Recent reviews by Magnus Greel

I've played through this game more than twice. It's the great granddaddy of four-person co-op games, and still one of the best. You should grab a few friends, or even a few strangers, and play through it at least once. Laughs to be had, waves of zombies to be slaughtered, set-pieces to be admired.

So this is my War and Peace length ongoing review of Mist Survival.

After realising I wasn't playing the version of the game everyone else was playing, I signed up to the Beta access via the properties of the game, and finally started playing 0.5.0.3!

Basically, the game's been hugely revamped and reworked--even the terrain and the map were new, and my old save games were no longer compatible (not that I'm complaining). And yes, before anyone says anything--the game is still being updated, put the pitchforks away. I do hope the Dev keeps at it--this truly has the feel of quite a remarkable survival game!

The new terrain is a little less foreboding during the day, but manages to keep that environment of solitude and danger while making good use of the Unreal Engine's visuals. Lots of cliffs, rolling hills, beautiful valleys and quaint little towns full of zombies and bandits that are out to bloody murder you.

The vehicles have been reasonably built into the game and it's quite a nice feeling when you finally get the first vehicle up and functional--definitely a game changer. The build tree is a lot more involved than version 0.4.x, and I've been having fun finding out all of the options. The bases are more varied as well now; here's a hint: don't just take root in the first base you find. Use the first couple of days to have a look around your nearby area and don't hesitate to stray into the hills.

The combat is still around the same, bandits are pretty hard to defeat. Raiding a bandit camp is still a nerve-wrecking experience! Even taking on the monsters is a pretty heavy task, but usually worth it.

The bugs are still there, and of course every update will bring more--that's the way an Alpha works. The Dev has released one or two interim patches for bug fixing which is neat. I hope when the game is close to coming up, the Dev dedicates a month or two for an actual 'Beta' just for bug fixing before bringing it out of Early Access.

And--there's a MAP! It's an interesting feature--you can pick up pencils, and mark events and your own location on the map--but when you move, the map loses the markings. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it brings an interesting challenge into it.

So--is version 0.5.x worth playing? Absolutely. It's a fairly cheap game and well worth it for the cost--and it's hard to get me this enthusiastic about a game, which says something! Yes, it's buggy, but it's an Alpha build. I don't normally go for EA releases, but I have no regrets about this one :)

Highly recommended!

This is a good game, and I really like that it's still being updated! I'm a pretty casual gamer, so keep that in mind for this review.

I do recommend this game, but--I only played 5 hours of it, and that was a while back. I've been trying to figure out why... I enjoyed it while I was playing it, but just didn't feel drawn to it--but out of a lot of games that I stopped playing, this one lingered in my head.

I think part of the reason I didn't feel drawn back to it is because of the 'skeletons, dragons and beasts' formula, it feels like I've played it before. But the survival elements do add something to it; I was actually thinking that I may enjoy it if it was purely 'man against wild'--sans skeletons and dragons, but against the harsh climate and that beautiful desolation. I have to say, I love the depiction of a freezing ocean in this game! The scenery is just so lovely and harsh.

The crafting and survival elements are on point, I love all that stuff. And one of my favourite things in games is exploring ruins and abandoned places, and this serves up ruins of all sorts.

I'm gonna try jumping back to it and see what the latest updates have changed.

Note to the developers though: It's a good game. I can see the potential. I really want to see how it ends up in full release. But you won't be able to please everyone. Don't say stuff like "you're only 2 hours in and you're only up to X"; I can understand why you'd say that stuff, but it puts people off. Acknowledge and invite to provide constructive critique, then reply generally (e.g. in an update, "we heard your suggestions, and this is why we can/can't take them on board" sort of way) and not specifically and directly, if that makes sense?

There is no other game quite like 7 Days to Die. There are other games that do better at certain aspects of survival games, and there are games that do a lot worse, but there is just no other game quite like it.

First, I'm a relatively new player--as of writing I have around 56 hours of gameplay. The problem is, this game is definitely better played with a friend on cooperative, otherwise it has a definite lonely feeling - probably intentional - but it can also be very repetitive in the tasks you have to undertake. I quite like those tasks, but only if I can banter with a friend, and discuss the game while playing it. That said, there is a LOT to do in this game.

Almost the entire world is destructible and can be scavenged for materials. The maps can be enormous, and the variety of buildings are impressive. I love looting and exploring post-apocalyptic places (the Fallout series is my favourite), and finding the remains of civilisation and the lives of the long-dead. Or in this case, the long-undead. One of the annoying things about Fallout 3 onwards is the number of buildings that are just closed off from exploring; in 7 Days, not only can you break into those buildings and explore them, but you can also build into them and make them your own.

A friend and I were going through houses looking for interesting loot and we fought off a bunch of zombies in a basement--and uncovered a hatch that led to a freakin' underground military bunker! It's that kind of game. Another friend and I claimed a house in a small town and made it our base, with an enormous wall around it and spike traps everywhere. We lasted for a few horde nights, until it was almost complete destroyed--but in the end we abandoned it because we wanted to see the cities and have more experiences.

It's not all gravy though. For new players, I highly recommend ramping the experience multiplier up to 300%, and switching up the other difficulty settings--trust me, the game is hard enough as it is. And janky, too. It's been in Early Access since 2013, and although the developers are still updating the game and changing the mechanics, there's considerable jank. Combat is pretty woeful until you get firearms, and the hitboxes/animations are dumbfounding at times. A zombie could be advancing towards you, and you'd get hit--but their arms wouldn't have moved. And so on.

But there is a charm to 7 Days that's undeniable. The graphics are a strange mix of beautiful and Minecraft-level at times. I run a last-gen video card, and I have the settings up high--the environments and lighting are really something to look at and it really conveys that sense of post-apocalypse brutality. But that said, up close it can be a bit less impressive... but weirdly enough, it works. It really does.

The pace of the gameplay is also nice--playing with a friend, you're given time to explore and enjoy the complex crafting system. It tends to be your choice whether to take on the zombies or just concentrate on building, although the 7th day always looms so preparations must be made. Hint: get up high.

There is a lot to like about this game, and a lot to be annoyed by. Do I recommend it? Absolutely, 9/10. But be prepared to make your own adventures.

Well. You'd think after 234 hours, I'd have recommended Fallout: New Vegas by now.

So here it is. I recommend Fallout: New Vegas.

If you haven't heard of it, it is one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and welcome to our universe, by the way. Clearly you haven't been here long to not have heard of New Vegas.

I highly recommend visiting Nexusmods and following one of the many online guides to get it looking and feeling like the best it can be; and ironing out the bugs, naturally.

Then get to playing. It's New Vegas. 'Nuff said.

Desolate is a good game, but it could have been a great game with a more interesting story and a better ending that wasn't steeped in bad philosophy and some awful voice acting.

That said, if you're playing for the gameplay, then it's pretty enjoyable. I played with two others, and even with backup it's got a fairly steep survival curve that will see you die AND lose a lot of equipment. The enemies are quite tough, however the further you play the more manageable they become. Even so, you'll find yourself sneaking around a lot, and combined with the limited bases and fast travel, it can get pretty dicey.

The atmosphere is spot-on, and the visuals are great with a lot of craggy landscapes and quite beautiful and eerie settings. The sound is very important, and it's crafted pretty well--apart from the voice acting, which I found to be a mix of brilliant and brilliantly silly. However, the spooky ambiance and growls, howls and screeching of unseen monsters is at times genuinely unsettling.

The plot, however... well. Let's just say the ending is a massive cop-out steeped in the sort of philosophical musings that you'd find coming from stoned first-year university students. It really takes away from the effort it takes to get there.

That said, the gameplay is really very good. So I do recommend it. I'd give it an 8/10.

This is a review of Empyrion from a player that hasn't left the first world! I thought I'd give a sort of first impressions review for new players.

First of all, the scale of this game is pretty impressive, even on the starting world. I crash-landed on a fairly easy planet, and found a handy abandoned base to call my own. From there I sort of dived right in--no guides or advice, just went in head-first with a beer in one hand and too much enthusiasm. I have to say, it's been a pretty good experience.

I was first confronted by a curious, green spider-like crittur which followed me for a while. It chittered and stayed a wary distance. So I ignored it and set about renovating my ramshackle base, and it was a steep learning curve--I had to learn about mining minerals, wood etc., about the survival aspects of this game and how to eat and create health items, how doors work and don't work and THAT GREEN B@STARD JUST BIT ME!!

So then I learned that the green spider things are also hostile. There are actual giant spiders in this game, but the green things will also try to lunch on you.

So I learned about making machines that make other things, and how to power them (I went solar for most part), tried my hand at building turrets, creating a little bike to roam the countryside with, tentatively exploring into the wilderness in search of materials and scurrying back when I was full up and HOLY H3LL MY BASE IS UNDER ATTACK BY FLYING SAUCERS!!

I swear, that took me by surprise. I had to go out and shoot them out of the sky, and they really ripped into my base. After limping back from this battle, I discovered two things: 1. there are factions in this game, and some of them just hate you on general principle; and 2. they destroyed my bedroom.

So I rebuild my bedroom and fixed a bunch of stuff, put up more turrets (the basic turrets really seemed effective only against random wildlife), upgraded a bunch of stuff and ventured forth again. This time I found a crashed spaceship--and not just a small one, a giant, Star Wars looking thing with a full suite of rooms and the like. I plundered away, went home again and built up my defenses, including a big old wall around my base. Then I decided that I needed better transport and discovered that you can build ship designs that other people have already made! I did that and got myself a neat little ship, suitable for planetary adventures, and found where the UFOs had come from.

I also discovered friendly reptile-looking aliens, but at the time I played I didn't really understand what I could do with them. I think there might be missions? I sort of wandered around their town and that was it.

Anyway, something had to be done about these flying saucer people. But I needed something a little more robust to take them down, not the dinky little lego hovercraft I'd built. So I set about learning how all the bits and pieces worked and actually consulted some online guides. There's a lot of stuff in the game that isn't too obvious in-game.

So I'm building and testing my idea for a hovering death machine that can rain h3llfire on my enemies, and things are going well when I get another flying saucer attack. I have more luck with them this time, and I spent some time looting them, and got back to the base to assess the damage and THEY BLEW UP MY FR3AKIN' BEDROOM AGAIN!

Why the ♥♥♥♥♥♥' bedroom, man??

Anyway this time I reinforced the bedroom, and grimly set about creating my floating hovercraft of doom. And that, if I recall correctly, is where I am right now. I took a long-ish break for RL reasons, but now I'm itching to continue my tale of revenge and wrecked bedrooms.

Also there are dinosaurs and radioactive storms.

Graphics: 8/10 (this has probably improved since I last played)
Audio: 9/10
Gameplay: 10/10 ♥♥♥♥ those bedroom-hating UFOs
Mechanics: 9/10 (it's complex, fair warning, and some of it is still a little clunky)

Saints Row 4 is basically an expansion of Saints Row 3, which was an incredibly fun game.

However, Saints Row 3 can be played and enjoyed in single player (though I played it in co-op); you can't really say the same for Saints Row 4. The story isn't as fun and you've seen most of it before. In co-op it's actually pretty good...

...When it works. Because this game crashes on both of our machines a *lot*. We haven't completed the final boss fight because we *can't* complete it--we get to a certain stage and the game inevitably crashes. As my friend has the host files, my account doesn't save the story progress, so I'd have to slog it out from the start to actually complete it in single player. It's just too repetitive to enjoy alone.

For a reasonably modern game, these kinds of bugs are really not acceptable--especially as Saints Row 3 proves that it doesn't have to be this way.

I do hope they make a worthy sequel to Saints Row 3, with all the involved craziness. As it stands, I can't recommend Saints Row 4 as such a sequel.

What! I've never written a review of Fallout 4, the most-played game in my Steam Library??

Good grief, that's slack on my part. Prepare for a long ramble through the Commonwealth.

This game is five years old at this point, so most people will know about it. The game that brought settlement building into Fallout, the quest to find your kidnapped son (and that sequence is still kinda brutal to this day), Preston Garvey demanding you help more settlements, Synths and a whole host of weird characters as you travel through Boston and its surrounds. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people are just here for Dogmeat.

I love it. Yes it's by no means the strongest entry in the Fallout series, but FO4 just has something about it that keeps me coming back. The world is more detailed than ever, the stories are poignant, hilarious and everything in between and the main quest, in my opinion, is actually very strong and personal. I mean they kill your partner and steal your baby in front of you! Did I rampage? You bet I did.

The modding scene behind FO4 is one of the strongest out there, and there are literally thousands of mods for it at Nexus and other places. The graphics in the base game are great, but you'd be silly not to use one or more of the beautiful visual mods--or an ENB--to change it to your satisfaction. You can even play through a Nuclear Winter, or through lush grassland and forests. There are mods that fix the bugs (sigh, Bethesda, get your sh|t together), introduce quality of life bits and pieces, give the UI a more modern feel and utility or just change the game to resemble something else completely if that's your thing. For me personally, modding FO4 was fun in itself!

Note I thoroughly disapprove of the Creation Club and paid modding. It's a disgusting cash grab and has done nothing for the community.

I also like the Settlement building--and I know it's a controversial aspect of the game. I really enjoyed going out and helping Settlements and building thriving communities out of small groups of people just doing their best to survive. I really liked the Minutemen faction for that reason, being able to improve the Commonwealth and bring security and stability to it. The base Settlement building is good, but with mods it becomes even better. I do wish Bethesda had spent more time refining the base game, but what you get out of the box really is pretty cool, warts and all.

And yes... I liked Preston Garvey, even though the game design made him annoying. When you ignore all the settlement demands and look at his character, he's quite inspiring. A man who loses everything and finds hope and redemption in a destroyed world, and somehow manages to persuade others to be better people. The most poignant thing about him is that he doesn't see it himself, but everyone else does--it's not the Sole Survivor that people in the Commonwealth recognise as the force behind the Minutemen, it's him. I have a lot of time for the Preston Garveys of this world. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent.

The DLC for FO4 is pretty good too. Far Harbor is the best by far, but Nuka World had its solid moments as well. Automatron is a must for robot building goodness. The other, smaller DLC is worth it if you're into Settlement building.

Even after all this time, I have to say that there really aren't many other games like Fallout 4, that deliver similar experiences. Even the train-wreck that is Fallout 76, which directly uses ideas and assets from Fallout 4, doesn't come close. The characters, the events, the encounters and the memories the game create are truly exceptional. Yes, Fallout: New Vegas was the better RPG and Fallout 3 arguably had a better post-apocalyptic style, but Fallout 4 distilled the ambitions Bethesda had for these games and brought a level of detail that just hasn't been matched since. Sadly, the way things look, we may not get another Fallout game that comes close for a very, very long time.

If you're into action/shooter RPGs, if you're into post-apocalyptic games, if you're into grabbing a gun and making what's left of the world a better (or worse) place... then this is the game for you. Grab it, go to Nexusmods and pretty it up and round off the jagged edges, then start adventuring. Let me know how it goes.

And remember... Codsworth lives.

Strange Brigade is an excellent co-op game, with detailed graphics, interesting puzzles and decent enemies. It doesn't bring anything amazingly new to the L4D2-esque genre of games, but what it does it does very well. Recommended if you have a few friends on hand to play through the campaign with.