Recent reviews by Fract

Doesn't hit the same as Hammerwatch 1 or Heroes of Hammerwatch does. The tutorial did not teach me as much as I would have liked and the classes just don't feel good to play.

Hands-down the best zombie apocalypse simulation ever made. You're not a superhuman hero; you're a panicked, stressed out survivor who has found themselves in a horrible situation. The developers have been working hard on this game for over 10 years. The game is full of content that will last you hundreds of hours, and still The Indie Stone continues to give huge updates once every few years. I can't wait to see how this game will look 10 years from now.

Welcome back, childhood.

This game lets me relive the horrors of working food service.
But this time I can yell at the customers.
It's like winning an argument with yourself in the shower.

I only care about gameplay. This review does not take into account the game's story, writing, or humor.

This game's only melee option is a quick-melee button. Without dedicated melee, it made me feel like my choice as a "BRR-Zerker" was a mistake. I expected more love to go into the melee system, but it seems that it's delegated to a quick-melee button that's an inferior combat option. Should I have expected a Borderlands game change up the typical gameplay loop? Probably not.
Another gripe with the quick-melee is that it has a weird "lock-on" system that can't be turned off? Your sensitivity is temporarily reduced during your quick-melee animation, it feels really clunky to try and melee any enemy.
My final complaint about melee is that it does not cleave. If you swing your weapon across your screen and you have three enemies in front of you, you will only hit what's in the center of your screen. I suppose this is a consistency across all Borderlands games, but it does not feel good seeing your character perform a cleaving motion only hitting one enemy.

The gun-play is about the same as previous titles, you have your choice between different weapon brands (that are just fantasy-ified names). I was really hoping that this "fantasy world" title would include more of a focus on spells as actual WEAPONS, but instead guns are still as prominent as ever, once again I wrongly expected any sort of change from the typical Borderlands gameplay loop.
Not all guns work properly, however. Any weapon that has an unlimited magazine, and has an overheat function has a chance to STOP WORKING ENTIRELY. You can fire the weapon, but nothing comes out. Ammo is not depleted during this state, but heat is still generated. This is especially frustrating when you have this happen to you during a fight, where your weapon just doesn't work anymore. If you encounter this bug, you must drop your gun on the ground and pick it back up to have the gun work again. I played a mission with friends where I had this bug neuter my guns roughly ten different times. It didn't help that both of my favorite guns at the time were the same type, so there were moments where BOTH of my guns were useless.

The SPELLS. Man they are phenomenal. Following my comparisons to the other Borderlands titles, spells are basically your grenades in this game. So much personality is in each different spell type. Shoot projectiles, spawn "turrets", create a dome of damage, slow, or healing (or multiple types!), a line of fire, or call lightning from the sky. There are so many options it feels great to use any of them. I'm sure my friend who played the class that can use multiple spells was having a blast.

You can equip a lot of stuff in this game. Slightly more than your typical Borderlands title. You still have your shields (called wards) and your artifacts that boost your class feature levels. You can also equip TWO rings (have to unlock them through story) which can both grant solid passives that can potentially complement your play style. You will also eventually unlock an amulet slot, which I can assume does something similar. So much customization!

However, the core game-play of this game still feels... clunky to me. This game is a re-skinned Borderlands game, but since it's re-skinned... any jank or poor quality can hide behind the veil of "it isn't a Borderlands title". Maybe my poor taste towards this game comes from the fact that my class choice confronts some of the worse aspects of the game. Melee. I wish the game had a dedicated melee option. Not locked behind a quick-melee button. No gun usage, just a greatsword slashing at hordes of baddies. But I understand, I shouldn't expect this from Borderlands, they don't cater to that style.

I personally don't recommend the game, strictly from a game-play standpoint.

Even though I'm reviewing this just for the sake of the Steam Awards, this isn't some joke review.

Astroneer is such a satisfying and heartwarming game. It scratches the same "itch" that games like Minecraft & Factorio aim for. Start with basically nothing, and work your way up into a big base of operations through mining resources and exploration. The wonderful twist that Astroneer brings to the table is that you can fly to another planet. When you arrive at this planet, assuming you don't know what you're doing, you basically get to start all over again but with a new set of minerals available to you. You can then fly back to your original planet and drop of the new stuff, or start working on an entirely new base set on this new planet.

There's plenty of stuff to do on your home planet as well. With the addition of vehicles, and road-construction equipment (pavers) you can make a planet-wide highway and connect special points of interest to it. You can get into automation and have robo-arms pick up and place resources in specific slots for you. Being able to watch your base "live" by itself is something I imagine a successful parent feels every day.

Obviously, this game becomes much better with friends. But I hate saying that, as ANYTHING is better with friends. Like taxes. So take this point with a grain of salt. There are pilot seats that hold up to 3 people. There's a crane that your buddy can operate separately from the driver. You can place resources in someone else's backpack. It's clear the developers made this game and kept in mind that more than one person might be playing at the same time. Multiplayer isn't required, it's optional. Having friends is good, if you have the chance, get your friends into this game.

I look forward to seeing this game stay relevant and get more updates in the future. Much love to the Astroneer community and the developers. Cheers!

Oh hey... it's Risk of Rain... but in 3D...
I wonder how it'll play out...
[ Hours Later ]
AAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHH

Pros
- Good Cinematic
Cons
- Poorly optimized
- Clunky gunplay
- Clunky movement
- Bad Crafting Mechanics
- Bugfest, my first time playing the first mission bugged out and prevented the objectives from progressing. I had to restart

Honestly, I'm disappointed because I was expecting a PAYDAY 2 gunplay and movement system, and a skill-tree to fit the theme of a zombie apocalypse. I wouldn't expect the same people who made PD2 to have made this. They feel entirely different, and this game is inferior.
I'd say that porting PAYDAY's guns, physics, and skill-trees into this universe, it would work out better than whatever they went with.

So as of right now, this ain't it chief.

This review is from a Free-to-Play Player's standpoint

Pros:
- Large amount of characters to choose from
- You earn in-game currency relatively quickly
- You are able to unlock a character within your first 10 hours of playing
- Tutorial explains the game relatively well
- The Helix/Augment system allows for players to create "builds" that differ every single match based on their playstyle
- The Loadout system also creates a massive variety of playstyles
- Large variety of game modes to try out
- Many customizable features via the Options Menu

Cons:
- (Sometimes) Slow matchmaking system
- Small player base
- Certain game types are very confusing for new players


Battleborn is something that took me entirely by surprise. I always assumed that the game was lacking in gameplay aspects, and had other common flaws that ruined a game's reputation.
I was entirely incorrect.
The game is incredibly fun and even moreso with friends. It has a little something for everyone. If you're a fan of any of the following games: Dota / League of Legends / Team Fortress 2 / Overwatch / Paladins; you should at least try this game out for a couple of hours.

Overall, this game gets a 8 out of 10.
With a larger player base, this game would easily get a 10.

Before I get started, let me clarify that I am rating this based on how much fun I had with 1 friend for about 2 hours.

This game isn't actually too bad, missions seem pretty challenging with 2 people and pretty fair/easy with 4. If you know where to go and what you're doing, you can speedrun any of the maps relatively quickly. Each type of character has their own unique ability and benefits to the team...However here is where the negative comments come in...

The Sniper seems to be the least powerful out of each class, there are no maps where its really important to have a Sniper, and even if you did...the way this game uses spawning is very stupid and just poor. I know a few games that do this and this is one of the "They spawn where you don't look" , which in theory is good because you dont want stuff spawning right in front of your face, but having a zombie spawn around a corner that you just checked is pretty crazy. Another aspect on the Sniper is that his Napalm Grenades don't do anything, yes they may chip away at HP and cover a large area, but based on playing this game on each map at least twice, it doesn't really help in any situation you will find yourself in.

The most fun I had in this game was probably using the abilities of the Tech character & Bunnyhopping around since they didn't put in a way to remove it (please keep this in! I love it!) Anything done to this game could make it better in my opinion, buffing certain items/abilities/characters, adding in some new maps (theres plenty of mappers out there!), and possibly some new content within this game.

As of the date of this review, this game gets a 6/10 from me.
It has its good moments and pretty fun to play with a friend or two (or three).
But it has a poor spawning system and you can get overwhelmed by something you thought was safe.

I would say to at least give this game a try with friends, play each of the maps once and complete the objective...and if you're a bunnyhop fan like myself, just try to bhop around and speedrun maps, it's pretty entertaining.

A note to the developers of this game: Please fix the spawning and maybe add a player vs player mode if possible. Great job!