Recent reviews by Kaban

"GPU crash dump triggered"


I honestly want to recommend this game, but even people with much better hardware than myself are running into the same exact issue. The lack of optimization in recent game releases sucks in itself, but the increase in outright memory leaks is incredibly frustrating. Pretty much have to wait months if not YEARS for them to get addressed, even with bigger budget games like Dishonored 2 and Deathloop.

EDIT: Tweet from sony at midnight EST on May 5

"Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.

We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans."

Glad it was reversed so quickly, I am back to fully recommending this game!

Honestly a very silly and enjoyable game for the price. I highly recommend watching the movie itself, as it's very well animated and genuinely a great watch. It also gives increased appreciation for this game, seeing how they used and cleaned up pretty much every single asset from the movie itself. Quite impressive seeing how well done it is!

Get it on sale or if you're familiar with E.Y.E & Deathwing and the studio that made them. Decent eurojank, fair amount of similarities to flow as E.Y.E (respawning enemies, their AI, etc.) for better or worse. I honestly would've gladly paid full price in hindsight, but only because I got over 200 hours in E.Y.E which I got for $2.50. I totally understand those that recommend against it, but my personal 2 cents is that it's well worth a go especially in the ~$20 area.

I played a fair amount of the first Vermintide, idly bought this a little while back while still having a crappy PC. Just now giving it a proper shot, after having gotten into Darktide and damn it's wild playing a feature-complete version, albeit in Fantasy instead of 40k. Full crafting system, varied classes, still feeling progression after maxing a character out, etc.

Wound up buying several of these sortsa games after trying Vamp Survivors and loving it-

-It has a demo! That alone makes me want to recommend this, because it's rare practice for people to have demos anymore. I think it's especially kind of devs to do when the game is as cheap as it is.
-Aimed combat skills being aimed with mouse cursor location is an awesome QOL adjustment
-Has a large number of side-grade and trade-off oriented skills (EX: adding extra projectiles and extra melee attacks in exchange for slower attack speed, getting substantial increase to critical damage dealt in exchange for severely lessened crit chance, etc.)
-Nice mix of pixelated graphics along with nice quality and cozy backgrounds, a la octopath traveler
-Unique challenge run system that has a variety of changed mechanics, and unlocks new purchases in the run-enduring "soul"coin shop
-LOTS of skills and weapons to unlock, and devs are fairly active and keep adding more. I'm still missing a good few at ~25 hours.
-Has a map progression system akin to Slay the Spire. The breaks in between make this one of the coziest and mellowest games of this genre that I've played. It also has a 30+ minute endless run mode like Vamp Survivors if you prefer those

-Enemy room selections have objectives such as a # of monsters to kill or survival time limits. Once it's up, you have 3 seconds to pick anything up before being kicked to the overworld and losing anything left on the ground. There are a number of skills that help with this in a few different ways, but early on it can seem a bit frustrating.
-Unlike Vamp Survivors or Soulstone Survivors, outside of the enduring enhancements from the soulcoin shop, everything from movement speed, defense, projectile size, etc. is entirely reliant on what cards you draw through a run. Nice for build variety and fluidity, bleh on it largely being based on there only being 1 character

-No character unlocks (YET). There's only one character, Rog. Rog's a good lad and I like playing him, but one of my favorite parts of other games in this genre, is unlocking characters. It seems like the devs are gonna be adding something for selecting "avatars". I am hoping they'll have slightly differing starting stats, but I'd be happy with just different char sprites tbh
-Lack of both visual and mechanic variety for enemies, and visual variety for settings. Barring the 3 actual game bosses, enemies will only ever run into you, or shoot small projectiles your way, often as single bullets or a tri spread of 3. This extends to the elites as well. The 3 bosses are quite fun to play, though.
-Lack of music variety. Since I usually play this as my last game of the night, I tend to have something else on in the background anyway, but it is a bit disappointing when compared to VS
-The EXP gain sound is is.... something. Probably the loudest sound in the game by far, doesn't have a separate volume switch, and it goes up in pitch as you increase in level. Can be kinda disorienting and weird, but it's better than it once was

It's very fun and well worth the price. While this may not be my favorite of this genre, it is the one whose development I'm most excited for (alongside Soulstone Survivors). Another review mentions it's like a combination of Slay the Spire and Vampire Survivors, which feels pretty apt. It's probably the most relaxing of the genre too, as the Slay the Spire & FTL overworld system ensures there's frequent breaks in between rooms. It can save between rooms too, which is always amazing. This has become my go-to game for when I'm winding down for bed or otherwise wanting a mellow time, I hope that this review helps you consider at least giving the demo a shot & that ya enjoy it :)

Oh yeahhhh, this is more than worth it now. The first couple years (especially the first year) were pretty bumpy, but the game's now in a position in which I can fully recommend it, even at full price.

(NOTE: This review is made with fans of the first game in mind. If you haven't played either game, I'd probably say to go for it.)

After years of following development on this game and the general excitement of having more feasts and skulls to drink out of, the 2+ years since launch have been very lukewarm. While there's some QoL changes and improvement to the early-mid game slog of questing, I feel that bannerlord is missing lots of small things that made the first game so good. Most fans of the first were wanting the essence of that same game, but Better, especially with things like marshalling and the campaign AI. Influence helps with the former, and I honestly enjoy the perk system stuff about levelling, but at times I find myself itching to play Warband instead. This itch also includes the main reason for my non-recommendation, mods.

I could easily forgive most of this stuff if there was a decent level of mod support for the game. It was sounding like a for sure thing for so long, and here we are almost 2.5 years after release, and it's all but non-existent. Maybe Bannerlord will be in an ideal state in another 2.5 years, but with what has been seen, it would have to involve mod support and would be relying on community mods to do the heavy lifting itself.

This game is a good example of why I wish there were reviews concerning price. I CANNOT recommend buying this game at full price if you're a Warband fan seeking more of that fun janky goodness. If it's on a fairly good sale, I think it's worth getting. You'll likely get a fair bit of time out of it and get your "money's worth", but you're likely to get a lot less mileage out of it than Warband.

My negative review isn't due to the gameplay or story itself, as I really enjoyed them despite my initial hesitations. I'm giving it a thumbs down because of a consistent crashing problem on the map of updaam during the evening on my second playthrough. I never had an issue during my first playthrough, but now, my game will crash (error 0xc0000005 i believe) at dorsey manor due to anything from laying down a turret & having a firefight with multiple enemies, or even when I headshot a SINGLE enemy inside the manor with the sniper rifle.

I'm now on my second night of just trying to figure out a way to complete this without it crashing, and despite my several earlier reckless "kill everyone" nights on my first playthrough, a scrap with ~5 dudes will now tank my game with that error even if I'm running at 540p on Very Low with raytracing off (while my first playthrough was at Very High with raytracing at 1920 x 1080 with ZERO crashes throughout). I remember reading these sort of crashes were a big problem with Dishonored 2 and that a patch came out in 2018 to (mostly) fix it. I only pray that it's not going to be until 2023 to get the memory leak problems for Deathloop fixed

EDIT: After some W10 updates and not having played for a while, the audio started working on laptop again, so I can definitely recommend this!

I'd be recommending this 100% if I could get audio to work on laptop. I've found many people posting about the same exact problem, even months back, and have gotten no resolution since then. Disappointing because this game is amazing otherwise.