Recent reviews by kernelRiot

Gorgeous game that teaches you the mechanics without words. The art style and music of the game are incredible and it's a real joy to progress through the levels. There are a few places where the margin for error feels annoyingly small and I replayed them a frustrating amount of times, but those are offset by the rest of the experience being so wonderful, charming, relaxing, and interesting.

Go play another game that respects your time. I'll never touch this predatory, exploitative, soulless game again.

My young son likes Godzilla so I thought we'd check out this game together and he enjoyed watching me play it, but as a parent I feel terrible exposing him to a game based on greed and exploitation. I would gladly spend money on a game I could actually unlock a complete experience for, without constant pressure to pay pay pay. I did get to teach him the phrase rip-off and scam, though.

The amount of Godzilla or Kong in this game is next to zilch. You see them lumbering around a map and I couldn't directly interact with them. That's quite disappointing.

This is a mobile game trying to empty your wallet. The characters are soulless. The combat is quite bland. Played it for free since it is a F2P game, but monetization will soon constantly try to upsell you on something, everything. The first couple of hours of the game are easy to go through because the upgrade timers are quite short, or easily instantly completed. It is initially interesting and a bit fun because there are so many systems to make progress across, that there's always something to do or check on or complete.

Later, however, doing any upgrades or training troops will take hours or days. There are artificial gates all over the place to incentivize you to pay to get past them. I can't even imagine progressing further into the game and having build timers eventually reach 20 days or something.

The most disgusting part of these whale-seeking games is how no amount of money spent would ever be enough. They will constantly and always show you there's something else to purchase. You could likely spend $100 and go through the gems and stuff in a matter of minutes. And then they'll want to sell you another $100 bundle. Or a 2nd build queue slot. A battle pass. Or this that or the other.

Clearly a cash grab and whale-hunting "game". Please don't reward the execs of the studio or publisher with your money. That'll only incentivize them to create more slop like this in the future.

In the grim dark future, there is only war. And it is epic. I enjoyed my time playing the main campaign and the side-missiony operations. The story was solid, the characters ultra-mariney, and the visuals top notch! Missions were a little on the length side for having young kids, but once you know that you can make it work. 12ish hours to play campaign, and 26h total to play campaign + operations. So the game length felt solid. Not over in 2 hours, but didn't overstay its welcome. Definitely recommend. There's a lot of options for unlocking armor, weapons, etc if you play even more. I'm glad that is there for the people who want the extra time in the game, since it rewards them for it, but it feels a bit too grindy for me, which is okay, since it's not required to have beaten the game!

I enjoyed my time policing Detroit city. It was a nice single player experience. Leveling up gave you skills to choose from as well as upgrades to your service weapon (although it took me too long to figure out you could swap the PCBs). Wish there was a way to respec though. Seems like that'd be something quite easy for a RoboCop to do. The story was cool and I liked getting to meet the side characters that I could help along the way, plus seeing what happened to them later. The antagonist felt perfect for the story and it was cool to see the set pieces and action and mayhem that went on!

The game's not perfect. The graphics were solid but some FPS drops definitely occurred. There were some seemingly random difficulty spikes too, but nothing insurmountable. I do wish checkpoints either happened more often or I could save anywhere at will. That's mainly because some of these missions could be an hour or two long and I wasn't sure when it was safe to shut the game down. Made it tricky to play this, or know when I could get in to play a bit, while needing to help care for an infant. That's my biggest complaint. Another would be that as I was trying to explore rather thoroughly it caused me a lot of backtracking and even RoboCop's running speed or dash ability were quite slow. Not the end of the world, but felt like a QoL thing they could also address somehow.

I also like that it seemed feature complete, doesn't have boatloads of skins or other mtx bs, fomo, or other toxic gaming elements. I buy the game and I got the whole experience, I felt!

This game is stunning. Visuals are incredible, the world vibrant and exciting to explore, the terrain so well made, the quests interesting and involving unique, memorable characters. I've really loved my time with HZD and am excited to see the culmination of the fantastic story!

I've played Kingdom Two Crowns and this feels like the PERFECT introduction game to the series. The levels are either complete or reload from save. The length of the game is about 6 hours. The mechanics of the game feel pretty smooth, even though (like the other games) aren't really described to you and you might not remember in the next level how to progress to the point you want to (raiding enemies, for instance). But man this game felt like an absolutely blast and I loved the 80s theme and I loved playing it! Would definitely recommend if you like pixel art, lite strategy, and killing baddies.

Just 8 or so hours into the game but it's really hitting the spot for an ARPG! The gear drops are interesting and feel pretty open ended and flexible for a variety of builds. There's tons of loot and I'm already taking advantage of the loot filter system, which seems really powerful. Graphics are solid and there can be a lot of beautiful chaos on the map when you've got enemies attacking and you exploding them and your pets walloping as well. I am running on Ultra with a RTX 3090 and still getting like 70-80 FPS. The maps, areas, and enemies are varied and interesting. The campaign maps are not randomly generated which allows them to make each level more interesting. The skill trees seem to allow you to craft your own build without being impossible to understand. I am playing a pet build and wasn't sure what it'd be like but I am really enjoying how my build's turning out. Haven't respec'd at all yet but it seems doable to some extent, will have to see.

I am level 25ish now and leveling up several times per hour, which really feels fun to see your build fill out without hours and hours of grinding per level. There are 15 masteries/main class types to pick from so there ought to be something for everyone. I could see myself starting another character in not too long just to see what something different is like. Quality of life seems pretty solid as well. Controller support. Easy to toggle between mini map and overlay map. Huge stash that's pretty cheap to get the 2nd page for (not that I needed it really, with the number of slots it has). It's easy to warp back to town to sell stuff. The story is fine but none of the characters really grab me, but that's not why I'm playing it, to be honest. The fact that you're exploring some of the same parts of the world at different eras in time is pretty sweet though! I am very excited to get into this game some more.

If there were some downsides it'd be the relative forgetability of the story that I've seen so far, the fact that the fog of war resets every time you portal somewhere else (so going back to town and back means your map is a blank slate again), how some parts of the map aren't navigable even though it looks like they would be, and it feels easy to get stuck on invisible corners or edges here and there, and the lack of secret areas. (Grim Dawn really nailed that, I felt.) Nothing terrible and does not put a dent into how much I'm enjoying the experience.

I am excited to see what's in store for progression, respecing, other quality of life enhancements, the end game of course, the rest of the story, what the other zones will look like.

I've played games like Grim Dawn, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Torchlight 2, The Ascent, and a smidge of Path of Exile. If you liked those style of games, I think you'll love this!

I was gifted this game by a friend and I played it on Halloween itself. I really enjoyed this game! The psychological aspects come out slowly and are revealed in an interesting way to keep you learning more, sort of doubting your initial thoughts, but ultimately knowing you're not going anywhere happy. This was fantastic. There were some jump scares, for sure, but it was more the tone, atmosphere, and unsettling nature of the places you visit that had me afraid to take the next step. About 2 hours in playtime, the game will have you interested to explore further and uncover more but uncertain whether you want to.

This really scratches the itch for an ARPG where you're finding new loot all the time, choosing from a bunch of options to find a build that really suits you, and then getting more powerful all the time! I've played this solo for a good while and have started to play with a buddy and it's been a lot of fun to wander around the grim world, killing monsters, and having our builds synergize well together! I would definitely recommend this to someone who has liked other ARPGs like Diablo.

This game takes what's great about Shadow of Mordor and keeps going with it. There's orc captains to recruit, regions to explore, strongholds to wage war against and take over, and tons of gear to collect and skills to unlock! I'm loving it!