I've played it through multiple times on console, and now grabbing this on sale to check out Mooncrash. Prey itself is a solid-enough ventilation duct simulator, but the amount of backtracking you can potentially end up doing does make the second half of the game into a slog. I should also add that I really dislike the final ten minutes, but that's just like, my opinion, man... That said, I still really enjoy exploring Talos I, and I especially like having a game installed where I can just load up a save to go drift around in zero g for a while. I might even consider picking up a vr headset if they ever release a sequel, if for no other reason than to zero g it up like a true belter. Giving only 3 out of 5 because, while I do genuinely like certain elements of Prey (enough to have picked up a second copy here), I consider it to have some pretty significant drawbacks as well. Not a bad purchase now that it's fully patched, on GOG, and under ten bucks.
...just based on feel, it doesn't seem too shabby. Visuals are a bit better than Xeno1, and camera rotation adds a lot. That alone goes a long way for me. Weapon sfx were surprisingly beefy with headphones (well, except for explosives which seemed way too quiet). I was really hoping to be able to rebind a couple of keys, but that's not a big deal at this point. I'm really not thrilled with what I've seen of Wasteland 3 so far, so hopefully Xeno2 will bring the tactical ayy-slaying heat. And I really hope the devs have been studying Jagged Alliance 2. In the era of remakes, that's the one I want more than any other. Looking forward to it, Goldhawk. Keep up the good work, dudes.
I could eventually really enjoy this, but not in its current state. It runs fine, but really needs a few quality of life features like tooltips (please guys, just plaster everything with tooltips and comparison windows, and add an option in the menu to disable them for more experienced players). I'm also not a fan of the way corruption is playing out. Frankly, I don't really enjoy the idea of just churning through dozens of dudes over the course of a campaign. I'd much rather have some characters I care for that will be along for the whole duration if I play well. You can change their voice and appearance, give them different portraits, but why bother, when every monster they kill brings them one step closer to being inevitably recycled. Knowing every soldier is doomed from the start makes me not care, makes me not want to invest any of my personal time or in-game resources into improving them, and it just seems like corruption will be the largest source of frustration for me. I just picture my campaign focusing entirely on stealth while skipping as many "kill all enemies" missions as you can get away with. So, stealth chess with stink lines, spending money on nothing except food. I don't mind supporting the team, AB is a cool idea, especially if your interests include some blend of Darkest Dungeon, XCOM, Bloodborne and the old pen and paper RPG Deadlands, but after 6 hours of play, I'm probably going to put it down and wait a few months to see what kind of improvements will be made over time.
(*Game of the Quarantine) Holy shit. I really love what this game is doing. I remember seeing some little ads here and there as far back as maybe 2016, and always intended to check it out but never got around to it until now. I'm a huge fan of turn-based tactics, have thousands of hours with XCOM 2, Jagged Alliance 2, and Invisible Inc really hit home for me. I can't stop playing it. You don't have a grand, overarching story or a ton of micromanagement. It's pretty straightforward, and it's just a certain type of gameplay loop that I can't get enough of. I read somewhere that Klei has no intention of making a sequel, and I think that's a damn shame. This is my personal quarantine game for 2020, hands down.
Not really, but I couldn't resist. It's actually more of a story generator that lets you nudge things along until you actually grok what the hell is going on, and I've never played another game even remotely like it -- to be clear, it's absolutely not a card game along the lines of Magic, Gwent, etc. It is its own thing. And while the board can gat a little cluttered at certain points, it's a pretty cool system. If you enjoy occult horror and or the Lovecraft mythos, this does that. It does that really, really well. But you have to meet it halfway, and in order to tell its dark, morbid stories, they made it incredibly abstract. The cards on the board are just there to lend your imagination some material to work with. The writing is charming and dark, while leaving a lot to the imagination (important in storytelling, but not something you see in many games), the music fits very well, but the characters are pretty flat. It's not exactly a character drama though. My only real complaint with it is related to the Dread/Fascination spirals you can find yourself in way too easily. I tried to avoid reading any guides, but it was quick enough to find info on the mechanics I couldn't deduce. And yeah, it really sucks to have to use outside sources for explanation of game mechanics (with any game) but I don't hold it against Cultist Sim too harshly. Mythos stories never end well. It's the nature of the beast. This is probably not going to appeal to people who want a power fantasy to rip and tear through. I've played a game or two each month for probably a year and I've barely scratched the surface of what you can really dig into. It's really, really cool, and does its thing like no other game out there. However, it's very niche, and I think a lot of spontaneous purchasers who aren't looking for this very specific thing may find it a bit awkward and obtuse, especially due to how some key mechanics are barely hinted at, let alone actually explained.
Really charming. Really simple... But good fun, and a great pickup on sale, especially if you watched a lot of Power Rangers growing up. Nowhere near as in-depth of a tactical game as XCOM or Obsidian Brigade, but it's about on par with Mutant Year Zero, but I enjoyed Chroma Squad far more. Whereas MYZ had more effort put into graphics, Chroma Squad had more effort put into charm and deeper customization options (your fighters, your megazord and your film studio can all be customized as you see fit). Not super deep, but I think the devs nailed what they were aiming for. Looking forward to a sequel for sure.
Might be my favorite game of the past decade. But... It's largely due to the mods. Vanilla, it's fine, it's an enjoyable enough tactical game, but I actually prefer Enemy Unknown with the Enemy Within expansion. Where X2 shines IMO is with the thousands of available mods that expand on every conceivable element of the game. New enemies, new weapons, new missions, new maps, new game mechanics, and the vast majority of them are really well made -- The modding community for X2 is amazing, and I really appreciate that Firaxis supports and promotes fan projects. I question whether this is truly DRM free because 2K, but I already own the game elsewhere and wouldn't want to redo all the modding I've done on my own game just to check. Highly recommended (but because of mods).
I love turn-based games, and this is turning out to be a decent WWII-flavored take on Darkest Dungeon without DD's stress mechanic. Or rather, the stress aspect is sort of shifted over to the various districts of Warsaw, impacting zones, the enemies in them and the resources you gather from them as opposed to your own troops. I can't give a full capital R _Review_ on it since I'm only a few hours in, but it's a cool project. In short, I'd say it's worth checking out, worth supporting, but unless Darkest Dungeon transplanted into 1940s Poland is the exact thing you've always wanted, I'd get it on sale. I avoided Vambrace (partly because anime, but mainly) because I heard about a lack of character progression and UI clarity, and while this actually has a decent amount of skills, perks and weapons to customize your freedom fighters and build your own strategies, it really could use some improvements to UI. Presentation of a lot of critical information is less than ideal. Some tooltips float half off-screen when you need to be able to compare info, you have to waste movement points stuttering back and forth between a loot drop and a point of interest if you need to decide on which items to take or leave behind, equipment has to be clicked on in a fairly specific way to get the selections to register sometimes... Combat on the other hand is pretty solid and intuitive enough, but I'd still prefer if more info were presented much more clearly. Cool little game if you're looking for a Darkest Dungeon-like, but get it on sale. I like it a bit more than Mutant Year Zero (mainly due to having significantly more flexibility with character development and loadouts, and I really disliked MYZ's 'x number of kills' ability cooldowns). I think I'd recommend Rebel Cops a bit more than Warsaw, however.
I've been playing RW for a few years, since v0.16 or 0.17. Absolutely love it. Make sure you check out the mods.
As a kid I read a ton of the old Eastman & Laird Ninja Turtle comics (they were significantly more serious and occasionally straight-up gory in comparison to the cartoon or the live action movies). I also probably watched Howard the Duck way more than it warranted. I generally avoid most anything with anthropomorphic animals as protagonists these days, but something about MYZ sparked some serious nostalgia for me. I'm also a huge turn based tactical fan with thousands of hours in games ranging from Jagged Alliance 2 to XCOM 2, so this seemed right up my alley. I played through twice on xbone, once before Seed of Evil, the second time with it. I don't own it through GOG, but I noticed there weren't many comments, and if anything, MYZ deserves some attention, or at least some discussion here, because I'd be interested in a sequel that improves on what they established here. I'd say the game deserves decent marks in most metrics people might use to grade a game, with art direction being a high point, but it falls short of being something I felt I could really get into. The main gameplay loop left me systematically jumping between maps for easy kills, running the simple math of how many points of damage I could deal per turn rather than feeling involved or invested. I guess what I mean to say is that I uncharacteristically ended up playing the metagame for optimal kills to refresh cooldown timers (most skills require a certain number of enemy kills between uses, and the number of enemies in the game is finite), and I generally never play games like that, minmaxing and taking advantage of metas. Something about MYZ brought that out of me though, and I feel like it's due to a very, very narrow scope in terms of what you're able to do as a player. I'm torn - if I had been involved in making it, I'd be very proud, but as a customer, it left me mostly unsatisfied. But again, a sequel that expands on this would be great to see though.
