Recent reviews by Dovah Snake

This game is only worth it if you buy it at 90% off and also buy it for at least two other friends.
Some (not all) of the levels are designed well, and the art style is well done.

Other levels are not designed very well, and this game is not suited for solo play because of how bad the bots are and how many choke points need co-ordinated play from all four players.

The difficulty curve is very odd, with recruit being boring, and the next difficulty level being too difficult.

At full price this game is not worth it, especially because it was unceremoniously abandoned by the developers with a lot of changes still pending. This game would have been made significantly better with just some number tweaks, too bad the developers abandoned it.

If you intend to play solo, or are looking for more depth and polish in the levels, play L4D2. That game has mechanics like cutting a smoker's tongue, whereas here everything involves shooting the shiny "weak spot". The part that gives this game depth is the card system, from the inventory cards, to the level-modifier cards. That mechanic is not for everyone. I don't mind the mechanic, it gives a good sense of progression to the game, but it needs better level design and enemy variety to be more impactful.

But at 90% off, the game is okay for a fun time with friends you know (not online randoms).

I am fairly surprised that I am writing such a detailed review for this game. But I feel that it deserves it. When I first booted this game up, I was expecting a goofy, maybe even gimmicky first person shooter, mainly because of the steam trailers. I did not watch or read a single online review of this game (mostly because I do not have much faith in them), so I walked in completely blind.

What I was not expecting was a game with so much love and effort poured into it.

Let's start with the technical side. This game has absolutely fantastic graphics, but still manages to run incredibly well. When I say fantastic graphics, I don't just mean something very screenshottable, like an Assassin's Creed or a Red Dead Redemption. The graphics are absolutely cutting edge, but they end up enhancing the gameplay in innovative ways, and largely stay out of your way unless you want to pay attention to them. Even though this is a game full of fire and explosions and chaos, not one of these causes an FPS drop.

The world destruction is implemented very well, and things break in ways that are predictable and intuitive, which must have been very hard to design and bring to life. The last time I had a game where I liked the environmental destruction mechanic was Red Faction, which was a long, long time ago.

The guns feel solid and punchy, and the three classes are designed well to suit various playstyles. The gadgets are designed well, and contribute to the feeling of skillful gameplay rather than just being I-win buttons.

The monetisation is very forgiving, and at no point do I feel like the game is trying to scam me.

The success of multiplayer games has a significant luck factor behind it. This game has taken off well, and I hope it continues to succeed. In a world of extremely cynical free-to-play titles, which are all built to milk and deceive players as much as possible, this is an exception, a game with a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into it by very talented people, who genuinely love games and want to make gaming better.

This is a game made by nerds for other nerds, without a single suit in sight.

10/10 Embark, you have done the impossible, you have made multiplayer gaming better in 2024.

Disclaimer: This review is going to offend some people.

Starfield is a game for people who are already Bethesda fans. People who walked the wintry roads of Windhelm and Dawnstar in Skyrim and thought what a much larger world would look like. People who braved the dusty badlands of Fallout and wondered how the tech would look like if it was not ravaged by nuclear war.

This game exists for one purpose: to evoke a sense of wonder and grandeur. Thousands of planets and moons that are all very very different. Hundreds of characters, all of whom have their own charm and personality. When you load up the menu and see all the stars, moons, planets you can explore, it evokes that very sense of wonder that every really good game should evoke. And yet, it has that human touch. When I first landed in New Atlantis, in front of the train, there was a young lady called Donna happily sweeping the station, talking about how she really wants to explore the universe, but hasn't yet. She echoes the same sense of wonder a player would have.

The main story is good, yes, parts of it can be a bit of a chore, but it is the task of every science fiction story to ask the right questions about the existence of humanity, and the last few missions, especially the ending, do that very very well.

I have seen discourse about this game around things like "the enemy AI being not very clever" etc. In my honest opinion all this is very petty. This game is not about that. It is not the core aspect of this game. This is not a game around combat. If you want combat in an open world, there are some very good games around that offer that. Dark Souls. Bloodborne. Elden Ring. This game is not for the combat junkie. It is for the explorer. The wanderer. The curious individual.

An enormous amount of effort has gone into this game. And it shows. It is, in my opinion, a ground-breaking game, and sets new standards in the game industry. The negative online discourse is by people who enjoy drama and negativity around games, and not the games themselves. The curious toddler in me, unaffected by years of cynicism, does not agree with the opinions of such people, and neither should you. There are small flaws in this game, but if it were perfect, would it not be boring as well?


UPDATE: Regarding the replayability of this game, I wrote an article about it: https://thereallydeep.com/gaming/starfield.html (I do not get any money from this website, this is only for informing folks).

Forza games do not work well with a steering wheel. The cars randomly steer themselves, and the steering wheel response is laggy and strange. However the F1 games by codemasters work beautifully with a wheel. The cars feel precise, the game controls support my wheel (logitech g29) out of the box, and driving in that game feels absolutely *chef's kiss*.
But I wanted a game where I could drive non-open-top cars with a wheel, and it would not be a sweaty hardcore simulator like Assetto Corsa. I picked up Grid Legends because Codemasters (who also make F1) makes it, and it has closed-top GT cars. It works well with a wheel with some tweaking, and there is a lot of car variety, and the racing in the game feels great. The campaign is a bit mediocre (feels good to see live action cutscenes though), but the Career mode has a lot of variety in its races. Very good sim-cade game.

At low-medium I get decent (90fps) framerates on my 6800XT. Not exactly acceptable. But as soon as I blow up a barrel or something, it drops to single digits. Also the stuttering is insane. This was supposed to be a performance patch. This is terrible. False advertising. Please patch this game asap.

10/10 game.
Optimisation, graphics, gameplay, and difficulty.
I am someone who really cares about how a game feels. I love low-latency, responsive, smooth gameplay.
This game feels incredible to play, feel and play around with.
Buy this game. You will suck at it in the beginning. But you won't suck at it because you opened a chest and the chest ate you as a message of spite from the people you paid (♡♡♡♡ ♡♡♡ fromsoft) , but because getting good at anything worthwhile takes time and effort.

They made a remaster but did not fix the ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡ bugs. On the VTOL mission mouse input stopped working so the game did not work an more until I took out a controller from my cupboard and used that. Terrible experience. Look at the people who made the Dead Space remake. Learn from them. Put at least some effort into QOL updates, for God's sake.

This is extremely low-effort and not worth playing or buying, even for free.

Another fantastic Forza Horizon, do buy an edition which has the HotWheels bits though, those tracks are spectacular.

I already bought and played this game for like 100 hours on the epic games store, but I bought it again on steam because I hate launching that bloatware.

The gunplay is fantastic.
The gameplay is mediocre. The game often leaves you in a place which is miles away from the objective with no way of getting a vehicle, and even if you have a vehicle there is a blocked barricade in your way.
The zooming out of the map to see the actual objective is super slow for some reason.
There are tons of low-quality bullet sponge bosses.
I don't understand the fact that you can get a legendary at level 12. and because you have not hit level cap yet, that legendary becomes useless 3 levels later. What even is the point?
Don't buy the second season pass. There is nothing of value there.
The dialog is the worst voice acting I have ever heard in my life. Nothing comes close. I am generally not bothered by bad voice acting in games, but this is too much.

This is the best looter-shooter out there. But just because it is the best one does not mean it is good. There are better looter games (Vermintide 2) and there are better shooter games (you don't need me to provide a list). Buy those.

I have seen a few reviews by game journalists that claim that this game is only a must-play if you are a Harry Potter fan. Those reviews are wrong. This is an extremely competent fantasy RPG, and for me, probably the best one I have played since Skyrim. Sure, it does not need as much in-game lore creation as Skyrim, but that is because the lore already exists in the Harry Potter books. This game is what happens when you take a bunch of harry potter nerds and make them create a game. The world is extremely detailed, the art style is beautiful, and the magical combat is perfect. If you like any of:
1. magic
2. RPGs.
3. Harry Potter
4. feeling like a combat god

buy this game.

The game runs pretty well on my PC, except in the winter sections, which hit the framerate pretty hard. Still runs better than fallout 4 though.

My big issue with this game is that it is really difficult to play as an evil character, which breaks the immersion really hard.
Your character has a goody-two-shoes voice and the blandest of expressions, half the dialogue is overtly wholesome and appreciative, and there is no crime mechanic in this game. You cannot hit a teacher with Crucio, which is rather unfortunate.

But you can pet the cats.

10/10.