Recent reviews by Robertson Crusoe

I bought this game during the sale for about 15 bucks and I still wish Steam would offer a grey area when it comes to recommendations.

Well, let's dive in: The visuals are gorgeous. The dinos look great, the environment does too. In the beginning, it felt so motivating to to breed my first dinos and to keep searching for new ones. I wanted to see them. I wanted to have and show them. Sadly, the dinos and watching them is the biggest part of this game. And that is where its limitations start to show.

While you need cash to do basically anything, there are various other resources, like electricity for example, that you need to watch and maintain. Money will come in easily, as long as you maintain visibility of your exhibits. However, the most important resource, when it comes to player entertainment in this game, is space. All the islands feel very limited in space to build and the terrain will often take away more of that space than necessary.

Repetition is another thing worth mentioning. You will basically do the same thing over and over again. On every island. Often, your progress is limited by how many island you have finished. But that is what bugs me a lot. Instead of freely being able to advance and to spread and to uncover, I feel like I need to do the same jobs again and again, only to get a little more space or a new breed of dinos.

This pattern continues when trying to unlock buildings. The amount of buildings is thin, very thin. And most of them do not really do anything except generating cash, which you will have plenty within a couple of hours. Logical errors, such as not being able to transfer money to another island, while still being able to sell your findings that are clearly stored on one particular island on just another island, is strange. So, there is a limitation and an easy workaround, which simply requires you to wait and watch until you can do something again.
And that is a problem this game has: Wait and watch. This issue would not be such a huge deal if the game was not that easy. See, your rangers are not being attacked by dinos. Even if one of them breaks loose, it does not feel punishing. It does not feel dangerous. That was the whole premise of the movies, wasn't it? Man plays god. Man creates something dangerous. Man cannot control the danger and gets punished for his arrogance. Loose dinos that roam your park are not really a danger. As far as I could see, I did not have to pay insurance money for the fact that a visitor got eaten alive. The killing animations are not cruel either. It is all rainbows and sunshine for some reason.

The quests or missions or contract or whatever you want to call them are nothing you really need to work for. They are accomplished on the fly as you progress. Sometimes they ask you to go out of your way. For example: Set a dino loose to see what happens. But what truly happened for me that the fear of a loose dino, that I had before, suddenly vanished. You know, until the point where one breaks loose, you can always imagine the most horrible outcomes. And than it happens and well, its not that horrible at all. Fixed within the blink of an eye.

The sandbox island, which you can unlock during your time on your first island, is not very interesting. For some reason, you do not need any funds anymore, but still need to unlock buildings. And buildings, like I said, are neither interesting, nor do they add anything of value to your park. Tycoon-wise, this game has nothing to offer. And when you are sitting on an island where you do not depend on cash anymore, the last tiny thrill is gone and suddenly, everything is very bland.

At some point, I felt like I simply pushed on to see what comes next. But overall, it felt too much like a chore, like dry old bread, that I could not go on. This game needs a lot more content, more upgrades, more economy, more thrill in terms of danger and more depth. In the end, I grew tired of watching my dinos do the same stuff over and over again. Without a real challenge, this is just another Zoo game with animals that are supposed to be dangerous, but turn out to be very timid. There would have been no difference for me if instead of dinos, the game would feature pet dogs and cats. And that is because of the abscence of danger, the fear of losing control and a supposedly fragile system, that could collapse on the player at any point of the game. If it does, it is always very much fixable in a matter of 30 seconds.

So, sadly, not even for the price tag of 15 bucks did I feel like playing a game. In general, the experience was more of a alpha version or demo, always leaving me with a feeling of "there must be more around the corner" only to be disappointed because "no, there is just more and more and more of the same you already do now".

Thanks for making me use an additional account even though this game is on steam. And than again, thanks for leaking my password and giving me the headache of having to change all my low security passwords. Thanks for taking 5 days to inform me of the incident, even though you have been informed almost right after it happened. Thanks for everything!

Far Cry 5 in a nutshell, sadly without John Candy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GwdlLJw9q0

Even though this game is quite old, I believe that there will soon be a new time for Kane & Lynch, since nowadays, people often view the real world through a camera and a screen. However, this shall not be a review of a video game. Kane & Lynch 2 is not your everyday video game. I am not sure that it is even a game, since it fails to deliver any of the qualities we commonly expect to experience in video games. If common third and first person shooters are like a well looking, well tasting burger from you favourite fast food place, Kane & Lynch 2 is a phone video of how this burger has been made. If regular video games are like David Hasselhoff in Bay Watch, Kane & Lynch 2 is the leaked video where we see David eat a burger while being completely drunk. This game is ugly and it the player will relate to it in a very unpleasent way. Let's get started!.

Neither Kane nor Lynch are likable in any way. They are about 40 to 50 years old, highly unattractive, out of shape and if you would meet them, they would not like you, because they can't. You can easily imagine the abusive childhood they probably have gone through. They are incapable of solving conflicts in a civilized, progressive and respectful way. They are trash. Criminal, obsolete, cancer of the earth trash.
Switch to regular video game characters, especially in shooters: They are usually the good guys. Patriots fighting terrorists like in Call of Duty. Scientists that had to defend themselves against filthy russian Raiders, like in Tomb Raider. The examples are infinite. The same goes for action movies. Violence and its use is often justified. He had to kill 28 people to save his daughter who was locked in an underground basement. She had to stab the muderer in the eye with a kitchen knife to defend herself. We get to see and get to play sparkling clean characters that perform the most horrible actions to others because they are the good guys.
Sometimes, you even get to play a bad guy. In Pay Day and Pay Day 2, you are the criminal. You steal peoples money, but at the same time, you are the cool guy. You might not be the good guy, but you are cool. And you kill infinite waves of faceless enemies. They do not even really die, the violence is closer to a violence in a Disney movie that real life.
And sometimes, you play the bad guy in a satire, like in Grand Theft Auto. Than, violence is even funny, somehow. Satirical, over the top, stupid violence.
There is probably only a couple of exceptions and like "Sleeping Dogs", "The Last Of Us" and "Far Cry 2"
Kane & Lynch 2 however, is none of the above. You get absolutely no soothing explanation for your actions. You play the product of a hostile environment in a hostile dog-eats-dog world. And I use the phrase "dog eats dog" on purpose, because afterall, the subtitle of the game is "dog days". It already implies that bad stuff is about to happen, but also implies that you play a dog. Not literally, but that is exactly what Kane & Lynch are. Ugly, old and useless dogs that have bitten way to often and are now looking down the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun. And nobody will care about their deaths. Nobody. They are trash in the streets.

Shanghai, as the place where this game is set, delivers the perfect ambiente for this premise. People live in tiny, filthy apartments in narrow, trashy streets in houses full of low life trash. If somebody drops dead in one of these apartments, nobody would notive until the smell is unbearable. You can hear the radio through the wall. You hear a dog barking in the distance. You watch giant buildings passing buy through the side window of a car. Those are the beautiful, ever changing main menues of Kane & Lynch 2. They prepare you for the world you are about to enter. Nobody cares about you. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you here. Everybody tries to get what he or she can get. If people act, they act out of a deeply grounded selfishness. And so do you.
The reason why I can relate to the main characters is quite easy to explain: I am a human being. Lara Croft is a scientist and adventurer, full of ambitions. Every Call of Duty character is a patriotic bad ass that is about to save a nation. I can hardly relate to that. Gordon Freeman is a scientist fighting off alien invaders. B.J. Blazkowicz is an american agent killing Nazis. James Bond is the worlds best secret agent. Solid Snake ... well, you get the idea. All these characters have either inhuman qualities or simply are heroes. I am not a hero. I am a regular, commonplace guy. The reason why we play heroes from time to time is to simply dream or to fantasize. To be extra-ordinnaire for once. To be the hero of the day. At least, I imagine that this might be the reason.
In Kane & Lynch 2, you will not get to dream or to fantasize. You will most likely have the desire to rather play a different game. Kane & Lynch 2 is an emotional ride of pure disgust. It is like seeing the most beautiful person vomit. Little pieces of dinner in his or her hair, sour stench of stomach acid and trash in a back alley after too much booze. It is like watching the corpse of a man who got shot while having sex and even though he is dead, still has a boner. It is disgusting because it is close to reality.

Every aspect of this game is horrible and beautiful at the same time. The main menues for example, are all peaceful. Yet, they deliver a feeling of total isolation and meaninglessness. You watch Shanghai through a car window, like I mentioned. You watch buildings and cars go by. Nobody cares about you. That is peace. Total peace. And at the same time, it means that you mean nothing to anybody. Meaninglessness. You sit inside a moving peace of metal, plastic and glass, while all others that you "meet" do the same. Everybody is inside a box, doing what everybody does. Total isolation.
When you run through the streets, shooting people, you can still hear the radios playing behind closed doors. If you kill somebody, nobody cares. They are inside their tiny spaces, hoping not to get hit by a stray bullet while cooking chicken soup. You do what you do, everybody else does what everybody else does. If you are in the way, people will try to get rid of you. If you are facing a conflict, there will not be a magical way out. Live or die. Kill or get killed. Uglyness. Totally human uglyness.
The same goes for the rest of the game. The gun sounds are not saturated. They sound "lame". Watch a YouTube video of somebody shooting a gun. It will sound awkward. Guns don't have this awesome accuracy you expect them to have. They are tools to kill. A little better than a fork or a spoon, but not these awesome, self aiming, accurate beasts of destruction. They are being handled by out of shape criminals that run and gun, with a high pulse and probably hugh blood pressure. Old, used, rarely maintained guns. Combat feels unsatisfying, because it shall not satisfy you. It is just merely the only way these characters know to solve conflict. Buy killing the problem, no matter what it takes.
The visuals of the game deliver the same language. Even though the two characters, which are controlled by you, are the center of the attention, they are not really the center of the attention. They are the protagonists of a phone video. They are the guys in the car accident everybody watches but nobody wants to see. You exist to satisfy a perverted desire. The desire to watch decay and destruction. You are the guy that jumped off the building. Everybody is watching but nobody truly cares who he is. You are the center of a snuff film. Expandable, free of value and the audience can't wait to see you die or kill. Like in the movie "Running man", which I keep thinking about when I think of this game. You are trash, pitted against other corrupt, ugly, filthy trash and we want to watch you guys ripping each other apart. We want to see blood, brains, organs.

So, it seems I have reached the limit in this review.

Probably the coolest game I would never buy again, if I had the chance.

It is entertaining in the beginning, it truly is. I had so much fun building tracks, watching my trains move from town to town and upgrading them when I had the time and money. But the rest of the game is a chore. A real chore. And the worst part is, that I would actually not moan about it, if it wasn't for the price tag. I paid about 30 bucks for it and still overpaid. In my country, they ask for 50 bucks, which is AAA- league. While in return, you do not get a AAA game.

Let me list some of the facts here:

+ The graphics are nice.
+ The train models are very detailed and nicely designed.
+ The voices and sounds are nice.

All the positive aspects of this game are quite superficial. Because, ... well, let us look at the downsides:

- The AI.

- The AI of your trains. Unless you want to micromanage literally every single step they take, the AI will find a way to fail and become useless. For example, your trains will reach a destination, despawn, and respawn but facing the opposite direction. They will simply and magically turn around without any extra tracks or such. But they cannot change the tracks inside of a train station. This means, you will have to either micromange the tracks they use or you will have to create very own tracks only for special routes. While ...

- ... the enemy AI does not. They will have one track, but double the prices. That means, you build cheaper, but more. They build more expensive, but less and can have a dozen trains run on one single track into all directions.
This is very anti-climatic, but not a big deal, unless you actually try to win. Because in order to win, you will buy out your enemies, thus getting their tracks. But what will you do with a single track when you have to rearrange them entirely? Like I said, you will have to either micromanage everything or build dedicated tracks for your trains. Getting access to the useless tracks of the enemy is no help. It is not realistic and not fun. I am not sure how this issue can be solved, because it is a major flaw in the foundation of the game. Enemies make the game interesting, but playing with enemies is a ridiculous chore.

- If you play free-mode with 3 enemies, you should have a thick hide. Not because they will outsmart you or something, but because of the mind-numbing spam that will make you want to quit. At least for me it did. Because ...

- ... while you are extremely busy planning your tracks in every possible detail, they will steal away your employees, sabotage your tracks, rob your trains, steal your scientific progress, build new stations in your cities and spam their - in the beginning quite entertaining - annoying phrases over and over again. Even though it does not sound too bad, in reality, it is. While you press okay on the final tracks you planned for five minutes and suddenly, three opponents play out one of their actions on you, you will have no clue what has happened. One of your trains stopped, one of your tech tree results got stolen and one of your employees left. Which one? No idea. You were busy looking at the notification about the stolen tech tree result. This can happen every 2 minutes. I had a game, where I hired an employee, just to lose him 30 seconds later. For about an hour. The result was that I literally hired and trained every employee and my opponents took them all. This is not fun, nor entertaining. And there is no counter. You cannot raise their payments, cannot debate with them, nothing. They are simply gone. And you are stuck with the ...

- ... UI. Want to see what train does what? Well, good look finding out. And easy list to see all the trains and their destinations and such? Nope. Not in here. A list of all employees to see which positions they fill? Nope, no luck today. The UI is a burden. It does look and feel like it was designed to serve console players. Big buttons, no real control. No PC standard. No real overview, no real gameplay.
While you are forced to micromanage so many actions, the UI blocks you from doing so.

- Laying down tracks. My god, how horrible. In the beginning, it is great fun. But the more you progress, the more it becomes a chore. Accidentally misclicked when trying to bulldoze a little track? Sucks for you, because now a gigantic piece of track you carefully placed is gone.
Want only to delete like 200 feet of tracks? Sucks for you again, because you can only delete the entire track until it reaches a breaking-point, like a supply tower or station. I mean it. You placed a huge track like 10 minutes ago, that has cost you a fortune and now you cant to change a tiny part of it, what do you do? Your only true choice is to either create a new track on it so that you can delete tiny parts of the old one or you place towers to create breaking points. No leasure in doing so. Not at all.

- Missing track parts. Like, an "X" or a "Y". You will have to create Y's and it is literally impossible to create X's, which will take away a lot of freedom when it comes to creating useful tracks. Like I stated above, trains can magically turn around. They can also magically switch tracks when they move into the maintenance building, but they cannot switch tracks if you need them to. An X would be extremely helpful, that is why it got invented. But instead, you will have to create absurd levels of connections between tracks.

- Tasks in free play. Why? Like, literally, why? Who came up with the idea to create a "free"-play mode and than add tasks? How free is a game mode if it features tasks?

-The most comfortable mode you could play is the free mode without opponents. Than, you would not have to witness their 12 trains that magically move trough one and another. Nor would you have to repair their awefull tracks when taking them over. Nor would you have to endure their tiring, repeating phrases over and over again. Nor would you have to stop caring about your employees, because 2 minutes after hiring them, they are gone.
But, playing without opponents does turn this game into a mindless track laying game with no challenge. You simply cannot lose. And with opponents, there is no real challenge either, because it is all funny pretending and make believe.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing this game. I can see myself playing this for 3 hours at the weekend. But not for longer, nor with a real feeling of entertainment or challenge. But the worst part of it is the steep price tag. 50 dollars for a game that is basically extremely shallow is crooked. This game is not triple A standard, yet has a triple A price tag. From all the positive reviews, I can see that many people do like it, but this will stay a niche game and will turn off many players because of the price tag, which is not reasonable at all. If you want to charge 50 bucks, half of a hundred Euro/Dollar bill, create a game that is woth half of a hundred Euro/Dollar bill.

I'd say. pass for now. Wait until it is on sale for about 15 bucks, than get it if you must. But don't expect a deep, content rich, realistic simulation. Rather expect a nice game that you can play every now and then to pass some time.

At about level 11, the game switches to Wallet Vs. Wallet. There is nothing really more to say. The time in the beginning was entertaining, but now feels like a waste of time.

About 2 years ago, I downloaded Project Zomboid for the first time. Back then, one of the devs proudly announced that he increased the drop chance of the trowel ingame. Everybody went nuts. Some people said that instead of changing drop rates, they might work on the actual game. Those people were brutally banished in the steam forums. I remember it fondly. Because back then, the game was on the zenith of its hype train.

But dogs work harder before they get the treat.

Let us be honest here for a moment. I mean, really honest. You probably read all the reviews. The positive and negative one-liners. Even the long reviews that overextend extremely. Let us ... simply be honest: There is a valid reason, why people suddenly realized, that this game does not show any real progress. It does not. And that has a valid reason. I can only suggest, or guess, but if I feel deep down inside of me, I can only confess: I know the reason. I have experienced it many times. You produce something and during the process of production, positive feedback rains down on you. Your product is not done, but already perfect. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves the idea of what they see in this game.

Many people call this game "the most realistic survival game you will ever see". Others call it a "simulator". None of that is true. Both suggestions are simply ideas of what the game could be. It is neither realistic, nor does it simulate a real apocalypse. It is not even a real game. Like many other survival games, it does not feature a real story. "This is how you died" reads the text before you jump into the cold water. And that is all you get. A suggestion of how you died. Nothing more, nothing less. Because that is the core of the game. It wants you to die. Otherwise you would see that there is nothing to live for. Nothing but drop chances of trowels, tons of people who committed suicide by drinking bleach, insane amounts of zombies that will chase you until you die, and so on and so forth. Once you manage to survive, and you will acclaim that goal quite fast, there is nothing challenging anymore except for the mechanics that overload you with hostiles or the brutal illnesses that kill you before you can overcome the massive obstacle that is indeed the true user interface. This game is not realistic, nor a simulator. It is clumsy, over-complicated and over-simplified at the same time. It is over-complicated when it comes to the interface. Every simple step feels like a burden. And it is over-simplified when it comes to mechanics to make your life harder. You will find 200 hammers by the time you found your 5th shovel or axe. Reloading a shotgun takes forever and even though your woodworking skill is at least 5, you are unable to move a kitchen counter without destroying it entirely. This is not realistic. It is not a simulator. It is a game. A simple game, that has yet to be finished.

Getting back on track: Many people told you before and I can only repeat myself ... there is no real progress. I am a newb when it comes to modding. All I have done is create mods for Mount & Blade. I had to learn and understand Python, learn how to make and edit textures and of course, 3D models. I managed to do it. A full dev team is unable to create vehicles for the game within the time limit of 4 weeks. That is astonishing to me. A 3D model, an "animation", sounds and some code. That is it. Nothing more. But remember when I told you that the zenith of the hype for this game is already due? That is the point. The devs know that they made the money, got the shoulder claps and applause and now what should they continue working for? I mean, this is not sarcasm: Please tell me, why should they continue working on the game? This is a problem of the "early access realm". You show your half finished product. A certain group of people love it and you get your feedback. The rest does not care. You are overwhelmed by positive reviews of a product that you honestly did not publish, but people see what they want to see, and suddenly there is a huge hype for your game. It spreads like a fire. You make a big load of cash. Why for the love of god should you continue working on it? There is no more motivation. You can only reach those people that got scared of the "EA" title or those that did not want to pay. But you already made it. This game is done. It takes half a year to create vehicles for this game because there is no more wind in the sails. The motivation is gone. It is time to abandon this project but the devs were unable to overcome their own fear of letting their fans down but if we are, and that is the main premise of my review: If we are completely honest to each other, we know that this is all we will get. A half finished product. A boatload of unfulfilled dreams and hopes. Broken hearts and misery. But we deserve it. For it was us, who bought it before the devs could deliver. For it was us who hyped this game and it was us who praised "potential". Think about it: "Potential" is a state that we see, but that is not there and may never be. We have to stop talking about potential. It is not us who create this game. What we see in the future is just an image that is created from our wishes and desires.

tl,dr: There is a reason why you are looking at the negative reviews. You want the game, but you know it is unfinished and will never be finished. Listen to that reasonable voice inside of you. It speaks the truth. Buying the game would only support the process of not delivering what you promised. Don't be that guy.

2 of 3 matches I played were ended by a freeze where it showed that one player is still taking his turn, but in reality he did not. Nothing could be done except from quiting the match which may result in an elo and karma punishment.

The 1 match I played was actually quite decent. It had a really calming background music and the visuals look nice, just like a board game. But in sum, this game pretends to be a full release, but does show gamebreaking bugs right after the tutorial.

Also, at first I played without logging in, since it is kind of annoying to force a steam user to register with a new account. But the only option to play was "free match". Everything else literally showed "Only available after login". So I registered and logged in, only to see that the only option, still is is "free match", while the rest suddenly says "Only available on purchase". If I had seen this right away, why should I login at all? Fishy, just fishy.

I have no motivation to invest any money in a game riddled with bugs.

A game that does not grant you direct control over your troops should better have a decent AI. Otherwise it becomes a chore to play. This is a good example. While this game is beautiful in its pixel art design, has a calming and charming soundtrack, it falls completely short when it comes to the gameplay.

Most of the time, you will either sprint/walk to the left or to the right. That is it. The rest of your time, you can watch your fellow people fail wherever they can.

The first thing you will notice is that this game has no tutorial. That can be "interesting" or it can be off-putting. I was lucky to quickly graps most of the things that are happening. But after a while, I got really sick and tired of having to fail to learn. For example, I did not know that the workers will charge into the woods at night to chop down trees. That leaves only one possible way to get trees chopped: Do it in the morning. The rest of your day, you will most likely gather troops and after that upgrade your walls. This is it. This is the only way to play the game. You will do that over and over again.

Since towers cannot freely be placed, you will most likely not build too many walls, but rather fortify crucial spots. But after all that repetative work, there was no relief. I watched my knights and archers stand in front of my walls, only to get mowed down by the first shot of my own catapult. It did not even hit the one enemy it tried to shoot at. It only destroyed my own people. That happened multiple times and I grew sick of it. Because the result is, that the enemy will fight your walls without any resistence and if you manage to survive the night, you will have to walk around a lot to gather all the money you just lost only to buy the same troops that will once again, be mowed down by your own people. I am sorry, I cannot bare such gameplay. If I do not have control over the actions of my fellow people, I need smart people. Otherwise I do not feel like a leader of people, but like an idiotsitter.

I am sure the forums are filled with shortcomings like this and I am also sure that people found ways to work around those shortcomings. But in the end, that will turn me into a problem solver of issues that should not be there. And with every single issue I have to work around, my variety in playstyle will shrink more and more until the point that only one way to play this game is left. And to be entirely honest: 15 bucks for hours of walking left or right, fixing problems and only one way to play with no replay value whatsoever ... does that like a good buy to you?

This might be the only game, where the people with the lowest skill and the highest pings get all the cool stuff and win all the battles. You can literally see 12 of your bullets hit the enemy, while 2 are registered. This is how great the netcode is.