Recent reviews by SpacemanSquid

Democracy has prevailed, for now. As long as Sony sticks to the reversal, things will be just fine.

Review: it’s a fantastic and frenetic shooter with engagement the likes of which likely hasn’t been seen since my generation sunk thousands of hours into Gears of War 2 horde mode and Halo 3 Forge game modes.

Many moons ago, alongside the original Quake, Duke Nukem, and Doom, my dad sat me down and let me play Quake 2.

To this day, I still hear the dreaded calls of "trespasser!", "toyeetah!", and "let me out!" any time I see or think anything Quake 2, and the soundtrack still rings clear in my memories.

And now, with the remaster, I can properly relive it all again and then some. A true masterpiece, no matter what the naysayers and haters might be thinking as they huddle over their beloved Quake 1.

A near-perfect porting of an old classic into the modern gaming scene. Doesn't overdo the "realistic" graphics, stays faithful to the original vision.

It's a grand strategy with the constant flow of an RTS. It's got incredibly deep and meaningful empire creation options, and even more equally meaningful and fun events and choices to be made during actual play.

You can play it for flavor, or you can get down to the nitty gritty of the meta. You can play for the memes, or you can sit back and literally watch the AI do it all for you.

This game has everything you want out of the paradox strategy game experience, with DLC that often has greater scope and which goes on sale often enough to warrant mentioning.

And the cherry on top is that it actively encourages you to never embrace diversity/constantly genocide on the assumption that you don't want end game lag. Honestly pretty based.

I bought this game and its DLC specifically to watch rats with guns shoot the bad men.

I don't even care if I win or lose. As long as the guns go bang and the nukes go boom and the rats scream "horned rat sees us!".

I honestly can't recommend this game enough. A perfect blend of boomer shooter and light RPG elements, with a unique setting and story to wrap up all the excellent gameplay.

Honestly, phenomenal.

If your idea of battle royale fun after a long day at work is getting gang-banged by a bunch of chinese players using crappy VPNs to avoid their governments online gaming time limits with big unga hurta swords spamming the same move using perfectly-timed macros, then boy have I got the game for you.

My more serious review is that it's a poorly done fighting game with a BR twist. It's a battle of wits as you race to out-cheap the other players, usually by having more grapple hooks in order to effectively stun-lock anyone and everyone to death. If you can manage this and get lucky with purple or gold armor, you've basically won the match, greatsword or not. No other mechanics function consistently.

Absolutely fun, definitely a solid gameplay loop.

At the time of this writing, there is no crafting in coop, which is what I've played almost exclusively, and I've still just been playing almost non-stop. Really cool

I've got quite a few hours on this one, and yet haven't written a review for it, ever.

What can I say? It's always been great, definitely used to be better and have a better community (as far as mods go).
But it's still great, even now.

This game is good fun only because it's challenging, and that's what I like about it. My biggest gripe with this game is the fact that most, if not all the item/taming progression is garbage. Certain structures can't be crafted until much later in the game, at which point you already have no need of it or it simply becomes an issue of "eh, why not?"

Prime example: air conditioning and dimetrodons. You would think taming an animal that serves as a less-effective AC unit would be early game material, but it isn't, because the animal in question practically requires late-game materials and experience.

My next, possibly only other big gripe is the absolutely horrid AI. It's garbage. Giant dragonflies the size of small dogs can easily kill a T-Rex because, hey-ho, the rex can't attack something so close to its body or run away, because it's body-blocked by a bunch of bugs clipping into it. There goes hours of sitting around waiting for the rex to tame because the taming system is frustratingly time consuming (even with server settings for sped-up taming).

Here's the sort-of TL;DR of it all:

pros:
> Dinos. Who the hell doesn't like dinos?
> Fun, challenging survival
> Immersive gameplay, with conditions based on weather and even activity (hunger, thirst)
> Lots of animals to tame, lots of reasons to tame them
> Beautiful gfx (most of the time)

cons:
> Dinos. Everywhere. A lot of them are annoying as hell. Tweak this.
> Possibly one of the worst item/pet progression in any game I've ever seen.
> Some of the worst AI ever. Extremely frustrating at times.
> Taming is incredibly time consuming, and sometimes not worth the effort.
> Almost no automation, with few exceptions.

Game is good and fun, with friends. Could use LOTS of improvement, and I'd love to one day say that most of my hours on this game weren't spent sitting around clicking "remote use item".