Recent reviews by Calmputer

This game was in early access for so long, only because the developers didn't know how to stop adding more stuff.
They didn't know how to stop making it.

There are so many option to choose from, in an infinite number of ways to combine them.
There are so many ways to play this game, that it's impossible to not find one that jive with your playstyle.

Sit back, relax your shoulders, and enjoy the havoc.

If you liked Limbo but thought it was a little too gruesome, and monochrome... this game is for you.

Also, you can hug. 10/10 game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzAzU294oKo

All of the text in the game fades away WAY too quickly.

Everything from loading screen tips, to tutorial messages go through their fade-in to fade-out like they've got somewhere else to be.
As a non-native english speaker, it's really tough to keep up.

Either slow it down, or wait for a mouse click to move along, or add a slider in the options so the player can set the speed they're comfortable with.

A haunting story with immaculate art-, and sound-design somewhat hampered by a too-restrictive inventory-size.

Art-design:
As a style I feel there is still so much to explore with PS1-era graphics, unhampered by that era's limited processing power, and in this game it seems almost effortless in its execution.

Sound-design:
From music to effects, it is almost hauntingly beautiful at the same time as it's slightly upsetting. Perfect for a horror game.

Inventory:
Originally the inventory was limited to six items at a time, but the game has now been updated to let you choose the size of your inventory yourself, and one of the items that previously took up an item-slot, no longer does. A+ devs listening to the players.

Story and World building:
Haunting, is all I can really say without spoiling things. The world is very fleshed out, and so very bleak and dark... and yet, again, somehow beautiful.

Watch the first 20 minutes of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWJP1xERAgI

As long as you get a few essential mods, this is a really good experience.

It also gets even better if you have a few friends along for the ride.

* essential mods:
TTRulez_AIMod2
BetterMarkets
Kh0rnsSoundmod
Advanced_Zoom

* Then after that, if you want.. you can also get:
WAR_FX
Cockpit_Glass
Ultra Visual and Weather,
Source HD Texture

MechLab Customization:
Yet Another Mechlab
or MercTech
Adds much more extensive customization options to your mechs, add one or the other, never both.

Metroid meets The Thing. It has issues, but I love it. It's short, but not too short. It lacks an in-game map, then again, so did Metroid.

It's just really satisfying to just go on an unthinking rampage for a while.
Is that so wrong?

Full Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNUQbYlXjgM

It's Halo 3... enhanced, not fully remastered. So going from Halo 2 Anniversary straight into Halo 3 feels like a disappointing downgrade in visual quality. However, it's still the Halo 3 campaign which is great.

If you're only interested in the multiplayer, it's probably a good idea to give them around a month to solve all of the bugs they invariably introduced before diving in.

Watch full review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzU8nrZElI

It's early access, so obviously it still has issues.

However, the premise of the game is solid. figure out the fundamental structure of a ship and break it apart piece by piece until either nothing's left... or you run out of time.

and that sentence touched on one of the few problems I have with the gameplay-loop. When you play through the tutorial, you get unlimited time, oxygen, fuel and tethers*. and I spent easily two hours dismantling that tutorial ship piece by piece. Everything went where it was supposed to go (except one bulkhead that accidentally went into processing instead of the furnace). It was really cathartic and nice... then the tutorial ended and I went straight into the game's campaign.

*tethers lets you connect an energy strand between two objects. If the objects are far apart, it will attract them to each other.

first thing I noticed was that the tethers I had relied so heavily on in the tutorial.. were now limited to 5 (you can upgrade that to 50 but it takes a LOT of time) ...

After around 6 minutes I got an alert that I was about to suffocate. ooookay, let's go deal with that (you can upgrade the oxygen from 400 seconds to 800...

and after that, I got told "hey, you only have a minute left. hurry up!".

wait what?! I haven't even taken out the reactor yet and now you're telling me I have to leave?!

yeah.. you only get 15 minutes per day to do your job... when you summon a new ship, it will say a number of days next to the icon. so some ships you only get for a day... and the highest number I've seen was 4 days.

I understand the need to give a sense of impending doom... but
A) you already have that with the oxygen-, and fuel limit, and
B) 15 minutes isn't even close to enough to do ANYTHING on the beefier ships.

currently I can't even expose and pull out the reactor in 15 minutes. let alone salvage the engines or components. and even with the huge ships, you can sometimes still only get a single day to do what you need to do. I guess it's also there to make you prioritize getting the most expensive objects on a ship to either get cash reduce your debt, or finish work orders, and/or certification requirements. but again, 15 minutes feels like too little. oh, speaking of your debt, I do find it gloriously dystopian that you rent all of your equipment and that the game somehow managed to made me feel thankful that I can buy said equipment once I gather enough Loyalty/Lynx Tokens, instead of keep renting it. if that's not "selling a solution to a problem they created" I don't know what is.

I suppose I can play in free play mode, where it's like in the tutorial... but you only get the equipment and possibly also only the ship-classes you've unlocked so far in the campaign.


Verdict: I like it. despite its flaws. and again, this is early access, so maybe some of the things I have a problem with can change? If I want to zen out and just break apart a ship piece by piece... Free play is the way to go.

Watch Full Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnoY2fCbLE8

This is a really beautiful underwater game, that could have done with some more time in QA-testing. There are bugs, and obvious UI problems/errors that should have been fixed months before release.

Let's start with the biggest:
After having finished the game, there was a trio of Remora that I hadn't scanned. but I could not find them on ANY of the maps.. so I start a new game, to see if there was a new game plus mode, where the game would remember what you'd scanned and what you hadn't. No such luck. you start over from scratch when it comes to both the story and the scanning.
but more importantly... the game deleted 5-6 of my last savegames. Two hours of playtime, just gone. and it replaced the autosave with one created by the new playthrough.

Some UI parts of the game will let you use the D-pad on a controller, others wont. some will let you use a mouse, others wont. some parts of a menu can be clicked by the mouse cursor, some can't (on the same page!)... you have several ways to see a list of all the animals that are in the game (after you've scanned at least one specimen of the species), but only one of those lists will show you how many more of that species you need to scan.

The player model while swimming is flawless. The player model while walking on the sub is liable to give you nightmares.

Every time you enter the sub, the music player will start playing. Regardless of whether you paused it or muted it last time you were on the sub, and it's full of copyrighted music. Only stream this game with the music silenced in the settings menu... though that will also remove the background music while you're diving, which is quite soothing and nice.

Every mission you finish will unlock a small documentary that you can watch. The UI for play, pause, forward, back and exit... will show over the subtitles, and only disappear if you pause the video.. defeating the purpose.

but other than that, it's beautiful, short and soothing as all heck. and I really liked the voice acting as well. Mira Furlan (Delenn from Babylon 5/Danielle Rousseau from Lost) knocks it out of the water park.

If it gets a patch, I'll change my recommendation to "yes".

Full Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ3PmyXEknc

An entirely beautiful game, that oozes charm and mystery.

While it has some horror-elements, you can modify your game (through game modes or mods) to fit inside your comfort level.

In my personal case, I suffer from thalassophobia (irrational fear of deep dark waters, sea-creatures, and/or large bodies of water)... and while when I'm playing in the shallows, the game doesn't get to me (I can't feel the pressure of the water, and outside the game I don't move sluggishly) ... the moment you add a hostile sea-creature it overrides the rational part of my brain and turns me into a bundle of anxiety and panic.

Thankfully, you can alter the play-experience to suit your comfort level, either by using different game modes (creative, freedom, survival, hardcore), or through mods or console commands.

In my case, I use the "invisible" console command, together with a mod called "No More Vehicle Attacks and Invincibility" (https://www.nexusmods.com/subnautica/mods/72), to make it so I can actually play it.
It's regrettable that it disables achievements... I mean, I get it, obviously... but it feels like I'm already playing at a harder difficulty as it is... I have learned to live with it.

But I digress...

I love this game, it is beautiful and immersive... yet not so immersive that I stop functioning as a person.

Full review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umSdVvekgkw