Recent reviews by AwfulAwkward

I've played basically every other fighter series there is over the past 25 - 30 years. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Marvel Vs Capcom and similar VS games, Killer Instinct, some random comic book DC fighters on the SNES and a few of the anime fighters (Naruto, Dragonball, Jump Force, etc...)

This is clearly an unpopular opinion, but never once have I regretted a purchase more than this one.

Visually, at first glance, I thought it looked great. In practice? Nope. Not at all. Hot garbage covered in actually really nice (maybe even hand drawn?) animations, covered in more garbage.

Normally I'd call it a pro when games have actual dialog for win speeches instead of just text, but the ones here, even in just Versus mode, just drag on for literally full paragraphs and I quickly just stopped caring about ever hearing them ever again.

I played a few versus rounds with my kid and we were both equally baffled by how unbalanced the fighters felt. We chose randomly since we weren't familiar with any fighters and most matches either ended up one of us comboing the other to hell and still losing from just 5 or 6 normal hits from the other, which makes you wonder why bother with combos at all to begin with... or one person had an easily accessible ranged attack and the other wouldn't be able to get close enough to land a hit without a well timed dash that could still end up being repeatedly chain whipped to death.

Fighters seemed to have a single yell and grunt for attacking or being hit so you'd hear the same exact sound over and over and over and over until you just can't take it any more. I think we lasted maybe 4 or so fights before both of us just threw out controllers down in disgust of this game.

Again.. this is just one opinion. I've played at least one of the previous Guilty Gear games on like.. the PS1 or PS2 when an ex GF said she wanted and I went out and got it for us and I remember we had fun. So, I don't think it's the entire series that is bad, but this one, at least to us, is just terrible.

If you have some other favorite fighter series that you enjoy, I honestly don't think you'll enjoy this one without really forcing yourself to play it until you're just so invested that you feel like your time would be wasted to not continue. As for me and my kid? If I could set a digital copy of this game on fire to never see it again, I would.

Don't bother. The real, physical card game, with real people at a real table... that is fun. This, however, is a disaster of a game. Navigating anything is a chore, and actually anger inducing after a while, since you can't see more than one other person's played cards at a time, you have to click through other players individually to see. Often leading to repeated switching back and forth before you make a decision.. and it makes no effort to explain anything if you don't understand how the cards work.

The removal of online multiplayer is a major kick in the pants. Why the hell would anyone want to play a multiplayer card game alone with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of bots?

If you're looking for a good game to play with friends, just buy the real thing and, hell, put the cards under a camera and stream it to friends and play that way.. you'd essentially get the same, if not better experience except, you'd still technically have online multiplayer unlike this ****-show of a game.

I can't recommend this game at any price with the removal of online multiplayer. They clearly had no idea how to make a game and even screwed up their announcement that they were removing online multiplayer. They released a notice on July 25th, stating it would be removed on July 10th which lead me to believe they sat on that information for at LEAST multiple weeks and didn't even bother to read it, much less update it before putting it up. This game was already scored pretty low to begin with. It's gone down a full 5% since removing multiplayer. Don't bother.

This game is... kinda unique and simple yet also kinda complex. You and your party go from room to room, setting up automated defenses or buffs along the way, using resources that you gather for each door opened, until you find the exit. There are rooms with lights and rooms that are dark. At any point, enemies may spawn from the dark rooms, forcing you to be strategic about what you place where. Once the exit is found, one of you grabs the crystal from the start and bring it to the exit and you move up to the next level. The thing is, once the crystal is picked up, enemies (possibly endlessly?) spawn from the dark rooms all at once and leave you hobbling to the exit with the extra weight while the rest of the party defends and clears the path.

On paper, this sounds fun. In practice, the controls and UI leave a lot to be desired personally. You have to toggle between mouse/keyboard and gamepad in the menu, which requires that you completely close out of the game to apply. I think I heard each of us separately ask if things in the UI needed a double click, drag, or click in two places.. I don't remember which it is at the point either. Maybe it was because my first time playing was multiplayer with friends, but the game made no effort to teach a single thing about the UI, keybinds, or how the game is played and I was left to figure it all out for myself as the game progressed and it is frankly not very intuitive... but I think I felt confident that I had figured things out for the most part by the end of our second attempt.

Another interesting thing about it is that death isn't the end. If you're in a multiplayer game and you die, you don't become a worthless spectator. You still earn resources for every door opened. You can either give them to the remaining players as you see fit or even still just use them yourself to build defenses while others explore. In most game modes, there are random characters spread out across the map that you can hire and, in the event that you're dead, you basically come back to life as the newly hired character.

All in all... I honestly don't feel the game was really my cup of tea. I wasn't a fan of the controls and the lack of ANY guidance whatsoever on even a first play through just left me yelling and cursing and how awkward some aspect turned out to be once I finally figured it out. It's certainly not a bad game... it just could have been done better, even if it was a small team.

Seems they've announced a successor to this game recently. Hopefully they did a better job on it than this one. I won't be paying to find out, personally.

I actually kinda feel bad that I convinced friends to buy this. The visuals are somehow both great and terrible at the same time. Unless I'm missing something, there are very few options for pieces and zero options for boards and only three locations for scenery, with the exception of some of the piece sets that have their own scenery to go with them. Nearly every combination of pieces and locations that I tried make it difficult to discern who's pieces are who's since the difference between white and black are far to similar to each other in 90% of the classic style options.

Which brings me to my second issue with this game. Options. Aside from volume and music, there basically are none. Changing pieces and locations is a chore since you they can only be changed at the time of creating a game against another player or computer and cannot be changed again from then forward since there is no menu option for it once the game has started... On top of that, if you're going through the small selection of challenges or learning section, it uses the last pieces and location you had used in a normal game and leaves you to figure this out on your own.

Having to start a game, pick pieces and location, decide you don't like the combination because it's too hard to distinguish colors or it's just not appealing, closing out to the main menu, going back to select the game, delete it, create new game, select pieces and location, in a loop until you settle on something that is even playable is absolutely ridiculous even for a 2016 game.

Up to now, all I've been talking about are visuals... and that's because that's really all you're paying for. The visuals. There is almost zero of anything else worthwhile for your money and it falls short on usability for the sake of making everything shiny. I lost count of how many times I moved a piece I didn't actually want to move or moved to the incorrect spot because I clicked on a piece and decided on a different move but all three mouse buttons do the same thing and not one of them are to cancel a selection.

On top of all of this, starting the game itself was problematic. It defaults to whatever sound device it feels like with no option to change it in game. So, even though my speakers were the default in Windows, the game would decide to use my headphones. This was an issue going around in the discussions here years ago that they claim has been fixed. As of 2021, It has not. Alt-tabbing out of the game forces the game to minimize completely if playing full screen.

Then, rather than fixing the issues with this game, they turned around and released another just like it less than a year later. It even looks like they recycled DLC for it... I didn't buy that one so I can't speak to whether it's any better than this one. Though, there seem to be far more people playing it regularly than this one, so if you are dead set on one of these two games, I'd definitely say the other is worth a try because this one just plain isn't worth it and I can't even return it because I got it as part of a bundle that I purchased entirely because this game was in it.

My advice, if you're looking to actually PLAY chess or are looking to learn and not just look at it, there are plenty of other options to be found for little to even no money that provide a far better, albeit maybe not as pretty experience.

It's a fun roguelike MMO with a pirate theme. Always more fun with friends. I think i've played about 100 hours this past month since getting it and every time I load in, it's a different but still great time.

Being a roguelike, stockpiling resources isn't a thing. Every time you or anyone logs in, you start with the same amount of resources as everyone else on your ship. Everyone has every weapon and item available to them and none are better than any other. There's a good variety of cosmetics unlockable in game as rewards for completing things or the Emporium (cash shop) for your own personal touch or to match up with your crew. That being said, choose your outfit and gear wisely. Those bright and flashy outfits, weapons, or ship cosmetics can be the difference between being able to hide right under someone's nose or being spotted from across an island. Be sure to dress for the occasion. lol

Thieving pirate game about pirate thievery. Whether you're a PvP person or a PvE person, there's something there for you. Krakens, Megalodons, and skeleton ships can spawn randomly and ruin an otherwise good plan, so be ready to change things up on the fly. You WILL PvP at some point whether you want to or not. Luck of the draw.

Frankly, this game really shines when interacting with other players, be it for teaming up or for a fight. Alliances can be made but don't expect everyone to be friendly. Even alliances can be broken on a whim. You're not safe until that sweet sweet loot is in the hands of an NPC. HAPPY HUNTING!

Guns, cars, explosions, explosive punches, sex, drugs, and great humor...

10/10 - Would get slapped around with a giant purple dildo again

UPDATED Feb 2018:

6 or so months ago when I initially wrote a review, the performance was horrendous with my 4790K@4.50GHz, GTX 970, and 8GB RAM, even running off an SSD. They must have done a good amount of optimization, because I can now run max settings at 1080p and get a solid 60 - 120fps with a slight stutter here and there maybe but mostly perfect.

I absolutely have to recommend running this on an SSD though. When I reinstalled recently, it was on a normal HDD and it was still taking 2 - 5 minutes to get to the main menu and another 5 - 10 just to load into a server. With it running on an SSD, I can have the game started and be roaming around in a minute or two easy. Definitely something to keep in mind.

I was mainly looking for another chill game to hang with friends and do random mindless stuff. I was mostly interested in having another Golf game, but if you're only here for that, this might still be something to hold off on for a bit. Some courses have scripted events like cannons shooting your ball to another part of the course, but something about the way the physics was programmed can leave you stroking out because your ball lands in the wrong place and goes out of bounds each and every attempt.

Outside of that, most of the issues I had with this before have been fixed and they've added more content to keep things interesting with seemingly more to come.