Recent reviews by BubonicDuck

Did I play this game for over 50 hours, playing through the game 4 times and getting all the achievements? Yes.
Do I recommend this game to other people? No. Lol.

Technically, the game is a mess. Huge frame drops when using the sniper rifle, desktop mouse icon will flicker onto the screen whenever you turn, had the game crash on me 6-8 times.
Dialogue choices can be vague and, in one example, I got locked out of later content, despite the NPC giving the same reply, so no indication my choice altered the outcome.
There are about 4 character models for all 30+ of the survivors.
It's very common in the maps for there to be a box, car etc to be near a wall, far enough away so that it look like your character can fit between them, but close enough so the character actually can't move through the gap. Additionally there's ankle high obstacles sometimes that you'd assume you could just walk over, but they act as invisible walls.

World of Tanks adverts are absolutely everywhere to an absurd extent.
They're on the walls, the floors and pickups. The logo is even plastered on your protagonists.
It's very jarring when there's some heavy story stuff going down and there' just a huge WoT advert plastered on the pavement.

What we have here is the bare bones of a great game: Got that stealth action, crafting traps and medical supplies, mech combat, really nice stylised graphics and effects, choices having consequences and interesting and adequately written characters.
If falls short on everything though and the technical issues make the game a real pain at times.

Most people will not have a good time at all with this.
If you're a weirdo like me you might actually enjoy it.
It's basically a janky af Metal Gear wannabe that has it's moments, though the game really falls short with it's bugs and distracting advertisements.

Absolutely Wanko

The game basically involves going on a rampage in a classic GTA style world, only it's a rougelite.
It's witty, chaotic and looks lovely.

Cheaper than a pack of socks and a lot more fun. Buy it now.

This game is what would happen if you asked a 10 year old what the best game ever would be like, then went out and made it.

"Cheeky Bastard" - message when a 'Pal' escapes a 'Pal Sphere'.
It's some insane cross between Fortnite, Elden Ring, Zelda, Minecraft and Pokemon; like they discovered a hack were if you rip off enough IPs you become immunised against copywrite laws.
Should it work? No. Does it work? Yes.

The game loop involves building a Minecraft type base, with crafting benches, beds, cooking and farming. You then collect, (blatant and lazy), Pokemon, (rip offs that must only be legal because they could be considered parody), which you use to fight for you and also work at your base. Build defences at your base to fend off raiders, who will trash your stuff and kidnap your monsters.

The player character also requires food and will get too hot and cold . When you get one shotted by the first monster you see that isn't 2 feet tall, (I'm playing on hard and dmg taken is x4, making larger enemies very deadly), you'll drop all your items and the monsters you're carrying, respawning at one of a selection of spawn points around the map. I went off and left some dropped items and mons for ~3 hours and they didn't despawn, but not sure how a game restart would affect this.

The game has a huge open world map, filled with bosses, dungeons and hidden treasures; very much like Elden Ring but with the climbing and gliding of the recent Zelda games. The world is filled with discoverable fast travel points and is great fun to traverse, (and fight), upon the back of one of your pet monsters. Different monsters will appear in different areas, at different times of the day. There's even a massive (Erd)tree.

There's a tonne of freedom in this game, with some great difficulty options.

Oh and of course there's a lot of jank.
This game could really do with much better melee combat! I'm 22 hours in and I have a baseball bat, a metal spear and a stun baton...You need to hit lv44 to unlock the sword, which is unlocked after: Landmines, handguns, frag grenades, incendiary grenades, hunting rifles and the shotgun and super shotgun.
The melee combat is also in desperate need of some kind of charged/heavy attack.

The character creation/cosmetics are also terrible. There's no consistent theme with the character creation beyond, "that could be a fortnite skin". Player characters can either look like they're from Shrek or Dragon Ball Z. If you try and make your character a chunky monkey, their engorged belly will have the muscle tone of someone with 10% body fat who does 2,000 crunches a day. Your arms will also clip through your tum.
I've not found any cosmetic items besides some hats, there's not many armour types and they all look like they're from Avatar. My character looks like Isekai Walter White.

So, should you buy this game? If you are 10 years old or fancy executing Piplup with a musket, BUY THIS GAME RIGHT NOW!

This game is sillay

Update: Got permabanned from the Stride Fates community hub for suggesting they offer refunds/exchanges lmao. They offered no reason for the ban.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3038963455
Update 2: Joyway announced on the Stride Discord they would honour their promise of the single player story to early access backers on Steam, if you email them with proof of purchase.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3043359773

Is it worth your £15 even though it's been abandoned in an unfinished state?
Um, a bit, maybe?
It plays like an elaborate tech demo. Things feel slightly janky and lacking polish.

The running, wallrunning and sliding are great. The jumping is good most of the time. I still don't know why they made the gun really weird to draw*, but the shooting is nice, the reloading is arcadey**.
*The holster is "under the armpits" and you're basically required to cross draw or cavalry draw, your armpits will move based on the direction you are looking though and not where your armpits are IRL. **You reload by pointing the gun down, which I feel is a bit lame as reloading is one of my favourite things about firearms in VR. I guess it's because it would make things trickier but the option for more immersive gunplay would have improved my enjoyment of the game.

The game is set out into 4 major segments:
A time trial, running through a selection of abstract courses aiming for the best time.
An endless mode, were abstract sections very similar to the time trial are procedural generated in an increasingly difficult run, endlessly, until you fail. This mode also adds some enemies.
Arena mode. A randomly generated selection of rooftops, with randomly generated missions, (based on several archetypes like, defeat some enemies or collect items within a time limit), with some randomly spawning enemies.

They're all okay. The arena mode is particularly janky and your enjoyment will largely be based on how good your randomly generated set of rooftops ends up being. Sometimes certain missions will be nigh on impossible because of this and other times you'll just be running back and forth over the same routes, other times you'll actually get something really interesting. The time trial mode would be great if users could share their own courses as the selection is a little limited.

Then there's multiplayer. I don't know much about this. Tried it once a long while ago and it was like someone tried to make a Gorilla Tag clone in Zuckerburg's Metaverse. It apparently has new modes now and some kind of leveling system, and legs. I'd recommend checking out other reviews and the community hub for more details if you're interested in learning more.

And that's all there is to it. I've played for 12 hours and I'm pretty bored with it. I can imagine I'll play it again when it's not so fresh, as it's good for some light cardio, it just lacks anything substantial to keep me hooked.
It's just like, well, an unfinished early access game that requires more content lol.

It's a no from me though, as although this has potential, there's not a lot to it; and supporting the developers during early access to then have content this game severely needs, released separately... Well that's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and has put me off financially supporting the company again.

If you really want to buy Stride, the game is on sale fairly often.

Edit: Even though I have been told I will get my single player story mode in 2024 without having to make an additional purchase (wait and see lol) for being an early access supporter; I still don't think the game is worth £15. If you think it looks good I would still recommend waiting for a sale.

This Quake 2 remaster is insane.

It's a commando, terrorism, counter-terrorism game.
The idea is to blow away as many people as you can, in as short a period of time, with as many different weapons as possible.

The game is currently being review bombed for the poor treatment of Mick Gordon.
I recommend everyone looking up Gordon's open letter and voicing any complaints directly to Marty Stratton/ID/Bethesda/Microsoft.
I'm still going to recommend this game because I really enjoyed it.

Doom Eternal is a challenging and intense single player arena FPS, with a large focus on resource management and intelligent play. The game has some great arena movement with additional; dashing, double jumping and a grapplehook, (meathook). The game also requires you to juggle 8 guns, two grenade types, a flamethrower, a demonic sword, a chainsaw and your fists, to slaughter hordes of demons. Demons have their own weaknesses and tactics. Certain enemies have powerful ranged weapons that can be destroyed with precise fire, certain weapons will do increased damage to specific demons.

This all accumulates to a late game that involves encounters regularly involving 1-3 mini boss type enemies, 4-5 large demons, 1-3 support demons and a constant steam of, "fodder", demons in some really interesting arenas. You'll want to strategically focus down on the larger demons while tactically moving to avoid being surrounded. If you're not intelligent in your play you'll find yourself desperately scrambling around trying to isolate a lowly imp to chainsaw.

Yes, the game does have multiplayer but it was pretty much DOA. While I liked the asymmetric mode, it's not for everyone and very frustrating to play due to it's small playerbase and huge skill gaps. As a new player you'll likely find yourself waiting for 10-20 minutes for a match that will involve you being obliterated and back searching for a new lobby in under two minutes. I will say the SpiceyDemon's Discord community is great and almost mandatory to join if you want to really enjoy the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Graphically, the game is a masterpiece. When I first played the game I spotted a flying demon high up in the distance. I took a shot and was stunned as a chunk of it's flesh tumbled down to the ground and landed at my feet. Yes, when you shoot demons their skin and meat tears away from their bodies! Not only does this look fantastic, it serves the purpose of being able to gauge how much HP demons have remaining. This game is an absolute visual treat, with it's vivid colours really helping with identifying enemies and pickups at high speeds.
Sound wise, soundtrack is yet another masterpiece from Mick Gordon, guns sound great and the demons have their own recognisable and blood curdling screams. It sounds like an orgy at Satan's personal nightclub.

Difficulty wise, the game is seriously challenging on higher difficulties. At this point the game also has Horde Mode and plenty of Master Levels that push the difficulty to it's absolute limits. There's also Ultra Nightmare difficulty that challenges the player to complete the entire game on the hardest difficulty without dying once.
If you're more of a casual player, the game is still playable! Put it on easy and you'll still be faced by the same hordes of demons but with less aggression and much less damaging attacks.

The game has also some light RPG elements, that basically power you up throughout the game and let you have some perks to customise your play style.
The AI is pretty good, it all feels right. Sneaky enemies will constantly try to flank you, ranged enemies will find vantage points and close quarter enemies will rush you.

The level design is pretty good but overall sadly it's mainly a linear string of arena battles. Still a pretty high standard of great looking levels but besides the simplistic secret hunting, there's not much in the way of exploration or alternative routes.
Some people are up in arms about the platforming but there's around 2 minutes of pure platforming in the entire game and it's very simplistic, particularly when compared to the platforming and aerial manoeuvres you'll be performing during the late game combat sections. If you can't handle doing a couple of dash jumps between arenas you're really not going to enjoy having to meathook launch yourself into the air then double-dashing and ballista boosting to a jump pad while raining your arsenal down on demons.

TL;DR

Originally posted by Mike LeCoq, 0.9 hrs on record, product refunded. :

I was nearing death, and out of ammo the whole time, and that was on the second easiest difficulty level...
The action is just so relentless it doesn't give you time to breathe. It kept building up, and you had to start memorizing all the different kinds of tactics for the various enemies. Once you initiate a fight with a bunch of enemies, it's on and you just have to try and hang on...
In Doom Eternal everything is balls to the wall the whole time..."

Ever wanted to be a little frog?
Sounds nice and relaxing right?
Well you're wrong!
It's hardcore survival. It's kill or be killed.
Frogworld is an intense survival horror in which you must avoid many predators that won't hesitate to end your life, in turn you must also not hesitate to take the life of your own prey so you're strong enough to survive. There are no checkpoints in the levels which really ramps up the intensity of encounters.
Genuinely scary, particularly if you are afraid of snakes, fish, birds, turtles, ants or cars.