Recent reviews by Erusaert

Scum of the earth publisher, but hey, at the very least my good friend DLC unlcker has my back in such troubled times. You can stuff your subscription up your ass.

I have never been more disappointed by a game's introductory sequence than I was with this. I saw the "Puzzle" tag, but the screenshots and description all set up a more horror themed, exploration heavy game with some light action sprinkled in and a puzzle here and there.

What I got was confusion that lead into overwhelming frustration at one of the most beginner unfriendly opening puzzles of any game I've ever played before in the form of a crane puzzle. Over 30 minutes later from first sitting down at it I finally cracked and decided to open up youtube to find the solution, only to realize that I pretty much needed to reload my save and begin again to un-♥♥♥♥ my situation.

That simple act of reloading was the straw that broke the camel's back and made me realize, "I've never had to reload because the first puzzle of a game was this terrible before. I think I've seen enough and want my money back." which is beyond disappointing. I remember the near decade of wondering if this game would ever come out after the first reveals, and after this? I wish it hadn't. Even on sale I don't feel particularly grand having to resort to google because I'm not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ brain dead ape that does sliding block puzzles for fun in my spare time. I wish I could have seen the rest of the game, but genuinely ♥♥♥♥ this.

I pray whoever said "Yeah, that needs to be the first puzzle players interact with." falls down the stairs.

Would prefer to give a neutral review, but in lieu of that I'm content enough to give it a good ol' internet updoot, though it comes with a series of large buts.

- Being mascot horror inherently brings with it the apprehension that a promising start will turn into a soulless cash grab as time goes on, squandering potential before it's left the crib. The time that's past since chapter 1's release and now with no clear sign of chapter 2 at least offers a modicum of confidence, I will concede.

- Optimization isn't everything it could be. I'm out here running the latest games on the highest settings at 100+ FPS, but this game dipped into the 50s in areas for reasons that are beyond my comprehension. It was honestly kind of nauseating, especially when combined with the lack of an FoV slider which should be the bare minimum for settings.

- The game's got charm aplenty, and no one scene overstays its welcome, though some don't enjoy ENOUGH time to stew and contribute to the overall experience. It's a bit of a barebones experience, and I'm hoping that future efforts will shift to a paid model to further support the love that this game very much needed and lacks and which future chapters would benefit greatly from.

- Level design is extremely uninspired. Vanta black tunnels that absorb every tiny bit of light that you've ever witnessed in your life, the same copy pasted, tedious rock piles blocking every path that isn't mandatory or an extremely unnatural looking side shop with unintuitive interior layout and a lack of varied props to make the world feel alive.

- Invisible walls are almost as plentiful as the personality, and similar can be said for randomly floating props, atrocious clipping, inexplicable texture disappearance that I presume was SUPPOSED to be hidden, but very much isn't. Maybe I just explored the environment too closely and was supposed to hurry through, but I stared down quite a few things that looked like they belonged in an early beta as opposed to a public release. Still wondering why in the main plaza prior to the theatre there are just two random giant, solid blocks pretending to be buildings. Neither bears any windows or other details, but instead just... exist? Presumably to sell the illusion of the park being bigger than it is? But the park is absolutely tiny. It's impossible to miss that detail, and the attempts to mask that only further worsen it.

- Molly was killed off a bit abruptly and unceremoniously when she still had so much room for future presentation and ample room to explore her "character" and figure out a bit more about her, but Rambley gave her the French monarch treatment rather abruptly. I'd have much preferred to see her simply be blocked from further pursuit to be reintroduced at a later date, regardless of whether we dispatch her then or not. I do hope that's merely a fake out and that we'll see her again.

- Tension, while built quite effectively, is very INEFFECTIVELY managed over the long-term. Each set piece was rather textbook and obvious to read, so stress developed from confrontations will, depending on the person, either sit and bubble up to an uncomfortable level and stay there right up until the climax, or rise briefly and immediately collapse once the pattern has been established, only to never find the strength to pick itself back up again before the bird gets chopped in half. I found more discomfort from the tight spaces of Molly's chase area due to claustrophobia than I did from anything else, as she was very clearly never going to be a threat until a very blatant chase sequence that you aren't meant to lose without intentionally letting her kill you (which I did, and I will say: Bravo on the death screen. It's beautiful) for one reason or another.

- You get to pet a pretty cool cat. :)

- The credits song is actually extremely endearing, and was a welcome surprise.

Overall I'm looking forward to chapter 2 and hope that it's given more love and care than chapter 1 was given, but time will tell.

Genuinely one of the least pleasant experiences I've ever had the misfortune of "enjoying". I decided to try it out because I heard they did a lot of good work to improve it, and good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LORD was that a bold faced lie.

Teleporting, brain dead AI, piss poor LoD control and overall texture quality, optimization out of the early 2000s, awkward level design and a save system I'd expect out of an arcade machine back in the 80s rather than a modern day video game. Enemy spam with 0 truly pleasant interactions alone make this a regret purchase, and yet I carry on out of some sense of self hatred and wanting to know what I'm getting into when playing Ruin - something that I've also heard good things about. Can't wait to be horrifically disappointed (and frustrated) by that too.

Edit following Ruin attempts:
Ruin is somehow even more uninspired, lazy and boring than the base game and almost make me miss the gameplay of Security Breach, if solely because at least in SB I got to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DO SOMETHING that wasn't the same recylced slop. When I first saw the security system in Ruin I joking said to myself, "Gee, I can't wait to do that 40 times in the next 20 minutes." and I was horrified to come to see that my joke was quite literally a perfect representation of the gameplay. I'm done. I trudged through SB hoping I'd enjoy Ruin, but I hate Ruin even more.

I say once more: I would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ EMBARRASSED to have worked on this project, and I genuinely hope every soul that touched this professionally never works again after the team inevitably collapses.

The foundation... is actually pretty bad and shockingly minimalistic, probably to be able to sell the solution to that problem with overpriced DLC.
The game as a whole with all the DLC is decently fun.
Mods are, in most cases, significantly higher quality and more fun than the official content Paradox tries to sell for absurd amounts of money.
It's PDX, and their anti-consumer practices are disgusting. There's plenty of mods available that don't NEED DLC, so look around for those before purchasing, and see if you can get away with just the base game.
Alternatively: Turn to the seas and partake in legendary piracy. Paradox don't deserve your money either way.

A logical, fun and respectfully handled evolution of the typical Funcom survival formula to explore the Dune IP in a manner precisely as satisfying as anyone familiar with the dev team could hope for. I didn't quite expect a desert to be something I look at and say to myself, "Yeah, this is nicely varied and looks surprisingly good." to, nor did I fully feel comfortable imagining how well Dune might translate to Funcom's usual game design philosophy and overall game feel.

It's approachable to those new to the open world survival genre, appropriately punishing for those who don't respect the world and the dangers it offers without ever feeling unfair or outwardly hostile towards the player. You don't need to spend an hour scrounging for stone and wood to ♥♥♥♥ out the most elaborate base you've ever seen just to protect a modicum of loot, and you can comfortably go and actually explore the world and better yet SLEEP without fear of your hard work being wiped in your absence by a terminally online zerg squad.
On the other hand, some may feel it's perhaps a bit too easy to gather materials for how little one may have to worry about building if they haven't played a Funcom game previously, given the lack of PvP elements in the main open world, leaving base design largely an aesthetic choise for personal satisfaction more than a mandatory thing everyone must become intimately familiar with. You can build yourself a palace to retreat into after some exploration and looting and a grand internal vault to hide your most treasured loot in, or you can build a 3x3x3 and call it a day. Both options are valid.

My biggest complaint is likely going to boil down to another staple of Funcom design: The combat's not that amazing. Guns don't feel responsive whatsoever. You click, they go bang, you get a hit indicator, but it in no way, shape or form actually feels like you just shot someone. Melee combat is a bit floaty and your weapons sort of just go through people, typically being fully capable of stunlocking non-shielded AI enemies with even the most basic pacing of your M1s. The enjoyment of combat against NPCs really boils down to the fun you make for yourself, unfortunately. You can just run at them and put them down in one swift motion, feeling nothing and typically gaining little for your effort, or you can intentionally slow down to try and add style to your engagements just so you feel something when you're fighting something that isn't a player. I do wish they made combat feel more impactful, but I still am loving the game regardless.

Overall it's pretty much exactly what I expected it'd be, given the devs track record and the IP we're all exploring together. I'm very happy with my purchase, I'd probably even say I'd buy it again if not for the fact I've already purchased the ultimate edition for one of my homies and am now in crippling debt. Please send any unwanted organs to my home address at -

Brother. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blinked, decided I was going to go eat, checked how long I played out of curiosity and discovered that I spent 12 continuous hours, only broken up by bathroom breaks, no lifing this. This ♥♥♥♥'s cursed. There ain't no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way. Stay away, y'all, this ♥♥♥♥ doesn't let you go once it has you.

Super fun little game with a lot of personality and a great foundation for the devs to build up from. In its current state I'd probably say wait for a 10-15% sale if you want to be particularly tight with the grip you keep on your wallet, but for the money asked there's great replay value, plenty of weapons and movement abilities to play with and lots of challenges to take on. I'm quite keen on seeing how the game continues to develop and expand as time goes on, and hope to see more soon with the devs seemingly quite focused on frequent updates.

Biggest complaints for now would be different ink (class) balancing as some just don't feel great to use, weapon and movement balancing because again: Some things just feel terrible (Looking at you, Em-Dash. Even with upgrades you're almost always worse than every other movement ability.) to use in regular play, and finally: Enemy variety is a bit lacking as of now and I would absolutely adore seeing even just more models to round out the roster of faceless nerds to dunk on.

Solid game though, and it's safe to say I'm very eager to eventually try it out with friends to see how it fares multiplayer as opposed to running it solo. Love the game, love the devs, if they release a "Supporter pack" DLC I'll probably buy it in a heartbeat, because I'm 100% okay with being stuffed under their desks. :flushed:

It's a solid enough foundation for a game, but it is very painfully clearly an EA title as of the time of writing this. You'll have seen everything the game has to offer roughly within 2-3 hours, depending on how slowly you actually move and if you have to do any early resets.

- The game's got fairly poor difficulty scaling. It's one of the easiest games I've ever played until an unclear threshold is crossed where suddenly destroying a single piece of valuable loot seemingly makes it impossible to find enough to throw together to progress.
- The enemies are, generally speaking, completely trivial and at most mild irritants in your relentless march towards progress. The worst case scenario will be an enemy deciding to patrol back and forth in a room with a lot of loot and your cart, but even then all you have to do is send one friend out to yell at it and draw aggro before leading it away. Death is almost universally a skill issue outside of friendly fire shenanigans. It's frankly just boring, and the AI needs a lot of work to become anything more than the tiniest speedbump of annoyance.
- The devs are more focused on adding in frankly unnecessary features (Overcharge) instead of hard leaning into adding more content and saving things like overcharge for later down the line when there's more of a game to support a long-term playerbase. Note that that isn't a criticism of overcharge itself, but rather the point at which it's being implemented when the game is woefully lacking in the content department.
- The gameplay loop is exhaustingly samey and relies an unhealthy amount on you having funny friends. Solo play or going through LFG channels and trusting randoms is about as fun as watching paint dry. If you don't have friends you're kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥, because there is nothing about this game that holds up after the first couple hours (at most).
- The price isn't bad for the amount of content offered! I'd still probably wait for it to go on sale or go through a third-party key marketplace if I could go back in time, but that's me.

Steam really has to add a "Meh" option. The demo is the definition of "perfectly fine" and does not stray from that even slightly. Nothing is particularly good, but nothing is bad, and that makes it damn hard to decide whether or not to give it an up or down.

- The humour, or attempts at it anyway, are pretty damn bad. I ended up muting it after 3 minutes because of the mission control cockroach not shutting the ♥♥♥♥ up as I tried to examine the weapons and decide what I want to use. He's not funny. He's obnoxious.
- The guns feel pretty good to use, and enemies take a good amount of damage to take down, showing along the way any damage that you do. It's good feedback, and chipping away at shells feels satisfying. The mandatory switching of weapons in order to replenish supplies is also extremely cool, and I love that you have to mix up your gameplay like that.
- The classes are fine. Not good, not bad. They don't really feel different enough for me to give a ♥♥♥♥ about who it is I'm playing.
- Movement feels... wrong? You physically can't outrun even basic mobs without using movement abilities, and that feels absolutely horrid, but it still feels like you're moving at a tolerable pace. I'd like to at least -slowly- gain distance when sprinting away from enemies, but as is, unless there's something wrong with my game, you can't.
- The world is perhaps a bit too big for what it is you're being asked to do, and that leaves me unsure of if I should be exploring to find extra goodies or not.
- The graphical style is ♥♥♥♥-ass ugly, and I'm kind of shocked they went with what they did. It's just terrible looking.
- Diving in for a first time is beyond confusing, because nothing explained to you, unless I missed a tutorial section somewhere that would explain to me what I'm supposed to do.
- Solo play is not particularly pleasant as enemies do not stop spawning, and some objectives demand you sit completely motionless for a short period, and as such sometimes damage is mandatory if you don't have any friends to protect you.
- Sound design's fine. Guns don't generally sound puny, but besides the guns there's really just not a whole lot to listen to. Deep Rock Galactic, which is probably the closest competitor, has constant ambience and bug sounds to fill in the gaps between gunfire, dwarf screaming and the stomping of Molly's robotic legs running after you to carry your looted goods. This demo doesn't have much of that at all. I know partially this is my fault for muting the cockroach, but he should not be the only other real source of noise besides gunfire. It sounds empty and lonely.

I'll be curious to see what the full game offers, but I don't foresee myself being willing to spend more than $10 at the absolute most on it, unless they offer some significant improvements to compete with other games of this type. I'd certainly like to see this become a success, but time will tell.