Recent reviews by Millertime

This one is pretty close to a great golf game, unfortunately there are some severe issues that stop me from recommending it. For the review I'll only cover my negative points; anything not mentioned should be considered a positive. There is a lot to like here, and if/when these issues are resolved, it could be one of the greatest golf games yet made. I pre-ordered the deluxe edition so I've had it for a few days now and have just over 14 hours played at this point.

- Random hits of major input lag. I'm using an Xbox controller with wireless adapter, which I've used for years in dozens of games. I've never had input lag issues so I am very confident this is not on my side. Four or fives times a round the push up to complete a swing does not register. The swing bar just keeps going until it reaches the end, there is moment of nothing, and then the shot is made with a very slow timing note and the ball pushes WAY out to the right. There is nothing more frustrating than having a good round going and then an input is missed and you hit OB.

- Swing timing in general. I really do not understand why golf games cannot get the swing input timing right. For this game you need to pull the stick back very fast, wait for the bar to reach the right power, and then push forward very fast. Even when going as fast as possible I rarely get a fast timing result and frequently get slow timing. There is a golfer specific setting for preferred swing speed that affects the tempo, and I have it set to the slowest available. When I have this set to anything faster it gets worse, to the point where even quickly jamming the stick as quick as possible still results in a slow tempo penalty.

- Graphic glitches. Sometimes bands of player's hair disappears, showing a strip of bald scalp. There are flashes of white on the eyes and mouths sometimes when showing a player reaction, like the textures don't overlap and you're seeing through the gap. The logo that goes across the screen when cutting between shots sometimes has bars strobing.

- No practice range. This really blows my mind... I cannot remember when I last played a golf game that doesn't have a practice range. The closest you can get is to turn on mulligans and start a round, but you have to go through the pre and post shot routine every time. Honestly this is just an embarrassing miss.

- Unable to save rounds in progress. Another facepalm miss - you cannot exit a round in progress and continue later. You have to complete the round or abandon it. These are basic functions that are missing.

- No tutorial or instruction. This doesn't affect me so much as I've played dozens of golf games, but for someone that isn't familiar this game is going to be a quick refund. There is no instruction at all. There are challenges that start with things like "Drive into the fairway" but these aren't really explaining anything.

- Odd camera angles. There are two issues here, one is that when you are near objects such as cliff edges, spectator stands, trees, etc, the view can get pushed to a really awkward angle. The problem is that the swing meter is displayed in an arc behind the player, so it's entirely possible for you to not be able to see the swing meter when the camera angle is adjusted. The second and more severe issue is that sometimes even without the camera angle being affected, the swing meter is displayed against a light background such as clouds in the sky. The swing meter is white and cannot be changed, so sometimes even on tee shots you cannot distinguish all of the swing meter and know where 100% is at.

Overall there is a great golf game here waiting to be revealed. I'm not sure if the release was rushed or this is just EA saying "This is what we have" and not caring about severe problems. I hope this can be corrected quickly, as the course selection and appearances are great.

The game seems to be completely stable, I just find it to not be fun. Early game is mostly trial and error, and the mid game is a crazy grind.

On my first play I ran out of food early because I didn't start farms soon enough. On the second play I ran out of water in the first drought because I didn't have enough stored. There was no way to predict this - there is no display for how long your food and water supplies will last given the current population. After a few restarts I managed to get through the first drought without losing anyone, and could start to look at research. The first few basic research items, such as the forester, only took a few days. But looking at the next tier of research was nuts - where basic research takes 60-120 research points, the next items are 400-1,200 each.

The real issue there is you don't have enough population to staff what you need to support multiple research labs. In fact I can barely staff one research lab and the farms needed to feed everyone, lumberjacks to cut trees, someone at the mill making planks, and foresters to keep trees and berry plants going. I was constantly having to micro-manage the worker assignments to meet the changing needs because I barely have enough workers to maintain survival. During this time I had three beavers born, and about the time they grew to adults able to work, I had existing workers die of old age.

When a drought comes, everything dies. Your colony will survive off the stores if you prepared well, but when the drought ends you have to replant all your crops, or the next drought will end you. It's a bad cycle that feels like a grind with very slow progression. Some of the research items look fun, but I just cannot imagine myself grinding to them one at a time when each one takes hours of watching and doing nothing.

This product is really cool, and from videos I've watched of actual graffiti artists, quite accurate. Unfortunately I have to rate it a NO because of features missing from this version. From what I gathered in the Discord channel, there are at least two versions of this software and possibly a third. There is at least a 'mobile' version for Quest headsets, and a "PC" version that is on Steam and Oculus stores.

I watched several hours of gameplay videos before buying this and it seems they were all using the mobile version that is only available for the Quest headsets (I have a Rift S). The version that is on Steam appears to be abandoned in favor of the other version, as you can see if you look through the forums here. The last update to this version was over two years ago. Some of the key problems:

1) The tutorial is broken; the very first step asks you to teleport to a location. The game does not recognize when you do this, so it will not advance. This is an issue that was reported nearly three years ago and has not been fixed. The development team has confirmed it as a known issue that they do not intend to fix. From videos I've watched, it seems to work to completion on the mobile version.

2) This version has fewer caps than the mobile version. I know that at least the chisel cap is not here, I am not sure if others may be as well.

3) The quick pick palette is not in this version. To me this is the one that is a deal breaker and resulted in me going for a refund. In short, on your left hand display is a color palette with several options such as greyscales and color wheels. The right stick is used to go up/down through color families (greens, yellows, reds, etc) and then within each family left/right on the stick rotates through the colors in that family (for example maybe 9 shades of green). What is missing from this version that I saw in videos from the mobile version is a panel on your left hand display where you can set around 9 colors for quick selection as your work. As a result, in this version if you want to move from your current color selection to another, you have to right stick up/down to find the color family then right/left to find the shade of that color. And you need to hope you remember the name of the shade you last used if you're wanting to use it again, because the color ring displayed does not match the spray color.

I will say that the game has a nice pipette style feature where you can hold a button, point to an existing color in your work and select that color. However if the color you want to go back to is not within reach you have to move to grab the color and then move back to where you are working. It's a quality of life enhancement that is badly needed and definitely affected my enjoyment of painting. I would be more inclined to overlook that missing feature if I had any reason to believe it was coming, but as I said this version does not seem to be in progress like the mobile version.

Also I will say that the teleport movement is awkward and sometimes frustrating. This game plays best in room scale with at least an 8x8 open area so you don't need the teleport movement so often. It's difficult to place the teleport destination close to the surface you are working on. Frequently I found myself teleporting as close as possible to the wall and then stepping forward to actually work. After doing this a few times I had walked forward to the edge of my open space and had to walk back, teleport forward, and then step forward to start the cycle over again.

If you have a Quest you should look into getting the mobile version from another platform, although I did hear that version is missing some features that present here so you may want to investigate that first. If your headset is only supported by this version, be aware that some of what you see on gameplay videos will not be available to you.

Maddening but fun

Calling this game a Mil-Sim is a bit of stretch in my opinion. To me Mil-Sim means something like ARMA, where this game is very much like Counter Strike. If you like CS then you'll almost certainly like Onward, but it's not what I was looking for.

The maps are small - it's possible to get shot about 50 yards out of your deployment zone less than a minute into the round. The rounds are fast paced, and it's very difficult to be aware due to the low field of view on my Rift S. Playing against AI bots I could see where they are shooting from and not be able to see the enemy at all. It might be better on an Index but I don't know.

Also the physical requirement is not to be taken lightly. You must turn your body to rotate your view, and you have to kneel or lay down to be crouched or prone in the game. Again this is something that may matter more or less to different people, I have a very slight knee injury and it makes me a little slow to get up and down which will definitely get you killed in the fast paced game.

Kind of surprised at all the positive reviews honestly. It's not a bad game, it's just very light on content. About an hour in and I've seen all I want to see. You can draw up custom plays which is nice, but that's about it for content. The game is a two minute drill in football and you're the QB. You can call the play and then pass - and that's all. It's nice that you can scramble and run but there isn't much point to it, you're going to look for an open receiver and pass.
It looks like all the reviews are a few hours played or less; I don't expect many people will play it for long really.

I picked this up because I saw that in the 'realistic' mode the game was more like real life fishing - in the frequency of bites and how the fish act. Unfortunately I found that even in this mode the fish do not behave at all like in real life.

To begin you are on a small pond stocked with a few types of trout. You have a single rod and reel combo, a bobber, and some flies. You can walk around the shore of the pond and throw your fly out, then wait a bit and a fish will bite. There is no reason for the fish being a specific area, they are just in some places and randomly move from time to time. So on this level it's just wait until the fish bites.

I was OK with this because I really wanted to unlock the next level, which was a larger lake with bass, bluegill, and crappie. This is the kind of fishing I enjoy in real life so I was excited for this. I had to catch enough fish to get my character to level 3 and make enough money to unlock the level, which took about 90 minutes or so. I unlocked the level and went to the lake, but you start on a boat dock and cannot get off the dock. You cannot fish from the shore on this lake. There is a boat but you need to unlock a skill to use the boat. So I went back to the trout pond to catch until I reached another level and could unlock the boat.

Now I can finally fish the lake! But why is the only boat here a ski boat? Why not a bass boat on a bass lake? That's a minor annoyance but not really a problem. What is a problem is that the fish here again do not behave like real fish. The boat has a fish finder (of sorts..) and shows the location of fish as you are controlling the boat. But again, the fish are randomly placed and randomly wander or just disappear. Real lake fish have a reason to be where they are - usually because of structure like rocks and underwater trees, or drop offs and edges. They hang out in places where they feel safe, and that is the challenge of finding fish on a lake in real life. Here there is no structure, and even if there was you have no real depth finder to detect it, just a radar like ping that shows direction to fish only.

So in the end, the game is boring. Yeah I know it's a fishing game, but it's not the fun kind of boring that fishing can be for some people. There is no need to understand how fish behave or where they will be in certain times of the year, day, or weather patterns. The fishing areas are very small and it doesn't matter if they were bigger because every area of water is exactly like the next.

Maybe they will improve on these areas in the future, but considering they have already released 5 paid DLC sets I don't expect that they are interested in this area of game development.

I wanted to recommend this game, because I like the idea and want to see development continue - but currently this game is a mess.

Pros:
- Finally a PC disc golf game that feels somewhat like disc golf.
- Graphic quality is nice

Minor Cons:
- Highly unoptimized, game stutters on my i-7 9700k with RTX 2080 Super. Stuttering happens sometimes while the swing bar is moving, affecting accuracy.
- Characters are a bit silly. Why vikings with shields and weapons?
- Course design is uninspired. It's mostly just various trees along your path. No course management decisions to make, for the most part you just throw right at the basket.
- No throw distance estimates. You won't know how long a 75% strength throw is with a disc until you try it several times. Then once you upgrade your character skill this changes.
- Disc path visuals are inaccurate. The disc often flies well off the line expected, making it a guessing game on bending shots.
- Character animations and very jerky. Changing the disc flight angle makes the character lean forwards and back which is nice, but the appearance of the disc throw the reach back and throw doesn't change. The characters arms and the disc bounce up and down and it just looks unnatural.
- Menus and controls need work. Using a controller, the left stick does not work, you have to use the D-pad. Frequently while in the menus going to Apply changes does nothing, then when you back out you get a prompt to discard changes or go back. You can go back and try to apply changes again but nothing happens. Randomly sometimes changes are applied. If you start a throw and the power bar goes all the way up and back without hitting a button, it will reset. But the A button then stops working until you go to the menu and exit back to the game. Lots of little issues like this.
- Control sensitivity way too high. It starts set to 100 and I've turned it down to the lowest setting and it's still very touchy. For some reason there is a zero setting available which basically means your controller stick doesn't work.
- Menu selections are confusing. It's not clear starting a round if a course only has 9 holes or the back 9 is locked. Also the first two course options have different course names but are the same? It might just seem that way because sometimes the menu options selected don't actually take effect and will stick to default values even when showing something else selected. It's unclear how I can unlock additional course options.

Major Cons:
- Throws are highly glitchy. Putter stance from 40 feet, 50% power, disc lands 10 feet short. Same throw with same disc next time, disc flies 120 feet past the basket. This is not an exaggeration and it's not a rare event. This is a game breaker in my opinion. I've had 30 foot putts with the putter disc thrown at 40% power and fly over the basket for at least 150 feet and into the water. Throwing that same disc with a normal (non putting) stance at 90% power barely flies that far.
- Tap ins are still not working. It seems they have been fixed somewhat but they still miss frequently. If you are going to have a tap in feature in the game, make it just count a stroke and end the hole.

I'll keep following the game and am hoping for some updates, as I want the game to succeed. We need a quality disc golf game on PC. I thought I could ignore the minor issues and just play, but the major issues ruin the game. Randomly having putts from 20-30 feet fly 100+ feet past the basket is frustrating, more so when unlocks are based on getting even par across a course. I played for about three hours learning the distance and pathing of different discs on different types of throws, but once I got to the point of actually wanting to play better, the bugs were constantly there to ruin rounds.

This game has a very unique and interesting economy system where investing in one area now will pay off with another resource later, which is used to further progress. The majority of the game seems to be about getting that balance of resource investment correct as you play.
Unfortunately as much as I like the game and the idea, I cannot recommend it. The game is quite difficult to get in to, because there is basically nothing out there to teach new players. All of the guides are far out of date and even if they were still applicable, the information provided doesn't really help a new player understand where they are making mistakes and how to properly start. I've been to the Steam forums, official forums, Discord, and YouTube looking to improve at this game, and basically it seems that the current playerbase is what it is and is not looking to expand.
Also I question the current format offerings. You can play unranked at 4v4 or ranked at 2v2. The problem is that a) the 4v4 format operates a bit differently from 2v2, and because it's unranked you get people trying things that have no chance of working. There isn't a lot you can do to interact with your team mates or help, so a poor or afk player will ruin the game.
Then the ranked format forces all players to use the "Mastermind" allegiance, which is a random selection of units from all factions. You can re-roll to get hopefully better options, but this is really meant for people that have a deep understanding of all the units in the game. In essence, the unranked games are generally bad and the ranked format is for experts.

There is the ability to do custom matches, but the playerbase is already so small that it can't really support this.

I spent about 15 minutes playing through the tutorial, then started a local game. This was about 90 minutes of driving around and frequently getting stuck on hills while looking for a copper deposit, which is the required resource to build all the first structures. I finally found a large sized copper deposit, but I can't build an extractor because that building requires copper. I try to use the mining laser from the explorer vehicle and get the message "Not suitable for mining".

Why would the initial resource be so difficult to find and produce? At least start us with enough of that resource to build an extractor?
I like slower paced building games, but this one doesn't seem to be much fun. The first experience was a major disappointment.