Neue Rezensionen von Koh

I spent more than half the time on record in a lobby searching for a game. The queue times are terrible if you queue as a human. Every queue went above the 10 minute mark on a full lobby of humans. I really wanted to give this game a shot but it gave a horrible first impression. Cant even say anything about the gameplay cause i was only able to play 3 games.

Edit after going through the comments: The game came out 2-3 days ago at the time of reviewing and the playerbase is low. If you want a better experience searching for games you may want to wait for peak hours, no idea when those are but good luck in your adventure.

The game's visual is great and as a singleplayer game its probably good. Sadly i can not recommend this game if you are planning to play this with a friend. If you do not live right next door, this game uses a high ping detector which will instantly kick your partner from your game. This error has been acknowledged by Ubisoft but decided not to remove such an annoying feature "in favor of protecting the quality of their co-op experience", kinda ironic. If you want to read more on the issue, just google Bookworm - 2cea2bdc , that is the name of the error. See for yourself if its worth the risk or not, the singleplayer campaign is probably solid on its own but that is not why i got the game for. Good luck o/

Marbles on Stream, as you might expect, is a heavily stream focused RNG race game. It uses twitch integration in order for people to join races, as anyone in the streamer's chat can join the active race on screen. Over 50 dev tracks + community created tracks. For starters, the game is free and viewers are not required to download the game in order to join any race. I will try to go through as many points on the game as i can possibly think of.


- The game offers customization though every aspect must be unlocked throughout the use of the in game currency (PbP Coins). There are a few ways to gain currency, as a streamer you can complete challenges which mainly comes down to doing as many races as possible as each race earns you EXP that goes towards the challenge completion progress. Another way to earn currency is by joining the community day streams which happens every friday on either the Dev's channel (PixelByPixelStudios), or in one of the community dev's channel (Spooo or StandardDamage). The third way is by purchasing these coins using real money.

Customization as a streamer (technically anyone can do this but its more recommended for streamers)
- You can unlock up to 36 marble slots through the in game shop. This in turn gets divided in 2 groups of up to 18 marbles each, for viewers and subs, that means you cant go above 18 marble slots for subs or viewers. The viewers in your chat then can join the races using any of the unlocked slots (by writing !play #), as every slot will hold a number from 1 to 36.

- The in-game shop also offers many skins and shape modifiers for your marbles which gets updated every season. Both skins and shape modifier are permanent, which means you can use them as many times as you want in your marbles without worrying of losing your skin. There are also exclusive skins that can be won during community days, you just gotta get lucky to win the races, luckily these streams go for quite some hours every friday so there is always a chance to get one cool shiny skin. Another way to get an exclusive skin is by straight up purchasing a custom marble, which basically means you can give your own image to the dev and if they have slots by the beginning of the season, your design will become an available marble for anyone to purchase (this option is way more common used by streamers, for more information on this i would suggest visiting the Dev's discord). Shape modifiers basically changes the shape of the marble, but it will still act as a marble, so no matter the shape, it will have the same collision as the regular marble. This is just another cosmetic gag that i love, and the shapes can range from a d20, to a skull... to a tire... to a barrel! There are alot of shapes to get if you want to add more flavor to the marbles you show on stream

Customization as a racer
- Racers have a different customization option, while skins and modifiers are handled by the streamer, viewers/racers can have their own spawning animation, accessory (which also adds a trail to the marble depending on the accessory you get), and finishing animation. These personal customization for your marble are handled through the phone app and you still need in game currency to purchase said modifiers.

Customization as a track builder
- The game comes with an in game track builder that you can start playing with for free. The free version is quite limited but it gives a good idea on how the builder works in case you would want to dive into making tracks. Note that in order to get the full building experience, the game offers a seasonal pass that not only unlocks a bunch more of track pieces, but also raises the limit of pieces a track can hold. Both versions, free or season pass, allows you to upload your designs, though the free version is limited to 3 uploads.
It is important to point out that the benefits from the season pass last for that entire season, once the new season starts, you will need to purchase that new season's pass. This pass also drops down in price as the season goes by.
For more information on how the track builder works, i highly recommend this guide done by one of the community members:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1910444994

At the time of writing this, the game offers 3 game modes, Racing - Royale - Tilted

Racing
- As you might guess, this is the default mode for marbles. This is the mode you will most likely see streamers run. The races are all RNG, so there is no input that will give any advantage to anyone. There are also 2 different ways of racing. You can either select a track and straight up race, or you can do a Grand Prix (GP) with up to 16 tracks you can either select yourself or let your viewers choose using the !vote # command. At the end of the GP, you will get a cute animation showing the top 3 racers of the GP.

Royale
- Just like the name implies, this is Marbles on Stream's take on Battle Royale games, i want to believe it started as a parody that just grew on everyone because i gotta admit that its quite fun to see marbles mashing each other till only one stays alive. This mode in particular allows viewers to target any other player in the game by using the command !target "playername". In that aspect, this mode is more interactive than the normal racing BUT, unlike races, this mode (at the time of writing this review) has 8 royale maps but no community created royale map support.

Tilted
- Tilted was the latest mode added to the game, this relies solely on the streamer's ability to try to keep as many marbles alive from beginning to end. Its quite funny especially on how tricky it gets as the streamer progresses levels. Viewers are still meant to join and hopefully cheer on the success of the streamer, but unlike racing that is rng, and royale that has some viewer input, this mode is only managed by the streamer.

Overall these are the 3 modes. The dev added a new way to modify these modes by adding Marble Weight. Basically if the streamer has this modifier enable, anyone that joins a race or royale can change the way of their marble to make it either heavier or lighter, this in turn will change the way the marble interacts with the track, as it will either jump higher or just stay on the ground, pretty fun concept that i yet to explore more.


Depending on the amount of marbles that participate in a race, the marbles that finishes said race will earn points that will go towards a global leaderboard. Any racer that makes it to the top 100 during the season will be distinguished in any stream they participate in as they will carry their current placement in the leaderboard right before their name. Its also nice to note that the winners of the season also get rewarded, thats why you will see alot of people 'grinding' their placements, but don't be fooled by this, the game's community is very friendly and more often than not racers will stay on stream interacting with others.


Like i said, the community is extremely friendly. People will join your stream, chill, have fun. Its also nice to join the community days to get to know even more marblers, both Spoo and Standard (community managers) make a great job spreading positivity just as much as Pixel (game dev). There is alot of passion put into the game, and its shown, which is why i've been supporting Marbles for over 8 months, before it even came out on steam. There is always room for improvement and its easy to see that marbles is always heading the right direction.

Just the same as with OVRDrop this tool helps you if you don't want to use the oculus dashboard or the steam overlay. It has easier more straight to the point options than OVRDrop, but overall they are similar tools. It drops performance on my end every now and then, i can't pinpoint why and no matter what i do, the tool autolaunches even if i disabled it both in the steamvr settings and in their own settings (which is honestly extremely annoying). Aside from that, it works, just like OVRDrop, it works fine. Its a nice tool to have that i hope it will get optimized more in the future and i hope this weird autolaunch issue gets patched or someone can direct me on how to stop it, cause it always gets on my nerves. It sounds silly, but if you are someone that is constantly starting and stopping steamvr, it just gets old to have to wait till this tool launches.

Please dont ever leave steam

The Crew is a fun racing game and has a good online experience -when it works-.

The controls are good, they manage to feel responsive under the arcadish style of the game. Each upgrade does have an impact on the car's handling. This is not a driving simulation game, i don't know what was the popular belief in the game but i never seen it as a driving simulator type of game. The way the cars feel reminds me instantly of the old need for speed series, which is something nostalgic and fun. Progression through the game will allow you to unlock different specs for your cars, being able to tune up your favorite ride with up to 5 different specs: Street, Dirt, Perf, Raid, Circuit. Each spec has an immediate impact on the car's handling.

The story is not the most ingaging one though is not too tone down to be silly or childish. Its just there for you to follow.

The AI feels cheap, which can sometimes ruin part of the experience. You can indeed outrun them and get some nice distance as long as your driving skills are up to par, but they still somehow manage to keep up a speed that their cars shouldn't be able to have. Not sure if this is working as they intended or a bug, but it would be better if they didn't use cheap tactics to make it "challenging". The cop AI is -okay-. It sure makes me chuckle when i run inches away from a cop at 180mi in a 50 zone and they don't seem to give a damn, but then again, if they actually had to chase people for every time they are speeding the game would become unbearable. Its not hard to escape the cops, but its not an easy task at first. Once you get the hang of it you will be able to lose them easy, especially inside cities, or you could always go rampage and try to shut them down. So far, the only way to have the police chase you is by breaking things, crashing into other cars or the police itself. A small destruction bar will fill up and once its max the chase starts, or if you break things right in front of the cops, that sometimes also triggers the chase.

Day to night cycle is highly welcome making the world quite beautiful. I've been stopping several times just to admire the view and take screenshots left and right. The entire presentation of the game's world is quite good. I gotten no texture pop ups so i've been able to enjoy every detail without problems. Some landmark views are just way too good to miss. If you are into these type of exploration, then the game has plenty of areas to go just to get a cool view of things.

Exploration is encouraged, be it either for the view or to find abandoned car pieces / antennas. Antennas work like Far Cry's antennas or Watch Dogs CToS, once found they will display all side missions around that specific area plus they will also allow you to fast travel (though about this i am not 100% sure cause at times i could fast travel to locations where antennas were not activated yet). You can use trains or airports to travel from the different locations, this can help at times especially if you are in a hurry and want to go to a specific part of the map that you haven't explore yet, as fast travel won't work on locations you haven't visited.

Car and player customization is minimum. I think for a racing game of this caliber, its a shame it has so little to offer. For colors, you are only allowed to change the whole body and only with preset colors for official/metallic/iridescent, there is no color palette. Another lacking thing is the fact that you can only place one sticker on the car, and i can't seem to change the color which makes it almost impossible to bond with your ride. You can modify the front bumper, the interior of the car, hood, spoiler, rear bumper, side mirrors, and the side of the car though i haven't found any car that allows me to change that area in particular. As for player upgrades, the HQ has perks for you to increase that will grant different bonuses.

Each mission and side mission will grant you a car piece that directly affects on the performance of your ride. The better you rank in the mission, the higher the upgrade will be, ranking from Bronze to Silver to Gold. Self explanatory, bronze is the minimum upgrade, silver is the medium and gold is the best upgrade. Each car piece comes with a specific bonus (acceleration, top speed, grip or breaks) Every car piece you get is "car-bounded" though the piece will go to your garage, if you want to place that upgrade on another car you will have to pay a small fee. Though if i am correct, the car pieces are only usable with other cars as long as they share the same spec (Race, Dirt, Raid, Perf, Circuit), so if you finished the mission or side mission with a street car, the piece will only work for those specific cars. Upon leveling up you will be given the option to purchase pre-build kits that will instantly upgrade your car. The first kit you get it at level 10, the second one at 20 and so on. This kits are barebones generally level 10 or 20 (depending on the level of the unlock) bronze pieces, but it does help speed up things if you don't want to go through the trouble of racing every mission or side missions again. Every 5 levels the overall performance of every car you own will get a boost.

The damage on impact is nice to watch, though the autoregeneration of the car is a bit puzzling. Not sure who's idea was but its strange to see the car going all wolverine on you and shaking off the VISUAL damage. The damage done to the car won't affect the performance on your car though it will affect the life of it, causing you to eventually head back to your HQ to repair your car is the life on your car is low. Same as damage, you car can be covered in dirt and snow but it will wipe off the moment you hit the road.

Pairing up with friends is what the game was meant for, and sadly this is were the main problems shows up. Making up a crew with your friends can make progress easier, though the sole act of crewing up with your friends can prove to be frustrating. Connectivity issues, unable to join crews, made this particular experience tedious to no end. For some reason the 4th member, will somehow always find a way to not work and when it does, you might be able to run some missions before you get dc'ed from the servers. The game seems to eat a whole lot of bandwith, so slow connections might have a tough time playing the game with friends. Upon reaching level 10 you will be given the option to choose a faction out of 4. This will enable PVP missions and PVE, and also a type of "salary" that will increase base on your performance.

Overall, despite of connectivity issues, the game is fun. Its not the mmo experience it was advertised but what you get is not bad either. Its hard to recommend it unless you are into exploration and have the patience enough to go through the connection issues. When it works, its a really fun game. If you are in doubt, i would suggest to wait a bit longer, maybe a price drop. For racing enthusiasts, the gameplay might be too arcadish, but its still fun.

-Lacked the money to buy a minor heal spell for my knight.
-Infurated, began to murder every npc in town
-Their blood now serves as a healing source for my leeching talent

11/10

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Edit (since people actually took the time to read this)

I play this game along with my friend in co-op mode. While i wouldn't consider myself new to this type of games, i was soon reminded of how hard RPGs can be.

For people that are new to the genre, this game can prove to be quite frightening, especially at the beginning, even in normal difficulty. The lack of direction given, or... the freedom of choice you have... makes the game quite confusing at first, which is why its highly recommended to always read the dialogue carefully. The game even gives you the option to read again the whole conversation through the conversation log tab.

Co-op mode adds to the fun of the game. The fact that you can play the entire game along with a friend makes it the more enjoyable to go through. While people can argue that co-op can make any game look better, Divinity: Original Sin, gives a further meaning to play with your friend, having the NPCs actually acknowledging your companion and not just simply having it there for the sake of having someone around. You can get to talk with your allies at any time, getting to know them more. At certain times, depending on your actions, you will even get short interactions with whoever is in your party that can boost certain traits based on the answer given. There is a meaning for your friend to be there, is not like other games where your co-op companion is just another clone of yourself.

The gameplay is fun. Turn-base combat system based on AP (Action points) is self explanatory, the more AP's you have, the more actions you can make in your turn. Each character has its own APs that are boosted by their attributes and gear.

You are given several classes to pick from though you are not prohibit from learning other classes abiilties. For example, my knight can use water-based skills which are the ones that can grant healing spells along with other water/ice abilities. As for character appearance customization, its not really deep, in fact, i believe it might be one weak point of the game.

Overall, the game is incredibly addicting and fun. While the early levels might discourage newcomers, this game sure is one big reminder that classic-style RPGs are not dead and can show up at any time to surprise us and remind just how fun and frustrating they used to be. I was lucky enough to encounter no bugs so far, which is something i am grateful for seeing how i read some bugs around that can make progress quite more painful than what it should.

I would hate myself if i had to give a real numeric value to the game, so i will say this: "If you are curious about the game, buy it, you will simply not regret it"

One last thing, save often. F5 will be one of your strongest allies. (Not kidding, really, save often)

Never been to any European country so i had to rely on playing this game or watch pictures.


Better than google's street view/10