Recent reviews by metalpriest94

A fair word of warning: Monster Hunter: World is an MMO disguised as Singleplayer/Co-op game.

This is the first Monster Hunter I've played so I don't have any experience with previous titles, but I also had not many expectations. I understand the appeal of this game, I really do. But it's really not a game for me. When a game takes more than an hour to begin to be fun, I doubt it will ever happen.

Positive:

• Palicos <3
  
• graphical Design is awesome
  
• great character editor
  
• tons of content

Negative;

• the pacing is soooo slow, everything takes forever
  
• no gameplay flow, you get interrupted all the time, quest design doesn't help either
  
• quests feel meaningless
  
• controls are awful
  
• story is solely told through cutscenes (imo, the weakest way to tell a story in a game)
  
• also, cutscenes can't be skipped
  
• forced online play (only private sessions to emulate solo play)
  
• had to use Alt+F4 to quit game during a quest (never seen such an insolence in any game)

I really wanted to like this game, but it's feels more like an MMO and not a good one. It's been quite some since I played a game that respects my time this little.

Was a great fan of Mini Metro and Mini Motorways and honestly... this is not it. The game was not developed by Dino Polo and it shows. The core gameplay is fundamentally changed from building a network to guiding the vehicles. This feels like major step away from what these games all were about: strategy and planning. Mini Airways is mostly about reaction time and motoric aptitude. Let's take a more detailed look:

Pros:

• catches the general aesthetics of the Mini series
  
• controls work great and precise

Neutral:

• too easy difficulty for my taste, also "fake" difficulty, to elaborate: the game relies on overwhelming you, rather than testing your strategical abilities
  
• Unity splashscreen is not customized (possible even on free license)

Cons:

• new UI is way to large to the point of unreadable (even the store page only shows legacy UI, which is rather telling)
  
• UI is broken on fullscreen (3840x1080, button graphics and hitboxes do not match). Having worked with Unity in the past, it can handle exotic resolutions quite well
  
• departuring planes disappear mid-air at waypoints
  
• misleading tags: immersive simulation (really?), procedural generation (a few rngs are not procedural generation)
  
• forced tutorial on first map, even on replay

In this state, I cannot recommend the game. Since this is the "prologue" and not Early Access, I don't have high hopes that the core gameplay would change substantially, and with this not happening, it would not be a sequel and feels like a knockoff. unfortunately.


Edit: some changes. reading it again, it partially sounded quite condescending

First off, let's address the elephant in the room: Yes, the performance is poor and there is no excuse to not delay the game to figure this out. But still, there are some things to consider before rage quitting and accusing the devs and publisher of fraud (yes, some people actually do this). At least, the communication of those problems was up-front, as well the fact that the recommended specs are for running the game at 1080p at 30fps. I agree that this is by no means good in 2023, but if you buy/bought the game despite this better knowledge and are/were disappointed, then this is just expectation(-mis-)management on your part. You might not like this but you needed to hear it. So much for the rant...

...now for the actual review:
Cities Skylines 2 has been some great fun for me in those first hours. From what I've seen, it comes with all the city service branches from the previous game and all of them have been refined quite a bit, though some have been simplified, like industry, universities and parks. In general, gameplay feels slower and more relaxed. This, you also notice in the traffic and day-to-day simulation, which were greatly improved.
Spoiler regarding the progression system:
Unlocking strucures works partially by expanding your city and partially by a point system. You earn points for each milestone, which allow you to unlock structures and improvements on your terms. It's not revolutionary or anything but a nice change of pace,
Of course, CS2 also offers some new features like mixed zoning (apartments with shops), parallel roads/tracks without mods, lines for cargo trains, small roundabouts and more.
All of them are useful improvements for a city-building game.

The graphics are vastly improved and looks especially great when following cars or citizens. From some distances and angles, textures might flicker and some shadows look very bad.
The style of the game is less colorful and cartoony, but more realistic. In my opinion, this is not better nor worse, just different.

The sound design really makes the city feel alive and feels well mixed.
The music is quite lackluster, but this is highly subjective.

Pop! OS 22.04 (Linux)
Intel i7 6700K
48 GB DDR4 2133
RTX 4070
SSD (External, USB C)

Cities Skylines 2 still has lots of room for improvement. Nonetheless, I consider it a good game that, at least gameplay-wise, lives up to the expectations. So far, I have barely noticed the performance issues and those were resolved by disabling Field of Depth (don't like this effect anyway) and volumetric effects. Also people, declutter your systems once in a while :)
Anyway, I like the game and can't wait for the things to come.

All comparisions to CS1 are based on the unmodded versions of both games.

I saw the trailers and the mixed review before playing and went in with basically no expectations. Still, I was disappointed by this game.

Good:
-Graphics in general are nice
-classic NFS arcade car physics

Neutral:
-Lamborghini Countach as a starter is nice
-soundtrack (mainly rap) and avatar customization options are not my cup of tea
-did not test multiplayer

Bad:
-frame rate stuttering (system fits minimum specs and almost recommended ones)
-long loading times
-aesthetics and GFX are weird aside from car models and kill the immersion for me
-hip-hop/gangster style feels forced

If you're more into arcade racing, hip-hop and mixed art styles this is for you, otherwise you better stay clear of this one.

Game requires you to use one of three third-party logins, none of which is Steam or developer/publisher-made .
Will give the game a chance when that changes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem playable with a HTC Vive Cosmos. The controllers are not showing up in the menu, therefore I can't navigate.

Super fun, but quite short isometric Twin-Stick Shooter. Get drunk and fight the hordes of hell with 6 different guns and several other wacky skills.
Features:
- Booze (very much)
- Gore (also very much)
- Heavy Metal Music (also very... eh, you see where this goes)
- Eric Cartman enemies
- Peter Griffin enemies
- obese DoomSlayer enemies
- Nazi-My-Little-Ponies

Get it on sale, get the uncut patch and start the Big Drunk Satanic Massacre

Great little game for some relaxing minutes. I needed a bit of time to get used to the fact, that your cities/islands can't be saved and are basically gone for good when you leave them. After that, it became more and more enjoyable. At least you can always take pictures of your islands.

I only had the shareware back in the day and cranked lots of hours out of it. Thank you for bringing this old classic back and making it even better

Welcome to your new job!
These are your tasks:
-work as cashier
-serve fast-food
-pack goods
-shoot mutated fruits, while doing the first three

Your benefits:
-your new boss will give you friendly advice
-guns delivered to your workstation
-a shooting gallery


Honestly, if this is what GMOs will cause, I would want this job.