Recent reviews by Merfy

A short summary, before it gets cut off.

Pros:
- Gritty, intense moments with good variation dependent on your chosen play style (coop, multiplayer or singleplayer)
- In depth mechanics to cover maintaining the submarine and make each role have purpose
- Great industrial and dark art/sound design which adds to the atmosphere of the game
- Amazing levels of customisation, with a fully fledged submarine and character editor and the ability to modify the exposed electronics and machinery of your sub on the fly
- Multiplayer networking I've never had a problem with, which is always a favoured rarity
- Continuous support and development from the team, keeping the game evolving

Cons
- Occasionally janky character physics which can be frustrating for players with little patience for qwoplike catastrophies
- Occasionally janky wall physics, resulting in the occasional sudden crawler intrusion
- Missions could do with some more variation in length or otherwise fleshing out to add some level of depth to them

As you can tell by the list of pros and cons, I love this game. It has a gritty charm to it which is often unmatched by many titles, and you will routinely find yourself in uncomfortably moist situations. These will challenge the reactions of yourself and your crew, and the chaos that ensues will always keep you on your toes.

I have never tried the traitor mechanic as of yet, but have plenty of experience with the accidental mishaps your regular crew can make to similarly catastrophic effect. Welding tanks in suits, incompetent doctors and born-in-a-barn engineers will create in house aquariums and you will be both frustrated and entertained.

If you are not the type to become upset when you get crushed by 5000m of water simply because your engineer left the airlock door open, I can very much recommend Barotrauma.

In about roughly 11 hours I completed Praey for the Gods at a somewhat leasurely pace. If rushing the main focus point of the game is all you wish to experience then perhaps this is not a game for you.

The sort of people who will enjoy this are those who enjoy getting lost in a different world for a few hours, wandering the cold mountains in search of firewood so you can stop shivering long enough to eat. I loved the little adventures I had whilst attaining each goal the game set out, whether that was a main objective or loot raiding.

In short:

+ Beautiful graphics
+ Awesome feeling fights and epic moments
+ Sensible and responsive feeling controls
+ Little hand holding delivered or required to learn the game
+ Mostly well balanced needs system which rewards prepared players
+ Expansive and relatively well polished map with few areas with nothing in them - even the tops of mountains or otherwise obscure areas

- A little short considering how long/similar bosses are when you actually board them.
- When exploring off the beaten track it feels like the world is missing context and lore to make exploring more interesting and extend your game time
- Some boss fights can become drawn out in ways that punish even prepared players with cold, a mechanic that during a fight they have little control over other than successfully progressing with the enemy. During exploration the mechanic is otherwise balanced.

All in all, worth picking up if you love shadow of the colossus, puzzle games, survival games or just like the look of the big bog off dragon bird.

I have had a lot of fun in Osiris so far, however, I would recommend you hold onto your cash until release. If you're the sort of person who really enjoys the standard update cycle of Early Access games then this may definitely be worth your money now. Whilst the game has a lot of features already in place (and working somewhat well) it's just missing content at the moment.

At the moment I would give it these pros and cons for buying:

Pros:
- Incredible atmosphere. Requiring resources at night is terrifying task, made more so by the real danger of having to go out and mine when it's dark and you can't see scaly animal bastards sneaking up on you.

- Fair build/resources system. Building is expensive but the resources are by no means unachievable, and encourage you to explore and find better ways to claim the resources you need.

- Beautiful. I'm amazed at what they've been able to pull out of Unity's graphics capabilities. In some ways it sets Osiris apart from other obviously Unity games, other than some UI choices.

Cons:
- Combat. It just feels clunky. The pistol is by far a more reliable weapon than the assault rifle, which is needlessly expensive to buy ammo for an insuperior gun. It's innaccurate with the animal movement, does less damage than the pistol, and unlike the pistol requires expensive ammo to be made for it. I could honestly say a lot about how the combat isn't quite how I'd like it to be, but this is trying to be a short list.

- Content. As soon as I was able to manufacture vehicles I realised how small the world feels at the moment. It took away from my sense of awe a little, as at first the feeling of having to plan out the day ahead was great. Not getting shredded in the dark meant you had to think about which resources you'd need carefully, and also where they were and how to get to them. The vehicles upset this balance because they're kind of the end game at the moment. The space ship allows you to cross the entire map in about 20s, which makes it feel tiny when both the G.A.V. and on foot would do the time spent on the world justice. There's not really a lot of alien types, or especially interesting and useful areas that have function at the moment.

- Performance.
Osiris is beautiful, but the sacrifice it made w

When you pay into an early access game you expect it to be finished to the standards advertised. Especially one by a renowned publisher like Double Fine, and for £15.

What looked to me, and to everyone else, as an excellent idea and promising project turned out to be a ridiculous waste of money due to unfinished development and poor excuses.

If you wish to rely on mods to make the game interesting and playable, buy it. If you want a complete game from the start, don't.

Master Reboot is a fantastic mash of beautiful art, intriguing levels and unexpected terror. Been thoroughly enjoying this so far but having to work through in small segments.

If you love exploration games, horror games or both this will be perfect for you. Or just really, really love the Tron-esk neon art style.

The love hate relationship I have with this game is palpable.

The feeling of holding off a massive alien offensive for several turns only to have one of your favourite men, raised almost from a child into the supersoldier of the day, eliminated in a brutal one hit is enough to make grown men cry.

Manly tears were shed playing this, and many more will fall.

It takes genius to make a game this addictive yet this soul destroying. Totally worth a buy.