Recent reviews by y=sin(1/x)

I think it would be very easy to harshly judge this game based solely on the trailer and content on the store page. Despite that, it is a thoroughly enjoyable adventure gaming experience. Indeed the trailer doesn't do the graphics and art style justice which actually looks much better in game (although admittedly still very obviously Unity powered). The puzzles are on the simpler end of the spectrum, although I personally prefer that over absurd moon logic puzzles typical of older adventure games. It is relatively short, and can easily be completed in one ~90 minute sitting. For the price asked I think that is very reasonable.

If you like point and click adventure games, high fantasy romantic comedies, and accounting related humor, or any combination of the three, then you owe it to yourself to check this game out.

All you really need to know about this game is given in the description. It was made in 48 hours and it is about anorexia. I would say that it was essentially what I expected, but that wouldn't be doing it justice. The dialogue is very well written and more subtle than I had anticipated, the art direction was fantastic despite being minimalistic and the choices were presented in very clever ways. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that the player is often given the illusion of choice as opposed to any real agency. That may sound like a detriment to gameplay, but it underscores the fact that anorexia is a real condition by making the player feel trapped into making unhealthy decisions.

With all that said I would definitely recommend Shrinking Pains. Even if you take your time with each dialogue screen it only takes around 10 minutes to beat once so if you have time to scroll down to the reviews section of this page you definitely have time to play it. If the premise intrigues you, then you really don't have an excuse not to play it.

Is it a good game? yes
Is it as good as Fallout 3? no
Is it as good as Fallout: New Vegas? no
Is it as good as Fallout 1 or Fallout 2? no

TLDR; buy if you want a game with many hours of content. Don't if you want an authentic Fallout/RPG experience.

I want to preface this by saying that Fallout 4 is by no stretch of the imagination a bad game, and there certainly is a lot of content on offer. The problem is that Fallout 4 is no longer an RPG, it is an action game with RPG elements. I know that some people will disagree with me on this, but Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas actually were RPG games, and indisputably the first 2 games were. You had to chose a specific build, and couldn't master everything. Skills are essentially completely gone, leaving only perks. But the thing that I found most obnoxious was the transition to a Mass Effect style dialog system where all dialog trees give you 4 choices. I find this annoying in other games that claim to be RPGs and I find it annoying here, it makes all dialog feel artificial and samey.

Related to dialog, I was also severely disapointed by the story. Gone are the vibrant and colorful characters found throughout the wasteland of previous games, there are very few friendly faces with a name besides "Settler", and the characters you do meet all feel fairly stock. As for the plot, its uninspired at best (although I haven't beaten it, so I can only really comment on the beginning). In a desparate attempt to match the emotional impact felt in Fallout 3, the story seems eerily similar. In Fallout 3 you are motivated to explore the wasteland in an effort to find your father. Swap that last word with son and you have the basic outline of the plot of Fallout 4.

On the other hand, the gameplay was at least tolerable, and works as a decent FPS. Of course, that alone says that there isn't much customization on offer here. It seems like shooting at people is the only thing you do in this game, there aren't many quests offered at all (especially towards the beginning), and while some offer the ability to use stealth, virtually none of them give you a way to talk your way out of things, something that seems vital for an authentic RPG experience.

As for the settlement management, I love the idea of settlement building in the Fallout universe, but it was poorly executed here. No matter what you do, all of the buildings you make appear cut and pasted, and start to look downright ugly. The actual process of building requires you to walk around and place prefab units down, and has virtually no tutorialization whatsoever. It feels clunky, and doesn't fit with the control scheme required for an action game like this. I think it would have worked much better if the settlement building were a standalone game of its own, instead of being tacked on to a heavily action oriented game. As it stands the settlements just get in the way of things, and it seems like the developers intentionally included fewer established settlements on the assumption that players would build their own. For an RPG, I would prefer the ability to interact with the people living in existing settlements as opposed to the ability to create settlements and defend them against raiders, which seems more suited for a 4x strategy game.

In conclusion, I am recommending this game, because I fully expect to get 100+ hours of playtime out of this game, and it still is a decent action game. Unfortunately, fans of the Fallout series, and RPGs in general, will be dissapointed, and would probably be better served by replaying one of the old games. However, there is one other thing that I must make absolutely clear, DON'T BUY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE EVEN A MODERATELY UNDERPOWERED RIG. The optimization in this game is absolutely pathetic, and will give virtually unplayable frame rates and tons of microstutters. The graphical improvements are hard to spot, but the performance unimprovements are impossible to miss.

This is a great 4x space exploration game. You will waste hours playing it.

It's pretty clear that this is a source engine game, but that is hardly a bad thing. The ironic thing is that I actually like it a lot more than I like Counter Strike, historically accurate revolvers take a long time to reload and often are slow to refire. This makes for a more thoughtful and strategic style of gameplay. Best of all it is not even remotely pay to win, indeed I don't even think there is an in game store at all; the only thing you need to win is skill.
As for criticisms I would say that the gameplay modes aren't terribly interesting. Almost all servers just run some version of shootout which basically just involves running around killing people without much in the way of a goal. I have seen a few payload maps, but I think it would benefit from a little more gameplay variety. All that being said I can't let this game slip by without a very stong recomendation. It is 100% free, you have no excuse to not download this game.

From what I can tell every negative review of this game I've seen has been about issues with Uplay. While annoying, if you do get the game to work you're certain to enjoy this game.
I don't know too much about driving games, so I can't say how good the physics or implementation is. That being said the shifting mechanic puts a really interesting spin on traditional driving and racing games. You can shift into oncoming lanes of traffic and ram into opponents or just drive around aimlessly in any car you want. The missions make good use of all of the mechanics available and add a lot of variety.
Other than the gameplay the central story is arguably fairly generic. However everything gives the impression of an old buddy cop movie and the characters are well crafted enough to be engaging and entertaining. All told I would definitely reccomend it. I might even go so far as to say I've been rather warmed to the genre as a whole.