Recent reviews by Carter

What this game lacks in brand name studio advertising and high profile streamer support, it makes up for in competitive spirit, difficulty, and complexity--as well as top-of-the-line gun physics and breathtaking graphics. With a wide variety of guns to choose from, the meta of DeerHunterX promises to stay fresh for years to come. The Barrett provides a strong optic with laser accuracy, but the M16A4 offers a high rate of fire and larger magazine. Several other guns, including a semiautomatic shotgun, offer a well-balanced selection of loadouts for eager DeerHunters.

The AI of the titular "Deer" is beyond that of any AI in any AAA-studio game on the market, Far Cry 5 be damned. They react dynamically to your presence, requiring stealth expertise and careful positioning to kill even the slowest of deer. The constant challenge of increasing your killcount in DeerHunterX's vast and varied landscape provides hours and hours of gameplay; as you master one weapon, the Deer master it as well, learning its sound and how to escape its dangers.

The environment of DeerHunterX is amazing, to say the least. The game could be a walking simulator and I would still put hours into it. Rolling hills, dense forests, lush meadows--playing the game takes you to a world as detailed and captivating as Tolkien's Middle Earth, with the added bonus of an endless population of Deer to Hunt(X). Spend a while staring up at the sky. You won't regret it.

All in all, DeerHunterX promises to be a mainstay of Steam libraries for any serious and discerning gamer for years to come. The addition of multiplayer, if it comes, will place it in the Hall of Fame with other all-time great competitive FPS games, but until then, the in-depth and captivating open world campaign is sure to reward any gamer willing to put time and dedication into the best indie video game of the 21st century so far.

I’d recommend this game any day of the week based on visuals alone. It’s gorgeous.

It also has a fascinating and exciting story that unfolds in front of you in a very fun way. Add to that the “choices-matter” aspect of the relationships you have with your friends, and the ability for the story to play out in different ways, and Oxenfree becomes a standout atmospheric adventure game.

It’s haunting and weird and sometimes downright scary, but it’s also funny and heartwarming and honestly just really fun to play. I got it on sale, but I would have paid a lot more than I did.

My only advice would be this: the game allows you to complete the story without discovering most of what there is to discover. I regret that I did this the first time, as it’s obviously not as exciting on the second playthrough. Take your time and be adventurous, don’t head straight to the end!

I want to recommend this game, but I can’t. I had my eye on it for a while as it seemed like a pretty neat cross section of a lot of my interests, but when it came down to it, I had a hard time enjoying it.

The gameplay boils down to a pretty repetitive crawl through a lot of locations that don’t feel unique or interesting. You steer your raft, dock it somewhere, scavenge for goods, and then either take shelter or move on.

However, rather than being complex and challenging, the game just feels artificially difficult by way of RNG. Say you get a small cut from some brambles (which, by the way, aren’t labeled or identified in any way as something that can hurt you). If you don’t have the materials to craft a bandage, you have to start looking for them. Maybe you find them in one of the next five places you stop, or maybe you don’t and you die of infection. All of my deaths in this game came down to simply not finding one thing that I needed to survive. It was never the game besting my ability, I just got shafted by randomness.

I wish the game was better, because it’s very beautiful, and a journey down a swollen river through apocalyptic Appalachia is such an awesome concept. But at the end of the day, the gameplay was frustrating rather than compelling.