Recent reviews by ɠųąཞɖıąŋ ąŋɠɛƖ!

Overkill's Walking Dead is a profoundly flawed game that most zombie game fans should avoid for now. The game was supposedly created over a period of four years, by the developers of Payday 2, but instead the title feels like a very complex mod or early access game/beta. The game centers on five survivors that live within the District of Columbia. Each character has a unique set of abilities and weapon bonuses. Heather/Reina is a scout and utilizes the crossbow to perform silent mid-range kills. Her main power is the smoke grenade, which, in theory, provides cover and slows enemies. Grant is the long-range sniper specialist and uses the quarter staff to fantastic melee effect. His power is the molotov which lights tons of enemies. Maya is the support class and utilizes SMGs, which are lousy, inaccurate messes in the game. Her power however is the overwhelmingly valuable medbag. Finally, Aidan is the tank and utilizes the baseball bat, silenced shotguns and his power is the poor flashbang.

Now that we've got all the classes out of the way, let's underscore that none of this matters since the weapon bonuses each class gets for the weapons are absolutely worthless. I leveled Reina, the crossbowman, with sniper rifles, forgoing the bonuses and succeeded marvelously. That's because sniper rifles are by far the most powerful ranged weapons in the game. In melee, the quarterstaff, the machete and ice axe are king and every other melee is a poor shadow, doing less damage and taking a higher equivalent weapon level to perform one-hit kills. The gameplay is deeply flawed, relying on horde wave missions for 33% of the total game. The AI is brutally attrocious. While the zombies react brilliantly to sound, they also see you at times, regardless of how well you're hidden. That itself could be forgiven if the human AI worked well but instead Overkill provided them with telescopic laser vision in order to compensate for their brutally stupid "intelligence". AI can't flank. They don't navigate through weapon fire properly. They often shoot you while looking away from you. Sneaking is hit or miss. They move in janky bouts of super speed or brutal clumsiness and Overkill blessed their snipers with super invincibility. In the final levels of the game, you'll face dozens of snipers wearing dorky football helmets that absorb up to 2 sniper rounds before you are even allowed to score a headshot, even if you aim for the exposed areas of the face.

The storyline focusing on the characters is non-existent and once one of the four main characters dies on mission 4, you're left nonplussed since you never learned anything about any of the characters. The entire game plot amounts to: Attacked by the family. Repel a zombie horde. Repel the family attack. Oh noes, they stole our water purifier. Get it back! Steal one of their radios. Steal their boss. Whoops, the Famliy is actually not as bad as the Brigade, another, different interchangeable antagonist. Attacked by the Brigade. Flee your base. Stumble like idiots in the sewer hitting a bunch of levers to open a door. Steal medical supplies. Assassinate some thugs. Steal some supplies from thugs. Liberate some survivors. Attacked by the Brigade again. Kill their second in command, Hurst, who has 6 lines in the whole game. The end. That's it. That's the game. And if you succeed in each mission, the game can be completed in 10 story-bereft hours. Don't expect to care about the characters. There's almost zero characterization.

All of this could be forgiven if the game actually *ran* properly. It is a disaster. The update system is absolute trash. I pre-downloaded the 19.3 GB game the day before the release. On release day, they disseminated a 125 MB patch. No problem, as I have a 65 Mb/s connection right? Wrong. Downloading, unpacking and installing that update took over an HOUR. And each subsequent update takes crazy amounts of time. Some updates take as much as 30 minutes. None take less than 10, despite being 25 MB in size. The game loads poorly, even on my SSD with 32 GB of RAM. Expect to see the same stupid Red-Zombie skull splash screen. Out of my 75 hours of play time, I'm not kidding when I say that at *least* one hour of that time was spent staring at the screen.

The game looks good at high settings but doesn't look better than Dying Light despite needing higher system requirements. The network code is abject vomit. If any player joins a game in L4D 2 or CoD or Battlefield, you feel nary a thing. Here the game hitches and seizes with a fraction of the playerbase, often ruining progress through a difficult area of the mission. Did you traverse into a new zone of the map? More seizing occurs. And I'm not talking about a minor dip for a few seconds. I'm talking about 5-10 fps for a good 5-10 seconds, while surrounded by brutally difficult walkers. Just as bad is the janky hitboxes where headshots miss through phantom heads or where a solid strike to the head is ignored as the zombies grasp you anyways.

If zombies hit maximum 3-Dot panic level, they become practically untennable but since the game has no server browser and relies on blind matchmaking, expect to have a plethora of idiots ruining your careful 30-50 minutes of stealthing on a whim or through sheer, stupendous idiocy. Luckily, I had a friend playing with me and we were able to clutch our way through a series of these situations but I sympathize with loner players that lack that advantage since most missions, on the easiest difficulty, are practically impossible on solo. The game also has a bogus camp-upgrading/happiness mechanic that has almost no legitimate effect on your own experience in the missions. Oh and you can find an NPC called a Wanderer and feed him a lot of rare, valuable and amazing weapons and items to get....trash that's weaker than what you have.

All in all, Walking Dead confirms four things for me:
1. This game is 2 weeks old and already long dead. The total playerbase has never exceeded 15000 players. Let me repeat that fact. The playerbase has never exceeded 15000 players. The current playerbase fluctuates between 1000 and 4000 max players a scant TWO weeks later. The game is dead and has far too many technical issues to be salvaged.

2. I'm never buying another Overkill game. Between Payday 2 and this crapshow, I'm done spending 60 USD on unfinished cash-grabs.

3. If you're alone, don't even consider buying this game on sale. The community is gone. The game didn't make enough money to justify continued support and while pre-developed Season 2 content might release, it won't save the game and Season 3 will never arise since the game is horrendously under water.

4. Finally, I spent time with my friend replaying Hell or High Water, for almost 40 hours. It is by far the most efficient map, with rush finishes amounting to only about 18 minutes and providing a host of weapon and mod drops. Additionally, the campaign is pretty simple, even on higher difficulties. The map has a nice combination of scavanging, stealthing, gunplay, staged in residential districts, abandoned buildings, storefronts and the like. Hell or High Water is what kept me and my friend in the game. The map is what ALL of Walking Dead should've been like, not the shameless switch-hunting stumbling in the dark of other maps or the final map Join or Die sniper fiesta.

**Addendum** I believe that Skybound and Starbreeze have initiated a public dispute to prevent Starbreeze from sinking any more time into the game, including providing the *promised* content that has yet to be released. This is a patent violation of Starbreeze's contract with its customers. False advertising. Additionally, the moderators in the steam forum are horrendously unprofessional and incompetent, taking it upon themselves to reward abusive posters while arbitrarily censoring others.

Avoid this scam.

4/10.

(mini-review).

I bought this copy as a backup to my original Platinum-DVD collection (I have over 2500 hours on the non-steam version). Great RPG that is made all the better by a monstrously open and adaptable development platform. Sure, the story leaves something to be desired and really pales in comparison to Baldur's Gate 2, but with all the mods, DLC and self-created content, you certainly make up for quality with a mind-boggling amount of "pretty good quality". The game runs on toasters now and has co-op/singleplayer elements but can also be played in PvP. There are a myriad of MMO and PvP servers online to choose from. This makes NWN a never-ending pandora's box of DnD entertainment. With the exception of really dated graphics and a buggy execution by Beamdog, this game is a gem.

I have 6,000 hours in L4D 2 but in between the better part of a hundred completed campaigns, thousands of hours in MMO/PVP servers and utold *days* modding the platform, I can honestly affirm that NWN still holds the title for my most played gaming title, likely exceeding 6,000. This game has "mega-value" written all over it. A flawed reproduction of a masterpiece.

Highly Recommended!

9/10.

(mini-review).

Dragon's Dogma: DA or DDDA, for short, is a singleplayer RPG set in a western-narrative world but told from a strictly Japanese/Korean viewpoint. Consequently, the models are attractive, the animations are swift and dynamic and the combat is satisfying. Exploration is rewarded with varied, beautiful environments. Truth be told, the game has "AAA title" written all over it and it oozes quality. The only weaknesses are a maddening focus on crafting for every minor item advancement, a lack of a deep, character-driven story and the dearth of exciting armors/weapons.

DDDA is a fun RPG that might scratch a particular kind of itch. WIth a better story, more pronounced character interactions, more stylish accountremants and a few more wild boss battles, DDDA might have gone down as one of the best RPGs of all time. As it stands, it's a fun diversion if you can obtain it for cheap on sale.

Worth a look.

7/10.

(mini-review.)

So I bought Splinter Cell Conviction a month ago. I waited to play it (big mistake, I know) a month later. The game won't load, indicating Error Code 1 - Windows 10 is unsupported.

Yes, I have tried to:

Reinstall the game. (Twice).
Verify Game Cache. (Three times).
Set the application EXE to admin mode and Windows 7 compatibility.
Installed the public fix EXE.

None work.

What's more, the actual page to the game is gone. So I can't even write a review for the game. But interestingly, it says I own the Deluxe version. Except I don't own the Deluxe version in my library. Ubisoft is a *mess*. Of the last 3 games I've bought from them...*all of them* have had catastrophic issues.

Avoid this "game".

2/10.

(mini-review).

Clunky. Bad UI. Poor controls. Awful graphics. State of Decay 2, as a mod, created for broke 12 year olds.

Avoid this game.

3/10.

(mini-review.)

I love Warhammer 40K. I am intimately acquainted with the Dark Angels and the Deathwing. I bought the game, hoping to find a deep, expansively fun shooter. Instead, the game is just a chore. The plot is paper-thin and predictable. In fact, it is far weaker than the plot in Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch, which got bashed for its storyline. The game vacillates between looking absolutely gorgeous, with massive, well-rendered environments/amazingly detailed terminator armor sets and laughably poor tactical dreadnaught animations (omg, those legs). All of this could be forgiveable if the game was fun and had replayability but it's not. The game is rote and repetitive, with you fighting overpowered waves of tyranids as you proceed through various areas of a space hulk. That, in itself can be overlooked as well, except that the classes and weapons are far from balanced. Weapons lack punch. Melee isn't satisfying. And powers/progression make little sizeable difference. Progression is brutally slow requring a mind-numbing amount of replay of the same missions in order to make small changes to your marine.

For a game that normally costs 30-40 dollars, Deathwing is simply a bad value. I finished the campaign in 8 hours with minimal reason to keep playing. And the lobbies are ghost towns as they are. While the game runs reasonably well and looks reasonably good, the design of the game is flawed at the core and that makes all the difference.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

6/10.

(mini-review).

XCOM 2 is a good game. However, as much as it pains me to write this, it is not the game for me.

XCOM 2 is a turn-based, tactically squad-based strategy game with an enormous amount of history and reverence in PC gaming circles. The tactics, UI, gameplay and combat depth are all unparalleled and truly sublime. They are, very much, best in breed. However, the storyline is rote and boring. The universe is an uninspired, under-designed, under-cooked mess with very real attempts at stealing Mass Effect 2/3's visual style, music and aesthetics. Imagine the best squad-based tactics game you've ever played, with remarkable depth, virtually no past-campaign content, limited modding community, coupled with a dry, lifeless plot and Mass Effect 3's design leftovers -- that's XCOM 2. If this game were set in the Warhammer 40K universe, had more content and was possessed of a strong story and maybe campaign co-op -- I'd never play anything else ever again.

XCOM 2 is a good game. However, as I said, it isn't the game for me.

Pick it up on sale if you can. Tacticians will be right at home and love this title. Just don't expect a lot of creativity or soul.

Recommended.

7.5/10.

This is going to get me a lot of downvotes but the game is a definite pass. For starters, the game is almost 10 years old and those rose-colored glasses most people remember the game with are getting quite smudged by this point. The game just doesn't look great. The plot is pure, borderline offensive nonsense about occultists/demons being good guys and angels being the prime antagonists. But like all Platinum games, this one has a narrative that is laughably juvenile during its best moments. The entire 15 minute starting scene is just you mashing buttons like a seal. Platinum has a life-threatening allergy to intelligent plotting.

All of these issues can be forgiven with fast, frenetic combat controls and this game has that but tons of people are experiencing issues with the game launching/saving. I myself had the game load into the well-known white screen of death. A white screen so damning that only a hard restart would work. No, setting the game to 640x480 didn't work. No, ALT-TAB didn't work. And I couldn't even kill the app with CTRL-ALT-DEL or ALT-F4. So yeah....hard restart. The worst part was that the restarts would often cause my Catalyst drivers not to load properly or have my Gigabyte sound drivers fail.

So yeah, something they did to the game in the last year caused me to go from being able to play it to apocalyptic white screen of death. Maybe I should've pushed through the dumb game play while I had the chance?

The game is obvious oversexualized pap for lonely 20-somethings. Just ditch this game, sign up for a Match.com free weekend and save your time for games that actually matter. You'll be happier.

Avoid this game. Join e-Harmony or Plenty of Fish if you're lonely.

4/10.

Despite a select few of hopelessly delusional dreamers that kept arguing that the game was healthy and that it had a valid contrubution to the Dawn of War IP legacy, every real Warhammer 40K fan could see the writing on the wall. Comprised of a snooze-inducing, schizophrenic campaign, a trend-pushing mobafest multiplayer and limited moddability, it's no surprise this game is an abject failure. Are you looking for slow, flavorful, cannon battles by capable units, with advanced abilities? You won't find that here. Advanced cover, suppression, morale? You know, all the stuff that made the first two Dawn of Wars unique, successful RTS experiences? You won't find that either. How about expansive base-building(DoW 1), rich RPG elements(DoW 2) or syncced kills? Keep walking, that's not in here either. Last Stand? Not a chance.

Games devolve into a mad dash towards 3 super units that play like a stunted, grotesque moba and the exploitation of busted doctrines that can be abused for cheap wins. Unit positioning, cover, upgrades and tactics don't matter. Just who's blob is bigger. It plays like Starcraft 2's dumber, less interesting little brother. Even more laughably is the lack of races (only 3 on release), the rampantly toxic circle jerk community of abusive moderators both on Steam forums and Relic forums that let defenders of the game insult customers. These same moderators, ban or humiliate legitimate critics for far lesser infractions. It comes with Denuvo, making modding almost impossible. Relic stated that they aren't allowed to release modding tools. So the large, expansively rich community of mods that DoW 1 enjoys are a pipe dream.

And now Relic has admitted that the game is in fact a failure, as all intelligent critics knew, and that they won't be upgrading, balancing or even really fixing the game at all. So they put the game on sale for 14 dollars and hope they can scam some more prospective customers with a bad, unfinished, unsupported game, one last time before they pull the plug. And they have the audacity to call this "making love, not war". To date, Relic, Sega and the like, still think it's the customers' fault for not enjoying the game and purchasing it. They won't accept the responsibility of attempting to ignore its core constituency for some cheap bonus moba-player sales. They won't accept that the game's mechanics and aesthetics and story all fall short of prior games in the series. The arrogance is positively flooring.

Dawn of War 1, and most specifically the enormous and alive modding community, is the game that made a Warhammer 40k fan out of me. Since then, I've bought dozens of their rulebooks and codices, dozens of other games and a pile of miniatures. I've spent thousands of dollars on their products because DoW 1 and the mods opened a door to a new world for me. Now Games Workshop greedily restrains modding out of complete irrational fear that their plastic toy sales might be threatened. The myopic panic is shocking. What makes the issue even worse is that the game loads slowly and demonstrates mediocre performance at best. I have the recommended system for their game and I can only get high settings at 30 fps. Hardly ideal. The camera is a cludge and the movement is unresponsive at best.

Relic has the right to abandon a game, in less than one year no less, that has no shot of generating positive income. Sega has the right to abandon the support for DoW 3 to prevent additional losses. Game's Workshop has the right to act paranoid and pretend that mods will financially exsanguinate them.

But quess what? We, the customers have the right to call this game a crapfest, because it is. We have a right to be upset and disappointed that we paid 60 dollars for an incomplete and inferior experience that is missing many of the promised elements that were *never included*. We have a right to point out that this game is as close to a scam as you can get without actually being illegal. We have a right to warn others of the toxic, disingenous moderator community on their forums. We have a right to warn others to not buy this lousy, unsupported scam game, even on 77% off sales, after only 10 months of release. And yes, we...I have a right to tell Relic and Sega that I will no longer, *ever* buy another title from them ever again.


Trust me folks. This game isn't what you're looking for. It's 77% off after only 10 months for a *reason*. Avoid it and spend the money on something you'll actually play more than once. This is a piss-poor game. And Relic and Sega should be ashamed.

Avoid.
5/10.

-DoW 1, 2, Spacemarine, Homeworld, Impossible Beasts owner, Ex-Relic patron.

(mini-review.)

An attractive, charismatic little top down shooter with a lot of depth, HELLDIVERS has a lot to like. Unfortunately, its showstopping bugs, coupled with its balancing issues make it a tough game to love and recommend. The game's lovely aesthetics also make it hard to see what you're shooting at sometimes.

Get the game for cheap if you can but don't expect much if you spend full price.

Not worth the time. You'll find better games elsewhere.

6.5/10.