Recent reviews by A_Nerd

I gave this game a negative review when it came out. The deceptive marketing was a problem, and shouldn't be forgiven easily, but this game is now amazing.

The story is pretty dumb and creates a lot of ludonarrative dissonance, but the world is amazing to just be in, I loved Night City so much that I did 100% of the content in this game, something I have never done with any other game.

I would strongly caution anyone against buying this game. For starters it has been abandoned by the devs, so any issues you've read about or seen in other reviews, are here to stay. The most glaring of which is, and I'm not kidding about this, there is a giant tree in the middle of the practice mode. Not like, out on the course of the driving range, I mean where the player stands. Look it up if you don't believe me (why would you, its absurd). It renders the entire practice mode (driving range, putting practice, etc.) unusable. There is literally (in the original sense), no way to use a major feature of the game.

Lots of other issues, for instance, it really only works on HTC Vive, it doesn't work on Index really at all. As in the game loads and whatnot but you can't get past the tutorial because they are Vive controller specific. Good luck pressing that button that isn't on your controller.

These and others are well documented issues,. The devs themselves made a post 2 years ago about how they were "working on" removing the tree. I'm not a developer so maybe I don't know but I'm pretty sure of 2 things. 1. Trees don't usually just appear places as a bug. 2. If they did, deleting them would not take over 2 years of working on.

I regret purchasing this game, and trying for longer than the return window to get it working. My only solace is that I can warn others off of purchasing this. Let me be clear there are TONS of other issues than these, and they will not be fixed as the game is not being worked on.

It's a shame, I really wanted to like this game

I am speaking without an ounce of hyberbole, exaggeration or undue emphasis. This game changed my life. I cried at the ending. I'm a 24 year old man, and few things have ever affected me in the way that this has.

Read the whole thing before passing judgement.

So let me be clear, this isn't a good game. Not good in the sense that it fails to meet much of the the basic criteria most people set out for their game. The performance isn't great, which is alarming given the graphics are straight out of 2002. The assets (sounds, enemies, walls, obstacles, buildings, and skybox) are clearly not original and seem to be placed throughout the maps with gleeful abandon. Enemy AI is about as simple as it could possibly be. Gun handling is static and flat. Honestly it feels like a bad mod for Half Life one.

As for the story/gameplay itself, well its a good thing the player moves like Usain Bolt on cocaine because the entire game (as best as I can discern) consists of moving across large labrynthe like maps finding keys (small, easy to miss) before backtracking to the starting area to unlock doors. The only story I got in my short playtime was Microsoft Sam's robotic giving me a sentence or two about an area I am entering or perhaps a cursory overview of my mission, oh and also that the RFF are bad.

There was no story that I could make out. Had I not reread the store page description I would have had no idea who my character was, what he was doing, or why. Certainly I did not encounter much in the way of an emotional journey. Clearly as you can probably see I did not spend much time playing this game. I made it through all of the first level and much of the second level before I called it quits on the repetitive shooting at enemies from outside their vision range.

Imagine you spent an afternoon in Garry's Mod placing down prebuilt objects and HL2 enemies semi randomly. That seems to be about what this game amounts to.

HOWEVER, It seems clear to me that this game is not trying to be something that I am criticizing it for failing to be. I purchased it on sale for 89 Cents Canadian, and I got my money's worth in 30 minutes of amusement. Moreover It is clear to me that the person who made this game is perhaps early on in their career of designing games. To that person, if they are reading this review I have only words of encouragement to give. While lacking in many areas of design that a standard game would have, it has a nugget of originality and is clearly a milestone on the path to actually good creations.

To the designer: Good job, keep making games,

To the interested customer: Pass on this unless you are very passionate about half life one mods and/or reused source assets.

Fantastic improvement to an already great game. Endless space 2 builds on all of the weak areas of the original without losing what made it fun. Its not an overly simple game but aside from a couple of tricky mechanics it is not hard to learn. It really captures that 4X rewarding feeling of doing well and watching your plans play out. Extremely varied races and mechanics for each one. All this from a proven and trustworthy developer. I highly recommend for anyone who enjoys Strategy/Grand Strategy games, especially if you are a CIV fan who wants a more varied experience.

No technical issues, the game looks and runs great. The menus and UI are (for the most part) well designed.