Recent reviews by Holonaut

I hesitated on this one for a long time. I was salty that it meant discontinuation (more or less) of Vermintide 2. Also there were a lot of complaints about this game initially that made it sound really bad.

Now almost two years after release I snatched it on a sale for 16 bucks and I have to say this game is a gem. It is extremely similar to Vermintide in many aspects, but somehow more motivating. In between missions you're in a hub where you'll see some random other players going about their business and you see yourself in third person. Given that you start out as scum in prisoner rags it won't take long to want to unlock better cosmetics. To get better cosmetics you have to earn lots and lots of bucks, and you get those of course by completing missions.

There is a large variety of weapons both melee and ranged. The integration of guns was done perfectly. The guns feel extremely unique and satisfying to use. Somehow you can blast through levels mostly by shooting if you want to, but in close range against hordes, melee weapons are still most efficient. I suppose once you climb the difficulties, there will be more of a specialisation going on, where some classes focus mainly on melee, others more on ranged damage, and then also sub-divided into burst vs sustained damage.

If you like Vermintide for its gameplay and atmosphere, give this one a shot, you won't be disappointed.

Ferret Scoundrels 2 looking good

Good
arcadey pirate game with a simple game loop (albeit with some modern bloat). Sail, shoot stuff with cannons, use "nitro" to go faster, cook and eat food to replenish nitro into the sails (idk I'm not a scientist). Open world. First person view (buried in an option wheel, but it's there). Collect resources and upgrade your ship. Optional pvp and coop, but singleplayer works too. Awesome UI that mostly gets out of your way - standard in AAA titles but I play so many indie games with god-awful interface design that I'm always happy to play a big title to cure my eye-cancer. Also in every aspect except UI and battlepass this feels like an AA indie title so it's worth mentioning at least the design feels polished. Has nice volumetric water and weather effects.

Bad
Obnoxious and continuous rambling about battle-pass and dozens of events that make me feel like I'm playing a mobile game. Just shut the ♥♥♥♥ up and let me zone out. Also the game's tutorial section including unskippable cutscenes overstays its welcome.

Neutral
Graphics and animations look like an average game from 2014, but at least the performance is good, I suppose this was a design decision to optimize the multiplayer aspect. There are wind-mechanics but hyper casual (you go like 20% faster in the wind)

Verdict
It's a nice little game if you enjoy shooting at ships with your own pirate ships and if you like arcade-style games with simple mechanics. 24€ seems just about right for the scope and quality the game offers. I'd pay 6€ extra to get rid of the stupid event calendar and real money shop.

Arcade Paradise does many things, but all of them follow the principle "do one thing and do it well". Picking up laundry, putting it into a washing machine, getting it out, putting it into a drier, picking up trash, cleaning a toilet - everything in this game has a haptic feel to it, a nice animation and super clean, nicely done UI elements.

The basic game loop is doing the laundry for customers, collecting money and upgrading your shop. While waiting for the machines to finish you can collect trash, or go into the back room to play some arcade games. All the games are custom programmed, all with their own unique UIs, and they are extremely simple. All games I played so far only need the WASD keys and space key. They are of the caliber of Pac-Man and Match-3.

Everything in this game is easy to control, you are never confused about what to do next and you can choose to grow your two businesses as fast as possible or procrastinate. There is even a minigame in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pause menu. A nice touch is also that most of the arcade games have an online leaderboard. And each game has "goals" (in-universe achievements) that boost the respective machine's popularity / income generation.

Arcade Paradise is repetitive - that's kind of the whole point. If you enjoy glorified, gamified simple-minded tasks and enjoy some grind to unlock more minigames - give it a try!

TLDR: Cozy shop simulator with frustrating bugs.

Very similar to Supermarket Simulator - if you know that game you'll feel right at home.

You start with a tiny shop with one cash register, one shelf, a storage room next door and a PC to make purchases and set prices

Typing in numbers on the keyboard and hitting enter to checkout customers who pay with card is fun.

Clicking individual bank notes and coins to give out change is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cancer. Honestly just forcing all customers to pay with card would make the game 3x more enjoyable. Maybe consider adding a card-only terminal (potentially driving away customers who want to pay with cash if no hybrid terminal is available)

The game has employees that work for you, and I got one ASAP to deal with the infuriating task of handing out coins. But unfortunately, the employee brain breaks as soon as a customer orders a singular item and tries to pay with card, rendering the employee useless while still having to pay for their shift.

From the discussions it seems that employees also run into issues when tasked to store shelves. I did not confirm this myself but given the game-breaking bugs I experienced within my first hour of playing I don't find it hard to believe.

So right now I won't recommend it because it's just as frustrating as Supermarket Simulator with similarly annoying bugs.

Please check the patch notes that came out after my review. Things might get fixed.

An iteration on the previous game in every possible way. I have a hard time going back to Yakuza: Like a Dragon after this, since Infinite Wealth is basically the same game in terms of systems and gameplay, but better.

Expectation: dig a hole

Reality: get spammed with dialogue

Tetris Effect: 2nd Controller Disconnected

Good:
- Has an Adventure Mode, or basically a campaign to play through that gets harder but gives you slow passages in between
- Has a ton of modes to goof around with
- Does a good job emulating NES Tetris in the Classic Score Attack mode. It uses the same mechanics and scoring as NES Tetris, is just as brutal and even allows you to choose between PAL and NTSC modes (Classic Tetris released in two different versions with different speeds at different levels because PAL runs in 50Hz and NTSC in 60Hz). It doesn't emulate the bugged score counter, bugged line colors and game crashes past lvl 150 afaik, but everything else seems good.
- Online PVP works nicely and easily. Matchmaking can take up to 5 minutes unfortunately because barely anyone plays Tetris and maybe also because there are too many gamemodes

Bad (Section: Actually getting into a game):
- The menu structure is annoying, you have to go through too many menus and screens just to start a game (5 screens or so)
- Loading screens between menus... Why
- Everything has a multiple second long animation. This is especially obnoxious if you're playing on higher speeds and top out in 30 seconds or so. And then have to wait for all the damn "here is your score, here is your number of lines, here is your time..." animations until you can finally hit "play again" after what must be at least 15 seconds of waiting time.

When I emulate NES Tetris (for free) it takes me literally 1 second to jump into a game. And when I lose I have to wait 1 second for the animation, can keep or change the start level and jump back in.
In Tetris Effect it takes about 2 minutes from the moment I click the desktop icon to even get into a game. And then another 20 seconds when I want to replay, which btw does not allow you to adjust the start level, in which case you'd have to quit and go through another round of loading screens, and then it doesn't even prefill your previous selected starting level. It's mindboggling how a game from this decade can be so much worse in all these regards than a game from 1989.

Bad (Section: Technical Issues):
- A lot of problems when multiple controllers are connected (when you wanna play local multiplayer). Sometimes the game decides to assign Controller 1 to both players. Sometimes it disables all Controller AND Keyboard inputs and you have to ALT+F4 (that combination still works, I guess Windows gives it priority before a game can do shenanigans with your controls). Sometimes it fails to recognize the 2nd controller. Sometimes when everything works and you go back to the menu, the controllers no longer work. It is a mess! I had all these problems on two different OSes (Windows 10 and Ubuntu) and any combination of my 4 controllers (Xbox 360, Xbox One, some fake USB NES controllers), which do not cause these kinds of issues in other games (including local coop).

Bad (Section: Pricing):
- Terribly overpriced if you're just after some basic modes. One of the rare cases where I think selling it for $5 and then add all the other modes as $3 DLCs or so would have been a good idea. There's no way I can get my friends to buy Tetris for 34€ just to do some goofy PVP rounds

I wish I could recommend it but with the current pricing model, the technical issues with local multiplayer, and the awful amount of loading screens and animations I can't do so with a good conscience.

Updated my review after a bit more playtime to be more nuanced (originally I gave it 10/10)

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The Bloodline does an amazing job of just letting you mine ores at cut wood to your heart's content. No inventory limit as far as I'm concerned and resource nodes are dense enough that you can chop or mine non-stop, especially in hotspots.

All the non-combat activities (mining, chopping, fishing, crafting) include some very nice and simple and minigames - usually there is a cursor moving from left to right and you have to click at the right moment to hit a green area on the line to get an xp boost or improve quality. It's enough interactivity to make you feel like you're actually doing some work, but short enough to not make it feel annoying.

Experience is gained like in Elder Scrolls games and you can progress in running, jumping, even ragdolling. Combat is fast paced. You can hit specific body parts and send enemies flying. Weapon choice includes sword and board, two handed weapons, daggers, bows, crossbows, pistols and rifles, spears and staves from what I've seen so far. There are also different school of magic like geomancy, storm magic, necromancy, druidism and so on. There is rightclick to block, timed parry and shield bash to stagger enemies. But from what I've seen, no heavy attack. Instead you can put skills on your hotbar.

There are some goofy spells, like transforming yourself into a rabbit, or transforming any physics object into a mount that you can then ride.

You have a grappling hook with which you can move through trees like tarzan once you get used to it. You can also climb and wallrun. Overall the movement in this game allows you to overcome obstacles efficiently and makes you feel very mobile.

The artstyle is consistent, the UI is decent and the soundtrack is surprisingly good compared to most other budget titles.

Now for the cons:
- There is a camping menu, but the only place where you are allowed to build a camp (with campfire, bed etc) is in your own settlement at the start of the game - literally the only place where you don't need a camp...
- Sometimes eating food does not restore any HP, sometimes it does. Besides, a lot of foods have descriptions like "restores: 70 HP. eating this will restore 45 HP". There is a lot of unclear information like this and it's especially annoying when an item like that actually restores 0 HP. I don't know if it's a straight up bug, or if I had some debuff with no way of inspecting it
- Performance starts out good with steady 60 fps but in certain regions or when looking at some things, it can drag me down into the 30s and 40s, despite the low poly graphics. Not very pleasing when this happens
- The side quests are often very dull and too cumbersome. Like "pick up 10 dung from the local cows", but the entire farm has only 7 piles of dung, so you have to wait a few hours and come back later when it respawns. Or "free 15 hostages from the bandits", where it already feel like too much after the first 3.
- The camera glitches out regularly, sometimes NPC ai does not load so they just stand around without moving, sometimes large objects are simply invisible. It's quite glitchy.
- At first I liked the fact that there is no main quest, but after a few hours I lost a sense of direction and progression. Idk which location would be appropriate for my level, or where there might be some boss to fight that will actually challenge me to improve my build. The game could definitely benefit from some more guidance and challenges, which imo doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of a main quest.

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Verdict:
I recommend getting The Bloodline if you're looking for a goofy budget version of a "procedurally generated" Skyrim, without any main quest or background simulation or interesting NPCs but similar skill progression, and especially if you like gathering/crafting jobs in MMOs, with satisfying repetitive actions. I've been looking for something less involved than Runescape but more active than Melvor Idle (for gathering / crafting) and this one hits that spot. The game is very polished and satisfying in some areas, but lacks maturity in other areas of design, and still wrestles with stability and performance. If I put more weight on its strengths I'd give it an 8/10 but realistically it's probably closer to a 6.

TDU, but reincarnated 18 years later as a racing game (rather than a literal test-drive simulator)

I played the demo for 4 hours. It gives a good overview of what you can expect from the game. I definitely recommend giving the demo a try. Just like the full game, it is around 40 GB. It is time-gated (5 hours), rather than cutting content.

I'm a big fan of the TDU games and The Crew 1 (may it rest in peace). The Crew 2 was, in my opinion, a disaster. Worse graphics than the first title, forced airplanes and boats on you, the handling and crash physics were an complete joke.

Motorfest is finally getting better again, with the best graphics in the series (a low bar to beat), very stable framerate, but most importantly, an awesome driving model where cars have inertia and you need to hit the brakes in order to win. Drifting is caused by the inertia of your car and is done by using handbrake or normal brake and going into a curve at the right angle. It's not some "press X" to initialize le epic drifting mode. The damage model is unfortunaley still basically non-existent.

The game has a ton of theme park content that is presented in an enjoyable way. Races are organised in "playlists" which usually follow a theme, e.g. Japanese racing culture, American muscle cars, vintage cars, etc. You get a lot of info about the cars that you drive in these races that is quite interesting to learn. I've known that the Nissan NSX, Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra etc are all legendary, but I didn't know why. The game told me all about it, while doing some races with them.

What I like most about this game is the vibrant colors, the cheerfulness, the map (Hawaii), the ability to customize driving assists: It has a steering assist, breaking assist, ABS, EBS, ASR, Drifting assist. Most of them come with multiple levels (comfort, sport, off). Turning all of them off turns this pretty much into a driving sim where you practically need a wheel and pedals to drive safely, because of how much tactile sensitivity and control is needed. You'll also need to start hitting the brakes 100m ahead of a curve if you're in a fast car. I settled for mostly sports settings and a gamepad, and it's perfect for keeping me on my toes without making it it too challenging to stay on the street. The inbuilt time-traveling feature (reverting time up to 15 seconds) encourages me to play with fewer assists and drive riskier. In multi-player races, time-travel is replaced with "teleport back to track"

Also I'm a big fan of Cockpit views and this game nails it. The virtual driver actually rotates the wheel more than 90 degrees, crossing their arms and everything, which is very rare in games. Depending on the car they also position their arms differently, for example in cabrios they sometimes place an arm on the window sill. I play in cockpit view most of the time.

Like all modern racing games, this one is very gamified. You don't just set a waypoint 60 kilometers away and drive for half an hour like in TDU. You set a waypoint 5 kilometers away, meanwhile your car AI talks to you about some trivia, and on the way you can probably do some slalom challenge or speed-trap. The integration of these minigames is well done this time around and does not force you to go through a highscore screen and reset your car, like it did in The Crew 1. All cutscenes are skippable (but are done so nicely, I rarely feel the need to). The game is not as ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-insane as Forza Horizon 5 with in-your-face action every literal second. Especially the start of the game is very chill in comparison.

Great! The control scheme is good, I got used to it in 10 minutes and it's super efficient. Prices can be entered with the numpad, which is something I still need to learn. (But you can also click or use regular number keys)

This repetitive, simple work is really relaxing to me. You also manage the entire store, buying shelves and fridges and what to put in them. Every day a few market prices change so may wanna check if yours are still good. You also have to pay some bills, but it's very manageable.

Has some serious bugs at the time of my review:
1) Customers sometimes complain about too high prices for products I don't even offer. It appears that the game doesn't always update the state correctly when putting new products into your shelves
2) Customers glitch out and walk back and forth rapidly in front of a shelf without picking anything, and do not stop this infinite loop until I skip to the next day.

I rate it Reassessing my career choice / 10