Recent reviews by Hungry Nomad

The best survival game I've ever played with a realistic hook and style without being too simulator. Honestly 10/10.

On it's release Team Fortress 2 was the most balanced, original, funny, complex yet approachably deep multiplayer shooter experience ever made. Now it's entirely lost it's identity and lost the perfectly honed weapon and mechanics balance it had back then.
The vast majority of 'players' now are HATEFUL sniper aim-bots which has not only made the game unplayable but made spending money toward unboxing your own rare cosmetics completely worthless, as the players you're playing against aren't human and thus any social feedback on your customisation is completely gone.
The keys are also laughably expensive for what you unbox 99% of the time but that's because the crates aren't for you and me, they're for the whales who will always pay anyway.

For me TF2 was once a place of immense gameplay and social enjoyment. Now it's a strung up, slack jawed shell. It masquerades as the masterpiece it once was, all 9 of the team are still here after all, but really it's one of Valve's most effective traps for preying upon gambling addicts.
Unless something really drastic happens, like Valve starts to put real love and care into TF2 again, to revitalise what once made this game special... Unless that happens:

It really pains me to say it but ... I believe Team Fortress 2 is dead.

If you're new here - please go play something else.
To the rest of us OGs - it's time we turn our backs, shed one last tear, and move on as we remember the game for what it once was.

This game does not deserve to have the Mixed rating. With the patches so far the game feels solid and enjoyable and I'm excited about playing it more and seeing what's to come in the next 4 campaigns since my brother and I are still on the first.
It's current Mixed rating is more a review of the publisher I'd say, since Curve clearly forced the devs to push the game out the door before it got the release polish it needed.

Absolutely unreal levels of quality all over this game and it's so absorbing to play for hours on end.
The more effort you put into looking for the little details and experimenting with the possibilities available, the more the game surprises and rewards you for doing so.
The game is wonderful, amazingly voice acted and the DnD mechanics / dice roll systems work amazingly well. The dice rolls are very satisfying both in and out of combat and due to the nature of DnD dice roll rules, the results of combat are always fair and since the character and event writing is also excellent, the story dice rolls never have contrived, unrealistic events just happening due to a very high or very low roll. Every eventuality on the 1 - 20 scale seems to have been well weighted, well written and believable.
2 weeks with the launch build though and it's apparent the game needs a few patches to complete the general perfection Larian were building toward as they approached final release, but if they approach the patching the same way they approached creating the game, I have no doubt they'll iron out the vast majority. If not, modders will add that final sheen in time.
This isn't a strike against the game though, the game is so huge that a few things just stick out as almost finished, but these things are very few.
All in all I can't recommend this game any more highly. 10/10 and easy to hold up as the guaranteed Game of the Year.

I'm about 1.5 hours into Dusk and the further I progress the more shallow the game feels as Dusk's poor gameplay design choices begin to stand out. The game's item and recovery balancing ruins the harder difficulties due to an easily found exploit allowing slow but free full-health regeneration by using a faucet repeatedly. This not only devalues 1+ health bonuses dropped by enemies but also removes any satisfaction felt by discovering hidden, actually clever ways to restore health like cooking viscera and finding secret health stashes.

For those that enjoy a difficult yet balanced shooter experience, this game isn't for you as the game's hardest difficulty was made difficult without finesse by simply making death 1 hit from any enemy damage source while enemies just become damage sponges. All such "difficulty" does is challenge your strafing skills until you inevitably get hit and become irritated as you either restart or insta-load from your last save. Doesn't sound like much fun does it?

"Well then, play on one of the other 4 difficulty levels!' I hear you say, "Try the next hardest down the list."
Yeah that's logical and you'd think I'd find a happy middle ground of satisfying difficulty but sadly not.
In stark contrast to the hardest, the second hardest is far too easy, going from the aforementioned 1 hit death by any enemy to the starting enemies needing 5 hits to kill you. This generous damage resistance is exasperated by enemies being very easy to kill and I mean without a weapon.
You can throw almost any physics object at an enemy and when struck they instantly explode. How does that makes sense in the game world? It doesn't. Plus if I can make enemies explode with objects doesn't that devalue doing the same with my super shotgun / devalue the damage my weapons do in general? At least the buzz saw makes sense to act as a weapon when thrown; throwing a bar of soap or boxes do not..


Even positives I have to list are marred by at least a downside..
1. The secrets are very well hidden however they sometimes break game logic by simply being hidden behind walkthroughable walls that look solid but aren't, with a misaligned texture being your only clue.
Sure, Doom did it back in the day but that doesn't make it any less ham-handed, especially with 20 years of game design hindsight. Can't you at least make it a hidden switch or logic based specific item interaction, such as cooking viscera as mentioned above?
2. The game runs very well with minimum dropped frames at high refresh rates, so the game/engine is well optimised and the gameplay feels fast if that's your thing. However, the game wants to be played at this full speed though and cracks begin to show in enemy pathing if you slow down your movement. I've had melee enemies get lost on their way over to me and just stand nearby motionless waiting to be shot if you stop moving in a place the AI doesn't agree with.

Final thoughts: I feel that does it in getting my feelings on this game across without playing more and losing the two hour refund window. In summary, I'm disappointed with how formulaic the difficulty implementation is and how "green" the game design feels.