Recent reviews by Autisticus Maximus

You buy this expecting Vermintide in space.

What you get is but a slice (albeit a very good slice!) of Vermintide in space, wrapped in a whole lot of gacha game. All proceeds go towards funding Uyghur genocide.

maybe make a functioning product before charging people $60 for it

just a thought

This is some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Put this in the game by default and quit scalping people. Literally paying an additional 3% on a $60 game for a visual feature that should be in the options menu.

This game is a mess. Devs have no idea what they're doing, even after years of making the game worse by accident.

"We haven't done anything yet. I think we've doing a pretty good job so far." -actual quote from actual dev

EDIT: YOU INTENTIONALLY WALK INSIDE WALLS, INCLUDING THICK, IMPENETRABLE SURFACES, AND SHOOT PEOPLE THROUGH THEM WHILE THEY ARE PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO SEE YOU. READ BELOW.

So. I love this game, I really do. But for a game to leave a very serious bug in it for years and never publically address it in any respect is unacceptable.

Hunt: Showdown has a desync bug. The server and the client disagree about where your position is, and you'll rubberband off to somewhere you shouldn't be. Often this client-server disagreement takes several seconds to resolve - seconds during which you'll be unable to move, because you'll be hitting an invisible wall while the client tries to figure out where the server thinks you should be.

This bug's been in the game since pre-alpha. Crytek has never, ever so much as addressed its existence. We consumers are not being taken seriously - there's absolutely zero transparency about why they're not fixing the bug, which is a slap in the face when I paid money for their malfunctioning product.

So that's why I'm leaving a negative review here, and I encourage everyone else to. Our only recourse as consumers is to review bomb the game to hold Crytek accountable, because they have no interest in fixing this themselves. Steam reviews affect purchases, and purchases affect their income. Maybe that way they'll act like responsible devs ought to.

EDIT as of 14/04/2022:

It's come to my attention that the desync bug that made me leave this negative review in the first place is much, much, MUCH worse than I thought it is. See this video on YouTube for details: watch?v=HfcTN4WRdMI (full URL cut to make it less shady).

TL;DR: The desync bug can be intentionally reproduced and used to glitch halfway through walls, allowing you to both see and shoot through what seems to be any wall in the game, including half-metre thick masonry. Let me repeat that: you can INTENTIONALLY WALK INSIDE WALLS, INCLUDING THICK, IMPENETRABLE SURFACES, AND SHOOT PEOPLE THROUGH THEM WHILE THEY ARE PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO SEE YOU.

Absolutely shameful, Crytek. Leaving this in the game for literally three years puts you in the very bottom of the scum barrel that is gaming companies. At least ActiVision "we can have a little molesting, as a treat" Blizzard fixes their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bugs.

The Leviathan expansion broke this game completely. As in, if you installed that update, or any of its hotfixes in the following weeks, your game would be unplayable (this isn't hyperbole - you'd crash and your save would be corrupted, it was literally impossible to play the game for its full time span).

It has now been months since then. The game's most recent version still contains numerous game-breaking bugs, and the game runs much worse than before. Even if we look away from the awful, bug-ridden release, the features the new studio implemented in 1.31 are comedically bad - monuments give you (often extremely powerful) bonuses for just some cash, you can build super ultra mega cities (think 100 times the size and wealth of Rome or Istanbul - again, this is not an exaggeration, you can get a 5,000 dev province where Rome and Istanbul hover around 50) in the arctic... I could go on. I can confidently say that 1.30.x is better than 1.31.x. For all intents and purposes, 1.30.6 is the final version of EU4 - subsequent versions are a mockery of the game.

Don't support Paradox Interactive. Please.

Microtransactions in a not only premium, but full-price game. Do not give these devs money.

The game also happens to be a bug-ridden mess anyway, and is by far the worst game to become highly popular in recent memory. A better one will come along to replace it; clones are popping up everywhere already, and one is bound to not be a hot mess at some point. Wait until then.

Buy our focus trees, guys! Overlook the fact that they're way less fleshed out than mods people develop for free!

Like all other recent Paradox games, HoI4 was released with a host of issues which, to this day, remain unfixed as the devs focus on selling more features instead of fixing fundamental issues with the game (such as piss-poor AI and patently absurd war outcomes). While I personally enjoy the game, I caution against encouraging Paradox's development model by paying for their games. If you want to play this game, I'd suggest using someone else's copy.

Stellaris was never a very good or well-polished game – it was a bug-ridden, rushed release, and instead of fixing it, Paradox went straight towards releasing overpriced DLC without fixing the core issues of the game, such as sectors, bad AI, and the unbelievably terrible warfare design which takes more inspiration from EU4 (whose combat is decidedly lacklustre) than HoI4 (whose combat is the point of the game). While it is indeed an empire builder, it's an empire builder whose warfare is more chore than game.

That they keep pushing DLC, then, while leaving the game fundamentally broken, is an insult to the consumer. Putting more band-aids on a pustulent, rotting mountain of gaseous lard isn't going to make it any more appealing, and it certainly hasn't for me. The worst insult of all is that, after complaints that the game had no built-in auto-explore feature, one was released – locked behind a mid-game research option, which forces you to tediously queue your exploration manually for hours before finally getting to focus on the rest of the game.

While it's fun watching the numbers go up, the rest of the game is grossly underdeveloped, and will remain as such permanently, since Paradox builds its games' width rather than fixing their crippling shallowness, should it be present on release. You'll see more features, but they won't meaningfully interact with one another (see EU4), and the fundamental issues present will never be fixed. You might have fun for a few hours to begin with, but you'll be left with ashes in your mouth as more and more intentionally overlooked design problems keep nagging at the back of your mind. The only thing a responsible consumer can do with a product like this is to simply not buy it.

Everything that needs to be said about Hollow Knight has already been said. I just want to tip the review odds in its favour. If you want an in-depth review, read Audish's here: http://steamproxy.net/id/maudish/recommended/367520/

In my opinion, Hollow knight is the best platformer ever made. It took me a while to even intellectually understand how someone could possibly dislike it.