Recent reviews by Zack

11/10, space wizard Artificer goes 2D. Jump, dodge, fight, die, rebirth, shoot some enemies and die again. You will face adversity and struggle the likes of which you haven't seen since you played Risk of Rain 2:2 much skywater. Just wish my other favorite character was here, space warlock Void Fiend, but I can always hope for a DLC release

As a general overview, Nova Drift is an amazing game, and leaves me hunting for any game that has a game loop as satisfying as this. It hits all the spots a standard rogue-like hits, but the games are fast and satisfying. There are a few core principles at work, so I'll try to break them down.

Ships, shields, and weapons
the core of your build is your ship, your shield, and your weapon. You have many options for each of these, and they all behave differently. You can combine a set that focuses your build into a single area, or combine some disparate parts to make more of a balanced build. The point is that you can go a hundred different directions with this.

Ships run from glass cannons to mobile warships, with several oddball gimmick ships inbetween. These can make a run a high-skill fight for your life, as you frantically dodge around and try to survive, or you can just bide your time and take one shot to handle a problem.

Weapons cover a broad range of what I consider classic for these types of games. Single shot snipers, homing missiles, cluster bombs. You can also wave around a giant blowtorch, wield the power of a blackhole, or throw boomerangs. It gets interesting.

Last of the core elements is your shield. There are auras that hurt enemies (and you), reflective shields, or shields that slow the very fabric of time. Choose wisely, as you won't survive long without proper use of your shields powers.

This all sounds pretty awesome, right? Well, theres more! MODS! If the equipment is the delicious bread of your sandwich, here are the toppings. The mods run everywhere, splitting shots and homing shots. Fire damage, bigger explosions, spawning drones and mines, allies and turrets. Your mods can turn an ok set of equipment into an unbreakable fortress of pain for your enemies. You could also pick the wrong mods and kill your run because you didn't realize just how much you were relying on your shield to keep you from dying.

The point is, the game rewards trying new things, branching out, finding the most interesting builds to play, or setting yourself goals like making your grenade strong enough to oneshot a boss. The game is so simple, yet so perfectly balanced that I don't believe there are any trap options, just ones I suck too bad to figure out how to use properly.

It is difficult to think of any game that more soundly took over my gaming life than Deep Rock Galactic. The gameplay feels amazing, the community is wonderful and helpful to new players, and the devs are quite literally the best I've ever seen on any game. They are regularly in contact with the community on the DRG reddit. That's right, the devs are so awesome that they don't need to fear stepping onto reddit because all they'll hear there is dwarves singing their praises.

So deceptively simple, so deeply intriguing. This is just as good as all the classic RPGs, without all that distracting art and annoying story stuff. Go in, kill some enemies (My headcannon says all of the enemies you fight are different versions on slime produced by an alchemy lab), get gold, spend it to kill more things. 10/10 gold pieces, would hard focus constructors again.

A fun MMO RPG, around for years and still evolving. Just went through some major updates to adjust how the classes work, which has roped me back in to strike again.

Wonderful game with a great community. Wish it had more people, it will always hold a special place for me.