Recent reviews by Chiken_Sammich

Is Dogma 2 a masterpiece, as it's predecessor was? No, not even close.
Is Dogma 2 a bad game? No, but there is a high chance of disappointment. DD2 misses the mark, in a lot of ways. "Masterworks all"? Not all, but that doesn't mean, those that aren't all masterworks, are trash.

1st off, I want to come to Capcom's defense here. They're catching a lot of heat for "microtransactions". Sure, there are Riftcrystals for sale. But RC is available in game, just like it was in DDDA. It's an optional purchase. You don't want to buy them? Then don't! Play the friggen game & stop complaining. Note - I'm saying this, knowing that late game (in DDDA at least) requires a ton of RC for purification, forging, inclinations, etc. It's possible that late game or expansions, force gamers to purchase RC, due to supply never being able to reach demand. I'm hoping that's not the case. But I'm being fair, based on my experience with DDDA & what I'm seeing in DD2.

Now to my gripes:
1) Denuvo? Seriously? Why do we still do this? I'll at least give credit to Capcom,
__thank you for not going the Epic exclusive route. You would have lost a
__customer. Even just a timed exclusive, would have ended with me never
__buying this game.
2) Tying pawn voices, to inclination..... Odd-ass & semi-annoying decision.
3) The world, feels less like a world & more like a cramped maze. I'm not
__claustrophobic, but who knows if that'll change after a few more hours, in
__game.
4) Riftstones throughout the map, being tied to a specific inclination, seriously?
__I was running with a friend's pawn, she fell into the brine & when I went to
__the nearest riftstone, I couldn't access her, because I was restricted to pawns,
__with the corresponding inclination. I get it, maybe it's a way to spread the
__love around but of course, we're going to prioritize our friends. Odd decision
__in my opinion.
5) The "class purity" thing is irritating, but kinda sorta understandable. Basically,
__Thieves(formerly Striders or Assassins) have no ranged & are restricted to
__daggers. Granted, I'm only lvl 20 & haven't strayed from my class. Maybe if I
__use ranger for a bit, some skills will carry back over, but from what I'm seeing
__so far.... Fat chance!
6) Climbing blows! Yeah, sure DDDA had a bit of a janky climbing system, but
__you could at least use it. DD2 almost makes it an achievement just to grab
__hold of an enemy. Don't get me started on trying to navigate the terrain....
7) ♥♥♥♥, now ya got me started! When you design a world that is primarily
__hilly/mountainous terrain & then you place chest/resources at the peaks.... I
__don't know, maybe you want to make it so there are ways to ascend to those
__heights. Just food for thought. I spend a ♥♥♥♥-ton of time sliding down terrain,
__that should easily be climbable.
8) Bugs & crashes? Yeah, they're here. Hopefully to be ironed out soon. But these
__cookies still have a lot of cold dough in the center. I know, companies want to
__get their game out there & start making some cash but I have more respect
__for companies that will delay & (nearly) perfect their product, before release.
__When you have a fanbase that has been with you since 2012 & has been
__coming back for more than a decade... Maybe, you want to attempt to put
__your best foot forward. Just a thought.

OK, I'm done ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, for now. Even though, I'm disappointed. I don't hate the game. I'm finding a lot of the game enjoyable. Some of the elements are there but, 'using the framework of what made the 1st game great & just expanding upon that' isn't really what seems to have happened here. DD2 is it's own unique beast. You decide if you want to try to wrestle it to the ground.

Would I recommend "Divinity: Original Sin 2" to another player? Once again, this is where a "maybe"
option would be appropriate.

The game itself, is pretty damn good. Where this game shines, it shines bright. The characters, storyline,
combat mechanics, build flexibility, artwork, sfx & music, etc. All very well done.

The problem is that the UI, inventory management, map system, quest tracker, etc. Essentially
everything under the hood, is atrocious! If these categories were intentionally designed this way. I can
only assume, either the designer hates the player or the intent was to drag out playtime, making it look
as though, 'players can't get enough of this game.'

1)Inventory management has to be the worst offender.
--A)This is your standard, 'Carry what you can, find a stash when you're overloaded/overweight.' Cool
---thing here is your bag size will expand & you seem to never run out of bagspace. Problem is you still
---have weight limits..... ok so fair enough, right? WRONG! See "B"
--B)So you want to stash those materials, equipment, etc.? Cool, so how do you go about it, when there's
---no dedicated central storage location? You find a chest, tree stump, crate, etc & then load it up. You
---may be thinking, "That's cool! I can make any location, my base of operations. Also this is more realistic
---than having a magical bank that can access my stash from any location in the world, as long as you
---find that zone's bank." Fair enough, if you prefer the realistic approach over the convenient one. But
---this is irritating, when you have to relocate.
--C)OK so now, you've picked out a chest in a comfortable location. Time to start offloading that loot.... &
---hating life! See, you can't just open the chest & start tossing loot into it. Not like any other game's
---reasonable storage system, anyway. You have to open your bags, find the item you want to stash,
---access the popup option menu, scroll down to "Hold in hand", close your inventory, open the chest, &
---drop that item in there. Congratulations! Now you only have to do that 9 Bahjillion more times. Make
---sure, you don't accidentally select loot all when you're browsing your stored items. Because it'll make
---you turn off the game & write an irritated game review.
--D)I will sort of credit the developers for allowing bags to be carried inside your inventory. This will sort of
---help with organization. Throw materials in one, weapons in another, etc. Now you only have to stash a
---couple bags in the chest, versus each individual item. Problem is, this really just adds a few more steps,
---into an already irritating task chain. See, the way you load up those bags, is identical to how you load
---up that chest. Now you have to ♥♥♥♥ around looking through bags, within a chest. Worse off, I have
---found no way of labeling bags or chests. So now you're just blindly searching.
2)Maps are vague, to the point of almost being useless.
--A)Sure, the map is pretty detailed & you can decipher what you're looking at. Problem is, nothing is
---labeled. A few nodes will pop up as you play through the game. Those nodes will have a description,
---when you cursor over them. OK so maybe you're cool with this. Because again, it's realistic-ish. That's
---up to you! I find this crap annoying as hell. I essentially just use the map in my head, "Oh, that's where
---I did that. or That guy was over here." Still irritating AF!
3)Quest tracker
--A)Not all quests are trackable. Why? Don't ask me, I'm not the designer who hates you!
4)UI
--A)This is hard to quantify. Aside from the aforementioned issues, your UI mainly consists of 2 popup
---select wheels. One is for Inventory, Characters(basically stats, seeing buffs/debuffs, attributing points
---to progress your build, etc.), Equipment, etc. The other wheel swaps the selected character. This is all
---fine & functional, but foreign to what most gamers might be used to. Having to relearn an entire UI,
---just to play 1 game, builds a "barrier of entry" wall to new players. Functional, but irritating!

I could only ever recommend this game, to someone with a lot of patience. Even then, I'd probably do so,
if I'm willing to lose them as a friend.

I'd never recommend this to another person.

So here's the thing. I played Quest Hunter & didn't hate it. But there are a ton of reasons why I'd never point another gamer in this direction.

1st off, combat is terrible. Hitboxes force you to attack like the close talker on Seinfeld. Basically your mele is completely useless. You're going to take a hit, if you try to use mele. Since you know you're going to take damage, you might think that you can just use your shield to block & attack when your enemy is open. Problem is that you take a ton of damage through your shield, unless you stat up your shield block, which forces you to gimp your other stats(Health, Attack, & Defense). Level cap is 20, so skill points are limited.

OK so you're going to avoid mele & just use skills. Smart move.......... sort of. The problem with using skills is that the cooldowns are redonkulously long. So now you're going to be standing around waiting on skills to be available. Can you say "boring"? I basically played every minute of this game with movies or music playing on the side, so I had something to divert my attention.

Now lets get to the AI. See how I said, "you're going to be standing around" in the last section? That's cause you are going to be doing a lot of that. There's a mechanic in the game where if you light a torch, enemies will just stand outside the ring of light. That allows you to just range them from inside the light. Even if you don't have a torch around, you can just run until the enemy just stops & allows you to unload on them. There seem to be leashes or invisible barriers that enemies won't cross.

Difficulty is extremely confusing. So I played the game on hard or whatever they named that mode. Through the game I died 5-6 times. Once I jumped off a ledge because I got stuck in a crevasse, plus there was an achievement for it. Another time I was too close to a TNT barrel when I ignited it. So essentially, hard mode killed me 3-4 times. Basically this game is a cake walk............. Until the very end of the game, when things seem to be impossible. Flame traps littering the ground, armies of rapid enemies chasing you, while a teleporting mage casts spells at you, all of which have a ton of health. The last battle essentially is just running, spamming health items, & trying to get some valuable shots on target.

There's no way I could consciously tell another person to play a game where you basically just stand around doing nothing, the majority of the time. Could you imagine getting a friend to buy this & play it with you? I'm sure they'd ask you, What the hell did you make me buy? What are we even doing?

As far as a way to kill time, sure it does that. It's the reason I played it & didn't hate it, but I can't imagine multiplayer being any better & I wouldn't want a friend to drop cash on this thinking it would be a fun time.

If you're ever looking for examples of game series, that have been revived. Monster Boy:ATCK is a good title to add to your list.

Developers revive old series or try to update old games because it's easy money. The problem is that they usually just rush out a garbage title & fans just end up disappointed. Monster Boy, on the other hand, does everything right. The animations are gorgeous, the music & sound are stellar, the controls are precise & well thought out, the puzzles/roadblocks aren't overly complicated or frustrating, the story isn't amazing(but reminiscent of the original games, so it's forgivably welcome), the world & it's inhabitants have depth & character. I can't say enough good things about this game.

Game Atelier masterfully revived the franchise, designed it exceptionally well for today's standards, & perfectly captured the nostalgic feel of the Wonder Boy series. This is a perfect example of how to revive a franchise. Other developers need to take note.

Right off the bat, I'm going to present my problem with Poi. This game suffers from a bad case of, "do-it-again-itis". Each stage has something like 8 medallions you need to collect. After you obtain a medallion, the stage ends & forces you to reenter the stage & go for the next medallion. On top of that, there are a number of other collectables which will either be missed due to player oversight or inaccessibility, forcing further stage runs. Basically, you're going to be seeing the same stages a lot. While this is somewhat forgivable during the game. The biggest infraction of do-it-again-itis comes when the developers force you to play the entire game again, for ONE final achievement. Not only are you forced to play the entire game again via "New Game+", NG+ isn't even what you'd expect NG+ to be. The only thing that carries over in NG+ are your times. You'll have to recollect everything, including any cosmetics. The worst part of NG+ is the fact that you're now nerfed to be 1 shotted throughout the entire game. Furthermore, most dialogue & cutscenes are unskippable. This only exacerbates the frustration with having to redo everything. The way the developers tried to keep things fresh was to sort of mirror all of the worlds. Basically if a path was on your left, it will now be on your right.

With my above irritations vented, Poi is actually a really good 3D platformer. This looks & feels like some of the better console 3D platformers(very Mario-esque). Poi is very family friendly. My only problem with the story is The Master Explorer loses both his wife & explorer's medallions, during a storm. But he's only concerned with finding the medallions. WTF brah!? & why don't the kids even pose a question? I don't know if a kid is going to catch that, but the Master Explorer is clearly a sociopath.

Cloudpunk exceeded my expectations. I saw some reviews bashing this as just a walking simulator or errand runner. I won't contest those claims, those elements are very big parts of Cloudpunk. However, the problem with walking simulators & errand runners is that the worlds are uninteresting & just a slog to get through. Cloudpunk provides a world worth gawking at & a story that has you questioning what's next. On top of all that, the choices you are asked to make, feel like they actually bear weight. I found myself actually questioning the morality of my actions. It also helped that at the start of the game I made the decision to play as the consummate professional, only to have that idea tainted with morality.

If you ever find yourself in the mood for a chill relaxing game with a solid story, this is it.

Fast & ruthless, the way hockey is meant to be played.

Eternal Edge is a flawed game, but I will admit, I did enjoy what I was able to play. In the 20 hours I was able to play, my biggest gripe was due to lack of polish.

1) The combat is a bit clunky, but better than a lot of other games out there.
2) On random occasions, the game will just close out to desktop, so saving is crucial.
3) Others have complained about difficulty overlap with overpowered enemies in low level zones. I didn't experience that. Sure there is an occasional over leveled enemy, but they are usually due to events, that warn you about the level & are easily avoided. There is also the issue of roaming out at night. If you do that, you will run into nasty enemies. Just sleep till day & learn to avoid them when night falls.
4) During crafting, you'll have the required mats & the game will show that you do, yet in some circumstances, the game will tell you that you are short on materials, while trying to craft the item.
5) The terrain is awkward. You'll see pathways up hills & mountains, that look scalable but aren't. You'll have to jump up stairs, when you should just be able to walk up them. There is at least one crater in the game, where if you fall into it, you'll have to reload the game to get out.

Now to the real reason I wouldn't recommend Eternal Edge. The game has just ceased to load to the main screen. At some point, the game just decided it was done functioning as a game & is now just a white screen simulator. I load the game. I'm presented with the Unity logo. A white screen loads...............

Right off the bat, I'll say:
1) The game is enjoyable (at first).
2) Premium currency is given out at reasonable rates. You don't have to spend money to become competitive, though it doesn't hurt.
3) Steam is not the place to play Animation Throwdown. You want to play this on your phone, due to the benefits of ads. Fortunately you can link your account to your mobile so you can collect the achievements, here on Steam.

Now, while I do enjoy AT, I'm getting ready to walk away from it and here's why. I hate games with timers & cooldowns. AT forces you to play when they want you to play & wait or pay for round credits. Essentially you have to build a schedule around the game. This sucks of you work or have a life. I've been waking up in the morning & crushing everything I can because I don't want to be racing expiring timers at the end of the day. I hate games that do this & while I had fun with what I played, I'm getting bored/irritated with this.

I'll recommend AT, but only if you are willing to dedicate a ton of time to it or you're willing to miss out if you can't keep the day's schedule.

All in all I spent around $10 for the 2 permanent perk packs. I played for about a month before I decided to buy in & never found them necessary, but they help alot. And $10 seems fair considering I played for almost 2 months at the time of this review.

Is Warframe great? Absolutely
Would I recommend it? Yes, to anyone that isn't me.

Warframe is a fast paced hack & slash/TPS, has a ton of content & is exactly the type of game that could reel me in for ages to come....... If I had the time to dedicate to it & I wasn't an old man. My problems with Warframe really just fall on having to chase timers in respect to dailies & expiration of buffs. Sometimes I'll log in & get a buff that lasts for 4 hours or have to pound out a crap ton of dailies/weeklies before I run out of time. Now I'm not faulting the game for this. I'm just saying this is not what I'm in the mood to do, not anymore at least. My other issue is that this is clearly a KBM game & my old-ass hands can't stay in the 'KBM claw' position for extended periods of time(like 4 hours in 1 sitting). If this came out when I was a kid, there would have been no removing me from the PC. This is just not for me.