Recent reviews by Cam

Cars
The selection of cars, going from hatchbacks to LMPs, etc is great fun. The handling can leave a bit to be desired, with all cars seemingly favouring oversteer out of the box, but still nonetheless very fun to drive.

The Upgrade System
Working through a career championship, slowly improving the car, tuning and honing it in is a great deal of fun and a good gameplay loop, per car, per championship.


Performance
Boy did they mess this one up, the game struggles on even the best of hardware, poor CPU optimisation seemingly the cause. Those with better single-core performance may have better experiences than myself, but man, what a disappointment.

Graphics
The performance, previously mentioned, would be somewhat forgivable if the graphics were up to the standard you would expect of a fresh release in 2023. For reasons I can't figure out, even with ray-tracing, ambient occlusion, global illumination, etc all seem off. Car models themselves, are lacking, with poor texture-work, dated models, etc, it's hard to believe this is the latest, greatest for a racing game.

Crashes
Know what's fun? Not having the game crash after 30 mins of practice/qualifying leading up to a race, resetting the whole event. Applying upgrades, loading races, even just opening the game, all have led to crashes at some point at another.

Multiplayer (and it's penalty system)
Anyone who's played Forza in the past will already know what to expect here, rammers galore!
But this time it's different, Forza have a neat little penalty system, designed to curb these toxic racers, the issue, however? It doesn't work. I've had plenty of races ruined now, where another driver has speared into me, crashing me out, and leaving me with a penalty as a cherry on top.


Give it a year, maybe this game will become a great redemption act, akin to Cyberpunk 2077. In it's current state, I cannot recommend anyone buy it however. It is simply not a finished product, ready to be played.

+Gameplay is addictive, yet simple.
+Constant Support (very frequent updates, each bringing new content)
+The Price! (Whilst I bought the game at it's earlier price, for £4 for a game with 50+ hours, you can't get much better a deal)

-Repetitive (If you are not a fan of grinding nor simplistic gameplay, this might not be for you).

Note: This review reflects opinions as of the FH4 Series 36 Update.
This review may be edited if the development team handles concerns reflected in this review.

+Graphically Stunning (Lighting, visuals, etc. are stunning)
+Repeatable Gameplay (Enough diversity in gameplay to keep player interested)
+Seasons Mechanic (Creates a fun alternative every week with lakes freezing over, traction changes, etc.)
+Solid Implementation of "Gambling" (The wheelspin for rewards are provided at a reasonable quantity)
+Beautiful and Diverse World (With glorious views of Edinburgh, the Lake District, etc., the views whilst driving are fantastic)

-Horrific Micro-Stutter (This game has a constant stutter throughout gameplay regardless of graphical settings)
(Specs are Ryzen 3900X, 32GB - 3600MHz, RTX 2070S - 1935MHz, 1TB MP600)
Note: whilst not a solution, I did find that disabling g-sync reduced the stutter from full-on stuttering to a micro-stutter

-Routine Crashing (Another complaint, this one being a serious one, is the periodic crashing that happens every 30-45 minutes, the game will visually freeze with audio continuing.)
Note: this has caused me to continuously lose progress as I have noticed it routinely happens after race wins where the race will no longer be recognised as completed on restart.

-Engine Audio (A minor complaint but worth mentioning, some higher RPM engines sound very poorly sampled almost describable as an auto-tune effect)
-Race Wheel FFB (Force Feedback within this game feels very off, racing feels considerably harder with a wheel than a plain controller, so work needs to be put in here.)

Gameplay-wise this game is fantastic. With a diverse map, more cars than you could feasibly ever drive, and enough races to keep you entertained for hundreds of hours, this game always manages to impress.
Nevertheless, where it all falls apart is the awful optimisation. My opinion on the game diminishes, knowing that I cannot get invested in the game with the lingering thought that at any moment, the game could crash.

Therefore, my final recommendation is that if you genuinely want to play this game, for the time being until further developments are made, pick up this game on the Windows Store instead of Steam, where stability is supposedly much better.

Note: As of writing this (23/12/20), I am 18 hours into the game with all the bees and all levels at least completed, I have not yet beaten the final boss.
So, this was a game that I had received from a Humble Bundle not expecting much, I’d seen footage of the previous game and had heard issues with the game falling apart a bit in later levels. This game DOES NOT share this problem.
This game is totally engrossing, easy to pick up and play with very little to no fall off over time.

+Very easy to pick up and play (levels can be warped to and take anywhere between 5 – 15 minutes depending on exploration)
+Very attainable achievements (achievements are all very understandable with attainable goals)
+Good balanced quantity of collectibles (Coins, Bees and Tonics)
+Great controls (simple, yet efficient, not too floaty neither)
+Great diversity of levels (Each level comes with a variant, along with plenty of levels following the standard diverse range of underwater, chase, etc)
+Diverse Overworld (Plenty of diverse settings, platforming and details to explore)
+Fun, Cartoony Soundtrack (Perfectly fits the setting of the game with good diversity through levels)

-Repetitive cutscenes drag A LOT… (Unskippable cutscenes for every bee; loud needlessly long unskippable logos intro *this also plays when you return to menu to close the game which is very frustrating)
-Camera inconsistency (Throughout most of the game the camera has been fantastic, however there have been on a few occasions where the camera seems too slow, such as chase levels, where the camera favours following the chasing object over the player making platforming needlessly harder)
-Damage System woes (The game has a two-hit system with flying off when you are hit once, this system is great but the flight pattern of Laylee is completely imprecise and often buggy with Laylee flying off straight away to inaccessible areas.)

I've held off on reviewing this 'til after the game came out of Early Access.
The game is and always has been a fantastic thoroughly enjoyable game to play, with endless possibility and creativity you can always come back to the game over and over for a new experience setting an amazing example of a roguelite.

+Thousands of choices for weapons & style of play
+Fun & unique pixel art style
+Stable Performance

-Capped at 60fps (for a pixel game does this really matter?)
-RNG can be brutal
-Wand customisation UI a little lacking (sometimes hard to tell what a spell effect changes)

So after what feels like an eternity and a long dream since moving away from the xbox 360 Halo is here at long last on PC.
The games feel brilliant and at a fantastic price. 343 have done an amazing job of both giving the games a good cleanup and QoL updates (such as FoV and uncapped FPS) whilst also keeping the classic nostalgia we all know and love.

+Halo is Finally on PC!! (All of the main games from CE to 4 are now available)
+Performance is Almost Flawless (144fps @ max on 4770k/GTX 980)
+Uncapped Framerate & Adjustable FoV
+Graphical Updates (CE & 2 have received overhauls whilst still remaining faithful)
+Great Value for Money (Regularly on sale and for £30 full price it's an amazing deal)
+Fantastic Soundtracks Throughout all the Games
+Beautifully Remastered Cutscenes in Halo 2

-Gameplay Monotomy (Suffers somewhat from the linear nature of older FPS)
-Levelling System (Feels poorly designed with single piece armor upgrades using points)
-Slow Sessions in Multiplayer (Large multiplayer matches can take a while to fill a lobby)

Heaps of fun, always good to pick up and play at any time

Pros
+Combat is easy to learn whilst also diverse
+Writing is fantastic, witty characters and a good pace
+Visually beautiful - One of the best cell shaded games I've seen
+Diverse environments

Cons
-Some Performance issues (Primarily caused by PhysX)
*i7 4770k @ 4.2GHz & GTX 980 OC*
-Excessive running back and forth missions
-Loot is server-side shared in Coop

This is a fantastic game, it's a brilliant game to play with friends or alone. The game can start off a little slow but once the game gets going it's addictive.

Plenty hours of gameplay and it's made even better playing coop

Thoroughly recommend getting it.

+Very nice map (Large, tropical and beautiful, but does feel somewhat empty sometimes)
+Wingsuit is very enjoyable (Controls feel smooth, satisfying to explore)
+Incredible sandbox potential (grappling hooks, thrusters etc.)
+Visually Beautiful (Visceral explosions with plumes of smoke, beautiful scenery, etc)

-Code 38 crash (This issue has had no proper solution despite being in the game since launch)
-Memory leaks (Again, been in the game since launch, 16GB of RAM mimimum)
Vehicle controls
-DRM (The game will pause when internet access is lost however there is an offline mode)

The game is great whilst it runs fine however when the memory leak occurs or the code 38 crash happens it can be incredibly frustrating, in my experience the crash happened anywhere between 20 minutes of gameplay to an hour with one session lasting four hours without the issue so experience might be different for others. Whilst the vehicle controls are pretty poor it's unlikely that you'll spend too much time actually driving since the wingsuit is pretty fast and fun however the race challenges are a nuisance due to the way the cars control. Framerate was a solid 60 with all settings on and set to high (excluding motion blur)

i7 4770K
GTX 980
Game installed on SSD
16GB of RAM

Brilliant game. Definitely one to play with friends, however this game is very glitchy and frequently crashes but don't let that put you off 9/10