Recent reviews by Itz

A lot of people seem to be blaming the game, it is true this game is abandoned but its very false that the developers are fully responsible for the game dying. From what I remember the Publisher for the game was bought out by a company called Haveli Investments, the lead developer of this game was very sad to see it go. His whole studio was disbanded and all development on this game stopped, for those of you who didn't know the situation. This isn't the devs fault, they wanted to finish the game, and the lead developers heart was crushed when he lost the opportunity to make a squeal to one of his most favorite games. I would not recommend anyone buys this game, as it is not just abandoned, the dev team behind it no longer exists nor has control over the game anymore.

R I P Private Division, thank you for giving Strauss a chance to create an amazing squeal, its so sad we will never know how it would've turned out

Good game and concept, but the actual combat is janky as hell, this game makes no sense with what it teaches you on how it plays. I've had numerous times where AI have blocked attacks in the completely wrong stance and I only have 5 hours of game time here. I've also had countless times where strikes that did land didn't kill the enemies or harm them in anyway, I've pushed/grappled enemies only to be cut by their phantom blade.

I really want to like this game, I enjoy games with a challenge and a big one at that, for example I only play helldivers on the hardest difficulty or games like green hell, I am no stranger to challenge and its what I want a game to have in order to keep me around.

That being said, I can't really justify half this games challenge, the only way it makes more difficulty after a certain point is by again either cheesing the player or making the AI just out right better than the player in certain aspects. This games difficulty feels like C&C where instead of actually making better AI that are harder to kill and fight, you instead give the AI crutches and what I passionately call ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. After a certain point it feels like the AI have stopped trying to be better and instead are just getting more and more assistance

Now if this game is on sale for a few bucks, I highly recommend it to anyone, but as this game isn't normally $5 I can't justify saying I'd want someone else to try this out

Update as of 2025

I'm proud to say a lot of the issue I had previously complained about are still very much prevalent within the game. I have constant issues where either J-walking citizens get stuck in the road causing massive traffic jams throughout the whole city backing up to the highway. Cars have a tendency to just pull a 3 point turn anywhere they like if you don't separate the roads. I've had countless issues when building pathways above roads, from roads suddenly becoming "Invalid" if I remove a pathway I placed above the road. This one was actually so bad there's an intersection in one of my cities I can't delete, all of the roads are invalid if I try to delete them. And the path connecting to the road shows the road as invalid when trying to delete it, meaning I'm literally hard locked & stuck with my intersection. Its so bad I can't even place traffic lights or remove them, stop signs, cross walks, all INVALID.

Now the biggest issue with city skylines 2, the AI drivers are still horrible, the 3 point turns are not even the worst of it. Prepare yourself to see an almost 1:1 ratio with your population to taxis. These cars are actually either the dumbest idea, or the developers just didn't care to make these things function. They tend to act like Ambulances, Cops, Fire trucks, and garbage trucks, in that if you remove a left turn from a street. The taxi simply does not care, the taxi will always do what it wants unless you FORCE the cars to listen by turning your streets one way. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET THESE TAXIS TO STOP TURNING ON STREETS THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO

I don't even want to get into how sometimes I'll find drivers who are on one side of the road completely stopped because everyone needs to pull a 3 point turn in the EXACT. SAME. SPOT. I swear I've seen over 500 taxis use the same exact turn around point along with any other vehicle that decided to turn around. (Your dividers won't do much by the way, any intersection these vehicles will turn around) I would like to mention how yielding in this game doesn't seem to work half the time. I have highways that clearly have artery roads yield to them yet half the time I'll find a line of cars stuck in an intersection because one lane keeps moving slowing down the rest, whether its 1, or 6.

Generally I can't recommend this game, I still find countless issues with AI drivers causing traffic. This is a huge issue as traffic affects everything in the game, your emergency services, imports, exports, and happiness. I've had multiple times where my city had a population crash of a few thousand because emergency services couldn't get through lines of idiotic traffic. (And taxis, I have a city population of 2,500 and I see about 2,000 taxis, there is public transportation already setup in the city)

This review only talks about the game itself, I do not have any mods and I don't use mods when constructing a review. It isn't fair to praise a game for things the community has had to fix, these are issues the developers should've had fixed when this game was released. Instead they seem to have a bigger focus on releasing DLC rather than addressing the AI drivers more aggressively leaving me frustrated to face a lot of the same issues I originally had complained about.

Don't get this game unless you want to spend 1000 hours trying to get traffic to die down without any mod assistance. I already tried watching countless videos on how roads are meant to be built, even when following these instructions I face the same issues previously stated.


2024 Review

Cannot recommend this game due to the horrible AI drivers causing massive traffic in cities that other wise shouldn't suffer from this issue. IE Telling cars to not turn left on a street and they just don't listen and still turn left after taking away the ability to. Taxi's make no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense in that they will flood your city and slow down everything constantly dropping people off where ever even if it is a dam highway. I've tried including tons of paths for foot traffic, public transportation, making roads one way, adding barriers to two way roads. No matter what the AI find some way to be a moron and slow down the general flow of traffic making maneuvers that make no sense unless they were all collectively high and drunk. Traffic is a huge part of this game and the fact that it will almost always flow like ♥♥♥♥ really is sad, making almost the same setups in Cities skylines just shows that this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ broken in many regards. The foot traffic is still a huge issue as well, they do not listen to cross walks so I don't even bother anymore unless I'm adding paths to make them happy, the game will still suffer from lag in the dam main menu, I load into a city and I'll have maybe 60 fps but in the main menu it is always 10 or less until I start a city.

At first I did not like this game but its grown on me
1. Server times have been fixed which is pretty cool
2. The game gets consistent updates and patches

one thing I do see a lot is people crying about the anti cheat rooting into your system, I'm a little technical so to explain why this is so dumb we'll use hell divers 2 as an example and Apex as another with Easy anti cheat

1. Helldivers anti cheat is just like the rest, what does this mean?

well people crying about the anti cheat being rooted also don't know that popular anti cheats like Easy anti cheat, Battle eye, PunkBuster, and more are all rooted! Woohoo! Just about every anti cheat system is a rooted program so I don't see why its so fair to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on hell divers 2 for having a rooted anti cheat but not games like Rainbow six siege, fortnite, call of duty, ect, we don't. Its cause the majority of people are uneducated on the topic and only hear about it from one game instead of looking at how these types of programs actually work. Now on the basis that the company had been leaked, yes, but I haven't found anything recent about any sort of break in to the company in anyway, no hacks, no leaks, so I think the anti cheat company got on top of their game. Another thing is people saying the anti cheat doesn't work, now I'm not familiar with hell divers 2 anti cheat in anyway but I can say the NORMAL situation is that cheats evolve faster than a game does, C# is a really hard language to detect for some games anti cheat, external programs are almost entirely invisible to anti cheat. So the fact that this game is getting hacked is not surprising to me, this game is big, new, and people wanna cheat on it, think of it like minecraft. Cheating isn't allowed and its pushed against, but there will always be a new exploit or bug for the coders to push.

"Should I get this game?"

I don't know, I'm not your dad, I'm not your mom, I don't clean your clothes, look at this game and see if you want it, but what my review is here to do is to try and educate some people on this whole topic so they can make a better decision

Btw yes the game is buggy, but this game was released not even 3 months ago, its not as bad as 76, so maybe we should all calm down about the bugs, and understand this game just hit the market recently. At least this game is getting patches

Dead game no update in over a year
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* Open world games follow a sort of similar format, where each place a player goes within 40 seconds distance there should be a location to explore, loot, or travel to. Starfield has a travel time close to 15 minutes, what does this mean for the game?

* Loneliness, this game feels empty, why yes thank you for letting me land almost anywhere on a planet, there is nothing to do. No locations to explore, no enimes to fight, no loot for the goblins, within each planet unless it is important you can expect to find. 1 maybe 2 locations, very generic abandoned facilities among other things. did I mention

* Gunplay, this game's weapons fail to hit many many marks, from the satisfying punch you'd feel from firing some weapons, an example halo. All the weapons have a sort of satisfying punch, kick, and or sound to them, starfield's armory to my knowlage and experience almost never make any of the marks. For example in halo your sidearm typically a pistol when shot will feel just right to shoot, anyone who has played this game knows. Within starfield every pistol I've come across so far just about never makes it to that satisfactory punch within the weapon, no satisfying dominant bang from the sidearm.

* Enimies, they are annoying more than threatening in most cases, I've yet to find any real variants between the enemies, and the "variants" are just the same man. Copy and pasted with a white bar, now you bring his health down to none just to have it set back to full. This game seems to also find a way to make some if not most missions a run for your money, the amount of ammo it may take to reach or complete and objective is laughable. See how much you make after buying more ammo

Lastly I am just a monkey brain gamer, I want to be able to grab a gun and shooty shoot shoot, so this review may not align with what you experience. Nevertheless do not let one review dictate whether or not you do buy a game, take a majority, and make an educated decision on what you want or think. But personally I'll stick to Fallout 4, and new vegas, if I want my universal space exploration. I'll just go to star citizen

12/4/23: By the way there's a new update, if you get a bug where space is somehow stuck to your ship and first off I don't know how you could screw up that badly. The updates fix is "Load a save", I really really wish I could kick Todd in the teeth so he'd wake up from his fever dream that this game is good.

Wait, I need to buy the bundle, just for 2 countries... wait... The only other country besides the USSR and Germany is a Paid DLC? And ur ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kidding me its 18 bucks right? ♥♥♥♥ this company, guys have gone to ♥♥♥♥ can't even release a game without making DLC countries before giving us more than 2 options.

Additions

I felt as if my last review didn't really encompass enough of why exactly I hated this game and still do. As of now I feel no need to respond to the people talking about mods for more content nor people just saying "Digitalmindsoft didn't develop it" shut. Digitammindsoft is listed as a developer on the steam page. Further more to shut you down on "DigitalMiNdSofT isn'T mAkinG it!" "made by Digitalmindsioft, developer" of which this quote was placed on the BARBEDWIRE STUDIOS Youtube of all places within anycase I will dive into the game itself now.

Variety

There are two countries within this whole entire game, and the price tag for the game is $35, let me humor everyone who says there is enough variety for a second. I've paid $17.50 per country within the base game if my math is correct. Now lets say I want Finland, Without modding the game as that is not within the context of the game itself I will have to pay $18 for the country. Adding a bit more onto this lets be generous and the America DLC comes out to be $25 at the end of the day since Digital was so nice. The game comes out to a well deserved 78 dollars, you heard that right. "Less than a full priced video game" Folks if you want it all give me an extra 43 bucks in DLC alone!

Edit: I guessed 15, the price is 25

Gameplay

Go get men of war assault squad 2, then play this game, then tell me what exactly is so different besides graphics, a new trench, and lack of content from the NEWER installation to the series. You play Men of War assault squad 2 you leave a man, you play gates of hell you leave a depressed man sippin on jack, the point is the older series of installations to this series just somehow managed and still manage to be better than current installations.

Final notes

I dunno, buy the game if you want my review shouldn't be like ur father figure on whether or not you want this game, go look at a majority. Think about what you want more and decide from there, I'm simply here to s_it on a s_itty game

With an additional 1000 hours since my last review I thought I should update it

This game is pretty okay, its alright, I mean I only have 1700 hours

Yuh, my review has changed for a few reasons, some of these may not happen to you but they happened to me none the less I still like the game, but I cannot recommend it in its current state.

1. The game is buggy, but don't think of fallout 76 kinda bugs, the bugs in this game are smaller and rarer to some across yet still annoying. One that I am facing is my FPS being locked at 30 no matter what I do, I have played this game for almost 2 years now so whatever you got for me to try to fix it I've tried it.

2. The game feels rather empty in terms of what you have to use, there are only 2 machine guns, a hand full of SMGS, and 2-4 shotguns I don't remember exactly. Snipers have it a bit better off while assault rifles seem to be the main focus of the weapon game-play.

3. Due to number 2 the game has a more straight focus play style than a methodical tactical sim like you would think, due do the lack of variety in weapons it also leads to the variety of strategies used being dumbed down too

4. There is no current armor system in this game, this is understandable but also not acceptable, for the amount of time this game has been out, you would think they'd add quality of life features like armor and maybe some sort of basic medical system. But there is none and has been none for the entire time I've played this game and I can only hope the armor system that is being talked about actually gets added soon.

Over all I cannot recommend this game within its current state, it is incomplete which for early access is okay my only issue is when your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game has been in development for almost 6 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ years take this ♥♥♥♥ out of early access or lower the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ price
$20 would be more fair for a 6 year long early access title

Good asf game