Recent reviews by Cosmic

So far I've absolutely loved Planet Zoo, the game is not only very pretty but it's a huge amount of fun constructing and customising your zoos, and then watching all your animals in their enclosures. Planet Zoo is surprisingly deep and can get a bit tricky at times with each animal having very specific needs. These include suitable terrain, enough sheltered areas for all the animals, toys and various snacks specific to the animal, some animals (like monkeys) need climbable platforms and logs (of which you can entirely create yourself if you want to), some animals need deep water to swim in, some need certain plants or trees, some need specific temperatures etc etc.. It results in each animal feeling very different and it's almost a bit of a puzzle trying to build the perfect enclosure for them. There's also pretty cool little mini enclosures called 'Exhibits' where you can house your snakes, insects and lizards etc.

However just building a good enclosure is only the start as you then need to make sure you've got enough staff and staff buildings to keep all the animals happy and healthy. Each staff member needs to be paid and there's a variety of different types from the usual Janitors but also Animal Keepers, Vets, Vendors and Security. The guests don't particularly like seeing staff buildings or big electrical generators, so you need to think quite carefully about your zoo layout to hide them. You can also set up custom work areas for all your different staff, so managing everything can get quite complex in a big zoo! There's 'research' too where you can set a staff member to research an animal or part of your park, this then gradually drip feeds you upgrades and new foods or toys for that animal.

Overall it's a lot to think about... but despite all this, Planet Zoo still manages to feel fairly chilled and relaxing to play. You can pause the game anytime and then build or modify your zoo whenever you like. You're never rushed to get anything done. If you like customisation, Planet Zoo also continues the crazy 'customise literally everything' idea from Planet Coaster, and although I'm a bit lazy, from looking on the Steam workshop, many people have built some incredible stuff (which you can then download and use...!!).

If I was to throw a couple of minor criticisms at Planet Zoo, the first would be animal stress. The game tells you that animals get stressed if they don't have anywhere to hide from the crowds of people... however, it's really inconsistent and I frequently found my animals got stressed despite having specifically built a hidden area in their enclosures far from the crowds. Sometimes the animals would go to this area, but sometimes they'd just forget about it and their welfare score then drops to 0 for being 'EXTREMELY STRESSED'. This then prompts animal welfare groups to start protesting in your zoo. But the game doesn't really offer an explanation why the animal is stressed, nor what you can do about it. I ended up just repeatedly editing their enclosures until eventually something clicked and they decided to use my hidden area, I just wish it was a bit clearer.

Outside of that though, it's just minor UI annoyances. When using filters, why can't I have a search bar to type in the species, biome or climate I'm looking for? Why do I have to scroll down a gigantic list to find the exact one I want? This doesn't help when (for example) a Leopard isn't called a 'Leopard', it might be a 'Clouded Leopard' instead and it's frustrating to remember/find. There was also a thing in the tutorial where they ask you to "Put down some animals that you don't have in your zoo yet", but there's no way to filter for 'animals I don't have' meaning it's a bit of a fiddle to remember all the animals in a zoo you didn't build.

I would give a cautious recommendation to Ghostrunner. So far I've mostly enjoyed it, the combat is awesome and when everything goes right you feel like the coolest ninja ever! Dodging hails of bullets by millimetres then wallrunning round the back of an enemy, slowing time and slicing him in two is badass as heck. Not to mention you get several different awesome abilities including short range teleports, time slows, shockwaves to bounce enemy projectiles back at them and more. The game looks absolutely fantastic too, the cyberpunky levels you race through are beautiful and they make me actively want to stop and chill for a moment just to check them out, I really love the design and I'm super glad they've announced a sequel!

However, for my issues with the game.. When you get to a few tricky sections, especially those involving lots of platforming, it can get quite frustrating. Ghostrunner is absolutely merciless and if you slightly mistime something or touch the wrong surface, BAM dead, and you gotta start that section again. Fortunately there's little delay in coming back to life, it's just a single button press and you can try as many times as you like, but it does get annoying when you've been hit by that same enemy for the 25th time. Some of the platforming can add to the aggravation too; without any spoilers there's the classic 'rotating tower of lasers' that you need to climb a few hours in, and I swear I honestly wanted to throw my laptop across the room. It's meant to be an awesome kinda 'boss' level and as soon as I saw it, I was like "Ohhh damn, here comes a big ass enemy robot or something", but nope... it's a fricking laser parkour headache..

I do recommend Ghostrunner but just be aware that the game is definitely on the tricky side. Be prepared to die... and die... and die... until you nail it perfectly. As long as you're good with that and you like ninjas (who doesn't), then you'll enjoy this for sure. For me, it borders the 'Hard enough to be frustrating at times' line, but I know that line varies for everyone so..

Slay the Spire is a really great and addictive turn based card dungeon fighter/brawler. You pick one of four very different characters and then start your dungeon 'run' with a very basic deck. Every monster and boss encounter you win, you can add cards to your deck and gain gold, potions etc. Some cards are simple while others are quite complex, and each character has different cards that can be added to their specific deck.

You've got the big brute warrior dude that likes to stack up strength and/or armour to make all your cards hit super hard, the poison roguey backstabber who builds up poison on enemies which damages them constantly every turn. There's also the wizard-y robot mage which uses magical orbs and stacks up different powers to obliterate groups or the zen purple assassiny woman who can change stances to deal absurd damage at high risk to themselves. Each character has their own big decks and different strategies you can employ.

The game also has extensive Steam workshop support that can add new characters, cards, gameplay mechanics, whatever you want really...! I was a bit hesitant to buy Slay the Spire at first as I wasn't sure how deep it would be and thought I'd get bored, but I can conclusively say that this game has a huge amount of replay value with a lot of depth and unlocks to keep you coming back.

Basically, buy it. If it's on sale, you'd be insane not to buy it.

Easily one of my favourite games. The completely 'Overwhelmingly Positive' should tell you something. The game is simple, yet has a huge amount of things to do and explore. It's cute, fun and appropriate for pretty much any age or gaming 'skill level', from those who are completely new to PC Gaming, to those who play 12+ hours a day.

The game is absolutely worth the full price and you'd be crazy not to buy it if it's on sale. Do note that this game is addictive though and can easily devour your free time, but it will be time that you're extremely glad you spent!

THIS DLC PACK CRASHES THE GAME FOR MANY PEOPLE! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

I think they're working on fixing it at the moment :)

EDIT! If you are getting the below error, DISABLE the free HD graphics pack. It's causing a lot of issues at the moment. Game works fine without it :)

While I love the game, I'm having a lot of issues trying to actually play it currently.

My laptop far exceeds the minimum specification and I can start the game up fine, but when I actually go to play a map, the game immediately CTDs with no error message. I've tried changing the graphics, verifying integrity of game cache, updating my graphics drivers and visual c, I've also tried launching the game directly via the executable rather than through Steam, but nothing has made a difference. I have many different (more demanding) games installed and they all work fine!

I really want to play the game!!

Happy to change my vote to a recommend if it would work!

Honestly if you haven't played Divinity, you're really missing out. This is probably hands down one of the best single player and/or co-op RPGs available. If you've played Divinity 1, then saying that number 2 is a 'vast' improvement would be an understatement...

In Divinity you first create a character with the massively detailed character creation. It gives you almost so many options you may well feel a bit lost at first and is reminiscent of something like D+D with a large selection of classes, abilities, talents, social skills etc. This doesn't prove to be much of a problem though as there's several presets you can choose from, all of which actually have their own unique stories that will come up while you're playing. I'd strongly recommend picking one of these, at least first time!

Once you've made a character you get thrown into the game with absolutely nothing and as a prisoner. Without giving any spoilers, you spend the first few hours of the game trying to break out of captivity with very limited resources. It's extremely satisfying and fun as Divinity always does an amazing job of offering you choice with how to play and complete quests. Sure you could just try to bulldoze your way through the main exit, or maybe you could sneak round a side route, or maybe there's an underground passage you could exploit or maybe you could enlist some help from someone? Maybe even certain abilities may help you escape? The game never goes easy on you though, and you may well find you need to explore and get some gear before attempting certain quests/areas. (i.e. the game does NOT scale with you, each area and every creature or monster is a very specific level and you can get ripped apart in seconds if you go to an area without good enough gear!)

The game is gigantic too, whereas Divinity 1 had one huge area, Divinity 2 is about four times the size with multiple large areas. I've played for around 50 hours so far, and I'm about half way through the second area, so I'd estimate the game could easily take you 100 odd hours to get through. Not to mention that there's more characters than you can see and play in a single campaign, and maybe you want to try out a different class next time, so there's good replayability too!

The only thing I can really criticise it on are a couple of bugs, one of which is that my mouse wheel acts really odd when scrolling through my inventory. Sometimes it goes up when I'm scrolling down and vice versa, but then sometimes it'll work fine. Also, I felt a bit that the potions and recipes system isn't really explained very well and it's a bit finicky to use, I barely touched it for ages because of this.

Make no mistake, you should buy this game. You will enjoy it, singleplayer or with a friend or two!

(Oh did I mention that there's also some amazing mods for this game too on the steam workshop..!!)

The game isn't terrible by any means, you can see the workings of a great game, however it feels very clunky and a bit unfinished. The art is beautiful and it feels like the most work was put into that, but the rest of the game is... functional, mostly.... Firstly the game isn't translated very well, this is immediately obvious upon first starting it up, the game tries to get across a 'story' but the English is... 'broken' at best. Surely it's not that tricky to get somebody to correct a few lines of English for you?

Next is the fairly mediocre UI, although the game itself is quite simple, it doesn't do a great job of explaining what you're meant to click on and what button does what. The icons are a bit odd and the game even has to remind you to 'Click on the robot and then click on the yellow button' because it's not immediately obvious where the 'Go' button is. Since this is the most core aspect of the game I feel this is the kind of thing that needs to be instantly understandable by a player, but Algotica doesn't do this well. Other various UI elements don't look great and don't really work very well either, you can open windows and parts of the UI but it's not obvious how to close them, some UI elements feel way too large etc...

The game is also a bit... eh. It doesn't feel that much fun, the feedback isn't great and the levels can get a bit tedious and repetitive. Couple that with the tricky to use UI and it gets tiresome quickly. It was fun for about 15 minutes before I got tired of it honestly.

Everspace is a space shooter where you play a clone and do many different 'runs' through space. Each run you'll explore lots of different large open areas, collect resources and blow up bad guys and then zoom onto the next area, before inevitably dying yourself. Every run you'll get cash and then you spend this cash to upgrade your ship for the next run. It's not entirely dissimilar to FTL but instead you're in direct control of the ship in first person.

The game is quite difficult, especially early on and the AI ships are merciless, it also doesn't provide you much information outside of 'here's the controls, off you go'. However you're rewarded for discovering things and learning by yourself, you quickly learn what to stay the hell away from!

Despite what others have mentioned, I quite liked the control of the ship. It's simple but effective and fits the role of an 'arcade' space shooter well. This game is not EVE or Elite, it's not a simulator. If EVE is the 'Gran Turismo' of space games, then this would be the Burnout.

It's not perfect and a couple of things I would mention is the lack of ships to choose from. You've got the 'big ship', the 'medium ship' and the 'small ship' (plus one other weird one). They're slightly different but it would have been nice to have a few more, maybe with some cool and interesting abilities etc. Also, I felt that the game can be a bit 'stingey' with how much credits/cash it gives you each run, either that or the upgrades are a bit too expensive. It's always a bit of a letdown when you spend an hour or more in a run and then only get enough cash to upgrade a couple of minor things, for example, upgrades like 'Get 5% more cash', is just a bit boring and also costs too much to upgrade.

Despite these issues, the game is fun and I'd recommend it probably in any sale. The DLC is good too; I'd definitely say buy them together. There's a good variety of weapons, things to find and explore etc.

I played an hour or so of this in offline mode which was enough to decide that it wasn't my type of game.

Typically I'm not that fond of platformers, however I'm always prepared to give it a go as there's a specific few that (despite me not being a fan of the genre), I have enjoyed in the past, Hollow Knight comes to mind as one. I wanted to give Gonner a try as it looked cool and I prefer the more 'action' based platformers.

Despite this, I still wasn't very keen. While it looks very fancy in the screenshots, I found the art style a bit frustrating and confusing often to work out what was going on, especially amongst all the explosive death effects. I kept dying and then would spend 5 seconds trying to actually find my character again on the screen, during which I'd then die again as you die instantly if any enemy touches you. I think I lost nearly all of my lives while just trying to find my character amongst all the explosions.

I also found it controls to be very 'nit-picky', you can jump on an enemy to kill it (same as other platformers), but if you don't jump EXACTLY on the enemy's head, slightly to the side - then it just kills you instantly... and then you get back to the same death-loop of trying to find yourself again before you loose all your lives.

The game felt very unforgiving, and while I can understand a game being tricky, that being combined with the over-the-top and confusing art style don't really mesh very well. If a game is designed to be difficult, I think it needs to be accessible; controls need be precise and it needs to be extremely clear to the player what's happening on screen, why they died and what the player could have done to prevent it etc. Binding of Isaac (as a roguelike) and Hollow Knight (as an action platformer) both do this very well, both are very difficult at times but have tight controls and make it easy to see where you went wrong.

Maybe it becomes clearer with more practice, but Gonner certainly doesn't do much to 'ease you in' and very quickly gets difficult and confusing to play, enough to put me off.