Recent reviews by Alerus

I liked the atmosphere and the slowly unraveling mystery of this game, but the inventory management was just too tedious and the combat felt cumbersome -- it didn't make me feel dread, just annoyed at things in my way and as a possible barrier to having to reload and slowly walk back to where I was. If you're okay with those things though then you might enjoy the other positive sides of it.

A very fun mix of retro and modern game design. It's challenging in a way we should expect games to be, but not overly hard unless you want to push it to higher difficulties because you enjoy that!

It's incredibly polished for a game still in early access, although they keep adding nice QoL features. Even though "only" chapter 1 is out now, you'll get a lot of playtime out of it. There's really no reason to wait.

If you enjoyed shooter of the 90s, but also still enjoy modern shooters, this is a no brainer.

Phenomenal game. One of the best metroidvania's out there. Very challenging, and the true ending final boss is a significant step above the other already very difficult bosses. But the controls are tight and the challenges are fair. Very satisfying to finish.

Get it.

Near flawless recreation of DnD.

This game is for all intents broken for me at this point unless I want to load a save many hours ago. There's no backtracking, and the party is split. I'm currently getting destroyed by two regular enemies. Watching videos online I see other players doing like 3x more damage with just plain regular attacks -- no strategy. All I can figure is I missed finding new good weapons from somewhere and it's made it impossible to progress past these two basic enemies.

I cannot recommend a game that makes it impossible to progress because you missed some hidden items or something and have to sacrifice hours of game play to maybe go find them somewhere.

Not finished yet, but it's a fantastic coop beat 'em up and probably my favorite. Fixes some of the small things that annoyed me by the first.

Very glitchy. The other games in the series work better.

Other than Dead Cells I don't normally enjoy Roguelites, but this one has me hooked.

The short: No Man's Sky following the most recent NEXT update is now the game everyone always wanted it to be.

The multiplayer works well, there is lots to do, and building your character is a slow but rewarding process that makes your growth feel significant.

For anyone who was a fan of the classic Escape Velocity games, I think it's a reasonable comparison to say that No Man's Sky is what Escape Velocity always wanted to be, but never had the technology to do.

You may have never heard of Escape Velocity; it was a small Mac-only game back in the day. But even if you haven't heard of it before, perhaps my more detailed comparison below will make clear what No Man's Sky is and why you should care.

Both games (EV and No Man's Sky) put you in a vast universe where you can customize a ship, build a fleet, side with races, be a priate, be a bounty hunter, engage in extended missions, generate trade routes, etc.

But Escape Velocity was only 2D, and you only interacted with planets and missions via a simple GUI. No Man's Sky brings that entire concept to life. You don't just dock at a planet, you land on it--Anywhere on it. You find bases on it and other interested facets. You interacted with the NPCs in the world. You can land on your own fleet's massive ships. The bases you find are not just static, but can be made by you and other players.

And of course, the defining feature of the NEXT update is that you can share all this in multiplayer in a persistant universe; a feature always lacking in Escape Velocity.