Recent reviews by LoopKat

Been absolutely loving this game, it's been so nice to have another tower defense game that sticks to the traditional TD formula and uses randomized elements sparingly, but effectively. So many other TD games make randomization the entire focus of the game and, quite honestly, the TD elements usually suffer for it, but not Gnomes

Gnomes strikes just the right balance of keeping things interesting by forcing you to adapt on the fly while also allowing you to plan for specific (and often very goofy) builds. It's a game that expects you to learn its mechanics to succeed and then continually rewards you for doing so, everything from stacking buffs so high on your gnomes that you expect the game to break to elaborate cactus plant mazes that shred goblins to pieces with needles and debuffs. Even at 35 hours, I'm still discovering new synergies and every time a run ends it just feels like another opportunity to try again and experiment some more

The mechanics are fun, the humor is subtly amusing, and it's been worth every penny

NOTE: Portal RTX uses a secondary Nvidia process to enable RTX, so there's a quirk where having a "Background Max Framerate" enabled in your Nvidia Control Panel will CAP your game's framerate to this setting and limit your performance. Disable this setting in the Nvidia Control Panel for Portal's HL2.exe if you're arbitrarily capped at the default 30fps (or whatever your Background Max Framerate is set to). Also, due to this dual .exe setup, the game will CRASH if you Alt+Tab at any point OR while changing Portal's default video settings (Nvidia's Alt+X RTX menu is fine, but may require restarts)

Actual review:

As others have said, this really isn't a great showing for RTX, largely due to absolutely awful performance you get if you try to play with anything other than DLSS 3.0 set to Ultra Performance.

Some performance numbers, running with a Ryzen 5600X + RTX 3070 at 1080p:
-DLSS off + High RTX preset = 25fps
-DLSS off + Ultra RTX preset = 15fps
-DLSS set to Quality + Ultra RTX preset = 35-40fps
-DLSS set to Balanced + Ultra RTX preset = 40-60fps
-DLSS set to Ultra Performance + Ultra RTX preset = 100-120fps

You may look at these numbers and think "wow, DLSS 3.0 gives a huge performance boost to RTX" which is true, in a sense, but the game is legitimately crippled without it and I personally don't think that's acceptable. This iteration of DLSS adds a lot of visual artifacting like shimmering on many objects (particularly anything with a grid pattern), as well as subtle "wobbling" on anything in motion. Setting it to Quality reduces these artifacts, but well, you can see how much the framerate suffers by doing so. I think it's fair to say that failing to hit even 30fps without DLSS at 1080p is pretty ridiculous, especially considering how expensive these GPUs have become. At the very least, I would've liked to see DLSS 2.0 available for comparison for those of us who don't like 3.0, but I guess Nvidia only wants to push 3.0's raw performance numbers when set to Ultra Performance.

As for RTX's visual quality in Portal RTX? Well, it's alright, but it honestly doesn't look anywhere near as good as the promo material, even on the Ultra preset (maybe you need to crank some of the sliders beyond the Ultra preset? That seems a bit ridiculous considering my performance numbers, tbh). Most surfaces are dull/matte and don't benefit much from raytraced lighting, reflections only appear on some surfaces (not on glass, weirdly enough) and only really stand out when there's strong direct lighting, shadows become so diffused and soft during motion that they almost completely disappear and only rematerialize when the object stops, etc. Largely, it just feels like a modern lighting engine was applied and doesn't really stand out beyond that, it doesn't feel like it has RTX flare in any specific way and each addition seems to come with a drawback.

Since this version is free for anyone who already owns the original Portal, you might as well give it a shot if you've got an RTX card. It's obviously a step up in terms of visual fidelity from the original and you can clearly get some good performance numbers if you use DLSS on Ultra Performance mode, but I personally feel like the non-DLSS raytracing performance was hindered in favor of promoting DLSS 3.0, which is a shame.

The president of Tripwire, John Gibson, supports Texas's abortion law which strips away women's rights to choose if they want to have an abortion and even allows people to claim a $10,000 bounty on anyone who they suspect may be seeking to have or have had an abortion. This law is anti-human, anti-woman, and will literally kill and/or traumatize countless women who experience medical complications or are victims of sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies.

F*** this guy, full stop. Do not buy his games. Do not support his company. My sympathies for anyone who receives a paycheck from this maniac, I hope you can find a better job elsewhere.

The president of Tripwire, John Gibson, supports Texas's abortion law which strips away women's rights to choose if they want to have an abortion and even allows people to claim a $10,000 bounty on anyone who they suspect may be seeking to have or have had an abortion. This law is anti-human, anti-woman, and will literally kill and/or traumatize countless women who experience medical complications or are victims of sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies.

F*** this guy, full stop. Do not buy his games. Do not support his company. My sympathies for anyone who receives a paycheck from this maniac, I hope you can find a better job elsewhere.

Everything about this game is anti-fun. You need to bash rocks with rocks for hours on end to make crude metal tools, but you can only get that far after wandering aimlessly to find super rare resources at specific coordinates (which can only realistically be found via an online guide).

The latest update (June 25, 2017) gave your pistol limited ammo (your only saving grace against enemy encounters) and amplified the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by 1,000%. This has been on Steam for nearly a year, yet it's hardly more than the most basic of playable alphas.

"Get your ****in' hands up! ****in' cuff yourself! Throwin' a ****in' grenade! There's a ****in' cloak-a! Killed the ****-a!"


Personally, I think Clover and Wolf have the best dialogue overall, but Syndey's blatant vulgarity is pretty damn entertaining. I haven't used her enough yet to fully appreciate her, but I'm liking her so far.

Since I purchased this pack post-Update 100, I can't compare it to the "non-nerfed" version, but I've found the Anarchist perk deck to be quite good as-is. You can reach 400 armor easily with just the deck and the Improved Combined Tactical Vest and can go even higher if you convert enemies. Anarchist gives you armor based on your total health and the Hostage Taker skill gives you extra health whenever you have a converted enemy. In short, you almost become a literal tank. The only downside is that you can't regenerate health like Ex-Presidents or Grinder, but you'll likely be taking armor damage (and replenishing it) most of the time anyway so it doesn't matter much (Aced Partners in Crime can provide passive regen if you need really it).

And, the Bootleg Rifle isn't as bad as everyone says. By itself, with no assault rifle skills, it's not that great but that can be said about most weapons in the game. Luckily, Aced Surefire and Body Expertise make practically any weapon viable. It may not be an astounding feat, but I solo'd Slaughterhouse on Overkill with ease using -just- the Bootleg rifle and the aforementioned skills. At one point, I even managed to kill 3 dozers in one clip (1 green, 2 black) in a span of about 5 seconds. It's a good weapon that can handle hordes of cops if you spec yourself correctly.

tl;dr This is certainly worth the price on sale ($1.24) and maybe even at $4.99 if you aren't tight on money. You were essentially paying for Syndey herself before Update 100, but the new skills mean you're actually getting a useful weapon now too.

It's been a while since I've played a game that frustrated me from the moment I started playing it, luckily, my quota is now filled after playing Blade Symphony. I may only have an hour logged, but that's more than enough time to determine that I'm done with it.

Pros:
-Looks pretty (nothing ground-breaking, but better than most crap on today's market)
-Runs well, stable framerate
-Interesting character designs with (some) customization options
-Workshop support

Cons:
-Basically everything else
-IMPOSSIBLE to play with keyboard and mouse, controller is 110% recommended
-Still impossible to play with a controller
-Combos are non-existent beyond switching between 3 different stances and hitting the attack button (singular, there is ONE attack button)
-Hitting an opponent is almost entirely based on luck (hit indicators are misleading and don't update quick enough between movements, opponents can just spam2win)
-Parrying/blocking mechanics can be countered easily and are essentially useless


Praise be to GabeN for free weekends.