Recent reviews by Josip

Previous Negative Review

Just found out that the game has a seasonal wipe system — your whole progress is deleted every 3 frakking months.

What is the point?

Edit

I was wrong.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

It'a 7 year old game, but this does not stop it in being absolutely one of the best first-person, atmospheric, open-world, exploration game that I have ever played.

Why the thumb down review?

Feels abandoned due to gameplay bugs, glitches, bad UI, bad AI and lack of support for modern equipment (e.g. ultrawide monitors, etc.). It is all fixable, if you are willing to do it.

First time I tried to play it, as a newbie to mods, I spent around 4 hours in a world of mental pain trying to install and manage all the mods I needed. Mods are a double edge sword - at first it seems difficult to get them to work, but then once you figure out how to do it you discover a whole new world of possibilities with many available mods at your reach - which equals to more time of getting more mods to work with the game.

Few days ago, I wanted to revisit the Fallout world, but I just couldn't bear with figuring out how to get all the mods working again with older saves, which made me just quit and uninstall. Last time I was willing to learn and figure out how to get everything working. However, a year later, the Fallout world wasn't worth it this time.

As a base product listed on Steam, I would not recommend it to a friend. However, as a base game with the community support (mods and etc.) it is a good game that is immersive and atmospheric.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Offworld Trading Company game is unlike anything else out there. Its a building, strategy, competition game with quick decision making & maneuvering involved in order to win. Its a solid game, but it can hardly deliver consistent amounts of fun hours, because after you finish the first match you already seem all.

It is a fast paced game where the player must be active and paying attention. You can pause anytime, so don't worry about your lack actions per minute micro skills, you don't need those. However and this makes it so intriguing is the fact that the buildings need claims to build, so its not all about speed but deep thinking and planning ahead. Most games skirmishes are a quick 20-30 minutes.

Players play as corporations on Mars – choosing a location, trying to make a fortune supplying the central colony, and buy out the competition. The game offers no military conflict, but black market manipulation, auctions and economics. These corporations produce and consume 13 resources; a handful tutorials explain the basics. There are 4 different corporation types with specific advantages and resource needs. Nearby material deposits, hopefully rich (or surface ice) determine the quality of a founding location.

When I faced the campaign I found a really different game, with mechanics not explained, construction limit and a kind of rush to win that I was never able to beat with the concepts explained in the in-game tutorial.

The UI is very polished, allowing control over fluid, rapidly changing situations. Market price system and its representation is especially impressive; you see price trends, actual price and spikes.

Difficulty is per player, determining upgrade cost, debt thresholds and starting money. So it can be used to even skill levels in MP matches. You can't change the AI difficulty.

The DLC cash grab is pathetic, disgusting and disappointing.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

There’s so much fun to be had here, and the co-op is probably the best I’ve seen in a long time. The country of Bolivia is massive and fun to explore, with plenty to do and visuals that never fail to impress. But, since I like this game a lot, I have to go over its shortcomings.

At start it's somewhat generic 3rd person shooter. It is fun solo, but the real fun starts in co-op.

The Bolivian setting is impressive and beautiful, with a diverse biome world to explore. The environments feel properly dense with all kinds of growth. However, gruesomely repetitive missions can hinder your gameplay, there really is no fun to be had in all that, unless you're a digital game world photography enthusiast, or a digital game world hiking/tourism lover, then i'm sure you'll be having the time of your life with Wildlands.

The "shooty shooty" mechanics are quite competent with it's 1st-3rd person shooter hybrid mechanics, guns feel decent to use and have satisfying sound effects. The character, gear customization is well done too with quite a lot of options to deck out your character. There's a good amount of weapon choice as well. Also props to Ubisoft for including bullet drop and prone mechanics, not many AAA mass market oriented games include those, especially 3rd person perspective driven games. The tactical gameplay aspects barely feel like they're even there, they are very bare bones and worse, feel like they don't even need to be used. The cluttered HUD is also painful, there is very little challenge in fighting enemies since they get auto tagged and become visible through walls and crap, so yes – disable HUD elements to increase immersion and realism. However, by disabling HUD elements, the game becomes unbalanced because it was clearly meant to be played with the hand holding mechanics enabled. The synchronized execution mechanic is also half broken, because your AI team mates can shoot through solid rock to execute their targets.

Then comes the driving, Wildlands has one of the worst feeling driving i have ever experienced in a game, the cars are weightless, they feel like paper boxes on wheels. Nailing the driving model should've been a core focus for the developers, since you spend so much time driving in this thing, instead the numb driving played a significant role in my abandonment of the game. The flying feels better, but not by much, it also is quite dumbed down, with very little fear factor of screwing up.

I will still recommend the game, since I had too much fun and would be insincere otherwise. There is lot of cool freedom in that game, you just have to use it. Many possibilities to do things in unusual way thanks to the open world structure. I'll give 2 examples. First is a mission where you have to drop off a truck in enemy base and leave without raising any alarms. You can do that normal way and try to sneak out or take down all enemies quietly. Alternatively, you can sneak into a nearby building, get to the top and base jump out of the base. Second example is mission to interrogate base commander. You can get in normal way, or get a friend to fly you in a helicopter over the base, jump on a parachute on top of the building he's in and after interrogation have you friend pick you up with the same helicopter. The quantity over quality approach is the most detrimental aspect of nearly every modern Ubisoft game. it really hurts to grind basically same content over and over, however it is my guilty pleasure to role-play specialist and explore the vastly different biome world solo or with friends.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Boring. The multiplayer is so dull and uninspiring. Just another boring arena shooter. Nothing new to it. Gun-play is unsatisfying and feels like firing from wooden sticks. Graphics are mediocre and feel nothing special, Star Wars Battlefront II or Battlefield 1 have, in my opinion, superior graphics. Feels repetitive. The multiplayer feels like Call of Duty, bunch of unorganized pricks running around shooting each others in the back. Not fun.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Great game, when it works. The game is plagued with problems (read the discussion boards), and there's effectively no official support for it. Sadly the Steam version (or any other PC version distributed through any service) is the worst of all: it's not optimized, lacks widescreen support, runs at the low-resolution of 800x600 and it can't be changed, Steam overlay not working, etc.

Buy it when PopCap and Steam manage to get their crap together and fix this one.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Metro 2033 looks beautiful for it's time and still holds up, but go beyond that and you find a semi-good first-person shooter. The levels are laughably linear, with almost zero chance for exploration, the enemy AI is utterly braindead, the weapons are okay and all the voices sound the same. On top of that, the level of interactivity is terrible: very few things can be opened or searched, and the majority of people you meet are little more than mannequins, who won't speak or react to you in any way.

However, as for its atmosphere and narrative, the story is good and the heavy breathing sound you hear when you put on your gas mask really provide a great atmosphere. Metro 2033 more than makes up for its linear gameplay by making the world extremely rich and detailed. The sounds and sights of the tunnels and the post apocalyptic surface world are amazingly interesting and beautiful. Stepping out of the metro and into the open world for the first time is stunning. Also, the survival horror feeling is strong, light mechanics and the gas mask fogging up on you adds a very realistic edge.

So, very linear gameplay which was totally expected, but nevertheless the game is fun to play and I happily churned my way through it and all the experiences it has to offer. All in all a great experience well worth playing and enjoying, just don't expect anything revolutionary.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Excellent game, but only those with patience. For those that are just looking to shoot things up, you may find the game difficult. For those of you used to playing Splinter Cell, you may find this game to be a little linear. For those of you with an open mind and a little background in the Hitman series, there's plenty of replay value. You can keep going back to try a different way to accomplish a mission.

While a load of fun at times, the lack of mid-mission checkpoints really kills it. Some of the missions are pretty long and to have to start all over because of one stupid mistake really ruins it. The controls are sometimes decent, but the graphics are outdated. The controls, animation, voice acting and missions are all one sided, predictable, cheap and sometimes awful. I used to play it as a kid and I due have a bit of nostalgia for it. That said, for newer players, seek new releases of the game and if you find that you like Hitman series then defiantly return to it's roots.

I should also mention that for some, this game is sometimes unstable and unplayable on modern systems and sadly nobody gives a sChit about releasing a patch to fix all these bugs and problems. Clunky controls and camera movement. If you don't want to lose your head on adjusting settings, stay clear!

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

It's easy to control the battlefield as there aren't many units which is great since RTS are known to be very stressful and micro-managing.

I'll start right off with negatives. There aren't many, but they are intense. The most annoying one is. I think, the greedy practice by developers/publishers. They left out two main types of factions in the DLC pay-wall. If you are looking to play skirmish, which you probably are since online multi-player is semi-dead unless you bring a friend or find someone in the community hub, you should pay up and get those two DLCs because they will expand your experience.

The second negative point is YOU CAN'T REBIND KEYS in RTS game.

As for the graphics, they do look good, but nothing amazing. When you zoom in like 100% you can see some rough textures and etc. - nothing hearth breaking. However, while normally zoomed while playing an RTS, the world, vehicles and explosions look awesome and sound awesome as well.

What is the best part of the game? The immersion and atmosphere you get by playing. Voice-overs are top notch and cut-scenes (that can be skipped) bring good life to the game. Story is decent - I would even call it interesting. I was genuinely looking forward to hear what happens next.

The battles you will have will astonish you. Seeing all the firepower brought against your enemy, while bullets are flying and vehicles are exploding while friendly air-crafts are dropping bombs on them, creates such a good and satisfying atmosphere of a huge battlefield and really puts you in the seat as a commander of a huge fleet. Reminds me a little bit of Ashes of Singularity, however here it's much easier to control and understand the specific roles of your units.

Lastly, music i.e. soundtracks brings another layer of immersion and amazing atmosphere to the game. I honestly feel like a commander and I get sucked into the world of Kharak. Skirmish is not that fun, it just felt meh with the maps and the peace of the gameplay. Multiplayer is dead pretty much.

Truth, Doubt or Lie - Steam Curator

Well, what can I say. Another RTS. A little bit more original than the usual stuff, especially because the pace is slower and requires less frantic-clicking. But as the game progresses it becomes a click-challenge just like the other RTS games. The game is about conquering regions and when done so, you can mine for either metal or radioactive, which you will need to build your buildings, vehicles and static defenses

Technically, it might be an impressive game, but in my opinion simply putting a lot of objects on screen is not sufficient to create an enjoyable experience. The tutorial was painful. The UI was that helpful. I often felt overwhelmed with information and units to control. It just felt complicated. The combat is slow enough that you might want to spend some time base buildings. However, that part of the game is not engaging. Then, you might want to return to combat and play with your set of toys, but that part isn't very engaging either.

Based on my gameplay, either you're good at macro-management all over the map, which enables you to quickly conquer regions or you setup major defenses and when you survived the first 30 minutes of defense hell, you have an easy time. I did this for the most part of the campaigns. There wasn't much original stuff to do. A few things, but nothing to write home about.

Unit-development and whatnot is what you've seen before as well: short range and long range units, low armor or high armor, slow and fast and some specialized units. Though the idea is not original I liked it nevertheless. What is unique though, is you can improve your armor, weapons and building-strength infinitely. At each step you'll pay more for it though. Over time you'll save something called Quanta. This will be invested to upgrade your stuff.

The AI is very basic. It just forms an army and rushes towards you. All in all the game is deliberately implemented so that the visuals are subdued - no big colorful explosions. Since this game encourages lots of units, a decent CPU on top of a graphics card is welcome.

All in all, from a single player perspective, it is not a bad game, but I just didn't find myself liking it that very much. It looks cool. Would I pay $50 or €50 for the gold edition (includes all the add-ons)? No.