I’ve got mixed feelings about this game. Every time you play (also your first playthrough, which will be the most fun because everything is new) will be different. I love random games, although this one isn't truly procedurally generated, the order of events is random. You don’t play as one teen trying to escape, you play several consecutive teens trying to escape over a span of time. I love this, it makes the game fun and unpredictable. The game is basicly a large set of scenes, stringed together at random. Some scenes are really fun, intriguing and moody. However... other scenes feel cheap and rushed to complete. Since the sequence of scenes is random (which I love), the transition from one scene to another can sometimes feel random (for example, in one scene I traveled on by stealing a car, in the scene that followed some kid was with me in the car all of the sudden… how did he get in here?). Many scenes have a minigame which feels like filling up for some variation. Although some minigames are seriously fun puzzles, others are too simple. All in all, I love the game for it’s adventurous feeling and randomness but it feels a bit rough and sometimes unfinishes around the edges. Some scenes are really good, while others are simply bad. Also the world is very cold-war-era Left vs Right; Rebels vs Authority. Ans you don't have much Freedom in which side to choose (pun intended). TL:DR It's a good game if you love chill semi-random hitchhiking adventures, about escaping the USA if it was run by North-Korea on a sunday afternoon.
True spiritual successor to the Syndicate game from the 90's and Syndicate Wars. Four agents, an open world with multiple districts, a decent backstory + lore, plenty of weapons, items and augmentations. Which you'll have to discover first and then research, which costs money. After completing research, you can buy them, which also costs money. Everything costs money. You're a syndicate operation in a syndicate world. The game is very stealth focused. You can't go running around throwing nuke grenades everywhere like in Syndicate Wars (or were those cheats? I can't remember). I love the open world that feels very alive and the non-linear approach to the missions. It's up to you what you want to do first once you're out of the tutorial. Controls can be a little bit annoying at times though, specially since there's no pause option or quick-saving / loading halfway a mission. When things get tense I sometimes get hasty and careless with my commands. One miss-click and you get caught and you're done for... it spirals out of control with endless waves of enemies... There's no save scumming halfway a mission so making a run for it is your only option if you want to survive (and clones of course...). This adds to the tention but also requires patience for some missions. All in all it's a very good atmospheric futuristic dystopian succesor of the original Syndicate (Wars) games.
I may be biased because I'm a big fan of Metroidvania platform games. This game is definitely a good Metroidvania-ish game, even though it can be a little bit of hack and slash at times. The artstyle may become a bit repetetive / boring after a while, but it's definitely not bad. There's plenty of places to explore and/or break into if you want, but watch out for the guards... The bosses can be challenging in their own ways. There's plenty of different melee and ranged weapons at your disposal, also traps, shields, potions.. and miscellaneous items that can be used in a little bit of crafting. All in all I really enjoyed this game. Can recommend if you like platformers.
Disclamer: I played Curious Expedition 1 a lot; but only the singleplayer version. This game is CE1 at its core, but it's fleshed out a lot more, mainly when it comes to story, items, battle and abilities of crew members (especially the last one). If you loved CE1 you will love this game. Some things have changed though. For example, you can no longer choose which items to keep, donate or sell at the end of an expedition. Instead you give it to the secret society you chose to support at the beginning of your expedition. You automatically donate/sell/give all items you collected, to your chosen society, in return for credit of that society, which allows certain advantages, depening on the society. TLDR: IMO the game stayed true to the 1st one but with improvements.
The developers know what they're doing. I loved Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld. The one thing that bothered me about Rimworld was the fact that it was 2D, you couldn't dig or build down/up like in Dwarf Fortress. This game allows you to to do that. It isn't flat. It's set in a realistic medieval setting. You start out with a couple of villagers and supplies. One, two, three, or more, you decide at the start of each game (just like in Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress). The premise is the same: Survive. This game, although still in development, does a damn good job at everything. Its UI is very intuitive. The AI is good. Similar to Rimworld you can set priorities to jobs for each citizen. The weather and environment influences several things... You better not leave your food out in the rain, it will decay faster. Even if you keep it indoors and the temperature is too high, it will decay. You better start digging that basement or find other ways to preserve food. I'm loving this game. One of the guys in my current game keeps drinking all day long... gotta build a seperate storage to store and lock the alcohol away from him...
It's certainly not a bad game, it's actually rather good, except for some minor inconveniences. However this game is not for everyone. It's a serious hospital simulation. Nothing like Theme Hospital or Two Point Hospital. The tutorial could be better, like others have mentioned. It only touched the very basics. The blue arrow that points at certain things that the tutorial is talking about is way too small and hard to find... I found myself scanning around for the blue arrow to find what the tutorial was talking about. The building mechanics can be a bit tedious and finicky at times. They remind me of late 90's / early 2000's building mechanics like in Rollercoaster Tycoon. They're not bad or buggy (haven't encountered any yet at least), they just feel old. However, the game is pretty damn good when it comes to managing your hospital. All the management aspects are developed very well. The menus work well, once you get used to them. It could improve on showing more detailed management information, it doesn't go into much detail there (just very general averages per department). One thing I liked in particular is how much control you have on the treatment of every patient. You can take a patient fully under your own care and take full control over its diagnostics and treatment. Useful for patients whose condition is life-threatening so you make sure they life... or whose treatment is expensive, so they get treated as efficient as possible and you're sure to earn those big bucks ;) The game focuses on realisism and can feel a bit 'dry'. I imagine it's not for everyone. But if you're a (hospital) management freak who likes realism, macro- and micro-management and doesn't mind complex menu's, you will probably enjoy this game.
I don't get why this game gets such bad reviews. I was expecting a shitty Pizza Connection sequel when I bought this on a discount (I grew up with the 1st one as a kid so I thought I'd give this one a try). I was surprised by how polished this game is and I find it's quite relaxing and enjoyable. The game mechanics work very well and I haven't encountered any bugs or annoyances yet. The graphics and audio are well done. There's plenty of stuff to do and to keep an eye out for during the game. You can give each restaurant their own menu so the pizza's match the type of customers in that particular restaurant/area. The pizza creation is fun to experiment with, to create that one pizza you need for that one particular restaurant that's mostly visited only by elderly people with their weird unique taste. I find myself finetuning the crews schedules so the restaurants are never understaffed but also never overstaffed. Think about where you want to place advertisement. What type of customer do you want to attract to a particular restaurant? There are plenty of aspects to think about. I'm playing the storymode and I haven't gotten to the point yet where you can use gangsters to do criminal stuff but I image it's only gonna become better as the story progresses and more stuff gets unlocked. I can imagine the game might feel a little bit simple/boring for some people, but at its core it's a solid well-made management simulation. Don't be fooled by the bad reviews if you like these kind of pizza business management games.
A hidden gem. It provides a very good turn-based, roguelike, stealth infiltration expierence, with plenty of replayability. You control a group of agents (that you can level up, upgrade etc.) who are part of a secret organisation, that tries to escape the iron grip of the global conglomerates which have the world under their control. Gameplay reminds me abit of the old X-com games, where you move in tiles and turns. However, don't expect to barge in with guns blazing. It's all about stealth and thinking about every move you make, to prevent getting detected, sneaking and hacking your way in. Thanks to the procedurally generated missions and world, no mission or playthrough is the same. Some missions can turn out pretty harsh because of this, because the randomness sometimes gives challenging and unexpected situations. Regardless, the game mechanics work very well and there is hardly ever a situation that you cannot overcome. If the game proves too difficult, the settings allow you to finetune the difficulty to your liking. All in all a very well made turn-based stealth game.
Bought this game on whim when it was on a discount. I love classic adventure point and click games and I wasn't disappointed by this one. It is definitely good but it's also a bit cliche at some moments. However, it's a good adventure game in the spirit of the old 80's and 90's adventure point & click games. It reminds me a bit of the old King's Quest games. The puzzles are logical and increase in difficulty and complexity as you progress throughout the game (they may seem a bit to easy in the beginning but this grows). The pacing in puzzle difficulty is well done. The scenes are drawn beautifully and the story is interesting. All the speech is voiced (pretty good, not great). All in all it's solid and fun adventure point & click adventure.
I'm used to Amanita making point-and-click puzzle games. However, this one is played completely without a mouse. The mouse is disabled completely in the game, even in the menu's. The game seemed a bit boring in the beginning, the puzzles were simple and it builds rather slow (and there was A LOT of ladder climbing). But eventually the puzzles become more challenging and the story begins to pick up and becomes more interesting. As the game progresses you'll meet new enemies that behave differently and you have to think about their behaviour as to how to solve the puzzles. The puzzle element really shines in this game. If you like a slow-paced puzzle platform game without combat, this is for you.
