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Recent reviews by sara_bear

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14 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
105.9 hrs on record (96.0 hrs at review time)
Here's the thing.. if you enjoiy jigsaw puzzles you WILL like this game. That being said.

Points of good or bad elements
1. While the base game is free and there are free packs available.
You are going to have to frequently pony up for new puzzles.
Yes if you owened an earlier version of this developer's puzzle game you get those old puzzles for free added.
But honestly that makes this game a puzzle drug dealer.. just the way I feel about it.

2. All the earlier game version anoyances have been removed.

3. The challange puzzle is rediculously HARD. So many pieces as to be blindingly fiddly. Eye aching puzzle images.

So is it worth buying, yes. But I'd wait for bundles and sales for your pack buying expenses. You'll feel less ripped off that way.
Posted November 26, 2017.
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139 people found this review helpful
6 people found this review funny
1,083.1 hrs on record (117.1 hrs at review time)
First off let me say I had no expectations going into this game. Yes like so many I've played and loved all the earlier incarnations of Fallout. I know the mythos. I've stuggled and partied on with the improvement misses and wins. Yes I followed along with all the discussion of where's the next Fallout going to be. What effect a branch within Bethesda might adjust gameplay. Thing is no matter what has happened earlier within a game series, each incarnation while it may resemble prior output. Is a new game and it's best to treat it as such.

So a little background for those new to the game series. Read nearly every review and you'll be hit with this quote "War. War never changes." It's a knowing and yet by now amusing start to get players in the mood to play in this world. The world is not much far off from the one we live in. Think post WWII 50tys early 60tys fashion and style. Except in this world they took nuclear power and developed into their energy based technolgy drive. Cars ran on atomic power cores. Robots were household everyday helpers. It's kind of the world promiced to us with the "World of Tomarrow" tours they put out in the early 60tys. A robot does your housework. Everything easy and automated for everyday life. Now think for a moment what happens in that technical marvel utophic future if all goes to pot with a nasty little nuclear war with China...

That's the setting of all the Fallout games no matter which region they are set in. This is America after the Fallout starts to clear. Blast craters bleeding radiation. The water is poisoned. The food grows radioactive. The old foodstuffs you find aren't much better. Lazerguns being shot at you, though of course a cobbled steel pipe gun can be just as nasty. Wepons are super franksteined or near space age. Sometimes it's nice just to find a funtioning weaponsbench. Ammo is always running low. You've got Ghouls both the still inteligent, the starting to slip into brain degraded crazy town, and the full out zombie ferals. You've got mutated animals, mutated super mutants, near endless tribes of Raiders, technology scabbers, gun hording militant gangs, the Brotherhood of Steel, killer robots, deathclaws, and even syththetic soildiers all of them running around more than happy to take a shot at your noggin. Pick a side, you'll apreciate the help. You crawl over crumbled buildings. Crack open chambers sealed against the blasts. This wasteland is devastated and covered in salvagble junk. You're in Boston and the surrounding suberbs this time. And yes once again you are a Vault deweller. But there is a nice new twist to that old shtick.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

GRAPHICS: Top knotch standard you get nowadays from Bethesda. Everything is lit well, good texture, and nice color palate. While it's not really pretty it does look as if it could very well be real. As an aside: a few weeks of playing this and my dreams now often are these landscapes. You will get immersed in the visuals.

AUDIO: Guns, growls, wepon blasts, explosions.. they are all well done. The voice acting for everyone...well except you are excellent. Yes you read that right, your character whether male or female has the most uninteresting voice within the game. That and the dialog choices are my biggest gripe about this game, more later on the subject.

GAMEPLAY: You've got your standard wasd mouse point movement. Space for jump. Quick keys for inventory favorites, holding you breath durring scope use, throwing combustables, using opening, and taking items. Mostly standard contols, not much of a learning curve.

Yes you get a lovely pipboy. For those of you new to the experiance. Your pipboy is a radio, your maps, inventory access, quest display, stat lists, and bestower of the lovely VAST time. While is not the total freeze of past incarnations. This rendition is more of a mildly sluggish "bullet time" effect. The world still moves, just through molasses. So I advise you to pick you critals quickly cause you've only got a couple extra seconds. Also players of earlier rendition need to note that going into your pipboy and taking healing will no longer give intant healing when you leave the pipboy. It skips ingame swallowing or chewing but you're still going to have to give them a few mommets to work. Yes that includeds stim packs, though if you want to stim up in VATS time you'll buy a rew secs there for yourself. Just be aware.

Now to the issue of your protagonist's dialog. Unfortunately Bethesda chose to go the route they took with Mass Effect. Chose one of 4 choices with the arrow keys, hints will be given in color shifted selections. Those that require a little push yellow, more push orange, and real hard to convince red. Gone are the old well wriiten dialogs of the past. All you are given are short clippped and pretty low impact selections. They added insult here in my opinion with poor voice acting for either protagonist choice. I'm not happy with this. What you said and how you said it should matter in gameplay. I miss the old philosophical monologues, they were a nice counterpoint to the devastation of the surrounds.

Gone is the repair your rapidly degrading weapon and armor by combing them with another. You now have to uses a scrap bench you take possesion of for parts to upgrade your current wepon and armor pieces. They took away that almost ridiculous degrade factor. Your gun now lasts in the condition you found it in. While this is good. All those lovely wepons and armor bits carry a lot of weight, you'll be schlepping around. You will miss that ability to crunch your inventory down.

They have added town building to this new rendition. While a lot of players may stess how little impact it has on the plot. You will eventually after you've been at it a while, find some benifit to it. Traders are scarse. But setting up your town with a wepon bench, armor bench, scrapping worktable, chemical worktable, and a cookstand; will let you adjust your inventory nicly to a benifit. Not to mention storage, even a garden. And if you snag the right skills and make a few friends. You can put in a traing post, even set up a trading line. What do you need access to, there's probably a way to add it to your town. Set up enough spots and you can greatly reduce your need to always be repetativly going back to base to clear your inventory space. Oh and by the way you'll even have to build your bobblehead stand.That's right.. they brought bobbleheads back (THANK YOU). Those cute little stat and skill boosting little figurines are once again scattered around the common wealth.

And I can not stress how fun it is to get ahold of power armor so early in the game.. No this isn't the game imbalancer you might be thinking. Powerarmor is the only armor that can be shot to pieces. You'll be repairing it frequently if you always wear it. And well you can't really do that. Power armor takes powercores to operate. Those aren't commmon, not impossible to find. But the few you do find you burn through them quick when you wear a suit. So fun to have, hard to maintain.

OVERVIEW: I love this game. It's just as fun as all the earlier versions. Just as satifiying to blow a raiders head clean off. Just as nerve wracking trying to survive waves of ferals comming at you from all angles (those buggers climb in though holes in the walls now). Same "oh crap" feeling when you spot a deathclaw. The main plot is compleling yet you'll spend a great deal of time doing everything else before you even get to much of it. Case in point 100 hours so far myself, no where near where I might find someone who knows where to find my remaining family. Much less close to that family. There's a lot to do and you will love doing it, main plot be buggered..

I will mention that so far the dhls that cost extra, look as if they should have been included in the basic game. I haven't bought them yet, so I left them out of this review. Take that for what it is.
Posted April 17, 2016. Last edited April 19, 2016.
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64 people found this review helpful
148.3 hrs on record (33.2 hrs at review time)
Ok calling all RPG fans....

Grim Dawn was made just for you if you liked
Diablo 1 or 2, PreSkyrim Morrowind cycle, Throne of Darkness, Van Helsing, Titan's Quest, or any of their closest kin.

The opening plot starts with you being possesed, tortured for inforrmation, and being hung. The hanging exorcises the aetheric infestation (4th dimentional being has no desire to die stuck in your body). Your rope gets shot down and the game starts with you enhanced body being asked if you're willing to redeam yourself and help save a small parcel of humanity. No spoilers there folks, watch the trailer (nicely done).

The setting is as if someone took magical Renaissance era Europe added a touch of the old West, a dash of Tesla, and iced it all with some Soloman Kane.

Graphically
You've got the 3 person top down angle camera view.
And well folks... while the detail level isn't bad. This game is dark, grubby, and crumbling in looks. A while one occationally gets to walk through areas like this
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=652567803
more often you'll get dungeons like this and darker
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=652567901

I turned up my brightness. Cause everytime I was in a dark area at night. Even with light enhancing items, it was bloody hard to see. Which is realistic (and can be nice in a horror game) but I personally don't find it fun in a dungeon crawler.

Audio
30% of NPCs have voice acting. The rest speak only in text format. The hacks, shots, grunts, ect are worthy; but nothing special. The background music is your typical ignoreable mood enhancer stuff.

Gameplay
Now here's where it gets enjoyable. It's your standard mouse point directional walk, left click attack, right click ect.. with the customizeable 2 layered slots for potions, spells, special attacks, and the permanent spot for your personal rift portal (that your lovely modifed humanity grants you). A great class system and you'll get to choose 2 of them eventually. Then you get you devotional choices once you restore your first shrine (on a nice astrological skill map). Your inventory will expand with some quests. You have a storage chest and the ability to send items to your other characters. You get enhancement bits to add to your items. Once you help the blacksmith, the ability to craft.

And if all that seams familar to you (to any core rpg player it should) there's the truth of this game. The developers have taken nearly every well working gameplay aspect from all the games before and used them.This isn't a bad thing even if it's not truly inovative. It's nostalgic without being hokey.

There's also multiplayer available.........

Overall
I really think if you ever enjoyed a 3 person view RPG you should buy this. It's a premium experiance and a excellent dungeon grinder.
Posted March 25, 2016. Last edited April 10, 2016.
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36 people found this review helpful
6
31.4 hrs on record (30.1 hrs at review time)
Firstly if you don't like jigsaw puzzles, you can stop reading now.
Simply all members of the Pixel Puzzles series are designed for jigsaw lovers. They are a true delight to play and here's why..

Pixel Puzzles 2:Space

is a wonderful addition to the series. You get beautiful space art for the new set of puzzles. There's a new side game meshed in. And best of all for once there's no anoying factor to contend with this time around.

The pros
very pretty art to reasssemble
challenging cuts to the pieces as always
fun mimi game
enjoyable rocket launching (hint: always launch the main rocket before finishing your current puzzle)
there is no anoying fairy, koi, or zombie to deal with


Pixel Puzzles 2:Space is an excellent experiance and real fun to play. Relaxing and stess relieving with no puzzle box to store or pieces to pick up. Beautiful art with a fun theme. So for a most enjoyable jigsaw puzzle time, you should add this to your collection.

Rating 9.8/10
reason... there are never enough puzzles


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Posted February 29, 2016. Last edited March 5, 2016.
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29 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
1.0 hrs on record
Disclaimer: I was given a key for review purposes.

Wicked Witches is a cutish scare your enemies type game. Running around scaring people can be quite fun. It's not complicated, just gleeful destruction.


So here's the breakdown
Pros:
Enjoyable mild humor. Very chuckle worthy referenses sprinkled throughout.

Lots of growth potential. (see below)

So-sos:
The visuals. Think slightly melted wax Halloween figures. Everything kind of translucent over bright base white forms. Cute but a tad creepy. I like it and think it's pretty, but many won't.

Game play is quite fun.

There is no voice acting. Slates with dialog and thought bubbles only.

Cons:
Clunky controls. Flying is akward. Your aim is shetchy. Between the two a lot of fun depleation carries over as you continue to play.

Little current available content. Seriously... An easy level, 2 hard levels, and a insane levels are all this game comes with. You'll note my gameplay time. Well that's all it took to play all of the three first levels 3 times through each and try the final level twice (it's just not a fun level and I saw no reason to continue to try and beat it).

The 3 mapping fails that you run into durring play. One shouldn't usually be able to run through solid objects or fly and fall under the ground. It an anoying glitch that should have been fixed in the programing stage.

The set up of "I was acused of this. So I'll become this!" plot is just imature nonsense.

The music gets carinval annoying after a couple mins.

Only 3 spells given. Which is surprising since within your house there a two huge spell shelves yet all one ever fills is 3 tiny slots on one.


Basically overall I get the feeling the game was rushed to completion and lots of content either never made it or is waiting somewhere in the wings.

I'd love to see more levels added and more spells available. Or course I'd love to kick the familair (such an anoying cat) to the moon as well, one does have hopes...

Overall I'd give the game a 6.5 out of 10. I give it a higher number. If I knew for certain more game content was forthcomming or if it had a cheeper price. There's a lot potentical fun here. A few tweaks (a solid objects are solid!) patch- that's a hint devs). Or just some added content is all it would take to make this a true winner.



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Posted February 23, 2016. Last edited February 24, 2016.
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24 people found this review helpful
4.4 hrs on record
Copy given for Review

I'll tackle this first with a basic breakdown.

On the grahics
It's a pixelated game. Many gamers avoid these types due to them looking either dated or well there are just so many out there badly done. Bird story however, is well done. Some of that is the use of gray scale mostly which even in pixelated graphics adds wonderful shading. The game looks good simply.

On the audio
Firstly there is zero voice acting. No one ever talks. In fact the game uses thought bubbles which are either filled with (.....) or an image for the "need this" use.
Then you have the music. Considered soothing by quite a few out there. Personally I find it sad and depressing with no cathardic release. Think elevator music without a beat. It may be played well but you still don't really want to listen to too much of it.

On the gameplay
All you ever use is the arrow keys, the enter key, and the space bar. Walk this way, jump here, and pick that up.

And here is where I explain why I don't care for this game.
Sure it's visually apealing, but that just isn't enough for me. The protagonist is never apealing partlly because he's never really fleshed out. Bored in school and abandoned by parents is a flat and nearly facetless presentation. Walking around in a world where everyone else is a voiceless shadow requires a dynamic protagonist and they just don't give you one. The game tries really is supposed to be trying to get a deep emotional responce from the player. But you can't do that if there is just so little for a game to connect with.

Pros
Well made.
Kinda pretty to look at.
Has one accievement, if you manage to play through the whole game.
Has cards.

Cons
The music.
No one talks. Ever.
You never get to make any choices, it's all predetermined.
Linear one way plot.
Can a game be too short and yet entirely too long...

Honestly I understand a lot of players love this game. But I've played visialy graphic novels with vaster character depth than Bird Story delivers. There has been a lot of discussion on the age of players in regards to this game. Perhaps younger users get more out of this. I may be too worldly or mature for what it presents. Truthfully though I don't find aimed at younger players any excuse for such symplistic depth.

If you take this as a simple concept story which takes you along for a short ride, than in that Bird story does deliver.

If you like this game, I'm happy for you. Personally I found it sad and a little boring.



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Posted November 19, 2015. Last edited November 19, 2015.
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23 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
4.7 hrs on record
Game copy given for review

Once again another hidden object game out of Artifex Mundi's camp. This time you the queen, must go after your missing child.

Pro
A made with skill, hidden object game. Make no mistake, these developers know how to craft this type game.

The Midline
The art is ok.
Voice acting pleasent and unremarkable.
Puzzels are just more of the same. So just like every other hidden object game, that the staleness is smellable.
It's too very easy.

Cons
The plot is all over the place. Pick a genre already!
And the protagonist is completely uncompelling.

Look I love hidden object games. This by no means, not a bad game in any way. It's just not in the top 20 great hidden object games list. It's mearly ok. So if you've love hidden object games, it's worth buying. But you might want to wait for a coupon or a sale.



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Posted October 13, 2015. Last edited October 14, 2015.
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29 people found this review helpful
5.3 hrs on record
Once again a great hidden object game from Artifex Mundi.

This time you are Alice with a broken mind trying to figure out what happened last night. You had a car crash.. falling through glass.. what is with this red electric in your veins?!

Pros
A great plot. It's a really good story and well worth finishing it.
Pretty visuals. Nice art with cool coloring.
Good puzzels that are fun to play through. You won't to hit the skip button all the time.

Cons
It's easy, even if you play at it's hardest level.
It's short. Less than 3 hours per play though.

So if you enjoy hidden object games. This is a good one, if a little easy and short. It has been made well, it's fun, and it's nice to watch. Worth picking up.


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Posted October 5, 2015. Last edited October 6, 2015.
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24 people found this review helpful
5.2 hrs on record
Was given a key for review



Once again Artifex Mundi has handed us a really good hidden object game. They make these well folks, always.

This time you get to play in a 1700ty/1800ty ish fantasy playground. Fight Dark sorcery with herbal spells and your ability to find those lost bits.

Do you know the Dark Swan myth? Then you understand the plot. Ever want to play a part within a old myth? Here you get to. That's the joy of this series. There are a few twists and those are the fun surprises.

This isn't part 2 of the story of Grim Legends 1, it's a second grim legend. If they ever make a third one I can easily imagine it will be yet a another different legend.

Pros
Nice music.
Well use of voice acting.
It's pretty. Just plain outright pretty to look at and watch.
Middle level gameplay. Spend a few mins and you'll rarely have to use the hint button.

Cons (of a sort)
Lack of gameplay inovation. It's just like nearly every other well made hidden object game. This isn't a bad thing but it's almost as if they used a formula.
Not really a mystery, if you rember the myth.


This is a really well made hidden object game. Definatly worth buying and adding to your collection.


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Posted September 27, 2015. Last edited October 6, 2015.
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35 people found this review helpful
4 people found this review funny
3.7 hrs on record
Skip this review if you haven't played 1 or 2.

Your father once rid the land of the plague of monsters and established a group super scientists as the govening body in charge of the land of Borgovia.

You know how that turned out.. the scientists were of the mad kind. The baddest of the land took over. You have been cleaning up the new scientific scurge, unraveling subplots of maniac generals, and generally kicking the b*tt of any monster who roams the country side. Good fun that...

You have been betrayed by an ally. The city is rulled by gangs. And your betrayer has a crazy cult running around causeing trouble for every one. And it's up to you to save everyone once again.

This is a wonderfully darkly humorus mix of classic horror monster and steampunk world they give you to play in. Well crafted, sounded, and drawn. Very enjoyable, easy to play fun to master rpg.

Game specifics
Good top down (nice camera angle) 3 person graphics. Yes you player image changes with equipment choices. Hat/helmet choice is as always important.
Nice background music (easily mutable with little loss) soothing but still mildly inspiring.
Comfotable click to slash or shoot, use wasd to move controls. Any seasoned rpg player will find the controls downright instintive within a few minutes.
They thoughtfully used the same voice acting as the first two games. And those were solid choices from the start.

Pros:
New character classes available. Which means new talents, skills, and auras to master. I like the new ones, though I do wish the old ones were available too.
You now get to send agents out on city underground movement missons. It's nice to feel you alone aren't trying to save the city.
You also get a treasure hunting Chimera. Think of it like a goodie sniffing ink jumping war dog. Pick a far off ink location and enjoy the magic items he returns with.
Yes the dark sardonic humor is intact, it's enjoyable listing to the npcs.

Cons:
You could carry a character over from Van Helsing 1 to game 2. Currently that isn't possible in the third game. You have to start over with a totaly new charcter simply because you can not play as ANY of the old clasees. New classes, so you start with a new charcter. I like the new classes, but this just sucks.
My greatest beef however is they still do NOT have the glory points system working. Honestly I never gotten it to work in any of the earlier games. But you think by now, it would have been fixed.. wouldn't you.

Like trap makers, gadget mechanics, spell slingers, sword swingers, and gun shooters.. you'll love this game. Wanna slay monsters...? Buy this!

There is a ultimate edition comming out soon which if you have all 3 Van Helsing games (supposed to be free btw if you have all 3) which will fix all the concectivinty problems present in this game. It's been promised that you will be able to play a character and carry it over through out.

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Posted September 10, 2015. Last edited September 15, 2015.
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