Recent reviews by The Snattle Rake

One hell of an ending.

I really wanted to like this game. There are some solid ideas, the story seems quality, it looks good, and it's not even that bad at first; the first hour or two of the game is pretty enjoyable. Plus, we all want a modern Syndicate, right?
The more I play it, though, the more frustrating it becomes.

The enemy seems to detect me on a whim, unless I'm at some strange angle behind the enemy's back, and my character always insists on getting as close as they can before taking the enemy down, even with a sniper rifle. Squad members can be unresponsive, have difficulties pathing, and occasionally manage to embed themselves in walls when I put them in cover.

Speaking of cover, the easiest approach to the game I've seen so far appears to be just a straight up assault, using the infiltrator to pick off people with his cloak where possible. Problem is, you quickly get overrun that way, unless you make sure to grab some serious combat gear, which doesn't become available until you've snuck into a couple compounds. When you do try an assault, you have to micromanage your team and who they target.

Which leads to the issue of how difficult your squad members are to control, much less micromanage all four of at once, which you must do in real-time. Each of them has a weapon, some abilities, and their own strengths and weaknesses, and you're not going to be able to keep track when surrounded and trying to work the situation out. There IS an option for "real time with pause" at the very start of the game, but it just gives one of your team members a maxed ability to slow down time. Why? You could just give me a pause button, plenty of other RTT/RTS's have one.

Thinking of trying the co-op? It sounds really good, but you're not going to get to try it, since it seems only to work when it feels like it, and it doesn't seem like that's very often.

Okay, well you'll just savescum your way through, right? Quicksave before ♥♥♥♥ goes down, quickload if it goes wrong, right? Nope. You can't save when in danger, and even when you load, you do it at special checkpoints throughout the city. So when you load the game after it glitches, or if you don't want your whole team to have to be recloned, you get to run all the way back to where you were, where the enemies will have completely changed for no reason. And that's after you sit through a good 20 seconds of loading screen, even if you've got a good rig.

In conclusion, it's a fun game when it's not trying to piss you off, but it spends a lot of time doing just that. And given how long it's been since its release, and the fact that the developer seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth a year ago, that's unlikely to change. This is not the modern Syndicate you're looking for.

Thieves' Gambit is an interesting if somewhat disappointing CYOA. As told by the description, you're the world's second best jewel thief, and you're out to steal a very nice but supposedly cursed diamond. If you've gone through any of the CYOAs released by Choice of Games before, you'd be surprised to know this one is actually pretty short; I completely my first run through in about thirty minutes.That was a nice thirty minutes nonetheless, and for the most kept me interested. It's pretty well written, but subsequent playthroughs are the most likely thing to disappoint. Probably owing to how short it is, you really won't be making any big plot changes aside from a couple possibilities that seem to have no later consequence. Across a few playthroughs with different styles of approach, all that really seemed to change for me was who had to do what and how everyone felt about me, as well as a minor plot twist at the end that didn't have a huge impact.

It's still pretty good, and I like the story despite the fact I don't seem to be affecting it too much. I'd say $2 would be a better price, but I still got $3 out of entertainment out of it.

Klei Entertainment is turning out to be a company that is very hard to be disappointed by. Mark of the Ninja was a brilliant blend of platforming and stealth, and we're all familiar with the great survival game that Don't Starve is (even if you're like me and only know anything about that game because everyone you know seems to play it). Klei has given us another stealth game, except this time it's a cyberpunk turn-based game with a hint of strategy, and it has the be the best combination of those things I've played since Syndicate.

You've got your standard cyberpunk themes in this game; giant megacorporations that rule the world, cybernetics, and everything including the coffee maker being hooked up to the internet. That last part is particularly important to you, because one of your most important tools in this game is an AI called Incognita who you will use to deal with the enhanced security you would be expect in a cyberpunk setting. Cameras? Hack them. Safes full of corporate goodies? Hack them. Menacing turret in the center of a room with four guards? You could hack it, but it might be a bad idea, as enemies usually have heart monitors that raise the alarm when you kill them. Doesn't mean you can't knock them out with your futuristic stun gun, though!

Gameplay is fun and decently challenging, with the game never putting you in an outright impossible situation. Levels are procedurally generated,with often fantastic results, striking a good balance between obstacles and things that can help the player. The player navigates these levels with a team of up to four agents, though is limited to two at the beginning of every campaign. All campaigns have the same plot, but can vary based on which difficulty is chosen and the luck of the player with level generation. Completing a campaign, regardless of win or loss, rewards the player with experience, which unlocks more agents and hacking tools to choose from at the beginning of a campaign. With so many ways to start a campaign and so many ways a campaign can go, the game has tremendous replayability.

The story is rather nice for what the game is. The game is actually fairly short, with most of the potential to steal your time coming from doing multiple playthroughs. Thus, there really isn't that much space for a story to fill, but it uses that space very efficiently. The game establishes its setting very well, and the player will have a good feel for the game world after one or two playthroughs. That said, there may be a few holes you won't fill in on your first playthrough, and characterization of the agents you have access to takes a few playthroughs to be truly complete. But at least every agent is unique in some way or another, both in story and gameplay. The plot itself isn't anything award-winning, but it will keep you interested and you'll love how it ends (No spoilers!).

The graphics are nice, though it definitely took a cue from the style of Mark of the Ninja. The UI is great, and the player is given multiple ways to view and assess a situation.The music is nice to listen to, and every sound effect sounds just right (Something is really satisfying about hearing my agents tase the crap out of a guard). Everything compliments each other very well, and it definitely adds to that stealthy feel.

I actually can't find anything big to complain about with this game. It's been finished and polished very well, and I haven't seen any bugs or glitches on my end. The biggest problem in the game is that as a consequence of the level generation, security is occasionally placed in nonsensical locations with strange schedules, such as a guard that spends the entire level staring at a blank wall, and that's a really small problem. The game is terrific on every front, and in my opinion it's definitely a game that money is well-spent on. This is definitely a game that belongs in the library of any true stealth game fan.

First, anyone considering buying this game should know that, as of the time of this writing, the game is oriented primarily towards combat. Trade, questing, and exploration are indeed present, but serve to fund the player's upgrades; you will not be playing this game as a merchant, diplomat, or explorer. That said, if you do enjoy naval combat and aren't averse to a challenge, you will enjoy this game.

The developer claims to have taken inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates!, and anyone who has played any of the releases of Pirates! will definitely notice some of the influence. I'd personally classify the game as an improved successor; the game took everything that was fun about Pirates!, strips away the tedious things that no one liked (we're looking at you, dancing.), and improved on some things that had potential but weren't explored, such as trade. This is probably why the game is so oriented towards combat, as Pirates! was as a whole about you sailing around being a scurvy bastard. Except now you can have giant multiple ship brawls where crap is exploding left and right and everything is on fire.

The game itself follows your regular RPG sort of formula; kill things, gain experience, upgrade skills, and search for good loot. There are four playable factions, but aren't very different aside from some minor gimmicks. The world is split up into multiple procedurally generated regions, with enemies becoming stronger the further you venture from where the playable factions start. Those four factions start with a region they control and a couple that they hold part of, and the rest of the world is infested with pirates. Unless you're playing online, your faction will be the only one to ever advance beyond where they start, and you will spend most of your time fighting pirates. Inter-faction warfare is a thing, and you can contest other factions for control of a region, but I haven't figured out the purpose as of yet. Your end goal is supposedly to help your faction take over the world, but I have no idea what actually happens if you do.

Combat is, again, the largest part of the game, but I found it to be the funnest. Fights are largely tactical affairs, usually with you sailing into range and your crew automatically firing at enemy ships with standard cannon fire while you fire off skills at the enemy. Multiple ships can enter and leave a fight, and whether you're engaged in a fight is guaged based on proximity to hostile ships and towers. The AI, which I'll address in a moment, does come to back both you and the enemy up, but only within a certain distance. In single player, this can turn skirmishes into full battles just to take a harbor, and that capacity for fluid battles is part of the appeal that combat has. The game scales rather well, so unless you sail to the lower level areas with higher level gear (and there's an option in world creation to force high level gear to get scaled for an area) or you try to rush too far ahead, you'll never too over or underpowered.

The game is not without its lackluster components though. Despite advertising diplomacy, trade, and exploration as options, they're not as prevalent as you would think. Diplomacy exists in the form of quests, which usually revolve around delivering stuff, killing something, or building new towns or defenses, and the only real benefit is gold and increasing the size of a town. Trade is a regular buy low and sell high deal. Exploration is just lifting the fog of war; there's no relics to be hunting for or anything. The AI is also a bit strange, with it usually backing me up pretty well but sometimes acting as if the pirate sloop currently taking over the nearby port isn't something it should intervene in. So far I've chalked that up to expected instability an overall effective AI. My biggest gripe is that you're thrown into the game to sink or swim; no tutorial, or even a quick brief on controls. Thankfully everything is rather simple and a guide does exist outside of the game, but a little guidance before sending me to take on every pirate in the entire ocean would be nice.

As for graphics and sound, gorgeous and fitting. The varying biomes each have their own graphics styles, and the models of the ships look great. The extra effects such as explosions or fires look nice, and they give a real feeling of weight to the carnage you're unleashing on the ocean. The graphics are a bit more artsy than realistic, but everything fits together really well. The music gives off a feeling off a nice feeling of adventure, and the sound effects are on point for everything. You will enjoy every single time a ship blows up, whether its yours or someone else's.

Overall, this is a pretty nice game for what it is. I'm not sure of the developer's plans, but hopefully it will make trade and diplomacy more important and make the AI a little smarter. It's a good mix of RPG and... Whatever Pirates! was, and it's addictingly fun at that. I recommend getting it while it's still on sale, you should be getting your money's worth.