Recent reviews by default animal

Great visuals and sound effects.

The gimmick with the controls is not great. I see that the enemies have poor AI (simply standing still and firing full auto) and really bad accuracy to compensate for the controls. I would rather the controls were better, and we had a harder game with smarter AI.

This is a game I want to like and I want to see improve, but cannot recommend in its current state. It is worth a wishlist though IMO because it does get updates and the dev does read + respond to feedback.

A major playability problem with this game is all the NPCs - particularly shopkeepers who seem to be the only source of new equipment, consistent ammo, and food? - all killing each other before you even get to them.

I guess it has something to do with the reputation system and the fact they walk around, get friendly fired, and retaliate until the town slaughters each other.

So I'm going to try the other gamemode eventually. The story mode feels wrong because of this even if it is meant to be screwed up and absurd.

The gameplay is fun, when I am not doing anything involving the inventory. The art is good. Would like to see more interactivity with the world and maybe the grapple-hat-toss physics to be a bit more useful.

My review will likely change when cooperative mode is in, and there are some sanity checks to allow NPC shopkeepers to survive or at least respawn if you rest at a fire.

The terrible ammo system and tiny amount of enemy/weapon variety make playing this game feel like a chore. The way the levels are laid out also discourages exploration (no secrets, nothing big to find), and you have to repeatedly play through them fully despite them being completely linear.

I have much more respect for the original Shadow Warrior after playing this ugly, clunky game. It is surely the worst Build Engine game you've never heard of, with its floaty jumping, lame weapon selection, cramped corridors, on-rails levels, trickle of toothless enemies, and overreliance on vertical looking.

You can't even save manually, and checkpoints cannot be loaded after closing the game, so playing the game in short bursts is impossible, as your progress will constantly be forgotten.

The remaster itself is fine, everything worked as expected and even alt-tabbing worked, big surprise. But unless you are seeking nostalgia after having enjoyed the original, or maybe you just have really low standards or a high amount of curiosity, skip this, pick up a better shooter instead, others in this genre completely bowl this one over in terms of fun factor.

Fun for a little while but not very deep, and clearly designed around the online play, which is completely dead. Few levels, vehicles, and race types, so playing against bots is sure to get old quick. This is not the Twisted Metal I was hoping for

6/10 - Only buy on sale with friends, and be ready to be disappointed.

Besides all other flaws, downgrading the servers after the game's playerbase dropped by 92% was a foolish move. They upgraded the enemy AI but you will never notice as they now freeze up completely, and hit registry/movement are even laggier and glitchier than in Conan Exiles now, that's hard to do, and we're not even talking about PvP, just fighting NPCs has noticeable lag.

It is pure myth that a good game peaks at launch.

What really happened here was Funcom not having a longevity plan to keep the game enjoyable except for a very small group of people who enjoy games in the "tedious but easy" category.

They did not have the tech to merge servers, even though they KNEW most servers would have less than 10 people online for most of the day. The servers felt empty at population cap, you would never see anyone else because the map is too big. Now, most of the remaining playerbase are trapped and the only option is to restart on a new server keeping none of your progress, but where? None are populated, each one has just a handful of people doing easily soloable farming gameplay, they don't need or want you there with them.

This is a serious issue in a game with a "main quest" that involves 5-10 minute missions where you spend equal time in cutscenes as walking around empty environments with nothing to find.

Why am I writing this review now after 100ish hours? I think the first 40-50 hours were enjoyable although the game was obviously flawed. When everyone I know quit the game, I knew things would only get more tedious for me. The further you go into the story, you realize just how little they put into encounters, quests, and the later levels. As you leave the tutorial area you will slowly watch as environments get less detailed. Quests get buggier. Combat gets easier. The story is just plain horrible.

Exploration has its moments because you will eventually find fantastic gear but then you realize it makes you so overpowered and the slow crawl of the main story's pace means you'll go another 15ish hours before you experience even a little challenge again. You do get access to vehicles early but even the air vehicles feel slow when you realize your entire server is a ghost town.

Other stuff. The UI is overcomplicated, controls are gummy both in action and in menus, graphics/performance are a prime example of Unreal Engine, in particular UE4/5 underdelivering. Sound design is mediocre at best.

I don't have much that's good to say about Dune Awakening. They threw away a lot of potential by making it so easy, and the survival so tedious and uncomplicated. The player gets way too strong, even not using spice powers. Unlocking tech through singleplayer story nonsense makes this awkward in coop at best, and while not every game must be coop to be good, if a game forces me to play it online, it better be good in coop, but if it's easy to solo, why do I need buds to play a literal sand farming simulator...

An indie developer would make a way more interesting game. Funcom as usual takes too many safe bets and uses the weakest tech available to push out incomplete products that feel like forever early access.

Same as I said at the start. 6/10 game: Worth it on a 50% off sale? Maybe. don't bother alone, best experience is treating it like an action game with your friends, farm as little as possible, have fun with the combat, maybe make a cool base, but don't expect the game to evolve after the 40 hour mark, you already saw everything.

I will change my review to recommended, independent of all flaws, if the game opens "hard mode" servers where cooperative play is absolutely necessary and solo is painful or nearly impossible, and the tedium of resource gathering is reduced so more time can be spent exploring or in combat.

Imprecise controls, mouse lag, horrendous performance. Obnoxious and distracting AI voice acting. Look elsewhere if you want indie gold.

After playing for about an hour, I had to check this game wasn't an early access title - it has potential, but it's not getting substantial updates anymore.

The concept of the game is fantastic, and the foundation is decent, but it doesn't have the depth of a simulation, and it lacks the breadth to be a sandbox.

So all that's left is the "social experiment" sort of experience, but the servers are all completely empty, even at US and EU peak times over the weekend.

If this game had more modes of play and a mission editor, people would still be playing it today, but the server list is a passworded graveyard, and as far as the solo gameplay goes, you'll see everything it has to offer in under an hour.

Great game. I wish more people were playing multiplayer, particularly in cooperative mode. But it is pretty fun in singleplayer. Campaign is seriously addictive.

There is a lot of depth here to discover as you progress through the ages, many different events that actually lead to battles, and when you do get to those real-time battles, your tactics can make a huge difference.

I found the building UI to be a bit tough. I couldn't find more than like one or two hot keys, so it took a long time to build even simple stuff without decorations. But it does feel good to design something new that you felt your fleet was lacking, and watch it perform even better than you expected once you take it to battle.

I also could not figure out where to launch expeditions during the age of exploration or send out trading caravans during the age of commerce. I checked the manual and googled around but did not find anything yet.

This game doesn't hold your hand at all, the initial tutorials do help but a lot of the satisfaction here will come out of figuring it out all on your own.

Full recommendation from me. This is another indie gem which is criminally cheap and occupies a unique space. I hope it gets a sequel because I really want to experience this in multiplayer.

Not sure yet. It's early access. Doesn't really do anything unique, it's just okay. Worth waiting to see how updates pan out.

Valheim being the gold standard of this genre means RuneScape Dragonwilds has some seriously big boots to fill. At the moment, it does fall short in many regards and commits some openworld-survival-craft cardinal sins. I think it can be made better. But that will take the studio a lot of time and a lot of attention to detail.

+ Building produces some cool looking structures and bases. Good variety here.
+ Combat animations look good. Maybe a bit flashy for my taste, didn't try all yet.
- Resource cost to repair.
- Hunger/thirst way too spammy, it depletes very quickly, shoving 3 pies and glasses of water down your throat for mere sustenance every 10-15 minutes was never fun in these games.
- Combat feels weightless: player attacks too fast, for instance. Couldn't identify any reason for executing combo finishers and specials. Not a matter of it getting better in more challenging areas, the way you can just snap around with no momentum to worry about doesn't feel right. Please make combat tough and every move consequential, not a weird animation cancelling snapfest.
- Physics engine is not very sophisticated or impactful.
- Graphics engine lets down a decent foundational art style: flickering lighting issues, no good antialiasing solution, too much postprocessing causing a lack of visual clarity... lots of which you cannot turn off.
- Performance leaves a lot to be desired. Likely down to bugs with graphics engine as there's very little to render onscreen.
- UI and usability nightmare, a big leap backward from Valheim.
- Camera controls. There are none.

Didn't try multiplayer yet. Will be revising this review once there have been some patches and I've played with friends.

Jagex, if you're reading this, you can do it. Nail the fundamentals. Take more notes from Valheim, trust yourself to innovate where that's not appropriate. Don't go back 10 years and mimic Ark, Enshrouded, and all the other garbage.

Frantic, gory fun.

First let's get this old mixup out of the way. It's not really like FEAR at all, that game doesn't even have a sprint button and you are much more durable to compensate.

This game closer to a Crysis/Halo/Doom2016 hybrid: you can only wield two weapons, you can cloak, and your superhuman strength and speed balances out ammo being much less available than in FEAR. You're an escaped experiment who can dual wield shotguns and turn men into grenades. If anything, the player is the terrifying monster in this horror game.

It's not perfect. Trying to do stuff like pick up replacement weapons during combat is just a janky feeling and I think they could improve that if they're going to make a sequel. I've also been shot at by enemies pointing their guns in the opposite direction but that happens pretty rarely.

The writing and voice acting were over the top edgy in an "adolescent trying to be badass" way. I thought the overall plot was great, but the main story was surprisingly short.

Bonus points for the devs letting you turn down all the screenshake effects. Unreal Engine 4 is a major weakness of this game, giving the graphics a dated look & no good anti-aliasing solution. From a design standpoint, despite the high contrast lighting, visibility is not great, but at least we have superpowers. I like that the loading screens are instant, almost making jumps between one level to the next seamless, if not for running around the "main base" area.

Overall, pretty good game, short but sweet.