Recent reviews by Captain Weekend

It honestly pains me that I can't recommend TF2 in its current state to other players. There was a time when I could have easily given this game a positive review, however that was at least a decade ago. The game is now plagued with major issues that need to be addressed, but Valve have long since neglected the game and it's unlikely the game will ever be fixed.

Probably the most talked about issue with the game, the fact that casual play is completely plagued with cheater bots which even join in groups in an effort to not be kicked, and will even kick real players. This has gotten so bad that on lesser played maps and game modes there are full teams of sniper aimbots that make the game unplayable.

To make this even worse, players are actually greatly outnumbered, not by cheater bots, but by item farming bots. You may think TF2 is one of the most played games on steam, however real human players only account for about a quarter to a third of the active players. Even the all time peak player count is due to these item farming bots.

The worst thing about this is that the owners of these botnets that are choking out the game have harassed anyone who have tried to expose their activities, sending death threats, encouraging harassment, and even in one case calling in a fake bomb threat. Valve's complacency over this issue has led to these botnet hosts being allowed to operate with impunity, and even worse valve have effectively profited off of these botnet hosts that have been attacking their actual players.

TF2 used to have a brilliant matchmaking system known as quickplay, you could easily join any Valve server, and you could easily switch between teams if you wanted to, which helped games to not be steamrolls. Nowadays every game in casual is a steamroll one way or the other, and there is so much wasted time waiting to join games, or waiting for the server to switch maps.

This matchmaking system has been unpopular since it was implemented in 2016, yet Valve has never once listened to this community feedback, instead only taking the advice of a handful of pro players who do not represent the greater TF2 community. Not to mention Valve also listened to this group of pro players about game balance, that led to the game being less fun for the majority of players.

This wouldn't be a massive issue if it weren't for the fact that the shrinking playerbase has led to the collapse of community servers. Some hosting groups like Skial and UGC still exist, but mostly run meme gamemodes, and other groups like Uncletopia run the game in a way that attracts competitive players that don't want the casual experience that TF2 is made for.

The game has not received a significant update since 2017, ever since the game has only received cosmetic updates that serve to line Valve's pockets by encouraging people to gamble on loot boxes. It has also caused the file size of the game to balloon as the majority of content that is added are seasonal maps that are only available to play for a couple months a year.

The only reason Valve keeps the game alive is because of the item economy still makes them enough money to warrant keeping it alive, and that if one of their item economies were allowed to collapse it could threaten the integrity of the item economies of DOTA 2 and Counter Strike 2.

Do I still play this game? Yes, at this point where I've played the game for over a decade I think I will end up always coming back like an abused spouse. However, unless Valve fix these major issues I will never recommend this game to anyone else.

I play it for the story I swear!

The game is alright but lacks common features in tetris/ tetris clones, such as being able to see what the next upcoming piece is, or being able to hold pieces.

Also. a recent update reset all my progress.

Needs a dab emote.

What you see is what you get with this game, and I can't really fault it for that. Yes, it's a unity asset flip, but there is an undercurrent of fun when you realise none of it is to be taken seriously.

Also, if the devs do stick on track with this game and add multiplayer and character creation, I can see it being well worth the price.

If you like Borderlands 2 or TF2 enough to want some cosmetics at a cheap price and a little effort, then by all means this is worth it. Also if you enjoyed the previous poker night, I'd say this is a straight improvement over the last, so it is good as an upgrade.

If you aren't good at poker and really want the cosmetics, then follow this link: wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_hold_'em_starting_hands#Statistics_based_on_real_online_play
The real online play figures are the easiest to understand and likely most accurate, they should give you a good idea of which hands you should play and which you should fold, also the game has a cheat sheet if you can't remember what beats what.

Pros:
*Dialogue is fun to listen to
*pretty good as poker sims go
*choice of texas holdem and omaha
*incentives to play past rewards for other games

Cons:
*Dialogue gets repeaty quicker than it should
*Claptrap and GladOS can get annoying
*Too much dialogue is unskippable
*The game can often feel like it's cheating

Dialogue
First the good, it's funny and well written, with lots of references to the characters' source material. However, after about an hour you've pretty much heard it all, and then it can get really irritating. The issue is the fact that a lot of it is unskippable, poker night 1 at least had an option for minimal conversation, however this seems to be absent in 2 as far as I've found. And whilst muting dialogue helps, it still leads to long, boring pauses where the pace is slowed in favour of conversation you've already heard 100 times before. This is also where the issue with Claptrap and GladOS come in, whilst the quality of these characters' dialogue is subjective (I've never been a fan of claptrap) it gets incredibly annoying having to sit through their dialogue, granted claptrap isn't the worst (it's more how his voice sounds than what he says a lot of the time) GladOS is present throughout the game and will constantly interrupt to berate you, which whilst at first humourus and definitely in character, it gets annoying fast, especially due to the fact that her lines can be fairly long and she talks very slowly.

In conclusion of this point, dialogue is both the main draw and its main drawback. An option to minimize interrupting dialogue would've helped the replay value greatly.

Cosmetics
The Borderlands 2 ones are decent compared to the standard of the title, although the TF2 ones are definitely the main draw, the necrinomicrown and long fall loafers can easily go well with other cosmetics for their respective classes, also the samson skewer goes well with the brock locks heavy hair, essentially letting you cosplay as Brock as Heavy, also he has other military theme cosmetics it can go well with.

As for in the game itself, this is where the incentive to keep playing past the other game cosmetics comes in, After every tournament (unless you are the first knockout) you will earn credits which you can use to either buy drinks or buy cosmetics to change the theme of the inventory. This is a clear improvement over the last where you could only change the decks and felt, in 2 you can change the decks, felt and chips, choosing from a borderlands, sam and max, venture bros, army of darkness, or portal theme. If you equip all of the same theme, the background of the inventory changes, along with the music, and will also have special scenes for player knockouts and winning.

Gameplay
It's poker. The only other poker games I've played is poker night 1 and the minigame in new super mario bros, easy to say it trumps them both, also I'd say it's likely a step above any free browser/flash one you'd find.

However, the game can often feel unfair. Now whilst this may just be a case of poker being based on probability, but you can never tell with a game just by playing it that if it's following the same rules you are. I'm definitely not the only one who experiences showdowns that seem like a sure victory, but the ai manage to either get really lucky, or just completely trump your hand, like for instance one time I had two pair beaten by three of a kind, then a three of a kind beaten by a straight, then the next I had a straight beaten by a flush, at that point where it's beating it with the winning hand one station higher consecutively it feels incredibly unfair, and like the game isn't being honest or even following any kind of rules. This is mainly an issue if you're going for the achievement of having $1,000,000, as sometimes your losses can feel very forced.

Final Conclusion
The game is good, and worth it even if you only want it for cosmetics. I'd maybe say wait til sale but at £4/$5 it's cheap enough for what it offers. The game is only hindered by the dialogue getting repeaty and the game sometimes feeling unfair, however PvAI card games will almost always feel at least slightly suspect no matter if it's based on gambling or not.

Pros:
+let me get rid of one of those "Coat of arms - Yellow Farmer" things so it's not clogging up my inventory

Cons:
-tons of missing textures making it literally unplayable

I've played for a short amount of time, but the issues are already glaring. First off, I would like to disclose that I did not actually pay for this, I got it when it was free for 24 hours.

The major issue I can see is that the courses get way too complex, and sticking to par or under can be incredibly difficult or impossible. The arrows gradually become a suggestion, as you can easily get lost on the course, mainly due to the levels being built vertically, and your scout not being able to travel in 3 dimensions, only 2. Also, many of the harder holes can be weirdly easy, as going off course can make you filter past most of the course, getting you under par by what could be considered cheating.

Another massive issue is that restarting a hole DOES NOT reset your strokes, pretty much making it pointless. The only reason to ever restart a hole would be so you can get past a part with less strokes, but it not resetting your strokes makes it pointless, you may as well just not care about score and just blast your way to the end, but then why really play in the first place? And why even bother going for a score when the scoring system itself is bugged? Sometimes, even if you shoot under par, you still get an above par score, so there is really no reason to play at all.

The scenery also gets in the way a lot, often making you unable to see where the ball is or is going,
a full top down view and see through scenery would've helped a lot.

Whilst this issue is subjective, I find its a definite problem for me, and that's that you don't know where the ball is going to go when you hit it, aside from the general direction, or if you have already hit the ball and recalled it. Along with the physics being buggy, it does not help to be blind on where the ball is going to go, or how it's going to react when it collides with a surface, and it's not fair for trial and error to be present when the game centers around taking as few strokes as possible.

This game's major issue is that it wants to introduce more complex mechanics, but can't even get the basics down first, I could not imagine paying money for this as there are better minigolf games out there for free.

♥♥♥♥♥♥ dice rolls really ruin this game, not hitting shots that were 95% accurate, then having an enemy that barely ever misses, creates a huge imbalance, which I wouldn't mind if I were looking for a hard as nails game, but I'm playing on the easiest mode and still having a tough time, which is made harder when I'm in no way a veteran of this type of turn based combat or XCOM. The challenge in this game comes more through trial and error situations (for instance, making the enemy come from a completely different direction for no apparent reason, and with no warning, making your first turn setup completely pointless) and that the mechanics are fundamentally broken; I'm aware that just because it's above 50% doesn't make it certain, but I'm missing shots way too often for it to merit the stats its given me, it may as well just be a coin flip or spinning wheel considering how often accurate shots miss, although the same never seems to happen to the enemy, they will be at their furthest range and still get a shot for half a soldier's health, sure, one or two of them may miss one or two times, but the enemy aim never seems to suffer at all. I couldn't ever imagine turning the difficulty up on this game, it seems there's virtually no difference between difficulty levels.

Also, the tutorial is unskippable and way too long, it halts gameplay to essentially force you to do what it wants and only what it wants for the first couple levels, it may as well just be on autopilot for the first fifteen minutes, it's really annoying when starting new games to have to sit through a long and boring tutorial showing me what I already know how to do; if there is a way to skip it, I haven't found it.

The one merit the game has is that its story and setting is really good, the weapons, units and maps are all very interesting, and it does a good job of fleshing out its own world. If this were just a medieval/fantasy or anything else, I probably wouldn't even bother picking it up.

Sadly I can't reccomend this purely just because of how flawed the combat is, which is especially bad when combat is the main meat of the game. Hopefully its flaws will be fixed in the sequel.

Pros:
-Great narration by Stamper, his storytelling is amazing and he gives a lot of energy in his performance, he really makes the game unique
-great music
-lots to do past main storymode

Cons:
-recycles a lot towards the end, you'll reach parts in the last two chapters that are just straight recycled from past levels, with no further challenge added
-Towards the end, a lot of the gameplay is no longer fun puzzles and is now just fiddly and hard to pull off tricks, made even worse by the last level that is just one big fiddly mess that is annoying and really doesn't do the game justice as a finale.

This game is great, but story mode is really too long. Had it ended at chapter 6, it would've been fine, but the last two chapters (whilst adding some awesome and unmissable cutscenes) add a lot of stressful and unfun levels (with much recycled content) and feel like they were more bloating it for time than anything else.