Recent reviews by SlappinFace

I can't believe I'm refunding this, but a few criteria have unfortunately tipped me over the edge.

On the plus side, this game has clearly had tons of love poured into it and if you're looking for a deep and immersive dive into the world of 40k, you're in for a treat. However, it's pretty clear this love has not been poured in evenly.

1 - It's very poorly optimised. No, my PC isn't out of date or built poorly. Reducing some settings even made my frames worse, I hope this will be fixed with time but still.

2 - The combat is enraging at times. You'll find yourself stunlocked with no way to counter, or utterly out of ammo and forced to be blasted again and again by ranged units or flying buff-balls, or with the sheer amount of noise and action on screen you'll miss the small ping and blip of an unblockable attack.

3 - The AI is almost a handicap with how inept they are. Wedged into scenery, walking into walls, fighting the literally most pointless pointless enemy on the stage instead of helping you. For this point and no. 2, it becomes very obvious how painful it is on the Antenna section of chapter 1. Massive onslaughts of bugs, with objectives you can only shoot to complete/defend and strong enemies that fly and buff others. You'll find yourself running low on ammo and unable to defend the objectives and/or kill the buffing enemies, but your teammates will do nothing to focus or target them to help.

4 - The deep customisation shown in videos and screenshots is only available in PvE/online sessions and not in single player games. I'm not sure if I'm missing something with this but all the armour customising and paint adjustments seem to only be available when playing with others online. But even if I've missed something and it is possible, it doesn't matter much because...

5 - The customisation is insanely irritating and uncomfortable to use. To unlock colours and other parts to customise with, you have to use a currency to unlock them. Simple right? Except they're all bundled off in to separate chapters and if you want to unlock something further into the bundle you have to buy all the ones previous to it. You also have to flick through multiple menu screens to preview what's in each bundle which slows the whole process down. It's still very detailed with tons of depth and options to it, but sweet jesus it asks you to tolerate a lot.

So overall I'm sure a lot of people will be fans enough of the genre or happy to overlook parts of this to tolerate the rest, but for me I just can't stomach how the game is currently to keep on going.

I adore this game, it's clearly had love and care poured into it by the developers.

Thank god Sony reversed their decision for requiring PSN, the Devs truly care about their game and the players. They went to bat for us and did a fantastic job!

Easily one of the best designed courses from an aesthetic and gameplay perspective, easy recommendation to buy it!

It's also got some of the most frustrating and most satisfying holes in the games, which is very bad and very good.

TL;DR -

Parents:
Depending on the difficulty, it's either Skyrim & Valheim, or DayZ & Valheim!

Pros:
1 - satisfying and aesthetic building mechanics
2 - great variety and scale with difficulty options
3 - being able to house useful NPCs who perform tasks for you is a great twist on the genre

Cons:
1 - Story quests are almost mandatory to progress effectively and the writing quality is lacking (limited voice acting too)
2 - because of the above quests and early game requirements, there is a lot of running around to begin with
3 - managing and looking after your NPCs is complicated and not explained very clearly

Recommend?:
☐ - Yes
☒ - Almost
☐ - Meh
☐ - needs work
☐ - no way

Worth the money?:
☐ - Could charge even more
☒ - Give or take
☐ - Wait for a sale
☐ - Not even close

In detail -
Let me start off by saying that I'm seriously impressed by this game and the team behind it. For such a small studio to release a game like this without keeping it stuck in early access for ages is impressive enough. What makes it even better is how they still provide regular, meaningful updates and content, with a detailed road map for the future.

But anyway, into the meat of the game!

Medieval Dynasty takes classic survival genre tropes and turns several on their head. Instead of it just being you against the world/animals/zombies, there are established villages around the map with NPCs living and working in them. But they aren't just there to lower your FPS, you can chat and buy things from them and even recruit some of them to come live and work in your growing settlement!

Except you've barely scraped together enough stones and sticks to build your own little shed, so time to get building! The mechanics for this are very straightforward, and unless you've started building in the middle of a very scenic field, (which I definitely didn't do on my first save...) you shouldn't have any trouble cutting down the trees and cracking open the stones needed to start a decent base of operations.

Once you have the empty houses to let new people move in, (no, those empty beds don't count as free space even though that makes perfect logical sense) you can get to work bringing in fresh blood to help do the heavy lifting. And this is where the game truly starts to shine, exactly where most other survival games start to fall flat.

In any other similar game, I would be running around regularly at any stage of the game to still gather the basic resources like logs and sticks, ruining the fun I should be having at being such a badass Bear Grylls. But not in this game, I can just put my lovely new villager to work collecting logs and sticks for me! So long as you keep them fed and watered, (the needs for which can be reduced, increased or turned off completely to suit your own playstyle) they will keep working away to fulfill the quotas of work you've given them.

And this mechanic works for every job, tool or gameplay loop. Running low on food? Switch that woodcutter over to do some hunting, or maybe get them to collect some berries at the herbalists hut. So long as you have unlocked the technology or knowledge to construct that building, (the rate you earn everything in the game can be heavily adjusted to like the needs of villagers and other difficulty options) you can set an NPC to work and do that for you.

Couple all of the above with seasons that actually matter and affect not only the needs of you and your villagers but also the plants you find around the map, abandoned camps and chests of loot that rotate depending on the time of year, building customisation and a hunting system that doesn't make me want to put my head through the monitor, and this is a truly amazing game to play.

If you downright hate survival games, this won't change your mind. What it does do is give the tired genre a shot of adrenaline and present players with a lot of freedom to forge their way in many different directions. Plus with areas of the game like combat and construction being expanded on in the future and the inclusion of co-op at some point, if your love for survival games hasn't died yet, this game will help entertain you.

So, here's the thing.

You're going to see lots of reviews saying the game is broken and unplayable. And that's true to an extent, it's quite buggy at times and the servers are struggling. However, looking back at the series, almost every single has had a bad or bumpy launch. Battlefield 4 almost died on arrival because of how broken it was, needing a whole other studio to chip in and fix it.

I can honestly say, with nearly a decade of playing the Battlefield franchise (not counting Hardline of course), this is some of the most fun I've ever had playing the series. Breakthrough on Kaliedoscope, Renewal or Hourglass is just incredible, with massive maps that feel perfectly in place for the series.

I was playing close quarters in some blown out local shack, holding enemies off the point as I could see further away and spot a tank squad booming in the background to keep them from holding the dunes overlooking the location. The noise and screeching of vehicles grew louder until my HUD started to flicker and my radio bugged out, before I realised the sandstorm tornado that had spawned was right on top of my position. Me and my squad ran for our lives, a few of the slower players swept up and thrown to kingdom come by the approaching wind. Enemy vehicles hoping to swoop in and take the empty point were also taken away, as the tank squad reversed to get away. I climbed the tallest point I could find nearby, jumped off and deployed my wingsuit to slingshot round and get behind the enemy lines. I cut down a squad, before being nuked by a low level with a rocket launcher who then proceeded to detonate themselves with grenade that bounced off his own jeep.

Only in Battlefield.

Straight off the bat, even if you're not a massive fan of the franchise, I would recommend you get this game. But I'll go in to detail now. This is all based on about 4 hours of play, I'm about a third/quarter into the levels of the game and I've hit level 2 in 2 classes

Good:
Gameplay - solid, satisfying, great to get stuck in and squash some bugs. With all the weapons, attachments, perks and more, it's a system that's easy to understand but provides a lot of depth of you really want to master it. The aliens are really intense too, always keeping you on your toes and tense for the next battle.
Audio - Oh my god yes, just so damn yes. From the shrieking and snarling Xenos, to the unnerving and tense soundtrack, this game nails every part of the atmosphere of the movies. Which brings me to...
Graphics - So, here's the thing. Is this a beautiful, gorgeous game? No. The graphics aren't the tightest, the settings aren't exactly exhaustive and it won't blow your socks off. However, the level design, aesthetics and style is perfect once again, really nailing the aesthetics of the series.
Other - The team AI is actually pretty decent, your "guy in the chair" isn't irritating and provides some good callouts to help you manage the alien hordes, and the depth provided by challenge cards and other challenges add replay and variety.

Ok, so now the bad:
Menus - holy crap, I've never loved and hated a menu system like this. It provides a lot of easy access when tuning your loadout or comparing items, but between the pop ups giving details about an item blocking half the screen, right clicking to go back dropping you out of some menus completely, key swaps between menu sections, and being forced into multi step conversation when you visit the armoury, the game doesn't make things easy for you.
Cosmetics - having a lot of options when creating your character is pretty neat, and being able to change that at will is also pretty sick. But so far, the skins and other cosmetic items you can buy are very underwhelming. Actual character cosmetics are very limited, and honestly most look very similar to each other. The higher level weapon skins look really damn good, but most are darker in colour which means those sick decals you unlocked to slap on your gun don't show up well, because most decals are darker in colour too. I hope they add more cosmetics across the board, and please give us a colour editor when placing our decals!
The bugs - of course, this game isn't completely stable. Both myself and my friend who I play with have had our gun sounds disappear completely or weapon effects stop appearing. Normal mob Xenos will sometimes get stuck in walls, or slide along the floor on their side. The interaction objects are very sensitive and will stop progress if you even think about glancing away (this could be an actual coded part of the game, but either way it's still annoying). I've also lost count of how many times the customisations of my gun have been reset when leaving a menu, which is usually an issue with cosmetics and not attachments.

Final say
This game is honestly pretty damn great, awesome fun to play and it seems to have some good legs on it right from release. However, as well as the issues above I mentioned, it will need more modes and other features. We've got horde mode, but please give us Versus or some kind of PvP! It's crying out for an intense competitive community!
Also, give us some stuff to use or have around the base. Right now it's devoid of any real life or personality, it's just some place I sprint through to get to the armoury. Let us collect alien trophies and record our total kills with them, sprinkle other collectibles around the maps, anything like that would inject a little more flair into things.

But yeah, seriously just go buy the damn game already.

This is game provides the quality and depth of a full AAA release, it's honestly incredible. It's one of the few titles that has got free-to-play right, there are options to buy things with real cash but it's quite easy to earn the currency yourself and everything is priced pretty damn accurately. Yes there are items that earn you more credits per match, but those are just 1 skin each for 3 different ships and the amount increase is hardly game-breaking.

The ship combat itself is literally beautiful, huge spacehips swooping through asteroids as they trade blows with the enemy as fighters dart around them and missiles slam into hulls. It's easy to pick up and play, but takes time and effort to master. Every ship of over 30 available responds uniquely and requires different tactics to use and defeat.

It also runs perfectly, with even my outdated laptop able to run it at high/ultra settings with around 30FPS and it looks incredible with the amount of detail put in to the ships. The matchmaking can take a long time to connect to a game but the matches are often balanced and rarely put you against high level players out of reach.

If you like space combat or spaceships, I'd say this is easily a must to download.
If you aren't or haven't tried something like it before, I'd still say to give it a go and try an amazing free-to-play with a great community online. Hell it's free, what do you have to lose?

This is literally one of the most perfect games around. You can easily play it offline with AI or on your own completely, plus the mulitplayer is still thriving to this day.
As my hours on record show, it's very hard to get bored of the game on it's own. But what happens when you grow tired of the vanilla content?
Open the workshop and look through the 23,000+ items available, until you're fighting alongside Deadpool, Master Chief and Harley Quinn as you beat Shrek to death with an ice pick as "Don't Stop Me Now" blares out of your speakers. If you're not entertained by that, you are probably dead inside and need to have your life support switched off.

I've lost over a day of my life to this game, it is arcade perfection. It runs beautifully and looks amazing, with a surprising amount of customisation as well.
The track design is also pure genius, although don't make the mistake of thinking this is for kids!
Several events had me swearing hard enough to kill an entire chapel of nuns...

You can soak enemies in piss and flash your smiley face crotch

10/10