Recent reviews by Pyro Gnome

Need more positive reviews to offset the idiots who can't be bothered to look up the dev roadmap or understand that living in a country AT WAR is maybe not the most conducive atmosphere for working on a passion project with very few people. The game has great potential and is NOT abandoned. If you can't show a little understanding and patience, YOU SHOULDN'T BE BUYING INTO EARLY ACCESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Morons.

EDIT: Yes, give me more clown awards to prove that I'm right about you. Thanks for the points!

Most of the negative reviews are prior to the integration/balance update that ALWAYS follows a new expansion in Rimworld, as they listen to feedback and made adjustments and additions accordingly. People whining about Anomaly always playing out the same are not telling you that you can CHOOSE to play with a focus on Anomaly content or just have it integrated more casually like every other event type that's been added by other expansions.

Rimworld, as always, gives you the power to adjust your experience with the content. The first time playing Anomaly is probably best done in the full-on horror setting, and after that you can just let it be a bunch of extra stuff you can do if you want to - or not. Just like how you can choose if you want your colony to have a vampire from Biotech, or if you'd rather just kill it.

Don't let people who are too dumb to use a menu or pay attention to patch notes turn you away from a great addition to the game.

Funny how all the negative reviews seem to have nothing to say, except for the one that doesn't understand how to mitigate climate disasters and plan ahead. I thought Civ players were supposed to be smart(ish)?

They don't make 'em like they used to...

First ~12 hour impression is good. Very true to the original, but with a lot more system depth. Nothing blowing me away, but nothing jumps out as really annoying either... yet.

Not like I'd give it a negative review with over 4,500 hours played...

A fantastic open-world retro-style JRPG with metroidvania elements. An absolute home run!

First of all, I've seen a lot of comments/reviews about poor performance with a powerful machine, which I was experiencing as well until I stopped trying to play at 4K. If you have issues with performance and are playing at 4K, just turn your resolution down to the next step with the same aspect ratio, as you save your video card literally MILLIONS of additional pixels to render. I went from frame drops at minimal settings to super smooth at medium/high.

So far mostly good. Quite a few minor bugs, but nothing save-ruining or fatal-crashing. As one would expect from a GTA/Deus Ex hybrid, at 10 hours played I've barely scratched the surface so this is very much a first impression review.

Most of my frustration so far comes from expecting the AI to be incompetent when they instead flank me and light me up. That's not a bad thing - play smart to survive.

I'd like to have a little bit more time to react to conversation options as it sometimes feels like I barely have time to read them all, never mind pick the right one... but I'm a slow reader, so this is likely not an issue for most people.

Pretty good settings menu, except I can't understand why I can change every action on the keyboard EXCEPT interact. What the actual ♥♥♥♥ is that? Literally the only thing I wanted to change was interact from F to E, and it can't be done.

Take the bad with the good until it's fixed, but for now I'm enjoying my time in Night City.

One of the best games of the last several years, easily. Fairly difficult, quite random, insanely fun.

Excellent atmosphere and many solidly designed systems are slightly held back by there only really being a couple of "correct" ways to play the game. Both of those also require the same exact early game to be followed to a tee on any difficulty above normal, with the hardest difficulty only being doable with favourable randomization.

Despite this restriction, the various story modes and scenarios tweak available resources and provide unique challenges which add a surprising amount of replay-ability. That specific strategy that was the only way to beat one scenario on hard mode might even be impossible to pull off on another.

Worth the cost at full price for survival strategy fans, but at 50% (at time of writing) it's a solid pick for anyone who appreciates atmosphere and/or hard choices.

RATINGS DISCLAIMER: I'm harsh. I've worked on cutting edge VR tech, so it takes a lot to impress me. A 3/5 is good.

Graphics: 4/5
Lots of little things come together to make this game look SO nice, and there are some surprisingly appreciable graphical options if needed, such as disabling various screen-space effects.

Sound: 4/5
The soundtrack could use a little more variety, but it never really felt stale to me either, as what is there is very good and suits the atmosphere perfectly. Decent SFX and an excellent score help make the great atmosphere that keeps me hooked. However, there are only a few spoken lines in the whole game, and you'll hear them fairly regularly (but not repeatedly).

Gameplay: 4/5
Lots of tech options, and a good sense of freedom. The concept of concentric city planning and building is surprisingly addictive.

Story: 3/5
While the setting and lore is very strong, there are certain "story" elements that sort of have to happen in every scenario (triggered by a new building or law enactment, for example) which get old when once you've seen them a few times. A little variety in that regard would make subsequent playthroughs feel more like a new story.

Usability: 2/5
The game's only real shortcoming is some difficulty in finding out what you should actually be doing, and what you're doing wrong. There's a tutorial, but you'll never really feel prepared for what is thrown at you until you've failed several times. Even if your first game feels like it's going well, like mine did, you'll suddenly find that just scraping by isn't good enough. But a mostly solid UI and an easy-to-access set of tutorial tips keeps this from being an insurmountable hurdle. I recommend visiting YouTube first if you want to play on harder difficulties. There are a lot of things you can do wrong without even knowing it.

Overall: 4/5
Despite the initial frustration, I love this game. But I thrive on problem-solving and overcoming challenges. If that sounds like you, don't miss this one!

P.S. Trying a new review format because I know how much I appreciate reviews like this. Feel free to review my review! =P