Recent reviews by Cosmic

I tried to like this. I was super keen going into it with so many positive reviews, but I really don't get it at all. You have a bunch of plants in front of you and a book with lots of vague descriptions. Someone asks for a plant and you have to match the plant with the description and then give it to them. That's it.

I just expected so much more. Maybe there is once you get further in, but after almost 2 hours I was absolutely bored stiff. The music too is this slow dreary background music that was lulling me to sleep, and if you fail 3 times you then have to complete one of two frustrating puzzle minigames. I genuinely don't understand what's fun about this.

At first glance you could dismiss it for being a slightly wacky LGBT themed but otherwise unimpressive looking 'furry' RPG. But you'd be wrong, it's huge amount of fun and a lot better than it looks, the writing is absolutely top notch and often pretty funny, and the characters are well developed and each has a lot of personality. There's also a lot of depth and options in the combat with many different 'spellbooks' to collect and use with their own selections of spells, and each character having their own roles to learn, it surprised me how much I enjoyed just destroying random groups of enemies. Finally the sound is also great, immediately from the get go the sound effects when you fight and win battles are super satisfying and then (so far) all the background music has been great!

The only real thing I could complain about is some of the sprites for the enemies. The 4 characters you control always look great and even other misc NPCs look good too, but many basic enemies have pretty simple art that looks a bit unfinished in places. This doesn't affect the gameplay but it felt to me like some better art could have been used to tidy it up.

On a minor note I'm also just not a massive fan of RPG Maker, the engine often feels old, clunky and buggy in places. This game does a great job of making (entirely?) it's own art and UI, and I absolutely love that.. but I can't help but wish a different engine was used, the resolution scaling/limitations in particular is painful on a large monitor.

If you don't play too seriously this is a game that's always fun and a great laugh with any friend. The art style is simple but effective, the weapons are impactful and the upgrades you get are mostly interesting. It wouldn't be a game I'd play every day, but it's still a massive recommend at the price point.

Great game, but as of recently it doesn't open whatsoever. Some kind of engine issue with Unreal I think, so nobody can launch it. You just get a black screen and then CTD. Do not buy right now.

Great card game in the same vein as Slay the Spire and just as addictive! Instead of controlling one character like in Slay the Spire, you play several monsters which you use to defend a central nexus at the top of your train. The game has a bunch of different factions all with different unlockable card sets and has many different difficulty and modifier options to spice things up. It plays slightly faster than Slay the Spire but needs just as much careful planning and management of your deck to maximise your power!

The only really bad point I'd say was that there isn't really much of a tutorial, the game throws you into the deep end very quickly and you're just expected to get the hang of it. However all card abilities and types are explained clearly and I found after only a couple of runs that I completely understood it. Regardless, I'd probably recommend playing Slay the Spire first. Once you're tired of that and looking for something else, come try this!

Honestly I can see how this is a great game and many are absolutely going to love it, but after playing for a while, it just wasn't really what I was hoping for. I loved Wipeout and I wanted something as close to it as I could get, however BallisticNG is like Wipeout in some ways but not others, and it felt different enough to put me off and I eventually just went and emulated Wipeout instead. It does some things better that Wipeout and some things worse in my opinion.

A few things I didn't like:
- The campaigns. I just found them dull. Every single campaign always starts with 3 introduction races which is.. fine. I'd rather they mixed it up a bit but sure. But the biggest frustration for me was being forced to do the less interesting events like Time Trials and Pure Races. I really don't enjoy these and I'd much prefer if the wacky gamemodes were in a separate mode or something. I completed about 2.5 campaigns before I got tired of these events and just gave up.
- The weapons. The balance seems a bit off with some of the weapons, ones that are terrifying in wipeout like quakes and even missiles slowed you to a crawl, feel like a mere tickle in this game. But then the turbo and autopilot are crazy broken. It just doesn't feel as fun or satisfying as the weapons in Wipeout.
- The community. I absolutely love games with good mod support and the large collection of awesome stuff on the workshop had me really excited. However one of the first things I did was to go on the BallisticNG Discord and ask about some cool mods, particularly anything that resembled/recreated awesome stuff from the Wipeout games. However they were pretty rude and nobody seemed to want to discuss any good mods. It felt like the bare mention of the word 'Wipeout' basically got you exiled from the server. This completely killed my interest in mods and I eventually gave up.

I don't know.. it's not a bad game, but I'd advise that if you're looking for Wipeout, then go emulate it instead of buying this.. and don't dare mention anything about Wipeout on the Discord server.

It's 'fine'. A fairly standard class based shooter. The free to play model seems decent so far but the game in general feels like it needs a bit more content to really keep me, I'm not sure why I'd play this over something like Apex.

It's not bad, just didn't really blow me away after playing a few matches. A hesitant recommendation for those who want another FPS.

Eh.. it's alright I guess.. I played it for a while and quite enjoyed it, but eventually got to a frustrating bit and ditched it. I just found it a bit slow. Some parts of it are even intentionally designed to be boring and repetitive to represent the monotony of certain tasks in real life. The story is simple but does the job, and some of the writing is good and funny at times, but it's still not quite enough to keep me coming back. I get that it's meant to be about a deeper meaning with why we make certain choices.. but the core gameplay just isn't that fun, and I found myself caring less and less about these 'choices' as the game went on.

It's not a bad game, and if it's in your library already, or you can get it in a sale then go right ahead. There's definitely games out there that do the whole 'choices matter' and deeper meaning aspect better though.

Isaac is literally the reason that Roguelikes are popular today, sure there was others that did similar to it before... but none did it quite as well. Isaac is tough but fair, and filled with a metric tonne of unlocks, powerups, enemies, bosses and items. Not to mention the diverse range of characters to play too which change the game up.

When I first played Isaac, I honestly thought it looked kinda weird, but you only need to play a couple of runs before it gets crazy addictive. This is the kinda game where you go after every achievement and each one unlocks a new item for your playthroughs. The theme is dark and strange in places, but it only adds to the atmosphere of being lost in this crazy giant dungeon.

If you've ever enjoyed Roguelikes, you will enjoy Isaac, absolutely. It also has a lot of workshop stuff and mods if you want to mix things up.

While it is fun and I would absolutely recommend it, I do agree with other reviews that the balance is a bit off. I had exactly the same experience - find the first few runs really difficult (to the point of frustrating and almost quitting the game), then you find a completely broken item and just steamroll the game. For me I got a healing scroll that allows you to heal infinitely on a cooldown, so you can just max heal before every room. Combined with armour and a few max HP increases and you're basically unkillable.

It is fun honestly, the shoot to the beat mechanic takes a bit of getting used to and it felt really odd to me at first, I just wanted to blast everything DOOM style initially. But eventually it becomes second nature and is pretty awesome. The guns all feel weighty and impactful and the music is good too. The loot is 'mostly' interesting, although some extra descriptions on some items would be helpful. Am I meant to know what "Marked for Death" does? Or "Cleaving"? Also I've no idea how to carry a second weapon with the "Carry Two Weapons" ring as you're never told. Sure I can start Googling these, but just providing a short description on the tab menu would be super helpful.

Either way, these are mostly small things and once you get going on a good run, it's a lot of fun! If you're looking for a sick shooter, I'd probably point you towards the two recent Doom games instead, but if you've played those or want something new, BPM is your thing!