Recent reviews by IceNineOcean

Super fun game, gets really frantic at times, but there's nothing quite like dropping a pod full of rocket launchers on the head of one big bug, then using both rockets to kill two other big bugs, or strafing a swarm of bugs with a flamethrower torching maniacally, constantly calling in fighter jets and orbital strikes. Genuinely the most fun shooter I've played in ages.

Really fun factory game, it's the only one that really competes with Factorio, in my opinion. The overarching project of building a dyson sphere that you can visibly see on the horizon give the player a sense of progression outside of your own factory. Furthermore, the game has systems that slowly unlock though progression and the scope of the game slowly unveils as you build up and expand.

The game is still early access so there's some systems that currently feel incomplete, namely the combat system, which is serviceable on planetary surfaces, but fighting in space feels incomplete at the moment.

Accurate to tabletop because Liberators are T R A S H

for real though, it's decent. If you're a big Dawn of War 2 head, I'd even call it great. Some of the systems feel kind half-baked, I think, for instance, being able to set a new retreat point would be nice, but who knows, that might get patched in, or it might be an intentional choice, but it is a point of frustration. Sticky combat seems like a point of contention, I'm personally kinda fine with it. Same thing with the combat triangle of counters; the combat triangle doesn't counter that hard, if you use the abilities to charge into archers with assault guys, for instance, you're going to win that fight, also, numbers generally matter more than unit counters, the unit counters simply provide highest effectiveness (and there are, admittedly, some hard unit counters).

Unit information is lacking, so there isn't any sort of numbers to crunch, which is frustrating to an extent; you gotta kind gauge if a fight is worth picking based on vibes and the unit triangle, which I think leads to some of the unit triangle contention. I'd personally like at least some stat numbers.

UI and hotkeys are non-standard and take some getting used to, but at least you still can create control groups and queue orders, which is the biggest thing for me.

Still, in general, an enjoyable first video game foray into the universe of AoS. Far from perfect, but by no means bad.

With 2.0 and Phantom Liberty added, I can now solidly say this game is great, the Phantom Liberty questline is really fun and feels like it actually does a lot of the ideas possible in the setting not attempted in the base game, and even some of the new basic gigs added are really top-tier stuff.

I probably would have given Cyberpunk 2077 like a 6/10 on launch, I didn;t think it was bad per se, but it felt like it missed a lot of opportunities with the setting, I'd say that now it's much closer to an 8.5/10 or so.

Narratively, it still feels like it's more interested in capturing an aesthetic than exploring conceptually or reckoning with the themes invoked by the cyberpunk genre; but that's more or less expected, and at least the game does so more thoughtfully than some of the cyberpunk shlock I've seen elsewhere.

it's good

Absolutely A+ tier Immersive Sim; this is the genre done right, and feels like a real successor to System Shock 2. I honestly slept on this game way too long, and hope Arkane can make another one of this caliber. Genuinely the only modern game that feels like it can stand alongside titles like Deus Ex and System Shock 2 within the genre.

Really cool aesthetic and design. Definitely has a bit of a retro Silent Hill/Resident Evil vibe to it, but like, in a fascistic sci-fi universe. Inventory management can feel limiting at times, but it forces you to make decisions regarding weapons and ammunition, so it's not without game design considerations. Otherwise it does a good amount to modernize the retro formula; it's not adhering overly rigidly to nostalgia, and the PS1 style graphics are honestly used to great effect for atmosphere; hiding detail is used to great effect to draw out a sense of menace that many higher resolution monsters lose in clarity of rendering.

I'm doing my part!

Best game

30 minute find the battery simulator, would not recommend.