Recent reviews by M.A. Splinobi

It may not be the perfect BONEWORKS 2 I was expecting, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it still stellar. The weapon variety, the model variety, the easy to implement modding; slap multiplayer into this game and I truly believe you've got Garry's Mod VR on your hands. Truly, Brandon and the SLZ team have outdone themselves again.

My only true complaints have to lie in the story itself, being that it's much shorter and much less coherently put together as BONEWORKS, but the actual mechanics of the game and the much clearer modding support give it that upgraded edge. The fact that this can run on Quest too is crazy. Easy 8.5/10, would be a 10/10 with multiplayer support and a longer, more coherent story.

Can't recommend it, feels like a straight downgrade in every way to the original Dying Light. Honestly, it makes me wanna go back and play some more of the original. At least there the combat feels good, the parkour feels great, and the story actually gets you invested. Damn I miss Crane, I miss Harran. Dying Light 2 is populated by people who you won't care about, with human enemies that feel rank and file and zombies that feel like cardboard. This is another example of why we in the modern day should not pre-order games; we need to wait for release and hold these developers accountable when they release a straight downgrade like Halo Infinite, WWE 2k20, or Dying Light 2.

Although it had a catastrophic launch and countless bugs, I've always championed that Cyberpunk 2077 is a legitimately good game, even with it's problems.

It fills my heart with joy to see it brought back from the dead thanks to the absolutely stellar Cyberpunk Edgerunnners. So many people get to experience Cyberpunk 2077 in a more finished state, whether they were there day 1 or are just starting it for the first time. Welcome to Night City, chooms! I've been waiting for you!

To this day, still my favorite VR experience of all time. Hands down. It might even be one of my top 10 games of all time.

BONEWORKS is a masterclass in VR innovation. Everything a VR game should be. It was clear from playing that the goal of this game was to bring the best parts of every standalone VR experience and bring them into one full game. There have been plenty of games that let you climb, plenty of games with realistic guns, plenty of games with a fully visible body, plenty of games with realistic physics. In BONEWORKS, everything is there and more. The selling point of this game by far is the physics, along with the fact that you (the player) have physics. Gone are the days of being accustomed to phasing through objects, as your hands, head, body, and legs all are physics objects that interact with the world. This means you can use your hands to shove an enemy away or even climb up objects you normally wouldn't be able to grip. Objects feel like they have real weight, combat feels impactful and satisfying, traversing the world is easy and every path is the right path. I could go on and on about how much the gameplay speaks to me, and that's just story mode! I still go back to arena mode and sandbox to this day, my friends are particularly fond of the zombie arena. I will say that this game is best enjoyed using the Valve Index controllers, as it was developed with those in mind.

The story of BONEWORKS is still rather in dispute, as it wasn't clear cut given to us. BONEWORKS chooses to tell its story in the background, while allowing us to focus on gameplay. This does mean, however, that your first playthrough might result in a "Huh?" at the end credits. Actually going through the game and paying close attention to the cutscenes, video messages, and text on the walls that explain an in depth story about a double agent, the dangers of void energy, and a search for immortality, but I won't say much more than that. The story manages to not only stand on its own, but also tie back to SLZ's previous game "Duck Season". Duck Season had a lot of mystery and lore that could not be explained until the community picked apart BONEWORK's lore and explained much of it. I am personally excited to see where the Duck Season/BONEWORKS universe goes next when SLZ releases their next game. Love the games story, but it does lose some points for being super missable on your first playthrough.

In my entire life, I have only bought a soundtrack after playing the game to it twice. The second time was "No Straight Roads" (which is unfortunately not on Steam yet), but the first was BONEWORKS. Michael Wyckoff, who also created the soundtrack for the other SLZ games, Hover Junkers and Duck Season, crushed the soundtrack for BONEWORKS. It oozes industrial synthwave and fits every single part of the game it's included in.

I just adore everything about this game, and it's not even made by a big studio! Stress Level Zero literally only contains less than 40 people and managed to put out a masterpiece. I wish I could nominate it for more than one steam award, because I wanna nominate it for nearly all of them. Am I gushing a little too much? Probably, but for the sake of finality, I will say this. If you own a VR headset and are acclimated to games that use locomotion movement and are not prone to VR sickness, this is a must buy game.

After fully completing the main campaign of Far Cry 5, with its incredible storytelling and addictive gameplay, I had expected this to at least be somewhat salvageable. Unfortunately, this DLC is a total trainwreck. The main story revolves around you saving the planet by going to Mars to re-empower an AI fighting an arachnid race of aliens. Oh, and you play as Nick Rye and your guide is Hurk. Two characters from the main story with less braincells than Boomer's AI around fire. Meaning there is no straightman in this quest, just two morons. Hurk has been ripped apart and turned into just a head, floating around. It's up to you to do the following tasks: Restore control of towers and bases to the AI using power cores, collect power cores from boss Alien Queens, and collect Hurk's scattered body parts. The guns are all replaced with laser weapons (which can be used in the main story for free at anytime, if you like being OP) and you are given access to a jetpack that helps you traverse the sheer cliffs of mars.

If this sounds like fun to you, don't be deceived! What this DLC is, is just fetch quests and "prepper stashes with no reward". Not to mention towers, which myself and my friend compared heavily to the snorefest that was Saints Row IV. The boss battles seemed fun at first, but ended up just being "stay high up and shoot at the queen while it can barely do anything to you". Some queens even have abilities that range from inconveniencing (shutting off your jetpack) to infuriating (overheating your weapons). In a game where every weapon runs off the "lasers don't have ammo, they just have overheat", having your weapon forcibly shut down just because you were hit with a fast moving projectile is extremely annoying. Not to mention only a few guns are actually worth your time in the end. The jetpack was honestly the most entertaining part of the DLC, and it was shut off for us halfway through the campaign in what I assume was a bug, but I can't be sure. I had my music off because I was recording for YouTube, but apparently the Hurk robot blasts rock music and explains his thoughts on it? Sounds pretty rough. Not to mention he's your only choice of follower, so you better love Hurk.

The story isn't silly and fun like Blood Dragon, it's childish and weak. It tries its hardest to remain tethered to the main story by using characters it assumes you care about instead of creating its own characters. Its enemies feel weak, yet its guns also somehow feel weak. The jetpack can be fun as long as it isn't taken away from you. If you want to climb towers, just go play Far Cry 4. I'd even recommend the trainwreck that is Saints Row IV over this. The fetch quests are boring and dumb, I had to stop when I found Hurk's Manboobs. This just reminded me why I never buy DLC for Far Cry: It always disappoints. And apparently this is the best of the three?! Honestly, this made me decide to preorder the standard Far Cry 6 over the season pass included version. Do not buy this because the guns can be used in Far Cry 5 like I did. Just spend your money on anything other than Far Cry 5 DLC. Please.

I've bought every single 2K WWE game to this date. There have been bad ones, yes. But I've never regretted buying one. Never until 2K20. I legitimately think this is the most I've ever regretted purchasing a video game in my life. The glitchy bodies is fine, I've always loved the glitchiness of in-game WWE 2K. But the crashes, the lost data, the broken stuff, the straight up missing stuff, the deleted stuff, the broken cutscenes, the poor model quality, the fact that they sold the game with what is possibly one of the worst playing match types (mixed-tag: it hasn't changed since it was in the game in 2k14, still have to tag out if the other gender is in, making it basically two singles matches) as the ONLY SELLING POINT. If anyone asked me if they should get this game for memes because they saw a funny stair glitch on twitter, I would plead them not to buy. Everything legit bad about this game pushes it way past meme bad and into legit painfully bad. Do not make the same mistake I did. I am definitely going to be more careful when checking out 2K21 after this trainwreck.