Recent reviews by Rusty

I got both poker nights in the Humble Telltale Bundle (2017), so I paid less than a dollar for each game :-)

Poker Night 1+2 might be the most fun poker games to ever exist. Nothing else can match the vibe and banter between the characters. It's a perfect Steam Deck game too.

Most other poker games put me to sleep, but I guess poker in Read Dead 1+2 is also ok. In singleplayer it's fun to cowboy ragequit, shoot everyone at the table and take your money back, when things go sideways, while the online multiplayer poker is pretty good too.

Sad that poker night can't be bought anymore on Steam, but now that it's abandonware to me that means morally it's fair game to acquire by other methods. A search on igg-games[dot]com returned useful results. Do with that as you will.

I tried finding any other fun poker games and the only other one that looked interesting to me was Dogs Playing Poker (2002) which is based on the paintings "dogs playing poker". Each dog has a backstory. The game is available on myabandonware[dot]com

If anyone has other decent poker game suggestions with fun characters or gimmicks, please share as a comment!

As others have mentioned the game has an issue with controls, but I followed this guide and that took care of the problem for me, at least making the game playable.

However, I still have another nasty issue with the game on AMD Radeon RX6800 XT which is graphical artifacts/flickering of screen space reflections (SSR), as I describe in further detail in this post. It's not enough to make the game unplayable, but it does make the graphics look like trash. This on top of being "always online", forcing you to use the EA App and the previously mentioned controller issue is just too much to forgive, even if the game might be ok otherwise.

The only time I can suggest this game, is on sale, maybe if you have an Nvidia GPU and use the controller fix workaround. Otherwise do not even think about buying it, no matter how good it looks. It's disappointing that NFS Most Wanted (2005) is still the best NFS. I should have known better, than to get scammed by EA.

If you are looking for a modern arcade racing game, I'd recommend Forza Horizon 4 instead. There the only drawback is it doesn't have any cop chases, but otherwise it's a better game in every way.

Imagine a combination of Tony Hawk, Subway Surfers and Left 4 Dead. That's this game.

Runs well on Steam Deck, mostly between 50-60 fps, even when docked to a TV @1080p.

Two minor issues:
1. There's a known bug, where it says you've got a "corrupted save" when starting the game. You can safely ignore this message and play the game normally, although one save slot will be occupied and say "corrupted". Cloud save, Auto-saving and the other save slots work fine. Do not delete the "corrupted" save. This is possibly caused by the steam cloud save file in the game's save folder.

2. The Xbox One version of the game had a co-op mode that is sadly missing from the PC version.

Impressive HL2 mod, where you get to play as the bad guy. Has a story that keeps the game interesting enough to finish it and surprisingly good voice acting (I did turn on subtitles because I'm bad a hearing radio chatter).

Lot's of mods are overly ambitious and never really deliver on the idea that's presented, but this is one of the rare exceptions that actually gets the job done. Someone hire these modders, they know how to make games!

Incredible fan remake of the original Half-Life. I can barely believe this is made in Source engine. This is as good as linear FPS games can get. It's like playing HL2 with good mods, except everything is already installed for you. Just click play and enjoy.

Some reviews complain about lack of health/ammo and replaying long sections when you die, but I didn't find this to be a problem at all. On most deaths I was back to where I was pretty quickly with the default save points, if you need an extra save, just use the quicksaves (but don't mess those up!). The only downside is that almost like a point-and-click game, sometimes it can be a little tricky to figure out what the game wants you to do next. I managed to play through it without looking anything up, but there were definitely moments, where I almost got stuck. My hint would be to press "e" on anything that looks interesting (for example glowing green buttons) or shoot stuff that looks shootable and that will lead to progress 90% of the time. If that doesn't help, there is no shame in looking up a walkthrough for some parts. You probably just missed a door or something...

Also thanks to Valve for letting this happen and letting the devs make some money from it!

(not like Nintendo and other companies who would shut something like this down instantly...)

UPDATE: The game has been discontinued because it was no longer financially viable for the developer. Sad. Hopefully it can be brought back. Maybe one day the server files will get released or leaked and the game can be revived a little bit.

R.I.P.

---

My previous review:

If you like PvP multiplayer games, then this is a good one. Basically it's Tarkov + Borderlands, but actually better. I like the environments and PvE more in this game, it's kind of underrated and I don't think it deserves the "Mixed" reviews label. It's better than you'd think and probably mostly reviews by a bunch of people who simply lost a lot of loot at some point and ragequit. It's understandable that this happens, it's just that type of game. Don't be fooled by the cartoony graphics, the game is as difficult and tense as Tarkov. I've been playing for about a week and I feel like I'm now past the point where I'm just a target for shooting practice and I'm about as dangerous as the others with mostly blue gear. A lot of players have a "shoot on sight" mentality, so you should try to avoid people most of the time. My personal rule for the game is that I only shoot back, if shot at and will try to carefully co-op with randos, when I can (that is if I don't have much to lose). I also like to play as a "guardian angel", where I will stalk a player and try to stay unseen by them, then if they get attacked by something, I help them out. Very funny sometimes, when they realize, I could have killed them easy. When I actually use the comms and voice chat in an encounter with another player, it goes well about 60% of the time which is honestly not bad. Then 30% of the time I die and 10% of the time I manage to kill the attacker. As a new player, I'm okay with this. I am not the super hero in this game, just another prospector like everyone else... except with worse gear in the beginning.

Everyone will make mistakes in this game, but will you learn from them? If you make too much sound by sprinting, play too risky shooting at everything and loot without caution, then you will quickly get punished hard for that. If you get past this and don't just ragequit, you will hopefully learn how to be a ninja looter: Check corners, be aware, loot carefully, etc. As merciless as your deaths can be, the rewards for smart play make up for it. You can play a certain way, where all you take with you is a pistol + smoke and mostly move carefully and get fat on loot, almost without even firing a bullet, then evac with smoke grenades, so snipers can't get you easily. All the loot gained from these "naked" runs will build you up to get the better weapons for PvP. I find the progression in the game a little grindy, but not too much, it's an acceptable and somewhat enjoyable grind.

I spent 10€ on the battlepass which is my usual amount to spend on free-to-play games that I enjoy. For these 10€ I get quite a lot of stuff, including enough in-game currency (aurum) to be able to buy the next battlepass and a little extra, if I save it up. 10€ gets you a lot in this game, compared to most other free-to-play games. You can even generate some of the premium currency with time, unrelated to the battlepass. Skins in the game are good and you can mix and match Body/Gloves/Boots from different sets, giving a lot of options for customization.

I've had great success finding squad mates to team up with by simply messing around at the station, then adding people as a friend who respond. Squad play makes this a very different game from solo sneaking. You have to play very coordinated to beat other squads. I like the difference in gameplay between these different modes of playing.

Another great thing about the game is the style and graphics. The lighting is well done, compared to most games that give you an outline of other players in the dark, in Cycle it's actually hard to see in the dark (got surprised by players hiding in the dark multiple times, where I would have sworn no one was there a second ago). The jungle environments and post-apocalyptic stuff looks good.

Overall I very much recommend "The Cycle: Frontier", if you enjoy these kind of PvPvE games. Considering that it's free to play, you can just give it a try and run around the planet with a pistol, until a player with better gear snipes you. If nothing else, the game will give you a good jump scare at some point!

Portal + Unreal Tournament = Splitgate

It's really that simple and if you like the sound of that, then play it.

This is possibly the best open-world singleplayer + story game. On top of that the online is also good, full of activities to do. It's one of those games, where if you think you got bored of the game, you can do something completely different in the game. Bored of being a good guy? Try out being a bad guy. Bored of riding your horse and shooting stuff? Try winning at poker online against other people. Try hunting, fishing, trading. Bored of that too? Why not go online and try actually talking to people in the game and see if you can get a gang going... there is so much to do and it's one of the few games with a world that actually feels kind of alive and not just like a bunch of scripted bots.

All that said it's not entirely perfect. The movement and using cover are often kind of clunky. Dark areas at night can be very hard to see in and you are more likely to be blindsided by an enemy which I would be fine with if I could skip to daytime, but that doesn't work in the online mode. I've had a couple bugs and crashes on hardware that's definitely good enough ("unknown error fffff"). The game runs and looks fine on Steamdeck which is just crazy. However, if I play the game over wifi on there, instead of ethernet, I've had frequent disconnects online (every hour or so), so this is a game that I usually play on desktop.
One other good thing is that the controller support for this game is top tier. I played it on PC and on a friends PS4 and there was really no difference, except that I'd get my ass kicked more online if I play PvP, but to me that's not really the fun part of the game anyway. Riding around on a horse, through beautiful scenery doing cowboy stuff never really gets old. If you can get RDR2 on sale it's an absolute steal. Even at full price it's worth it, if you don't want to wait.

One of the best arcade games on Steam.

The only problem is that the game has issues on Steam Deck and Linux. It's not really stable and consistently crashes, the first time I open the game in a day, but it's stable and works fine, if launch it a second time. Another problem is that leaderboards don't work and trying to open them will crash the game.

If these two issues could be fixed, the game would be perfect and I would change my review from negative to positive.

Amazing cinematic action game, strongly inspired by Indiana Jones.

Runs and looks good enough on Steamdeck. Two things to keep in mind, when you start the game:
- There are two games that you can choose to start in the main menu: "Uncharted 4: Thieves End" or "Uncharted: Legacy". I looked up which to play first and generally saw people recommend starting with Uncharted 4 because it has the backstory for Legacy and makes more sense that way.
- After you choose "Thieves End", the first time you run the game, you need to let the game compile shaders. There is a little loading percent indicator which says "Building Shaders". Just wait about 15 minutes for this to complete. Make a coffee or something, while this one-time setup is happening and be patient. Do not click around the menu, looking for a way to skip this.

The game is totally worth the huge 120 GB install size and 15 minute wait on first-time setup. The graphics, gameplay, voice acting and massive amount of content are simply top-tier. If you have a decent PC to play this, get it. If it's on sale, it's a steal and you will fit right in with the thieves ;-)