Recent reviews by Scodo

After two weeks, the game's first major update locked most players to a new larger map the network simply can't handle, and as a result, this game has the worst hit registration I've ever seen in a shooting game. Sniper rounds regularly phase through targets, shotgun pellets evaporate half-way to the enemy, and automatic rounds bounce off mechs without chipping the paint. For what is supposed to be a PvPvE extraction shooter in full-release state (not a beta or early access), this is absolutely unacceptable quality and I can't believe full refunds are not being issued for such a fundamentally broken game. As someone who has legitimately enjoyed this game a lot, do not buy it in its current state.

examples:
https://imgur.com/a/Qzxefqo
https://imgur.com/7ZjJ2fE

The game isn't bad. Combat isn't bad. Everything that isn't sailing and combat is cumbersome and puts me off the thought of booting it back up.

The menu designs are really clunky and irritating
You can't track multiple missions or mission objectives at once
If you're just trying to locate a public event on the map there's a good chance you'll accidentally pay silver to fast-travel to it because the fast travel button is the same as the scroll map button.
Acquiring blueprints for new ships and weapons is a hassle and an agonizingly slow drip-feed. The blueprints themselves are scattered around the world and rank-gated to purchase.
The voice acting is ok, but I just wish NPCs would talk less. I don't need to hear the raw material refiner's life story. I don't need to listen to the carpenter wax poetic about logs. You can skip a line at a time, but if you just want to get back to blasting ships, you have to slam the spacebar 20-30 times to get the next quest.
Character animations are somehow both too stiff and too fluid at the same time

Spyglass scouting is neat
Ships look and handle great, behind the captain camera feels great.
Cannons and torpedoes are fun to shoot.
This makes me want a new SMP more than it makes me want to continue playing.

Glad I didn't buy this at full price.

Maybe a little too easy post-patch, but a ton of fun. Great for short deckbuilding runs when you have a half-hour to kill.

Solid little budget turn-based tactics game. More Chimera Squad than XCOM in terms of scale and scope, but between battles there's a novel exploration and puzzle solving layer that introduces a bit of variety. The story is basically Running Man, so if you like cheesy 80's action movies, you'll feel right at home.

Suffers the same problem most TBT games do where later on your characters get too powerful and enemy numbers skyrocket, turning late-game battles into a bit of a slog. But it's hardly unique to this game.

Can't recommend this one.

There's a fun gameplay loop in here, but it's completely negated by the metagame progression system.

Researching new equipment is required to be competitive in multiplayer, and until you do you'll generally just end up handing over your hard-earned data and salvage to closed beta players who have been progressing since before the game was available and have objectively better guns. Equipment being equal means skill is the decider, but the inverse is also true: in a fight between equally skilled players the better equipment will be the decider. It's not much of a battle royale when it depends more on grinding than on making use of the equipment you find in-game. Then you get to the end of the game and the best strategy is to hide until 10 seconds and then rush one of the doors of the dropship. Why is the area inside the drop ship not a safe zone? The Cycle already solved this problem by having the pvp hotzone be the area around the dropship and the dropship being a safe extract.

So you manage to get the crafting resources to develop a blueprint for a grenade or gun that might allow you to be somewhat competitive against closed beta players with machine guns instead of relying on your 15 round magazine assault rifle. But it's going to take 4 hours to research. So why not just play a different game for that 4 hours until this one offers you slightly more level playing field?

But it's even more meta than that. The devs have said there will be a progress wipe sometime in the Early Access, so all the progress playing catch-up you're doing now while being farmed by beta players is going to go away anyway. So why even play at this point instead of waiting for the progress wipe for a completely level playing field? Again, the smartest play here is to just go play another game.

Which begs the question, why play Scavengers at all? I can't think of a compelling reason unless you've already been playing since the closed beta. Maybe I'll come back and check it out after the progress wipe.

It may not be the most detailed or deep RTS on the market, but Iron Harvest does one thing better than any of it's squad-based contemporaries: It makes you actually feel like a commander instead of an RTS player.Matches of Iron Harvest take the form of small-scale squad & vehicle based fights over discrete resource and victory point nodes much like Company of Heroes or Dawn of War 2, but the formula is distilled even further. Micro-management is present, but not overwhelming since units typically take most necessary actions with little babysitting, and develop slowly enough that you're generally free to start an engagement and then move your attention elsewhere for a moment (but not too long). This is good, because objectives are spread throughout any given map and you're tasked with maintaining control over as much of it as you can through careful positioning, cover, and reinforcement.Units that are wounded can be evacuated to your base and replaced with fresh troops, which creates a constant cycle of combat, retreat, and relief that really makes it feel like you're managing a war front. Blobbing simply doesn't work since a concentrated army cedes too much control of the map. One big issue is that the default infantry units and grenadiers are so fast, powerful, and versatile that it makes the specialized infantry such as flamethrowers and machine gunners feel useless.Likewise, the mech-based vehicles are interesting in concept, and a few have interesting capabilities. But it really feels like a missed opportunity as each faction has one or two mechs that are just straight up better than the others. Since most of the anti-armor mechs are also good at killing (or disrupting) infantry there's almost no reason to ever build a tier 1 mech that focuses on killing infantry. The best use of mechs is to break stalemates and pressure different areas of the map in order to let your infantry advance and take victory points, though they work best in tandem with your infantry. A mech without infantry support to cover the weak armor on its flanks is quickly isolated and destroyed.

If you ever played Dead Space and thought to yourself "Man, I'd really like to use the plasma cutter for its intended purpose" then this game is for you.

In Hardspace Shipbreaker you play the part of a junkyard jockey tearing apart derelict space-ships for salvage. Your main tools are a scanner, a gravity gun, a focused/spread laser cutter, and gravity tethers. Using only these, your job is to safely dismantle and process ships of ever increasing size in the most efficient ways you can find. Efficiency here comes in many forms, from economy of motion in how you move your character around in zero-g, to how much of the superstructure to you have to shave off in order to start processing valuable nanocarbon hull pieces. Momentum and weight are everything as you have to break the ships down onto manageable pieces to move them to goal areas with your gravity tethers. The internals of the ships are a different beast, as you deal with how to safely vent fuel, shut off power, sever reactor coolant, and safely extract unstable reactors.

This game rewards both creativity and caution, the more efficient you can be with time and material the more money you'll stand to make. But cut too many corners and you might end up venting fuel or reactor coolant, creating a chain reaction of burnt out computer banks, or even causing a chain reaction between thrusters and ruptured fuel tanks that shatters the back half of your ship.

As someone who's spent his fair share of time crawling around the superstructure of navy ships between pipes, weld points, cabling, and whatnot, Hardspace is that experience distilled into a fun little arcade/sim blend of low-stress zero-g floating. It's not without its bugs and glitches, being early-access. And there are some excessively tedious tasks like stripping equipment from cockpits and passenger compartments. But I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants a cathartic, mellow-paced problem-solving game where you float around breaking big things into little things.

A take on PVE/PVP game modes in a competitive team-based hero shooter format, but missing several critical elements required to make a team shooter work.

Without such basic features as in-game chat, minimap, FOV adjustments, and others, the game may be free but it's simply not worth your time over other free alternatives.

Remnant is my GOTY for the past year. It's entertained me more than any of the AAA releases I've played recently and I hope it marks a return to solid AA gaming studios putting out high-quality labor of love products.

To describe the gameplay: it's the movement, stamina system, bosses, and exploration of a Soulsborne game combined with the tight gunplay, upgrades, and spellcasting of Warframe. It's all wrapped up in a post-apocalyptic dressing with some really awesome and original visual design. The world-hopping nature could have used a little more back and forth between worlds instead of linear progression from one to the next, but that's just a personal opinion. Aside from that, these core gameplay aspects are a little derivative (straddling the line between an homage and a ripoff), but executed fantastically.

The biggest thing that sets this game apart from either of the aforementioned titles is the trait system. You acquire experience and trait points throughout the game, and are able to assign these to traits as you like (and gain the ability to reset them at the end of your first playthrough). These traits can be basic things like improved stamina, health, and faster spell charging. They can be utilitarian, such as increasing money or experience gained. Or they can be combat related, such as improved consumable/revive speed, reduced recoil, improved melee, and improved range damage. But you don't start out with every trait available. They're unlocked based on milestones and gameplay actions, so playing in your preferred way with your preferred weapons will generally unlock traits that improve that method of play even more and it's really satisfying to find new traits that directly correlate and bolster your personal style.

Your first run through will probably take between 12-15 hours, but the New Game Plus actually really makes this game shine. Many of the environments, NPCs, and bosses are randomized each reset, so you need a couple runs to unlock all the weapons, armor, spells, and traits. Highly specialized builds start to get pretty ridiculous and fun once you have enough points to max out multiple core traits. And you'll need it too, most of the bosses are highly technical fights with tight margins for success and failure that require careful timing and solid damage-dealing.

The biggest drawback to this game is that there's no in-game chat or voice over IP. At all. Zilch. Not even a chat wheel or emotes. It's understandable given the new regulations regarding communication in video games and the size of the studio, and for the most part it doesn't hinder game play. But it would be really nice to occasionally be able to explain a boss mechanic to a struggling partner.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW

I was looking for a new low-key ARPG to take a break from competitive multiplayer gaming, but this ain't it chief.

Credit where it's due, the game looks and sounds pretty good. Character designs are colorful and fluid, and environments look no worse than Diablo III. I also like being able to move via WASD. But that's where the positives end.

This game is boring on a fundamental level. Painfully boring. I played for an hour to start, then each time I logged on I played maybe one or two missions and couldn't compel myself to keep going. The game had no hooks in me, and for some reason locks all the characters behind a long grind even though you paid for the game up front. But if you look at the leaderboards they're all dominated by a single character anyway. As of writing this 97 people playing through steam, so good luck convincing any of your friends to play it with you. It probably needed another six months of development before an open beta, not an early access.

If ARPGs are your jam and you want a budget title, there are better options.