29
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955
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Recent reviews by MetalCanyon

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Showing 1-10 of 29 entries
285 people found this review helpful
8 people found this review funny
13
8
4
7
93.0 hrs on record (14.6 hrs at review time)
This game made me feel like I'm back in my childhood, playing Baldur's Gate 2, which made a big impression on me and developed my love of RPGs as well as D&D (pen and paper included). I was under the erroneous impression Pathfinder was but a different variation of D&D, even if, for all intents and purposes, to me, it still remains as such.

Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous is a complex, amazing experience (so far, about 14 hours in and I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface), which gives plenty of tutorials for the newer player to explain some of the basics and tips, yet still offers a lot to someone knowledgeable about the mechanics and tactics. Having said this, I do have to berate the game for giving me the impression my exploiter wizard (a class I had never heard of before) required INT and CHA, not the usual INT and DEX. As it turns out, having little DEX does affect your ability for all kinds of touch attacks, making your character rather... ahem... useless in most cases. Who would've thought? :)

Either way, the mechanics are all there, there are PLENTY of classes and even more spells, abilities, items and enemies. Combat is fun and feels satisfying, especially when your tactics go right and exploit the enemy's weakness or reduce their advantages. The actual animations might not be *quite* as polished as, say, Divinity: Original Sin 2 or Baldur's Gate 3, but that's a minor complaint.

The writing is on point, the characters themselves a lot of fun, bringing intrigue and a wish to learn more about them. There is voice acting, which is pretty darn good most of the time, although not all of the text (of which there is a lot) is voiced. Prepare to read.

You get plenty of choices in the game. Sometimes these are minor dialogue options, sometimes they will define your character or decide what companion you might gain or lose. So far, I've felt like my choices actually mattered and weren't simply superficial, which is saying a lot these days.

There are mythic paths available for your character. I haven't reached those yet (I have, but they're at the very beginning), but they seem to be bringing some seriously epic changes to your character (fancy turning into a demon? A dragon? A lich?).

The soundtrack is ABSOLUTELY fantastic. I am a huge lover of good game soundtracks, especially epic ones, and this game delivers on a scale I haven't heard of in a while. Very, very enjoyable.

If you'd like to see a spoiler-free-ish preview of the mechanics (and my bumbling), here is a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfESQvn-qAs
Posted September 2, 2021.
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1 person found this review helpful
38.0 hrs on record (5.5 hrs at review time)
An absolutely beautiful game with lots of different mechanics at play - ship combat, missile strikes and defense, bombing, building/configuring your ships, buying/selling, dialogue, factions and reputation, strategic decisions on the grand map, etc. The game features several tutorials but they will mostly give you the basics. You will need to learn the rest by yourself, by trial and error.

Sometimes it feels like anything I do creates an impossible situation but I'm sure it's simply because I'm not fully understanding this or that mechanic. Needless to say, the difficulty curve is quite steep.

All of those things aside, this is a game that is fun (and occasionally frustrating) to play, has amazing graphics, excellent sound effects and a plethora of lore that I'm yet to wrap my head around.

Short preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5R2QKyxuaM
Posted July 27, 2021.
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15 people found this review helpful
0.0 hrs on record
If you liked the original 112, this will spice things up a fair bit (especially if you like zombies). The difficulty ramps up considerably over the duties and you simply can't save everyone (just like it says on the tin). One of the big problems is that grouping units becomes much more important now (to support each other), but the AI still does what it wants, meaning you will often lose people due to the way the game handles their behavior. The one thing this fun DLC would need is the ability to send your units in convoys, so all the vehicles would go at the speed of the slowest.

All in all, a very fun and frantic DLC with a few headaches here and there.

Want to see gameplay? Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VhJD2Fpy4Y
Posted July 14, 2021.
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A developer has responded on Jul 15, 2021 @ 3:18am (view response)
13 people found this review helpful
3.1 hrs on record
Early Access Review
I'll try to keep this short. I don't normally play games like these (prefer turn-based RPG stuff) but Black Skylands has pleasantly surprised me with:
- lovely pixel graphics
- excellent, crisp sound effects for pretty much any action, explosion, etc.
- fun, fast, satisfying combat
- plenty of upgrades and modifications (weapons, airship, base)

What I didn't like so much:
- random enemy attacks on islands you liberate have to be dealt with or you run the risk of losing that particular area. This is fine but can often appear on the other side of the map, forcing you to abandon whatever you were doing and make your way to the affected island just to sometimes find out it was simply two bandits (or sometimes thirty)
- the English translation is completely fine most of the time and does not detract from the enjoyment. But it does sometimes read fairly odd; some sentences are structured in peculiar ways.

If you'd like to see gameplay and my thoughts on Black Skylands, you can see a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_81KkR2yc
Posted July 9, 2021.
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145 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
3
3
1
21.7 hrs on record (8.1 hrs at review time)
A little bit grindy but surprisingly fun.

You are Mr. Prepper, a guy that has tried to escape a dystopian version of America where the president is above all and 'The Agency' keeps regular and intrusive checks on people and their property. Your mission is to escape via a rather unorthodox and fantastic way.

The game includes a lot of inventory management, building up your secret bunker beneath your house via the workshops, using more and more adnvanced/rare materials, all the while keeping your home tidy and in accordance with the rules. There's a surprising amount of content included: farming, trading, crafting, building, combat, dialogue (no dialogue options so far), cooking, electrical usage management, etc. Every day gives you a certain amount of time to perform whatever you wish to do, limited by your stamina and health (sleeping/napping and food). I hate time limits in games but Mr. Prepper is pretty lenient with it and I have never truly felt hard-pressed to do things very quickly, apart from when I was deep in the bunker and the Agent was coming to check my house.

All in all, fairly nice graphics that hark back to the old days when characters were being scanned and digitized into games, some basic but somewhat satisfying combat, a fair bit of grinding via trapping and trading (I like it, though) and progressing through the days.

There are some blockages to progression in the forest (essentially a dungeon) via materials and tools as well as the mine, which requires key cards. It's not overly clear where to get those apart from simply grinding and upgrading your workshop, which will unlock more recipes.

Here's a Let's Play if you want to get a feel for the game:
● Mr. Prepper Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclWgGKOiaU&list=PLIhNUXJ4tecduIBFHFw2bX18GxF8aDC3_&index=1
Posted March 18, 2021.
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A developer has responded on Mar 18, 2021 @ 10:40am (view response)
1 person found this review helpful
36.5 hrs on record (17.6 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
I'll keep this one short. If you loved the Firefly series, this hits a similar spot. It's got some very similar music (which is amazing, I just wish there were more tracks) and has a somewhat comparable feel, since you're a sci-fi working man in a megacorp environment where pretty much everything you do costs you dearly (money-wise).

Before I get ahead of myself, the whole point of your 'shifts' in the scrapyard is to dismantle and cut away the parts the corporation requires. This will include entire devices like switches, computers and even reactors, as well as tonnage requirements of different materials, which you deposit in the processors and furnaces. It is impossible to describe just how satisfying this game is when you're pulling off the large pieces of ships' shells - you have to play the game yourself to feel that.

There is also a rather impressive simulation of pressure - most of the ships you get to scrap have an intact pressure vessel and are also pressurized. This means just cutting away at their hulls is possible but extremely dangerous and counter-productive, which translates to you getting into the actual ship and using the various switches, computers and the like to depressurize the ship, flush the fuel from the fuel lines (to prevent explosions when removing thrusters) and so on. I hope there's going to be more options of interacting with the ship systems (indeed, an upcoming feature is 'ship diagnostics', which I assume will have something additional to do with the actual systems).

Everything happens in zero gravity. If you get motion sick easily, this might be a problem (I've had zero problems myself but I don't get motion sick in general) especially because your suit's RCS thrusters can move you in all three axes, allowing you to move, turn and spin at will. The physics are enjoyable (they also apply to the ship and its pieces/items) and both the players as well as everything from the ship will get affected by any forces that are applied to them. This includes your futuristic gravity tethers and the gravity gun as well as depressurization events, explosions and so on. Having said this, the developers have (understandably) game-ified the physics, causing objects to slow down to a stop after a certain number of seconds. Unrealistic but I never truly found it annoying, especially considering that a fully-realistic physics simulation would mean a complete loss of all the items and the ship itself after a single explosion, since it would have been blown away into deep space.

This game is fun, enjoyable, addictive and has - shockingly enough - better voice acting with its crew logs you sometimes find than many other games that actually focus on story. There's also humor which does not feel too forced and made me chuckle a few times.

Absolutely recommended!

Here is a video of the gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmliIjn9I8
Posted November 26, 2020.
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22 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
32.7 hrs on record (3.2 hrs at review time)
Product received for free from Microsoft for review purposes.

I love turn-based combat and X-Com-esque games. But I have never played any of the Gears games and did not know what to expect. However, the screenshots looked great and, obviously, it's a genre that fits me perfectly.

You know how a game can look fantastic on screenshots but not so good in motion? I'm happy to say Gears Tactics delivers in graphical prowess, overall polish as well as mechanics. Long story short - it's brilliant in almost every aspect.

You control a small squad of soldiers who are moving around a warzone in their APC, doing various missions and fighting the grub (remember, I am a complete newbie with the lore) enemy. Gears Tactics took a slightly different approach to the time units and actions you usually see in these games. Each unit gets 3 actions (sometimes more, sometimes less), which you can spend on movement, shooting, throwing grenades, etc. This might not seem so much different than what the new XCOMs are doing, but there are nuances. Firing a weapon or doing pretty much anything does not end a unit's turn. You can spend your action points in whatever way you wish, on any tasks. Movement is also slightly different. No hex or rectangle grids here, it's all free-form, which feels great. And the game's UI does an EXCELLENT job at letting you know how far you can move with one action point, so you don't waste 2 by mistake.

Getting your soldiers into cover is easy and intuitive. The UI will let you know what kind of cover you're going to (half, full or breakable). However, unlike in the new XCOMs, where a target can either be fired upon normally or flanked, if you can get around them, in Gears Tactics, getting a nicer angle on your enemies will mean their cover will be less effective and more bullets will make contact (and vice versa). This mechanic feels great and very rewarding because you're not forced into either taking pot shots at enemies or going gung-ho attempting to get to that magical 90 degree to the enemy's cover to get a flanking shot.

Melee attacks are a thing and quite spectacular (and gory). After killing an enemy, sometimes they will be knocked out, which means you can perform a melee finisher. This exposes your unit (usually) but also grants everyone an extra action. A very interesting and, in the end, strategic mechanic that's fun to use.

There's also overwatch, which will make the unit fire on enemies as long as they have ammo and action points left. I'm mentioning it because it's extremely satisfying (and fluidly animated) to see enemies strumble or even fall over when being shot at by overwatch. Sometimes, you will not just do damage to them but actually interrupt their action (whether that was lobbing grenades or trying to shoot you), which makes it very useful, but it also can be turned on you!

The graphics are crisp and gritty, the animations very fluid. In fact, the animations when characters interact in melee are so well-done, you will never notice the little pop when two models position themselves to have a melee spat. It feels natural. The sounds are great, even though I'd sometimes wish my weapons had a little more oompf to them.

I usually don't mention things like the options menu in reviews but I have to in this case. This game probably has THE best options menu I have ever had the pleasure of using. Not only does it give you an explanation of what the plethora of options do, but they give you the expected performance impact on your GPU, CPU as well as video ram. Not just that, the menu also provides screenshots to reflect how changing options will impact the look of the game. Truly excellent, if you need to change things to get better performance.

There's no base building, which is a bit of a shame for me (I love the mechanic). You get to recruit other soldiers and you pick up equipment cases (which stink of lootboxes and microtransactions; I don't know whether that's just a coincidence or it was a mechanic they wanted to implement but then decided against it - there's zero microtransactions in Gears Tactics), which provides mods for your weapons, new armor, etc. There's also extensive customization of armor, weapons and the characters.

All in all, the game feels great, sounds great, plays great, has very satisfying mechanics and combat, and is polished. I can very much recommend Gears Tactics to anyone who enjoys X-Com type games.

Video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZdTEZP_uoI
Posted April 28, 2020.
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318 people found this review helpful
6 people found this review funny
3.8 hrs on record
Product received free for review purposes.

Cloudpunk is a bit of a dream of mine. Cyberpunk, dystopian environment with cliche neon glows, constant rain, implants and... FLYING CARS! Ever since I've seen The 5th Element as a kid (yes, I know this is more like Blade Runner), I wanted to play a game where I would be some kind of a taxi driver having to navigate the sprawling city and chaotic traffic.

And Cloudpunk promised that, at least on the screenshots and snippets of video. I wanted to really love this game. And, at first sight, it makes a very good impression. Everything is built out of voxels; large enough to give it a distinct art direction and small enough to allow for many details. The textures are also quite old-school and pixellated. And I really enjoyed those aspects.

Flying is a bit... meh. It feels awesome to get into traffic at first but it immediately dawns on you that your HOVA (the flying vehicles in the game) isn't quite so happy to behave in a controlled manner. It takes a little bit of time to get to grips with how it controls. The flying traffic becomes less of an obstacle when you simply fly high on the 'highways', or avoid them altogether. You can also refuel your HOVA, which got me excited, as I love RPG elements in games. Having to earn money to repair, upgrade and refuel your flying car is a nice touch but it feels more like a slightly annoying fly you have to swat every now and then.

The basic premise of the game is that you're working for an illegal delivery company - Cloudpunk. Naturally, this consists of mainly delivering packages, which is what you'll be doing for most of the game. If it weren't for the somewhat intriguing overarching storyline, the deliveries would really be nothing more than A-to-B.

I would be fine with his, however (I've spent countless hours in European and American Truck Simulator games) the game brings a strange kind of narrative to the table. Everything is voiced (in most cases not very well, unfortunately, but we'll get back to this in a bit) and there are zero dialogue options. You sometimes can deliver a package to one of two destinations, but when speaking to NPCs, you are essentially watching a visual novel.

This would not be so bad if it weren't for the incessant babbling of the city's residents. When you're listening to very much tongue-in-cheek dialogue (the game doesn't seem to take most of the NPCs seriously at all) and you're getting sick of the length, you can be sure you're probably only half-way done. A random street drug vendor is telling you about how he doesn't get enough customers? Get ready to hear exciting things such as what his cat is named, how your hero doesn't like cats, how cat food was far less expensive outside the city and what the drugs are made of. Then proceed to other bizarre things he might tell you.

I've played plenty of text-heavy games such as Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout 1&2, etc. But I never had the urge to browse webpages on another monitor in the mean time (granted, because those old games usually didn't have much voice acting, but still).

This problem is very much exasperated by the fact that the voice acting is... mediocre at best. What makes it even worse is that Rania's voice actress, the main character you play, just does not convey emotions very well. There is one shining beacon in this sea of averageness and that is the person who voices "Control", the NPC who gives you the delivery missions. He's good and lovely to listen to.

All in all, the immersion-breaking dialogue, the painful voice acting and the somewhat boring play cycle of deliveries is enough to crumble my 'recommendation', despite the very nice graphical look of the entire game. I will say that, if you're getting this game for the looks and don't mind some very casual play (there's no combat as far as I'm aware of), you might actually enjoy it. For me, I got bored after about 4 hours.

Shame. :(

Video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFpIbHuyBJI
Posted April 28, 2020. Last edited April 28, 2020.
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50 people found this review helpful
6 people found this review funny
31.9 hrs on record (13.6 hrs at review time)
Game was received free for review purposes.

On the surface of it, this game might seem just like a slight polish of 911 Operator, its predecessor. However, after playing it for a fair few hours, I do have to say two things:
- It's as fun as ever, especially when you get an abundance of things to do and have to juggle your units around
- They've added special events, storylines, weather, e-mail feedback, promotions within the call center (you get to hire dispatchers under your command, etc.) and so on

The voiced 911 calls in the previous game were fun and, arguably, the highlight of each duty you took. However, the quality of the voice acting (apart from the operator who has an excellent voice and was apparently a real dispatcher) was all over the place and often somewhat silly. What's worse is that the calls started repeating fairly quickly. Not a huge deal but you knew what to expect and what to answer.

This has changed in 112 Operator for the better. There are two reasons for this. I feel like the frequencey of voiced calls are lower each duty now. A bit of a shame but I'd rather have that than repeating calls every few minutes. The second reason is that there is now a MUCH larger variety of voiced calls. They also give you many more options on how to respond (correclty and incorrectly, with consequences). The quality of the voice acting is on a much higher level and more consistent. You have panicking people, people in distress, those that wish to stay anonymous, people that will argue with you, prank calls, etc. A lot of them now not only start an emergency you have to send units to respond to, but also begin new mechanics like a search for missing persons, manhunts, etc.

Speaking of new mechanics, the weather now changes and presents a new challenge. A huge storm? Expect lightning strikes, your motorcycle units out of commission, children getting lost... A heat wave? Get the already stretched firefighters to set up sprinklers and respond to huge wildfires which now spread through regions and have to be dealt with immediately. Firefighting units now have a certain amount of water in their vehicles and need to replenish those.

As each emergency unit arrives at a location, you get a much better visual overview of what's going on. The game will represent a top-down view of pretty much everything quite accurately. A broken pipe spewing water, a damaged road sign, a collission between a motorcycle and a car, a stadium with a concert, etc.

To top it all off, there are now minor stories involved in your duties, like a manhunt for a serial killer over several days, an arsonist and so on. You also get to read e-mails from survivors, your dispatchers and your supervisor.

As a negative, when there are a lot of units going everywhere, it's sometimes difficult to quickly gauge what's available and what isn't or where a unit is heading. A simple solution would be to turn the path of a selected unit red instead of just highlight it a slightly brighter white.

All in all, very much a surprising sequel. I honestly thought it would be a fun rehash of the original but would present nothing new. I was mistaken. If you liked 911 Operator, you will absolutely enjoy 112 Operator even more.

Let's Play of 112 Operator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mohR_7R7gjo&list=PLIhNUXJ4tece8TChZnjc4N1Lfoyo1V3qc&index=2
Posted April 23, 2020.
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1 person found this review helpful
175.6 hrs on record (81.6 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6jqZtuguQE

This game is *amazing*. One of the few games that has seen so much content and polish added through early access it's much more playable and content-rich than a lot of released titles.

Everything from the art style, beautiful lighting in the caves, varied enemies and their animations, all the way down to how good the weapons feel, the sound effects rumble and the soundtrack rocks is amazing. The developers are very active and have been steadily adding and fixing things while keeping in touch with the community.

Deep Rock Galactic is a grindy (but in a fun way!) game that you can enjoy both in single as well as multiplayer. If you're playing alone, you get a helper drone which is not half-bad at fighting enemies, helping you get up if you're knocked out and even mining minerals. Other players can (depending on your settings) drop in to your game. Playing with friends is recommended as it's even more fun.

Four classes are available, each with their own set of tools, weapons and gadgets, making for a varied and complementary experience. Loads of customization options can be unlocked as well as weapon and gadget upgrades, skins, etc.

The variety of enemies has just been growing in number over the course of the early access period. I do have to say shooting, taking off parts of the creatures' armor and killing them never really gets old. Combat is very satisfying due to the aforementioned armor plinking-off, the meaty sound effects of the weapons and the quotes of the dwarves.

This game is close to perfect for what it is and I can truly say it's made with love by the developers. Why? You can see that in all the little details they put in. Even the beer glasses (there's a bar on the home ship) have their own designs. And then you notice that the more special brews have a nice little design on top of the foam. Your dwarf loudly gulps the liquid down and the sound effects are so good it never fails to make me thirsty myself.

I could go on and on but this is one FUN game, especially if you play it with friends!
Posted December 17, 2019.
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Showing 1-10 of 29 entries