Recent reviews by Pexo

10/10 GOTY

TL;DR; Sifu is an exceptional game that offers a deep and fulfilling experience. An absolute must-buy for fans of action games and/or martial arts. Highly recommend.

The absolute best beat'em'up genre representative.
The combat system obviously is where Sifu truly shines. It's both challenging and rewarding. It demands precision and timing. Every fight just flows, like a dance, where each move counts. The aging mechanic, where your character gets older with each death, adds a unique twist to the gameplay which at this point is just a cherry on top. The absolute best element of the game is actually the combination of four different defenses which compliment each other just perfectly.

The art style is stunning, environments are both beautiful and immersive. The level of detail in each scene complements the game's overall aesthetic, creating an engaging world that feels alive and dynamic. The soundtrack is captivating, enhancing the intensity of fights and the depth of the story. The sound effects of combat are crisp and satisfying, making each punch and kick feel impactful.

The plot is compelling, pretty cliche but cool nevertheless, driven by themes of revenge and mastery.

The (higher) difficulty is be punishing, but never feels unfair. It encourages learning and adapting, prefectly embodying the spirit of martial arts where practice leads to mastery. Beautiful allegory.

And once you are done the campaign there's like a hundred custom arenas' levels from which the final ones REALLY put your skillset to test. Not an easy 100%.

Outstanding gameplay fluidity wrapped in amazing audiovisuals and accompanied by a breathtaking story.

If you happen to be keen on fast paced arcade games make sure to give Katana ZERO a shot.

You can't really recommend this one enough. The absolute benchmark for all and any releases of the genre.

Klei really outdid themselves this time, "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews don't really do this game justice.

The game is pretty much perfect under two conditions:
1. You like to play colony management sims or tycoons in general
2. You are fine with sci-fi/cartoonish setting

Both checked? Aight, then you're all good to go. GL HF. 10/10

Jokes aside - I truly believe that Oxygen Not Included is the greatest representative of all colony management/simulation games out there. A true banner to quality, not over-the-top but deep but meaningful complexity and very good audiovisuals.

Regarding quality - Klei being Klei took care of ensuring that the game is more or less bug free, and that the gameplay loop is simply as fun as possible. You will occasionally encounter small bugs (disappearing HUD while pressing ESC during day save anyone?); all of those are pretty much cosmetic though and at best require you to press two buttons again in order to restore balance to the universe.

Gameplay is not 100% sandboxish, since you get a few directives that you are inclined (but not obliged) to fulfill. That really comes in handy in sandbox games at some point, it lengthens the period of time you are involved into a single playtrough, since once you've established all infrastructure that you aimed for instead of just growing bored and starting another playthrough at best you follow the aforementioned directives.
The most distinct and interesting element of gameplay I've noticed is that every time you overcome some kind of challenge you bump just into another one: finally fixed some oxygen generating system so that your Duplicants can breathe? Well, guess what - you're out of food. Oh fixed that too? Well try power generation for growing colony. Oh you thought that coal generators will cut it? Well, that's too bad, you're out of coal, try to come up with something else and fast. Btw. you're out of algae, so the oxygen is running low, GL. Set up all the basic systems? Cool, all of your Duplicants are sick now though. Fixed them straight? Cool, the temperature of the base is way too high/low now, you better do something about it. Btw, we are out of water in the main tank, think about it, alright? - And it goes on and on and on. It really is lovely.

I'll be brief about the well balanced complexity of the game - there's a big bunch of systems intertwined throughout the game, so you have to think about everything on at least a few levels: gases, liquids, electricity, temperature, physical infrastructure, travel time, germs/safety etc.
I have never encountered any game before that would satisfy my pseudo-scientist-wanabee nerdy soul like Oxygen did, all the materials in the game are characterized by bunch of physical/chemical parameters such as specific heat capacity, melting/evaporation temperatures, density, etc. It's really fun to play with at times.

And last but not least - the audiovisuals: The graphics are in Klei's modus operandi's cartoon-ish style. Characters and animations are simply lovely and cute, also funny at times.

I have only two things to highlight, that bother me personally, although they start being bothersome only after a good while of a playtime:
1. Duplicants have only a few possible looks, meaning once you've played a bunch of games, or simply have a decently long surviving colony you'll find yourself with bunch of... duplicated Duplicants.
2. Some sound effects and/or background music also becomes boring to hear after a while.

I'm guessing both of those issues are extremely simple to overcome with some basic mods though, so still, not all hope lost.

I can't wait for the newest DLC.
10/10, would dig through whole asteroid just to turn crude oil into petroleum without using oil refineries again.
Seriously, if management games are your thing - play this.

Just tragic .-.

What's there left to say? If you haven't played it yet - do so.