Recent reviews by TEARS FOR SEARS

What you get when you have FurFest at a Cabela's

If Arena didn't exist, I would not play Magic. Simple as. I love this game and started getting my feet wet in it way back around 99, but paper is prohibitive in both cost and time. The things you will hate about Arena are largely the same things you will hate about paper - rotation metas get stale, RNG exists despite your best efforts, and you still have to break packs open whether you like it or not.

There is a wildcard token system that generates tokens of the various rarities from the packs you open. If you are F2P, it is as slow as you would expect. Being entirely F2P is very doable and there will always be cheaper decks that are competitive in any meta.

The cons specific to Arena don't keep me from recommending it, but I would be remiss not to list them out:

-Commander is the most popular way to play paper right now. There is no Commander mode in Arena, really. The bulk of play is Standard and Draft modes. Standard was the only way to play when I was a small sperglet, so for me this is not a dealbreaker, but maybe it is for you. MTG Online is there if you have to play Commander online. I don't find Standard to be the issue it is in meatspace thanks to the lower cost of entry (and let's be real, storage) on Arena.

-Accessibility is very limited. Arena still makes Magic a terrible game for anyone with visual impairment, but it's extra headscratching that they really just don't want to spend the time to improve their UI when it's just so very feasible to do so. You're going to be getting more and more older Magic players as time goes on and I don't feel like the visibility is functional even for age-related impairment. If you're especially in need, I really don't think WotC cares you exist.

-Having a computer keep track of rules for you is great 99% of the time, but 1% of the time there will be a gotcha moment where you learn an interaction isn't what you expect and there's no feedback as to why. Paper has this too, but paper also will have someone who knows what's up and can explain it to you. There's no way to talk to people in Arena, really, so you have to go looking for this information on your own.

-The client does everything it can to isolate you from being able to engage with other players. People still find ways to be toxic with emote spam. You are able to mute anyone to fix this. If you are someone used to a more laid back and casual atmosphere with magic, there's no real way to engage with other players in that way here. A good example would be that you can tell someone "Sorry!" as an emote, but you are only able to say "Sorry!" if the other person said "Oops!" first. If that sounds weird to you, it's because it is. Out of the ten default emotes you can use to interact with other people, half of them are conditional on the other person saying whatever their counterpart is first. Had to go AFK unexpectedly? Your only option to communicate to your opponent would be "Oops!" which 9 times out of 10 will be read as you BMing after forcibly stalling out your match.

-You WILL get people who stall matches out of saltiness. This occurs far more often when you're new and the matchmaker is trying to put you with other new accounts, but it never goes away.

-The shuffler has a bit of grease in it to try to make it so you draw a starting hand with a usable composition of cards types. When it works well, you don't notice it. When it works poorly, it feels awful. Manage your expectations accordingly.

-There's a battle pass. It's fine. The exclusives to it seem to eventually show up in the store (at high markup and mostly with no warning), but I've enjoyed them. It's mostly a pack generator.

-There's a shop. WotC is allergic to selling their client-exclusive pets, avatars, sleeves, etc. on demand, which is some real mixed signals from the company that brought you every predatory decision made about paper products in the past decade.

*smushes my greasy nerd hand against the collective foreheads of recent disappointing co-op releases Redfall, Darktide, etc*

It's afraid.

IT'S AFRAID!!

Belmon't

Needs a lot of QoL brought over from Vermintide 2 that I'm really surprised isn't already in here. Game is very fun and has me thinking about playing it constantly, though.

Hooray.

I have found myself in the unenviable position where a sequel is reviewing alright enough despite doing nothing to captivate me like the first game did.

I personally haven't run into many bugs, not that they would be enough to offset how much I enjoy the IP. Everything that disappoints me about this game is a deliberate design decision and I find myself confused as to how anyone who enjoyed Dying Light can find enough of what they liked in Dying Light 2.

- The stamina system completely gimps the fun parkour draw of the IP right out of the gate to the point that I'm honestly baffled as to how we even got here. In my 12 hours playing, I have found the maps to lack the variety in terrain and height that the city areas had in the first game. The city just isn't that fun to run around in. The windmills you unlock are needlessly punitive due to the short stamina bar and I often found myself losing steam early on in my attempts. Please note that I didn't find them frustrating or unfair or anything approaching raw emotion. What I found was design that cared so little about me being there that I cared less and less, myself.

- Melee combat feels fantastic. I absolutely love how it feels to destroy people in this game. Unfortunately, the durability system is right there waiting for you to keep you from having too much fun. No, you can't repair a weapon you like and keep using it. Go find a new one. The game ends up training you to avoid fighting to stretch out the lifespan of something you have the audacity to enjoy. Those long dark nights from the first game that you had a blast just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around in until sunrise? They have taken pains to restrict the length of time you can enjoy their world and I cannot for the life of me understand why.

- Parkour does not feel as free and fun as it did even when you entirely discount the stamina bar. Grabbing onto ledges is strange and floaty. From a pedantic sound design standpoint, Aiden's grunting is so loud and continuous that you wonder how the guy ever survived freerunning out in the wilderness.

- Speaking of Aiden: the voice actor is amazing. Unfortunately, everyone else is *not* amazing. Rosario Dawson is fine, but very aware she's in a video game. Everyone else is laughably cartoonish, which would be entirely fine if Aiden also carried that tone. End result is that the player character feels like he's in an entirely different game from anyone else.

- The writing is just not there. This practically ties into the cartoonish direction for the majority of characters, but boy do I wish the script let me care long enough to see more of the story. I think most people are happy to overlook a lot of contrivances in games (myself included) if there's an attempt made at fully engaging the user. You end up feeling less frustrated that Aiden is facing yet another garbage roadblock on his quest and more that the game has decided to spend another hour talking at you and vaguely acknowledging the hoop they want you to jump through next.

- To that end, there isn't a scrap of nuance to be found in the world proper. Dying Light wasn't exactly a master class in storytelling, but it did set up a world that you felt unfortunate for everyone to be stuck in. You were actively watching society continue to insist upon itself, for better or for worse, in the face of impending destruction. The most narrative-forward presence the player regularly engages with here? Small bands of regular people milling about with zombies to sometimes unintentionally comedic effect. Characters can't decide if Pilgrims are a major unknown threat or a joke and will happily contradict their own stance within the span of a few sentences. The world doesn't respect its own setting way before I show up. And that is insane to me.

Love the game. Feels woefully light on content for how good the gameplay is, though.

I thought I was very brave to solve the mystery despite the rampant amount of spookiness. Not trying to brag, but, you know.

I will hug all the birds and yoU CAN'T STOP ME YOU COWARDS

Got that old school replayable fun factor

edit: Still holds up