Recent reviews by Rusty

I remember having a lot of fun with the original Motherload Flash game by XGen Studios back in the day and remembering that, I decided to get this game to relive that nostalgia. But it's just not as great as I remembered it. Although XGen deserves credit for coming up with an original idea for a good mining game, XGen has not significantly improved on it and other games have taken the idea much further and done more interesting / fun things with it. One problem with Motherload is that it is a long grindfest and takes forever to get anywhere interesting. The story is slow moving, forgettable and kind of bland. The only thing to add some variety to the mining gameplay are the puzzles, but these are too few to really make the game much more interesting. There's not much challenge, it gets kind of boring and I couldn't be bothered to finish it. The problem in my opinion is the lack of interesting discoveries to be made exploring the underground and a lack of opponents or challenges to overcome.

Rather than playing Motherload, I'd like to suggest the following "mining" games with better exploration, more challenges, variety and fun gameplay (these are fairly obvious and I'm sure there are many other good ones I'm missing):
- Terraria
- Minecraft
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Don't Starve
- Factorio

Great co-op game, definitely one of the better recent games. If you like Borderlands, L4D, Risk of Rain style co-op and the adventuring / cave exploring in games like Minecraft and Terraria, then this game is for you. There are destructible environments, lots of variety of enemies, 4 different playable classes with many unique abilities and customization, different biomes and mission types and the game is original in it's own way. Sci-fi dwarves are just awesome. I can see myself playing this and coming back to it for a long time. Rock and Stone brothers!

There's smaller maps, not as much customization, no jets and the graphics are a little dated...
but the guns, the campaign, destruction, sound, map size, the weapons, the vehicles, the classes are all fun. Newer battlefield games have some improvements on paper, but are they actually better? Somehow not really.

Then there's the Vietnam expansion. Now that's DLC that was worth it.
Raining rockets down on your enemies in a huey while ride of the Valkyrie plays, just never gets old.

Not a bad game, I'd recommend it on sale if you liked Red Orchestra, BFBC2 Vietnam or games with jungle maps, but I had a problem: this game has performance issues, even though my PC should be able to run it no problem (AMD 5800X CPU, RX 6800 XT GPU, 32 GB RAM). I looked into this a bit and read that often Unreal Engine 3 games run poorly on new PCs because of bad default config, they have some kind of texture streaming thing that is unnecessary on good PCs and have a default fps limit of 63. I followed all performance tweaking tips I could find, requiring to edit the ROEngine.ini config file, then setting it to read-only and things got a bit better. The game kind of ran smoothly, but there was still some slight, constant stuttering, when moving around the map.

About the game itself - Pros:
+ Big maps, most of the time there are active 64 player servers
+ Guns are satisfying and have nice recoil
+ Good jungle maps
+ Chaotic large scale fights
+ Awesome when you turn the tide of battle
+ Good Sound - MG goes brrrrt, Artillery makes a big boom, the headshot dink sounds wonderful
+ The banter from the troops is fun (but gets old after a while)
+ There's helicopters and it's fun to spawn in them as gunner

Cons:
- Performance issues as mentioned before, often noticable LOD / Object pop-in and flickering textures in the distance
- I'm kind of bored of sim-lite shooters where you have to constantly lean / duck / camp
- "Is it an enemy or a bush simulator", this gets really bad on some night time jungle maps and I'm especially talking about the thick vines on trees that can completely cover up a player, so he is almost unseen, while being able to see through and shoot players through vines (I guess this was the attempt at making the jungle feel dangerous, but it's just not very fun)
- Like Red Orchestra, often it feels like you are just running into a meat grinder over and over, getting rekt by Sniper, SMG, MG, then Artillery and Napalm, all without being able to do anything is quite demoralizing (but this is could also be seen as a pro because this is quite realistic, I guess...)
- Too much "where the hell did I get shot from? Who? What? Why? ok I'm on fire again RIP"
- Has a strange kind of balance where the commanders and limited classes on both teams get to shoot fish in a barrel, while 90% of players are fish...
- You rarely ever get to fly the heli or drive the tank
- One problem that I'm not sure about: I couldn't figure out how to see who was talking on voice chat, so I could mute them. So mute button exists, but you don't know who to mute lol (maybe I just didn't see it)
- Movement is kind of slow, feels like running underwater and vaulting over things is clunky, compared to BF for example

I don't regret buying this on sale and spending some time playing it, it's a unique experience, but in the end I want to play something that looks better, runs better and is more fun, for example Arma 2 / 3, BF4 / 5 or Bad Company 2 Vietnam which all still have multiplayer that is active enough in EU at least. Ironically this game might be better on lower-mid end PCs, but on high end, I don't think the performance issues will ever get fixed. If they do I would recommend the game.

I played Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid back in the day. Haven't played for years, and don't really know what I'm doing, but the crazy effects are definitely fun, compared to the simplicity of Hearthstone, which is really the only other card game I ever played much. After the tutorial the game starts off by giving you a deck with Blue Eyes White Dragon, now that's a card I remember! I'm sure net-decking / meta etc. is as annoying in this, as in other online card games and I will get absolutely rekt online, but more importantly you can play against your friends with a certain ban list you agree upon. This is all I really want from the game, playing some good ol' Yu-Gi-Oh online with friends during Corona times. What a time to be alive! The best thing about playing this, compared to the old days is there is no arguing anymore about what the effects do, the game sorts things out. The only thing I can see being annoying is getting the cards you want (that might take a while) but for a free game it's a nice surprise and you get plenty of cards to start with which can be "crafted" to get what you want. If you are looking for some Yu-Gi-Oh nostalgia, this a good way to get your fix!

One more hint: I noticed under the "Special" section in the shop -> "Bundle Deal" you can get a lot of packs for relatively few gems (the in-game currency). 750 gems for 10 packs, instead of 100 gems per pack as usual. I'm pretty sure the first thing you should do is to get enough gems to get the "Duel Pass", then get the those "Bundle Deal" packs from the special section! You just need to play the tutorial and a couple extra games to afford it, seems very reasonable to get started! This might be gone at a later time, so grab it while you can...

It's good in parts, but I'm not that impressed. Compared to older snowboarding games I've played, this just barely holds up. SSX Tricky on PS2, 1080 avalanche on Gamecube, Shaun White Snowboarding on PS3 and even the newer SSX game on XBox 360 are at least as fun as this. Apart from the online multiplayer, this doesn't really do much to top those games.

Some of the things that are disappointing about Steep:

- An online connection is required to play most of the games content... WTF, this is just stupid and a great example of why modern gaming sucks. What exactly happens when the game's servers are down? It's just a matter of time, until it's unplayable. I don't like to buy games with an expiration date. This is just unnecessary DRM with no benefit to the player and will be a major annoyance at some point in the future. Only free-roam works offline, challenges which are the meat of the game do not. This is mostly the reason why I'm giving this a thumbs down, it's inexcusable. I understand that multiplayer obviously doesn't work (without LAN or splitscreen), but why make the singleplayer challenges online only? It's just total BS. The mountainbiking game "Descenders" made by an small indie dev has working offline singleplayer, while also having online multiplayer. I bought that game three times on different platforms and regret nothing. Ubisoft could learn a lesson.
- Most courses seem kind of randomly thrown together, rather than having well designed or interesting routes to take
- Graphics look good sometimes, but it's inconsistent. You can tell that more effort went into some parts of the map and a lot less in others.
- Some of the mountains really don't look good at all, like some kind of randomly generated mess. Have the developers ever actually looked at a snowy mountain? The Icy lake also looks bad with clearly copy, pasted textures which was done in 5 minutes of dev time.
- Even on highest settings, low level of detail on distant objects and texture pop-in is quite noticable, also when you open-up the map (this is clearly a console port, isn't it?). A more stylized map without stuff constantly popping in and out would have looked better, but then again zooming in on the map is cool, I will admit.
- Tricks and controls are kind of unpredictable, doesn't feel anywhere nearly as tight as old games
- Cringe dialog by your manager/tutorial narrator who also sounds perpetually stoned, quick sample: "yo dude that was totally gnarly man, keep it up"... I got a good laugh out of some it.
- There are some challenges where the mountain "talks" to you (What exactly is your character smoking?). Mostly the mountain complains about people skiing and just being there really -> in a game about skiing. So thanks for that pseudo-environmentalist hippy guilt tripping.
- The game is often janky, it's easy to get stuck in places and annoying to get out, while clipping through objects. Old snowboarding games has some of this too, but it's no better in this.
- The textures in the backgound briefly flicker when I press start to open up the menu. It slightly bothers me, every time. This should be easily fixable, how can this still be there, did the testers ever open the menu?

The good stuff:

What's really great are the trick animations. It seems like all the development effort went into this. What's also cool are the satisfying trails your character leaves in the snow and little balls of snow rolling down the mountain. Multiplayer is pretty good, there's a score attack and racing mode, so it's definitely fun for a couple games, but gets stale pretty quick. You can also play on some maps in multiplayer that would otherwise only be accessible through the DLC. It's nice to have some variety with Snowboard, Skis, Wingsuit, Rocketsuit, Sled and Walking, but in the end I really only care about the snowboard and skis.

Conclusion:

I got this game cheap while it was on sale for 6€. That's the only time I can really recommend getting it, don't pay more. Mostly this game makes me want to go back to play the old snowboarding games I mentioned on emulators. At least I remember those being a bit better than this. The only major improvement in Steep is the online multiplayer.

Better than 2042:

- better maps
- better classes
- better vehicles
- better balance
- better hitreg
- community run servers and a server browser
- hardcore mode
- better performance
- more weapons
- classic battlefield

I played this over the free weekend and still feel scammed out of my time. I wanted to see for myself it was as bad, as people were saying... and sadly yes, it is. Other BF games are better.

What's wrong with 2042?

- Battlefield has always had some jank and that's been part of the fun for me, but this one has extra jankiness.
- The class system just doesn't work that well. I liked playing all classes in older BF games, they all had their purpose, but here nothing really harmonizes that well. The Gadgets are kind of randomly thrown together, while any class can use any gun.
- The UI is the worst of all Battlefield games.
- Hit detection feels off (and I don't mean bullet travel time, I get how that works). I got hit after being well behind cover a few times.
- Before every game there is an boring intro you can't skip, and after a game each character in your squad trash talks a bit which is also unskippable and pretty much instantly annoying.
- After a game, instead of staying in a server and instantly starting the next game (as it has always been in BF previously), it kicks you out to the main menu and you have to wait a little to join a new game again.
- Considering all the unskippable silly stuff and menu shenanigans, in this BF game you have the most waiting and less time actually playing the game. This might almost be the most frustrating thing about the game
- No server browser, only matchmaking.
- No picking maps or excluding maps you don't like.
- Then again there aren't any maps to like. They are all sprawled out and not that memorable. There's nothing like fun maps from previous games, like Karkand, Shanghai or Africa Harbor. You have to do more running around as infantry than previously, as there are less transport vehicles and more open space.
- There is no voice chat, I think (or maybe no one was talking at all, still not entirely sure).
- The vehicles all handle poorly, compared to previous games.
- I have graphics maxed out (Ryzen 5800 and RX 6800 XT, 32 GB RAM) and they mostly run ok, there were a handful of short fps drops in 4ish hours of playing which isn't a big deal, but I don't even think graphically it's much of an upgrade to BF4. I much prefer BF4's buttery smoothness. On older hardware or borderline recommended specs, just play older BF.
- There is a Depth-of-field effect that I think can't be turned off (and yes I tried editing the config file and it did nothing). It happens when you are aiming, in the intro and post-match screen, the main menu and also randomly when you die sometimes.
- Everytime you die, your character does some ragdoll janky breakdance, then starts a dramatic death animation during which anyone can revive you. The "dying hand" animation in BF3 was already kind of annoying to see hundreds of times, this is even worse. There's a reason they removed this in BF4.
- You have 30 seconds to get revived, longest time I think out of any BF game and kind of pointless.
- Not a lot of variety in guns, but there is decent customization. You can change your customization mid-game, kind of like crysis 2.

The movement is a bit better than previous BF, vaulting works better, but it's not a big deal.

The best thing about the game which is easy to overlook is the "Portal" mode that I had the most fun with, where you can play conquest or rush from previous BF games (BFBC2, BF3, BF1, BFV). Also in this mode the game doesn't kick you out to the main menu and there is no cheesy post-game cringe trashtalk! Seeing BFBC2 with newer graphics is pretty cool, but don't get too excited: it's missing content (smoke, noobtube, tracer dart, red dot and acog sights?), compared to the original and has the regular BF2042 UI which doesn't really fit, so it's kind of like one step forward, two steps back.

Compared to playing the gimped older BF games in BF2042, I'd rather just play the proper original ones which still hold up quite well btw. So although "Portal" mode was a decent idea, it's kind of like the rest of the game and falls short of it's promise, while being a faint reminder of what could have been.

TLDR:

Annoyances, less fun, lots of jank, sprawling lack of direction and loss of the BF feel.

BF4, V, 1 and Bad Company 2 are easily better BF games. It's funny how Titanfall 2 is a much better sci-fi shooter than 2042 and Apex, but it's been kind of forgotten. Glad I got all those games on sale for around 5€.

I'd even rather play BF2 on a 10 yo laptop, listening to commander spam, while being nadespammed + ear-raped by overpowered jet bombs 24/7. At least besides those problems it has better vehicles and maps.

**Final Verdict**

It's really hard to recommend NRAN... I certainly wouldn't recommend it to everyone, especially if you are new to emulation and a computer newbie, stay far away from this, unless you have a real nerd friend to help you out (or happen to be one). That said, the end result of a well set up arcade in NRAN is awesome. I'd say EmuVR comes close and is better at providing VR emulation for consoles, while NRAN is better for VR emulation of arcade machine games.

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(Updated Review)

I wasn't ready for the learning curve it takes to get this emulator frontend working properly. After trying some after my initial frustration, I finally got things working the way I wanted. Be sure to read the guide exactly, watch a Youtube tutorial or three, then read the guide again and use it as a reference. Even then there are some things not mentioned in the guide. You will most likely encounter an issue, but you won't be alone and most likely there will be a hint somewhere the steam forums to help you out. If I had to compare the difficulty of configuring NRAN, I'd say it's about the same as setting up a modded Wii with Wiiflow (probably a useless comparison for most people, but I'm sure someone gets it) or using modding tools in other games (the UI is kind of bad). That's hacky software. This is a commercial product. Still despite all the annoyance, I thing the end result is worth it. Setting up this game is hard. Be prepared to spend not 2-3 hours, but multiple days figuring out how to use NRAN. This was not what I was expecting. Your time spent on the setup will depend on your level of emulation and pc skill / knowledge. You will not be "playing" the game after buying it. First you have to build your own arcade. Don't bother with trying to find a pre-made configuration pack for the game, believe me, I tried and the one I found was outdated and only lead to more issues and wasted time that would have been better spent on actually learning to use the arcade builder.

Read the Guide, learn to use builder tool, add things one by one, not all at once. I'd suggest starting with SNES games using .sfc ROMs (get cartridge label images here[emumovies.com], you need to make an account, but it's worth it). Then Posters (use this image resizer tool for posters[ivilded.wixsite.com]). Then add Radio stations, VHS and Music tapes. Be sure to test your Arcade every time you add something new, so you don't accidentally break something without knowing what caused the issue. Only after you have done the previous things, got them working and have some idea of what you are doing, I would suggest trying to add MAME games and customizing the arcade machines.

There are some things I still couldn't get working quite right:
- Using Youtube links on the VHS tapes to stream videos. First VHS tape streaming doesn't work at all, then I found an updated youtube-dl wrapper on the forums and replaced the outdated version of youtube-dl that the game uses. This let me stream from youtube, but it's janky. It hangs and doesn't play the video smoothly, unless I pause and let them load for a bit. I'd suggest forgetting about the youtube-streaming feature and instead pre-download any videos you want to watch in the game. Makes sense anyway...
- Attract screens (adding these is a confusing mess)
- Certain MAME games - some work, some don't

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(Previous thumbs-down review)

I found New Retro Arcade after playing Hypercharge, the newer game by the developer, when I checked what other games they had made. As a retro gaming enthusiast who has made extensive use of emulators before, this seemed like is might be the kind of "game" for me, a new and interesting way to enjoy old arcade games. NRAN delivers that, but I didn't expect the setup to be as involved. It really is a laborious pain to get how you want it. From the occasional emulation compatibility problems, to tracking down and inserting artwork for the cabinets and adding attract screens... it looks cool when it's done, and you walk around for a bit playing the various machines, but then you notice something is missing and rather than fiddling some more, you just give up and open RetroArch.

In the end the NRAN feels like an arcade that is closing, rather than one that is being revived. The lack of multiplayer on the Arcade machines and no more updates to the game add to that perception. It's as much about fiddling around with things, so they look nice (almost like animal crossing, but more frustrating), as it is about actually playing the games. The developers were upfront about these drawbacks and I thought I could look past that, but it's just kind of disappointing that the end result falls flat, just before reaching its potential. It's a nice interactive VR diorama, but not worth the effort, unless you somehow enjoy the tinkering.

One thing worth mentioning that I discovered in my search to set up NRAN is EmurVR[www.emuvr.net]. It's not a virtual arcade, but aims to be an "Emulator, but in VR" experience in a smaller room that you can freely customize. It's free, supports gamecube, wii, ps2 and 3ds, has online multiplayer for most systems (but not all) and is being more actively developed with new features.

I looked up whether I can skip Titanfall 1 and jump straight into 2 and yea it's fine. TF1 has a story that's only attached to multiplayer, so it can be kind of tricky to get through it now. While downloading the game, I watched this summary of the story in TF1 which I'd definitely recommend to understand a bit what's going on:
TF1 Story Summary

After downloading the game there were still a couple of settings I had to tweak for it to be good. By default the game only runs in 1080p and has depth-of-field (DoF) blur enabled. I play in 1440p and wanted to disable DoF. Some settings aren't in-game and you need to edit a config file or add launch options to change them (a bit annoying, but oh well). This page on PCGamingWiki tells you how to set up a button to disable DoF and set your resolution to 1440p:
Titanfall 2 - PCGamingWiki Page [www.pcgamingwiki.com]

First I played through the excellent campaign. It has a slick sci-fi style and smooth gameplay which is important for all the wall-running, doublejumping and sliding you'll be doing. The gunplay is fine. And then there's the mechs / titans. With a dozen or so loadouts for the titans, each with their own unique abilities, they make the game interesting. Especially your own titan in the story, BT who adds some personality to the game.

I played a round of multiplayer, did ok, middle of the scoreboard, got plenty kills on players and got myself a Titan a few times. So it wasn't too bad with the starting weapons. Movement discourages camping, doing stuff gets you closer to getting a titan. So there's no excessive camping. Each run is like a speedrun to get your titan.

Titanfall 2 is overall a well-designed game and you can tell a lot of effort went into it. Finally something good came from EA, although all credit should probably go to Respawn Entertainment. The PvPvE gameplay reminds me of OG Star Wars Battlefront and BF 2142. If you like mechs, cool sci-fi and fast-paced FPS games. This is the one.