Recent reviews by Jay_Utopia

So, I absolutely loved this game. The story was bafflingly good, the visuals were beautiful and unique, and the soundtrack had me crying at a place or two. I will say, I had a couple issues with it, very minor things, but that's the case with just about any game. A 9/10, I'd recommend it to literally anybody.

(Spoilers here for the end, cause I gotta talk about this)

I think one of the biggest things holding me back from making it a 10/10 was the ending scene. In the false ending during the first timeline, we were shown everything in the future playing out until the scene before the credits. Besides the obvious Cath dying in that timeline, I adored everything we saw there, especially what we got for Mark and Nicole's relationship. Which leads me to the true ending, which was all fine and dandy, until the second to last scene, where they're on dates with other people, RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER?!?!?! AND THEN IT JUST ENDS?!?!? I know it's not the end of the world, there's all that stuff about letting go which is nice, but COME ON!!!! If it were me (And listen, I know for a fact I'm not even half as good a storyteller as any of the people who made this gorgeous game, this is just my opinion), I would've had the same set up, with their respective dates seemingly going well, until for some reason or another, both dates walk out one after the other in a somewhat reserved commotion (Perhaps Mark's first, and then Nicole's). Both sit there stunned, maybe annoyed, until they notice one another, and one of them's like "So, what's going on with that?". They wouldn't necessarily need to have some sort of "Kimi no na wa" esque scene where they feel pulled to each other, but it would have been real nice to see that, even with no past to prop them up, they could still find each other again. (Also short haired Nicole ftw, I was kinda sad we barely got to see that throughout the story). To me, the two pillars that made this game as great as it was were Mark and Cath's friendship, and the love between Mark and Nicole, and without that latter one, I kinda feel a little let down. I still adore the journey this game provided me, but the destination is slightly sour in my opinion. I did love the final scene between Mark and his father though, probably didn't appreciate it quite as much as I should have because of the prior scene, but I'm glad that was how it fully ended.

Cities: Skylines II is an… interesting game, to say the least, and my thoughts on it are really conflicted.

Firstly, I should note that I never played the first game, so unlike many others, I don’t have anything substantial to compare it to. Also, I’d rather not touch on the performance issues and bugs, since those have been beaten to death by other reviews. I’m more going to state my thoughts on the state of the game’s release and current handling, cause I feel like that’ll be a better overall review.

Now, I’ll say it plainly: I really love this game. I don’t have 220+ hours on it for nothing. The joy of getting to fashion my own city is incredible, and I’ve spent many hours just trying to figure out how things tick. It’s a great experience, notwithstanding the bugs that do dismantle the late stages of the game.

That being said, it’s got a ton of problems, and I think the biggest issues are with how the game is being handled by, to a decent extent, the developers, and by a much greater extent, the publisher.

Firstly, it’s abundantly clear the game should’ve been released as an early access title, not as a full release. Not only would that have allowed for more consistent fixes and polishing to be implemented in the first months after launch, but it would’ve curbed a lot of the massive negative backlash the game has received. When a game is in early access, there’s this default sense of understanding a player has that “yeah, theres issues, but these will be solved.” With a full release, an unfinished game feels half earned, and disconnected.

Another big problem has been the consistency of updates and patches. For the first little while following launch, the game received fairly consistent patches and updates, and this allowed for the player base to see that the dev team was dedicated to working out the kinks in their creation. However, everything changed mid December, when Colossal Order took an entire MONTH off of development for the holidays. Now, I’ve tried researching Finnish labor laws, and I don’t quite understand it, so to be fair, they may just have been obligated to do so, but regardless, taking a WHOLE MONTH OFF is plain ridiculous, especially given the state of the game at that point in time. Any glitch you’d experience during the first day of that period, you’d still be experiencing a whole 30 days later. I’m not saying taking off time for the end of year holidays is bad, and taking off two weeks I think should be a given for certain occupations, but the two major holidays people take off time for (Christmas and New Year’s) are always within the same two week time period. Even if some employees might celebrate other holidays that require more time, I doubt that’s enough for the entire company to take off twice that amount! And tragically, when they returned, they changed up the model of their patches, from consistent weekly patches with smaller fixes to tying patches to major content releases, which is just insane. Issues with the game that hinder the experience should be worked on and fixed as soon as possible. If you patch an issue, why would you wait until a major release to implement it??? We’re experiencing the bugs and the problems NOW, and having to wait for content releases is just frustrating, and it makes it feel like all the hard work the devs are putting isn’t actually happening. People would understand if a weekly patch had to be delayed here or there if there isn’t sufficient fixes yet, but as it is now, it’s simply unacceptable.

Pricing is another massive issue, and this is primarily on the head of the Publishers. Personally, I really like the Beach Properties asset pack. The buildings look nice, having more signature buildings is fantastic, and I mean come on, palm trees go HARD (though they should be put into the base game, not added in an expansion). HOWEVER, although the content that’s included is great, the $10 price tag is ridiculous, a straight up scam. $10 would make sense for something like the coming Bridges and Ports Expansion in the latter part of the year, since it’s a major update to the mechanics of the game, but for an ASSET PACK?!?!?!? It’s straight up lunacy!!! Paradox is just pulling prices out their ass to reap as much cash as they can off this, and it’s getting disheartening. I don’t know how much influence CO has over the pricing, but I’d hope they try to do SOMETHING to rectify the issue in the future. I felt almost obligated to refund the expansion pass Monday, cause I’d rather have my money now, and wait to see if the rest of the Waterfronts expansion is worth it, than just stick up thumbs in my eyes and hope for the best like a two year old.

I only really see one solution for my grievances: wait and see if things turn out well. After what happened with Cyberpunk, I’ve made it my own personal doctrine to never judge a modern game for its state at release. I’m probably not going to pick up Cities: Skylines II again until the end of the year.

Hopefully, by then both Colossal Order and Paradox will have gotten their act together, and made a better foundation for the supposed masterpiece of city—building we were promised.

I mean, it’s not horrible. The asset pack itself does what it says: gives us properties suited to beaches. Sure, it sucks that we can’t actually MAKE beaches right now, but no one ever said this asset pack would set out to do that. While I do really hope we’ll get beaches soon, I think that everyone losing their minds over the fact that this pack doesn’t give us that is just too much. I am disappointed with how the game’s been handled so far, but I’m not going to withhold some bit of credit where credit is due just cause I’m bitter at some aspects.

I will say though, the $10 price tag is absolutely outrageous. I would rally for a 50% refund, but I doubt I could do anything to convince Paradox to change their minds. I might refund the expansion for the time being, and wait until more content comes out, but other than the price tag (which is most likely the publisher’s greed at play) and the lack of beaches (which again, wasn’t the goal in the first place), the buildings do look pretty nice, the radio station is an absolute jam, and I mean come on, they added palm trees.

An absolute blast of a game, a fantastic experience, and a joy to play. Project Zomboid is a challenging game, and it took me quite some time to start getting used to it, but now that I've gained my footing, I find myself enjoying much of what it has to offer.

It was great. Fantastic. Beautiful. So many other words, I'd be here a while if I just kept going.

Excuse me, I'm going to go cry now :,>

While I would have preferred being able to play with friends, I have to admit that Solo-Slooping was still an enjoyable experience, and I definitely enjoy and respect this game. It's very immersive and interactive, and I feel like I could genuinely learn how to man a ship or dig up treasure from this game. The only thing I didn't enjoy was again, the bit of loneliness that came from not having friends who have this game, but it's still fun to both go it alone, and try to find random people to sail with too.

I loved all the exploration, the building was fantastic (Though worrying about hull integrity can be slightly bothersome), and the diverse and amazing ecosystems were absolutely stunning, I'd recommend this game to anybody! (Especially those who'd wet their pants playing it)

I've had a ton of fun with this game. I love the constant work you have to put in, as well as how much you can customize your raft as you float along on the great blue ocean.