulty curve but nothing compared to what the community is cooking up once you’re done with those. While I’m not that engaged in the community I really appreciate all the time and passion clearly spent on the custom maps that I played. The quality of graphics, scenes and advanced gameplay for a game about pressing a single button is really insane and is a testament to what creative people will create even with limited resources.

The recent collabs with music creators is also nice to see, especially this far into the game's life. It shows both the devs and community is well alive and kicking while wanting to show off what the creators in the space are capable of. Giving both people more songs to work with when creating maps, helping sales of the game and boosting the amount of people finding that artist. Simply a full net positive loop and shows that the devs are capable.

Considering age it’s not surprising that performance is excellent even for “heavier” maps with high resolution background etc. The achievement selection is okay according to me, nothing a regular player would be able to do within a reasonable time-span due to the grind and difficulty for a few of them. At the same time if we’re considering the age it’s definitely possible for veterans and people who’ll continue to play for a few years, not for me though.

An overall easy to play, understand and love game. Both the experts and creators for this game are absolutely insanely skilled people and from playing this on my phone over 10 years ago to playing it every now and then on my computer I can’t say it isn’t worth the price, especially on sale. (Even if it’s frustrating at times)

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 game genuinely feels like a fresh breath of air for the FPS genre. With the arcade style gameplay and quick respawns leading to low amounts of downtime. Something that combined with the insane movement you can pull off and good respawn mechanics leads there to be nearly zero "just running" time as you spawn quite close to your team or objectives and can enter a fight usually in less than 15 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 small highspeed invisible daredevil with a shotgun 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 (has been nerfed massively -w- ). You can basically play all TF2 classes with the loadout options and while some weapons become meta 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. Balancing is according to the developers changing every season for a fresh feel which keeps the game from going stale, in season 4 however… shotgun was meta which unfortunate as it’s so boring playing against especially in a high speed game like this.

The overall game is very fast paced, roughly in the same class as Hyperscape was at its peak and with all the movement related gadgets and map design it feels really good moving around the maps. With the 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. The heavily objective based gameplay also means going solo without your team will very likely be worthless unless you can pick your fights correctly while also being very skilled yourself. This type of composition I feel is fine but discourages people to play solo unless it’s bank-it where one person can do so much more, something that could be solved by adding other gamemodes like TDM or similar for people who’s playstyle needs aren’t being met with only objective based game modes. When playing solo it's an absolute blast just putting on some nice music and dashing around killing people at high speed in bank-it but it's not possible in other game modes since the game is heavily objective based.

The lack of gamemodes is a small problem since there are other more important fixes that need to be addressed, and while server issues has been resolved since long past (mostly)
some stuff like performance is still quite shaky when buildings are being crumpled, this may not be fixable due to the cheer amounts of compute needed though. This even with top spec hardware (5800X3D + RX 7900XTX) means that for competitive play you might need a better computer to perform at all. The game looks beautiful even on low graphics so they clearly know what they’re doing and I can't fault them for not being able to fix the performance issues of building collapses since it’s the last major performance problem with the game.

Since this is a review update, servers have now been fixed to 99%. Matchmaking however seems to be a bit over the place still, though it’s nice seeing the regulars on at times though this is sadly a show that the game isn’t doing so hot. I know most people don't like SBMM but having some kind of system in casual would be nice since you can get put with 2 people who's on their first game against the top 5 on the leaderboard, I know this is a player base problem at this time, but if the base would grow this is almost a must.

Cheater problems seem to have been resolved, either through patches, bans or them leaving so that’s nice. Aim-assist with MnK is basically a non-issue nowadays (from what I see at least). The most offending weapons have had their AA removed and it seems much harder to get it working on MnK now than before as it was straight up aimbot. Since cheaters are now gone I actually started playing ranked during season 4 again, big mistake on my part as it kinda ruined the game a bit for me. World tour is fine as you can’t lose progress, but when you get placed with boosted people in ranked it just drains your energy. The rank system is bad in my opinion as it’s almost never balanced and goes based on team ranking instead of individual. Good players who get placed with bad players in their team will either win by the skill of the good player and all receive the same amount points, boosting up the worse players even higher or the opposite happens. This leads to there being 2-3 really good players in almost all lobbies and the rest being very clearly worse making it a steamroll often as these good players can take on full squads alone. Making the whole ranked system more like get steamrolled, or steamroll in most situations and all this only worsened if you queue alone where the odds of talking to teammates are very low, but hey at least there is a text chat now.

The UI design is quite clean and the redesign for equipping things to all profiles actually came into existence, hooray!. The game is still filled with sub-menus though so it can be a hassle finding that one menu sometimes. That being said the UI does in my opinion need a rework mainly for team deposits as it should show the team color on the objective marker instead of just red. Most UI bugs have been sorted now though so you can see what’s happening more easily and the netcode for deposits and playercash have gotten very much better.

The cosmetics are quite unique, not anything revolutionary but with sets being split up between layers of clothes, weapon animations etc you can do quite a lot of unique things and they are also well designed. Leveling up gives you some that ain't too bad either but it stops at level 70 (40 when review originally got released) which is the level-cap. There are battlepasses that cost around 10€ but events and playing ranked gives you the currency to buy them as well. Quite a few things you get for free that are cool if you decide to buy it once you get its cost back in in-game currency by a factor of 1.5x. For season 4 it took roughly 60h to finish over 90 days, so I'd say it's quite manageable. To get all weapon/ability unlocks was roughly 50h which really hurts the game as the game shines in loadout versatility which you don’t get when you start.

I wasn’t keen on the AI stuff at first but seeing that the VA's knew and agreed to it, I’m good. Sadly this hasn’t evolved to be more integrated with names being broadcast or similar, custom team names would go hard if moderated and the voice overs could be such a bigger part of the game if they found a good way to do it. Now it’s kinda underwhelming for it being AI when it could be so much more if implemented.

The game is no longer in its early days and lots of good things have happened to the game, even if it has lost quite a lot of its base. Moving from quick cash to world tour as the main gamemode was a great idea. Normal quickcash cashouts never got the redesign I and others suggested but that’s fine with how world tour works. The devs over at Embark actually listen to the players and I can see this game going far once it gets a bit more mainstream, it would be so sad seeing this game die like Hyperscape. The gameplay is solid and the full on team fights are 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.