Recent reviews by taiiat

this game.... is like if you mixed....
Ivara from Warframe
Agent 47
Sniper Elite

and then made a Puzzle Game out of it.
wild, crazy, different. outstanding.

grand theft rube goldberg cyberpunk hackerman matrix parallel timeline mission impossible heist simulator simulator.


most of my messing around with this game was on another Platform, but getting another copy to post a Review was something i was sure to do.

i think my leading remark mostly covers what there is to say about describing what the game is like. you're going to do some silly Heists that have you setting up some amusing fantasy chains of Equipment to steal some stuff or sabotage some stuff, or elsewise.
also compete with your Steam Friends for the best times on each Mission.
also there isn't quite just one right way to do each Mission. some things you still have to do like actually get to the target Room to steal the thing or break the thing, but how you get in and out, whether you're a ghost and nobody ever knew you were there, or you smash your way out with Guns blazing around you - up to you!
clean and quiet does score better, but hey, as long as you do the thing, the game doesn't care. success is success.


also this game runs on anything.

this game is fascinating and hilarious.
at the time of Writing i'm probably roughly 40% of the way through the Levels.

Neural Network AI generated Terrain and Monsters, in a Rogueish game. a pretty novel idea, i say.
that may not sound remarkable at first, but it lets the game do something that games generally can't do. and it lets the game have Enemies that match the art theme SO WELL. you're not fighting Orks or Soldiers or Evil Demons, you're fighting.... "W.T.F. even is that?!".

if you deal enough Damage to a particular part of an Enemy (generally Limbs / other stuff attached to the Torso), you can break it off before the Enemy dies. the Enemies will continue functioning without those parts, they'll fight to their last Limb!

the game tries to always push you to keep moving, and since every Class has a 'Dash', you generally don't get boxed into a corner either, you can escape.



mainly it's a solid game core with a very wild theme.

i bought a second copy of this game so that i could make a Review on Steam.

this is the best NFS game in about the past 15 Years, IMO. it's pretty great.
- no gross Framerate locks, game performs well
- good overall visuals
- sufficient upgrades and customization
- good social features to make it easy to compete finish times and scores against your Friends
- has both Singleplayer and Multiplayer support
- has both the illegal Street Racing and sanctioned regulation Racing styles of Gameplay, plus Freeroam unlocks
- some interesting strategy choices between on road or off road speed as well as destructible objects that slow you down; this meaning that you can make choices to potentially drive faster but at a risk. Driving through destructibles can let you cut faster lines, but the destructibles slow you down. you can make some sharp cuts for faster lines, but they can force you to go off Road and so you will lose some speed if your Car is all about on Road performance

this is THE type of racing that NFS is supposed to all be about IMO.
weaving through Traffic at 400k/h, threading the needle between other Racers(or getting aggressive sometimes, a calculated risk), Traffic, Obstacles, and the Cops that are hot on your tail. that's peak Need for Speed, to me.

Sprints, Circuits, Drift Trials, Time Trials, On/Off Road, plus some side Activities ranging from Collectibles to Speed Cameras, Longjumps, and Drifting Challenges - and all spiced up with offering both Illegal Street Racing with Cops as well as sanctioned Race Events.


one gripe of note i have, the game has Sharpening applied to everything, which is okay but it's a little strong. so the game has a mild oversharpened look.
if you're into Modding this can be helped a bit.

i should've looked into the game before Buying, rather than finding out the problems this has after.

you'd think with a Remaster that the main jank things about the game would have been addressed, right?
well, no.
the game still can't handle Focus changes (though atleast on modern Operating Systems it can't make your Computer crash anymore via this Bug).
it's sill imited to 60FPS and a 'game tick'/Game State Update of 60. so it's not even a passably smooth 60, the game itself only updates at that chunky rate too, so Camera Panning is still stuttery and whatnot. there's a Mod that's supposed to be able to fix this but it doesn't seem to work anymore (guess the game got any Update and that would basically can that), and apparently even when it did it ruined Driving just like the original.

plus whatever other Bugs were present atleast are mostly still present here.


honestly, i don't know what they even Remastered, then. as far as i can tell the only change here is that the DLC is included by default and that Online actually works (literally never worked for me in the original, despite owning a legitimate copy).
they did convert the game to Dx11 though, from Dx9. not that that means much with everything else still broken.
so functionally it may as well be identical to the original game.


what was the point of even making/Releasing this.

apparently this game has been Released for more than a Year and basic simple to resolve issues haven't been even touched yet.

i can't speak to the current presence of other issues, but the Field of View is still kinda awful no matter who you are.
for most People it's probably going to be too high. and you literally can't reduce it. so your Screen is heavily Distorted and Fisheyed. while for some it's not enough enough and you can barely increase it over the default, there's very little adjustment range.

so if you're someone that expects a good gaming experience, don't even bother for any Price until sometime in the future when they maybe decide to do something and perform some basic fixes to their game.
hopefully they do a Community Announcement if they ever do, so that People will know their game is now actually playable.



i'll update this Review if they ever do.

Severed Steel is like if Mirror's Edge become a Combat game and got blended with Ultimatum and Ultraviolet, and with a little Matrix.
just wicked.

a three Dimensional ballet of death, against Enemies doing their own three Dimensional ballet of attempted death.
this game is extremely clippable. you're going to have Clips you want to share with your Friends basically constantly.

along with some Voxel destruction to let both you and the Enemies shoot and blast through Walls, Floors, Ceilings, Furniture, you name it.



game has outstanding performance, a wide assortment of Video Settings, minor Control/Gameplay adjustments to tweak the handling to everyones' preferences, a respectable amount of customization for both Accessibility and style preference.
it's just plain great. the Videos and Screenshots show you pretty much what the game's like, so it's pretty self explanatory.

it's a real shame that this game basically didn't get any Advertising after that one E3 presentation for the launch of the XB1 and PS4 generation. People were kinda hyped about this game at E3 then the entire World forgot the game existed after that Day.

anyways, it's a great game with a variety of Weapons and Enemies, and a great feeling of Player freedom through movement. you can Grind, super Jump, Wall Run, Mantle up Walls, Glide boost through the air, bounce on top of things, Et Cetera - so many Player Movement tools that make the game feel very mobile and fairly fast paced. it just feels good to move.

it's an Insomniac game so the story is bonkers, and the Gameplay is even more bonkers - it's just a game that's purpose in life is to be fun.



the only cons are... that the PC port is kinda 'eh'. it's not compatible with DXGI Flip Model AT ALL. even trying to help it with Special K doesn't seem to succeed. so the Frame Pacing of the game isn't the greatest. you'll be stuck with Composition via GPU GDI as far as i can tell.
also the game may as well not have any Anti-Aliasing. it has some method available, and it's better than AA off sure, but it's not that effective. the game even has built in support for Super Sampling, which.... also isn't that effective. so no matter what, the game is going to look a little rough.
i've always heard this rumor about how the game stutters on an SSD but will play fine on a Hard Disk. the game definitely will have performance drops when streaming Assets, that is true. but taking longer to stream them doesn't feel better in any way to me. it just means you'll have the performance drop for longer. may as well have it on a fast SSD to get the reduced performance (and some stuttering) over with faster.


it's an awesome game, the PC port is just mediocre.

i played the previous game (on another Platform), and it was a quaint little game. in a nutshell, this sequel has dramatically improved almost every aspect of the game.
not that the other game was bad, but i feel like everything about this game is better.

i like how much more agile the Player feels. Player movement is just overall more responsive and quick feeling, Sprinting feeling the same way. Vaulting/Mantling is now a present thing to aid with Verticality. there is also a Dash/Lunge Ability on a 5 Second Cooldown. so when you need a big burst of speed, you got it.
i like the way Weapons and Equipment will gain 'Levels' depending on the depth in a Tower or depending on getting Upgrades.
i like the added roguelite Skill Trees.
i like 'Mastery' unlocks per item and that it feeds into the roguelite part as it encourages using a variety of Equipment to make everything overall better, both persistently the Equipment itself and you as the Player.
i like that every time you go into a Tower bonus 'Mastery' is assigned randomly to each Equipment choice to also encourage using a variety of things.
i like the much more diverse Weapon and Perk variety in the game.
i like the deeper relationships between Damage, Damage Types, Enemy weaknesses/resistances, Et Cetera.
i like the mixture of familiar returning Equipment and Enemies plus a whole lot of new ones.
i like the special variants/modifiers that Enemies sometimes appear with.
i like the more distinctly unique Characters, each having both their own passive Traits to unlock persistently with 'Mastery' as well as their defining Ability (and sometimes some different Stats).

like i said, it's just a better game in every way, i think.
nicer Graphics doesn't hurt either.

Hydroneer is a pretty cool game. acquire Machinery and Equipment to experiment with building Mining Bases to increase your production via Automation.
use all that Mining to collect Ores to Smelt them into useful Bars for making Goods to sell to buy more Machinery and Equipment.
all the Ores and Mining Equipment being Physics based makes it more interesting than it would normally be.

it's also nice to see a super tiny game that unexpectedly got a strong response and somewhat popular, to then say it's going to remake itself from the ground up(in the near future, not Released yet) as a "proper game" versus being kinda more of an Indie Technology experiment.
being willing to do that shows you that the few People that made it care about the idea and are happy to have the opportunity to realize that idea better than they could before.