Recent reviews by ᚣᛖᛁᎶ

More fun than the remake.

No need to beat around the bush, if you like Star Trek then you'll probably like this, simply because games in this setting are few and far between, and RPGs practically unheard of. STO is quite content rich, if you saw it on TV you'll probably find it here too, whether it's from TOS, TNG, Discovery or the movies. The bad news is that it's full of microtransactions and a lot of things are paywalled, but you also have events running pretty much constantly that often award top tier ships and equipment, and the stuff you get from just leveling up and doing story missions is perfectly serviceable for most of the content. The story writing is a bit hit and miss, as is the voice acting, but many of the original actors reprise their roles as characters from the show, including the late Rene Auberjoinis, Leonard Nimoy and Aron Eisenberg in what was likely the last bit of voice acting they ever did. Though somewhat disappointingly, William Shatner does not show up as Kirk, despite doing voicework in other Star Trek games (and TekWar).

However, if you're going to give it a go, I would strongly suggest making an account through Arc rather than Steam, to be able to take advantage of the various promo codes. Additionally, every so often there are 'recruitment events' where characters of a specific type created during the event get additional goals to be completed at your leisure, with nice rewards for completing them. These are temporal recruitment for TOS Starfleet, delta recruitment for TNG Starfleet, Romulans and Klingons, and gamma recruitment for the Dominion. So it pays to wait for such an event before creating a specific character.

An inexpensive and addictive survombie game, never mind the perpetual early access status. It was already more complete 5 years ago than most modern AAA games on release

You can get it for around 1$ at key shops, and for that price it's worth it. The story sucks, but the gameplay is fun and it has co op. Which works, most of the time.

One of the best Build engine games in the world, second only to Blood. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a tiny grasshopper.

Fun and pretty accessible. Brings back some of the Midway-era characters after almost 20 years. Jean-Claude Van Damme is in it. Much better graphics than MK11. Good story if you care about that sort of thing in a fighting game. Only downsides are all the microtransactions and the price of the Kombat Pack (which isn't even finished yet). However, there are a lot of free mods out there you can download and use for extra skins etc.

Edit: So I've defended this game before, but I can't in good faith recommend it when Bethesda are selling single short quests for 7 bucks a pop. It's bad enough that the base game is lacking in story content, the only real, proper quests are the main one and those of the factions, which are more like the guilds in Skyrim than the interacting factions of FNV or F4. Every other quest is a radiant fetch or kill quest with little to no story to go with it. Most planets are barren wastelands with the same few prefab locations procedurally scattered around, and while more interesting locations do exist, you have to be lucky to find them. Filling the content void with overpriced quests is a scummy solution, I'm not saying all new content should be free, but come on man. There is no way 10 short bounty quests with 2 new items each are worth the price of the base game. And to those who would say 'oh just don't buy it then', it makes no difference if I do or don't, when millions of other people will inevitably buy it (they already have, as a matter of fact) and send a message that we like having our games cut up and sold to us piece by overpriced piece.

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First off, it's important to note that this isn't a space sim, it's a Bethesda-formula RPG with a space setting. If you played their previous games, you know what to expect because let's be honest, the core formula has remained unchanged since Morrowind.

Random loose observations:
- The ground combat is pretty much like Fallout 4, except with some more modern FPS movement like ledge mantling and sliding. Unfortunately, the slide needs to be unlocked with a perk and is kind of pathetic.
- Space flight is limited to the orbits of planets and space stations, and all ship combat takes place there. Other planets are travelled to via warp jump.
- Some ground combat areas have no gravity. Shootouts in zero G are pretty fun.
- At character creation you will pick a background and up to 3 traits. These aren't just starting bonuses, many of them will unlock new dialogue options. Like in Fallout 1 & 2, traits have an advantage and disadvantage.
- There are a LOT of guns. Since loot is level scaled, the further into the game you are, the larger the variety you will see.
- There is a joinable pirate faction with it's own storyline and radiant quests involving piracy, theft and smuggling.
- Ship building is very satisfying, but there are some annoying limitations which hopefully mods can do away with.
- The uninhabited planets have random caves and outposts scattered around, but they're so far apart it makes you wish you had a vehicle. Wilderness exploration seems pretty pointless at the moment when there is a fair amount of hand-crafted content which is much more engaging.
- Many of the non-faction sidequests are unfortunately just simple fetch quests. It's a case of quantity over quality with them.
- As of writing this, there are still plenty of bugs to be ironed out. Anyone who said it was bug free clearly lied. Some missions seem to have been tested more thoroughly than others.
- The carry weight limit is a big pain in the ass considering how much loot there is to collect, not to mention all the materials you will need for research and gear modifications.

Might add more thoughts later.

More Subnautica, this time in the arctic. The mostly environmental storytelling of the OG is replaced by a character driven plot with a talkative protagonist and other characters, human and otherwise, to talk to. The other significant change is that a large portion of the playable map is now above ground, and a brand new hoverbike has been added for traversing those areas. Aside from that, it plays pretty much the same as Subnautica. The graphics are vastly improved and the new biomes are arguably even more visually impressive than in the original. Unfortunately, the choice of vehicles is somewhat disappointing. There is no epic endgame vehicle like the Cyclops, instead you get the much more compact Seatruck which is basically a Seamoth that can be upgraded to act as a mobile base. The hoverbike looks cool, but it's so fragile that you're better off just stomping around the land areas in the good old Prawn suit, which returns mostly unchanged. Overall I would recommend Below Zero if you enjoyed the original and are looking for more, just don't expect it to have quite the same impact, because it won't.

The base game is great, but this DLC is just not fun. Infinite enemy spawners, enemies that get another turn before dying, 2 annoying jerkoffs hiding in the vents and taunting you throughout the whole facility that you never get to kill. Those spawners already made the final stretch of Steeltown very tedious and no one liked them there, so obviously making them abundant and designing all of the major combat encounters around them is the most logical decision. The real icing on the turd cake is the unavoidable final bossfight. It's not bad enough that it combines all of the worst mechanics in the DLC, it's also preceded by an unskippable cutscene, dialogue, and then another unskippable cutscene that you have to get through every time you reload. It all feels more like a big middle finger at the player than something that's intended to be a fun experience. There is some unique new gear to be found, but it's all capped at level 21 so if you play this on an endgame save, you won't find anything better than what you already have. The narrative is pretty bland too, the whole nuke cult thing has been done to death at this point and this one doesn't stand out in any meaningful way.

A beautiful journey and pretty good survival game. The base building system offers near limitless possibilities, and is also entirely skippable, the perfect balance.