Recent reviews by Das MeeM

(For Reference this game was a gift from a friend)

I'll be straight forward in starting this review i enjoyed this game for some time when i was playing through it i immersed myself into the story and took in whatever it had to throw at me as the game progressed. For a while i did enjoy it and i wanted to continue enjoying it but as the game progressed my immersion was kind of totaled beyond any imagining of the terminology the word was meant to represent. How about we start off with the game and atmosphere set by Signalis.

Signalis is a quiet but graphic Indie title with a generalist genre of Sci-fi horror. Its protagonist Elster is from what i can assume a cross between a Synthetic and Organic being containing both parts from a clearly robotic base strewn with some organic biological mesh included; who is clearly animated with a clean cut goal of finding her Gestalt through any means necessary. Taking place across various locations from a Scout ship crash site to a few facility's across multiple planets. denoted with a few side characters that operate independently in the background while you as the protagonist go about their own quest.

On the surface this is a pretty ripe universe just begging for exploration and this is why i was so drawn into the game earlier on; Sci-fi is my forte and i love me a good Dead Space clone which at first is what i got from the atmosphere set early in the game. For the prologue to about the halfway point of the game i must say i was well immersed in this setting prepared by the game; it had all the denotations of your generic Sci-fi horror survival game from a limited inventory to the limited ammo in portions of the game making you have to choose where and when you expend your limited supply of self-defense weaponry.

However the plot for this game i can summarize is one giant mobius strip in which the game repeats itself after you get the first "Ending" where you die, come back and repeat the first portion of the first chapter again but with more zombies and all your equipment available ; ultimately frees you up to get the actual endings of the game which after viewing them for myself relativity bothered me to be honest. As i was following the plot as small and rather lackluster as it was, i was still drawn to it up until about the half way point of the game where the atmosphere proceeded to veer into the proverbial off ramp at high speed proceeding to crash and burn spectacularly while attempting to go from Dead space to Silent hill in the span a tiny few scene changes. which at first i let go figuring that maybe it would be explained why there is a giant dungeon with flesh everywhere and blood sacrifices going on under a military complex, however.... it isn't.

That is what really bothers me when it comes to plot details, what eventually is explained in the setting vs what isn't. Sudden shifts like that is what derailed my immersion and made me stop playing the game and ask myself "WHAT AM I PLAYING ANYMORE?!?" For what derailment it did i hoped that maybe, just maybe theirs an explanation to all of this somewhere up ahead. Which is when my curiosity got the better of me and i looked ahead in a guide instead and found out all this exploring gets you nowhere in the endings. the endings to the game are just an anti-climax where the protagonist completes their goal in one way or another which left me with all the baggage the game off loaded in its setting being completely unanswered. To give you an idea of my dilemma ill just illustrate in the form of questions below listed.

• Whats the backstory in this world?
  
• What star system am i in?
  
• What is with all these replika's? is humanity going extinct?
  
• Who is the empire and why is there a rebellion going on against them?
  
• Why am i abiding by a six item rule? when everythings going to hell and back?
  
• What is this infection? is Elster infected?
  
• Is the facility abandoned? is there no Clean-Sweep teams coming?
  
• How am i able to pick up items in a train i'm not in or get a radio from an array I've never been to?

All that and plenty more i wont list due to how little is explained to begin with. Despite my enjoyment, its overshadowed by so many plot holes and reference shoe horns that it ultimately bumbles over itself as the game tries too hard to check mark each respective title it attempts to make a call to. Speaking of which about 90% of all the references in game flew completely past my head; This is an out of genre game for me i am an Real Time Strategy guy and the reference reliance does not compensate for the lack of plot explanations the game gives for every time it throws something completely new at you. Bickering about the plot aside let me try to move onto the actual game-play offered here.

Game-play is pretty standard which makes it rather tedious after getting used to it. Your given a number of weapons as you progress through the game that you don't have to use, but kind of have to unless you want the Infected to carve you into a blood fountain. the ammo and guns taking up a portion of your much needed inventory space feels like i have to rely on one gun for the majority of the games play time unless i want to backtrack every other minute when i find a new story item. Arguably what makes things worse is if you think using a melee item is easier, its not all melee items are limited too which made me hope and pray at some point i would get a reusable melee item like a crowbar or a pipe wrench or something. But you don't so all the weapons you use in game have limits but hey maybe once i kill a zombie i wont have to put up with it again right??? Except the zombies don't stay dead; which not even Dead space made that blatant of a game mechanic in their own franchise. The combat gets stale pretty quickly if your going to just grind kills for a specific ending which yes for some endings its required that you get a boat load of kills and damage so if you want them best be ready for the GRIND.

Combat aside the game loop is pretty stale too, the majority of the time your getting trapped around one-way doors you have to open from the other side, a plot important door that requires a key thats locked behind 8 other puzzle with their own key grinds so you can move the plot two inches, and managing your tiny inventory and having to guess whether or not that zombie you just killed will get up before you find the key to the next locked door or puzzle your trying to complete. All of that comes up as busy work which gets you little to nowhere faster then if you were to power fist doors like a souped up space marine from Warhammer 40K. Busy work that only works as filler which just pads the game out to make it feel like their is something going on, but there really isn't. If you dont like that you gotta suck it up because this loop is about 2/3rds of the game play;so oh joyous day a puzzle grindulator with sub-par combat mechanics fantastic! Remember when resident evil and dead space forces you to grind your way through the game as it flaunt its mechanics in your face every other minute? no? yeah me neither.

This is not to say that the game dosn't look great the graphics and sound design are on their own merit damn good. For a game that emulates the PS1 era graphics you'd find in resident evil it nails that well and i can see why some people prefer to play this on console or the steam deck for that matter. I myself have already searched a few times for the official sound track to compare it to other titles within its genre because it sounds that good. The creepy feels creepy, the adrenaline areas give you a rush, the unsettling feels rightfully unsettling; as it should be.

I wont recommend this game to anyone but if you enjoy this good on you. But as someone outside of the Genre. its going to be a hard no from me.

7/10
Brother. get the Plot and lore. The Actual Plot and Lore.

A long long time ago (2008). I had first happened to come across this game when i was just a young lad in 6th grade at the school book sale event that went on every year at my school district; regardless of which building it was at. Because it was early in the year before my birthday i asked for it if i could have this game and so thus i had gotten this game for the first time. After some time i eventually drifted away from this game due to my inability to mod it

Flash forward to early 2021 i had found the disk i had when i orignally had my parents buy it for me so long ago and now that my PC i have no longer has a disk drive i had then decided to finally buy it on steam for myself so i could finally download mods at ease instead of changing them in an out like i tried so hard to previously.

And oh boy was i greeted with the same enjoyment and nostalgia i once had all those years ago. But like with all my reviews theres more to it so i shall dive in.

Its unsuprising that the orignal game has become the forgotton step child with the expansion pack allowing alot more modifcations to it but the campaigns like when i played them before were interesting takes on the Star wars universes story in the Galactic Civil war period and how the story had progressed. However the base game is the same as it was back then so that is nothing much to write home about in this day and age.

Where the real meat is with this game anymore is the mods and man do i love how this game on steam is so much better with its ability to hook up mods to the game instead of the old method i used to use jerry rigging together the mods and half the time it wouldn't even run properly. but for all that i enjoy about this game man have some of the more popular mods become alot more complex then the last time i've played them. Not to say i havn't been enjoying them its just its alot to take in after not playing in years.

However if theres one glaring issue i can draw attention to i belive where this game shows its age the most, Is the AI. I wont sugar coat it the AI in this game is dated and hot garbage it doom stacks units on all difficulties and dosn't min max like in other games of its RTS genre. It makes the AI feel Brain dead at times and it kills immersion espceially in mods where hero units can only die once. it dosnt make the AI feel dynamic it just feels too clunky and very cheap at times where it can death roll worlds if you lose a fleet protecting a certian region of space. Above all theres no truly good median. Easy is too easy, Medium is hard, and good luck wining on Hard. If thats not bad the AI seems to get alot more funds in a Conquest game mode then the player and half thier worlds dont even have mining bases makes it feel like the AI has a crutch

Cheesy AI or not, This game is still very good and stands up to the quality standard of some RTS games in the present day. Whilst it can show its age from time to time remaster mods exist to even improve the base game itself. Not only that the Worship is a treasure trove and a far cry from the Moddb or Desura modding of back then when it comes to applying and changing out mods

To Summerize its a game that is worth the price tag, the base game is forgettable but improvable and very easy to mod with the workship, the AI is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥(my own take), Galactic conquest feels like a grand campaign that can be far better then the base game itself, and the skirmish mode is still fresh even this many years later.

8.9/10
its aging but its still a GOLD PACK for sure

I'll Be honest with you I got this game only because its a better version then the mobile free version and i had the pocket change to spare

Battlevoid Harbinger isnt what you expect from a Tactical shooter if you can call it that. the game itself tends to follow a more dungeon crawler style of gameplay where you inch your way from system to system upgrading your gear, killing baddies, and building up your fleet. Beyond that this game does not offer much

Whilst usually i would applaud games that follow the less is more style of game design but this dosn't cut it. Battlevoid Harbinger is lacking to say the least the fact the game limits you so much makes it seem like its just a mind-numbing grind simulator in space. I could compare this game to the likeness of an old Arcade cabinet of the late-80's and early 90's era of gaming history; in earnest opinion all its missing is a bar of text asking for you to put in a coin to continue if your ship explodes

Speaking of dying in the game, you will be doing alot of that. This game is cruel in the way of how progression works, you start off at the very bottom of the ship tiers and have to work your way up to even get to decent warships and that means you gotta grind all the way to the top. The worst part is you can't even tell how far you have gone in the ranks until you do die in game and if your hoping you had destroyed enough of the enemy to get that next rank you might end up finding out you just Barely missed that mark and you wouldn't even know by how much.

Also lets talk about the "Antagonists" basicly its all your average space baddies, Slavers, space nomads, Orcs (totally not a Warhammer reference), Pirates and some mysterious invaders of unknown origin. All in all its nothing to shake a stick at and the ships while for each race are diverse on thier own it does not compensate for the lack of substance that make each group feel like a "Threat" to Humanity. For the most part each hostile group feels more like your doing chores at the edge of human space cleaning up after the scum the inhabited regions of the human faction's interstellar territory don't have to deal with. Oh and if you are looking for an immersive story don't bother there is none.

To be honest this is a lackluster space dungeon crawler game that seems to be more in the department of lacking then anything else as the main compliant i have is the lack of anything to really want to stick with this game and find it more interesting then smacking my head against some dry wall.

I was expecting a bit more from this game in the respects of having more then 1 game mode or even a sand box where you could build custom ships and duel with other races or hell even play other races because playing only one race all the time is just bland.
imagine if you could only play 1 faction in any game that has mulitple factions; because this is how it feels.

Despite playing it some times to pass the time i just use this as a game cabinet filler. if i had to choose between this and slapping my head against some dry wall to get out the days stress? i think i'm going to go with the dry wall

4/10
Nothing note worthy, would slap my head against my drywall again

This game was my early childhood. I only came across it one day when i was just 11 or so years old, and back then i loved it and to this day i still do. Whilst the game isn't your perfect game or anything too innovative i like to think this game was the key point where it marks in gaming history when Indie games hit the gaming market in force. as this game came out 1 year prior to Notches famous game minecraft.

During the Indie era i can remember all of the different games that came out and this one amoung the many that have faded back into the echos of history this one still resonates with me. Perhaps cause it was the first i came across and it dazzled me at first with its different graphic set which by the way outdated in this era is a nice departure from the heavy and extremely overly detailed and Memory consuming games is a nice change of pace as the practice of less is more is a legitimate practice in the gaming industry.

However there are flaws such as lack of other game modes as the survival mode dosn't satisfy the secondary game modes that are provided though it is good for some time killing if need be. and the Story is rather slow at first because the game breaks down its story into sections where your not told the entire story until you progress through the game, which very much reminds me of how some novels work out, if anything the story plays out as a first-person perspective novel. just you can pilot a tank and interact with the game and see everything that is narrated in the story.

Whilst i wouldn't recommend this game to your average gamer i still like the game too much to not recommend it to anyone who is bored with the modern formulaic game play of most FPS games, it works as a nice departure from the current trends of the gaming market and brings you back to a time when the gaming industry was a more primal and pioneering.

For me its a legacy game that i enjoy to this day and whenever i get a chance that isn't spent on other games i enjoy i always find myself starting a new playthrough on a different difficulty setting

8.5/10
Antiquated game, but if you got time to kill and want something different? this is for you

When i came across Tank universal 1 when i was only 12 years old or so back when it was a demo on Wild Tanget. my young mind was blown away as to how cool the game was, i never got to finish it back when i was little as i said it was a demo game. and since i had always had trouble convincing my parents about what games i wanted and the fact that they cost money always made them stingy at droping a few bucks for them.

Now i am in my young adult hood in my early 20's and now that i have a little more financial freedom i bought both this game and its predicessor, and my eyes once again teamed with excitment when i saw these same old games i never got to finish on steam. and after buying both and finishing both i can summerize why i recommend this game.

This game is a wonderful add on to the realm of tron like games taking aspects from earlier vector graphic games and putting them in 3D and making them just to put it simply, AWESOME. Everything from the dynamic characters to the combat, and to the general story itself.

The second game complments the first game perfectly as according to in game lore the lands beyond the 1st logic gate are rather barren and are considered the badlands of the in game world where as the first game had mystery, Intrigue, and exploration the second has combat, strategy and above all the chaos of war. it sobers up the game from where it left off in the first as the situation is getting serious as the possibilities of losing grow ever more horrific as you march on through no mans land to stop a tyrant with unknown goals but with all tyrants we can only guess as to their intentions.

Its a spiritual Successor of the old vector graphic games such as Battlezone and Tron, course brings out the best of both games and keeps to the legacy of both. Always after finishing the first i always immedently start playing this one to continue the story right where we left off like a 2 part novel.

9.2/10
Whilst containing older graphics, you wont be bored with it any time soon.

Feels like yesterday when i just got this game, I was so overjoyed and overzealious when i got it for a christmas gift back in 2017. I enjoyed every last hour i spent in this game and played as almost every last empire type you could create. i used every last FTL and Played the game with a treasure trove of mods that enhanced how much fun i had with the game and above all i loved this game when i played it.

but if i love this game so much? why did i not Recommend it?

Well perhaps let me begin after the change to 2.0 when i got the game i started off in 1.8 and had only a few DLC and no Mods. I played my first game and enjoyed every last second of it, Warp travel was fun to use though annoying when it came time for war. and while Hyperlanes were alright as ive played many Sci-fi/Space Games such as Empire at war and Sins of a Solar empire which use these concepts as interstellar travel and while mildy annoying i adapted nontheless. and Wormhole was my faveriot as playing as the Commonwealth of Man having alot of its story based around it made this FTL my faveriot of the bunch.

Though after 2.0 released it made a huge change to the game with the elimination of the FTL systems and relegating the game to just Hyperlanes. Which had bumbed me out intiaily because i had grown attached to the other 2 that were done away with after this point. But i stayed in 1.9 as most of the mods at the time still worked with the old version up untill most of my mods were no longer compadible with 1.9 as the creators had to change them to suit the newest version. At this point i really used alot of mods to play Stellaris so much so to remove them all would have dulled the game for me to say the least. so i made the hard choice and made the move to 2.0

By the time this happened though once again the game was going to recive another game changing update as 2.2 was rolling out and at this time it would remove another set of major game play options that i once again enjoyed. however i was planing to see if i could save my mods only to not accomlish this and lose them and following suit the rest of my enjoyment for this game.

now the game has entered a 3rd change of its major in game mechanics and at this point im tired of this game. The updates while adding things have been making the mods i use to play this game uncompadible which crash the game. It dosn't help that the community dosn't want to help ither with saving mods for each update. one way or another im done with this game and i doubt im going to come back unless Paradox can get its act together and stop removing game mechanics like an early access game would.

It is kind of ironic, i came to Stellaris to escape the confines of more generic 4X games only for this game to become just as generic as them. Hell the biggest irony is i have returned to the very game i left for stellaris in the first place and if i had the hindsight i have now back then i would of never bought this game and stuck to what i left.

My only warning to the reader is, unless you like a game where the core mechanics are changed every major update. Then this game is definitly not for you.

5.5/10
If its not broken don't fix it!

The game was good at once heck even great at one point but the game took a down turn in 2014 for the worst. It was when Jagex the games parent company tossed the game out the window and abandoned it for another game the created off its rotting corpse is when this game could be verified as dead. Now as the game might not be completely dead to this day its pretty close to just outright dying as its player population is below 100 from the day this was posted and it was during mid day when i checked.

Its a shame what has happend to this game and its just another example of Cutthroat Corperate stragety that Jagex employs on its products. its even more of a shame that i spent time in the Lack luster map making mode to create maps that would never gain more then 10 players which was also hindered by the BS Server system set up by Jagex mind you, like other map makers who once created quality maps i had ideas too for this game including a whole map series me and a friend cancaled when the games popularity was rolling down hill.

Which trick question, Whats the point of getting the attention of the Main server players to play by your rules when they can just enjoy themselves in the main modes, and lets talk about those modes for a moment too. Besides Deathmatch, classic, zombie, and capture the flag. All the other game modes were meaningless, i mean seriosuly who is going to play Diamond mine or treasure hunt or whatever it was called.

Overall im just going to summerize because i am only writing this right now because i got nothing better to do and the fact i wasted my money to buy this and the 184.2 hours of my life that i will never get back. The game had potental it even could of been its very own stand alone indie FPS shooter like a simmilar game Guncraft but once again Jagex cuts the games throat and kills it so they cant admit they screwed up and the Community was just as voltile as its Devs.

I am not upset that this game is gone im just disapointed

2.2/10
Get stuffed Jagex i had more fun in Story dev in first year college then i had with this.