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Recent reviews by Dern_Zambies

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Showing 1-10 of 12 entries
3 people found this review helpful
8.0 hrs on record (3.5 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
Wow what a surprise this was. Barely started playing and we're already in love with this little gem. A quick and easy tutorial before you're thrown into the game world. Combat is a little funky but fun. EXCELLENT for couch co-op. Has the option to split the screen on two monitors! First time I've seen that in a game, makes playing with a partner very fun. Love the art, the atmosphere. Oddball sense of humor. We fed a robot head to a lonely eldritch abomination and helped a dude win a puking contest. Very much enjoying ourselves so far, can't wait to see what future updates bring.
Posted July 4, 2023.
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1 person found this review helpful
803.6 hrs on record (27.9 hrs at review time)
if you smoked meth while playing a sand physics game Noita is the hallucination you would have
Posted January 15, 2023.
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2 people found this review helpful
901.1 hrs on record (499.2 hrs at review time)
Writing this while quarantined in my room after catching a fever. 2020 can go ♥♥♥♥ itself, and if I could push a button to delete it I would. But I would shed bitter, bitter tears over losing Risk of Rain 2 and all the time I spent with it. TLDR game good commando bad push through until you unlock huntress

I was a fan of the original RoR, it's a great game and you should try it out if you haven't. Simple but pleasing visuals, dope soundtrack, fun survivors to play and enemies to kill. RoR2 is great for all these reasons as well but the energy level has been pushed to the absolute limit. It may have ruined videogames for me, I tried the new Doom recently and it felt sluggish with zero stakes. The only other times I've felt this level of exhilaration was in online shooters like CoD or PUBG, and Hopoo managed to synthesize that with their multitude of murderous critters. Honestly, if you haven't experienced a squad of elder lemurians spawning on top of you inside a narrow corridor you haven't really lived.

The way they've expanded the lore is brilliant. It adds a sense of epic tragedy that fits the titanic world you're slaughtering your way through. All done through item descriptions. That mood when you get to the final stage for the first time...that track begins playing...it sounds so familiar for a moment before it HITS you...you're really doing yourself a disservice if you don't play RoR1 and beat it at least once. I'm so glad they brought back Chris Christodoulou to produce the soundtrack, he's once again knocked it out of the park.

Playing solo is great fun. There was multiplayer in RoR1, though the online was unreliable. I definitely appreciated the local co-op but forcing such tiny characters to share a screen meant you could easily lose them in the chaos. Multiplayer in RoR2 is excellent. I'm very much a solo gamer at heart but creating games with your friends is a breeze, and the added difficulty scaling forces you to work together or die.

Visually the game is just a pleasure. I particularly love the look of the Bazaar. All the creatures and boss monsters look excellent. I appreciate that they attempted to make them all threatening in their own way but balanced. ATTEMPTED I say. The only thing fair about summoning a gang of overloading clay templar to gun you down before you've got a single movement item to your name is the brief second you're given to accept your fate.

It's worth noting that the game is only as difficult as you want it to be. If you're on the grind and don't need to prove anything to anybody then play on easy, slap on that artifact of command and assume your place as the true god of this world.

If I have any critique of the game it's that Commando is the starting survivor. If his kit was JUST weak, that'd be fine. Artificer and Mercenary are also quite weak in their own ways (IMHO) but still fun as hell. The problem is that it's also BORING. He's really just no fun to play at all until you unlock his alternate M2 and slide ability. He's a terrible way to introduce new players to the game, especially if they've never played RoR1, and people have definitely dropped it for this reason. I didn't touch him for the longest time after unlocking other survivors, which is a shame because phase blast has become one of my favorite abilities. That one-two punch is very satisfying, then throw a few backup mags on top and you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ auto-shotgun. And that's it, my one real complaint.

In closing Risk of Rain 2 is my game of the year. It shows how games can be art without being pretentious. It's moody and exhilarating. Just a joy to play. 10/10 Hopoo deserves your money and you owe yourself the experience.

edit: grammar
Posted December 2, 2020. Last edited December 2, 2020.
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2 people found this review helpful
604.2 hrs on record (537.9 hrs at review time)
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ what a bunch of babies. "Don't play this game, it's trash", they say while have 300 - 1500 hours in the game. PUBG is as fun as you expect, runs fine for me here in NA. I had no idea the fanbase turned so hard against the game...

Critiques worth making:

Hackers are a thing. The better you are, the more likely you'll run into them. Not nearly as often as some are claiming though.

Can't find a car and the safe zone is on the other side of the map? Running Simulator 20XX.

Microtransactions. Damn it, I bought this game. This isn't some FTP game where microtransactions are their income. I'm not going to gamble my money on cosmetics, release them in packs if you want more shekels out of me.

Community is a bunch of tryhard whiners apparently, but there are cool and funny people out there.

Final thoughts: This game is worth the thirty bucks, as you can see from the play time people sink into it. Very replayable, especially with friends. It's okay if you're garbage (like me), PUBG matches you with people of similar rank. That doesn't mean it will be easy, you just won't be playing against people who can drop you from a mile out right away. The gunplay is so tight, I love scavenging and kitting out my weapons. I'm definitely putting a few hundred more hours in.
Posted October 1, 2018.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
512.7 hrs on record (144.5 hrs at review time)
Armello is a truly great game that I give my full recommendation to. It's a true digital boardgame and I'm hard pressed to think of anything else like it on Steam. Visuals are beautiful all around with the 2D art and animation being particularly astounding. Gameplay is of equally high quality, extremely intense decision making that reminds me of XCOM. Of course if you're not a fan of RNG this may not be the game for you as it is completely possible to be shafted by bad rolls and draws, to say nothing of the other players.

If you're not familiar with the game, matches consist of you and three other players competing for the throne. You complete quests to boost your stats and gain powerful items, ultimately unlocking the palace so you can challenge the King. Or you can hang in the wings, slaying monsters and other Heroes to gain renown and buy your victory. Or if you're strong enough, beat the palace traps and fight the King before anyone has a chance to retaliate. Combat and traps use a dice system while you and the other players draw equipment, spell, and trickery cards from communal decks that get reshuffled once they're exhausted.

The game rewards picking a play style and kitting yourself out to enhance your natural traits. It's highly balanced, easy to understand, difficult to master, and gorgeous. Sometimes frustrating, always an experience.
Posted September 20, 2018. Last edited May 10, 2019.
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5 people found this review helpful
179.1 hrs on record (81.6 hrs at review time)
TLDR: This is a great game, but not a perfect one.

Pro

Sunless Sea is dripping (ha) with personality and atmosphere.
Genuine paranoia and fear when you set out.
DLC is actually worth buying.
Emergent gameplay.
Top quality writing.
Lovecraftian.
Unique.

Con

Combat is garbage.
Lovecraftian, so no ultimate answers.
Not a true roguelike so it's repetitive after you've died a few times.

Every now and then you get to play a game built by people who loved it.
Posted August 4, 2018.
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1 person found this review helpful
4.3 hrs on record
Definitely worth a try for a pure story based experience. Doesn't matter if you like VNs or not, I would argue this only nominally shares the genre. There are romantic and sexual elements, but even in the "good" ending the story is more of a tragedy. The other ending I recieved landed squarely in the land of horror and was genuinely hard to watch, not for the faint of heart in the least.

The other thing I appreciate is that choice matters. Your choices are a little ambiguous as you don't make them for the protagonist directly, rather you decide what her "mother" says to her, and her mom is a piece of work no matter what (not spoilers btw, it's apparent from the get go). What the player determines is the tone of the final act, and it's outcome, which can be somewhere from bittersweet to shrieking insanity.

TLDR: If you're reading this, just play it.
Posted February 21, 2018.
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6 people found this review helpful
5.7 hrs on record (3.9 hrs at review time)
Just blasted through this, would have taken less time but I spent some looking up how to get the fourth ending.

There are only two serious criticisms worth noting.

1. Needs editing.

2. Too short, which is almost a recomendation in and of itself. (The food is terrible and the portions are TOO SMALL!)

More time for character development would have amplified an already intense experience. On the otherhand a short and sweet story completely avoids the heavy handed blungeoning similar attempts deliver. Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune are also relatively relatable even if you're not LGBTQ because they're just kids who want to be themselves. Adding more could actually spoil the magic.

Also adored the soundtrack, though a longer story may have fitted it better as it comes off over the top in such a short time span, so I guess I'm conflicted. Not conflicted about recommending this VN even a little bit, so much love put into it.
Posted February 9, 2018.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
30.8 hrs on record (29.9 hrs at review time)
I have owned this game for years now, bought it long before I knew about ARMA, let alone the Battlegrounds mod.

This is clearly a single man project, and the creator is still active. I believe this is simply a misguided concept, not a malicious cash grab. After all this time the developer is still keeping us updated on their work and, you know, actually working on it. If it were anything else they would have deserted it like so many others.

In the short amount of time I got to actually play the game, I managed to gather a few positives. I like the handling and controls, firing has an appropriate weight behind it. You have limited inventory space, even compared to other games in the genre. Finding ammo for the gun you have is fortunate. You can starve, or dehydrate, or get bit by a snake which makes camping a little more difficult. While the playable zone shrinks it's not to the same harsh extent as in PUBG, so if you get screwed by it, you really screwed yourself. You can choose between random spawns or the normal mode where you all spawn in a central hud. There's also a pure deathmatch mode which is actually quite fun. You can climb things you should be able to climb.

There isn't much else to say that shouldn't be apparent. It's sloppy. Extremely difficult to actually play with other people due to the minuscule player population. I know, I've been trying.

The fact is it's playable and less than a buck. One day this will be a diamond, we just have to ignore how rough it is.
Posted June 10, 2016. Last edited October 17, 2017.
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13 people found this review helpful
83.8 hrs on record (71.2 hrs at review time)
This was the first game I bought on steam four years ago, and I still play it to this day. I have never experienced such satisfying, visceral combat, while the attention to detail is simply breathtaking.

Artful, really. A steal at $5.
Posted December 28, 2014.
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Showing 1-10 of 12 entries