Recent reviews by Watson

I was a player of the original version back in the day, I actually followed the game's development all the way since alpha (remember old Roland with the blunderbuss before he was deleted?).

I'm so excited that this game is back. It's a breath of fresh air in the current gaming landscape of heavily-monetized, dark-patterned, ADHD-pandering, high DPS low TTK, individualism-rewarding, e-sports garbage trend chasing battle pass simulators of today.
It's a game that rewards teamwork, mechanical skill and resource management in a way no other game has ever been able to recreate.
I don't mind that they didn't update the game much from the time it was shut down. It was fantastic back then, and it's fantastic now. A game that was revived out of love for the playerbase, not to nickel-and-dime us with invasive MTX.

However, it's not without its issues. It's riddled with strange, but minor bugs that cheapen the experience. Missing text, settings that don't work, buggy tutorials, etc. But the essence of the experience is still there and left untouched. If you're willing to give this game a chance, it will reward you.

NOTE: I received the steam key for this game by having purchased the alpha back in 2012.

I've spent most of my play time in this new version trying to think of a valid reason as to why Wollay would take every good thing about the Alpha and throw it in the trash when building this game's final version. I could not come up with anything,so my only conclusion is that Wollay is either a mad genius with an intellect far superior to the rest of the planet and we're the ones too dumb to see the genius of his game's design, or he's been emotionally damaged by the oppressive shadow of Reddit comments to the point of self-sabotage.

I was one of the people who never lost faith in Wollay, even as the other side of the fanbase called him a hack, a scammer, etc. so of course I was happy when the release was announced. I had been keeping a close eye on the trickle of information that had been loosely scattered by Wollay for the past 6 years since release, and I was excited for what I was seeing, as it seemed like it was all building upon the foundation of the Alpha, which I put several hundred hours into.

Of course then the beta came out, and then I was immediately disappointed.
Not only were some of the biggest issues from the Alpha not fixed, some were exacerbated and some features were even removed, making this final release an inferior product than the original in-progress Alpha build.

Here's a list of things that were removed from the Alpha:
- progression (levels, power etc.) was all removed. All your power is dependent on your current equipment, in your current region. Monsters grant no experience, making combat completely pointless except against bosses. Levels are tied to "artifacts" which are the end goal of each region, and only serve to increase ONE of your stats, chosen at random, by about 0.2 or 0.3 per artifact. I'm not joking. It would take several hundred artifacts on a single stat to even see a noticeable difference, and the random stat selection includes things like swimming speed or pet riding speed which aren't always useful (I once got a swimming speed artifact in a desert biome)

- the skill tree was removed. You start with all your abilities unlocked, and hang gliding, sailing and pet riding are tied to region-specific items. Namely the Hang Glider, the Boat and the Reigns, which need to be re-acquired every time you enter a new region. This is especially frustrating in ocean regions, since swimming is very slow and you're stuck with it for a while.

- You can no longer keep your equipment when you switch regions, including your boat and hang-glider, meaning you essentially start from 0 when you leave the region you're on. Your equipment remains in your inventory, but outside of its original region its stats revert to zero, making it useless. Why Wollay thought it was a good idea for an exploration driven game to actively PUNISH the player for exploring is something that will baffle scholars for centuries to come.

- You can no longer generate several worlds with different seeds. Every player is playing on the same map, No Man's Sky style. The map is still infinite and randomly generated, but nothing you find feels special since everyone else has a chance (no matter how infinitely small) of having seen it too. By the way, all of the map is revealed, so if you want you can just open the map, zoom in, and scroll infinitely to see what's around the entire, infinite world. There is no mystery and your curiosity is no longer tickled by the blue layer that once hid the unexplored parts of the map, thus making exploration feel unrewarding.

- Spirit cubes are gone. Sure in the Alpha they were mostly completely useless, but it was a good idea and a mechanic that was BEGGING to be expanded upon. I don't even remember if you can add wooden / steel cubes to your weapons AT ALL in this version, because since players can't get too attached to their weapons (as they become useless once you switch regions) there's no point in wasting cubes on them, so I never bothered checking if that's still a thing.

- I should also mention Wollay had published a roadmap including dedicated servers and other features, which he has promptly purged from the internet, along with his presence, after this disastrous release.

Also, the new hang glider sucks and is not fun to use.

So here's your average gameplay experience in Cube World 1.0:

You create your character and realize that you are unable to hurt even the lowest level enemies. The weapons you spawn with deal damage in the decimals and enemies kill you in 2-3 hits. You end up kiting them to friendly NPCs and letting them kill the enemies, hoping that they drop any loot that can hopefully get you started. You open the map and scour the region looking for something that you hope is a city (cities aren't signaled on the map, though you can see them on the map, but they can be easily confused for certain dungeons and vice-versa). After you go to the city and notice you can't afford any of the better equipment, you go back to kiting enemies into friendly NPCs hoping one of them drops equipment that just so happens to be better than yours and for your class, or gold. Once you feel strong enough, you wander aimlessly through the world talking to NPCs so they can mark the important points on your map. You go to the one point of the map that has the Harp (the only item that really matters) and then wander aimlessly some more looking for the towers that the Harp is used on that can either include the best equipment in the region or useless bags of useless gold since the golden 5* equipment is now better than anything the stores sell.
You clear every dungeon, getting the hang glider, reins, climbing claws, boat, etc. Eventually you find a super epic artifact that gives you a whole new level (that doesn't mean anything) and about 0.3% faster swimming speed. But hey, you have cool gear so you're ready to take on the entire world! You pat yourself on the back and move on to the following region only to realize everything you found is completely useless when you cross the border and you're essentially naked again. Going back to the region you were in is useless since you've cleared everything, so there's nothing else to do without essentially starting over. Game Over.


All in all, Cube World went from an RPG where progression and exploration went hand in hand, to a game where there is no progression and exploring punishes the player. The game went from having potentially infinite playtime to being worth about 4 to 6 hours.
All I have to say is, I'm glad I didn't have to pay for this game again. Was the Alpha a complete, polished experience? Far from it, but I got my money's worth of fun from it, where there is an actual game to play. This release is a fraction of the Alpha in both content and enjoyability which is baffling and completely backwards.

I'm really sorry Wollay, but you dropped the ball. I'm afraid it was all for naught.

TEKKEN 7, the latest installment in the Tekken series, and the first one to be released on PC, is a breath of fresh air for the competitive crowd, yet a mixed bag for casual fighting game fans.

TEKKEN 7 is the best looking entry in the franchise so far, taking full advantage of the power of modern hardware and the Unreal Engine 4 to deliver great quality character models, stages, visual effects and animations, in true Tekken style and polish.
Sadly, the effort placed in the graphical department wasn't mirrored in the musical department. While sound effects sound as punchy and full of energy as they should, the soundtrack is a cluster of dub/grimestep tracks with little variety and memorability, with a few exceptions, such as the serene piano tunes of Infinite Azure Round 1 and the Pokémon-style, epic-sounding high octane battle music of Mishima Building Round 2 (although ironically, this track is Dubstep pumped up to 11, it's actually very energetic and fits very nicely). Honorable mention goes to Duomo di Sirio (both rounds), and Dishonorable Mention goes to Geometric Plane (both the stage and the music) which sadly will be the song you'll hear the most if you're an online player.

The character roster is also relatively lackluster. Series staples such as Lei Wulong, Mokujin, Bruce and Marduk have been left out, and taking their place are new characters such as Claudio or Semi-new characters such as Josie, that either don't fit Tekken's real world martial arts roots (looking at you, Lucky Chloe), or are just completely bland, uninteristing and unimportant characters (looking at you, Katarina). This is, sadly, a continuation of the "anime-zation" of tekken that started in Tekken 6 with the addition of characters with "fake" or composite martial arts styles, like Alisa and Lars, and shows a worrying trend for those of us who enjoyed the "realistic" martial arts aspect of games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. A good improvement, however, is the addition of the crossover characters, Akuma from Street Fighter, Geese Howard from Fatal Fury and Noctis Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV (these last 2 characters being DLC), These characters aim to shake up the Tekken formula and fighting system with their unorthodox combat styles, and also to broaden the appeal of Tekken by capturing the interest of fans of other games.

The Tekken gameplay as at its highest level of polish in this entry, with rebalanced moves, removed and added moves for many characters, and the addition of new mechanics such as Power Crush moves and the revamped rage system. While Rage Arts are a fun, flashy addition to Tekken, they are very controversial as they are considered by casual players to be very cheap and safe moves to use. Personally, I find them to be very risky and easily punishable by competent players. Most Rage Art animations are also very bland, and usually following the same structure of Launcher -> Air pummeling -> Knockdown or other similar 3 part structures, and also nearly always re-using animations from already existing moves for the character. A little more variety would be very appreciated (this doesn't apply to the DLC characters and Akuma, who have very distinct Rage Arts and supers).
Rage Drives are also a very welcome addition, and reinforce the "comeback mechanic" aspect of the Rage system, and act as "EX Moves" of sorts for the characters.

Singleplayer content, sadly, is very lackluster and repetitive. The concept of previous Tekken games' Arcade Mode is extinct, instead being replaced by a full-on Story Mode and little "story tidbits" no longer than 1 or 2 fights for the characters who didn't participate in the story. These do contribute to Tekken's worldbuilding, however they are very short (the story can be finished in 3-4 hours) and feel "tacked-on" as a way to evade the same judgment Street Fighter V received on its release. The plot of the game is also very messy and confusing, spends a lot of time retconning old events, following threads that lead nowhere, shoehorning in characters, and running in circles, only to throw massive, series-defining, plot elements near the end that just feel clumsy.
Treasure Battle is alright, a fun way to challenge yourself, kill some time and farm for customization items, though it is rather repetitive and the AI can be very dumb.
I haven't tried Tekken Bowl, personally, and I have no interest in doing so. Tekken Ball would have been a more appropriate and fun gamemode to include as DLC.
Customization is fun, but severely toned down from Tag 2. Hair options especially, have been neutered and reduced in variety.

The multiplayer, although littered with ragequitters and occasional matchmaking and server issues, has relatively disappointing netcode (nowhere close to the quality of GGPO) and suffers on connections as high as 3 bars. On 5 bars, however, actions and inputs feel seamless. Just be careful who you fight in Ranked.

The focus on competitive, online play and the eSports-centered mentality is evident in Tekken 7, however the game adheres to old-fashioned, arcade-era values by not including some sort of tutorial mode for new players to learn the very distinctive combat system of Tekken. This wasn't an issue for me, as I had experience with the games, and Youtube tutorials are plentiful, but with other eastern developers such as ArcSystem including incredibly extensive and detailed tutorials for their game's systems, there is no excuse.

Overall, I absolutely recommend Tekken 7 for fans of fighting games and the series, as it is the best looking, best feeling and best polished game of the series. However, people with no interest in playing PvP (online or with friends) and who play these games for the story and singleplayer modes, will be met with content that doesn't even reach the knees of games like Injustice.

WARNING: Wall of text, TL:DR at the end



In theory, this game would be fantastic: A semi-open-world, Dark-Souls-esque fighting game with seamless transition between PvP and PvE, customizable movesets, and tons of move variety. However, it falls short of its promises. Here's why:

Although the game's advertising mostly pushes it's PvP content, you're going to be stuck doing PvE for a long time, to farm levels, gear and moves, and to beat the story. However, the PvE content is very lackluster, unpolished and simply not fun. It clearly took a backseat in development so the devs could focus on the PvP content (which I'll get to), however you're simply required to engage in it too much if you want to stand a chance online.
The world map is messy and doesn't lend itself to exploration too much. Environments are a labyrinthine mess of visual noise with very few rewards for exploration, only the occasional item box here and there, some paths that look like they lead somewhere when they don't and paths that look like they lead nowhere but they're fundamental for progression. The world is optimally traversed with the sole intent of killing the required bosses in the shortest path possible, that however is made impossible since the world is so hard to navigate and there's no map screen. You can only check your position in Altars which makes it difficult to understand what direction you're moving in.
This is coupled with a mostly unenjoyable PvE experience. Difficulty comes not from clever AI, but from weird choices in the AI's behavior and placement. computer controlled fighters will mostly fight by ganging up on you in groups of 3-4, an odd design choice considering how the combat system is tailored for 1v1 fighting. As a matter of fact, most enemies that you can 1v1 are complete pushovers since they're allergic to blocking and have very one-note move rotations.
Bosses are, sadly, not much more difficult. Once again, their difficulty comes not from good AI design or good use of the combat system, but from pumping up their damage, stamina and defense so that they have a massive advantage in relation to you. Other than that, they mostly use the same AI as the common enemies, with some random new move thrown in here and there so that you have a reason to come back and grind. Their variety is also sorely lacking: although there are plenty of bosses which use all four available combat style among themselves, battling against them still feels very one-note as the AI doesn't vary its offense, nor does it make any interesting moves, which makes most of the bosses completely forgettable. They simple have no personality, which is weird in a game about expressing yourself through your fighting style. What happened to "Make your move"?
The exceptions are a couple boss fights: one of them which will require you to pay attention to two boss fighters at once, and another which will have you fight a boss that can summon "minions" mid-battle, which while memorable fights, are so for all the wrong reasons, and very poorly designed as their arenas are very cramped, their AI is, as said before, very lackluster, and it's just more fake difficulty by having enemies gang up on you in a 1v1-designed combat style. The other boss battle is close to the end of the singleplayer campaign, in which you will fight against a boss who knows the defensive skills from all combat styles, and also uses a weapon to boot. This boss fight is the most enjoyable of the bunch because it actually employs variety, and feels like a good way to show you what every fighting style can do, and how powerful their skills are when put together. It also feels like a good final test of what you've learned while playing.
Doesn't change the fact that you can cheese the majority of bosses by kiting them while running around the arena, healing up and taking the occasional potshot at them.
Now about the PvP, and more specifically, the shortcomings of the combat system.
My experience with PvP is still rather limited, however from a few fights I've had I can see some glaring faults in the way the combat system is designed. While the concept of using different moves and linking into different stances is very creative and an excellent idea, the combat itself seems to have had all its strategic depth removed in order to please people who don't enjoy traditional fighting games.
First off, there is absolutely no reason to use any slow moves. Ever. They're reactable, dodgeable, parryable, and simply not worth it at all. Whatever damage they may do is offset by the fact that they're impossible to land against an opponent with the tiniest amount of reflexes. In traditional fighting games, the slower moves are used to extend or finish combos for some good damage, as they're fairly hard to land "raw", they need some decent frame advantage behind them so they can land. However, Absolver doesn't have combos, which makes the entire metagame revolve around poking your enemy with quick jabs until they happen to not block so they can take a bit of damage. Rinse, occasionally run away to use the healing spell, and repeat. Maybe you can throw in some stance transitions to screw over Parry users or to chip away at your opponents' block stamina, but that's really all they're good for.
So essentially, the majority of the good ideas implemented in the combat system, like stances and move customization, are thrown away because the combat simply isn't designed to accomodate them. Why would I build long strings of attacks when hitstun is so low that there are no combos? even if you time your hits perfectly and do the flashing character move cancels, your opponent can still block mid-way and there's no fast move such as a throw (guard breaking moves are mostly very slow and very heavily telegraphed) to quickly mix up your offense and keep your opponent on their toes. This, to me, is a huge design flaw and thrown away potential in an otherwise very creative idea for a game.
Coupled with a few issues such as shoddy connections and 3-player only zones, this combat system is simply poorly designed for PvP at a fundamental level, which makes this a fun, yet mediocre PvP game, and a tedious, one-note PvE game.

ideas to fix combat:
- implement actual combos. This will encourage players to experiment with the huge move variety. Scrubs will cry and complain at taking damage without being able to do anything, but such is the way of the scrub. Maybe make them interruptible by the shockwave or earthquake spells.
- implement directional blocking. Maybe you'd have to match or mirror your opponent's stance in order to successfully block their attack? This would make the Parry move a bit redundant, but would make blocking a bit less powerful in the hands of a less skilled player yet more rewarding in the hands of a high skill player, and make matches an intricate ballet between fighters, instead of Left Trigger simulator. Alternatively, remove blocking altogether to make players have to rely on their style-dependant defensive move, which is a bit more complicated to use.

TL:DR - PvE content gets stale, PvP content is exploitable and there's no reason to use deep strategy.
Overall, I would not reccomend at this state. Wait for content and balance updates that will hopefully come and fulfill the squandered, dormant potential of this game.

Gigantic is an incredible blend of the TPS and MOBA genres, and will feel both comfortably familiar and intriguingly fresh for fans of either.

Pros:
- Beautiful, polished artstyle reminiscent of Zelda: Wind Waker or Okami, with memorable characters and environments.
- Fantastic roster of varied and fun heroes.
- Engaging, competitive gameplay that is well balanced and rewards player skill and team coordination.
- Mostly well-behaved community, free of toxicity.
- Characters and skins are easy to get for free.
- Frequent updates bringing new skins & characters.

Cons:
- Slightly demanding system requirements (6 GB usable RAM) for what it is.
- Creature and Power mechanics might overwhelm new players at first.
- Game may become somewhat repetitive due to lack of map, creature and guardian variety.
- Poor Steam integration because of the ARC launcher.
- Mediocre matchmaking.

Overall, an absolutely fantastic game for people coming from SMITE, Overwatch, TF2, Awesomenauts, etc. and are looking for a breath of fresh air that doesn't feel very foreign.

The closest I'll ever get to seeing boobs.
10 / 10

Nobody should be allowed to play LoL or DotA without buying this as well. this is porbably the only MOBA I'll ever play, ever.