Recent reviews by Dooie

Within a month of release this game fixed basically every single gripe I had with it, and then even added some more content. One of the better relaxing fixing games out there. $5 is a steal for how much joy this brings.
From having a little guy that you get to customize to your heart's content, to being able to fish up ultra rare fish that give you titles (no spoilers here!), this game has stolen my heart.

DEATHLOOP has got to be, personally, my game of the year. Let me tell you why.

It all started when I played Dishonored 2 and fell in love, remembered why I loved watching Dishonored (1) so much back in the day. Arkane's eye for art, style, and unique gameplay is on another level.
DEATHLOOP is the perfect love letter to Dishonored styled abilities and action that I never even realized I wanted. To be able to teleport around the map constantly only having to wait for a fully rechargeable "mana" bar, (unlike Dishonored's 33% that recharges and otherwise requires potions) killing enemies at a rate that I could only dream of with Dishonored-styled abilities that are amazingly tuned for a great fast-paced action experience.

The PVP was pretty sloppy on launch. They didn't end up putting enough failsafes in place in case people hid in the tunnels when they got invaded, and they didn't end up giving the invader a win if the host goes offline/shuts their game off until a substantial amount of time passed after launch. Personally, I've already put in all the hours I'm probably going to get out of it. The amount of work you have to do to amass a good invading arsenal is generally speaking, not worth it. If you really like invading, and even have enough fun losing while invading, then go enjoy yourself. Personally, the only thing invading had in store for me was getting an invasion win so I could put it down for good. Now in terms of BEING invaded: Julianna is more often than not 1: inexperienced, and 2: has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loadout. If you just leave AI Julianna on until you amass an arsenal you're comfortable with, and THEN turn PVP on, it's not something to worry about gambling with and potentially losing progress from every time. Personally, that's what I did. I saw it as being the least frustrating experience so I stuck to it.

Ultimately, you can play the game however you like, don't let me stop you from having fun in the most apt way you see fit. I just hope you can have as much fun as I did. I've been looking forward to this since it was originally announced and it lived up to just about every expectation I had and then some.

~50 hours for 100% and then some.

Jalopy at its surface is a game where you drive across eastern Europe in the early 1990s.

However, once you play a few hours, you'll realize this is a resource management game. You need to keep track of your gas, status of your car's parts, your money, the amount of space left in your car for random goods you find on the side of the road (to sell), how many extra tires you have, what kind of tires you're using (not a critical gameplay mechanic), and a few more things I didn't name.
This game has a few issues that can ruin a whole run, like one time where I clipped a rock sticking out and it destroyed every piece of my cars internal parts to 0 durability nearly instantly, and another one where I was forced to restart my session to fix a world gen issue that, as far as I know, there was no other way to fix/avoid.

This is effectively a roguelite with some of the upgrades you can get, like doubling your cars total storage, or getting a golden wrench that infinitely repairs all your cars internal parts to max and never breaks. It's a very relaxing experience, and even when you lose a run you usually come out on top with either an upgrade to your jalopy, or some valuable experience (like driving further away from that one sticking out rock).

Remnant: From the Ashes is a souls-like, third person, looter shooter. I use a few of these terms pretty loosely. I played this game on the Nightmare difficulty with at least one friend for most of it, so my knowledge of how difficult the game can be centers around that.

In the souls like column, it's quite forgiving on Nightmare, but not necessarily easy by any means. Being extremely playable on keyboard & mouse has been maybe my favorite thing about it difficulty wise. I can't wrap my head around a controller while doing a difficult fight, but having thousands of hours on keyboard/mouse, and thousands of hours in shooters, makes it extremely digestible for me.
You still need to learn the fights on Nightmare, and I'd say as long as you threat manage properly, you'll be able to master every single boss fight to the point where you never take a hit of damage.

In the third person shooter column, this has been the most engaging third person shooter experience I've ever had by far. Non-first person shooters tend to be extremely bad at making every gun feel like it has a "personality" if you will, but this game really adds that little something that I never knew would be so helpful. Depending on which mods you apply to your guns, you can make the entire experience around a basic feeling gun feel a lot more unique. Similarly, there are even what I would call equivalents to legendary weapons in the borderlands franchise; these are the weapons that have a unique mod that you can't unequip from that weapon. Some weapons are also quite unique without having the mod slot locked.

In the looter shooter column, it handles scattering randomly seeded loot pretty well. Do NOT let the steam tag fool you, this is not a traditional looter shooter, and I would hesitate to call it one. It does not have rarities of items, but rather, a different color code is used for each time of item drop; perks/perk points you find will have a darkish blue aura, rings you find will have a purple aura, consumables you find will have a green aura, scrap (currency) and various iron types (upgrade material) will have yellowish auras, long gun ammo will have red auras, and small gun ammo will have white auras. The only things that drop from adds are currency and materials. Not really a qualifier but applying it to the game gives you a vague understanding of how the gameplay loop works.

When you generate a new level/world, it seeds what will spawn. Like different equipment, or different perks, etc, so you can't get everything in one run. Sometimes different bosses will spawn, and every boss has at least one unique drop; so on your first kill of each boss, you'll get a crafting material that you can use to craft either a gun or a weapon mod typically. This makes it extremely replayable to reset a level/world with the adventure mode so you can farm it for specific drops you want, specific bosses, or even specific world spawns.

All in all, this made for an extremely enjoyable experience for me, and it's the most appealing title I've ever seen Perfect World publish. This title came out of nowhere for me last year when it initially released. My friend showed it to me, and pretty much on a whim, I bought it the same day to play it, and it was 100% worth the $40. Nowadays, you can definitely wait for a sale. If you want all the achievements, you'll need both the DLCs unfortunately, but if you just want to know which ones are worth playing for fun: "Swamps of Corsus" is weak from what I understand, but the one boss I beat for an achievement was the most difficult boss I've ever had to fight in this game, and I was even on the lowest difficulty. "Subject 2933" has a decent story, gives closure to the vanilla campaign, and has a pretty good gun added to it. The zones are pretty enjoyable to clear, and the bosses were pretty fun to learn/beat.

If you're playing alone, I'd say to give the game a try on Nightmare. It'll be pretty rough at first, but as you find more loot and find a build you like, it'll get easier. If you just want to beat the game as fast as possible without any regard for difficulty, Normal is a pretty decent experience. I generally don't die to adds on Normal but it's not impossible to die in boss fights.

9/10, one of my favorite games.

Marked as free because I was gifted the game. Had I not been gifted, I don't know that I would have realized just how fun this game is.

Risk of Rain 2 improves on its predecessor in just about every way. More complex level designs, enemy behavior, and adapting the survivor abilities into a three dimensional space make it an extremely engaging experience. Every level is a race against the clock as you try to collect as many items as you can while also going quick enough to outrun the difficulty timer. This doesn't end up mattering too much if you don't care about killing the final boss, but otherwise it's an interesting mechanic (even though it's just about exactly the same as it was in the first game.) An extremely enjoyable, engaging, and compelling game to play over and over and over, with amazing pacing that I've yet to get tired of (for reference, I've put my current hours at posting in the span of less than a week.) I want to get better, and I feel myself getting better. I highly recommend this title to any Rogue-Like/Lite fan. Easily one of my favorites of all time in the genre.

Oh, it's also easily worth paying full price. I'll probably gift it to a friend eventually, as if to "make up" for the fact I didn't buy it.

Monster Hunter World is an epic beast slaying super grindy RPG. Your stats don't manifest in skill trees, but instead in the armor and weapons you choose. Each weapon type has a different playstyle with different moves and you can choose to master one or use them all (of course mastering them all is an option if you're up to the time sink and the challenge). Grinding every single monster's weapons and armor can be a daunting task but it can really pay off for how efficient you are at killing them, not to mention if you're a completionist it'll give you something to do in this game for a very long time. The game plays pretty well on keyboard mouse but there's a bit of a learning curve when it comes to the controls. Overall highly recommend if you like grindy games with some action involved.

Overcooked! 2 is a wonderful improvement upon Overcooked! and improves the game in almost every way. If you kind of wondered "why a new game tho?" like me, you'll be happy to realize this game has online multiplayer. I know that might make you think "why didn't they just add online multiplayer to the original?" well the answer is this: changing an already existing game to be ONLINE multiplayer is very difficult, and it's basically like starting from scratch, so they made a whole new game with an all new campaign and all new mechanics to help make up for it. This game is a blast and will really put your communication and multitasking skills to the test. My only real complaint is that while playing with my friend we had 4-5ish levels where I would be better suited for their job and there wasn't a way for us to swap other than changing who the host was, so having a way to change roles in those levels at the beginning so you don't undermine the whole mechanic would be nice.

Burial at Sea is a love letter to Bioshock 1. Everything you loved about the original Bioshock and more. Rapture is captured perfectly. I don't wanna give too much away because it's really interesting to play yourself. Highly recommended if you enjoyed Bioshock 1.

This is a review from a Destiny 2 Veteran of sorts.

I played solo up until May of 2018, within the first week of Warmind releasing. Back then all I did was shoot guns and not care and I sort of enjoyed the game but nowhere near to the extent I do now after all the loot of the game has been deepened. I put around 750 hours in year 1 (before Forsaken came out). That's just how much I liked the strike gameplay loop. I still enjoy it that much but it's easiest to grind with friends and just enjoy their company. My real playtime is 2094 active hours, and 2596 hours counting orbit/"AFK" time (even though most of this afk time comes from between activities and being in the tower which doesn't count as active gameplay). This is seriously one of the most engaging games I've ever played and there's a great amount of depth. All these little weapon perks and armor perks to help you tweak the game exactly to your liking. They're not necessary but they help you play the game the way you want to. Thanks to the clan I've reached out to, I've managed to clear every single raid, and at the time of writing I even did one of the raids 20 times - I wasn't even rewarded for like half of those clears, I just enjoyed it so much! Plus the game is gorgeous and the skyboxes are stunning.

I don't put much thought into forming exactly why I like this game so much because of how much time I've put into it, but I've found myself to be generally picky as to what hobby games I end up playing, and this is easily the most time I've put into a single game ever. I love this game, and I hope you can enjoy it too, especially since all content from the first year of the game is completely free now!

EDIT: I'll be periodically editing the review with my most recent time counts since steam's time doesn't represent my playtime thanks to so many hours being on blizzard's launcher.

If you're a new player, and trying to decide what DLCs to buy for content, the legacy collection will get you 3 raids, 1 of which is arguably the hardest in the game (Vow of the Disciple from Witch Queen)
Other than that, the Forsaken pack is good for exotics and the Last Wish raid.
Most of the dungeons require one of the DLCs to access, and those are pretty good challenges for a squad of three players.
If you're looking for the newest activities and story content, the seasons are going to be your friend. 1200 silver per season if you don't buy the annual pass, which comes out to roughly $12 per season.
The amount of quests the game throws at you is overwhelming, I would probably advise avoiding grabbing them, unless it's like on a planet you plan to explore or do quests on.

I won't lie, the new player experience can be extremely daunting at times. If you're not willing to commit to spending money at first, that's fine. Just run around, do what you can. Vanguard playlist is a good activity to just mindlessly and endlessly grind for weapon rolls and stuff. If you want something with meta perks or stats, there's plenty of docs and charts out there that tell you what the "best" gun should be. I suggest you look at perk databases, then find whatever the easiest is for you to acquire. If you get lucky enough to get a weapon you like, with a pattern on top of it (red border), you can eventually just edit the perks on that weapon.

EDIT: I still stand by my opinions for the most part, but I'm upset that he actually did the exact same thing as last time. I was in denial first thinking "oh it's fine he'll be back" but it's not. He's not come back. Radio silence again. I expected better but I'm still upset regardless. If you think this review describes some gameplay that you'd enjoy, then I highly encourage you to buy this on sale. However, I strongly urge you to NOT pay these people for abandoning their project once again.



People are upset because their infinitely large action RPG doesn't have infinitely large scaling anymore. It's like people forgot about how many inherent problems the Cube World Alpha from 6 years ago had.

To start, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. It's all just different and a lot of what's different is straight up better. Regions are now ~40% smaller and makes for much more enjoyable bite sized experiences. All of your tool and all your gear is locked per region, but this tends to be a pretty good thing! + gear allows you to bring some stuff between regions and it'll keep its stats. I don't know how far you can take + gear before it doesn't work but if you join a friend, it makes starting out again pretty rough, since starting out without any gear is already pretty rough on its own. Between regions are artifacts, small upgrades for things like how fast you glide and how fast you sail that are permanent for your character, and what dictate your level. If you have 1 you are level 2 since level 1 is default. Level just tells you how many artifacts you've picked up, that's all. If you learn about an artifact through npcs and it gets placed on your map, you can see ahead of time if you want to spend time earning it or not. I personally would skip diving stamina ones since I'm almost never underwater unless my "loot marker" tells me to go underwater. Anyway, this leveling system seems to really be what pisses people off about this new update but people romanticize the old system even though it was conventional.

Some very big inherent flaws with the alpha's leveling system was the fact that off the very bat you were expected to grind xp in the first place to start doing better. Gear almost never dropped and you could out level your gear and it would become useless after a certain point, which could happen pretty quickly. The alpha had a "power" system, where it was based on your gear and your level, and would cap out at 100 power. The entire game capped at 100 power. And people romanticized this system that was unbalanced as it was since enemies that were green could kick your ass sometimes when quests were miles apart from each other.

At the end of the day, people are upset that stuff is different, when this is just a different tech demo, not a straight upgrade from what the old tech demo. I personally enjoy this little adventure of constantly looting and constantly equipping new gear. Plus, once you're maxed in a region you can keep farming high level quest areas so you can look for + gear to help you between regions. Your experience can really be what you make it, and I'd rather have this version of the game for 6 years instead of the old alpha that we actually did have for 6 years.

Disclaimer: I purchased this game in July of 2013. You can decide for yourself if I "got this game for free." I'm personally not ticking the box since I've paid for it and got a key early only because I paid for it.