Recent reviews by flashwitt

Brilliant to see this classic back in play! One of the earliest community-content games, it still boasts a vast library of custom community content, (look for it at the Neverwinter Vault and Nexus,) and a thriving, if small, community of dedicated modders and roleplayers. It's still not the most beautiful thing on your shelf,though Beamdog's done an admirable job of squeezing the very best out of the game's engine, but if you love D&D 3.5, this one is an absolute must!

It's rough around the edges, and there's an irony in that fact, though I can't say those rough edges are good things. It's true- it stutters, and sometimes the controls just go haywire, but the storytelling, the art, the music- all are pretty compelling. I'm really enjoying the mechanics too- the whiste game is both a functional tool and an appropriate way to pass the time as you wander, and I very quickly also found myself seeking out different kinds of stories, and experimenting with my interactions. There's a lot of subtle undercurrents- the feeling as if your adversary and employer are manipulating the stories that you find, and changing them to suit his own whims. It's delightful, despite it's mechanical flaws, and I do hope the devs keep at it, and polish the game play up so that it's fully worthy of it's storytelling, and brilliant concept. I absolutely do recommend it- but I won't lie... It needs a lot of work.

Right off the bat- I love this game. This game is brilliant, addictive, and... *unfinished*. There's not much info on the main store page to make this clear. It's still a fantastic game, but I was really expecting a polished, finished game, and the unfinished aspects are jarring, awkward, and uncomfortable. I will continue playing it anyway, and am fine with watching it develop as I play, but it NEEDS an early access tag on it. My thumbs up comes with this caveat. Many people will love the gameplay enough to overlook it's glaring shortfalls, I am among them, but if you want polished triple-A, this is not it. Wait for a good sale, and pray for a more complete product. I am extremely glad I recieved it as a gift.

The Good: Innovative, exciting, new. It has most of the predictable elements of a survival-crafting game, but handles them in a way that makes it all fresh and new. The creatures that I've seen so far are amazing, they're well-designed, and have marvelous animations and sound effects. The landscape is gorgeous- though I'm sure it's a lot more so if your computer is a monster spacestation of a gaming computer. (More on that in the cons section.) Water is nicely "wet". And how can you not love living on an ancient dino-world and being able to tame and fully domesticate all sorts of crazy creatures?

The Bad: Where to begin? Character models are ugly, and character creation interface does little to improve this. Character animations suffer from the "unfinishedness"- you don't even grip your weapon, it's just sort of glued to your hand. The UI is spectacularly BAD. From poor font choices, to colors and transparencies that make important regular info like health and stamina impossible to see clearly, and other information- like leveling up, and the info cards about your tamed pets- is glaring and unavoidable. The graphics in this game are potentially glorious- but the game is poorly optimized and so even those of us who regularly run games on Ultra are forced to turn settings to MUCH lower quality for the sake of just functional FPS, and the visuals suffer for it. Coming back to the GUI: It's garish and glaring in some places, virtually invisible in others, and not even a little bit cohesive. It looks like complete strangers built different aspects, and no effort at all has been made to bring it all together cohesively, or allow players to adjust it to their own tastes. There ARE settings that allow you to turn aspects of the GUI OFF entirely, but the world is incredibly dangerous, and playing without most of that information is what I would call "extreme survival" mode. Since the recent updates, the game itself is full of constant spoiler info that does a lot more than simply *hint* at things you shouldn't learn about until much later in play.

Then there's the download issues. First, it's MASSIVE. I have read discussions where zealots of the game defend it with extreme prejudice, claiming that "triple-A games are big. deal with it," but that defense doesn't hold up. The download was bigger than Witcher 3, bigger than Skyrim Enhanced, bigger than pretty much everything, and the download, apparently, expands once it's DL'ed, taking up much more space than initially reported, partially because of compression, and partially because of massive updates and DLC. You should know that you WILL need a solid 100 gigs of space, if not more, to comfortably install and run this game in multiplayer mode.

Now, all that said, I have dinosaurs that need taming, so if you'll excuse me...

I received Cat Goes Fishing as a gift, and I love it. It's a simple but engaging fishing game that's entertained me for hours. I do wish it had instructions, a handbook, or some other sort of resource, but mostly, it's not needed.

This game is unbelievably addictive. It's buggy as hell in some ways, but the devs are still hard at work on cleaning it up, and it's absolutely still an extremely tense, rewarding, exciting esperience, despite that it's still deep in development.

I won't say it has no cons- The bugs *can* be infuriating, there is absolutely zero lore to explain when, where, and why you're actually in this circumstance. When full updates happen, it can delete your character and force you to start from scratch. There's a lot of tricks that don't feel well-documented (Though in general, the fanbased web guide is a huge help.) In general, I'd give it several thumbs up... give me a second so I can chop them off a screamer's cooling corpse for you.

This game is really cute, and the art is adorable- much like the tiny marginalia cartoons that used to feature in Mad Magazine. The human-voice sound effects are also very cute, though they quickly become annoying. I feel as if thes game shoud really be a mobile game, not a full game for PC, although some of the images are quite large and the art insanely tiny. Still, poking things with my finger would suit this game perfectly. I *do* recommend it, to folks who enjoy unusual and challenging but simple games. Fans of Where's Waldo would love this.

This game isn't perfect- but d@mned close. Right from the start, it shows that it's considerate of it's players, by giving you fully customizable controls, not the hardwired nonsense some game devs seem to always sneak in. And it lets you choose between a variety of difficulties, based on playstyle. Survival mode isn't brutal, but it's definitely challenging. Creative mode gives you fantastic resources to begin with and lets you explore both the game world, and the game's mechanics, so it's a great way to get the knack of the controls and systems.

The world offers up beauty, whimsy, and the gut-wrenching primal fear you only get from swimming over what seems a bottomless abyss. I can't wait to see this game when it's fully polished.

I got this game as a gift, and was not over-hyped as many (unhappy) buyers were. I enjoy the game a great deal. It's expansive, intriguing, entertaining. It's got a little action, in the form of attacks by pirates, sentinals, and hostile wildlife, it can be challenging to craft one's ship and gear, the planets are somewhat varied and interesting, although some of it becomes repetative over many hours of play. There's also a mystery to be solved- or possibly several, with cryptic clues, and new languages to learn. With the new base building, frieghters, and play modes, things can only become more interesting.
I do think it's default price-point is too high, and I'd recommend waiting for a sale, but I do recommand the game. It IS good, and getting better.

First, there's the DRM and registration nonsense to slog through, then once you've registered, the game presents with wretched graphics, clunky interface, two-dimensional combat mechanics, and some of the worst voice acting ever perpetrated upon a helpless player. "But it's an old game, you shouldn't expect glorious graphics and great acting," some might say- This game was made in the same year as Dragon Age: Origin and Fallout 3. It has no excuse. It's not worth the time it took to DL, let alone the purchase price, even on sale. Your 10 bucks has thousands of better ways to be spent.

This game was quite amusing, and the journal entries were pretty witty at points. The game play is entertaining, at least in small doses, but I can't see becoming terribly obsessed with it. I recommend the game, when it's on sale,