Recent reviews by 4onen

Stunning beat-based action with an adorkable cartoon cast and flawless transitions between in-engine and fully animated artist-drawn cutscenes, all set in an original sci-fi setting bursting with comedic life. I cannot recommend this experience highly enough -- one of the best games in years.

This is a gripping adventure of intrigue, anguish, and the complexities of interpersonal relations when faced with end-of-the-world scenarios. Unlike many visual novels, interactive segments (scene-setting art setpieces, card games, trivia games, music appreciation, a treasure hunt, and an investigation) interrupt the nigh-endless flow of dialog to keep the game engaging.

Better yet, on replays (of which you will have many to see all this game has to offer) a well-tuned skipping system and hold-to-fast-forward key that only fast-forwards unseen dialog make replays truly novel discoveries, rather than a painful slog through seen content.

In the end, this was an engaging, dynamic experience full of heart and vigor and I'm really glad I took the time to play it.

An extremely innovative sandbox world-destruction game with just the right blend of physical unrealism (carrying 30 pipe bombs, a rocket launcher, and a shotgun with a hundred shells?) and extensive physics simulation (cutting out a section of roof to use as a ramp, driving trucks through walls to make slightly faster paths...)

Also has a fun storyline built on the idea of digging a figurative hole deeper and deeper. Fun times!

Intense atmosphere, thrilling combat, and a multi-layered environmentally-driven story make Boneworks one of the most inventive games I've played since Half Life. The physical interactions between objects in the gameworld were exceptional at launch, and have become even better with updates. Climbing, too, is even more enjoyable now than it was to begin with.

But, this game does not pull punches with the VR intensity. You need your VR legs under you -- specifically the ability to deal with sliding locomotion -- to handle this game. Make sure you've tried sliding locomotion in other games and you're okay with it, as it's the only option you're getting.

That said, the movement is perfectly balanced in my opinion to blend freedom with a manageable set of largely naturalistic controls. If you need to climb a wall, and you can grip it, you just do it.

A fun expansion on the blow-em-up sandbox series Just Cause. Some tools from the last game have been tweaked slightly in ways that make things a little less fun (say, the Wingsuit is less floaty now) but others have been changed to significantly increase it. (For example, now grappling a ledge will often see Rico slide onto the top of the object, instead of always hitting the side then climbing up as in JC3.)

It has a story. That story isn't award-winning writing, but it gets motivation and reason into the game. The backbone of that story, however, all these new weather effects? That's rockin'. Often they're subtle, like wind machines and canyon airflow. Other times, they're massive benefits to the experience, like actually feeling the stress and confinement of fighting one's way through a standstorm.

tl;dr: I think it's fun.

Launch game's main menu to a cacophany of whining computer fans and a confusingly laid-out menu. (Mind, this is a computer that runs PS2 at high graphics settings without even a buzz.) Reduce all the graphics settings to medium, which seems to be as low as they go. Fans drop to 3/4ths max speed.

Check Resource Monitor. 113 threads on my 6-core, 12-hyperthread machine. Uh oh, Devs don't know how parallelism is supposed to work.

Enter a game of "squads," which is supposed to pitch 300 players against each other in teams of 12. Load into bizzairely laid-out lobby. Everyone's crowding around me and asking if I have a mic. (I do, and that works at least.) Enter gameworld.

I'm now informed I'm the squad leader. Having no clue what I'm doing, I set a waypoint someplace and start awkwardly herding people that way. We get in some fights, some veterans revive us, not too bad. I'm almost enjoying the game, and I'm sure I'd have a little more fun in a non *cough* "leadership" position.

Anyway, second death, I pop open settings to see if I could reduce any options any further. FPS are fine, but I don't like pushing my PC. The revive timer hits zero while I'm in the settings menu. Game freezes. Squad still talking in the background, but I have no inputs. I get my taskbar back with the windows key, but cant' close PS:A or get task manager to render on top of it. Nor Resource Monitor. Nor... anything. I lock and unlock the computer, but I'm still trapped in a frozen PS:A settings screen. I sleep and resume the computer. Squad are still there and the computer is still frozen. I reboot the damn thing, and finally the whirring fans and frozen PS:A window go away.

tl;dr: PlanetSide: Arena is a mess with no tutorial and no curve to its difficulty, and that's when it's functioning correctly. Functioning incorrectly, it stole input control from my computer and refused to close.

I strongly recommend to leave this on the shelf until someone can teach Daybreak how to write a core-count-aware thread-pool and tasks for said pool that don't deadlock.

Interesting experience! Physics are very difficult to pick up to begin with, but leave a large amount of headroom for speedrunning skill.

A neat game for introducing yourself to logic. Really helps to have a paper and pencil on hand, to draw things out and try things in your head.

This game is gorgeous. The level design, platforming, and movement mechanics all represent the ideal for such exploration games. (Although, running could have a little more oomph to it. I often felt like there was a minimum size to hills that trigger momentum, and any less didn't do anything.) The story, too, was engaging and had me absolutely entranced.

There's more to it than the story requires you explore. The levels are each so expansive, it can be confusing when you actually do run into a level border or other impassable area. Jumping puzzles are intricately woven into the level design and there are some segments that are just tuned for absolute speed and fun without worry about the jumps.

The story twists are wrenching.

Alright, here's a list of what the game does have:
-Building ship interiors to your own exact specifications
-A unique power management mechanic that takes seconds to set up, but allows for hours of optimization
-Walking around inside your ship
-Flying around outside your ship, in an EVA suit
-Guns
-Enemies, both ships and NPC characters
-An economy
-Repair drones
-A shipmate. Singular.
And what it doesn't have:
-A small learning curve.

I've been playing this game for ages, even before it came out on Steam when it was only available on the dev's website. The amount of progress since that tech demo has been astoudning, and at this point it is already a fully fledged game with ~4 hours of unique gameplay. And that's at 20% of the intended content volume.

I'll level though, it's probably not worth $30 in today's games industry. But the moment there's a sale below that, go for it. It'll take some putzing around the internet to figure out how it works, but when you're warping through space and decide to shoot at a ship just a little bigger than yours, you'll find out just how fun this game can get.