Recent reviews by 𝕸𝖆𝖑

Big good fun, turn brain off, get upgrades, wait for content sometimes. Haven't fought death yet but I've heard he's suppose to die at some point.

Big golf, friends not included (must include own), worth the money, large recommend.

UPDATE 3/20/2024: I did a lot of research finding the current 2024 servers. The instructions in this review has changed:

Yes, I recommend this. It's a classic. Also, if you wanna play this in 2024, here's what you do!

Inside your UT99 install folder, edit the file /System/UnrealTournament.ini in a text editor then copy + paste what I've included right here on a new line below any other block of text:


Save it. Now, in the same folder, edit UBrowser.INT in a text editor. Copy and paste what I've put here:


Save. launch UT99, hit ESC, go to Multiplayer, click Populated Servers and watch it populate. Thanks to 333networks for the master server list and service!

Oh hey, it's me, Ikadar! (Shameless self plug, find me on Twitch! I stream this kind of nonsense!) - Want to waste like five minutes reading what some random guy has figured out about this virtual world that everyone already knows about but nobody talks abot for some reason? Read on!...

So, to start this out, I've got a ton more time that my Steam current shows... It's at like 240 HRs at the time of this review, but I've given it probably closer to like 600hrs. I'm not as intense as some others, but around even a few dozen hours you'll probably recognize like half of this stuff I'm going on about.

Pros:
+ Be literally whoever and/or whatever you want.
+ Lots of social interaction, if you're into all that.
+ Tons of games and world jams.
+ Never a lack of interesting content.
+ Developers can download the Unity VRChat SDK and create content.
+ Automatically tiered positive trust/notoriety system. You can be a visitor, known user, trusted user and so on. You'll understand it more as you hang out, as there's a few factors that decide how your trust level ranks up, such as time played, friends earned, and so on. I honestly can't remember all of the factors, but I'm sure you can look it up or ask someone in-world.

Cons:
- There is a pretty big VR User Vs. Desktop User culture. This has coined the term "Desktop Peasants".
- The Devs don't fix problems as often as they probably should. Some platform-breaking crashes happen more often than they should depending on whatever VR setup you're using. However, Desktop version doesn't have too many issues.
- Nothing is sacred. There are modded clients that allow people to rip your content if you're a creator. While this is annoying, you'd expect the VRChat administration to care about this, right? Wrong, because not only will they most likely never respond to your concern, but they also offer nothing in the way of punishment other than 'maybe' removing the content from their server. Nothing will stop the thief from just re-uploading it, as it's already been physically allocated somewhere on their PC for them to modify, redistribute, and sell to their hearts desire.
- So many loud, obnoxious children. They are in 9 out of 10 of public worlds and they have zero adult supervision. This is actually my biggest gripe with the entirety of VRChat and it's not even 100% VRChat's fault (I blame the parents) - However, I do know that VRChat's developers could put more systems in play to keep them from absolutely ruining everyone else's fun. Age verification, more concise parental controls, world flag types (G, PG, MA, etc...) and locking accounts to those, depending on how they've been processed. Instead, it seems they're allowed to just make as many accounts as they wish, and they get complete free reign over the entire platform.

** End Notes: **
For the average user, my only words of advice is just to attend huge social gatherings until you understand the way the platform's social aspect really works. Go stand quietly in the world "The Great Pug" or "The Black Cat" for like an hour, I'm positive you'll learn almost everything you need to know.

For creators, just be cautious. Don't get too invested in uploading things until you're at least a known user, because I honestly feel like that's probably enough time passed to understand what you're going to get into. As a creator myself, I tend to only upload things that I'm proud enough of to show others, but not proud enough to lose in case it gets stolen. So, just saying, don't dump time into something that you can't bear to lose. Also, there are a lot of really awesome people who will be really willing to support any endeavor that you become a part of, so also don't be afraid to just be creative and collaborate with some of the other creators. Check out some sites like Gumroad, VRCArena, or some of the 3D Model sites like Turbosquid, Sketchfab, Etc, if you intend to post your work, as there is actually an abundance of people looking to buy from creators. There's a few developers I know that are actually making bank just from making stuff for fun, but just always keep that "this could be ripped" in the back of your mind somewhere.

Anyhow, have fun with it. Take your time learning the worlds, the people, and the blessing and curse that is VRChat. Happy travels! :)

Before this game came along, I was only defeating my foes with with harsh words and passive aggressive comments. Now, I defeat them with a large viking erection that has a beard, wears a steel helm, and slings an axe around dangerously close to my testicles. Would recommend!

The entire game is really awesome, the zombies are fun to kill, the parkour mechanics are fluid and easy to get a hold of. My only complaint is the final battle against Rais at the end of the game.

[SPOILERS / NOT REALLY SPOILERS]: It's an absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cop-out on actually programming a boss fight. The entire fight is quick-action button press fight and it's super short and lackluster. If you played the entire campaign with a friend as I did (and we loved it), the final boss fight puts you in a single-player only instance of it, so you both have to do it separately from each other.

Despite this, the other 99.9% of the game is really great. Some of the custom maps and community creations are pretty cool too.

If you've ever wanted to be a goat that treats everyone around them like garbage, this is the game for you.

This review is posted for both the indie and professional version 4.0 of Leadwerks.

Before I go into this, just for internetz credibility reasons because that's a thing I guess, I'm going to note that I'm a model & texture designer first and a programmer like fourth or something. I have extensive knowledge of a lot of free, professional and indie-level game development engines and suites, I've worked on a lot of projects for a lot of people -- Now I'm not saying I'm completely fluent with some of these editors I'll be comparing, because there's definitely room to always learn -but- I have researched quite a bit and dumped lots of hours into many of them, including the Unreal Engine, Gamemaker Studio and Unity. I do have a somewhat decent grasp on a variety of languages (LUA, C++, HTML5, Java, Uscript and so on.) So with that all being said, some points of this review will touch base on comparison of other editors against Leadwerks 4.0

I'll be listing my perspective on both the indie and pro versions of the editor, and on the two different rigs (by relevant specs) I used them on (one strong, one weak).

PCs Used Leadwerks on:

• AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ 2.6ghz | 4gb RAM DDR2 (1066) | nVidia Geforce 980 (2gb) & nVidia Geforce 550 TI
  
• Intel i7-4790K 4.0ghz | 16bb DDR3 RAM (2133) | nVidia Geforce 980 (2gb) | OCZ Vertex 4 SSD

PROS:

• Frequently goes on sale and can be used as an alternative to buying a Unity license. Both have a somewhat similar setup: People familiar with Unity will recognize and understand how the hierarchy and asset settings function.
  
• Very easy-to-use editor allows you to create brushes on the fly with little to no effort.
  
• LUA scripting allows you to do some complex actions and keep the load light. (C++ available in Pro version.)
  
• The engine itself has a fairly decent lighting engine.
  
• Friendly interface and a simple asset hierarchy similar to the older Unity3D versions.
  
• Surprising amount of overall engine flexibility for the price.
  
• API reference site exists and is maintained with every update.
  
• Very nice Steam Workshop integration, it's easy to publish and get user workshop content, shaders, placeholders and everything else for entry level stuff and testing reasons.
  
• Fully functional terrain editor with multi-layered texturing, which you can have set by elevation and however you carve it. you can also paint it fairly easily with a texture of your choice and blend them together.

CONS:

• Skybox creation is limited strictly to cubemaps. As far as I know, after a lot of researching and toying around, there isn't a way to do projection or spheremaps for a skybox. While you can still make some amazing looking skyboxes this way, it hurts in the category of trying to make outdoor environments visually immersive when you can't have free flowing clouds, ships in the atmosphere, large buildings off in the distance and things of that nature.
  
• It falls behind compared to other cheaper alternatives. The amount of time learning the API and getting oriented with it could be better spent on another engine (Unity, Unreal Engine, and so on.) - For simple projects, Leadwerks is amazing, but for a more mechanically defined experience, there's better readily available.
  
• I'm a visual designer more than I am a programmer: Importing your own models can sometimes be annoying. Just remember, if you export from Blender to Leadwerks (.fbx) to change the scale in Blender. A small model in blender can appear MASSIVE and take up the entire scene if it is free-exported. You also have to calculate normals with every new import, regardless of Blender's export. To be fair on this one; I don't know enough about what FBX entails, but I do know that no other engine I've used has this problem. Also, mesh above 10k tris don't handle well during imports.
  
• Bugs, lots of bugs. Luckily, the community is aware of most of them and they seem to be fixed with every update.
  
• Ghost assets. Sometimes upon removing an asset from the scene the asset's 'ghost' gets left behind. In test-play, you'll notice the collision will still be there for the object after you've already deleted it, causing you to have to save and restart Leadwerks before it goes away and things get back to normal. This also happens in the hierarchy, where you'll delete an asset but it stays in the scene (even as an instanced prefab). So rather than deleting your asset in the hierarchy and it being done with the deleted asset, you have to actually navigate to the folder your asset is in, and physically delete it from your hard drive to get rid of it from the editor.
  
• Terrain editor, while very nice, is a memory hog. Sometimes when you lie down a new terrain of 1024x1024, it can cause Leadwerks to crash. This happened more frequently on my AMD machine than it does on my Intel one, mostly because of the 4gb VS 16gb gap - And yes, it still can use the full 16gb when it first lies the terrain out for editing, it's ridiculous.
  
• One of the greatest bugs Leadwerks has is that if you have an asset, say a character or projectile that moves too fast, collisions get ignored (regardless of physics properties or collision restraints) and pass through objects, terrain, brushes and a variety of other things. It seems to be based on a combination of the speed and size of the object also -- Smaller objects at the same movement speed tend to collide properly most of the time. I played with it for a bit and showed it to one of the gurus in community, and he noted it also.

GREY AREAS:

• The API Reference site, while maintained pretty frequently, has a few areas where explanation is light. Certain things that require more explanation have very little, and things that require very little have tons.
  
• The Leadwerks community, both on Steam and the official forum is extremely helpful and very knowledgable. They've become adept at fixing a wide variety of problems. However, the community is extremely small and some of the weirder issues I ran into (again, turned out to be bugs) are harder to fix if one of their guru users aren't being active that day. The size of the community could be partially blamed on the "price vs. buyer" skepticism - People won't always want to drop $99 on things they can't readily find a ton of info about. I know I didn't, even after reading the forums, digging around Reddit, Steam groups and elsewhere. I waited until I could get the Indie version for $20 on the first sale, then waited again a few months later until the Pro update showed up for $20.
  
• While they market it as easy to use without scripting, I attempted to try to make something without messing at all with the scripting editor and could see how a new user would have some issues creating a functioning project without using only the default Leadwerks assets. They have this in-editor node system similar to the one Blender and Unreal Engine use for their shaders. It allows you to plug logic from existing scene-based assets into other assets also in the scene. While this seems great, it sort of still requires you to script your own assets, because you still have to create the functions for the node to plug into on each asset. Meaning that the only "scriptless" part of this would be the mapping portion of the editor and the ability to import assets (this doesn't always mean scriptless either).

TL;DR: Leadwerks is great for simple projects and it gets better every update, but right now it leaves a lot to be desired for more complex stuff. User friendly, but not game-mechanically friendly, and somewhat buggy.

It may only be early access at this point, but the game deserves massive props. On first playthrough, there are scenarios that are placed that will try to deceive you and force you to use your better judgement. Using your judgement incorrectly can force you to kill otherwise 'mostly' innocent NPCs (Julius & Helen in Arkovia for example). Things are not always what they seem with the setups.

The class system is brilliant for an ARPG, two characters playing the same class-combo can end up entirely different depending on playstyle. It's a fairly new take on things that ARPGs have been building on for decades now; For example, two Blademasters (Soldier+Nightblade) can end up with one being a two-handed using tanky warrior type, while the other ends up more like a dual-wielding assassin with an arsenal of area effect abilities at their hand. All the skills are fairly decent and there isn't a wrong way to build your class --and if you feel you have built it 'wrong', you get a second chance with skill resets whenever you want.

The game is also very fluid. Other than the given glitches that will most likely be fixed in full release, I have no complaints about this game.

Hotline Miami is a really fun game for the simplicity of gameplay mechanics it offers. To me, it felt a lot like playing a newer version of Metal Gear (NES) with a Grand Theft Auto 2 vibe, then adding a hint of SmashTV in with it.

Some of the levels set up hidden obstacles with the enemies that require you to be stealthy, while others require you to rush in and beat as many enemies as you can into a bloody mess before they get the chance to take you out. On top of this, everything is single-hit death (on you, and on your enemies) -- so the masks you acquire as the game goes on need to be chosen strategicaly sometimes to make levels more managable. As the game goes on, your character goes through some serious metal breakdowns and becomes much more violent with his intentions.

This game is very short, it only took me around 4hr 30min to complete it and about 30min to complete the after-credits biker mission, I was even screwing around and taking my time with it.

This could become an instant classic. All this being said, it is very much worth the money.