Recent reviews by Dipity

I'd put it down for years, and on coming back to it I have...legitimately no idea how they managed to make the experience so bad? Legitimately baffling. Why is it that if I click, every single one of my monitors blinks and flickers for a solid minute? Why does it hitch every time I die? Why is it that it can never know what inputs to show when I'm using a controller? Why did it just blank my entire screen and mute me in discord when it started? I don't remember any of these issues before. Fun, I guess. But I'd rather not jump through hoops just to play a game for a few minutes and get mobbed by hackers.

Look. If you buy it expecting it to be "Elden Ring but with Friends" you're going to be disappointed. It's fast--you have little no control over your stats, the characters are set in stone with their own specific abilities, the bosses are HARD, and Solo play is rough. Some characters feel vastly better suited for specific tasks, and that's the point--it's a roguelike. You need to experiment. You might be able to one-trick your way through like most souls games, but like those, it'll be a long, miserable slog. Even with a perfect weapon loadout, you can get your run ended in a snap due to bad luck.

A lot of people recoil at the idea of a closing circle. I get it. I was put off by it as well. The idea of running around, looting, and getting random drops screams "fortnite!" at the top of its lungs. The rain closing in and damaging you as you get caught in it, the revival mechanics, they're all incredibly different from the core souls mechanics we're used to seeing; no immediate "YOU DIED" and a fade to black before returning to a nearby grace, but a downed state where you wait for friends to revive you.

Which leads me to another point; I don't think this is a game that will work well with randoms. I just don't; 8 hours of playing with my friends so far, and there's a decent level of coordination that's needed in some cases to succeed, coordination you can't get with a stranger and limited communication, which I'm sure would be a frustrating experience for many people who hate the idea of playing it solo, but can't manage to get a second or third.

It isn't without fault; but I think, if you're a fan of FromSoft, and Elden Ring, it's absolutely worth taking a gamble on a new director who's trying something the company has never done before. Give it a fair shake; I think most people interested will find something to enjoy out of it, if they can separate it from the stigma of "being vaguely like fortnite because there's a circle in it".

Is it weird to say it makes me want to cry? Takes me back 19 years to a time when I was just about to turn ten years old, sitting on a sofa with my dog during a hot summer while my parents were at work, no xbox live, a barely functional AC, and one of the greatest RPG's Bethesda's ever put out to keep me company. So much is similar, even down to the control scheme. It's like looking back on something with rose tinted glasses, except now it actually looks as good as my little kid brain thought it did all those years ago.

Would highly recommend. Can't wait to experience it all over again.
Do yourself a favor though--don't play it with a guide open. Just experience it all. I promise it's worth it.

Legitimately one of the best RPG's I've ever played in my entire life.

If you're buying it based on reviews saying that it's like older CoD games, and that round based zombies is like older CoD games, save yourself the time and don't buy it. It's not similar in any meaningful way.

The Good:
The movement was tight. The Omni movement system feels great, and has a plethora of accessibility options to make it even easier for folks to get into it.

The gun sound design from what I got to play with, which wasn't much, was still on point. It was crisp, and felt good to listen to.

Visually--my last CoD was BO3, so it looks better than that. Thumbs up.

The Bad:

The tutorial tries really hard to be cool. ♥♥♥♥ is said an honestly ridiculous amount of times, like a Hazbin hotel episode. The voice acting as well felt even more wooden than typical CoD.

While guns felt quick and snappy, I had to turn aim assist off entirely on controller--it's so insanely strong by default, I was missing in the tutorial due to it jerking my aim around.

For some reason, crosshair, ammo, and grenade count was set as off by default. I thought I was just losing my mind when I played zombies, but nope--I had to turn it on. Weird choice.

Stick deadzone as well is pretty high by default. I had to adjust that down so my inputs didn't feel as slow.

The guns felt like they were doing very little. The choice to make headshots do only a little bit more damage than a bodyshot feels incredibly odd. My understanding is this was done to curb flinching exploits (I don't know what these are), but it seems like a total misfire.

Zombies, as a solo experience, wasn't great. I only played one match on Liberty Falls, and I constantly felt out of place. Maybe it's because I've never enjoyed Warzone or any game with an armor plate system, but it felt like five layers of tedium had been added onto a mode that was already tedious at times, but in a way that was at least fun before. But the hordes around wave 11 were untenable--I guess I'd needed to upgrade my armor and weapons more by then, but I'm really not sure how I was supposed to, between buying perks, and running out of ammo constantly due to having to take down Manglers (Who I honestly just saw as Panzers with bonus shrieker abilities, which isn't that fun).

The Ugly:

I launched the game at 10:32PM. It finished caching shaders at 11:15PM.

The tutorial initially didn't work, at all--not playing the opening scene with Woods, and instead having a black screen. This is a bug I recall from older CoD games, and it's weird to see it rear it's ugly head again. It took multiple retries to get it to work.

Menu lag--It's horrible. I was often stuck with 5-6 second delays between menu transitions, as well as "waiting for relay" popping up constantly, which added another 10-15 seconds of waiting, just to get around. I suspect that it has to do with the glut of animations they felt like every screen needed to have, but it was making me want to pull my head out.

Speaking of lag--despite meeting the recommended specs and playing on low, I had a few odd moments of the game stuttering badly. It was mostly in menus, like above--but the end game animation of Zombies didn't start at first, then sped through itself--the rewards screen for my level ups came and went so quickly I didn't actually get to see what I'd unlocked, before it oddly jittered and I guess read my inputs as me wanting to stare at the battlepass screen again.

On the matter of battlepasses--I'm just sort of exhausted. I think I saw 3 ads for some purchasable pack or pass before my shader cache had even hit 10%. It also sports the classic tactic of making you buy more currency than you need for packs (For example, if a pack costs 3000 points, you'd either need to spend $30 in $5+tax increments to get the points, or spend $10 on an 1100 point pack, then $20 on a 2400 point pack, which would leave you with 500 leftover--nothing costs 500 points, at least from what I could see under the menu lag, so you'd be inclined to spend more money again, so you're not left staring at 500 points you can't spend on anything cool)

All in all, Black Ops 6 is a game with solid movement, alright visuals, and...that's about it.

Internet got you down? Social media on fire? World going down the drain?

Go fishing. Turn off your brain, and let yourself breathe for a minute.

Highly recommend.

Where do I even start?

Amber Isle is the epitome of a fun, cozy little game, oozing with charm from every step along the way. I've played a lot of games try to be 'cozy', or 'quaint', where it often feels like they're just checking off boxes on a list like an OrbCorp manager, but Amber Isle stands out on its own as a unique experience.

To start--the Paleofolk are adorable. I understand players were humans until a certain point in development, but being a Dinosaur out to earn your Saurname fits much better in my opinion. The variety that's possible via the character creator is great, well equipping you to craft the perfect dinosaur that's uniquely you--with the ONLY minor gripe being moments of minor clipping on clothes, and sometimes eyeballs. But considering it's a small team, that's incredibly active in their own community, I don't see these as anything that'll be around forever. Genuinely, they rock.

Next up, the areas--while Amber Isle does follow the typical "different types of wood from different forests" tropes like other crafting centric games, from Spearfield Swamp to Snowdance, I found myself enjoying the varied environments and all the little ways I could spruce them up. Additionally, they don't "feel" like places from other games--again, Amber Isle stands out uniquely on its own.

Then, the characters. Man. Despite there being a huge amount of Paleofolk on the island, I found something to love, cherish, and relate to with EACH and EVERY ONE, which is SUPER impressive. The interactions don't need to be deep as an ocean to have a lasting impact on me, and it's obvious there was immense care put into every one. I genuinely can't think of a single quest or interaction that left me thinking "Ah, this is lame."On top of that, their designs, UGH--they're all so good. I think so far, I'm a big fan of Poppy--but I'm a sucker for a cute T-Rex, so maybe that's just me.

Regardless,

If you're looking for a cute, fun game, that's easy to pick up, learn, and offers an enjoyable, cozy, and cute little story, I would highly recommend this game.

Tentatively going to recommend this game, however, I'll add it needs work. I can see the potential, and the world is lovely. It's just not there yet for me. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on it going forward. Don't go into it with the expectation that it'll feel like every other RTS game. There's some similarities, but it's definitely far from the same.

The Blackgaol knight? Really? That's who's wrecking folks?

Lacks the AI generated tag despite the CEO of the company openly stating they use AI generated content in house constantly. The dev also owns a crypto company called Coincheck, and supports NFTs. Devs also don't present any concept art of the pals, which likely means it was AI generated.

I don't care about gamefreak either, but this is beyond just ripping off pokemon.