Recent reviews by dead_alewives

Fort Solis is essentially a very short walking simulator with a good atmosphere, very minor puzzle solving, great visuals and great voice acting. Tl;dr - I'd recommend this when it's on sale. That being said, the game falls flat when it comes to the storytelling aspect. Certain aspects of what has happened at the base aren't really made clear. It also doesn't help that the game feels very rushed with its progression; there's very little time for the game to allow different sections of the base to breath. A lot of the dialogue is clunky as well. I'm not sure if some things were lost in translation from Polish to English or what, but sometimes things that characters say just make no sense.

Like many other games of this type there really is no replay value whatsoever. There are no kinds of branching narratives or alternate endings here. The story and level design aren't even really captivating enough to bring me back to experience again (like a good TV show for example).

Fantastic, addicting ARK/Rust-like game. This game is in early access yet runs better than a lot of triple A titles I've seen; even more surprising considering it's a large open-world game being worked on by an indy developer. Sure, it has SOME jankiness to it (like defeated pals flying off into the stratosphere), but overall I've had very little noteworthy issues. PocketPair deserves all the praise and attention they're getting from this game. Hats off to them.

Outriders is a good game overall but one with a lot of missed potential. Since being in a looter-shooter mood lately, I thought Outriders would scratch that itch...and it kinda did, though the game is littered with problems, most of them being technical and could probably be easily fixed (if only the devs hadn't pretty much abandoned the game a year and half ago). Problems abound in Outriders like character movement feeling clunky, powers sometimes casting in the wrong direction, often being unable to vault over a one foot high ledge, controls sometimes feeling unresponsive, spoken dialogue OFTEN cutting out mid-sentence during cut-scenes (turning on subtitles is basically required) and the list goes on.

The game is essentially Destiny meets the Division but lacks the solid, responsive gameplay of either game. Ironically, the thing about the game that had me the most invested was actually the story which typically tends to be lacking in games like this. Of course once I finished the main story I felt little desire to keep playing...but I will. Going to check out more the multiplayer aspects. I thought I would just lay out some of the flaws this game has and tell everyone that, yeah, it's worth it...on sale.

(Updating my review since the full release is out now.)

TL;DR: This game is very much worth your money and time. The things this game does should put many AAA game studios to shame. The depth and freedom of gameplay, character design, writing, map design and music are all top-tier.

All of that being said, the game is still VERY rough around the edges, even AFTER the 2 GB patch landed. Many of the issues I noticed when the game was still in alpha are still there. A lot of the problems I've seen aren't just bugginess either; some are clearly design choices Larian intentionally implemented. I'll list the worst below. The ones I see FREQUENTLY will be annotated with a star...

- The game's still crash prone, though nowhere NEAR as bad as it was in alpha. And no, Larian's useless "Crash tips" or whatever it's called doesn't help. Choosing DX11 or Vulkan doesn't matter either.

-* Clothing items will clip off of the player character at times (specifically the player character). With helmets, it appears to only happen at certain camera distances and fixes itself when I zoom in. With armor, it tends float off the character's hips and can only be (temporarily) fixed by un-equipping and re-equipping it. Might be a certain armor type, not sure.

- The game at times won't respond to key strokes or mouse clicks, like the game fell asleep and I needed to jolt it awake. Several times I've had to click an item or object 2 or even 3 times for the selected character to respond.

-* During fights, while I'm waiting for the cpu to complete its turn, with the timer still going, I'll see one of the enemy AI just STAND there and not do anything. No movement, no spells being cast, no attacks, nothing. Then after about 10-15 seconds of this it will finally hand control over to the next character. Considering that fights in this game already feel like an eternity, this needs looking at.

- (Studio decision) There are NO HEALERS who can heal your party to be found anywhere, at least in the 30 or 40 hours I've put into the game so far. I've played many CRPG's over the past 25 years and can't think of any that DON'T have a town priest you can fork over some gold to in exchange for HP recovery. I have to assume this was a decision made by Larian to arbitrarily increase the game's difficulty.

- Spoken dialogue will cut out mid-sentence when characters are talking or won't be synced up with the visuals, mainly in cut-scenes. It happens so often I feel compelled to read ahead in the subtitles in case the character gets cut off...thus defeating the purpose of the (magnificent) voice acting. Thank God for subtitles in this very story-driven game.

-* The camera has a tendency to get "stuck" at a certain distance or place on the map at times. Typically this will happen when the party is walking through a passageway, but it will often just happen randomly as well.

- I've come one broken quest (that I know of at least). No amount of re-loading the game or leaving the map and coming back helped. This was AFTER the 2 GB patch landed for the game as well.

These are the most egregious problems I've faced with the game so far. I simply don't understand how more people aren't talking about this game's MASSIVE issues and instead only go on and on about how great it is. It has problems that need addressing, plan and simple.

My negative review has nothing to do with Baldur's Gate itself - it's a classic CRPG that MUST be played. The gameplay is excellent, even the stuff that Beamdog added. That being said, the bugs in the game are inexcusable. I happen to have played the original version of the game and realize that Beamdog's version actually ADDED bugs that didn't exist in the OG version, IE: Party members getting stuck within other party members, sound syncing issues, brain dead AI (at times). I thought that over the past 5 years or so since I last played this it would have been spruced up a bit, but no.
Get the OG version if you can.

Intriguing, well crafted puzzles. Good visuals, all around a really good game.

So my gameplay time is low, I know, but only after half an hour I saw enough. The way the game is structured is fine, it's the writing...it's awful. It's laugh out loud awful. And I get that this was probably originally written in German or whatever, but I don't see how it could be any better in the original dialogue. From the way the characters talk to eachother, I feel like my grown ass self is trying to play a D&D campaign with a five year old. I couldn't take it anymore. Awaiting refund.

A pretty decent casual game with good music, however this game is certainly Not worth 20 bucks. It's EXTREMELY short (beat the whole "story" mode in around 2 hours) and doesn't have anything to add to the replay value such as alternate characters to play with. I'd recommend getting this when it drops down to $10 or even $5.

So I gave this game a chance. I really did. I have fond memories of the first two games and, as a matter of fact, just completed another play through. That being said however, the technical issues in this game make it practically unplayable. Among them, this game includes such things as:

- Controls that are EXTREMELY clunky and the mouse cursor has a tendency to vanish causing you to have to back out and re-initialize interaction with an object. I don't know what's worse - these awful, unresponsive controls or the fact that you can't manually save (which I'll get to shortly.
- Spoken lines have a tendency to bug out and sometimes cut out mid sentence.
- The game ONLY uses auto save and, as far as I can tell, it gives no indication of when it actually saves. So, if you just got done completing a few tasks, you pretty much have to pray that it saved your progress before you quit the game.

All of these problems come across to me as things that could have been patched within months of the game's release, but it's been YEARS, and the fact that these issues still haven't been addressed PERPLEXES me.

I love this game for the most part, though there are definitely some kinks to be ironed out. Most of what I've noticed are:
- Buggy character animations (IE: NPC's will clip through their car when they re-enter them).
- Gravity physics have a tendency to spaz out
- Had a game breaking bug where an item fell off the counter while ringing up a customer and I couldn't do anything but quit the game.
Overall though, a good experience. It looks great, runs great, and even sounds great (aside from the hokey voice acting). Definitely recommended and worth the money. I look forward to future updates.