Recent reviews by Gordon Freeman

Better than S&Box.

While I'm not the world's hugest TF2 fan by any means, I won't deny that this is one of Valve's (and, indeed, the gaming industry's at large) most iconic universes of all time. This game almost certainly revolutionized machinima, with its characters becoming staples of Garry's Mod and SFM (the latter of which almost entirely owes its existence to TF2). There were also, of course, less good things that came out of this game, as well. It's arguably one of the first free-to-play live services with microtransactions, a trend which has jeopardized the entire industry. Regardless, though, the game is (at its peak) fun.

While my review ought to be pretty positive, I can't recommend that anyone tries the game in its current state. The game's main servers have been unplayable for years by now, and Valve has taken hardly any action against the aimbots plaguing these servers. VAC has been well documented as a particularly unfunny joke for decades by now, and hopefully this community outcry will do something to inspire change. If Valve decides to take enough action to save/fix the basic functionality of Team Fortress 2, I'll take down or change this review.

Pretty damn bad if you enjoy anything DOOM related. Buy DOOM (2016) instead. Or hell, buy the 1993 original and the 1996 sequel, or even 2003's DOOM 3, and enjoy thousands of mods on fantastic open-sourced engines that can run on (quite literally) anything.

By buying this game, you support:

- Studios not adequately paying their overworked composer (whose music is the sole positive selling point of this game). Screw Marty Stratton, and may Mick Gordon never have to interact with him or anyone else behind that travesty again.

- The abolition of the genre-defining basic multiplayer features that this very franchise popularized (there's no deathmatch, co-op, or anything. Just the FPS-MOBA hybrid "BATTLEMODE", a horrible gamemode that all of maybe 5 people play).

- Grindy battlepasses for almost entirely singleplayer games, or even games in general (which is a system they've long since abandoned anyways, in the hopes that people just buy the DLC packs for their horrible recolored and gaudy skins).

- Purple goop that neuters your mobility, among other annoying ass parkour-puzzle elements. In fact, pretty much half of it is annoying platforming. In a DOOM game.

- 24 maximum upgraded limit for shotgun shells. Keep in mind that, unless you focus on upgrading your ammo, you're not even going to see that much. In an FPS game, that's disgraceful. In a DOOM game, that's downright heresy.

- Practically no ammo pickups in a DOOM game, the only way to get ammo back is by using a regenerating chainsaw to create ADHD-pleasing rainbow-colored ammo-fountains.

- Quickswapping like a monkey with brain diseases to actually play the game at high-difficulties.

- The parading of a once-great franchise's corpse as the face of something it never was and never should be.

- Stupid story that doesn't mesh well with the type of game they were making at all. Even if you wanted a deep story from a DOOM game, this edgy Warhammer 40K fanfic sucks.

- Bethesda, Bethesda net account integration, and Microsoft. All of them can go straight to hell to be disemboweled and feasted upon by legions of Barons of Hell for centuries.


This game has some strong paid Bethesda shills fanboys, but believe me when I say this: it is NOT worth it if you don't think you'd be one of them. I'm sure they're grinding their teeth and preparing to spam "skill issue" already, as they do whenever anyone throws shade at this mediocre mess.

While the atrocious filter was offputting at first, the game was actually surprisingly fun with friends. The creatures arrive quite suddenly, but with enough atmospheric buildup that they can genuinely get some adrenaline pumping. In-game voicechat system works well, radio system also works well (though, you should at the very least deafen on an external chat platform if using one, it ruins a lot of the tension of knowing whether or not someone's dead, for example). The Company itself is a bit too cartoonishly evil and nonsensical for no reason for my personal taste, but the actual game more than makes up for it (plus, I must admit the airlock cutscene is still pretty cool, regardless of how much it actually makes sense).

Kicked ass in 1998, kicks ass now. Sells for a fraction of a modern AAA shooter, and has a lengthy campaign and immense mod support. It runs on almost anything, and is simply good fun. Multiplayer is easier than ever, as with the new update, you can simply invite friends to play deathmatch. Soundtrack is awesome in its own right. If you aren't considering buying it alone, buy it in the Valve Complete Pack on-sale. But no matter what price you get it at, you'll get your money's worth.

this game feels like an oversimplified logo.

a lot of csgo content is missing or removed (cts and ts changing models based on map location, or entire gamemodes). the ranking system is worse (based on maps rather than overall skill), and premier mode is the de-facto "competitive mode" now. the loadout system sucks ass, killing off any remotely fun gun because you NEED to pick the most practical loadout to stay relevant. the HUD is copy + pasted from valorant (minus valorant's ability meters, of course), with no option to revert to the older, cleaner HUD.

also, since this hijacked CSGO's steam page, CSGO's achievements are gone, and all reviews from their older, better product have carried over. we can protest all we want, but knowing the internet, 11 years of history will be completely forgotten in a week.

this is just csgo but with less content and cartoony-ass graphics. the game does nothing to justify its existence, period.

my favorite part was when alex knoll's self-insert said "if you mod it" and made a mod that removed his ability to write a coherent story with decent level design. it was so good that jimmy wong descended from the sky and said "you're not allowed any closer" and halted development on minor update patch #3 for ~9 months (and counting, out of the planned ~2-year support).

at least wyckoff's soundtrack still popped off, labjams (the soundtrack) is probably a more worthwhile purchase than the game itself. the community's also been a mixed bag, with some actually decent mods coming out (in spite of the restrictive SDK and lack of native scripting support), but there's also some really godawful mods made by children you have to sift through on mod.io as well. fusion (the multiplayer mod) is a must-have, and should've honestly been base-game. a singleplayer sandbox is hardly all that fun, and this is a sandbox first and foremost.

i really wish steam had a mixed review option, because this isn't an awful game, just a really really mediocre/mixed game that has a community of mostly unintelligible and unintelligent quest 2 standalone users. i do know that slz has some genuinely really great talent, and is capable of some absolutely phenominal stuff, but bonelab is really a showcase of both the best and worst SLZ can do. i'm still cautiously optimistic for their future projects.

game sucks

I wouldn't play this arm-flailing death trap if I was paid to do so. Awful community (comprised of Quest users below the age of 10 whose vocabulary is mostly slurs), physically painful graphics, and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane developer who believes that other developers should be taking inspiration from his unfun gimmicky locomotion system (and that VR FPS games are bad).

Oh, and now it's a paid experience for 1/3 the price of Half-Life Alyx. Or 2/3 the price of BONEWORKS, an infinitely better "physical" VR game.

"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain"

I wasn't sure if I liked this game before the real-world drama went down. It was a short, but sweet VR experience that was well praised for the uniqueness of its gimmick. However, even at the time, the game was very lacking in all forms of content, and very much was a relic of the 2017 "teleport only" fad. It was still an enjoyable experience nonetheless.

Things since then, though, have changed much. The game's plot used to be a word of warning against mind-controlling megacorps forcing people to do questionable things. However, SUPERHOT Team have become the very thing they set out to destroy. They've removed the scenes that told this storyline, forcibly, so that they could sell their games more easily on the very platforms they were warning us about.

This wasn't a mental-health decision (despite SUPERHOT Team's claims that it is), since only an idiot who can't tell reality from fiction would ever be depressed by the scenes. This was done to lower the age rating of the game to sell easily on the Facebook (Oculus Quest) and Chinese marketplaces. Facebook and the CCP are some of the most infamous when it comes to brainwashing through media, and to represent SUPERHOT Team's wishes to support them, they've removed all content that could be considered critical of them that they could.

What we're left with is a game with no content, no meaning, and no justification for its existence. Sure, it's decent fun the first time around, but you'll only end up with a few hours of playtime based on that. Post-game, this will always end up collecting dust in your library. It already was an overrated game considering the shortage of actual content, but now it's entirely worthy of a boycott.

To any member of SUPERHOT Team, if you by some miracle end up reading this review (though I know you likely are tuning out all criticism entirely), I have two words for you:
♥♥♥♥ you.