Recent reviews by nounwind

Just great. I have but one rebuttal towards some of the negative reviews:

Melee is great. The trick is to keep RMB / V / <your controller button> pressed! Try it! During their reload, you can tear up a whole ass Terminator >:D

Thinking about it, it should not have been a surprise that an archeo-linguistic adventure is a great combo. Investigating the collective past to better understand the present situation of humanity, but also one's own beliefs, is a powerful storytelling device realized perfectly by this game. Mix in an ancient language and suddenly the tredge of conventional archeological discovery turns into an engaging gameplay element with immediate and applicable knowledge gain.

I could go on listing all the things that are great about this game, but others have done that far better than I could. Instead, let me explain how its downsides became irrelevant to my enjoyment, and what you should be prepared for.

You're exposed to every decision without any preparations - it's like a real adventure. The problem is, your choices can often have more or different effects than you realize. That is, if you realized you had a choice to make or were making it in the first place, which is the most frustrating. Combine that with long travel times (fast travel skips sites), one-time only trips and a single continuous save file and you're just stuck in FOMO. Also, your progress on translation is blazingly fast if you pay any attention to it at all, so it quickly demystifies.

I think you need to (be willing to) play a New Game+ to get to the bottom of this game.

You may think: "what is the point, I solved the mystery?" That is true, and nothing will come close to experiencing this again. However, if you were paying any attention, it's likely you were always better informed than your character anyways. Use that more extensively! In New Game+, you get to take new choices, feel less FOMO and experience new dialogue and - that's the kicker - harder translations. It stops being Aliya's journey once that becomes the subject of your investigation itself, and the nebula becomes your digsite.

I've been hearing this is the best Terminator game ever made.

It has the optics, the sound design, the music, the atmosphere of the Terminator future down to a point. It is really immersive. Combine that with solid, although not innovative in the least, mechanics and you get a great wasteland crawling experience. That alone makes it worth playing if you like the franchise. Definitely get the DLC too though, as that really gives a boost to the storyline tie-in.

Although basic, hacking, lockpicking, crafting, and upgrading all have their place and don't feel tacked-on. The fighting is repetitive, but encounters definitely aren't decided by luck. You have options - both the combat and the story experience are definitely "multi-linear". Detection and general AI in this game is awkward, which is OK, Skynet is clunky. I especially like the head-on behavior of Terminators - makes them more menacing.

Two downsides stood out to me. First, the characters and interactions with them are... unsatisfactory. More importantly, I really despised the "sneaking past your first encountered T's" segments (once in main game, once in DLC, both times near/at the start). All future mandatory avoidance segments are way more casual.

I'd like to compare this mod to "Rogue One": it shows you a different perspective on the world, by elaborating on a part of the main storyline we already knew about, but can only observe through very different eyes. If you're in it for the story, which is great, this fits in so nicely in parallel to EP2, it's amazing.

This mod is definitely combat-focused, with a few puzzles. The devs got the combat to feel more visceral and fast-paced than I'm used to from Source mods, I love it. It feels substantially better than even Black Mesa, IMHO. As opposed to the predecessor, I didn't encounter any "puzzles" that were too obscure for me, and I also like the turn for the better the boss fights took in this installment.

Due to the character talking frequently, and the impact your choices can have, this mod feels much more alive and captivating. Though very different, this was probably my favourite Source experience next to Underhell.

I was expecting a slightly expanded Stanley Parable experience.
Knowing the style of this game, I was looking forward to the metaphorical vessel the designers would use to reconcile their reimagining of this classic with my nostalgia-skewed perception of what this game should be.

So, they gave me a metal bucket.

10/10

This game is exceptionally great at being itself, which may be a weird way to put it, but it I find it hard to compare it to something because it is so unique. It's a game that I would have never thought of buying because I didn't even know I wanted what it had to offer. I've played "survival crafting" before, but that is somehow a too narrow label for this game, even though it is entirely accurate.

Astroneer is an open world survival game set in a predefined solar system with procedurally-generated planets and a fixed story line. Still, it offers surprising replay value and caters to both casual and more "exploitative" gameplay styles. Being able to leave a persistent impact on a system-wide scale is an empowering experience. While its voxel-based terrain has a simplistic optic, I find it regularly offers inspiring vistas and immersive environments.

There are limits to how creative you can get, however, and perfectionists may find themselves relentlessly trolled by minor imperfections you can never quite get rid of. But you don't have to get bogged down in details - I once built a road network around an entire planet, and it made me appreciate the scale of this game. Everything is just within your reach if your ambitious, but far enough away for you to be challenged.

In my opinion, this game has really been saved by the effort that was put in after its release, especially the recent development sprint. With the big DLCs, it really does offer a completely new Civilization experience. And that's what it needed, because it's a lot worse at being Civilization V than Civ V is. Still, the policy of drip-feeding ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DLCs to season-pass buyers back at release is enough to make me count every cent I spent on this game twice. I cannot stress enough how ridiculous pricing on this game is, but I trust that you can decide that for yourself, and recognize it's still a great game.

MP is particularly buggy with Civ 6 for some reason, and while it improved recently, I have had my share of problems for me to not want to return to that. You should be aware of this and look for up-to-date info should that be important to you.

As a Civilization game, it sticks fairly close to the proven formula, which means it also carries over some common weaknesses. The combat can be exhausting, but at least it is consistent and predictable. The city and expansion planning is solid and made entertaining mostly by map features and your competitors. On that note, the AI is as weird and exploitable as ever, and I've always considered it to be a nuisance when playing. Still, it feels fresh.

Still, I'd never buy this game for its list price if I wasn't bored out of my mind, even now.

Stellaris always turned out to be the game to play when you got bored of Stellaris. I've owned it since release, and it has been essentially reimagined at least 4 times over. If there is anything I want you to take away from this, then that it is the most extensive single-player 4X I've ever played. It manages to offer both an amazing RP experience and challenging empire-optimization gameplay - although not always at the same time.

Playing this game for the hardcore PvE challenge or with a PvP focus has never been great, though. For me, the MP and SP experiences have always been vastly different, and it only managed to unfold its full potential in SP. You can't really force the gameplay to be something else, but you can mold the galaxy to whatever you want, I guess. Speaking of which, the sheer amount of quality mods, ranging from diversifying base-game content to full conversions, is also a huge selling point by itself.

In the end, it still feels like an experimental game. It will continue to change, maybe to the point where it is unrecognizable, and it wouldn't be the first time. It's a Paradox game though, and in my experience most DLCs aren't really optional. Starting from zero is a substantial investment that I wouldn't recommend to everyone, but if you have friends owning the DLCs to immerse yourselves in MP with, or want to get into "Star Trek : New Horizons", it can grow rather quickly on you.

In essence, the game is simultaneously uniquely amazing and thoroughly disappointing. It is the most lovingly crafted attempt at a historical 4X masterpiece I've seen to date, and I love Amplitude for making it. All of the innovations they set out to realize in this game, such as the era progression, the score-based victory, and the simulated combat, have been major successes in my book. Still, it fails to deliver any kind of long term motivation: you expect the game to "open up" at some point - and then it just doesn't.

While all the fundamental elements are there, and (despite the bugs) feel a lot more well-arranged than in its competitors, that is where it stops. You are promised a wide (dare I say unprecedented) variety of playstyles, only for them to turn out the same. A combination of bugs, "mandatory" exploits, and questionable design decisions, will force you into a behavioral sink, dragging you down the same paths over and over again. If you think Stellaris had similar issues, I'd like to remind you that it also features a lot more complexity, more random events, and a substantial mod ecosystem to see you through.

After about 60h, I feel as I've seen everything the game has to offer. That makes it perfectly good value for a video game, and it definitely was a worthwile purchase for me. However, it's near-entirely unacceptable by my 4X standards. Endless Space 2 is a game that I had a similar experience with, but it never felt as exhausted as Humankind.

If this were a Paradox game, I'd wait for some updates. Maybe the asteroid strikes and everything will be rebalanced into oblivion, who knows. For now, I'll have to wait for the mod community to pick it up.