Recent reviews by Psyche

One of those games that's a free gift to the fans. It's not phenomenal, and it's not in line with any of the usual genres Sonic games occupy, but it's great for what it is.

Good fun, especially with friends although it's possible to find random people to play with if you look around.
Relatively mod-friendly but deceptively demanding on hardware despite simple-looking pixel graphics.
Don't believe the developers when they say it's the "final" update; they'll never let it go and that's (mostly) a good thing.

The base game is a little bit bare but it and the DLC are on sale more often than Valve games and Gmod so the value for money is still there.

As many have described, this game is a little bit like Mario Party but without the minigames and that is a fair at-a-glance comparison, though 100% Orange Juice manages to give both more and less control to the players with regards to inter-player interactions and contests dependent on a random number generator, respectively. You see, while in Mario Party dice are used for movement and not much else, in 100% OJ the will of the die decides nearly everything. For this reason it takes a certain tenacity to put up with unfortunate series of events that would seem impossible at first but the game is happy to make all too real.

Strongly recommended to play with friends, ideally a group of four* though if you enjoy the gameplay or want to grind out the unlockable content the game has to offer the online community is relatively welcoming and you shouldn't have trouble finding strangers to play with.

*Every match will always have exactly four players, with bots filling in or excess players being restricted to spectating as appropriate. Consider the four-pack depending on how many of your friends are also interested in the game but don't have it yet.

I played CS:GO quite a bit. It was generally pretty good. Lots of fun and relatively lenient on low-end PC setups, being playable with my okayish old computer. Competitive was really hard to climb in if you didn't get a good start (as in 'Elo Hell') and/or you didn't have friends to party up with, but I didn't get hung up on it so it was still enjoyable. They added a battle royale mode at the same time as making the game free to play. They also started making purely cosmetic, increasingly graphically intensive changes to the UI and menus and forced you to live with them. At this point they started to lose me. I played a little bit here and there after that but was no longer dedicated. I certainly did not feel drawn back in by gloves or 'agents' as they smelled like predatory practice meant to act as new generations of the knife economy from a mile away.

I've tried out CS2. It feels the same or worse in every aspect. Nothing feels like an improvement. I'm also still confused by why some weapons in my inventory are unusable. The store page clearly says that all items from CS:GO were carried over, and I guess since they're sitting in my inventory not doing anything that's true, but I feel deceived as they are no longer of any value to me. Side note while we're on the topic of the inventory: the filters and sorting suck; it took me over a minute to find the 'graffiti' that I had already opened years ago amongst the sea of 'sealed' graffiti that I didn't want to touch, as there were no filters to differentiate those two item states.

Also, the deletion of the default 'agents' that used to be different based on which map you were playing on has rubbed me the wrong way too. There is now only one default for each team across all maps, and both are faceless, devoid of expression. This is clearly a trick to make the default/stock items in the game as boring as possible in order to make players want premium, costly customisation options.

More than this, they've also gone ahead and removed many game modes. I recall there being arms race (AKA 'gun game'), demolition, flying scoutsman and of course 'danger zone' (battle royale). All of those have disappeared. I've looked pretty hard for them, but they've vanished. The tutorial too. There is no longer an instructional mode showing you how to play the game.
All we're left with is the classic competitive mode, minor variations of the competitive mode and free-for-all deathmatch.

All of the above is sufficient to warrant a negative review, as it feels to me like a net loss of content in the game by every measure; however, what really stings most and makes me wish I could give it two thumbs down instead of one is that all of this is a permanent, terminal transformation of the game it used to be. CS:GO no longer exists in any official capacity. It was by no means a perfect game, but I personally prefer it to husk we've been left with. I have no recourse. I can't go back and play CS:GO except with some backdated patch that lets me use the version of the game before this 'update' hit, but all Valve support appears to have been dropped for that, so it's not really the same at all. It's just a really scummy thing to do. Let me keep the game I paid for nearly a decade ago and play it when I like, don't subject me to this half-hearted attempt to rekindle Counter-Strike's e-sport scene. Also, the consequent absorption of all the Steam store reviews for CS:GO giving CS2 artificial credibility and praise is honestly just horrid. I can see the little 'CS:GO REVIEW' tags, which will probably be a small help to anybody that bothers to read the reviews, but I bet they haven't been excluded from the overall % rating at the top of the page which most users use to judge whether the game is worth getting.

I'm just really disappointed.

My review of CS:GO from 4th July 2019, which was positive:

A great competitive FPS, not intimidating to new players but still challenging to get good at. Certain negative experiences will come with the territory, i.e. try not to solo-queue for competitive matches if you can help it, or you will always run the risk of being matched with teammates that don't speak your language (not as much of an issue on American servers), speak so unpleasantly that you'd rather block them, are griefers throwing the match or worst of all, are a party of four players taking turns abusing you that you can't do anything to counter. So having some friends available to play with (in your region) is strongly advised for competitive, but this is fairly basic.

Outside of competitive mode, there are other official game modes which are alright to hop into for practising your aim and understanding of other game mechanics, and there are also all kinds of community servers: aside from aim maps intended to give you an arena to git gud without pressure, there's also surfing and bunnyhopping, Source engine staples that can be fun and relaxing.

I personally don't like battle royale game modes in general so I can only give a limited review of Danger Zone. I haven't played it since the second map was added and there's nothing making me want to, so I'll just say it's okay; but remember that it is very much a game mode and not a game on its own.

I've never really been into the skin economy but from what I know of it, you'll be alright if you don't care what your weapons look like, or if your preferred aesthetic is camouflage as most low rarity tier skins are basic brown, green or grey patterns while rarer and more expensive items are flashy and boldly coloured. Knives and gloves are wannabe status symbols that don't really indicate much about their owner in practice. This doesn't matter in gameplay anyway. Only gripe I have with this whole system is that what was once a guaranteed free way of gaining a skinned weapon each week is now in a pool of chance with graffiti sprays which are ugly and greatly unappealing to me.

You ever seen a game, and then thought, "boy, I sure wish I could play it for free on PC"? This is your answer. By free I mean the mods are all free. The upfront cost for the game itself is nothing compared to the boundless possibilities it unlocks.

Decent story campaign that manages to be enjoyable if played solo, but the game really shines when played with others. Best played with friends you know, there's heaps of fun to be had but if you don't know anyone else with this game then random online buddies are great too! The replayability is really down to you though because there's a lot that you can do but whether or not you want to do it is the question.

While replayability seems quite forced, most other elements of the game are quite well refined and superbly executed. Could be more immersive, allowing for some more autonomy, though turning the player into somewhat of a passenger rather than the decision-maker is surprisingly effective in a few scenarios.

Oh, but don't play this as your first visual novel if you've never touched them before. Go to Newgrounds or something and skim through one or two just so that you get a feel for the kinds of stereotypes that this one is trying to subvert and play around with, otherwise most of the impact will be lost on you.

An even better incarnation of the original. Challenging yet loads of fun at the same time. If you fancy a biblical rogue-like that takes you on a journey to matricide, then there's no reason not to get this game.

The game was good.

Valve's neglect has left this game in a sorry state that is most unwelcoming to new players. It used to be that this game alone would be the sole reason why droves of users even got Steam in the first place, but nowadays your chances of actually having any fun are slim to none.

The biggest (yet not only) problem with the game at present is bots. Not the legitimate default filler-player kind of bot, but externally controlled bot accounts that ruin the game for everyone.

I find that they can be compared to tumours, since they are much like a cancer.

There are 'benign' bots that sit on menu screens or in their own little servers safely away from any human that is playing the game, however their macro impact on the TF2 economy and sabotage of various minute miscellaneous features like 'giftapult' item drops and the live player count cause long-term deterioration in the game's quality.
There are tens or even hundreds of thousands of these online on any given day, though you'd probably never notice if you weren't looking for them; that doesn't mean they're acceptable.

Then there are the 'malignant' bots who, although far fewer in number, make their impact much more felt due to the fact that they actively disrupt the in-game experience by entering matches in 'casual' mode (the main official mode supported by Valve, which only has VAC that does nothing) and using all kinds of cheats to instantly kill human players, making the game unplayable. 99% of the time this manifests as bots picking the sniper class and abusing his ability to charge up high damage rifle shots that can eliminate practically any opponent in one hit at any range, and of course they are using aimbot hacks in order to instantly kill players with perfect headshots the moment they come into view.
These bots are usually in parties, programmed to support each other. This means that human players cannot even vote to kick them out of the match, because there are too many bots for the 'yes' vote to get a majority. The bots will happily votekick you and all other real players though.
There are thousands of these roaming casual servers as we speak, stalking new prey whose day they can ruin.

This game is free to play, however your account is significantly restricted until you buy something with real money from the in-game shop. Do not under any circumstances spend a single penny on this abandoned project. The developer and publisher of this game does not deserve your money for as long as Team Fortress 2 remains in this pitiful state.