Recent reviews by Amirite

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Some of the most memorable moments in Dead Island 2 are when it introduces new zombie variants—like one with the hulking ‘Crusher’ that wears a wedding dress. I remember dancing around Becki the bride in the ballroom, barely bouncing out of her grasp while Sad Wedding by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel filled the air. The little orchestrated routine could’ve made for a great music video.

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In fact, Dead Island 2 as a whole feels like one big music video; the opening images of dreamy Los Angeles iconography, perfectly paired with Karen O's Drown, instantly set the mood. A zombie-killing power fantasy set to a decent soundtrack, with everything else as a stylish backdrop to amp up the fun.

The project switched development hands and endured delays many times, but Dead Island finally came back from the dead. Unlike its predecessors, it doesn’t take itself as seriously. It knows why you’re here and what you want and serves it up to you in the most gloriously epic way imaginable! There’s something innately cathartic in how the entire game is tied together, which makes me greatly appreciate Dead Island 2 for not trying to be another "checklist death march" open-world game. Its linearity feels refreshing and respects your taste for brevity.

The action has shifted from Banoi Island to a dozen hub-like locations around Hell-A, Dambuster's pulpy pastiche of Los Angeles. Embodied within this backdrop are six blinged-up slayers: a Paralympic runner, a hustler by profession, a stunt motorcyclist, a male stripper, an antihero with rockstar flair, and a rockabilly brawler. They each offer a couple of signature class traits and snarky quips-to-self for every last thing you see and do. As you all congregate on the last flight out of quarantine, the infection gets in the way, and the discovery of your immunity amid the ensuing chaos propels you to plot your way through the city of fallen angels to become part of the cure.

Like a cheesy B-movie, there isn't much storytelling substance, and the rest of the content is mostly excuses to get out there, kill, and loot. While the structured side missions reminiscent of GTA V's "Strangers and Freaks" fare better, the abundance of loot in every inch of the world somewhat undermines this experience. As you explore, you'll stumble upon numerous locked containers, each awaiting the touch of a specific key held by elusive zombies. With random spawns and no breadcrumbs to lead the way, tracking them down is like searching for a needle in a haystack... for rewards no more than extra resources and often underpowered gear.

From the opulent mansions of Bel-Air and Beverly Hills to the sun-scorched sands of the Santa Monica Pier, it seems natural that this would be an unusually vibrant setting for a zompocalypse. The scenery is stunningly realized, with plenty of corpses, cleavage, and other tourist attractions. Each frame bursts with vivid details, whether it's the shimmering heat waves off the sand or the hauntingly beautiful moonlit nights. Though densely packed, all locations are fairly small zones you can sprint through from end to end in a few minutes.

You wander through the storefronts of Venice Beach, climb the steep slopes of Beverly Hills, and explore an abandoned rendition of Hollywood Hills that was previously exclusive to the rich. The removal of this socio-economic barrier, allowing you the freedom to pilfer its remains, feels oddly liberating. You see, Dead Island 2 purposefully satirizes a city known for its polarizing reputation. In many ways, it offers a portrayal that feels safer and more genuine than what reality shows and decades of cinema depict.

It is a morbid reminder of how economically rotten the city is, where so few can afford to work and live there. A reminder of how troubled it was before zombies came, and how they now spotlight a longstanding societal split. The rules seem to only apply to the poor, and seeing this injustice fall apart as everything starts to crumble is the game’s best piece of storytelling. Yeah, I'm reading too much between the lines, but I also can't ignore how this exaggerated version of LA cuts closer to the bone than it has any right to in its pursuit of parody.

The essence of the game remains true to its roots: hack zombies apart and hoard crafting materials, but with some refinements to the formula to give a tangible sense of having well and truly f*cked a zombie up. It's predominantly a close-quarters affair, peppered with just the right amount of firearm fun. The visceral sensation as knives slice through flesh or hammers shatter bone is gratifying and unmatched. Witnessing how enemies physically respond to your attacks is delightful, especially when you break through skin, muscle, fat, and bone with repeated attacks, making bodies feel like flesh piñatas. And then there's the elemental chaos you can unleash—fire, electricity, causticity—alongside mods for bleeding wounds and extra wallop.

You’ll be seeing a lot of the dead and, crucially, their insides. They don't just die, they perform. Thanks to the procedural FLESH system, they rupture and break, pinwheeling through the air with shattered bone fragments jutting at ugly angles from limbs. Jaws hang loosely and lopsided on a last strip of skin, while eyeballs dangle from sockets, rolling across rotting cheeks on a shred of nerve as they gaze at the ground. Best of all they melt, with acid-infused weaponry sloughing flesh and muscle from bone like a candle under a blowtorch. From classic Romero-brand shamblers and the speedy 28 Days Later strain, to mini-bosses such as bloated bile-pukers and ogres with cleft torsos, they all eventually lose the structure and power they need to walk as their mass drips away, collapsing like a bundle of sticks.

Adding to that combat variety is the strategic use of the environment. Barrels of water, oil, and toxic waste litter Hell-A. Some are stationary and can be hit to release their elemental goodies, while some are portable and can be poured exactly where you want them. Setting up on-the-fly traps is an integral part of combat, and there’s great joy to be found in deep-frying a whole bunch of the walking dead with a puddle and a well-placed car battery.

Another layer of customization emerges through skill cards, which you can snag as you level up, dive into the story, or crush those side quests. Some cards feature active abilities like dodge, block, offensive slide, and dropkick. Others add extra spice, giving you perks like health regen or a damage boost for nailing perfect evades. As you dive deeper into the game, you’ll unlock some decent build-crafting options, though it takes a bit to get there. Soon enough, you’ll reach god-like power levels—even though enemies scale up with you—but that makes the sandbox antics even wilder. And just when you think you’ve seen it all, a mid-story twist hands you new ways to turn zombies into your rotting b*tches.

With the relentless onslaught of undead, my Ryzen 7 6800H, RTX 3050 Ti, 16GB RAM churned out an average of 60 FPS on medium settings at 1080p. However, when the screen lit up with too much fire or electricity, it occasionally took a nosedive to 40 FPS. FSR implementation is subpar to put it in a word, and DLSS is only accessible through modding magic. It's all smooth sailing playing as a duo. But when going in as a trio, horrible stutters and desync will haunt you unless all party members cap their FPS at 60, weirdly enough.

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Gruesome, gory, and gorgeous. Even though it's not groundbreaking, Dead Island 2 still competently executes its over-the-top zombie parody with an absurdly meaty and juicy combat.

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As the sun dipped low, painting the ocean in orange, there she was—a topless girl swaying gracefully in the last light of the day. She was an odd vision of beauty, covered in blood and adorned in skeletal chic. But before I could ponder further, a shotgun blast ended her dance in a spray of crimson. I turned and saw my six-limbed friend giving me a thumbs-up.

Yup, it's time to camp for the night...

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Moments like that are few and far between, but I don't regret trusting Virginia with guns. I no longer felt like I was walking through Detroit when she was around. Locals that came anywhere near our cabin received a pound of lead. It didn't matter if they were only taking a stroll along the beach or mourning their fallen. She executed them without a moment of hesitation and then looked at me with a thousand-yard stare.

The Forest delved into survival horror with a dash of action. Sons of the Forest flips the script, blending action-adventure with horror elements. Companions, lesser emphasis on survival, and greater focus on combat are the reasons for this shift. I've come to terms with the fact that it's attempting something different from its predecessor while still largely playing out the same. People play Far Cry, Horizon, and whatnot for a reason—there's a lot of fun to be had as the scariest motherf*cker in the woods.

It's been a solid decade since the chaos of The Forest, and now you're thrust into the boots of a mercenary tasked with tracking down a missing billionaire and his kin. You wake up post-crash landing, standard protocol in this neck of the woods, only to find yourself stuck with the lone survivor of your crew, Kelvin. Something got rattled around upstairs in the crash, and he’s left dazed and deafened. You scribble instructions on a notepad to get him to do stuff, and he just smiles and slaves away. Despite being marooned on an island infested with cannibals, the dude is just a ray of sunshine, your personal Hodor.

The tedious tale of survival takes a wild turn into the strangeness of the highest order, diving deeper into the supernatural shenanigans laid out in the first game—though not always in ways that tickled my fancy, it never lost its grip either. After cooking in the oven for a year, the lore got a generous dollop of attention, popping up in the form of notes and mysterious items more than before, plot holes got patched, and a couple of boss fights were added. But spill too many beans, and I risk those "what kind of f*ckery did I get myself into?" moments losing their magic.

If unraveling mysteries isn't your thing, there's a nice dual pace to what's on offer because if you just want to settle down, you can—building out a base and slowly taking over your part of the island.

You're handed a guidebook filled with simple illustrations showing how structures are made. Initially, I relied on its basic blueprints to erect four walls and a roof for what was a less-than-comfortable resting spot. But soon enough, I was on a mission, causing mass deforestation, all in pursuit of my dream lakeside, two-story log cabin with a charming slanted roof, a walkway stretching as far as the eye can see, a plethora of furniture, numerous farms and storage spaces, and an enormous illuminated cross on top to keep all things unholy at bay.

The freedom to build and tweak even the tiniest parts of my cabin as I pleased was a delight. However, it can be a tad tricky, especially when dealing with structural supports. Sometimes I could remove them, other times not, leaving me with random poles or crossbeams right where I wanted open space.

Hauling logs around isn't all there is to it, though. Most items fit neatly into your backpack, and when you want to craft something, opening it lays everything out before you like a deadly picnic spread. I often opened my inventory just to gaze over all my goodies.

In The Forest, you had a map. A crappy, handwritten bar napkin of a thing that was largely empty until you physically explored and filled it in. Contrast that with the sequel, where the map is four or five times larger, but you have a GPS with infinite battery and green flashing 'here there be gear' icons. It's a respectable way of making that huge map play nice, but there's no denying that it torpedoes the feeling of exploration you got from the first title. Another thing I sorely miss is the interconnected cave system from The Forest. It was like navigating a labyrinth, and the suspense and uncertainty of venturing into the darkness with monsters lurking about was unparalleled. In Sons of the Forest, you just keep walking until you see the light.

While the sequel may not quite send shivers down your spine, thanks to the surplus of guns, the subterranean creatures still manage to unsettle with their grotesque appearances—a case of body horror. Odd, freakish, vaguely humanoid entities with too many arms, wrongly jointed legs, and conjoined heads, all animated in distinctly wrong-looking ways. Above ground, you're frequently greeted by native nudists' raid parties that gradually increase in number, strength, and variety with each passing day spent on their turf.

The enemy AI can be buggy sometimes, but they react to how you treat them and what you do in the world to some extent. Going pacifist will only get you so far before you're forced to play on genocide island. Make the most out of the fleshy cannibal population; their bones and skins make good armor. Some locals prefer observing you before suddenly lashing out and will run away if you get too close. Occasionally, they'll all charge at once, or they might just stand around, seemingly waiting for you to line up headshots. Some bigger guys have little issue with menacingly walking up, but they're as pitiable as they are dangerous when begging for their lives. The combat may feel like a copy-paste of the previous game, lacking enough visceral punch, yet sending enemies soaring with shotgun blasts or limbs coming undone from axe blows is still satisfying!

Once you've washed off all the blood and had your Greg stew, there's a paradise waiting to be explored. The island is a feast for the eyes, with meticulously detailed landscapes and lush, vibrant forests ever dancing in the wind. It'll also whisk you through a tour of all four seasons. Your pick on the difficulty level decides how fast they're switched up. And it’s not just about the world getting all golden in autumn or blanketed in white when the snow comes down—it's gonna shake up your survival game, too! Thankfully, the difficulty settings are fully customizable, giving you total control over everything from AI behavior and day length to the amount of spawned supplies and survival damage.

On the technical side, the performance has come a long way since the early access days. I went from 40 FPS and lower at 1080p on medium settings to averaging 60 FPS, with some settings even cranked up a notch—all thanks to DLSS, which was missing back then. Playing on a Ryzen 7 6800H, RTX 3050 Ti, 16GB RAM, and Windows 11, I didn't encounter any major issues, except for occasional audio desync, and some minor "items being stuck in places" or "AI companions not following orders properly".

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Bigger, better, and breathtakingly beautiful. It improved upon its predecessor in every way. Except it's lost its scare factor, is flooded with firearms, and a GPS guides your way. Not as impactful when it comes to combining a compelling mystery and narrative with natural exploration, yet it'd be unjust to view it through rose-tinted shades when I had a blast.

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You know what they say about coffee: the best part of waking up... That rich, aromatic, piping-hot essence of caffeine in a cup, cradled in your hands, sending waves of warmth through your senses. Suddenly, your grogginess and irritability vanish after a few sips, and you feel ready to take on the day—is that even a smile on your face?!

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Playing Zipp's Café captures that same refreshing feeling, more or less. No special or secret ingredients here, just a reminder that the warmth of a well-crafted experience can be as inviting as the embrace of your morning cup.

Picture this: Zipp, the former mob raccoon turned café connoisseur, now struts his stuff by brewing and serving at his very own joint. In this café, you're not just slinging coffee but also dishing out faux feasts! Yeah, you heard right—fake meat galore. Because munching on your animal pals is a strict no-no in the World of Wilderness. For the uninitiated, this cute-critter café sim / visual novel acts as the standalone, bite-sized bridge between the first Chicken Police and the forthcoming sequel. World of Wilderness is the writers' attempt to create more media around the setting that started with the first game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110942969
Like most, Zipp has a past he can't seem to shake. In this three-hour coffee-shop noir, he finds himself amid some spill-over and becomes entangled in the lives of his patrons. His establishment attracts a diverse clientele, ranging from PIs to gangsters and the residents of the bug ghetto. The overarching theme revolves around beginning anew or, at the very least, questioning established norms. Although the dialogues tend to be dry, they frequently reveal meaningful snippets that gradually peel back the layers of the broader world beyond the confines of the café.

But here's the bummer: the story keeps poking you, urging you to take action, and just when you start contemplating how to respond, it makes the decision for you. There are glimpses of interactive elements, but it craves that extra spice, that player-driven sizzle. A bit frustrating, a smidge demoralizing, yet a nod to the story's strength: the characters. Characters so convincing, they could very well be based on real people. They made decisions, had motivations, faced the consequences, and are now throwing deep questions at you, making you wonder if they moonlight in our reality.

Adding splashes of excitement to the storytelling are three mini-games: brewing beverages, whipping up meals, and tackling the dish pile. They're delightfully straightforward, if a tad repetitive—no ticking clock, no story jams if you slip up. Once you get the hang of juggling the stove and espresso machine, brief detours to the kitchen become surprisingly satisfying. And, hold your latte, the weirdest puzzle you'll face is figuring out why on earth someone would ask for a drink with coffee, caramel, meat powder, and orange juice. Starbucks, consider this your eccentric flavor inspiration!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3110936787
Savoring the sips and bites you've put together, let the artsy and jazzy vibes wrap around you. With gorgeous hand-drawn art and the laid-back backdrop of Saxy McSmooth, an effortless charm permeates the old-worldly atmosphere. Crafted with nostalgic strokes and moody lighting, both characters and the environment come alive. If the whole noir thing gets too intense, hit the switch on top of the screen—it goes all monochrome, though I still think it looks better in color. Behind the counter, big, clear windows frame a scenic view of the distant city skyline, offering a quantum of solace in Zipp’s three-seated café from a world eclipsed by the shadows of racism and crime.

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Snazzy but sadly short, sans stress from slip-ups, it successfully whets the palette for the upcoming sequel to Chicken Police. Priced at a mere coffee's worth, it's a delicious delight without breaking the bank.

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Twenty years ago, when everybody and their dog was hot on the heels of Warcraft and Diablo, SpellForce did something new. It combined the base-building aspect of real-time strategy with the action of isometric RPGs, tipping the design scales closer to the latter. While it had nothing to do with Blizzard's heavy hitters, Spellforce was like a peanut butter cup of both. But seeing how, unlike in the early 2000s, turn-based games seem to get people going these days, THQ Nordic hedged their bets by taking a different turn to their genre hybrid.

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Set after the events of the third but before the original game, Conquest of Eo is, in effect, a sequel to the prequel taking place after the Circle of Mages—a covenant of the most powerful magi on Eo—was established, but before they managed to shatter the world into loosely connected bits, and chainmail bikini was agreed upon as the required uniform for the resident female warriors.

In the beginning, you are but a humble apprentice flocking to your master’s side only to find his tower in ruins and himself in the embrace of an untimely death. Armed with your wits, your master's magical hits, and an unshakeable grit to figure out what happened, you set about researching the secrets of the Allspark—sorry, Allfire—to carry on his legacy and establish your credentials as the hottest thing to hit the magic circuit since white rabbits.

Conquest of Eo is less narrative-driven than its more RPG-like predecessors, and although the side content might be rather simplistic, it'll hold you tightly throughout with its writing. Some of those are simple affairs like attacking a roving group of goblins or leaving them alone, but others have moral choices that require you to weigh up risks and rewards. Nonetheless, everything you'll be reading here is of a kind that immediately paints a clear picture of the author's vision in your head. All quests and quandaries are text-based, yet they feel far more visual than dozens of movies can ever be.

But before you set out on your journey, you'll need to choose just what kind of wizard you are. Alchemist, Necromancer, and Artificer are the archetypes that determine your approach to crafting and the schools of magic, such as death, enchantment, mentalism, nature, and so on. Want to enchant your way to customization? You're free to mix and match with the available options, too.

On my first run, I opted for Necromancer because it seemed evil and macabre. Its strengths lay in raising minions from fallen foes and toying with the powers of life and death. Alchemists can distill various items down to their essences to brew potent concoctions, ranging from simple healing rations to bombs capable of wiping out half an army in a good throw. Artificers mine ores to forge powerful glyphs for their units, creating smaller but stronger armies that punch above their weight class. However, losing even a single unit could deal a devastating blow to their overall strategy. Whether you stick with the pre-made ones or summon your inner mage-maker, the only variations lie in a few spells and initial creatures available to them—sadly, no secret ingredients.

It's hard work being a mage, having to search for a lot of materials for your craft, including your late master's notes. As you journey along, you'll find pages of his grimoire, and boy, did he have a fine taste for flashy books. Embellished with golden margins, elaborate hand-drawn art, and functioning bookmarks, the spellbook doubles as your tech tree menu that contains all sorts of incantations, from zombifying mortals to elemental summons and even water walking. The intricate art style of the spellbook seeps through to the UI, too. It's as if you've stepped into a world where magic permeates every aspect of life, from the book's pages to the very fabric of the game itself. Sadly enough, it's lacking an important feature for the time being, and that is a log to keep track of your expeditions.

Whether on the overworld map or in the thick of a battle, Conquest of Eo looks colorful and attractive. Its art style strikes the perfect balance between intricate detail and a stylized fantasy look. In contrast, the sound design falls a bit short of the visual appeal. The lack of voice acting and rudimentary audio feel like they come from a less polished game. The Celtic-inspired high fantasy tracks make for a pleasant soundtrack but aren’t strong enough to exist outside the game.

Plenty of exploring, exploiting, exterminating, and extremely aggressive AI behavior lies ahead. However, building cities, advancing through complex tech trees, or creating a vast empire isn't among them. No, expanding isn't cut off entirely, but instead comes with a twist. Since sources of revenue, like gold, mana, and research points are finite and scattered around, you'll often have to pluck out your tower, the base of your operations, and fly it to unexplored lands, adding an extra layer of strategic thinking to the gameplay's loop.

Of course, the AI shenanigans won't let you rest easy. The mages, more than other factions, have large territories, resources, and the ability to spawn entire armies from the very beginning, putting you in the common underdog scenario. They'll try to walk all over you from the onset, while any attempt at self-defense rubs them the wrong way. Although a couple of patches have aimed to reduce the difficulty spikes, your paths will cross sooner than later. With diplomacy nowhere to be found on Eo, you're in an uphill battle unless you decide to fall back on über strategies to cheese the fights.

Speaking of fights, turns dictate the flow of combat on Eo. Assuming direct control of fights transports you to small hex-based arenas. It’s as simple as moving troops into one another and letting them duke it out while you cast magical spells like an all-powerful overlord; it's not all that thrilling but not poorly structured either. For the impatient, encounters can be resolved automatically, but the predictions are a tad off. In occasions where the game is adamant you’ll lose, you might be able to snatch a tight victory by taking matters into your own hands.

Jarringly, stacks cannot unite to form larger armies, which reduces the sense of spectacle and importance in the engagements; however, gifted individuals can considerably bolster your forces through their special attacks and customizable loadouts once recruited. Heroes find their way to you, each having their own elaborate questline. Apprentices, on the other hand, know less magical trickery but are easily found in certain places.

The main quest and major landmarks are set in stone in each playthrough. However, the map is procedurally generated, and the smaller quests and skirmishes are shuffled around each run. Problem is, the main story itself is somewhat incongruent with some of the design philosophies here, like how you're incentivized to do multiple playthroughs due to different starting locations and customizable difficulties on the offer. Yet, the "been there, done that" feeling remains.

On a final note, my adventure to dominate Eo was magically smooth on my Ryzen 7 6800H, RTX 3050 Ti, 16GB RAM, and Windows 11 at 1080p 60 FPS, with a few crashes here and there. Nothing of concern.

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A somewhat askew balance of narrative and sandbox content, a simplified approach to combat, and a far from stellar AI. Conquest of Eo isn't risky or new, but the stories it has to tell are a delight. It's the type of game you'd want to play if you're fatigued by the glut of turn-based RPGs or can't dedicate to the intricacies of 4X titans.

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A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic (such as the power, size, or efficiency) of an existing commercial cartridge.

—Wikipedia

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Usually, I’d start a review by waxing lyrical about the weird things on offer and how they made me feel. I won't this time because, as much as it is a nonstop frenzy of feline fury, there's so little worthy of praise about Wildcat Gun Machine. It dispenses with narrative entirely. You’re an angry woman with a gun. There are enemies. Shoot them. Don’t let them shoot you. I wouldn't even know her name is Maria if it wasn't for the Steam trading card.

Want more? Well, let me know if you find something. The main thing is that kittens have gone a bit rabid, mutated into vile, violent beasts, and need to be bathed in a hell of bullets. That might be enough material for some, but it's slightly uninteresting for me.

Other things aren't simplified to the point of absurdity, though. There are, in fact, some good examples of level design, complete with winding corridors for trapping, or being trapped by, enemies and environmental hazards, like acid sprayers and exploding barrels. Each of the four acts starts from a hub area, which also shelters the vendor shop, and spreads outward, with different colored keys providing access to new areas; think DOOM's keycard and skull gimmick but in isometric view.

There are countless beasts to slay en route, but few are a thrill to fight. Most rooms cough up many waves of aliens to exterminate. Natural climax points arrive and then vanish over the horizon as more slimy monsters appear until you’re begging for respite. Yet, some even dare pop up far beyond the camera view and keep blasting at you while they're stuck in a corner.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889444355
But really, that’s about as much as you get for flavor. It all comes down to the shooting, which isn't shooting for the stars either. Letting rip with a machine gun or laser cannon isn’t especially cathartic anyway, as nothing in Wildcat's weaponry packs a real wallop. They tend to whir, buzz, or beep without giving that chunky, bass-heavy thump you'd expect from such chunky guns. For what it lacks here, it makes up for in tunes and tempo. Pounding industrial music goes on like a 24/7 radio that knows damn well how to pair throbbing electronic with banger dubstep and moody house tracks.

This tortured plod is exacerbated by a two-gun loadout system that gives you one high-damage heavy weapon and one infinite ammo pea-shooter. Effectively, you need to save the big boy for peaks of activity and spend calmer moments slowly pew-pewing foes into submission. At least, plenty of cat bones—the one and only currency in this hellish landscape—come from killing opponents, and different guns appear throughout the dungeons, with extra models to purchase from the floating cat monolith that doubles as a vendor. Range, fire rate, and power are the variables to consider when picking your loadout, or simply whether you prefer dealing death by laser, flamethrower, or ricocheting buzzsaw. Dash ability and movement speed can certainly be upgraded, but more importantly, you can cheat death up to nine times with the help of cats, assuming you've saved some serious bank.

While Wildcat is short on frills, it’s certainly not short on style and strains. The graphical approach reminds me of new school tattoo art: cute and grotesque, delivered in an over-the-top cartoonish fashion, from the protagonist—who looks a bit like the pop singer Pink if she had an eye patch and a pocketful of colorful plasma guns—to the enemies, which range from insectoid blob monsters to cyborg zombies and flying, flaming skulls—no shame in wearing DOOM inspirations on the sleeve. And the bosses are nightmare fuel, sporting futuristic tech laced with organic, bulging flesh, with cannons sprouting from their chests, faces, or… elsewhere, but then, how am I supposed to bask in their looks if they're frequently staying outside the jurisdiction of a camera that’s too zoomed in?! Maybe that's for the better; shooting them and dodging out of harm's way isn't much of a challenge anyway.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889444516
Indeed, despite high cartoon visuals, Wildcat doesn't stick the landing.

On a final note, it doesn't take much hardware to get this cat purring, so my i7-10750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and 16 GB RAM kept the gun machine barrels spinning at 1080p 60 FPS.

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As a quirky old man once told me, "it is the classic case of wool over your eyes with fancy screenies." Hectic shootouts, chunky ordnance, screenfuls of lead and laser, but not so much a wildcat. More like a house moggy dozing on a sofa, capable of occasional bursts of energy.

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With over 4000 space games on Steam, we sure get to see the farthest-flung corners of the galaxy as travelers and assh*les: invading, conquering, and harvesting planets of resources. The Gunk, however, takes a more humane approach, the kind that we get to leave the place in a better state than when we arrived.

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At the heart of The Gunk is a neat eco-friendly fable, so it has a sort of moral and ethical sweetness from the off. Crucially, though, it is also a game about tidying up, so that moral and ethical sweetness is knotted to something else that borders on compulsion. Maybe gamifying burdensome housework is enough, or perhaps it boils down to the fact that these games can make you feel productive even when you're procrastinating. Either way, this one is about reveling in the satisfaction of suction, even though it isn't working on high Watts.

As broke and fractious space scavengers, Rani and her (more than just business?) partner, Becks, stumble upon an alien planet in search of their fortune, on the trail of a mysterious signal pointing to a potential energy source. What they find instead is a planet where the life around them is being strangled by dark blobs of some zero-G snot. A combination of determination and desperation leads them to uncover the face of this rock off its mysterious goopy veil. Luckily, Rani comes equipped with a bionic vacuum arm and an infinity of space to hoover up all that mess.

It sounds fairly interesting but moving past the first hour, the narrative features a bit too many overused story beats and clichés to be considered engaging, let alone original. It's the type of story that begins to dissipate from memory the moment you walk away from your PC. Having two strong-willed women trying to "make it" in the space and pushing back against each other is welcome, but I was bothered to no end by the game's refusal to define their relationship. Was Becks a prudent and pragmatic friend, an over-protective mother figure, or a concerned and caring lover? It is left to your imagination, unfortunately. The vocal performance goes a long way to make the duo likable, but disconnected backstories and forgettable dialogue drag them both through the gunk. On top of all, during dialogue-heavy sections, the characters' lips flap like lifeless puppets, resulting in cutscenes that are fine to listen to but awkward to watch.

When Rani gets a moment to herself, she has to suck up the black ooze. Then, the grey fades and foliage bursts out of the ground with all manners of strange, characterful fronds. New paths open up—there's a bit of casual platforming to be had in here as you make your way through the world—and certain kinds of plants offer resources or items used in puzzles. The resources tie into some insignificant upgrades, ranging from increased vacuum speed to more potent powers like a lure that'll briefly distract enemies—an ability that could be helpful was combat not so trivial that it never felt like something I needed any help with anyway. This isn't a challenging game in the slightest. Instead, it's one in which most activities are fairly simple and have a lovely zip to them, barring Becks' constant bickering in your earpiece. You might climb higher by finding the right kind of seed to chuck into a glowing pool so it sprouts huge bouncy platforms for you to use. Wreckage blocking your way might require an exotic and explosive fruit-like sticky bomb.

Thing is, neither the platforming nor its puzzles go beyond their humble beginnings. This laid-back design is relaxing at times, though the low stakes make it difficult to feel engaged. Rani is a scavenger, not a fighter, so the vacuum glove is utilized to defeat the aggressive gooey critters in much the same way as you'd clean up the Gunk. Smaller enemies can be sucked into the vacuum before being tossed into each other, and projectile-spewing turrets can be pulled from their roots. While this approach makes sense, it means that the combat doesn't stand out, acting as a diversion more than anything else.

To some, the simplicity may be an issue; to me, it created what I sought with The Gunk, a serene adventure. Its vision of an alien world is day-glow colorful, filled with flora and fauna that should otherwise grow in deep waters. Navigating the planet's gloomy caves and abnormal jungles is a beautiful and calming experience, considering that you're willing to jump through a couple of hoops to get rid of some excessive effects by hand, such as blur, film grain, TAA, and so on. The musical score, too, needs a mention for how good it is at immersing you in this reverse ocean bed. It is strangely relaxing when paired with the act of cleaning up the Gunk, and you'll only ever notice how melancholy it is when you get a moment to stand around doing nothing but listening to somber violin tunes.

On a technical note, my i7-10750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and 16 GB RAM run this space beater on 1080p at 60 FPS, but there's a bit of grime and gunk clogging up the engine. Framerates dipped to 40s in certain areas back when I played the game on release—eons ago, my bad! A couple of patches have been dropped since that probably have fixed the performance hiccups.

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You say "middle-of-the-road, milquetoast, mediocre". I say "unambitious, unassuming, uninsulting". A peaceful space janitor simulator that, at the very least, respects your time and intelligence by keeping things short and simple.

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To all the neat freaks out there, you'll find reviews free of malicious messes at Summit Reviews

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GRID is a hostage to its own history, struggling for years to repeat its 2008 outstanding accomplishment. Many things are, again, wrong with Legends, but many are right as well. It takes notes of its long-lost success and polishes all that worked out well in 2019's disappointing reboot to a shine.

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What excites me about Legends is the addition of a story mode. Driven to Glory is a classic underdog tale, styled like a fly-on-the-wall documentary, where an unknown driver races their way into the big leagues, endures hardships and rivalries, and finally becomes a victor—with your help, of course. Let me get this straight right off the bat: it's cheesy, unengaging, and predictable. But god, doesn't it make me want to smack that smirk off Nathan McKane's little face, the series staple top dog. He finally has a face to go with his name and is immediately thrown into the bad-guy role. Not because he’s arrogant or dressed all in black, but because he enthusiastically tells you all about the new restaurant down the road that lets you choose which lobster you want to kill for dinner.

McKane aside, what goes on between the talented cast is a hyperbolic, factitious drama that drags down their decent performance. However, the bigger issue here is that you can't steer the story in the desired direction, even though you're the one behind the wheel. You're expected to finish early races in the middle of the pack, then slowly make your way up the rankings, but if you’re good enough to turn in podium finishes left and right, this sort of messes up the plan. The narrative blissfully ignores that fact and continues as if you’re still fighting for recognition.

Bah! I'm putting too much on a circuit racer. I'm glad it gave me a simple goal to strive for.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799204854
With the story's fluff and pomp out of the way, pure racing can take the center stage back. Legends hews close to arcade racers thanks to its smooth and forgiving handling, while the simulation elements remain shoehorned as always. On the surface, it looks about the same as its immediate predecessor, but under the hood, it drives far better; things have clearly changed. From electric jaguars, to outrageously-bouncy stadium trucks, to modern-day tuners, the wide and wild line-up of autos and classes all feel different to control, though none are difficult to learn. New camera positioning gives a better sense of speed, and more tire grip ensures your ride is more responsive and stabler than before.

You can grind your gears (pun intended) in the career mode, the stretched version of the story mode but with too much gated content. Elimination and drift return after years of absence, while the rest of the game is relegated to the usual circuit, sprint, and time trial races. You're stuck with replaying already-completed events and discouraged to take different vehicles since many of them require upgrades that require both money and a few dozen miles on the odometer. Until you have enough of both, progress is halted. Talking of upgrades, they boil down to tweaking just a few aspects of your machine. As for the mechanic and teammate improvements, they are as basic as "haggling over better prices" or "less faulty driving". Perhaps too basic, but they do add a bit of depth.

It builds out the reboot's paltry levels of track variety, too. London and Moscow are the new locations that take it to the streets among the ever-present San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, and Barcelona tracks. If you're looking for road tripping more than circuit racing, the fictional Strada Alpina, set in Italian Alps, takes the high-speed content galore to new heights. For more freedom, Race Creator allows you to mix and match over a hundred track layouts, cars, and rules as you see fit. Organize crazy multiclass events that see you globetrotting in dinky little machines against big rigs, in hypercars alongside vintage GTs, day and night, rain or shine.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799260381
As seen with the upgrades, technicality and other adjustable aspects of the vehicle are drastically simplified. Teetering a bar for gear ratio, springs, dampers, and a couple more are all you get for the tuning system; no numbers or units, just a "soft" or "firm" option to describe how you’re modifying the car. Not only that, damage and deformation lack the previous strong detailing. Bumpers and bonnets bend just a little and come off only after a string of intense crashes, while parts like tires seem irremovable, even in open-wheelers. At least, mechanical and terminal damage has been kept.

While you're bearing with the slew of career events, realistic opponents make up for other hiccups. As long as you're on their good side, they let you blitz past. Bump them enough, and you bet they will race you just as angry. They'll go bumper-to-bumper to defend their lines and outright slam into you to keep the lead. This is the nemesis system! To balance out their ferocities, they are programmed to be as fallible as you. Tires falling off, engine malfunctions filling up the field with smoke, and cars spinning out around corners, in unscripted sequences, make for spectacular accidents on their part.

Aggressive AI, coupled with the highest difficulty, makes it feel almost impossible to get in the lead compared to the next one down, which can often be easy. Legends suffers from unbalanced difficulties; however, the abundance of customizable settings allowed me to make a mix of expert and hard options and find the right spot for a fun yet challenging experience, whereas anything above medium was excruciating in the previous entry. In terms of multiplayer offerings, the game supports cross-platform play with up to 22 players on the grid. You can come up with many different scenarios using the Race Creator, friends and strangers can hop in even mid-race and take over any AI drivers, without interrupting the match in any way. They can even tag along with you in career mode.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799245369
Glossy paint shines in the blooming sun, rain puddles make glorious reflections across the tracks, and fireworks sing as they breach through prominent landmarks. All cars do look the part too, making the whole package a visual delight. On the other end of the audiovisual department, engines roar, and crashes are deafening. That wonderful, grating crunch of bumper-to-bumper action is as audible as it is visual. The few songs in the rotation are sweeping orchestral melodies with tightly-produced drums and electric guitar underneath that elevate the races quite well.

My i7-10750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and 16 GB RAM kept this motor purring on the highest settings at 1080p, 60 FPS. Although some of the bugs I encountered are already ironed out with patches, nemeses behave inconsistently on occasion. Sometimes, a clean pass might tick them off. At other times, blasting them into a fence won't register a thing.

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Legends may not do much to stand out, though on-track carnage and off-track narrative turn it into a well-oiled machine compared to its despised predecessor. As one of the only two purchasable options left in the series, it's obvious where your money should go.

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"Put your hands on the wheel
Let the golden age begin
Let the window down"
Let Summit Reviews in

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A car left to collect dust is only a hassle for its owner. The battery dies, brakes get rusted and tires deteriorate. A game series is, more or less, the same in that regard. After a five-year hiatus, GRID hit the road back but with improper maintenance; only a new coat of paint didn't do its rusted shell any good.

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I still remember the first time I sat behind the wheel in the original game. I was nobody with no car of my own, desperately wanting to find a mark and make a buck. A few one-off races here and there for other teams turned my sixes to nines; I became the guy that sponsors would happily put their logos on my cars.

Snap back to reality, ope there comes calamity... GRID (2019) is soulless, even in choosing its name. The competition must be purposeful, progressive, and gratifying, but it's nothing like that here, with the career mode dumped at your feet, gated behind a completion grid, and filled with useless treats. To get to the grand finale (elaborate air quotes), you'll have to race through at least four of the seven stages that take place across the globe. What you're granted in return is a cash surplus to buy cars, along with lousy accolades for simple tasks that would naturally come by playing the game. That's all up on the offer, and it doesn't take long before its mere functionality wears too thin, too early on.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2802742199
Stretching just a dozen tracks over nearly 200 career events means driving these courses to death. Looking back at previous entries, not only were there a couple of more tracks, races had more variety as well. Drift, togue, head-to-head, endurance, and many more are all scrapped. Instead, what's left comes down to time trials and regular circuit racing. Outside the career, racing is limited to free play and multiplayer modes. The former doesn't offer anything different from what you’ll see in the campaign, and the latter has been long dead.

Thankfully, the car list comes with a pleasing variety, despite having roughly around seventy vehicles. Drawing upon open wheels, touring cars, Japanese tuners, and wide-ranging GT machinery, most of which capture a sublime sense of grip and momentum... as long as driving assists are on. It’s at this point that the simulation elements shoehorned to the arcadey end of the stick start to fall off.

Cranking the difficulty up to higher settings is when both the situation and the cars spin out of control. Turning traction and stability assists off causes most cars to snap oversteer at the apex and out of the curves. It's still possible to corner without losing much grip, yet it requires such precision lift-off that feels unwarranted for an arcade racer, given that if I'm not already rammed sideways by the aggressive AI drivers. In spite of numerous options for difficulty, I couldn't find a sweet spot between fun and challenging no matter how much I fiddled with it. Alas, I switched back to medium.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2802744826
Oh, did I say aggressive drivers? I meant unhinged. GRID boasts its big new mechanic, the nemesis system. Rub against your opponents too hard or too often, and they’ll have a true unrelenting desire to run you off the road. However, it does sometimes feel like a work in progress, giving you a run for your money on some tracks while fading rapidly away on others. They change lines and swerve across the track under brakes just to give you a nudge, and a nudge is all it takes to send your tin-tops spinning around like a tin can. There’s clean racing, but it isn’t a viable option if you’re aiming for podium finishes. You’ll have to race them just as angry, but they are immovable bulwarks, glued to the asphalt. Any serious attempt to slam into them will most likely end with a dreadful crash on your part. Teammates are, as seen in the GIF above, infected by this behavior as well.

While you’re in the throes of trading paint with hot-headed rivals, you may spare a moment to take in the view. Most circuits have been recreated in painstaking detail, streets explode into a shower of fireworks and neon lights, and fans even recoil when cars hit the barriers beside them. Given how reluctant car manufacturers are to show their vehicles getting banged up, it’s refreshing to see that the crash physics are a lot more than bender fenders and grazed bumpers, whether you opt for cosmetic damage or full-on destruction. If you decide not to make many enemies along the way, you’ll get to hear the machines dancing to menacing engine rattles and gunshot-like backfire, swaying to the symphony of destruction, even though the lack of any sort of music takes away from the experience.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2802746100
When there are no crashes to distract the eye, other issues come to the fore. Shadow pop-ins and bad transitions of environmental objects, like trees, are noticeable. While I had no performance issues whatsoever with the series’ new arrival, GRID Legends, it’s unfortunate to see the highest graphical settings here make frame rates occasionally dip below 60 at 1080p on my i7-10750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and 16 GB RAM.

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...GRID is nothing more than “just nice racing” for the first few hours. Then, it’s a long, drawn-out drive. There's little to no variety or depth, the AI does more harm than good, and huge gaps between difficulties take bites out of the fun. Everything work in tandem to send this ride on a collision course.

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"We'll ride through the city tonight
See the city's ripped backsides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky”
We'll see Summit Reviews that shine so bright

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Hanging from his belt is a sheath smeared with dirt, all scratched up. It's hard not to heed the katana's dull, reflectionless surface as he draws it. He once had a sharp blade and a sharp tongue to match it, but it seems he isn't concerned with either anymore. Other tools along his belt, however, are shiny and oiled up, twinkling in the light. Lo Wang has given his arsenal enough oomph in his latest journey, but he has lost his touch. His soul and identity, too.

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You're wondering what happened to him, aren't you? Let's back it up to where it started, then. When Duke Nukem was popping steroids to kick alien butt, and Doomguy was on a "Rip & Tear" frenzy without making a peep, a warrior emerged from their shadows. Lo Wang is essentially a gun-toting, katana-wielding, walking d*ck joke that in no way was the funniest man ever brought to video games, but pulled off a few iconic one-liners which made him hard to forget. From boomer shooter to looter shooter to bargain-basement DOOMer Eterner, Wang himself has been having an identity crisis, just like his games. Things that made him stand out among the sea of shooters have been lost, like a fart in the wind.

Wang! Haha! Get it? The same exact joke squeezed dry for about two decades, now with eye-glazing puns that he self-consciously defends and trite pop culture references like singing "Another One Bites the Dust”, except he says douchebag in it. His quips are past their prime, and he doesn't try in the slightest to retain the irreverent sense of humor he was known for. The result is dirty, tasteless, one-note gags that spoil a rather sweet blood 'n' guts smoothie.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2774783467
Shadow Warrior 3 picks up where the second game ended, more or less. A colossal, world-devouring dragon that Wang unleashed turned out to be a real bastard to kill. The epic failure on Wang's part has left him feeling washed up and depressed. Fortunately, his former employer/nemesis shows up with a truce offer and a way to put the dragon down for good. What follows is Wang tirelessly swinging (giggity) from one arena to another, cutting through Yokai—or demons, if you prefer—to get to the dragon.

It is an exceedingly one-dimensional story with hollow characters, and that’s about as deep as it gets. It explores a new low compared to its predecessors. Significant betrayals and deceptions are passed over in a manner of moments, and its character relationships are changed with throwaway lines of dialogue. I wouldn't be having many quarrels if some of the old charms were still present: real villains, intriguing plot twists, or light-hearted banter among the cast. Nope... nothing at all.

Comedic chafing aside, the combat can be chaotically fun for a one-and-done, seven-hour romp. Crazy-fast gunplay, free-flowing movement, switching between different flavors of carnage, and tracking a constantly dwindling ammo count, this is what Wang excels at. His arsenal ranges from standards like a revolver to more unconventional additions like a shuriken-shooting crossbow. He likes to keep a shotgun, grenade launcher, and railgun in his back pocket for when things get hot, too. Each feels beefy in your hands. These are the guns that put demon b*tches on their back. A bunch of new toys, on the other hand, give the enemies a taste of their own medicine. Nabbing yellow droplets from defeated Yokai fill the meter of finisher moves, then with a single press of a button, Wang rips their insides out to grab a devastating but temporary gore tool to break out complete mayhem.

Shadow Warrior came closer to its roots. And I liked that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2774782573
One last trick up his sleeve is the grappling hook. It's a mechanic that boils down to hitting a key within a considerably long window and watching the same animation as he flings around each time. A neat gimmick to spice up the predetermined parkour points, though it is functionally useless during combat. Hardly ever did I find myself at death's door to use the hook as an escape... not even on the highest difficulty, which is a joke in and of itself; many second chances, a large room for error, combined with brain-dead, bullet-sponge enemies. Being unstoppable is fun for a while, but it gets stale if a single strategy is the solution to every problem. This is why the shadow warrior never gets the black belt.

Oh, it seems I forgot to talk about the katana—not that it's much of a potent weapon anymore. Reduced to trivial button mashing, all of the special moves from previous entries are now replaced with simple light and heavy attacks. It now has no use other than replenishing ammo from the fallen foes, given that if you've upgraded it already. Although these upgrades, whether in the form of orbs littered about or rewards for completing challenges, don't allow for varied playstyles. Extra ammo reserves, more frequent health drops, or a few minor weapon buffs that seem to have a petty impact on your survival.

All that said, Shadow Warrior 3 still finds more ways to ruin however much fun you had mushing enemies to a pulpy juice. Signs of stagnation appear too early on, due to every gun and demon type being dumped at your feet within the opening hours. It will hurl you from a prolonged fight in a flat arena, right into a mind-numbingly scripted platforming section, and back into another brawl. As thrilling as both can often be, not providing respite from the linear rush damages the loop beyond repair; a little breathing room or a sprinkle of exploration is nowhere to be found. Even tiny extras—like a challenge mode, coop, NG+, or anything of that ilk—to give it a sense of replayability are missing. It Doomed itself by trying to capture Eternal's lightning in a bottle, without realizing a mere bottle can't hold such greatness.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2774784509
For what it lacks in most aspects, it makes up for in audio and visual composition. Sure, it's not as gritty as heavy-hitters of the genre, but I'll be damned if I say it isn't a spectacle, at most times. Neo-feudal Japanese aesthetics nestled in gorgeous panoramas of mountain pillars make for salubrious eye candy. Unless you're capturing the moment, none would stick with you, as you're probably too busy blazing through everything. The music, however, complements the sonic chariot you're riding right into the dragon's maw. Even though the absence of Stan Bush will hurt long-time fans, East Asian traditional tunes fused into hip-hop and electronic beats leave nothing else to be desired.

Slicing and dicing on a mix of medium and high settings, my i7-10750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and 16 GB RAM maintained a steady 60 FPS at 1080p. There were no noteworthy issues... other than whenever Wang opened his mouth.

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It never takes its foot off the gas... or out of your ass. A dreadful combination, squeezing the life out of it. Painfully linear and limited. Lacking, but not in the number of lame jokes.

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"Out of the smoke
Up from the ashes
Straight into the fire
Living on hope
Driven by passion
One burning desire..."
Summit Reviews

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You're running the gauntlet, gleefully leaving a macabre series of killings behind; you have two partners watching your back, after all. Once the dust settles, the seemingly empty marshland grows ominously silent, and... BANG! The piercing whistle of bullets shrill through your mates' skulls. Both are taking a dirt nap as you wade through the knee-deep swamp water now with only a quarter of your hard-earned bounty, holding on to your dear, almost empty health bar. Facing the same fate as your crew, all that terror you went through, now a fading memory. Very soon you will be too.

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You'll die, paying the price for shattering the peace in the bayou. You don't win. Best-case scenario, you live to die another day.

Blending the competitive forays of Battle Royales with horror-themed cooperative bounty hunting, Hunt: Showdown comes out on top as the prime example of an engrossing multiplayer experience. It requires your utmost attention. Analyze closely and always think a few steps ahead, as if you're playing chess against a grandmaster. You might have your moments, but doing so is no easy feat.

You, a patron to a "Bloodline" of voodoo bounty hunters, have been summoned to the plagued swamps of Louisiana in the late 19th century. Using the Dark Sight to search for clues around three generously-sized maps, your task is to banish the nastiest of those creatures back to hell and escape with bounties in hand. From garden-variety zombies to demonic mutants, all manners of menacing beasts are found along the way. Be it old hags spewing out swarms of poisonous bees from their chest, or charred immolators bursting out in flames if their skin is pierced.

But, none are the stout challenge you'd be looking for. Not even the bosses. An elusive assassin, a nimble wall-crawling spider, and a bulky butcher with a flaming hook, all three seem to be formidable opponents, though, against seasoned huntsmen, they don’t require much strategic thinking to take down. Frankly, every hunter of the bayou regards these targets as tertiary, their heads will not make for proud cabin trophies.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2656948145
That bounty you happily took after killing the boss is the start of pure bloodlust. It's a "put a bullet in me" beacon, visible on the map, while also boosting your magic with a wallhack of some sort for mere seconds. As up to eleven other sweaty, try-hard hunters are racing to your location, it's up to you whether to put up a fight or madly dash through the muck to an extraction point.

It feels like an insoluble dilemma, given that death lurks about these festering lands. If your hunters go down, after the initial grace period, they’re taking all of their equipment and upgrades with them. While frustrating at first, the immense tension a permanent death causes, however punishing, keeps you on your toes at all times. The fear of losing hours of work in the blink of an eye makes the competitive, if mostly sluggish, nature of the encounters all the more thrilling.

Money is found sparsely throughout the world, while hefty sums are given at the end of each session, which is used for recruiting hunters and gearing them up. XP on the other hand, varying on the number of killed baddies and extracted bounties, converts to upgrade points and contributes to the overall Bloodline ranks—a natural progression system to simply show what item unlocks next.

You may think once tapped out, you'll be hitting a wall. But no. You can always fall back on a gratis, low-tier hunter. Or perhaps, take your chances in the Quickplay, a free-for-all, last-man-standing take on the bounty hunting mode. Your starting options are narrowed to random weapons, but powerful ones are dotted around the map for the taking. Survive the ordeal, and you have a custom-made cowboy with choice gear and abilities that free ones don't come with.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2656954183
Naturally, the guns of the era are slow to shoot and painful to reload. Having an itchy trigger finger is a sure way to kiss the dust. From puny six-shooters to shotguns and big-bore rifles, with several interesting ammo types per each, all are nonetheless capable of dropping enemies with a shot to the head or upper torso—unlike a good number of frivolous shooters. With that, anything is a death-blower in the right hands, turning each gunfight into one hell of a methodical showdown. A few widely accessible spam guns on the offer may be detrimental to the gameplay, but overall, the balancing is spot-on.

However, should you see firearms as the weapon of last resort, your chances of survival will increase fourfold. The pitch-perfect binaural audio design urges you to stay as quiet as possible. Shot a gun? Somebody across the map heard it and can tell what gun you're using. Creeping up on foes caught up in a boss fight? Footsteps, even when crouched, are noticeable and distinguishably varied over different types of ground. Ears pricked for the proximity chat, Hunt gets even more unnerving when other hunters acknowledge your presence. You turn back... but get a flying sledgehammer in the face.

Seeing that you'll be spending most of your time sneaking around, understanding how and when to use the tools and traps is of the essence. Yeah, a big bundle of dynamite is scary, but is it scarier than getting flushed out with its decoy just to have your face blasted off with an exploding crossbow bolt? I didn't think so. Makeshift bombs give you an edge in the fights, while consumables ensure your longevity. Another asset to your advantage—or disadvantage—is the ambient alarm systems. Like a startled flock of crows that can easily give away the location of who jumped them. Or the grating noise of all creatures when agitated, from the undead to crippled horses and caged dogs. Most of my kills were obtained by carefully listening for clumsy movements.

As you patiently traverse the fetid southern landscape, it's impossible to tear your gaze away from its grotesque beauty; atmospheric and vivid, with excellent lighting, you can almost feel the heat of the sun through the screen, yet a gritty feeling of despair clings to this zombie-infested old-west. That beauty puts a strain on the GPU as it does on the nerves. My Ryzen 5 3500X, GTX 1050 2GB, and 16 GB RAM run the game in agony on a fluctuating 40-ish FPS with graphics set to the lowest. As the VRAM usage exceeds the limit, texture flickering becomes a deal-breaker, though that's a pain known only to low-end users.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2656988430
That said, there are a few technical drawbacks on the servers' side, too. While disconnections are few and far between, you can still lose your cherished cowboy when thrown out of the match. Compared to other games, desync and trading kills are taken to the extreme here. I have lost count on how many times I've shot a player down only to get killed by his dead self, lying cold on the ground, seconds later.

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Ears ringing from all the gunshots, heart pounding out the chest, and hands trembling uncontrollably; Hunt makes me feel alive and fight like there is no tomorrow. Unforgiving. Strenuous. Tense. An experience like no other. I think I need a smoke or three.

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Been long on the hunt for fair and honest critiques? Look no further than the Summit Reviews

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