Recent reviews by Doc Islands

The game plays well, and the items you get have some really satisfying synergy. There are enough opportunities to get items that you don't feel like you're scrambling, though if you try to build for a specific Rare or Legendary item you're probably going to be disappointed.

The game has a city management aspect now, which I don't think was there when I played the demo. It feels a bit rushed, but it's not bad -- it gets the job done and provides decent methods for permanent progression.

Minor nitpick -- the dialog is rough. In some places it's missing quotes, in a LOT of places it's missing periods, and it overall comes off as a first draft that didn't get edited later. It's *fine.*


All in all, a fun game if rough in places. The gameplay loop is what's most important, and that's solid and well-balanced.

The ambiance of Half-Life, plus intuitive survival and crafting.

Other than the excellent setting, my favorite thing about this has to be how well it balances scarcity with need. I am able to scavenge the fruits (keyboards) of the wild (the broken computers) to what would feel like excess, were it not for the enemy presence. Where I'm at in the game at least, it feels just tense enough to make me want to prepare myself before setting out -- without making me feel so tense I can't bear to leave the safety of my home base.

Bonus points: the skill leveling is neat, the perks feel worthwhile, the co-op is great (including Lethal Company-style proximity voice chat), the voice acting is good.

The best co-op shooter I've ever played, one of the best shooters I've ever played, one of the best GAMES I've ever played.

The weapon variance is fantastic. I seriously contemplate what guns I want to bring on a mission based on the resistance I expect to come up against, while at the same time I have a few favorites that I know I can rely on.

The stratagems mechanic is amazing, it makes you feel so powerful -- I can't think of a comparison from another game. It's just that good. At the same time, you have to make use of your strats intelligently to be effective -- between minute+ cooldowns and super-short spawn times for enemies, you can't just go heaving bombs at everything and expect to win.

The lore/story is great. Every NPC in the game gushes about Democracy and Liberty, including (and especially) the bomber you can call in to "Dispense Freedom!" on your enemies. As long as you remember that it's satire, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hilarious. So far I haven't run into any people IRL that take it seriously, but there's always that danger of ultra-nationalist nutters ruining it for everyone, so keep that in mind.

The currencies are pretty decent. I don't have a lot of personal experience with games that have you obtain multiple types of currency to unlock things -- mostly I'm playing single-player games where you're just getting Rupees/Coins/Gold/Gil and so on. There are 6 total currencies to get here, 3 of which are just the same currency with differing rarities, and collecting them isn't a chore. You can unlock all the basic stuff just by playing the game, though you will have to play the highest difficulty levels to earn the Super Samples needed for the absolute top-tier upgrades. It's balanced well, especially as you don't NEED those upgrades to be competent at the game -- they're just sweet to have.

The actual gameplay loop is fun! It damn well better be, as it's ultimately why you're here. You have four layers of gameplay, in essence:

1. The Galactic War. This is the highest layer, and is not very interactive -- you see certain Sectors of the galaxy that are in conflict, and therefore available for you to Liberate. In those Sectors are planets, and in those planets are Operations.
   
2. Operations. There are different Operations to choose that will randomly spawn on a planet in conflict, with different missions in them depending on the difficulty you've chosen and some other random factors. Each Operation consists of one or more missions, all of which must be completed to consider the Operation a success.
   
3. Objectives. Each mission in an Operation has one or more major objectives you need to complete, sometimes with sub-objectives necessary before you can finish the objective itself. Maps will also often (not always) spawn in optional objectives that don't impact the Operation, but can be helpful to you finishing the mission.
   
4. MURDER. Between and during objectives, you are going to run into enemies. Be they Bugs, Bots or [POSSIBLE THIRD THING?], enemies of Democracy stand in the way of your mission. It's your job to violently obliterate all that stand in your path safeguard Liberty to make sure your objectives are completed safely.

So in summary: you shoot things, to make sure you can complete your objectives, to finish missions and therefore an Operation, to contribute to the overall victory of the Galactic War. It's a Hell of a lot of fun, made even more fun by the addition of friends you enjoy gaming with.

One final note: in-game, you'll hear that "Helldivers never die", but dying (and friendly fire, for that matter) is super duper ultra-common. You should avoid it if you can, but it's definitely not the end of the world. Work together and have fun!

For the first time, I have played a game that practically *demands* that I take notes in order to succeed. I'm having an amazing time organizing an ENORMOUS amount of information, and making the best decisions I can knowing that I'm informed enough to do so.

If you enjoyed Cultist Simulator, odds are good you'll enjoy Book of Hours. If you don't like the idea of slowly learning tidbits over time and tracking them yourself outside of the game, you likely won't enjoy it.

57 hours in and I'm not done my first run. I'm taking it easy, absorbing the information I can and writing down the rest. I highly recommend using something like Obsidian for your notes. Cross-referencing is a must.

Dwarf Fortress has historically been a hard game to learn, and an even harder game to master. I've played off and on since ~2010, never playing more than a little bit at a time. All that to say, I may be *kind of* an old hand, I was never an expert. I barely knew what I was doing most of the time.

I still had fun, though. And so I knew that no matter the quality of the steam release, I would happily drop full price to support Bay12. It was with great optimism that I dove into this new, graphically-focused release.

And boy, did my optimism pay off. This is a ☼masterwork☼ game, and I can hardly bring myself to stop playing. For someone like me, who has been consuming content from the community that plays for years, being able to play in a way that I can finally understand has been amazing. Or, to put it in a more dwarfy way, "He feels *euphoric* while playing Dwarf Fortress."

This game is not for everyone. There is no winning Dwarf Fortress, first of all. There are a great number of systems all interacting with each other that need to be learned. The dwarves are, paradoxically, both extremely detailed in their individuality -- and not intended to be micro-managed.

None of these are bad things, as making your own goals as you play is fun on its own, losing a fort in unexpected ways that make for great stories and an opportunity to learn what to do better next time is fun, letting your dwarves live their lives while you make the best fort you can for them to enjoy is fun.

If you enjoy colony sim and/or settlement management games, you will likely enjoy Dwarf Fortress. If you do end up playing, I give you these words of advice:

* Give the tutorial a go. It's super duper helpful.
* Don't be afraid to look up parts you're unsure of on the wiki. It's a phenomenal resource. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/
* Make sure you have a door or three between dangerous places and your fort proper. The surface counts as a dangerous place.
* Marking a door as "forbidden" stops (almost) ALL creatures from passing through, dwarf and foe alike.
* Dig too deep at your own peril!
* Losing is fun :)

I enjoyed this game.

There are two main components: managing the cult itself, which plays like base management in Don't Starve; and crusades -- aka, the combat part of the game and arguably the "point" of Cult of the Lamb.

The cult management part is fun. Like most town/city management games, it starts with you doing everything by hand but organically develops into being "automated" by way of your cultists, and I found it satisfying if easy. It may be because of the difficulty I was playing on, that being Medium, but the system isn't remotely as unforgiving as Don't Starve. The main "negative" (if you can call it that) to take away from this part of the game is that it's easy to get locked in on this part of the game without going on crusades.

The crusade part is also fun. It's designed with elements clearly inspired by (or in some cases, flat-out ripped off from) The Binding of Isaac, but still controls in a 2.5D way like Don't Starve. The power progression feels really satisfying without being either too easy or too hard. You can improve your starting gear with certain upgrades in your cult, which is ultimately what the cult is "for" in a gameplay sense. If you ignore your cult and just go on crusades, you're going to be stuck with the starting gear and get overrun by enemies pretty quick. Buuuut, like I alluded to above, it's easy to get locked in on the cult management part of the game...and if you do, when you finally do get back to crusades, you may find that you are demolishing fools left and right. I did in fact do that, but I frankly enjoy steam rolling a game when it feels like I've earned it, which Cult of the Lamb accomplishes here.

The story is pretty nifty, I can't say I've personally seen anything quite like this one before. I'm a huge fan of Cultist Simulator which does technically have you doing work in the employ of a dark god or two, but not anywhere near as directly as this game does. I don't want to talk too much about the story for fear of spoiling things, so I will just say that I enjoyed it quite a bit, and that Clauneck is my favorite NPC. Argue not with the draw, indeed.

Oh yeah, and before I forget, the music, sound and art are all great. The music ties everything together really well, the "voiceover" of NPC dialog that sounds like an eldritch language is seriously excellent, and the juxtaposition of adorable art with the intentionally horrifying work you're doing is chef's kiss.

Finally, there are a few bugs I ran into while playing that were...well, not heart-wrenching, but decidedly frustrating. In one multi-phase boss fight, the second phase bugged out and I was unable to progress. That was frustrating, but getting back to that fight wasn't a headache and I was able to complete it without running into the bug again. In another instance, I used a power to escape from a mid-crusade event but returned to my cult to find everybody missing. This was terrifying for a moment, as I thought this was an intentional punishment the game employed, but after I fast-travelled to another location and came back, everyone was there again.


All this to say, this was a fun game. I enjoyed playing and beating it. I think Massive Monster needs to do some additional QA on this one as their first priority, and then some DLC/expansions are in order because the premise and execution are excellent.

Honestly, worth buying for just two points:

* Steam Cloud sync, so you don't lose your progress over time
* The music, which ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it's fantastic in the background.

Not sure what to put here, tbh. I've been playing Skyrim since the literal day it came out. It is good. I only have such a low number of hours on here because I spent 200+ hours on a pirated version for years.

I say this with all honesty: it was worth spending all the money I've spent on buying the game and all DLC, even though I haven't come even close to the amount of time I spent before paying. This is just an amazing game.

This is a good game. You might not enjoy it if you don't have some experience with deck-building games.

Saying more could ruin the experience. Play the game.

The gameplay is okay.

The graphics are fine.

The story is alright. Could probably use a pass by an editor or two, but it's alright.

The music...honestly can't remember.

My opinions on this are almost entirely neutral, except that this game is absolutely 100%-ing my GPU usage while it runs. My desktop sounds like it's taking off while nothing is going on. My GPU is a Radeon r390x, so unless graphical requirements have seriously leapt since I got it, I have to believe this game is poorly optimized. I can't recommend it for this reason.