Recent reviews by Shatari

This is a very soft recommend, because the game is honestly terrible, but it's also kind of enjoyably bad. This really feels like a game where the dev team had never seen a zombie game or movie before, but the execs saw how well Left4Dead was doing and demanded a clone. Then they saw Borderlands and demanded the loot system be added. They they saw how World of Warcraft was doing, and demanded that it be a MMO. Then they got cold feet, cut the MMO part (but left in the foundations for the combat system). Then they ran out of budget and kicked the game out. Then it was a vague success despite all this, and they remastered it (ie fixed some bugs and resold the game all over again). It's bad, but you can feel that the overworked dev team really did try.

Pros:

• Act 1 and Act 2 look and sound awesome! The level design is really good, the sound is usually pretty good (there's a few misplaced sound effects such as a roaring fire when there's nothing nearby and the like), and it really feels like a tropical resort with a slum nearby. A+ on the map makers for the first few hours of the gameplay.
  
• Multiplayer is probably really fun. If you can't be the same characters then you probably only want two players, because there's only two fun skill trees (melee blades and melee clubs)
  
• The skill trees are quite varied, which makes multiple playthroughs interesting (even if the gun character is worthless due limited ammo and all of the guns have a massive damage debuff on zombies and the throwing character being a complete joke without mods). Xian Mei also has a skill that decreases agro, which is perfect for a more relaxed experience.

Cons:

• I'll be blunt: The story absolutely sucks. It was kind of good, but you feel the point during Act 2 where the time crunch kicked in, and they had to cut massive chunks of the story out while rushing the rest of the game. The problem is that they forgot to actually remove references to the cut content, so there's lots of references to characters that don't exist, characters who change names multiple times because they merged multiple characters into one and forgot to fix that in post, and at least one character who dies and then comes right back to life so that he can die again immediately after (likely due to merging characters to trim the script). And the end of the game, with zero fanfare, the player characters just leave. No attempts to help any of their friends left behind, no cares about the civilians the military is preparing to kill, nothing. They just leave.
  
• They also cut all of the child characters from the game due to a massive "think of the children" backlash they had after the original (awesome) trailer they had, but then didn't remove the characters or their dialogues. This results in several characters talking way too young for the 30-40 something that their model and voice actors are. The game also has one of these side characters get raped, which is both grody and really badly handled. If you want to have a "bad guys raped a teenager to prove that they are bad" as a plot hook, don't. But if you do, don't treat it as an afterthought
  
• Amongst the cut content are two levels I really looked forward to. They were hyped up as major plot points and challenges, things that would have really helped the stumbling plot breathe a bit so that you could enjoy the scenery: The rich part of the city, and fighting your way to the roof of the resort. Both get cut outright, and cutscened away. It sucks, it ruins all the buildup, and to fill the loss of the rich city part they just make you backtrack through the boring sewer levels. Plural. Because one bad sewer level wasn't enough.
  
• This is a "difficulty is more HP on the enemies" game, and enemies scale with your level. Skills don't really make up for this, so the more you level the weaker you get against all enemies. Big boss monsters are also sprinkled around without rhyme or reason, too, so they're best treated as environmental obstacles to be avoided if possible. Boss monsters also don't drop any extra loot, so they're a waste of resources to fight unless you're forced to.
  
• Too many escort quests. The AI in these are completely braindead, and will blindly run ahead to get themselves eaten while you're trying to deal with the ones chasing you.
  
• The level design from Act 3 onward is really bad. Jungles with see-through rocks, trees randomly dotted around (often floating because of it), a gatherable item quest for mushrooms (I think) that is so low textured that it just looks like a white smear on the ground, and a prison that is just a bunch of windowless corridors to end the game. The laboratory map was okay, but also kind of a weird story beat because we were told it's where the zombies came from, but then it wasn't? There's nothing to imply is was, at any rate. They built up the idea of it being an evil bioweapon lab, and it seems to be just a cosmetic testing site that was just repurposed for the sake of finding a cure. If they were doing bioweapon research on the side then they definitely weren't worried about security, functionality, or safety.
  
• Throughout the entire game there is a warning of an impending monsoon. The NPCs talk about it constantly, and it's going to be a disaster if it hits before you get off the island. Multiple days are implied to have passed (maybe even weeks, if some of the NPCs are to be believed), and yet...no monsoon. Not even on the last level. In fact, come about Act 3 they seem to forget about it outright. Chekhov's monsoon never comes up.
  
• The bloom. Okay, I played the original and stopped playing because the bloom was so over the top, so the definitive edition isn't as bad. It's been toned down by at least 3 firey suns, so it's definitely an improvement, but sometimes it flairs up and gets way too bright. This is most notable in when driving the big bank truck, and right after it rains in the slums. It's pretty minor, but it's annoying when it happens.
  
• Sometimes the game likes to have you force open doors directly into unavoidable damage or instant death enemies. Coming out of the "bash door down" animation leaves you wide open for easy damage. It will also occasionally do this during loading screens, especially when you're leaving the sewers.

As far as point and click adventure games go, this one is very easy, but also perfect for younger children. It's very short, but also fairly cheap (especially on sale). There's two main quests, and then a short side story that you unlock afterwards. All three have decent animations, the story wraps up well, and none of the puzzles are too obtuse (plus you can skip any that give you trouble, if that does happen). My niece loved it, and I enjoyed playing it with her.

I wanted to like this game. I like chill walking simulator horror games, but this one really didn't click with me mostly because it's a low effort game of unity assets thrown together in a "spoopy" way.

The first problem I had was the walking speed. You character is missing a leg, and this is portrayed with a glacial walking speed. Even your "fast walk" speed is so slow that it hurts. This is a problem, because you need to scour every square inch of a room to find the "spoopy" trigger before you're allowed to leave them, so doing laps while looking for anything you can click on is kind of miserable.

The second major irritation is the sound effect for walking. It plays on a loop, and it plays even if you're stuck moonwalking on an invisible wall. That happens a lot, so you're be staying still while listening to the endless step-ka-thump noise over and over again.

Next up, the darkness. I saw in the settings that there's a flashlight button, so I initially held off on exploring because it was too dark to see anything using the recommended brightness settings. Don't do that, you don't get a flashlight in the base game. If you want to see anything, crank up the brightness from the beginning because you can't save your progress outside of the automatic chapter saves, and you can't change any setting changes without restarting.

And what is there to see? Jump scares! Lots of them! If your head is in the right direction. I won't lie, there are so many jump scares that you'll miss at least half of them. Even with two playthroughs, I'm still not sure what most of them were supposed to be. The music would scream, I wouldn't see anything, and nothing changed regardless. If you find dolls and black goo scary, though, then you might find something to like here.

Choices vaguely matter, but there's only three endings and one of them is a "You suck, try again" ending. The "bad" ending won't be gotten naturally, because it requires you to not look at or interact with specific items, which you'll only know about if you look up a guide on what to avoid. I got the "good" ending, though, by deliberately walking towards the things trying to kill me, looking at everything I could, and spitefully ignoring anything telling me what to do. Personally, I found all three endings to be predictable and kind of boring, just like the gameplay.

All told, I found this to be a really boring, slow game with no payout. I'm hoping the DLC is better, but for $20 I'd expect something more than a bunch illogically connected corridors with some random Unity store assets jammed into them. I got it for a lot less in a bundle, but I personally think you could find an indie title on itch(dot)io that has a lot more heart and soul for a fraction of the price.

It used to be pretty good, but the recent changes have kind of been a bait and a switch. The latest patch has made it a completely different game, and I wish I could refund my Town Deed purchase. I'm going to recommend people not pay money for this game, and just enjoy the free to play version, because the devs can and will completely recreate the entire game without warning, and you probably won't like the changes.

It's a fun game, but it does suffer some bugs and some random drop off in quality on some puzzles. Simply put, some of them are really poorly thought out, either because they don't give a clue about what you're intended to do or because the controls are really bad (the driving mini-game is the worst offender). Fortunately, any puzzle that isn't fun can be skipped without any penalty, so both of these problems are very minor. The bugs are more of a problem, since any physics based puzzle can "jam" itself. If you're completely stuck on one and you know you're doing it right, your only options are completely redoing the entire puzzle from scratch to reset it, or skipping it.

Storywise, the game is kind of weak. It's a bunch of door themed puzzled sort of cludged together to tell a story, but all three chapters are very lacking. The final chapter actually feels like the two endings have their notes mixed up, which is awkward. This is also very unimportant to the game, because while the stories are lackluster, they're also very short and unimportant to the puzzles.

All told, it's fun for the puzzles, the music, and the visuals. It doesn't always work, but when it does it's a lot of fun and I genuinely recommend it.

The combat in this game is kind of miserable. It takes forever to dodge, the character doesn't always move or attack in the direction you're aiming in, enemies can't be staggered, you are always staggered upon being hit, and the enemies have priority if you both hit each other at the same time, meaning you will be staggered and deal no damage to them. It's not hard because you can farm a ton of bullets and cheese your way through the combat, but it's tedious and boring to do that.

It's a pity, because the setting, graphics, and story are all great, it's just the mechanics that drag it down (deliberately so, according to the devs on the Steam forum). It turns a fun hack and slash into a slow grind-o-thon and causes everything to screech to a halt. I've actually just downloaded a cheat program just so I can enjoy the game without the game stopping me from enjoying it, which makes it hard to recommend.

It okay, but this is a lot buggier than the original release, mostly in monsters being trapped moonwalking in place. They removed things like the Swastikas to avoid controversy (heaven forbid demons do anything Nazi-like), which doesn't really bug me but it does make the dramatic reveals hollow since there's nothing to reveal now. They also replaced the red cross with a neon green cross on all of the medical kits, which is really ugly and probably should have been handled better.

The new music is okay, but it's really "ACTION PACKED, BALLS TO THE WALL, ROCK AND ROLL!!!", which would work really well in a lot of modern fan levels, but the original Doom (especially Doom 1) was a lot slower paced and head dead spots in the action where you're either stuck key hunting, trying to remember where the doors/switches you need are, or you're just having to backtrack. The over the top music doesn't work when that's going on.

Finally, the engine itself feels a bit off from what I'm used to, with everything seeming a little more floaty and sluggish to respond. I chalk that up to the fact that I normally play GZDoom, which is an infinitely better engine. This one is nice enough for a bit of nostalgia, but the lack of mouse look, poor mod support, and lack of responsiveness is a little off putting. This does have split screen, though, and it's nice to be able to play it with my niece.

I do recommend buying this just so that you can import the .wad files into GZDoom and play it there, since even with the cosmetic alterations these are classic games well worth your time.

This is honestly the worst port of a beloved classic I've ever played. Just find a copy of the original and play it via Dosbox.

It has so much potential, and realized none of it. It was actually a lot of fun with mods. Unfortunately, the dev team had no idea how to actually realize any of their ideas, they hard coded a lot of limitations into the game, and then tried desperately to sell the game to a third party. When the sale fell through, the devs dropped it like a hot potato and the modders followed shortly afterwards. There isn't a game on the market that scratches the itch this game did, but this one isn't worth your money even on a sale.

Historical fact: This game is one of the reasons the 'Early access' concept was introduced to Steam, because everyone was so disappointed when they abandoned it that it actually made waves. That's actually kind of impressive, in a "Well, I wasted money" kind of way.

I play this with 199 active mods (and the list keeps growing), and no DLC (yet). Despite having only the modded base game, it's amazing fun and easily the best $35 I've ever bought. I highly recommend it if you're a budget gamer looking to maximize the bang for your buck. You can drastically change the nature of the game with just a few mods, from a primitive society born from a crashed starship long ago (my preferred start), to a space western, to an outright high fantasy game with magic and artifact weapons, to a Lovecraftian nightmare, and many more, often with the ability to mix and match as you see fit. You don't get to just play Rimword, you get to play your Rimworld.