Recent reviews by DarkMeadow

I love this game to death. Then Sony had to come in and ruin it. I DON'T WANT A PSN ACCOUNT TO PLAY ON STEAM, I WANT ALL HELLDIVERS TO BE ABLE TO PLAY!
Sony reverted the decision. This is a big win not only for Helldivers, but for the gaming community as a whole!

I would like to iterate, this is NOT a horror game. Yes, the first 20-30 hours will feel very scary and you'll just want to hide and you'll feel helpless. Yes, the first 20-30 hours will make you feel like a menacing and deadly killer who's just toying with the survivors until you eventually murder them all. However, you'll quickly realize that this game is NOT that. This is a competitive 1v4 game with a horror THEME. It can be stressful, laid back and anything in between, but NOT scary.

With that our of the way, this is truly a unique and addictive game. The only kind of it's genre of Cat and Mouse that's truly pulled it off. As Survivor, you feel as if every single person's actions matter to the team as you work together to make it out alive. As killer, you need to micromanage the objectives, survivors and your time, all in an effort to sacrifice the survivors.

The meat of the game is the looping. Survivor runs away, Killer chases them. Simple on paper, extremely complex and engaging in practice. There's no better feeling in this game than completely outsmarting the killer in a chase and losing them completely, or mind gaming a survivor so they run directly into your arms as a Killer. Even with 435 hours of DBD, I still feel like I have a LOT more to learn and improve upon, both with basic mechanics and specific tech.

I COULD go on about this game for hours, however, I would recommend getting the game and trying it yourself, as it really is it's own unique experience that really is worth getting into.

My second favorite game of all time (1st goes to Team Fortress 2). I first started with TW Warhammer and instantly I was enthralled. I spent the first 10-15 hours setting up big battles just to watch the amazing models fight each other. It was like when I would play with toy soldiers and set them up in large formation, but now I could do it quickly and actually watch them fight each other, which was just about the coolest thing I had ever seen. 150+ hours later, I see Warhammer 2 is coming out and I immediately pre-order it with the knowledge that the first game is essentially a huge expansion pack to the second.

Now, 1000+ hours and all the DLC later, I can confidently say this is easily one of my favorite games ever. While it can definitely be improved upon in some places (which is getting worked on in game 3), it doesn’t take away the literal thousands of hours of fun and enjoyment I took out of this. Never before have I had such memorable, intense and exciting single-player moments in my entire life. I can still vividly remember some of the most stressful and rewarding engagements and campaign developments years after I had them, and I’m still making more to this day.

The campaign side of things is amazing. I’ve spent most of my time in the campaign map, but I’m not at all disappointed by that. It’s beautiful to look at and survey the land that you will soon control and fight for. Building up cities, maintaining public order and strategically moving armies to protect your borders is surprisingly addictive and is constantly making me say ‘one more turn.’ Creative Assembly nailed the thirst for expansion so well that I almost prefer the campaign map to the in-game battles, but not quite.

In battles, the visuals are phenomenal, the soundtrack is amazingly composed, and the variety of units is astounding. Combine these three things (and their really interesting dynamic music system for combat and campaign) and you get to essentially create and fight in LotR scale battles with thousands of troops at your command and thousands of troops to fight off. From small dwarves to giant dinosaurs easily the height of 8-9 men, swords and shields to machine guns powered by radioactive rocks, living, undead and everything in between, you get thousands of different battle scenarios that have kept the RTS portion of the game still fresh to this day.

I really can’t overstate enough how in love with this game I am. I was always interested in fantasy, but this game really kickstarted my entry into the genre. Now I’ve read many Warhammer books, started getting into DND, I’m looking for a LARP group to join (but that is currently on hold. Thanks, COVID) and it’s all because this game showed me how awesome the genre can be. It literally changed my life for the better. If you love fantasy or strategy, you’ll without a doubt love this game.

Normally I hesitate with card games because of the huge learning curve and information dump there is at the beginning. I normally have to force myself to sit down for 30-60 minutes to make sure I can be properly introduced to the mechanics and game play loop. I especially hate it when games pause to tell you things about the game or force you do certain things to make sure you understand how it works, and it's even worse when this goes on for a long time. I usually don't want to sit down and focus on learning new things for a game I might not even like, so I generally just opt to play another multiplayer game or single player game I'm already working on.

However, with Slay the Spire, there were a total of 8 short sentences of tutorial at the beginning of your first fight and that's it. Everything else you learn about the game is done through visuals and in little tidbits through game play rather than making you sit through pages of info. I'm honestly extremely impressed with how easy this game was to get into. I let my brother (who's still in the single digits) try it and even he picked it up in about 5 minutes.
The game play itself is also very unique. By combing your typical rogue-like dungeon crawler with a turn based card system, Slay the Spire created a type of game I never knew I wanted. I'm 43 hours in with around 50%+ of the game finished, but this isn't even including workshop mods that I'm bound to get once I'm finished with the game.
I would highly recommend this game to nearly anyone because it easy to get into and addicting to play.

Easily one of my favorite games ever. However, this is a very specific type of game where it becomes REALLY awesome the better you get at it. I can't convey the feeling of playing an Expert+ level for hours over and over again slowly but surly getting better at it until eventually you can breeze through it like it's nothing. If you can spend the time to get good at it, you'll feel like a Jedi slashing at those cubes with pinpoint precision and accuracy faster than most people could comprehend, all while your favorite songs are playing to the beat of your slashes.
Although if you do play, make sure you get mods so you can get custom songs. What keeps the game's longevity is the variety and difficulty brought to the table through mods.
Overall, get it if you have the time to get good at it, because it's totally worth it.

If you like 4-player co-op games, DRG is sure to become one of your favorites very quickly. The gameplay, the setting and environments, the enemies, the customization, the fun moments you'll have with your dwarven team, the amazing visuals and sound design has all quickly made this game a spot in my top 10 games ever. Pay full price. This game is totally worth it and the devs are amazing with frequent communication and content updates. You will NOT be disappointed.

UPDATE: Almost 2022 and they still are updating the game with new, FREE content. A really unique fun game with some of the best developers out there right now.

I love this game to death. I fell in love with it before I even started playing. I remember watching Gmod and SFM videos on YouTube before I even played it, and I already was having fun viewing the creations made by the community. When I made my steam account, this was the first game I downloaded, and 2600 hours later, I can say that I love this game.

As the meme goes, this game took 9 years to develop, and it shows. Playing the game in a vanilla setting, the balance is near perfection. With a mix of hitscan and projectile weapons, combined with the flawless movement and physics of the game, the combat is some of the best I've ever experienced. It's easy to learn how every class works, but hard to master. Even now, 2600 hours later, I'm still mastering them. Throw weapon unlocks, 100+ maps, and over 9 different game modes and you have a game that you will be playing for a long time.

And that's just the base game. There's also horde mode called Mann vs Machine, which I've easily sunk over 500 hours into. With all the maps and difficulties in MvM, not to mention all the different upgrade combinations and unlock combinations you can discover, and you have another solid alternative mode.

The community is one of the best I've seen. While some (including myself a few years ago) may say the community is cancer, and there are portions that are, the passion and creativity coming from the workshop, animations, artwork, videos, mods, maps, reskins, servers, site owners, and professionals is outstanding. I would dare say I've spent more time consuming content made by this awesome community than I have playing the actual game. I would say please check out what the community has to offer, because it's truly amazing,

The graphics, while over 10 years old now, still hold up thanks to the cartoony style, and I don't know if they'll ever really look bad. However, being a 10 year old game, there's plenty of optimization issues, especially on less up-to-date rigs. I have barely noticed anything myself, but I do have a high performing PC, and have noticed many issues when playing on a friend's computer, or one of my older ones.

This game has an actual economy. With in-game hats, weapons, paints, skins and much more, this game can be played just for the trading alone. Trading in this game for me was one of my favorite parts. A new crate comes out, and I really like some of the cosmetics in it. All I need to do is sell some of my older hats for refined, then trade for the new hat. And of course, unusuals. I cannot describe the feeling of trading my way from a Strange SMG, to an unusual that I really wanted. However, recently, the trading community has made trading much much harder because of inflated prices, and an overabundance of currency. Still, this is one of the best parts of this amazing game, and you should still at least give it a shot.

The developers have started to slow down, I mean who can blame them after all this time, but the game still gets updates, just not nearly as frequently as it used to. As always with Valve, communication with the dev team is near non-existent. However, the lore for this game, and the characters that Valve has written, is hilariously amazing. Every time I read a TF2 comic, or watch a Valve made SFM, I always laugh. The characters are not only funny, but simple. This allows the community to then take the reins and create their own stories based on these characters.

Recently however, there have been some technical issues. For instance, the matchmaking is shoddy in its current state, and cheaters are becoming more and more of a problem. But I personally haven't found these to be much of an issue, but then again, I'm not a picky player.

Overall, this game is amazing. While there are some flaws, and more of them recently, I have never in my life put so many hours into any one thing before, and I don't regret a second of it. With the nearly infinite skill ceiling and re-playability, the huge array of items to trade for and collect, and the community that even after 10 years is still putting out amazing content, I think I can safely say this game is truly a masterpiece.

My final rating.
9.5/10