Recent reviews by dasfrodo

Do I recommend the vanilla game?
Eh, only if you're a fan of big, stompy mechs. The game definitely has issues, but it's a fun sandbox. If you're not into Battletech I don't think you're going to have fun for long.

Do I recommend the game if you mod it?
Hell yeah! Thanks to a full SDK the game has a dedicated modding community that added and still adds tons of features to the game. There's everything there, from pure visual mods to AI mods to complete gameplay overhauls.

If you're looking for a classic 90s style FPS this game truly delivers. Tons of weapons, masses of enemies, secrets everywhere, fast movement speed. Everything you love about Build Engine games.

Pros
- Visually stunning (for a a game running on a 25 years old engine that is)
- Good weapons
- Amazing leveldesign
- Good environmental variety
- Not too short, not too long
- Tons of eastereggs and throwbacks

Cons
- Many secrets are ridiculously well hidden and/or hard to find
- The Penetrator (the games SMG) is extremely strong but has a very, very limited ammo capacity. Why they made this gun so strong with such an ammo limitation is beyond me, because it would be tons of fun even if it did less damage
- Enemy variety, especially in the first episodes, is very limited
- Mechsects are annoying as heck. They are your typical "very small and hard to hit, coming in swarms" type of enemy. Their hitboxes are super weird too
- Performance. Yes, this 25 years old engine tanks hard in some areas, even on a modern PC. I suspect this is just an engine limitation, but still.

Overall though I can thoroughly recommend this game. I had a blast.

Yup, it's as "meh" as I remembered.

I've played this game on XBox 360 shortly after it came out at the time. I thought maybe, just maybe it wasn't as uninspired and bland as I thought it was. Unforunately, it is.

While I cannot understand and agree with the hate for the artstyle and the new direction the characters took, I do fully understand the criticism about the gameplay. It feels like literally anything 343 added is way, way worse than what they inherited from bungie.

• The Promethean Crawlers are nothing but boring, and extremely annoying cannonfodder. While I appreciate the attempt to get enemies "off the ground", the execution is very lackluster. They feel like they are supposed to be the replacement for the Grunts. They are not.
  
• The Promethean Knights are less agile but way tankier Elites and about as big as the Hunters. They are extremely boring to fight due to their tankyness and some of their abilities are badly telegraphed. They also tend to randomly teleport behind you and kill you. Oh, and they often come with a small drone that shields them when their own shields are down, catch all grenades you throw at them and they can respawn them. Only solution is to kill the drone, then the Knight. And to top it off, the drones tend to just fly away and hide the second you start damaging them.
  
• The new grenades are a bad joke. As if their damageoutput wasn't bad enough, no, they also bounce away from enemies if you happen to directly hit them and then after hitting the ground start their effect. Apart from blocking chokepoints they are completely useless.
  
• All of the new promethean weapons are completely uninspired copy pastes of existing weapons with a new skin and new sounds. Some of them extremely useless, especially on higher difficulties (looking at you Supressor).

Every single level that solely consists of fighting the Prometheans is a chore to get through. The levels with the Covenant in them are far, far superior. You might even call them fun. Although 343 managed to make their AI worse, somehow.

And to add insult to injury: the final "fight" against the guy you've been chasing all game IS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ QUICKTIME EVENT

I can only recommend this game if you want to finish all the Halo games. Apart from the lore, it is a completely forgettable and sometimes straight up frustrating experience, unfortunately.

This entire DLC cannot live up to the standards of the main game. Not even close. There is a lack of polish and it feels like the devs do not understand what exactly made the main game so, so good.

You are constantly thrown into arenas that are way, way too small (if you get an arena at all and not just a narrow corridor) with way too many enemies. Many of these fights are drawn out for faaaaaaaaaar to long to the point where you're seriously questioning whether it's intended to be so long or if the game bugged out. The problem isn't even the difficulty, the problem is that you constantly get stuck because the sheer amount of enemies constantly bodyblocks you. Enemies constantly spawn right in front of you, behind you or on top of you. It's an increadibly frustrating experience that I did not have with the main game.

The levels feel like they're a bunch of thrown together pieces that didn't make it into the main game and got recycled into the DLC. Apart from the very first level they do not look impressive at all. There's also a distinct lack of polish. Doors not having sounds, invisible walls where you clearly should be able to move through if you just look at the geometry and many, many small pieces of world geometry that block you and get you stuck in the middle of the fights.

I really, really love the main game. It's one of the best shooters I've every played and I was very, very hungry for more. I loved the challenge because it always (apart from the marauders) felt fair and if you died it was your fault. I did not think the DLC would be as good as the main game but as it is it's just disappointing. Especially for the money.

If you're absolutely starved for more Doom Eternal and do not mind lower quality content, this might be worth it. If not, stay away.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a very well made, beautiful game with amazing art direction an interesting story and compelling gameplay.

As long as you're fighting machines the gameplay is very interesting and varied, especially on higher difficulties, as every machine has numerous different parts that have different strength and weaknesses that, if destroyed, disable certain moves and skills that they have. It's a different story for human enemies though. Their AI feels like it's worse than the machines. They don't flank, they don't push, they immediately forget where you are and most die in one arrow to the head. Luckily, most engagements in the game are not against humans.

As of right now, the performance is not too great, even though I am running a decent machine (2700X, 2070 Super, 32GB of 3200Mhz RAM). Having said that, it's good enough if you're okay with 50-60FPS on high settings. There are numerous technical problems, like occasional framepacing issues that have to be resolved with a restart of the game.

If you're playing with mouse and keyboard I would recommend to play on the "hard" difficulty or higher. The game was clearly balanced with controllers in mind and is infinitely easier with a mouse.

Id took Doom 2016 and evolved the gameplay into something like a combat sandbox. You no longer just run around and blast everything away. If you try to do that you will run out of ammo constantly and die really fast, especially on higher difficulties. There are several key mechanics, like the chainsaw and the flame belch, which force you to react to each situation differently. Need health? Glory Kill smaller zombies. Need ammo? Chainsaw one big demon or some smaller enemies. Need armor? Set them ablaze and blow them up. Every demon has it's place in the combat sandbox, moves differently, reacts differently and has different strengths and weaknesses. This leads to very dynamic combat where you constantly switch targets, assess the situation and adapt. If you don't you won't get far.
Every weapon is useful this time around. No more pistol that is useless after you get the shotgun, no more shotgun that is useless after you get the super shotgun. The shotgun for example has a sticky grenade launcher which is perfect for smaller groups of enemies or taking out weakspots on the bigger demons. You wont be using the primary fire as much anymore but you will need the secondary modules on all the guns. The only upgrade I found completely useless is the microwave mod on the plasma rifle.

In the first couple of hours this loop of fighting, gathering resources mid fight and flying through the arena while constatly dodging enemies can be a tad bit frustrating and hard to wrap your head around but the moment this system clicks in your head you're in for one of the undoubtedly best shooter experiences ever made. The combat is just pure adrenaline and fun to the point where you can't play for more than a couple of hours because it is so exhausting. I finished the campaign in 15h on Ultra-Violence and I still want more because despite not giving you much in terms of weapons and upgrades in the later parts of the game, it didn't get boring at all.

The artstyle is a bit different this time around, and personally I'm not too big of a fan. The game is way brighter and colorful bordering on cartoony sometimes. I liked the atmosphere of Doom 2016 more and I'm sad that they dropped Megatextures. That said, it fits the bonkers gameplay pretty well. The game overall just has a more arcadey feel to it. Graphically it's insanely impressive and runs like a dream. In my entire time with the campaign my framerate never fell below 100FPS and avaraged around 150FPS on a 2070 Super on second highest graphics settings in 1440p. The mouse input is buttersmooth and despite some smaller clipping and gameplay bugs the game never felt buggy or rushed. It didn't crash once as well. One of the best launch title experiences I can remember.

The soundtrack is great, although not as good as the one from thje last game. 2016 just had these killer tracks like BFG Division and unfortunately for me there is nothing like this in this game. It's more on the EDM side this time around and although I like this genre, I think the metal soundtrack in 2016 fit the game way, way better. There was a couple of occurences where the old soundtrack plays and at these points I just noticed how much better that was.
Sounddesign is spot on. Weapons sound powerful and mean, demons have distinct sounds so you almost always know whats happening around you.

I have no idea why people call the platforming frustrating and bad. I think it was a great evolution of the mild platforming in the first game and it was great to have some variation to the constant demon killing.

Now the negatives:

Marauders suck. I understand the intention behind them and they're fine on their own but in a group of other enemies these dudes are just way, way too strong. They deal way too much damage, block everything, tank way too much and chase you relentlessly. There is a trick to beat them and at that point they were pretty easy to deal with but if you don't know this you're in for a very, very frustrating experience every time they spawn into a fight.
Quickswitch between Super Shotgun and Ballista, one shot each. You can permastun them that way. The only requirement is enough ammo. Make sure you have cleared all the other enemies in the arena as well

Arenas feel a bit unpolished at times where you get stuck for seemingly no reason on smaller props and get mauled by every demon around you.

Apart from the last one, boss fights are way too easy.

Apart from Ultra-Nightmare mode, I really don't get the point of 1-Up pickups. Just feels out of place.

The story is... meh. Doesn't bother me too much though because this game is about the gameplay, not the story.

Summary:

If you like shooters, go buy this game. It's worth the money and one of the best shooter experiences in the last 10 years and maybe ever. For me it was. I'll be coming back to this game many times. It looks amazing, runs well, doesn't crash, sounds great and plays almost perfect. Absolutely 100% recommended.

UPDATED FOR 1.0:

Welp, unfortunately, even with all the new content, my main gripes with the game are still the same. See the review below. However, I am using different mods now which help immensely. Game is still hard as heck and super RNG dependant, but it's fun.

These are the mods I'm using:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2206409341
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2199554577
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182627060

Do I recommend the game without mods? NO
Do I recommend the game with mods? YES!

Vanilla Noita is way too hard. It's way too reliant on RNG. As others have pointed out: if you don't have a decent wand setup until you reach Area 3 you're done. Might as well restart the run. As a result the game is very frustrating because you're entirely at the mercy of RNG. The basic premise of the game is amazing, it works really well, doesn't crash and is something entirely new. But the extremely harsh difficulty robs the game of all enjoyement, at least for me.

I want to create ridicilous wand setups that I can kill myself with on accident, I want to create even more ridicilous wand setups that oneshots everything in sight but the game doesn't let me. The stores between levels need more items and spells to choose from.

I'm not asking for a cakewalk of a game, but the fact that the game is a roguelike and not a roguelite makes the entire experience just increadibly unforgiving.

Overall a lot of the game is very, very well made and looks pretty good even for the now very dated Source Engine. The problem is that the devs pushed the engine way, way too far at a couple of points during the campaign, especially in the Xen levels. I have a pretty beefy PC that should run a game this old no problem at all but at certain points the game struggled to keep even 40FPS. This is something I can live with. It's not great, but it's not gamebreaking either because 95% of the time the game runs buttersmooth.

I'd say, aside from a couple of mishaps, the leveldesign until you reach Xen is great. There's tons of areas you'll recognize if you ever played the first game and you can feel the love the devs put into the game. But oh boy, what an annoying piece of work Xen is. The first hour, maybe the first two hours are okay but after that there's way too much cable unplugging and plugging, way too much repepetive leveldesign and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ unbalanced combat scenarios. Especially during the "Interlude" chapter the game just degrades to a clunky pixel platforming mess. If I had to decide I'd leave out the entire factory area alltogether. The gameplay and visuals in this area feel and look like they belong to a build of the game that is around ten years old. Compared to the rest it looks bland, uninspired and plain ugly.

I can't say I agree with all the gameplay changes they made to the game. Some of the weapons feel increadibly underpowered and some increadibly overpowered. Grenades are clunky to throw and take way too long to explode. Remote detonators are not really viable unless you want to kill something that is in shotgun range anyways. While we're talking about the shotgun: that is probably THE most unsatisfying gun in the game. Sometimes it oneshots people right in front of you, sometimes it doesn't. It's inconsisent as hell and considering most of the enemies do considerable amount of melee damage you're better off using something that has actual range. The game also suffers from extreme difficulty spikes. I breezed through most of the game on normal difficulty but some areas with fights required four or five attempts for all the wrong reasons (no cover, way too many enemies from way too many directions, etc.)

Do I recommend this? Uhm... maybe? I'd say around 70-80% of the game are really well made, look pretty and play well but the remaining rest SERIOUSLY drags down the overall experience, especially the "Interlude" chapter. The game is certainly well made, but it has it's problems. I won't blame you if you stop playing around half way through Xen. If you play this you probably know the ending anyways.

Dusk is a very well made no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ oldschool shooter. It doesn't try anything new, it doesn't try to enhance the oldschool gameplay with anything spectacular, it's just a fantastic, well made shooter and that's whats so great about it.

The leveldesign is very clever and extremely creative at some points during the three episodes. Just when you think you've seen enough of a level you get a new one with a completely different layout and feel to it. There are a couple of frustrating unbalanced parts in some levels (especially on higher difficulties) but that doesn't taint the overall experience.

There's just two little things that I didn't like too much. The weapon selection is rather meh and uninspired. I'd like to see some more creative weapons rather than just the classic pistols, shotguns, super shotguns, sniper rifles, etc. There is nothing outstanding here. The enemy variety is also rather limited. There's basically two types of enemies in the game: those that shoot you from afar and those that run at you. All the enemies in the game are made of these two archetypes and basically only differ in projectile speed and melee damage. Each has their own little twist but I think that wasn't enough.

Do I recommend this game? Hell yes. If you're on the lookout to get your oldschool shooter fix, this is the game for you.

I have no idea why they thought it'd be a good idea to re-release this game on Steam and make it F2P with such a confusing, unfocused and unexplained mess of a new player experience.

I played the game for a couple of hours when it released for free on Battle.net, didn't like it too much and had other stuff to play, so I dropped it. It was already confusing at the time.

The re-release here brought me back to it, trying again. My god, this has gotten even worse. There is NO explanation for ANYTHING, you just get dropped into the world with a trillion possible missions, quests, raids and events. I have no issue with reading guides to understand game mechanics but this game is just a giant questionmark when you go in without previous experience or help from seasoned players.

The least they could have done was include a player encyclopedia explaining all the stats, mission types and maybe even basic lore so you're not too overwhelmed with all the input. But they didn't.

I have played this game for four hours at the time of this review and I still have no clue what is happening or what I am supposed to do. I tried the singleplayer missions but apparently they got butchered as well. They are not really connected anymore. You finish a mission at get thrown into the world again where you have to manually start the next mission.

If you have the time and motivation to spend hours on reading up what you are supposed to do, this might be for you. If you want to jump in and just shoot some stuff it might be for you. Other than that, skip this.