Recent reviews by PastaLaVista

I haven't even opened it but i'm going to give it a thumbs up anyway because devs providing SDK tools is always a fantastic thing, good job ID

What can i say that everybody else hasn't already said? It's a great coop shooter to play with your friends.
Community is great, even more so when they band together for a greater goal.
I thoroughly recommend the game, it's not overpriced, it's updated frequently, the devs seem to have a close ear to what the playerbase wants and they deliver.

Even if i recommend the game, there is a pretty big negative:
The game is published by Sony.
The recent controversy involving the forcing of linking PSN accounts to play the game is the reason why you see so many negative reviews in early may and then those rising back up again.
Luckily the pushback was strong enough for Sony to walk back this requirement.

In short, the game is good, but keep in mind what happened with HD2 for future Sony published games when you buy one.

Negative review changed into positive - punish the bad, reward the good.

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Sony's FAQ website on May 3rd about PSN accounts on pc platforms:
Q - "Do i have to sign in to PSN to play a PlayStation game on PC?"
A - "Signing in to PSN is optional when playing a PlayStation game on PC"

Literally the next day:
Q - "Do i have to sign in to PSN to play a PlayStation game on PC?"
A - "Some PlayStation games may require you sign in and link to an account for PSN"

Playing the game on Steam did not require to create a PSN account when HD2 was launched. There was no clear indication that this was going to be a requirement months after the purchase, when said account was optional in the beginning and also confirmed by Sony's own FAQ - until they silently changed the terms. As of now, having a PSN account and be signed in will be mandatory or you would not be able to play the game
This is the classic bait and switch.

I see no reason to change the term from being optional to be completely mandatory to play the game you paid for if not for the sole reason to ride on the game's success and bolster the PSN numbers to look better to investors.
I see no tangible benefit to the end user on PC to be forced to create a third party account to link to Steam, when the game worked great without the account in the first place. Locking the customer out of the purchase after the purchase has been made is a pretty bad move.
To add insult to injury, if you don't live in a country that PSN supports, i guess it sucks to be you that you can't play the game anymore. Sony thanks you for the money!

it is claimed that this enforcement is for the security and safety of their players and to have better tools to deal with bad behaviour in game.
This sounds like Sony's corporate speak trying to justify the mandatory PSN account registration. Sony, the same company that had their PlayStation Network hacked several times since 2011, where usernames, passwords, full name and addresses and possibly credit card info were compromised.

If this was the requirement from the start, then i would have very likely not have bought the game in the first place, considering how hack prone are Sony and PlayStation infrastructure and having my steam account potentially compromised because it's linked to the PSN account is major turn off.
That is not even the big problem though - like i mentioned above, the problem is Sony making the PSN account mandatory in order to play the game. No account, can't play the game you bought.

I am not going to make a PSN account. I do not own a Sony console, I am not interested in adding another account to the giant list that i will never use outside of this game. I do not want to give my data to a company that suffered several serious data breaches over the past 13 years and risk my other accounts be compromised.
If it is so important and absolutely necessary to have a PSN account to play, why was the game launched with the account sign in be optional? Why wasn't the game launch delayed to implement this feature properly from the beginning?
If making a PSN account is so trivial, as some community manager said "it only takes 120 seconds and you can forget about it", then why do i need to make an account at all in the first place when the game worked great without it from the start?

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Imagine if you buy a car and then months after the sale it won't start and run until you make an account with the manufacturer and log in.
Imagine if you buy a TV and then months after the purchase you get a pop up for new terms of service where you only have the option to agree to forced arbitration by accepting the terms or be locked out of your TV because there is no refuse button - effectively forcing you to accept the terms or not be able to use the TV (that's Roku TV by the way, see it here in more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AddtrV6UFFs )

This practice of changing the terms of sale after the sale have been completed needs to stop and quickly, it's anticonsumer and sincerely hope it will be ruled illegal soon. If this change goes in full effect and does not get reverted i will definitely seek for a refund. You wouldn't accept this practice been done on your car, your fridge or your TV, so you shouldn't accept it on your games either.
If Sony wants to require a PSN account to play their games, its perfectly fine for me. Be upfront from the start that this is the requirement to play the game, don't try to promise something and then after you get my money you change the terms of the deal and try to lock me out of my purchase if i don't do what you are effectively arm twisting me into doing.

I will not buy any game that Sony requires the use of a PSN account, or any other 3rd party account or launcher or platform outside of my Steam account. I do not want to deal with useless extra bloat, there's a reason why i don't buy Ubisoft, EA and other platform games anymore.
After this debacle, i will definitely think twice or three times before buying if i know that the game is being published by Sony, because even if the PSN account might not be required at the beginning, they might still try to pull this stunt that they did with HD2 with the next game. If i decide to give them the benefit of the doubt again in the future, i will immediately go for a refund and never touch anything that Sony publishes.

There are tens of thousands of games that I can play from now until the end of times that don't try to bend me over after the purchase, my money will be better spent there.

To Arrowhead: It was quite a shortsighted move to let yourself be screwed over by Sony and have your own community managers pour salt on the wound by being condescending to your paying customers when they voiced their disapproval and concerns. Be this a lesson for the future when you negotiate terms with a publisher and when you deal with controversy with your community. Trust is difficult to gain and very easy to lose.

Fun and charming game, definitely recommended.

Gameplay wise it's pretty straightforward: sling your webs, solve puzzles, help other critters and rescue your partner from the big bad bird. Traversing the map is quite fun, the web slinging mechanics are rock solid and the use of webs to solve puzzles feels intuitive and rewarding.
There is a number of optional activities/quests you can do when going around the map. If you like exploring around, you'll probably complete a good number of these activities, while others require a more dedicated exploration to find secret entrances and passages. These side activities are not of course mandatory and a number of them unlocks cosmetic changes, like being able to change your appearance to different spiders, wear different hats, or ride a skateboard around.
The game didn't get boring to me, it's the perfect amount of "game" that the mechanics don't get tiresome and there's enough variation to them that the basic mechanics feel satisfying when you get accustomed to them. At first slinging around on webs might be slow but in no time you'll pick it up and will be able to zoom around the map quite graciously. Weaving webs also will come second nature pretty quickly, allowing you to understand better the puzzles you encounter through the game and make sense of it. It has a good bunch of "ah-ha!" moments and that's very good in my book.

Art direction is very well thought out and there is a quite clear care for details. The player character, the environment and other bugs, like the ants for example, all react to what you do. If you hit, push or interact with something, it reacts in a believable and natural way. Motion and animations are buttery smooth, things around the map read pretty clearly and overall it's a really pretty game to look at, both at still screenshots and in motion.

Sound design is also quite solid, the background music for the majority of the game has a quite chill and happy beat and it switches to different tones when appropriate. The music changes to a muffled watery soundscape when underwater, which is a nice touch, gets more tense when it's going through a tense moment in the game and overall reflects quite well the area in which you're currently playing, keeping a sort of consistency throughout the game but adapting to what you're doing and where you are. Sound effects are also pretty solid, things sound exactly as you would expect when interacting with the environment and are clear and distinct enough to let you know what's going on.

Overall, the recurring theme here is great polish and care for details. Game is beautiful, charming, sounds great and plays very well. Doesn't overstay it's welcome but still delivers a great value in terms of quality and quantity of things to do for the asking price. If you just like the idea to chill to the music and go around weaving webs or just going for a relaxing sling around the map, that's a game you'll really like.

AAA games these days feel like overpriced and underwhelming fast food slop, this is the kind of game that feels like the small family run restaurant where the food is amazing and the bill is much less than expected.
Good games like these at a reasonable price are worthy of support, so like I said at the beginning, I highly recommend this game.

As a road trip game, this is a quite nice experience. The game itself is quite charming, so if you want to have a cozy and relaxed afternoon/weekend playing this, go get it.

The positives:
The game itself is pretty simple in nature: take your uncle from Berlin to Istanbul in a road trip on a rust bucket. The car breaks down, you fix it. You find stuff on the road, you sell it at the towns to buy replacement parts or upgrades, and so goes the trip from border to border, through the countries that you cross on your way to your destination. Once reached your destination, you can decide you're done with the game or take the trip back and keep driving.
Overall the atmosphere, setting, art style and story are nice, driving is enjoyable and there is some replay value - even if quite limited, but no one is stopping you to keep on driving on and on as much as you like.

The negatives:
The game itself is not without flaws, some technical and some others of design nature.
Technical flaws can be quite summed up in inconsistencies and bugs: the fact that a good bunch of interaction with objects has a physics component to them that can be quite unstable, causes some quite frustrating interactions in the least and soft locking scenarios at their worst.

A real example for something minor would be buying or selling items in stores. When you buy large items, or a decent quantity of items, physics tends to get in the way and screw you over. You bought 3 tires because yours are broken but scanned them too quickly and paid? One or more could be launched in the back of the store where you can't go and pick them up, effectively wasting your money and getting you unable to buy more or the ones you need because stock does not replenish. What you see is what you can buy.
Same happens when you sell stuff. If you had a lot of items scanned to sell because your trunk is full and you want to get some money for your scavenging, you better be careful on what you scan. If you scan an item you didn't want to sell, you have a lever you can pull to cancel the transaction, so the items are returned to you.
The problem is that the items get dropped all at once, in front of the counter where you would likely stand so they get all spawned inside of each other, and close to the player, causing the collisions to happen at the same time and have the objects get thrown at max force around the store, some in front of you, some behind the counter, effectively losing them.

Some more serious soft lock scenarios are those that basically force you to restart from the beginning or outright reset your file save. One example is again caused by janky physics: AI cars on the road can quite often be found flipped upside down and if this happen near a tunnel entrance or exit, it can block you from progressing entirely. Flipping your car also is a "restart from the beginning" scenario.

That being said, even with the jankyness factored in, it's a pretty enjoyable game so if you don't mind the occasional hiccup, I'd say go ahead and play it.

꧁༺ 𝓛𝓮 𝓕𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓮 ༻꧂

EDIT: 113 hours in. Yep, it's still that good

Play it.
If you liked vampire survivors you'll like this. Sound and graphics are a clear throwback to the 90s era of videogames, when things were simpler but in no way shape or form less enjoyable. you can play this game with one hand if you want to or not even that if you build your characters in a way where you can sit still for the whole 30min run. Or, you can run around non stop and be completely deliberate with your attacks and manually click every single one if you wish to do so.
You have gear you can unlock permanently for all characters and abilities you can level up during gameplay to your playstyle or to suit a particular build. For the price, this is a game that is worth every penny it costs, highly recommended.

I spend most of my time drifting hilly and mountain roads, it's absolutely glorious.

Along with Content Manager and Custom Shaders Pack, the amount of customisation you can do is second to none. You can tune the game settings wise down to the finest bits, there are tons of modded cars you can race, maybe more than there is time to try them all and the same goes for tracks. If you're either on a laptop or a 100k sim racing rig, this is the game you want to play.

Great community of passionate people, lots of lobbies online to go race other players, do tandems or chill on a night ride on japanese highways. It goes on discount often, grab it by all means

Buy it.
If you like racing games, it's a must, specially if you have a steering wheel to play with.
Can customise it to your heart's content, very easy to install mods for and make mods for the game. If you like the idea to make your own car companies, design your own cars and drive them, then check out Automation: car company tycoon because the cars you make there you can export to BeamNG and drive them there.
Can't recommend it enough, along with Assetto Corsa, is the best racing game you can get your hands on PC

probably the greatest baker around, i use it daily for personal and professional work. very good for making real time renders too, so if you need something basic to set up a scene or a very fast baker, get toolbag 3, if you want better controls, better UI, better materials and in short better everything, get Toolbag 4.
90% of the time i use TB3 for baking so i don't have much reason to upgrade but if you have a more general use, you might want to get TB4

If you have KBM, a regular controller (since this game was designed to work on a gamepad first), Logitech or Thrustmaster wheels you're good to go. The game works fine as long as you stick to those peripherals.
If you have a Direct Drive wheel like i do, don't waste your money and time trying to make it work, it's a 90+ % chance it won't.

I bought the game in may 2021 when i had a Logitech G923 setup and played about 30 min with it and enjoyed my time, even for being that brief. I played 30 min only because soon after i've got myself into FH4 and AC and those two were the main two games i got hooked on. FFW to Nov '21 and i'm confident enough in my sim racing/drifting skills to buy my first Direct Drive Wheel (a Sim-plicity SW20 V3 20Nm) and start playing online with other people.

The brand new DD wheel works with every sim game except CarX.

It even works on a 20 year old sim game like Richard Burns Rally but CarX seems to not support DD wheels.
The remaining 4h30m of "game time" can be renamed into "trying to make the new DD wheel work", because nothing i tried in CarX fixed the issue.

The wheel gets recognised as a "Gamepad" instead of a "Wheel" under the peripheral settings, so no Force Feedback gets to you. You can steer the car around but with no FFB it's impossible to hold a drift or even drive the car at all for the matter.
This issue seems to be ongoing for a long time and i haven't heard or read anything regarding updates on DD wheel support so i gave up on the game entirely. It was a waste of money and time.

CarX is fun but if i'm forced to play it with my controller when i have a proper wheel setup, there is no point in playing the game at all when i have a dozen titles that support the wheel and where i can drift online too.

In conclusion: if you have a KBM, Controller, Logitech/Thrustmaster wheel setup, absolutely go for it, drifting online is fun.
If you have a Direct Drive wheel instead and want to actually use it, save your money for something else and play another sim game.

Hopefully the devs will add DD wheels support but to be honest i'm not waiting for that to happen. The game is going to stay uninstalled until this gets patched and then maybe i'll give it another shot. It's a shame because if i hadn't upgraded to a better wheel, this might have been one of my most played games.

I'll keep this awesome wheel and keep playing something else instead.