Recent reviews by cannedcream

Cult of the Lamb is an enjoyable rouge-like dungeon crawler mixed with a simplistic base-building game, filled with dark humor and cute little animal critters. The dungeon crawling is challenging without being too difficult, providing the right balance between fun and frantic, just as running your cult requires a little strategy, but not too much to distract you from the rest of the game.

What complaints I do have about the game are minor: mostly that I think your cultists grow old and die a little too quickly, I wish the building map was a little bigger, and I find that the diagonal grid you build on can sometimes be a little finicky when placing small 1-tile objects.

Overall, this game is fantastic and is worth the buy even at full price.

Having played both in singleplayer and multiplayer, not even playing with friends can really save this game from it's shortcomings. At this time, the AI in insanely hostile and will swarm the players which feels like it quickly ruins any attempt at playing the game the way it was designed to be played unless you and everyone in your team is pitch perfect at all times.

If you are an absolute fiend for tactical shooters then you might find something to enjoy in this game, but as only a casual fan I found this game to be unwieldy and more frustrating than fun.

I saw everything this game had to offer in 90 minutes and was largely bored through it all. Even if you have a strong hypno-kink, the content on offer here is so shallow that it's hard to recommend even at half the price. Honestly not worth the hassle of strapping on the headset for.

Honestly, a surprising step up from 2k22 in nearly every way.

I can't attest to every mode in the game because I've never touched things like My Faction, but I've since uninstalled 2k22 since I don't see me ever going back after playing this one.

The roster is pretty stacked with a lot of my personal favorites unlocked through gameplay rather than having to be bought in DLC packs like last year. My Rise is muuuuuch more focused this time around with more cutscenes, a interesting unique story for both male and female characters, and most importantly: a clear indication of what is a main story progression, a side story, or just a challenge.

My GM is fantastic this time around with a ton more match types, triple threat & fatal fourways, the ability to end rivalries outside of PPVs, new power cards, a new 'shake-up' system, the ability to have up to four brands duke it out at once (either as NPCs or with friends), as well as a few other quality of life improvements that makes it way more fun to play.

The best part is that every update no longer requires you to download the entire game file again this year; something that is much appreciated.

Still a shame that there's no way to add custom music without modding the game, and mixed-gender matches are still out.

Overall, though, this is a shockingly solid wrestling game for anyone who's a fan of the genre.

An honestly fantastic roguelike game. I adore the massive number of up-picks, nearly all of which can build up upon each other leading to an endless number of combinations that can result in some truly busted fun. The seer number of unlockables, characters, challenges, and rooms make this game an absolute delight. And while this is a minor thing, one of my honestly favorite features is how quickly you can start a run, save at any point during it, and quit within seconds. Unlike something like Enter the Gungeon where every death forces the player to sit through a 2-3 second animation followed by a splash screen, you can die, skip the splash screen, and be right back into another run within a second and half; meaning that the flow of gameplay isn't interrupted.

With nearly 1k hours into this game and a determination to unlock every single achievement, I have for sure gotten my money's worth a dozen times over.

Interesting, but shallow.

So, I've put a fair number of hours into King of Retail because I'm a weirdo who likes weirdo simulator games. On that front, King of Retail does have some pretty cool things going for it. The amount of customization is pretty huge, letting you design your store's look, layout, floorplan, and signs about however you want. There is even a basic photo editor that will like you create your own signs to put up in game. If you play in campaign mode, you can even slowly build out an army of stores, run your HQ, acquire benefits, fight against competition, and some other cool things that give more depth than just running one store.

However, there are a few problems that will be a serious issue for most people; the type of store you can build is very limited: grocery, clothing, or electronic. That's it. And while each category has a fair number of items in it that all look pretty good and have their own unique stats, it is limited. Eventually, all of your stores are going to look the same. Employees can also be annoying, constantly calling in sick and demanding raises. It's rare for a day to go by without one or both of these things happening.

One of the biggest problem, however, is that the game does a poor job of conveying information, and there are 2 specific places I think it's the worst: 1) Figuring out what TYPE of items your customers want. See, every item has 3 stats; Price, Quality, Fashion. Your customers are also divided by their class: Student, Farmer, Accountant, Celebrity, etc. Each type of customer prefers a specific kind of stats for the item they buy, and even through the game offers you a handy graph about is, I can never seem to get it right, meaning that I'll have items that sit on shelves going unsold.

And speaking of shelves, here is 2): the other place where this game fails to give information is in its shelving units. See, there are a number of different types of shelves that hold different kinds of goods, and while some of them tell you exactly how many articles of an item can fit on those shelves, others don't. They just say 'VARIES', which makes it hard to guess how many items you can put on there. Maybe this won't be a big deal for some, but I like having my stores nice and orderly, so having guess how much of each item to buy can be annoying.

There are also a number of bugs, glitches, and QOL improvements that need to be made to this game.

Honestly, despite all of the negative things, I would have still given this game a positive review as everything that is wrong here are things that could be fixed. However, I don't think they will be fixed, as it seems the Dev has abandoned this game right after release without so much as a Workshop so fans could edit the game themselves.

Honestly, it's a shame. King of Retail does do a fair bit right, but it's the compiling minor issues and corner-cutting of this game that just keeps it from getting a better review. If you can look past the faults and go in knowing that the game is going to be semi-jank, then you will have fun here. Just don't pay full price.

While Planet Coaster is a great little theme park building game with great graphics, tons of building options, and tons of room for creativity;I--like many others--need to protest this subscription model insanity. While innocent enough now, we've seen how the game industry loves to test out new, predatory business practices like this. (Remember when loot boxes and microtransactions were "just cosmetic"?) This needs to be nipped in the bud now before someone like Ubisoft or EA gets wind of it and starts thinking it will be the next get-rich-quick idea.

I'll remove and change my review when this subscription nonsense is also removed.

I haven't really touched a wrestling game since 2010, but lately I've just found myself in the mood to jump back into a modern one, and since I was hearing good things about this game, I decided to splurge some of my tax rebate money and grab it. Now that I've had my hands on it few a few hours, I find the game is something of a mixed bag of impressive improvements and questionable downgrades. I haven't touched everything in this game, but let me quickly break down my thoughts on the main modes I have played with:

EXHIBITION: Pretty much the bread and butter of any WWE game; the ability to quickly jump into a rather impressive list of match types with a damn good sized roster is great. I imagine any fan could lose themselves for hours in this mode, either by themselves or with friends. The controls feel pretty good and the increased complexity of how the reversal engine works makes turning the fight around a little more challenging for both sides without ever feeling unfair.

There has also been a MASSIVE improvement with the announcer commentary, making them feel almost like real people commenting on the match rather than robots repeating the same few lines. Not only will they make the comments you would expect about a character, they will also comment if they have any history with their opponent, as well as the quality of the match (ex: if one character has been taking a heavy beating through out, they may comment on this). Honestly, I love it and hope they keep on this path.

MY RISE: My main go-to in any WWE game has also been the story mode, and My Rise is... honestly kind of bland. While it is cool that you can pick from one of four backgrounds, and there's finally a WOMAN'S campaign, what's here feels incredibly half-assed. Most of your interactions are done via text messages and social media apps in what I think was a way to not have to pay the superstars to do a bunch of VO work. This kind of makes the fights dull and have no stakes. While it *is* cool when stuff does happen in the game, and I like how your actions as a heel or face can shape the direction of the story, the 'story' that is here feels so weak due to how few 'face-to-face' moments your created character has with anyone else. GET OFF YOUR DAMN PHONES!

And while I'm on the subject of created wrestlers; I should not that the create-an-entrance has been insanely stripped down. No custom music, no editing each piece of the entrance animation, no custom effects or pyro. You just pick one animation and one song from the list and that's more or less your lot. While, yes, there is a nice long list from both categories, the fact that a gameplay feature that's been in the series since as far back as I can remember has been removed is just disheartening.

(PS: for some reason, game controls stop working in My Rise matches. Try loading Steam in Big Picture Mode to fix this while we wait for a patch)

MY GM: On paper? Pretty fun. In practice? Strangely limited and dull. Despite all of the match types in the game, you are for some reason limits to Normal, Table, TLC, Extreme Rules, and Hell in a Cell here. For promos? Self-hype, Call-out, Charity, Advertisement. Despite this mode being little more than a fancy paint-job on numbers and graphs, it's so empty! I don't feel like I have any real control over my stars, the rivalries, or the business.

It's not all bad, however. I do like how each week you're presented with requests from your superstars and HHH that you can choose to complete or not, earning the chance to unlock cards you can spend to screw your opponent or boost yourself. There's also a nice system of puzzling out the right balance of star power, wrestling types, and face/heel alignment that can make putting together your cards an interesting challenge. I also kinda love how there's a list of unique pretend jobbers to hire into your company for cheap to help fill out your roster, (yes I absolutely want to have a match between a face giant king and a heel mime).

Overall, I think your enjoyment of the game is going to come down to what you're here for: if it's to fantasy sports your way through the business as a GM or create your perfect OC wrestler and take them through a story, you're gonna be disappointed. While what's here isn't bad, it is rather dull and lifeless. However; if you're interested in just grabbing your friends, picking your favorite superstars and slugging it out in the ring; you will have a great time.

Despite my own personal disappointments with the game, I can't really give it a thumbs down because it's not a 'bad' game. It plays well, looks great, and I've personally never had any crashes with it. So, if you just want a simple wrestling game, then sure, this is worth it.

If you can handle the sheer filesize of this game, Not For Broadcast is one of the most unique, entertaining, and emotional story games you'll find on Steam.

The gameplay is broken up in two different sections; a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style text story based around your home life, where what you pick alters everything from your wealth level, how the various members of your family feels about you, and even whether they live or die. While some dislike this part of the game, I actually highly enjoyed just how detailed it was, and how carefully the game keeps track of what you pick, meaning that there is rarely a 'right' or 'wrong' answer; the game--and thus the characters--are smart enough to understand that sometimes you need to make a hard choice, assuming you've shown kindnesses to them in the past. It makes these people that you never see feel like real people whom you want to care for.

The other half of the game is Broadcast's bread and butter, sitting you behind the editing desk of a live news program, where you'll be doing everything from choosing commercials to play, switching camera angles, censoring swears (or other things), and ultimately framing the subjects of the news in whatever negative or positive light you choose. There are also a number of other factors to keep on top of such as fighting against network static, faulty equipment, or bad weather, but thankfully the game never throws everything at you at once. Smartly, the devs temper all of the options on your switchboard and the things you need to do to keep it running so that you're always on your toes, but will probably not ever feel overwhelmed.

The story itself is fantastic. I will not go into any spoilers with it, as I think it is best experienced totally raw, but I will say the very careful way the writers framed the two separate factions, the characters within in, the news crew, your boss; they all feel like real people with faults and good aspects. You are the poor soul stuck in the middle of it all, and while you may sometimes feel like you're making the single 'right' choice; its very possible that soon after you'll be questioning yourself again. Unlike so may other 'choice' games that have you picking between sainthood and baby eating, everything in Broadcast is a constantly morphing gray and it's totally up to you to go with your gut and see the consequences to your actions. While your own millage will vary when it comes to how the story hits you, I will say that there were a few points in this game that came about that left me stunned in a way that few other pieces of media have done, let alone a videogame.

In short, if you have the harddrive room, I can not possible recommend Not For Broadcast enough. The writing team crafted a twisting story that puts all other 'your choices matter' games to shame, the actors absolutely sell every line they have; dramatic or comedic, and the set-up of controlling it all as a faceless name sitting behind an editing desk is insanely fun. Even at full price, Not For Broadcast is worth your time and money.

If you're interested in a survival game about being trapped in an uninhabited part of the world, surrounded by native cannibals, with the ability to build up your own base from scratch in any way so you please; avoid The Forest at all costs and go buy Green Hell instead.

The Forest is a collection of half-baked ideas slapped together and brimming with frustrating controls and gameplay. If you decide to just use of the of the pre-built structures for saving and sleeping and spend the rest of the game just speedrunning through the main quest, then maybe you'll get a few hours of distraction from it. But if you try to engage with any of the game's base building aspects (aka: the main feature of the game), you're going to be left disappointing at best and furious at worst.

First of all, none of your build-able items have descriptions so if you want to know what a thing does or how to best use it, you'll be going to a wiki constantly. Furthermore, very few items actually snap together, forcing you to do your best to eyeball structures as you cobble them together. And as far as I can tell, when you try to place the blueprint of an item, there's no way to 'scroll' that blueprint closer or father from you. So you have to move your character first to line it up, which can cause a ton of problems if you're trying to build in a tight space or in a precarious position. And by the way, don't make the mistake I did and waste all the time and resources building a fireplace thinking you could use the FIREPLACE to make fires or cook food. Nope. It's a decoration only.

It's that kind of baffling gameplay choices that you'll find everywhere in The Forest. Food you put on fires has no cook time indicator, so you might not even notice you put down something small like bird or rabbit meat and leaving you to guess at how long it will take to finish. Also, you are unable to take cooked food and put it in your inventory. Once you put it in a fire, your only option is to eat it. But if you leave it in too long, it burns, lowering its value. You're only able to sleep at specific times, so if you're low on energy and have no food to keep it up, you're kinda just screwed. Also, I hope you enjoy being attacked by natives. A lot. Because no matter where you go to try and build on the map, you're going to be fending off cannibals several times a day, every single day to the point where you can barely even get through cutting down a tree. And this isn't late game mobs, either. No, you're dealing with this annoyance day one. Not that failing combat even matters. As long as you lose all your HP outside, all the cannibals do is drag you into the same cave and string you up, forcing you to cut yourself down and trek back home. You don't even lose any your things, or even much time, so there's no thrill to combat; its just this annoying thing you have to do all the time.

Overall, everything The Forest does can be found better in other survival games. If the concept of this game still seems interesting to you, I would HIGHLY suggest getting Green Hell instead as it has everything this game has to offer with none of its problems. As for The Forest? I bought this game for $8 and I still feel ripped off.