Recent reviews by Driver

As the game currently stands it's difficult to recommend as it has very little player agency. You're pushed down a linear path as you are bound to the train which can only follow a single track. You can't make any decision about where you go, you can only travel along the one line that's available to you. Sure you can jump off the train and explore stations, small depots and such, but 99% of your play time is spent on and in the immediate vicinity of the train. Unlike games with similar crafting mechanics, you can't set out to gather specific types of materials that you need, you can only wait for your train to pass them by and grab them as you go, which puts the player in a very passive position. I never felt like I was making any choices in the game, just doing tasks that were assigned to me and gathering materials that the game allowed me to gather.

The research also suffers from a similar problem. There's plenty to research to upgrade your train and gear, but you never get to pick what you can research, it's all just linear progression. Each phase gives you 2-4 things you can research, then you progress onto the next. If you want to unlock better gear you have to keep researching what the game allows you until you get to a phase that has what you want. Worse yet, some of the research doesn't make sense. Unlocking acid means that abandoned stations now have a chance of spawning along the track where you can get off and fight in an arena against waves of foes. Defeat enough waves and you can get acid as a reward. How on earth does that work?

Combat is probably where the game is at its weakest. Enemies don't make any noise (unless they're shooting you) so it's hard to gauge where they are without leaving cover, at which point you'll be shot full of holes with their unerring accuracy. Or if you're gathering materials in the void, the sharks will 'swim' up behind you and the first indication you're being attacked is when you lose a chunk of health from your ass being bitten off. The arena fights aren't much fun either, mostly back-peddling while you spray bullets at the swarm, or having to tank damage from the armoured bug while you shoot it in its one small weak spot in its face.

It's not all bad, the crafting mechanics are very satisfying and while the research is linear, you do get to make progress and upgrade your train (Though I never saw the point in moving at anything other than a snail's pace as if you speed along, you miss all the resources floating about. Still, the steam and diesel engines do look impressive). The Rofleemos are rather cute and a nice addition, particularly when you can put them to work gathering materials for you. The puzzles marked by fireflies are rather good too, making you pay attention to your surroundings or having to listen carefully in order to solve them.

Overall it's a nice idea and I can see what they're trying to do, it's just fundamentally flawed at the moment as you're unable to make any choices about your journey. You're quite literally being railroaded, which is a shame as I had high hopes for this. Still, it's early days in Early Access, so there's plenty of time for development. Worth keeping an eye on, but probably not worth buying just yet.

I'm not a huge fan of rogue-like/lite games but this won me over with its strong visual aesthetic and excellent gunplay. There's a huge variety of weapons and skills to unlock along with alternate characters and difficulty modes so there's plenty of content for a very reasonable price.

It's difficult to find things to criticise. Perhaps some of the weapons seem a bit gimmicky, but there's so many of them that it doesn't really matter and you can always have fun experimenting with them and finding the ones that compliment your play style, so it's not really an issue. I did find the daily challenges to be a bit cheap on the rewards considering the difficulty. The prize of a few upgrade points at the end is all-or-nothing, if you don't finish the challenge, you leave empty-handed, whereas on the campaign even if you die a few rooms in you still get some points. It doesn't seem worth the hassle.

Still, a minor gripe at best, the rest of the game shows a huge amount of polish and the DLC adds in some new guns and characters. Perhaps a bit steep in price compared to the main game, but it didn't bother me too much as I was enjoying myself and wanted to support the devs. There's more free and paid content planned this year and next, so I'd say you're getting value for money.

A neat little combination of a couple of genres, the base-building and resource management of Command and Conquer mixed with a dose of twin stick shooter. The exploring, building and research parts of the game are well fleshed-out and there's a decent amount of new mechanics scattered throughout the game so you're never doing the same thing over and over, and there's a variety of maps in the main campaign so you can explore different biomes and deal with the unique challenges of each.

In 60+ hours of game time I only encountered two bugs, one where a build limit was miscalculated, meaning I couldn't increase my research points (this is a known bug and the devs have said ti will be addressed) the other was an item that gave me a discount on building/upgrade costs not applying the discount to upgrades (more of an annoyance, really). The game itself was stable, no crashes at all though the load times felt a little long, but not excessively so.

While I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, my one big complaint would be the writing for the two characters which was particularly clunky with conversations going back and forth where the same point was made over and over again. For example:

You've discovered a new mineral
Yes, I should research it
Yes, that would allow you to craft new equipment and buildings
Right, new equipment and buildings would make things easier
Especially with how hostile the local fauna is
Yeah, we need to protect ourselves...

YES. THANK YOU. I GOT THE MESSAGE.

That or dialogue that was delivered too late, ie a warning that a crystal I was to scan was fragile given AFTER I'd just accidentally blown it up with a grenade. That quibble aside, it's a very solid game, well worth its asking price and a steal if you catch it in a sale.

The DLC is a considerable expansion to the game with several maps located in a unique location with a self-contained story with new research, buildings and equipment added into the game which compliments the campaign. It's far more pro-active action-based which is a nice change up from the main story which is mostly played on the defensive. Again, well worth the asking price.

:edit: Build cap bug has now been fixed.

While the game is unarguably very pretty and the moment-to-moment gameplay is fun, there are far too many bugs that halt your progression for this to be acceptable. Too many missions that are impossible to complete because NPCs or enemies don't spawn. I really wanted to like this but it needs heavy patching, and from what I've seen in the discussion areas, these bugs have been around since launch and still not been addressed. I have a few other more minor quibbles with the game but those pale in comparison. Until these have been fixed, I cannot recommend anyone buy this game.

Grimrock 2 is everything a sequel should be: Take the things that worked in the first game, polish them up, add more things that work along side them and... make it bigger. An excellent old-school tile-based dungeon crawl with plenty of variety in locations and enemies with lots of loot and secrets to be found.

I was looking forward to playing this as I've been a fan of Obsidian (and their predecessor's) games but I found this one to be rather shallow. The character skills all seemed rather underdeveloped, the perks especially, and the Flaw system just didn't really work as getting yet another near-useless Perk in exchange for a permanent penalty just didn't seem worthwhile.

As other people have mentioned, the weapons are underwhelming. The game begins well and there appears to be a good variety until you realise that the later weapons are just the same ones you found before but are Mark II (ie, look identical but have higher numbers) and the unique weapons you find have worse stats than the generic ones and can't be modified. What on earth were the devs thinking?

The story is alright but the writing seems half finished in places. Near the beginning one of my crew mentioned they had a crush on someone they just met and the relationship went from strangers to full-on romance in the space of one conversation, it felt like a whole chunk of story arc had been skipped. Unfortunately that was one of the more fleshed out ones, all the crew have personal missions you can do but for the most part they didn't involve much other than 'go here, talk/kill/rescue someone or find something, job done.'

By the time I was about 75% through the game I was already done with it and finished it more out of obligation than enjoyment. One play through was enough for me, I'm not sure I fancy another 30-odd hours to see if there's any major changes from taking different decisions. A real shame.

So it's hard to know whether to recommend this or not. Politics aside with regards to the different versions, I can only speak to what I've played, so here it is:

The Good:
The gun play works well, the different 'weapons' have satisfying sound effects and visual impact on your foes, you really feel like you're dishing it out.
The visuals have enough variation to keep you interested, the retro look of The Oldest House allows for some interesting design along with the warping of reality.
Animation shouldn't be overlooked either, the way the protagonist moves is very realistic, especially how things like the dodge and flight mechanics work. That said, the facial animations during cutscenes can be a little... iffy, the NPCs specifically.
Similarly the sound design is very good, excellent atmosphere, especially from the possessed staff, the chanting can be quite unnerving. There is one rather notable event near the end of the game after which I nodded and said 'Yeah, that was cool' and a moment later Jesse herself exclaimed 'That was awesome.' Yes. Yes it was. Unfortunately it's a side mission, so it's likely a lot of people missed out on that rather neat section.
The setting is enjoyable, if you're at all familiar with SCP then you'll spot a lot of references to it, along with nods to Twin Peaks and other similar shows and films.

The Bad:
There's a lot of 'cheap' deaths you'll suffer. Sniped by an enemy you can't see, or plunging through a hole in the ground you didn't see because you're focused on a foe above you.
It needs a hefty rig to run, check the specs and make sure you're up for it. There's a lot of effects going on in combat with chucks of concrete flying about and dust clouds whirling all over the place.
The map can be confusing to navigate and it doesn't give you key information (such as locked doors you don't have access for yet). This could be hand-waved away with the distortion occurring within the building, but come on... There's also the problem of areas being gated off behind side missions and no indication that you need to speak to someone somewhere else before you can enter.
Why can the Service Weapon only have two modes available during combat? The two weapon limit has been a staple of the shooter since Halo, but in this game you have one weapon that can change forms. Why the arbitrary restriction? (Answer: gameplay, but there really should be an in-game reason)
The optional missions that regularly crop up can be horribly unbalanced. For example, I had to defend a group of allies from waves of enemies in one area, but the foes that spawned were the kamakazi types that just zerg rushed me and killed everyone in seconds. Or on another occasion I had to take out a large group which completely overwhelmed me in the cramped area they spawned. Ok, these are optional and you can ignore them, but come on, this stuff should have been play tested and balanced.

The... Meh:
Why can't I listen to the audio logs on the go? You have to stand next to the tape players to hear them. It brings the game to a grinding halt. I don't mind reading the documents, many of them were quite interesting and added a lot of background and flavour, but if it's an audio log, let me listen as I continue playing!
The story itself is... Well it's supposed to be vague in places, allow you to draw your own conclusions, make suggestions, hint at things, but quite often those things just didn't make sense even when they were explained. I felt like I was missing quite a lot by the end, wondering how people knew what they did and why... 'things' happened as they did. I thought the expansions would, well, expand on that, but they both seem to be fairly stand-alone stories.

All in all it's a mixed bag. I have played on to the end and I've almost finished the expansions, so I have definitely enjoyed myself, though I can understand the frustrations I've heard from other people. Definitely worth picking up on sale if you have a beefy computer.

(Steam won't let me post this without a thumbs up/down. So take the thumbs up as 'Good, but moderate your expectations')

I can't begin to describe my disappointment with this game. Doom 2016 was incredible. This... this is Doom designed by a committee. Terrible opening, poor level and enemy design design... How? How have ID screwed this up SO BADLY?! Played for about an hour, uninstalled, requested refund. Nothing I can do about the bitter taste in my mouth.

Have just got a refund on this. Far too much of a chore to gather the most basic and commonly used materials for this to be any fun. 5+ years in early access, I'd expect more from a game, especially when it comes to first impressions.

I just finished FC5 a few minutes ago and I'm still angry at how bad the writing is in the game. Putting aside the ludo-narrative dissonance (yeah, I know...), the ham-fisted way the story is dumped onto the player is horribly jarring. Expect to have your immersion shattered as you're suddenly yanked out of the game to be subjected to a cutscene where the antagonists will drone on and on and ooooon at you. These will happen once you reach certain resistance point milestones, but the way they're implemented is just terribly designed. At several points I was just doing my thing when my character keels over and I wake up in a prison camp. One time when this happened I was in the middle of a friendly base. Seemingly Seed's minions can just waltz into enemy territory, drug and kidnap me while I'm standing in front of one of the resistance leaders. Not to mention none of the actions you take in the game has any influence on how the game finished, it's just a binary choice you're given at the end (Neither choice having any satisfaction or coherence whatsoever).

This is the lazy work of hacks. Ubisoft were trying too hard to have an 'edgy' ending but didn't do the groundwork required for the endings to have any impact. The antagonists were sloppily written and I found myself wanting to kill them just so they'd shut up.*

As far as gameplay goes, if you've played one FC game, you've played them all (with perhaps the exception of the first). If you enjoy the minute-to-minute action then that's great, but be prepared for disappointment otherwise. I'd highly recommend giving this game a miss if you were thinking of picking it up on the cheap before FC6 comes out. And given how annoyed FC5 has left me, I'll be skipping the next one entirely. Giancarlo Esposito or not.

*(Spoiler)

And I didn't even get that.