Recent reviews by 아무렇지 않은 바다표범

Absolutely phenomenal game, easily in the running for GOTY if you ask me. The core gameplay is a unique blend of genres that 11 bit has somehow managed to make work together in a seamless way, and the effort that went into actually finishing, testing, and polishing the game (lowercase P, no pun intended) prior to launch day is a breath of fresh air in the current industry. On top of that, the story was absolutely stellar, far more compelling and cerebral than the plot of a "survival base management" game has any right to be. Every element from the gameplay loop to the environments was deliberately crafted from beginning to end, and I think that I encountered a grand total of ONE bug in my entire playthrough. Really fantastic craftmanship from 11 bit, through and through. The fact that they've set the price point for this game at $35 on top of it all is amazing.

I hesitate to give away too much about what the game "is," since I think it's best experienced starting from a blank slate (that one was a little bit intended, I'll admit. You'll get it later.) The base management elements feel like they draw inspiration from the strategy layer of the XCOM games: build a variety of rooms within a vertical grid to fulfill certain needs for your mission and your crew, then provide the resources needed to keep them running. Those resources come from investment of time and, of course, more resources, into the exploration layer. The environments outside of the base are absolutely stunning, and while the planetary resource extraction mechanics are about what you'd expect from previous games featuring planets, resources, and extraction of said resources on said planets ("No Man's Sky," et al.) the interaction between the exploration and base-building elements made it so that I felt like I was playing something genuinely novel, even if there were hints of familiarity scattered throughout. Sprinkle in a little "Ghostbusters"-esque anomaly zapping action, and an ever-ticking clock that pushes you to make every second of every day count, and you've pretty much got The Alters.

That is, of course, skimming entirely over the story, which absolutely parallels the mechanical side of the game in terms of novelty. It offers an impressive number of meaningful narrative choices, which not only affect how the story unfolds, but actually have a huge impact on your strategy for keeping the base running. I won't even try to elaborate on that without spoiling things, so you'll just have to trust me that the story is easily one of the best that I've encountered in video game in recent memory.

Overall, I would rank this game as a "Must Play," especially for anyone with a love of base management games or thought-provoking science fiction. Best $35 I've spent on Steam in a long time.

Factorio meets KSP meets Stellaris. Hell yes.

It really pains me to scroll through the reviews page for Artifact and see so many negative reviews on what is, quite honestly, an absolutely freaking fantastic game. The negative reviews seem to fall into two general categories: those submitted by people who didn't do any research into the game before buying, and are now upset that they can't get a refund after redeeming, or worse, OPENING the included card packs (really? I mean, REALLY?;) and those submitted by players whose idea of what makes a "good" card game has been so irreparably tainted by outrageously unbalanced grindfests like Hearthstone that they can't even imagine a game where monetization consists of anything other than pulling out your wallet just to bypass the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of throwing your meager pool of basic cards against "optimized" (read: expensive) decks containing half a dozen broken legendaries, and trying not to give in to the ceaseless calling of the in-game store as you get repeatedly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by impossibly broken combos and stupid synergies between ultra-rare cards. If that's what appeals to you, more power to you. I wish you nothing but good times, if you're into that sort of thing. But please don't come here and trash Artifact as being expensive or P2W or "a scam," because it is none of those things. Artifact may not be your cup of tea, but it is a fantastic game.

First, before I get to the meat of this review, let me set one thing straight. YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY PLAY ARTIFACT FOREVER WITHOUT PUTTING MORE MONEY IN. What's more, you won't even be at a disadvantage at all. Artifact has this magical thing called "casual phantom draft," which you can play for free* (after your inital $20 purchase) forever, as many times as you want, all day, every day, without needing to own even a single card. The skill floor for draft modes is arguably a bit higher, but once you catch on, you will be on a level playing field with every single other player in the game. And it's free. Forever. And if you're asking, "Yeah, but is it fun?"... yes, it totally is. In fact, I think it's MORE fun than the constructed mode. And it's free. Did I mention it's free? Oh, and there are also modes where you can play with pre-built decks, either with random players or with your Steam friends. Also free. So let's be clear here, if you are putting any additional money into Artifact, it's because you want to, not because you have to. It's still a phenomenal game even at the basic $20 price point, and I'd still recommend it even if you refuse to put one more cent into it beyond that.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the parts of Artifact that aren't free. First is the constructed mode, where you assemble a deck from among cards you own. I chose to use my initial packs to play two rounds of Keeper Draft, which allowed me to pick the cards I wanted from a larger pool rather than relying 100% on chance, and afterwards I chose to spend another $1.50 on a handful of cards I thought would round out the deck nicely. And yet, despite the fact that my deck literally cost me a buck and a half beyond my inital investment (less than the price of a single Arena run in Hearthstone,) I win games with it. A lot of them. Anyone who tells you that you need to sink hundreds of dollars into buying three copies of every single card in order to be competitive is full of it. Beyond constructed, there are the "expert" gauntlet modes, which effectively have a $1 entry fee (half the price of Hearthstone's arena mode) and, if you manage to win more games than you lose, you get that $1 ticket back at the end, plus a pack or two if you do really well. Any cards in those packs that you don't want can be resold on the Steam Community market, or "recycled" into more event tickets, allowing you to not only go infinite in expert gauntlets, but actually GAIN tickets if you're good enough. So, again, this line about Artifact being an endless pay-to-win money hole is absolute garbage. Being a whale gets you next to nothing, and there are many, many ways to be competitive as a low-to-no budget gamer, depending on what mode you're playing.

Enough negativity and money-talk, though. Let's talk about the actual game for a second, because that's what this is actually a review of. I know I've said it before, but Artifact is really a genuinely good game. It manages to strike a really great balance between the strategic complexity of a game like MTG, whose mechanics are incredibly deep but border on arcane, and games like Hearthstone or Gwent that focus on accessibility to casual gamers. Artifact is simple enough that you'll be able to fully understand what's going on within a day, but it offers such an astounding level of choice at every moment, which makes it incredibly tactical experience. As opposed to turn-based games like... well, pretty much every card game, Artifact works on a system called "initiative," which makes it feel more like chess or fencing than a traditional TCG. When you have initiative, you get to do ONE thing. One. Play a card, use an ability, whatever. As soon as you do, though, your opponent gains initiative and gets to make one play of their own. Gameplay flows like a dance back and forth between the players, with both sides trying to set up a favorable exchange once the shots start flying. When you're satisfied with the carnage that's about to unfold, or don't have anything left to do at the moment, you pass initiative back to your opponent, who can then choose to play another card, or pass as well. When both players are satisfied, combat happens, and the game moves on to the next board. (Oh, yeah... while all this is going on, you're managing resources and planning future plays across three separate boards or "lanes," with the victory condition being to either win two of the three, or thoroughly wallop your opponent in one lane before they can beat you in the other two.) Optimal play often involves intentionally taking a beating by passing on opportunities to play cards, just so you can get first play on a crucial lane, or abandoning a lost lane entirely in favor of taking the other two before your opponent can completely overrun the one you've already lost. Every single moment is a calculation, especially since a play that's too obvious can be cut short by an immediate riposte by your opponent as soon as initiative passes to them. Do you take the safe route and heal your wounded hero first, or play a powerful spell and save the healing for later, risking the weak target potentially being nuked down in response? There's none of the all-too-familiar, "Oh, gee. I wonder what ridiculous combo my opponent is going to pull out of his ass THIS turn." Rather than having 15-minute Yu-Gi-Oh monologues where the bad guy spends two commercial breaks explaining how he sets up some insane one-hit kill using half his deck, the initiative system allows you to potentially intervene at any point, either clicking on the "pass initiative" coin over and over as if to say, "Okay, I'm not going to stop you... yet," or pulling out your own trick to cut your opponent's plans short. One of the most satisfying feelings in Artifact is participating in a multiple-card back-and-forth over whether a particular hero is going to die when combat happens (equipping +health items, playing spells, using active abilities to switch positions on the battlefield,) and seeing the red X indicating they're about to die disappear, then re-appear, then disappear, then... a pause, and after 5 seconds, the satisfying "clink" of your opponent passing initiative back to you. Seriously, that clinking sound is fantastic. One of the best parts of the game, second only to its mechanical beauty (thanks to MTG creator Richard Garfield) and its incredible soundtrack (thanks to Valve's in-house composer Tim Larkin, who also did the music for Dota 2.)

Verdict: Beautifully designed, incredibly polished, and damn fun. Solid 9.5/10.

Surviving Mars is, in a word, underwhelming.

Seeing the name "Paradox Interactive" attached to this game gave me high hopes for it - Paradox are, of course, known for putting out fantastic sandbox-style games with an incredible amount of depth, like Cities: Skylines, Stellaris, and Crusader Kings 2, to name a few. I was hoping, given their track record, that they would have found a way to avoid the pitfalls of the "Mars colony simulator" genre that other games like Planetbase have fallen into. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like they have.

Surviving Mars isn't broken, buggy, or poorly designed. The graphics quality is passable for a colony sim, and I don't really have any complaints with the core gameplay experience. The only problem that Surviving Mars suffers from is that... well, it's really just not very fun. Its only major sin is that there simply isn't enough depth to make it feel like there's a point to it all. Sandbox games like this one rely heavily on the depth of the experience in order to make them WORTH playing, and Surviving Mars, unfortunately, lacks that spark that gives me a reason to be sitting at my computer playing it, rather than off doing something else with my life. Perhaps future DLC will help, but when you're starting off with a $40 game that feels like a $10 game, and talking about adding paid DLC to that in order to make it just "playably" fun, you're in a bad position to begin with.

Having rather foolishly opted for the "deluxe" package, I find myself not having much of a choice but to keep an eye out for whatever future DLC is released, and perhaps boot the game up again to see if it's become less of a bore. However, honestly, I would pass on this one unless you can get it on sale at an extreme (~75%) price reduction. It's mildly interesting for the first couple hours, but all in all, falls FAR short of feeling like a complete experience.

Just yes. Yes. To call War of the Chosen an "expansion pack" or "DLC" frankly does it an enormous injustice. This one expansion easily does as much to enrich the gameplay experience of XCOM 2 as XCOM 2 did for Enemy Unknown. It's not "XCOM 3," but it's definitely deserving of the title "XCOM 2.5." There's just so many cool new features and tweaks that I'd be wasting your time trying to explain all of them in one review. The added depth makes your job as Commander significantly more complex, but in a very rewarding way that encourages intuition, experimentation, and careful analysis of your options at every turn, rather than just regurgitating the same simple strategy you've used for your past 10 playthroughs. If replay value is important to you, WotC is absolutely a must. It is perhaps one of the best, most feature-rich expansions to any PC game that I've played to date, and if you're still enjoying XCOM 2 after two years, take my word that WotC will be well, well worth your time and money. Absolutely recommended, 10/10.

I should start by saying that this is a review purely of the technical issues that currently plague this game, not the content of the game itself. I don't feel that I've been able to get far enough into the game to thoroughly review its story or gameplay, so I'll leave that to other reviewers. To clarify, this review probably doesn't apply to you if:

1. Your PC well exceeds the recommended specs listed on the store page, and
2. You own some sort of two-stick controller which you are able to use on your PC

The sole reason that this review is a "Do Not Recommend" is as a warning to potential buyers to research VERY carefully before making this purchase. There are MANY issues that players are having right now, including myself, which make the game effectively unplayable.

First, do not even consider purchasing this game unless your GPU is sufficiently powerful to run the game at a solid 60 FPS on the settings you choose, with NO dips whatsoever. For some absurd reason, the game compensates for a framerate below the 60 FPS cap by actually slowing down the game, so that the same amount of time passes between frames regardless of how long it takes to render them. This means that, if you can't put out a solid 60 FPS, your game will literally be running in slow-motion. If you are on a laptop, or if you are on a desktop that hasn't had its GPU upgraded in the past few years, you will NOT be able to run this game playably in its current state.

Second, do not even attempt to play this game with keyboard and mouse; it is effectively impossible, and certain sequences will be beyond frustrating to complete with the game's insanely broken K&M controls. The game naively treats your mouse as an analogue stick, meaning that as soon as you stop moving it, your aim snaps back to the direction your character is facing. This means that you essentially have to use only WASD to aim, and the mouse is literally useless - a control scheme which is so mindbogglingly stupid that I have a hard time believing anyone at SquareENIX or Platinum Games ever tried playing this game with K&M controls, despite the game claiming to support it.

That said, I don't want to make it appear that I am "trashing" this game. From everything that I've seen, it seems like an absolutely lovely game, and I am sorely disappointed that I am unable to play it in an enjoyable way. If you own a console that this game is offered on, or have a sufficiently beastly PC and own a peripheral controller, give it a shot. I did enjoy the brief portion of it that I was able to barely stumble through, and reviews of the game's story have been absolutely sparkling. Just be aware that this game was clearly never intended for PC, and almost zero effort was put into porting it in a playable way. If you're okay with that, and you have the right setup to be able to play it, then by all means, do.

Going in, I had a certain understanding of what C:MW seeks to be: an essentially mindless hack-and-slash melee brawler with very little in the way of "deep" gameplay. I held off on playing it until the free weekend, since the genre didn't seem like my cup of tea, and boy, now that I've played it, I'm glad I did. I've played it for 2 1/2 hours and am now gladly uninstalling, with no desire to revisit this game ever again.

First, the combat. For a game that seems to want to be a fast-paced adrenaline-driven brawler, the combat, movement, and controls are clunky and feel unbearably slow. Even the fastest classes have a sprint speed that more closely resembles a leisurely crawl, and it takes painfully long for your character to do something as simple as an archer pulling out his dagger/secondary weapon. Furthermore, the core combat system revolves entirely around a rock-paper-scissors system of attacking, blocking, and feinting which, honestly, would probably suffice for such a simple game if it were actually executed well, which it is not. Some of the objective game modes do have redeeming qualities, but the majority are a horrendous ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in which far too many players are crammed into far too small a map, leading to frustrating situations such as being spawned directly in front of someone in the process of attacking an entirely different enemy, causing you to be instantly decapitated within half a second of spawning.

Furthermore, I've noticed that the game features $2-3 microtransactions for ALL cosmetics, which as far as I can tell are not unlockable through gameplay. Compare this to a game like Overwatch where all cosmetics can be obtained through sufficient gameplay and a little luck; in C:MW, you could play 20,000 hours and still need to shell out multiple times the game's sticker price to obtain all of the game's cosmetic items. I could perhaps (partially) ignore this ridiculous fact if the game were actually enjoyable, but, as I've said... it's not.

Overall, C:MW fails to deliver anything even resembling an enjoyable gameplay experience, and the presence of pay-to-unlock microtransactions in a $25 game is quite frankly insulting. If you can get it for free, you might give it a try and see whether you like it. If not, I would definitely not recommend spending any money on this game. 2.5/10

This is easily one of the most fun, fulfilling puzzle games that I've played - rivaling the Portal series in both quality and scale. The entire experience is incredibly polished, and the universe it takes place in is hauntingly beautiful (akin to the Myst series; alone in a gorgeous but eerily-empty world.) The core game has about a hundred separate puzzles across dozens of levels, each of which has its own unique flair, and the story involves just enough player choice to give it replayability (something lacking in most puzzle-adventure games.) The game mechanics are relatively simple, but each puzzle mixes the various tools you gain access to in new and interesting ways. Some of the puzzles can be a bit nerve-wracking and involve split-second timing, but the vast majority are pretty relaxed and allow the player to solve them at their own pace. You can go through each puzzle in order, or jump around a bit provided that you've made enough progress to unlock the more difficult levels. Overall, the difficulty of the puzzles was reasonable - not so easy as to be boring, but not so brain-twistingly hard that it keeps you up at night.

On top of the well-balanced gameplay, the story was surprisingly deep for a puzzle game; I was reminded a bit of The Turing Test, another puzzle game, in its examination of what it means to be human vs. a machine, as well as some of the pseudo-religious elements of BioShock Infinite. The game opens with a lot of questions, which you begin to find answers to as you progress through the various levels. I found the story to be almost as rewarding as the gameplay itself, which is a rare quality in the puzzle-adventure genre. It's hard for me to find anything to complain about in The Talos Principle; even at its normal $40 price point, I'd consider it a good purchase. On sale, it's a must-buy. 9/10

Factorio is, quite simply, an absolutely fantastic game. Don't let the "Early Access" status discourage you; this game is balanced, polished, and astonishingly bug-free (moreso than many AAA titles) and is only getting better as development continues. Even if it were to be released today, it would already be a fantastic product, and the fact that the developers are pouring considerable effort into improving further it is wonderful.

In the simplest terms, Factorio is a game of industrial production and micro-management. If you're the type of person who is still reading this review after hearing that, you will absolutely love this game. There's not much more to say than that. The gameplay is fun and engaging, and there's endless room for optimization and strategy, resulting in near-infinite replayability. Simply put, Factorio is one of the most enjoyable indie titles I have played to date, and is well worth the insane amounts of time you will no doubt end up pouring into it. 10/10 flaming biter carcasses, would highly recommend.

Before I get started, let me say that Payday 2 was once a GREAT game. I pre-ordered the collector's edition of the game, and played it enthusiastically throughout the closed beta and for several months afterwards. The game had a lot going for it: it was polished, with crisp combat and stealth mechanics, and expanded nicely on the novel heist-game genre that the original Payday: The Heist had pioneered. Gameplay was fun, with a nice balance to it, and plenty of options available depending on the play-style you prefer. When Payday 2 came out of beta, I was very pleased with how it had turned out.

That said, the game has gone nowhere but downhill since then, and it's gone there with a vengeance. The game has declined to the point that I have refused to play it for over a year now, which is saying a lot considering how great the game was at release. I am appalled by the sequence of progressively worsening game design and balance decisions made by the game's developers. Very early on (within 2-3 months of the game's release from beta, if I recall correctly,) they began making sweeping "balance" changes to gameplay that fundamentally changed the focus of the game. This included severely nerfing the stealth aspects of the game, effectively making it impossible to play the game in the way many players enjoyed it best. From there, the game began to suffer from feature bloat, with unnecessary elements being added, such as new difficulty levels which do nothing but give enemies absurd amounts of armor and health; a prestige or "infamy" system which allows players to throw away their max-level status in exchange for small, permanent perks; and of course, over $100 in paid DLC, very little of which was ever worth the price tag. The game is plagued by hackers, which Overkill have shown themselves to be completely disinterested in preventing in any way, and ironically, the addition of the "infamy" system has done just as much for the hackers, who frequently just edit their level to the maximum, as it did for the dedicated, loyal players Overkill has managed to hold onto for this long.

In more recent news, Overkill has continued its long-standing tradition of not caring about its player base or its game's reputation by adding a micro-transaction "crate" system a la TF2, Dota2, CS:GO, etc. which for all intents and purposes cements Payday 2's status as a terribly mishandled, free-to-play garbage game that, on top of it all, isn't free to play. I am appalled by Overkill's consistent lack of tact in their updates to this game (I can't recall a single update to the game that I felt actually improved it in any way) and I will most certainly be adding Overkill to the list of developers I will never purchase from again. Payday 2 was originally a 9.5/10 game in my book. I now rate it 3/10, for what little enjoyable gameplay still remains. Would not recommend.