Recent reviews by Calmswamp

spice gud

A fun game that focuses on gameplay first, while also caring about the lore of Warhammer 40k. At least the new lore that GW is pushing. Gameplay is tight and enjoyable, while the story is "blockbuster" entertaining but unoriginal. With the DLC being only cosmetics for the multiplayer - while you still have a decent selection for free - and more and more updates are giving free updates, the developers seem to actually care about their playerbase as something more than just a cashcow to milk for money.

Edit: I'm leaving this negative as a reminder of the blinding corporate greed. Lessons need to be learned, and no lesson will be learned if there are no consequences. The betrayal of a customer's trust is one of the worst things a company can do, and I will not act like everything is fine after Sony has backed off.

A fantastic game that is being kneecapped by not just Sony, but also its Community Managers.

After 3 months of a rough-but-workable launch, Arrowhead started to seem to get the bugs out of their game. A game that is excellent, even with the bugs. Unfortunately, 3 months in, Sony has mandated that Steam users must make a PSN account to be able to play the game, even though they've been playing it just fine in that 3 months. This is, ostensibly, for "security features" from a company that has a major privacy breach every 2 years. While the game had always said "PSN Account is required", it was not clear that it was required to play the game 3 months after launch, and I had assumed it was for Playstation Crossplay, a feature I neither desired nor used.

Ultimately, this would have been just a major annoyance for me, unlike those who live in areas that cannot use PSN due to Sony's own requirements, and thus cannot play the game any more. What caused me to make this review, and ultimately attempt to refund the game, is the Community Managers casual dismissal of player complaints, the callous disregard for treating customers like anything other than living wallets. So yes, I will "take 120 seconds out of [my] day" and "change [my] Steam review and make [my] displeasure known on a platform where it matters".

Despite all of this, I hope Arrowhead can recover and learn from this lesson. The CEO and Creative Director of Helldivers 2, Johan Pilestedt, is oddly the person coming out of this smelling the best. He has admitted there is a problem, he has spoken to people online (rather than protecting their twitter account, thus shutting themselves off from the world), and has mentioned multiple times that he is attempting to talk to Sony. While I doubt he will read this review among the thousands bombing Helldivers 2, I hope he does and knows that he's the only one who I am not disgusted with.

This is a dark day for democracy, and I for one am sick of video game developers and publishers treating its customers like chattel.

Edit: 2 years, 1 map, 1 boss fight, like, 4 weapon. Everything is still broken. Bravo Fatshark.

After a very rocky start, Darktide has updated to a point that one could call "finished" after a year of release. In that year, performance has increased, gameplay has been tweaked and enhanced, and the superb visuals and audio quality has only improved. Although the story is barebones and childish (You go through 30 levels of being insulted at all times, trying to find a traitor on the ship, only to discover that it's...somebody you've never met. Who was later updated to be one of the shopkeeps for the in-game cosmetic shop that sells you rags. This is starting to change with The Traitor Curse, as Fatshark can focus on actually making content for the game now that it's in a playable state.

The gameplay itself is phenomenal, taking the classic L4D formula that Fatshark had emulated with Vermintide and Vermintide 2, and enhancing that with enjoyable gunplay, unique abilities, and creative "grenades". While the AI Director can sometimes be straight up unfair at times, this level of randomness isn't extreme or even common, and helps make the game feel fresh when you're suddenly face to face with a dozen heavily armored Crushers while being flanked by 5 suicide bombers. There's a crafting system that is largely RNG based, and ultimately not very good, but it serves a basic purpose, and you don't need perfect equipment to play at the highest levels of the game.

However, the largest and most glaring downside of Darktide is its monetization and corporate meddling. From aspects of the game straight up removed or limited because Games Workshop is rabidly defensive of its property, or the more egregious sin of blatant cash grab monetization, there's a lot of aspects outside of the actual game that make the gameplay worse for having it. When basic elements of the game are unfinished and Fatshark makes sure the premium currency cash shop is operational? That's a problem. When a single set of cosmetics (hat, shirt, pants) is worth more than half the price of this $40 game? That's a problem. When people who have played the game for its rocky first year of release, who kept the game alive enough for Fatshark to be able to recover from their poor decisions get nothing while new players get $60 of premium currency for free? That's a problem.

Ultimately this monetization will ruin the game's enjoyment. It's not a free to play game, yet it's being treated as such for the ability to wear any cosmetics above literal rags and tatters you can buy in-game. There's a strange disconnect where past community managers insulted the fans, who just wanted Fatshark to respect the customer. While the game is very fun now, it's a question of how aggressive these monetization policies are going to be in the future. Vermintide 2 was already on the precipice of offering too little for too much, and if Darktide does worse, I can see the community moving to better games.

TL;DR - Fun game. Fantastic soundtrack. Good gameplay. Basic story. Atrocious monetization and developer awareness problems. 8/10

As typical for a Streum On game, it's buggy and barely works. But it's also fun, full of character, and once again the art direction elevates the game to a level that most games can only hope to achieve. If you're looking for a polished, balanced experience, this is not the game for you. If you want to blow people up with a glitching robot dog that may-or-may-not exist at any moment, while wallrunning in stunningly crafted mega-trains, then this is the game for you.

Also I'm a 40k fan so my opinion is ♥♥♥♥, so keep that in mind.

It's like Chivalry, but alive and the devs went to some lengths to make it somewhat balanced.

Except for horsemen. Horsemen are ***s.

Earn Brozef.
Make sure your legs are okay.
Escape the cycles of guilt.
But most importantly, kill a kind and loving daddy.

The best eugenics simulator since Pokemon.

On my estate born and raised
In debauchery and devience I spent most of my days.
Carousing, browsing, and housing up whorεs
A lifetime of decedence I spent away from the wars.

When dissatisfaction, that erroneous fool
Did unearth eldritch horrors 'neath his digging tool.
I got in one maddening fight and vomited my luncheon,
And wrote to my relatives to enter the Darkest Dungeon...

Despite the horrendous launch, Mortal Kombat X is a great game. Those who take a glance at the User Review Summary at the top should keep in mind that MKX was deeply in the red day 1, due to the fact that no one could play.

That said, now that the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a launch has been fixed, the game plays extremely well with a few hiccups that I hope get fixed in patches. The gameplay is an overall improvement from MK9, with the combos flowing much smoother and better, and the overall gameplay being much faster. They removed ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses that don't get staggered from uppercuts like mini-boss Goro or Shao Kahn, and instead have the AI get kicked up a notch for those fights. Overall, there's more kontent than MK9, despite the exclusion of Tag-Team Kombat. With ladders of various kinds, and hourly-updated new ladders available if you have a net connection, it's a good time-sink.

The Multiplayer suffers from a bit of lag, which is compensated as input lag on your end. While awkward, I'd prefer this over people just teleporting everywhere. As of writing, I know they're attempting to address this issue, but we'll see how well that goes. That said, the lag is still an improvement off of MK9's horrendous latency issues.

All-in-all, MKX is a great game, that's a little battle-scarred by the launch and a few technical issues. I give this 9 Johnny Cage Autographs out of 10.