Recent reviews by Nepper

Best TD game I've played.

I've had this game for almost exactly 5 years, my played time is legit with no overnight AFK's. Throughout the years this game has been painfully affected by cheats and for the past two years I only play a handful of sessions a year. Not only due to cheats, but the extreme toxicity I face almost every game. For fun I allowed public comments on my profile a while back, and you can see the type of comments the community tend to post. Some are references to jokes when I had genuine people with a great sense of humor in the team, and aren't as bad as they seem, but most are cheat accusations and belittlements. Reviewing the comments now I notice a lot of them are missing, for reasons unknown to me.

I logged in today to find out I'm permanently VAC banned, due to affiliation. As in, I didn't cheat. I didn't break rules. Someone else did, and I got slapped with a permanent ban due to affiliation as a result. The affiliation was due to an action (not on my part) about a year and a half ago, if memory serves. An action I've been trying to rectify ever since. At first I was thinking of all my skins and stattracks that are now lost. All my commendations (in-game upvotes). All my medals. VAC bans are permanent, according to their VAC FAQ. No exceptions. So I won't even bother contacting them and ask what happened. Sucks for me, but I approve of this policy.

But then I got to thinking. I've read and followed the AI-type VAC since it was first speculated. I've followed the topic with interest, as I feel it's a legitimate way for them to solve a serious problem. I've sat through an endless stream of overwatch clips, doing it manually is definitely not the way to go, and "beyond reasonable doubt" means people who are experienced enough to seem legit won't get banned. These types of opponents are super-not fun to play against.

As this review has already gotten longer than I intended, I'll skip the internal discussions I had with myself back and forth on the subject, and I've concluded that this is a step in the right direction. Permanent bans should be dished out, even by affiliation. So many games where you face one or two obvious cheaters and the rest of their team is clearly in the same premade, as an example, the cheaters die and all of a sudden the non-cheaters on their team know exactly where to wallbang, 100% immune to mind games, etc. They should all get banned. I'm not saying this is what happened in my case, as it didn't, but generally speaking I'm for this kind of policy, ban through affiliation.

13€ or so for a new game every 5 years is a cheap, cheap price to pay for a cleaner community. I can't do anything but whole-heartedly recommend this game. It has given me many hours of joy. This whole ordeal has sparked a new found interest in playing this game more actively again. Upside is that the skins I once bought are much cheaper today.

Sidenote, when you've played a online game a lot you're bound to have a few matches where you're doing things you thought was impossible. Having not been banned for these, or heard of anyone that have, shows they're not overly ban happy. Given how many games out there where the opposite is true, where that type of mentality literally kills the game, is a huge relief for me as it shows that Valve takes this game and its community seriously and wish to nurture it, despite what some few people may claim around the web.

A bit different from the normal approach, I like it.

Other than a few shortcomings (think any other game, but fewer), it's simply amazing. The graphics isn't for everyone, so if you know what it looks like and you still wonder if you should buy it or not; it's definitely worth the full price. Don't have money? Find cans and stuff, make this world a better, cleaner place AND afford this game! Just... DO IT!

To this day the positive reviews are still accurate. I still recommend this game to anyone who enjoys TD's.