Recent reviews by Shossum

Look, I can't tell you what to do with your money. I really, genuinely love this game. Its awards at the Golden Joystick are well-deserved and I agree that this is the best multiplayer game I have played in a very long time. Understand that by buying this game you're supporting one of the scummiest mega-corporations around, but you're also supporting a development team that's pouring their heart into what I consider to be a beloved IP.

I'm changing my review to positive. I feel like I'm doing a disservice to Helldivers and Arrowhead by leaving it negative. Read below for the issues I brought up before this change of mind and you'll see that I've always loved this game, just not Sony. If my thoughts deter you, then that's understandable, but if you don't care about the sociopolitical grift then you'll probably have one of the best gameplay experiences this decade.

For Managed Democracy.

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Sony has revealed itself to be the scummiest publisher since EA reared its head, and I was unfortunately optimistic in thinking EA would be the lowest bar we'd ever get. EDIT: I previously stated I was "planning to get rid of every physical PlayStation device, peripheral, and game in my possession." I have since sold my PS4, games, and controller, and given away my PS5. I retained my PSOne, since it does not require any kind of Sony account, and a PS3 since I think it can be played without a PSN account.

This isn’t about Helldivers anymore; it’s about a greedy multi-billion dollar company who forgot what it means to provide to its customers and would prefer to take advantage of us instead. If Sony ever reverses their foolishness, through tangible action and not a placatory tweet, then I'll revise this to a positive review. If Sony rolls back their dropped requirement and demands a PSN account (which I deleted), then I'll be requesting a refund the same as everyone else who has been snubbed by Sony's actions.

With all of that said, I love Helldivers 2. It's an amazing game that creates fun and unique moments. Despite the program instability and gameplay imbalances, it's still the best multiplayer shooter I've had my hands on in YEARS. I will continue to play in support of Arrowhead and their team, because the developer studio doesn't deserve the hate.

Sony still hasn't backed off on their stance, and has doubled down by claiming that they tend to poach PC players by offering limited games on Steam and publishing sequels on PlayStation ONLY. This is a scummy business practice and Sony has lost a customer - especially for games that require PSN to operate (looking at you, God of War: Ragnarok).

Arrowhead, however, is going strong. Helldivers came back from the dead with their "60-day Timeline" patches that released recently and I feel like I can enjoy the game again, whether it's tactically navigating the Automatons or frantically surviving the Terminids. I still cannot say "BUY THIS GAME!" because doing so supports Sony, but if that doesn't matter to you then please support Arrowhead. They're trying, and they're listening. There's only so much they can do, but they're doing it.

So you heard about Palworld. Many have, and there are boundless speculations and rumors everywhere. I've done a small amount of research, and by the power of not being embroiled in Twitter/X's mongering and outsider observation, allow me to provide my understanding and, at the end, my opinion of the game itself.

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Well yes, but actually no. - Palworld is a monster-hunting/monster-catching game with adorable little critters populating the world where you can find the likes of Wooloo Lamball and Flareon Foxparks roaming around free for the taking.

Inspiration is inspiration. "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery." If you can't see the Pokémon references in the tall grass then I don't know what to tell you. If you look at the 3D model wireframes side-by-side, there are obvious similarities and obvious differences. If you're modeling a direwolf-adjacent creature, you're going to end up with a similar shape. If Nintendo and The Pokémon Company haven't already sued Pocket Pair into the ground for the years that this has been announced as in-development, they're probably agreeable with this game existing. Especially since they C&D'd the Pokémon mod mere days after it was released.

There is no empirical evidence. Speculation and rumor are the only things currently sustaining the claims that Pocket Pair have used generative AI to develop Palworld. They have used this technology in a separate game, but that is irrelevant to this one until evidence is discovered to the contrary. If that happens, then I'm wrong, and my opinion will change.

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The NFT-advertising crypto-forward "let's turn your cute little critters into fake money" post was a hoax. The account that posted it, Palwcrld_jp (easily misread as Palworld_jp), somehow acquired a fake Gold Checkmark on Twitter/X, and proceeded to deface Pocket Pal's reputation by trying to throw them into the fire. Pocket Pair are already considering a defamation lawsuit. Source[techraptor.net].

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It's fun! It's a mix-up of Pokémon (obviously) and Ark: Survival Evolved. You catch indigenous creatures by shooting them in the ol' noggin with your favorite weapon then yeet a weird spherical ampoule thing at them. Catch rate is shown as a percentage when you do so.

You can take them back to your base and have them work for you. Each Pal has different skills/tasks they can perform. Having them work in teams prevents burnout most of the time. You can choose to make them work harder but that upsets them and makes them very sad. I don't like this, so I don't do it.

The base building is a bit rough, but not so awful that you can't get somewhat creative with it. I'm hopeful that with future planned content updates, but those are pretty far off given Pocket Pair's priority roadmap[i.kinja-img.com].

The grind isn't as heavy as Ark, and after playing on an EZ-mode server and an untouched co-op playthrough, it's nowhere near Ark's level of mind-numbing slogging. Which I enjoy. If you live for the grind, you won't enjoy that it's 'easier' than Ark.

Combat is simple but effective. Throwing out your Pals to fight with you makes things easier. There is no Pokémon-style turn-based "Eevee used Tackle!"-style combat. It's all in real-time, which is how I thought Arceus/Scarlet/Violet would be. Some Pals have special abilities in your party, like guns, which require you to craft their species-specific key item.

All of that said, here's my Complaints List:
- Achievements are disabled in multiplayer. Which is stupid.
- Pals will fall through the map during combat and/or capture. The former leads to instances where your Pals are eternally locked-in trying to fight something that's falling for eternity.
- Floating rocks and janky terrain collision! Yes, like Bethesda.

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1. There is no evidence that Pocket Pair used generative AI for Palworld.
2. The NFT post was fake.
3. It's a Pokémon-themed less-grindy Ark.
4. It's buggy.
5. I enjoy it; it's not for everyone. Just don't buy into cancel culture hype without doing your homework.

At its core, I could almost call No Man's Sky Minecraft in Space. The gameplay has a similar "peacefully lonely" feeling where you wander the environment collecting resources, making big holes in the ground, and hoping that the world doesn't kill you somewhere along the way. That said, there are some major flaws to that comparison:

• The universe is teeming with NPCs. You can interact with most-if-not-all of them, and most-if-not-all of them have something of value to give you in exchange for money, materials, or just picking the correct dialogue option.
  
• Not just the creatures that creep in the night try to kill you. There are creatures that creep in the day, space pirates, environmental hazards, and a slew of other mishaps, dangerous plants, and similar literal and proverbial pitfalls that could see an untimely end to your adventure.
  
• There are vehicles from land rovers (similar to Mass Effect's Mako) to spaceships ranging from Fighters to Capitol Ships. Yes, you can effectively own a Star Destroyer.

Those big differences out of the way, I have to say that this game has had major changes since its inception. It started almost literally as Minecraft in Space -- you just wandered the universe aimlessly with a red line in the galaxy guiding you to reach the center of the galaxy just to do it all over again . A lot of hype was dumped, a lot of features left out, and the mass disappointment in this game is practically a landmark of the PC Gaming industry.

Since then, there have been huge updates to the game. They could have easily sold these as DLCs to try and squeeze more money out of the consumerbase and make a buck, but instead they released this extra content as patches and updates -- fixing the game up and bringing it forward at no additional cost to their players. Slowly but surely, their playerbase expanded by word of mouth, faith was restored in Hello Games, and now here we are where the game has a thriving community and a new VR mode.

So what did I like and dislike about the game? Well, here goes:

DISCLAIMER I haven't played since the Beyond update, so I cannot comment on the new Base Building features, active multiplayer zones, or VR gameplay.

The Good:
The near-infinite universe to explore is mind-boggling and procedural generation ensures that your exploration is almost never bland. One of my prior complaints was that it was too costly to travel and explore with your ships, but they've made improvements to resource requirements and crafting costs and there are some exploits to make travel even cheaper if you're clever that made things much less tedious and enabled a greater sense of freely roaming. The character customization lets you be a Stormtrooper so that's pretty cool, too.

Also, with the better Log UIs that they've implemented, it's a little less of an absolute pain to figure out how to craft items, and you can focus more on finding the resources to produce things as opposed to trying to put to cubes together to make a pyramid.

The Bad:
Sentinels are a pain even once you get proper weapons, and a lot of the good equipment in the game feels horrifically overpriced when you're just starting out. There isn't a lot of guidance on the slew of different aspects of the game, but I assume this is intended as part of the discovery of how to play the game. If you follow the questline, then things are laid out pretty well but once you wander off the beaten path it gets more blurry and confusing.

The Ugly:
This is entirely subjective, but if you prefer a game that looks ultra-realistic 4k HD "I forgot I wasn't in the real world", you'll be disappointed. This game has a notably cartoonish art style to it, so don't go in expecting it to look like the latest EA Frostbite Engine simulation-level graphics experience.

No Man's Sky has come a long way since its release and it's gone from horribly bland to a mind-blowingly massive universe that you can make your own. I haven't tried the new base building, multiplayer, or VR features but it's a game that I ultimately keep coming back to and playing whenever I just want to zoom through the universe on a big spaceship and have a fun adventure.

REVIEW UPDATE
So after another hundred-ish hours of playing this game, and trying to get into it like I was after I got it working again, I have to say that this game is only fun while it's novel. By now I only view it as an un-fun time sink of a piece of software. I lack the motivation to want to continue the chore of the grind, I've fought off just about everything except the bosses, and I can't find the desire to grind out all the rare materials to summon them. The maps offer new little nuances and the new creatures are cool-looking as they come, but ultimately there's not enough reward to keep me coming back. ARK is dead for me, and I don't think it'll ever be alive again.

OLD REVIEW
So I have a love-hate relationship with this game. On one hand, I enjoy playing with dinosaurs, building structures, exploring, and all the other semi-unique things that ARK has to offer. On the other, I can't really play this game for longer than an hour before I get a "Fatal Error", "Low Level Critical Error", or the game just forcequits itself.

The instability of this game is worse than when PUBG was first starting out, and Wildcard seems to be in no rush to fix it or the plethora of random bugs that just grow in number with every expansion. It's a really disappointing lack of support for an otherwise great game, and I hope that the rumored failure of Atlas will teach Wildcard that they need to do more than just slap some code and skins together and expect it to be a good game.

Since Steam forces me to choose whether or not to recommend this game, I have to say no despite my fondness for it. If you're on the fence of buying this game, wait for it to go on a massive sale because it's not worth full price so long as the careless post-release development continues.

I don't even remember how long it's been since DS3 came out, but I keep coming back to it again and again with a new build, a new idea, a group of friends who want to murder each other... Unless they come out with a Dark Souls IV, I don't see this game ever losing its spirit because its uniqueness and rabid fan base just keep it going like the energizer bunny.

If you're fine with a learning curve where you will die again and again but each time you get a little better, if you're fine with having some random invader come in and wreck your progress for the sake of fun or covenant, and if you're fine with a profound sense of accomplishment when you've spent the past three hours trying to figure out how to kill a particularly difficult boss just to realize there was one weakness that could win you the game...

Get Dark Souls III.

SR:TT is one of the most fun games I've played. With varying gameplay, a whimsical atmosphere, and no shortage of insane shenanigans, it pays for itself after about three minutes.

I will say it has one problem: gameplay falls quickly into the "why am I doing the same thing over and over?" category without a friend. If you're a completionist, you'll want to get someone to tag along so you can crack jokes about the mundane and make more of an experience of the monotony.