Recent reviews by Roenie

Pales in the light of Portal.

It's a light matter maybe, but after uninstalling, it leaves behind 3 folders in subfolders of AppData (C:\Users\Username\AppData\). It didn't ask if I wanted to remove those as well. Had to check for and delete them manually. How did I know they're there then? Experience....I know what to expect these days. One is named Tunnel Vision (the dev) and two are named Aspyr (the publisher), iirc. I appreciate being able to play the first hour to try before you buy, but do clean up after yourselves please, devs.

I finished it in under 2 hours and I'm still recommending it which speaks volumes to the quality. Best voice acting I've ever heard in a game and I've played a LOT of games since the 90s. Beware it's a very sad story, it lingers in your head for a good while after. So play it when you feel balanced and confident that you can handle the gut punch and clear your schedule for the rest of the evening.

Like in a good movie, there is clever symbolism and foreshadowing much of which you will probably overlook at first but starts to fall into place after you've finished the story and go over it again. After the ending at first I thought: "What was the point of this story, other than to make me feel sad?" and I could easily have left a negative review if I hadn't given it some time to mull it over, because there isn't any real gameplay - it's almost like a walking simulator/visual novel. So without a point to the story, something to learn from it, there wouldn't have been a point to the whole thing.

Without spoiling the story itself, what I think the devs want you to learn from it about life is: We chase achievement in life to leave our mark on the world, make our parents proud and be appreciated by strangers and the game reminds you that the positive mark you've already left on your family (and friends) who love you - just by existing and being you, is greater than you think and is actually what really matters. They really don't care, in a sense, whether you achieve greatness at anything or not. Chase dreams if you want to, but value your relationships and yourself irrespective of your success or lack thereof.
I can tell you this in words but for it to really hit home you have to experience the game for yourself. That's why it's good. The way it's told and how it makes you experience and feel the story. This is why I roll my eyes when my aging mother who has never played a game in her life, craps on the medium of videogames because "it's all just guns and violence".

I used mouseclicks to advance, it's fine to do so, way more comfortable, reliable and less strenuous than trying to postpone your blinks but I can't speak to how much the blinking mechanic would add to the experience as I haven't tried it. I would say the story hits hard enough without it.

Extremely frustrating trial & error gameplay.

It forces you to restart from checkpoint to repeat the same rooms over and over. Margin for error is very small, you have to be fast but movement is sluggish and the objective often won't be clear until you've failed a few times. The game is slow to restart you from checkpoint when you die. I was gonna finish the game but I'd rather pee into the wind so I've uninstalled it and deleted my saves.

92% positive because 92% of reviewers became teenagers after the games industry turned to ♥♥♥♥ and have never played a good game in their life. Days Gone is everything I hate about modern big budget games. The title Days Gone refers to the good days of the games industry 20+ years ago.

- The writing sucks
- The characters' acting sucks
- The boring unoriginal repetitive 3rd person action gameplay sucks
- The bland, lifeless open world sucks
- The busywork sucks
- The missions suck - they're annoying AF
- The pacing sucks
- The clunky movement sucks
- The generic combat sucks
- The "bike" handling sucks
- The "bike" physics suck
- The gathering of fuel for your super thirsty bike sucks
- Gathering scrap to keep repairing the bike sucks
- Holding E for a few seconds to loot / interact with everything sucks
- Gathering plants / herbs sucks. Having to hold E makes it double suck
- Too many crafting / loot / gear / supplies management menus also sucks
- Burning all the piles of twigs ("zombie nests") sucks (busywork)
- Completionist style tasks required for regular ingame "progress" / rep sucks
- Maybe it opens up more later, but 3 hours into it progression is still linear which feels at odds with an open world setting, with cutscenes forcing themselves upon you whenever you reach the next scripted point, which kinda sucks
- The consolitis checkpoint save system definitely sucks(*)
- Console games suck

* The save system gives you the illusion that you can manually save anywhere but when you load the save you're back at a checkpoint from an hour ago. You can't name your saves, the name is the time, not the time of saving but an older time that corresponds with when the last checkpoint was reached. So if you save again 10 minutes later, that save will have the exact same name as the previous save. You can't discern between the two nor do you need to because they will load the same checkpoint. When you figure this out and realize you have 10 extra saves all with the same name and time that are all useless because they all point to the same checkpoint, naturally you would want to delete these unnecessary saves from your list, and of course you can't. You can't delete saves in a console game, what did you expect? They are stored in your windows profile\AppData\Local on C so have fun doing it manually. Everytime you load a save it creates a new autosave file there instead of overwriting a previous autosave.

A group of enemies pin down the main character's friend and blowtorch his arm to a crisp (in one spot) until all the skin is off his entire lower arm (after the cutscene) and he basically just shrugs it off without proper medical assistance. He has no problem riding on the back of your bike and afterwards having a normal calm conversation. He just wants to lie down for a bit after arrival and asks you to "find something for his arm". If this was reality the guy would need a skin transplant and antibiotics or he'd die from infection or necrosis, and without morphine he would've passed out from the pain.

It's a Sony exclusive console game ported to PC. It was ported very well for once (except the checkpoint save system that they should've ditched for PC) but why did I expect a good game? lol... console games are garbage.

PC Gamer magazine wrote:
"Deeply joyless. Dreary story, repetitive missions, sluggish controls, and lifeless world."

Robo_Steve on Metacritic wrote:
Incredibly boring, unoriginal and repetitive game play. Awful story. For some reason this game has legions of fanboys that defend it to the hilt.

I know the reason they defend it. It's right at the top of this review.

P.S.
VRR flicker with g-sync on VA panel monitor could not be eliminated. The ingame fps limiter does a bad job of smoothing out frametime variance. MSI Afterburner's frame limiter (RTSS) does a better job but it's not perfect and the game still has a knack of causing VRR flicker. So if you have a VA monitor, expect to be forced to use v-sync and suffer the inputlag.

Tedious, repetitive, slow, grindy.

You can't carry nearly enough in your 12-slot backpack to gather resources, you can only gather once per day with one character. Every day your NPCs require food, cooking uses up wood, every action takes an artificial amount of time in the form of a progress bar/circle... and once a day ends it's time to sleep and in the morning everone's hungry again - you get the idea.

Resource gathering, crafting and that type of "progression" to unlock things I wasn't expecting from a game from 2014. I guess this disease in game design dates back longer than I thought.

Mr. Prepper is a similar game and I actually enjoyed that more than this. I wouldn't recommend either of them.

This spaghetti code, can't-run-on-a-4090-and-top-tier-cpu game dev has 0 respect for their customers. v1.0 Streamer Weekend lets streamers play the test branch version of 1.0 three days before early access backers who have been waiting for over 10 years and will have to wait until after the weekend. Now 1.0 is more like 0.5 in reality 'cause it's a lie to sell more copies but that's not the point. Why are streamers getting access to something that non cringe customers aren't. Starting an Indian caste system of segregation in gaming? Oh no you don't.

Excellent translation of the FEEL of snowboarding and skiiing IRL. The sound of the snow under your board/skis is realistic and the animations are on point. Excellent open world maps that feel like mountain ski resorts that could exist for real, if real life was a little better than real life. There is lots of exploring to do. It's a very calming, "zen" experience, great stress/anxiety relief. The art style is idyllic and cute without being childish. The music does get very repetitive.

You can do spins, flips and rolls, there are trick challenge trails with scores to beat, but this isn't Tony Hawk Pro Skater in the snow. The controls are still challenging but less complex than that. You can freely switch between twin tip skis, twin tip snowboard, carve skis and carve snowboard.

Depth is limited because it was originally a mobile game. I'm 12 hours in and have explored half of the available maps. My current estimate is that I'll get about 20 hours out of it. Once I've explored all the maps I can't see myself playing for too much longer. That is the nature of exploration games. More interaction with NPCs, buildings and objects not for boarding/skiiing on would've been nice.While you can punch to knock over random skiers to get a small speed boost, you can't knock on any doors. NPCs don't intently skiing/snowboarding with you, they just kinda randomly move about and you can't have a conversation with them. There is no story of any kind.

There's not a lot of graphics settings. Luckily I didn't need them. Other than choosing whether you want v-sync or not there is no need to change much. A lot of games have super blurry anti-aliasing or chromatic aberration that you have to (try to find a way to) disable, that's not the case here. It looks great out of the box and performance is great too.

I never paid for this DLC but I have it anyway because I bought the game in an earlier stage of early access. Back then, explicit content was part of the base game. Later on but still during early access, it was moved out of the game, into paid DLC and expanded on somewhat - I'll go into the details below. Those who already owned the game could claim the DLC free of charge. Lucky me, but this review is not for me. I don't like to see other players getting nickel and dimed just to get the Steamy content.

If I recall correctly these used to be in the base game:
- Optional removal of "Terrible things are happening" censor bars
- Optional removal of mosaic nudity censors
- Addition of detailed and explicit nude textures for the player and most NPCs
Player and NPCs could get naked already.
Maybe more NPCs now, or improved textures? I don't know.
- Sandbox ability to "whip it out" (or "whip them out" if playing as a female).
- Sandbox ability to "pleasure yourself".
- Access to legacy sex system/scenes and orgasm UI meter

This is new:
- Longer, extended, sexy, and explicit cutscenes
Read: In-engine pre-scripted scenes not under your control. We aren't talking film or CGI cutscenes here. The base game used to have "unscripted" sex scenes already that put you in control (in 1st person) but not fully scripted ones as far as I remember.
- Additional "too hot for mainstream" content in various questlines
- Sandbox ability to pee and bladder UI meter
- Sandbox ability to touch NPCs
- Dynamic erections to surrounding elements for NPCs and player.

This happened while the game was still in early access, so why couldn't these new things be part of the base game?

Moving the explicit content from the game into DLC is what allows the game to have a more favorable maturity rating, increasing the number of potential buyers of certain ages. Putting a pricetag on the DLC or not was a choice.

It was always developed as an adult game. The explicit content, at least the content that was originally made and planned to be in the game definitely should have remained available at no additional charge.

The content was expanded on somewhat to justify the price of the DLC and I don't think it does that. I wouldn't have gone this route as certain content already created is being withheld in order to put it into paid DLC and that always ticks people off, myself included. So I hope this current DLC situation changes somehow.

If I was the devs I would've maybe released the originally made and planned explicit content as a free DLC and focused on polishing the base game. Then after release out of early access think about paid DLC.

Paid character DLC (Doja Cat) was worked on and announced during early access. This too I consider to be unethical. (Just the fact that many devs do this nowadays doesn't make it right.)

Because in an adult game you want adult content the Explicit Content Add-On DLC in review here raises the total price of the game to the point where I start to question the overall production value delivered compared to other titles for the price.

Quaint, serene, brutal, very taxing, stressful, frustrating, beautiful and responsive. Playing more than half an hour at a time can make you feel sick if you over concentrated which is easy to do because the focus required is so intense. Most of the time you will fall and restart every 1 to 5 seconds. Yep that often, that's not me being bad it's just the nature of the game. Input sensitivity is perilously high and it needs to be or you wouldn't be able to keep up with the pace of twists and bends. Even after you've memorized a trail you'll still faceplant plenty of times.

To be the right type of person for this game means you possess a high level of perseverance, you don't get frustrated, and ideally you are a speedrunner with a competitive mindset toward setting records on the leaderboard and finding the fastest routes and shortcuts to do so, as that's going to determine whether you'll just try to finish half of the trails once and get 15 hours out of the game, or go nuts and get 100+ hours.

Having returned to the game to check out the free DLC trails, I feel nauseous from hyper focusing and frustrated by a particular type of challenge trail that doesn't have any checkpoints, enough that these 14 hours of total playtime is where I'm calling it quits, having done less than half the trails the game has to offer.

Had it been a little easier to stay on the bike it would've been a more enjoyable game that a wider audience could have enjoyed, shifting the focus a little more toward hunting for faster lines and times, rather than just trying not to crash every 1-2 seconds.

Recommended, but definitely not for everyone.

Production values well below today's standard. Terrible sound effects and music, unrealistic ball physics, laziest possible UI design. I tried it again today just as I did years ago. Still the same bad game.

The game has close to 10,000 achievements so playing for 20 minutes will spam your Steam profile's "rarest achievements showcase" full of "rare" Zac Pinball ones, pushing out your previously earned proud achievements from other games. The only way to flush the Zac ones out is to, after playing Zac for the last time, obtain many new very rare "0-2% of players have this" achievements from other games. Yeah, good luck with that. I've had to remove the "rarest achievements" showcase from my profile because even though it's been years since it happened, it's still got too many Zac Pinball ones in there. I don't even play nor like this game. On the upside, when you get an achievement the game no longer stutters like it used to. yay.

The pinball machines in Zac range from old (70s-80s) to extremely old "retro" tables, and a comparatively very small number of modernized "Deluxe" versions of old tables that still come across as very dated. The only reason to use Zac is if you've played an ancient pinball machine as a kid that's not in FX3 or VPX and you specifically only care about playing that same machine again.

Zac's store page says:
"How long will it be in early access?"
> "We are estimating the game will be completed in 2019 Q1.”
It's January 2022, so it's safe to say it won't ever be finished. They couldn't even be bothered to update the expected release date on their store page and tell you why it changed! Couldn't be bothered for 3 years and still haven't! If that alone is too much effort, you can probably guess how much effort is going into development. They are however quite happy to sell you €110 of DLCs if you were to buy them all in one big 50% discount bundle. I believe the store page is still there just to abuse Steam as a passive income generator.

Get Pinball FX3 and/or Visual Pinball X (free and not on Steam) and/or wait until, I estimate, april 2023 for the yet to be released as Epic exclusive, new "Pinball FX" to come to Steam.

Zac is so weak it makes FX3 seem amazing, but you need to keep in mind the new FX is coming so tables you buy for it now you'll have to buy again to get them in the new FX, you won't be able to transfer them. Consider using VPX in the meantime or just don't buy too many tables.

Pinball FX3 review: https://steamproxy.net/id/roenie82/recommended/442120/