Recent reviews by theYeti

Great game, had some excellent spooky and tense action moments just as one would hope from a Metro game. Little bit of weirdness in timing of cutscenes and suchlike but nothing game breaking, and all the visuals are incredible. I would have liked to see the ending paced a little differently, but it's in-line with the Metro games as a whole so I'm willing to put that down to personal preference.

DLC: Two Colonels is a tight, doesn't-overstay-its-welcome set of missions that introduces a couple new mechanics and ratchets up the tension. Sam's Story is "the base game but more", I didn't find its story or ending too compelling and it didn't introduce much of anything different. That said "a couple hours more of the base game" isn't necessarily bad at all.

Overall: A fun ride on the way to a somewhat unearned conclusion.

I think Arkane did a good job making this mini campaign feel novel and different to Dishonored 1 and 2 and they definitely maintained the rich set dressing and background happenings that make this franchise so fun. There was some lack of polish, a few mechanics weren't really signposted and that caused some frustration.

The setup to the lethal/nonlethal dichotomy at the climax felt flat however, as the setup requires us to think of the Outsider in ways he hasn't been portrayed over the games so far.

Deeply, deeply frustrating game.

The visuals and gunplay are impactful and a lot of fun. The characters so far are interesting.

Everything else kind of sucks.

The vehicle driving is godawful on mouse and kb: using wasd to drive with an independent mouselook camera is sluggish and on top of that the close FOV and camera movement associated with the steering fighting the mouselook makes it shaky and occasionally nauseating. The vehicles have an enormous turning radius, and when you inevitably go offroad you slows to a crawl or gets stuck.

The menus are slow and obnoxious to navigate. Sometimes you can click on a button that has a keypress label on it, sometimes not. Sometimes F activates a button, sometimes Enter. The menus also for some reason straight up give away all the abilities and weapons you get by way of having them all filled in in the upgrade tree, which isn't all that important in a game like this but seems like a strange choice removing any vestige of surprise about the rewards you get while exploring.

Other controls are just plain clunky. Modifier + key to activate special abilities while in combat that wants you to move around a bunch isn't great. Could I mitigate some of that by mapping macros in my mouse's management software? Yeah, but I shouldn't have to.

The running theme in the items I dislike is that they're mostly related to designing a game with a controller in mind and jamming kb controls in there almost as an afterthought. The UI essentially feels like a lazy PC port.

The rest are bizarre choices-- the game clearly wants driving combat somewhere on the spectrum of borderlands to mad max, and the player gets something that handles like a moving van. The combat is hectic and fast paced, and in between that there's minutes on minutes of driving around nothing to get to anything else that's happening.

Edit: Updating with 12 hours total clocked:
I did discover that "instant cast" keybinds for the abilities are buried in the keybinds, those make the combat 100% better.

That said, I'm tapping out: The main plot requires not just racing, but clearly racing against NPC opponents who have a completely different set of vehicle handling characteristics to the player. Not really feeling having to 'get gud' at a driving mechanic that feels awful to start with.

I had a good time with with this, played it straight through in about 3 settings.

Things I liked:
-Set, setting, sound design all kick ass
-Pacing fed creepy information at a rate that I didn't feel clueless or confused
-Minimal running around /backtracking designed into the game

Things I didn't like:
-Ending and final cutscene fell completely flat for me
-Would have liked to see more of the creatures on the ship (especially Samantha)
-A couple of the puzzles felt too pixel-hunting

Overall I'd say it's worth a play.

At the time of writing I have 98 hours in this game; the very short version of my thoughts are: "It needs a lot of polish but despite that I like it a whole lot"

Frankly for a game that came out in November 2023, it has a /lot/ of rough edges. Most of those that i'm encountering, luckily, are either cosmetic issues or mechanics that need to be signposted better.

Aside from those things there are a couple things that annoy me:
-The aiming for what square to use a tool on is a little fiddly and makes it easy to hit the wrong spot
-Some heart events feel sequential (as in, take place one right after the other) despite it taking lots of time to get that next couple hearts. Connected events is a great idea, but they could play out better.
-The festival minigames don't feel rewarding/worth the time.
-The halloween festival references costumes and a haunted house that aren't implemented yet. Ultimately this isn't a huge deal but it feels sloppy.
-The skills available to pick when you level up feel like uniformly small steps (i.e., some milestones with bigger benefits would be nice)

The good stuff?
Set and setting:
-The island setting in lots of ways feels much more real and grounded than the typical "small town farm"
-The character portraits are gorgeous, as indeed is all the art.
-The characters are diverse and have depth and personality
-The heart events are humanizing and often surprisingly impactful
Mechanics:
-The time in a day feels generous enough to feel like you got something done each game day
-The collectibles aspect of the game is engaging and happens at a rate that feels satisfying
-Fast travel available early
-Universal inventory access for crafting (i.e., craft from anywhere)
-Different types of implements (e.g., scarecrow and sprinkler) complement each other in a way that feels intentional and helpful
-Most if not all of the "bits" you find (foragables, drops, fishing, etc) seem to have either a use or a way to improve their value, so nothing feels like 'vendor trash'


Edit - Updating this at 125 hours. I'm gonna put it down for a while until the next major roadmap milestones because I really want to see what it's like when it's feature complete. Fundamentally I feel like this is 3/4 of a really, really good game in the genre, but calling it 1.0 when major questlines aren't finished among the other things I mentioned above just feels weird.

Fun, somewhat flawed game.

Things I like:
Storage quality of life: You can craft form chests and sort items directly into all your chests. Tons of inventory heavy games omit this
Cute, chill art
Fun setting
Lots of things to pursue
Basic resources are very plentiful

Things I don't like:
Map is big and mostly empty. Combined with limited running and limited time in the day this is annoying and feels like a time waster. Fast travel helps this a bit when unlocked but not wholly
NPC dialogue repeats heavily, and you have to engage with that repetitive dialogue to get relationship points
Crafting recipes cluttered with one-off (e.g., quest item) recipes you have to flip past
Some minigames not explained especially clearly
Possible to accept a commission for an item you cannot build or buy yet

Overall I'm happy to put a bunch more time into this, it's a relaxing play despite the irritations I note.

This game is pretty wonky in places and the controls are a bit dated and don't have enough hotkeys, but the guns are satisfying and the 80s nordic aesthetic is charming.

Pretty fun multiplayer. As of this review still gets updates, which is cool of the devs for a game a few years old.

BL2 is one of my favorite FPSs around, was really excited to finally get around to pre sequel but after several attempts to get into it, it's just not doing it for me. The moon-aussies, the classes, none of it grabs me.

Wanted to like it but just don't. On paper this is my kind of game. Materials gathering, wide open, lots of traversal options, lots of things to do. The day/night mechanic seemed fun.

So far though I'm just finding it tedious more than anything-- with no fast travel, and quest objectives on opposite sides of the map, I find myself doing more repetitive traversal than anything productive.

The game clearly is well received so I'm marking it recommended, but I'm sure glad I got it on steep sale.

Update 1: Having played it a little more, I kind of loathe some of the writing; the oddball side quests are fun, but the edgelord monologuing villain was boring in far cry 3 and it's boring now

If you feel compelled to play every click on the monsters get loot type game out then Torchlight II is fine I guess, but TLII feels lackluster and sparse in a world with Grim Dawn and Diablo III sitting right over there.