Recent reviews by Stratego89

UPDATE: As of the time of this update, Sony has announced they will withdraw their plans for the required linking of PSN accounts to play Helldivers 2. While this shall leave a lasting stain on Sony's reputation, it should not on either Helldivers 2 or its publisher Arrowhead Studios; as such I shall be changing my review to a recommended status, while leaving my prior review intact below. This game is incredible, it is likely going to be remembered as a game that defined a generation of gamers and live on in memory forever akin to games like Halo, WoW, and Fortnite. It is worth every penny, a load of fun, and run by some of the most aware and loving developers I've ever seen. Be wary of Sony's potential for future tomfoolery, but do not let it stop you from being able to be part of this experience.

DEPRECATED REVIEW: I cannot, at least at this time, give this beautiful, wonderful game a recommendation for purchase clear of conscience. At least until PlayStation's account fiasco either comes to fruition or gets backpedal'd. Do not buy this game- at the very least- until you have confirmed you are able to create a Playstation account in your country, or you will be stuck paying full price for a game you are unable to play with no recourse to receive a refund at a later date. If this action does not violate any nation's finance laws, it very well should. In my eyes, it is fraud against every single person who purchased this game and will now have a bricked one. EDIT: I truly hope Sony for ONCE will just wake up and make the right decision. This game deserved to be one of the most highly rated and played games of our generation.

Owned the game for more than two years now and never actually had the time to play it until now. Finally sat down and installed it hoping to get to experience the good ol' days of Battlefield 3 again; sat trying to connect to a server (of which there were about a total of 4 occupied, and outside of my region), only to be kicked less than 2 minutes after joining by the ever-infamous Punkbuster deciding that I was cheating somehow. This is assumed to be because of my over-100 ping due to being in a server far outside my region since there were no other options. I'll take my shot at playing a different time of day when maybe something in my region is available, but regardless I've NEVER had ANY anti-cheat kick me and accuse me of cheating because of bad ping... Thank god global-banning software like Valve Anti-Cheat actually has their stuff together.

Right. This is gonna be short and sweet as this game is a major grindfest (not in a bad way) and the content I've touched is just a drop in the bucket even after 26.5 hours after the latest update.

No Man's Sky's "NEXT" update has -finally- taken the game to the point where it is actually playable. It no longer gets incredibly boring very quickly due to repetitive gameplay, lack of content, or inability to get QoL items like freighters early in the game. The number of bugs in the game is also down drastically- though for the record the few still there that I've encountered are nearly game-breaking or rage quit worthy. Couple that with the (very clearly beta) multiplayer additions I have not really tried out yet, along with the company's promises to continue delivering massive bug fix/content updates free of charge; things are looking bright for the foreseeable future of this game after it's extensive stay in the dark abyss of hate it's launch created.

However, though the game is finally in a playable state, I still could not suggest purchasing No Man's Sky for it's everyday price of $59.99. If you can get it for $20, grab it immediately and tell your friends to do the same. If you can get it for $30, my advice goes from "get it" to "if you don't wanna wait any longer it's still worth it". Below is a list of things I'd need to see in No Man's Sky before I could recommend a $40 or higher purchase:

Improvements on existing content - EG inconsistancies and typos in item descriptions, innaccurate or lacking quest descriptions, some of the choices of outfits lacking variety that the others have for no apparent reason.

Te multiplayer being HEAVILY fleshed out and improved upon - EG there is no way to play with just friends, multiplayer is either on/off completely, voices can still be heard while voice chat is disabled, players can straight up DELETE others' bases in an instant, etc, pvp has no purpose other than being a jerk...

More overall bug fixes and improvements to vital content - EG When you land in your freighter, exit your starship, fall through the ground into space, die, and lose your -ENTIRE INVENTORY- only to HAVE to pick it up from space in a ship and lose half of it because of the smaller ship inventory... it really comes close to making you second guess playing the game.

And there it is. My 'review' of No Man's Sky... for now at least. I've been wanting to review this game since I got it a long, long time ago (not at launch, thankfully) but felt the day would come when it would be decent enough I could say with certainty that I believe the devs really do mean to make things better and aren't just talking out their ***ses like devs in their situation typically would, and I did not want to add to the already nearly endless amount of hate they were getting unless it became obvious they weren't trying; and I was right, that day did come- they were trying to make things better, and they've done a damn fine job considering how easy it woulda been to bail out after the absolute mess of this game's launch.

P.S. Yes, that was short and sweet. If I went into a THIRD of what I want to say about this game and what I like/dislike, could be improved, etc; I'd have a college level essay that'd make my professor proud for a decade.

Cannot believe I forgot to write a review for this game when I finished playing it. Steam sale had me checking through old games to write a review, this is the one that gets it.

In short- the game is wonderful. Most verything is spot on. Story, music, "characters" (for what little there is, fittingly). The combat is horridly same-y and repetetive but due to the nature of the game, it doesn't actually hurt the gameplay as much as one would think. The artstyle and rendering is beautiful. If I had one complaint about something, it would probably be the fact that despite there being tons of different ways to approach pretty much any obstacle you face, they made EVERYTHING possible with just using your GLOO cannon and parkour. This is very obviously a means of preventing players from ever getting stuck somehow, but when you can do everything with your most basic gear and all the other means are either unlockables, more difficult, or take some sort of rare resource- you never want to go that route.

Regardless of the couple of flaws it has, I highly recommend this game. Even full price- but especially on sale. At the time of writing it's only $19.99- practically a steal for this amount of quality and quantity of gameplay.

Neither the worst nor the best MMORPG I've ever played- and I've never liked an MMORPG so take that as you will.

Literally the best thing about the game is it's soundtrack. After that gets old so does the game.

Only saying "yes" in the review recommendation section because it does fix a lot of annoyances of other MMORPG games.

Four time. FOUR BLOODY TIMES in the span of an hour today alone- I or the host of a mission has crashed denying us all our hard work. The game is fun- but the devs absolutely must fix this. It takes the game from pretty good to unplayable trash. I cannot possibly recommend a game that constantly denies the player's work and efforts due to poor coding.


Updating to include something. The recent desync update has made the game much more stable from a client:host standpoint. It SEEMS to have also stabilized/reduced the number of straight up game crashes all around but it's still too early for me to know for sure and turn this to a thumbs up rating. Even if it is better, I'm still borderline as the fact that your hard work can be so easily denied (especially in crime spree mode) from an error rather than an actual mistake on your part is unfair and overly punishing. Changes need to be made to the system to change this. At that point, I would have no issue giving the game a thumbs up even with the ludicrously priced DLC.

Game runs and handles like trash. My PC is not all-powerful but it's nothing to scoff at either, so on the settings I tried it at there should not be any fps/graphics issues whatsoever. I got not past the tutorial area before game-breaking bugs involving disappearing environment/objects occurred. The handling is crap, and there is no (at least in game) way to turn off acceleration for mouse/thumbsticks. There is no individual gamepad bindings option. Did I mention the game runs like trash?

Cannot give this game a recommend when it's outright unplayable on this system, and poorly constructed even if it were able to be.

PS. Checking free- since technically it came bundled with hardware as a bonus.

Do not waste your time touching this game. It would be fun- if it wasn't yet another war game owned by russian developers.

A good 1/3 of the game's "community" is hacking scum that the devs refuse to do anything about because "it's not their problem".

Russian bias just like any other game made by Russian devs. The Russian planes all 1shot every other plane, and the Russian tanks armor is literally impenetrable at any tier-tier match up.

The devs also KGB any posts that say anything remotely negative about the game on forums- including account deletion, even if they've paid money. If they didn't have a clause in their ToS that basically says "we can be complete douches", that'd be fraud.

Won't be surprised if they get this taken down by bribing Valve- it's the only way I can even think that this game would have such "great" reviews.

If I were to pick one word to describe Bastion, it would be "quaint".

Bastion has everything it needs to be a fun, unique experience to kill the time- the definition of a good game- without anything else. One could argue that this is a negative, as it truly does just have the bare essentials, and at times the game feels a bit more like an interactive story than a game, but for me it's a positive. In a day and age where game companies are in the great graphics-race, tossing aside any focus on a game's actual mechanics and fun in exchange for trying to one up the competition on which "looks better"; and in a similar manner indie developers abusing the once great concept of early-access to put out half finished games without repercussions, all I ever really ask for is just a well put together game that I find enjoyable and isn't the same rehashed experience with a different style. Bastion delivered this for me.

I got Bastion on sale but I can easily recommend the game even at it's full price, to anyone that's not specifically looking for an action packed fast paced experience. Some notable things about the game are it's great sound track and use of stylization in it's visuals, so if you're a fan of soft, calming music or vibrant colours, that'll be a bonus for you.

Overall I'll give Bastion a 9/10. There were only minor things I didn't like, and I couldn't honestly say they actually bothered me.

I honestly believe Radical Entertainment though up this game, went around to other developer studios learning what they did wrong and right in games in the past, took the 'right' pile, tossed it in the toilet and flushed it down, and started building the 'wrong' pile into some unholy altar.

Seriously. EVERY... SINGLE... THING... in this game is a TEXTBOOK example of "what NOT to do in video games" that you'd get in a 101 class.

Terrible controls. Terrible plot. Terrible music- maybe. Sound was INSANELY LOW compared to everything else on my computer- even when maxed. I literally had to TRIPLE the volume of my speakers to be able to hear it at a decent level. Terrible graphics. Terrible controls. Oh wait- I said that already. Well it's important to re-emphasize because the controls and mechanics made the game BORDERLINE unplayable. And I use that world with the utmost intention. If it had a SINGLE thing worse with it's controls- it would have been straight up unplayable. The game until a certain point was so easy it was impossible to enjoy. Then after that point they cranked the meter up to 11 to the point it was entirely unfair. Permanent stunlocks. ONE HIT KOs that you CANNOT avoid.

NEVER. EVER. EEEEEVER... buy this game. EVER.

I got this game at 75% off on a sale. I feel like walking up to the developers studio and demanding that 25% I paid back as a refund, then the 75% I didn't added on to compensate for my pain and suffering. This game was THAT bad. I've only ever quit one other game in my entire LIFE- witcher 2. And that was because it was LITERALLY unplayable due to issues with the port to PC. At least I knew within the first 3 minutes of witcher 2 that it was going to be nothing but pain and suffering and I didn't actually suffer through the ENTIRE thing.

I played through the game start to finish (as quickly as humanly possible...) so no one can say I didn't give it a chance. It had it's chance 100 times over as far as I'm concerned. I am unfortunate enough to have bought prototype 2 at the same time as part of the franchise pack when the game was on sale. Needless to say- I will not be installing that any time soon.