Recent reviews by Vintage Devilry

You can make a game with it if you're mentally ill enough.

A painstakingly-researched cat husbandry simulator.

Giving this a positive review just to spite all the review bombing toddlers crying that they have to wait or click on a different launcher to play a game that isn't even out yet. Even more so than Epic, you idiots and your endless outrage are fostering a console war mentality on PC. The exclusivity announcement was worth it just to see your heads explode. How many of you entitled nerds received this game for free but are still complaining?

"Master race" my ass.

Oh, Borderlands is fun. It has graphics and you shoot things.

A solid enough survival game, even taking into account how poorly it runs and the atrocious load times.

The community, however, is essentially a microcosm of everything wrong with online gaming. Chinese hackers? Check. Unsupervised 11 year olds? Check. Idiots spamming unfunny memes? Check. Slurs a-plenty? Check.

As ever, I find myself wondering why I thought I'd enjoy playing a multiplayer game.

$20 for one of the best entries in a brilliant series. Yakuza tells the decades-long story of Kazuma Kiryu, career criminal with a heart of gold. Yakuza 0 is a prequel to the original game (set in the glitzy 80s), and is a great place to start for newcomers.

$20 for 82 hours of gameplay. That's a single playthrough, and I've still got half a dozen unfinished substories and a bunch of new unlocked features like New Game+ to mess around with.

$20 for one of the best localizations of any game in recent memory. Yakuza 0's violent crime tale is excellent and well-told, with a memorable trio of antagonists and plenty of manly tear moments. But it's the surreal, hilarious side quests and activities that steal the show. Stare in confused awe as Kiryu competes in slot car racing with small children, then wanders to a bowling alley where he wins a chicken capable of working at a property management firm! Wonder if someone spiked your drink as you help club owner and unhinged maniac Goro Majima take down five rival club owners using the awesome power of friendship, playing dress-up and hitting people with baseball bats! Question the meaning of existence as you guide Kiryu on a stealth mission to acquire an adult magazine for seriously dubious reasons!

TWENTY DOLLARS. For Sega at their absolute best.

And finally...

$20, because the port has some issues. The game ran smoothly at 60fps on my modest system after a few tweaks to fix the most glaring issues, but it would still periodically hang and skip frames every ten minutes or so. I was never able to resolve this. Certainly not enough to ruin the immersion, but it does suck if Kiryu's singing karaoke or dancing when it happens. The port's hardly Deadly Premonition or Way of the Samurai bad, but be ready to do some damage control.

That said, this is still my GOTY for 2018 by a mile.

I've tried to get into this game so many times since ponying up for the Give Us More Money Edition, and every time I quit after an hour or so, annoyed enough that I usually uninstall it. Like I'm teaching it a lesson instead of just wasting bandwidth. Half a year will pass and I'll look forlornly at the screenshot section and think, "some of those later levels look like everything I want in a horror game," and then decide to repeat this miserable process again.

I hate The Evil Within. I hate its clunky controls. I hate how weirdly optimized the port is. I hate how even when I'm playing it as intended, it still feels like I'm doing it incorrectly. I hate how its maps and boss fights are designed. I hate the lumbering, slow pace. I hate that you die more often than a Sierra adventure game protagonist just trying to understand what the game expects you to do. I hate that it has so many awesome things to show me and I'll never see them because I'd rather eat my own face than deal with the brutally unfun experience of actually playing it.

Maybe this review will change when I inevitably torture myself again in half a year. Probably not, though.

As my "lifelong gamer" status slowly but surely gives way to "old jaded gamer," I find myself being drawn more and more towards experiences like Euro Truck Simulator 2. No hack writing, no anime designs, no tired quests to save the world, no twitchy gameplay, no cutscenes to pull me out of what little immersion I can still muster. Just me, my machine and a sprawling network of European highways rendered in careful, beautiful detail. If I don't feel like growing my business, I can simply cruise from country to country, taking in the varied and striking scenery. I can even select from a number of internet radio stations covering several genres of music if the roar of my Scania grows tiresome.

You needn't be a truck enthusiast to enjoy this game. I couldn't tell you who half the manufacturers are or where they come from. But when you're pulling a pair of trailers through a mountain pass on a stormy night and nailing every treacherous turn like you were made for it, none of that actually matters. This is a game you play to unwind and relax after a long day, regardless of where your gaming interests typically lie.

There is a lot of DLC to consider, much of it cosmetic in nature. There have also been four (soon to be five) major map expansions adding entire new countries, industries, cities and objectives to an already ambitious base game. I highly recommend you eventually purchase these, as you get a lot of content for the price and it very much enriches the experience. Like many, I'm wary of being nickel and dimed to death after buying what I expect to be a complete game, but you really do get some good stuff for a comparative pittance. Wait for a seasonal sale and the entire thing can be had for less than a so-called AAA release.

I really can't say enough nice things about this one. Nobody is more surprised by that than I am!

A shady company swindles a bunch of horror fans with empty promises and a glitchy game before using a license dispute as a pretense for dropping development entirely.

Just another day on Steam.

Oh, you don't appreciate the hallowed works of Cavia? I'm sorry your taste in games is so awful.

A decent port...if you can get it to work. Check the forums before pulling the trigger.

Might be fun online but I'll never know. Every match is infested with players that afk for vanity items.