Recent reviews by Lunabups

HELLDIVERS! We Have Won against the forces of Tyranny, against the anti-democratic scourge infecting super earth. It is time we look back towards the eastern & western front once more. However remain ever vigilant, Sony is a formidable foe, and should not be underestimated. Expect Sony to try something again!

We dive together or not at all!

[This Review Has Been Approved By The Ministry Of Truth, Any Void In Attention Will Be Considered Treason]

Whether it's diving onto bugs & scattering their bile, or onto bots & tearing a new one through their torso, this game has its magic in a group. However that is not without its problems, Primarily its balancing of weapons, and the game being harder in a group of less than 4. Despite these issues sounding bad, they've not caused me to feel like this game is awful. Genuinely one of the most fun games i've experienced in years, and being able to just get into the game and feel like i'm doing my part for democracy is great.

Join the helldivers today, just be ready to accept failure!

I absolutely do not like horror games, I get scared easily and turn away from them all usually. So this comes from the perspective of someone that absolutely avoids the genre.

The disdain & issues i normally get from horror is not what I experienced with this game, with friends this game becomes incredibly fun, and is blast that doesn't feel like it needs to scare you every 33 seconds, yet still gets you in that horror mindset. After a few hours, i knew what to expect, and what was expected of me. And while i get the occasional slap on the rear by a bracken, at the end of the day, im having an insane amount of fun - and thats what matters. Its very rare that I enjoy a horror game, and this game has been only Enjoyable since the start.

This is a perfect horror co-op game, its not overly scary, and its absolutely hilarious. Glory to the Company!

Looks like a meme at first but as you dive in you realise this games been made with a lot of care and consideration, Its like if ARK, Pokémon & Zelda (specifically breath of the wild) had been merged into one, it sounds insane, but its executed flawlessly. Every single Pal has unique animations for their tasks, every single pal has their own quirks that make them stand out. This is a labour of love by the very definition, and the devs should be seriously proud that theyve managed to create a game that makes the titan of this genre look like a tech demo.

This is a must try game, and if you give it a chance, you'll probably love it as much as I do. The devs have created something remarkable.

If you are not sold, you can give a sheep a minigun, and i think that speaks for itself.

If you are still not sold, theres an insane amount of dept- YOU CAN LITERALLY CAPTURE A PERSON, IT IS GLORIOUS HOW HILARIOUS THIS GAME IS, AND HOW WELL EVERYTHING WORKS IN TANDEM.

bravo, devs!
I now have a new game to obsess over

Honestly, this is a remarkable improvement over the first game in many ways. The annoyances from the first game are very much gone, Tiling & Painting, 2 tasks that I'd avoid in the first game are done so much better here, and the ability to clone designs is a welcome change. Placing is easier than ever with the guide markings, and while the game does run a bit more demanding than I expected, the game shows for it by being graphically pleasing. You can also edit wiring which I'm unsure if that was in the first.

I do hope the devs give accessibility some mind as holding the mouse button for every task does cause pain in my hands (toggle would be nice), and having the sensitivity be adjustable for painting & window cleaning would be a good change. But im honestly pretty hopeful for this game, its good and the devs appear to care about it.

Overall, a huge improvement over the first game and I really enjoy it so far.

Also whoever made the Steampunk 1877 parody art nailed it, would absolutely play that game if it was real.

Best Game Ever (until a bus rams into you)

I'm going to tell you exactly what this game is, a step up from the first game in almost every way. apart from optimisation - which is a bit worse than the first game when it launched. It runs at a solid 50fps stable on my system, and its because i have a properly configured system for next-gen games. You cannot run this game on cheaper CPUs, or slow RAM, and I feel like those are the pitfalls for most who only think about their GPU.

The performance disclaimer is at the bottom of the review
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Its addicting.
Its gorgeous.
Its seriously in depth.
Its easy to pickup, but hard to master.
and its an enormous upgrade over the original game.

And most of all, its the best damn city builder there is, surpassing the original game. And including a specific feature from its inspiration (SimCity) that was honestly the only good feature of it (Building Upgrades).

A good chunk of the original games DLCs are transferred over, the winter, natural disasters, & parts of the university, airports & fairs made a return. And theres been a tremendous amount of care into the new systems, like the post office & internet services. Public Transit is easier than ever before, and the introduction of accidents can completely detour your plans and force you to plan on the fly. And finally mixed-use buildings.

You can build gorgeous looking cities in this game with the right skills to do so, and it gives you most of the tools to do so. A Move It equivalent would be nice - but I'd implore the devs to improve the performance as best they can.

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Now the disclaimer about performance
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This is a CPU & RAM bound game, like the first one was, and it will not run on lower end hardware - this is very much a next gen game. CS1 was largely the same way at the time, and still is if you choose to use mods (if you choose more than 10-15 mods, 8GB of RAM would not work, and you'd need to upgrade, youtubers consistently used... 1000s of assets and need 64 GB of RAM alongside.

They made it clear before release, that the optimisation was not great, but that they didn't want to delay the games release because of it, and a part of me is glad they did. Because its clear to me that the pitfalls and issues in CS1 did not make it through to this one. This is exactly what you'd want from cities:skylines, bar you can put up with not having 144 fps, in a game that largely does not need it.

All the reviews with "it runs bad on my 4090" mean nothing, because this game doesn't use much in terms of GPU, and this game runs the exact same way on my RX 6950XT, as it did on my friends 1650 Ti. This game does not run well on misconfigured systems, and needs a good CPU & good RAM speeds - bottleneck one of those, and its going to struggle since its bound to those, *so a GPU does not help you with this game*. And no you cannot run this from a steamdeck, its just not got the needed power for this. The Steamdeck is good, but it wont run bleeding-edge titles.

This game may aswell be Civ because its standing the test of time.

PAYDAY 3? cant even login because its online-only and the servers are always down.
PAYDAY 2? wanna fire up a game? you can. always. whenever you want.

Don't waste AAA price on an expensive loading screen, buy a game you can play whenever you want instead and have a blast.

PAYDAY 2 is a very uniquely fun game, especially in co-op, and they did it perfectly here.

No offense to the Devs of PAYDAY 3, but you need to tell the execs to leave the game alone, and go back to offline-online hybrid play like this game, instead of forcing always-online DRM that is going to kill all of your work.

STARFIELD is a uniquely amazing game
There's no other words I can use to describe this, its near perfect

This (!spoilerfree!) review comes from someone who has played many of bethesda's other RPGs, none of which at launch. I'm not twisting anything to make you mad, nor am I excluding information to make it seem good. I'm telling you how the game is, as genuinely as can be - because I want you to play it and enjoy it the way i've been during advanced access. This is a stellar game that is going to get torn down because people expected this to be something that was never promised. And unfortunately even if they did everything right they'd be torn down by people who live to complain or get more views to complain. Don't get lost in the negative noise is all I can say about that.

Its so much harder to be honest, and fair to a game, but thats exactly what im going to do.

Steam has a text limit (who knew) so I cant post the detailed review, I've had to shorten down parts of it.

TLDR:
This game is nearly perfect, most of my gripes are with controls and the map, not with the game itself. This is by and large the most stable game bethesda has released at launch, and is well worth giving it a go, thats not to say it doesnt have Jank or doesnt have its problems. I can imagine when modding takes hold, this game will last as long as Skyrim has, and with less issues that plague skyrim modding like needing to patch things constantly. Its a fantastic game with a great cast, and some of the best worldbuilding they've had. The most endearing stories theyve told, and it feels like a penultimate bethesda game. However, Its a slower pace to start than their other games, taking a few hours to get going before ramping up - the game opens up a lot once you've finished the main quest "Into The Unknown". Despite its slowness to start, its an enjoyable experience at its *worst*, and one of the best games I've had the pleasure of playing. Everyone who worked on this game should be proud (& get properly compensated). They've made something incredibly special, that nearly 70 hours later, im still playing strong.

Its an RPG, not a Space Simulator, they've decided not to make you have to fly to each planet ala no mans sky, but cut out on the boring bits, to keep you in the game itself more - which I appreciate, and honestly its much more fun this way. Less time wasted doing monotonous things, more time doing what you want to do. The Capability to fly seemlessly is there though, and I imagine it wont take modders who disagreed with bethesda's "always-in-the-game" approach too long to change things to their liking.

STARFIELD is an evolution of the things they have learned from each game, and the ideas they've built upon for 30 years now. It takes what they did well from prior games, often times improving it - and making something new with it. I'm not being over-dramatic when I say this feels like a love letter to all of their prior games, as they've taken what they did right in each of them to make this new IP land.

This has the best combat in the entire Bethesda discography, tons of options, very fun weapons (the Magshot is satisfying as hell to land a shot with), a healthy mix of things from across centuries, companies, groups, etc. Combat forces you to be tactical and methodical in the moment, and it makes for a really fun experience. You can probably rival doom guy for his speed and carnage in this game, or you can be an opportunist that picks the weakest link off. Or be a warrior monk going in with no weapon whatsoever. Low Gravity combat encounters have been incredibly fun because of the verticality and range of motion you have. And despite being a sit back & pick them off player, I keep finding myself drawn to going in from above with a shotgun. And oh boy is that old-earth shotgun way too satisfying at shredding through enemies.

The Story is a bit slower than any other bethesda RPG to get rolling, but once it gets rolling things start to happen and it doesnt hold your hand as things ramp up. Stick with the game, and you'll understand why bethesda has said the game doesnt start until the main quest is done. However the game opens up the most with the completion of "Into The Unknown". And the story is reactive to your characters skills & choices. Theres dozens of ways to handle a situation given you invest in the right skills. And I keep finding more as I play NG+ (New Game + is handled exceptionally, im not saying why bc spoilers (duh))

The worldbuilding is top notch, every named person is interesting, the companions you can have are uniquely fun and endearing to have around, some more than others. The game doesn't hold your hand in this regard, and there's a healthy mix of instances where your skills can drastically change the games outcomes. It has a lot of really strong moral dilemmas that will have you questioning if you did the right thing even long after you've finished the game. While theres still the "quest marker", its less invasive & dare I say less needed than usual. You can open the scanner to help navigate more convoluted places, and can quite honestly ignore the quest marker if you bother to pay attention to what people tell you.

The Sidequests are very fun and give you lots of ins to new systems you may have not explored just yet. And the various factions & guilds have enough going for them to keep you busy; Theres enough to keep you busy for well over a couple hundred hours in one save, and I keep coming across new things each and every time I go to a new place.

I LOVE this game, I love the world they've made here, and its a genuinely a contender for game of the year. But unfortunately with a game of this scope & scale, things are going to be missed. And theres some things they missed that were incredibly obvious due to how well this game does everything else.

None of my issues were critical, and this is the most stable game that bethesda has made, only very minor visual bugs, no issues with quests breaking, and no crashes for me. Plenty of fun jank, no awful bugs. And this game is ripe for modding potential. I'm going to be playing this for years and that feels comforting.

Namely the interesting characters, feeling few & far between because of how large the cities are. They're there, you just have to look harder for them. However they are the best characters of any game bethesda has made, and thats not me exaggerating.

All in all, this is a very close to being perfect game with my only gripes being a difference of opinion and nothing too major. This game's flaws do nothing to ruin the fun, and I'm glad they stuck with the creation engine with it. The Creation Engines biggest pull is the modding, and its the reason that we still play their older games, they didnt need to change engines, and im glad they chose not to. I cant wait to see the mods, STARFIELD is... dare I say, Ripe for modding potential, and i'll be playing this game for years to come. Thank you to everyone at Bethesda's inhouse studio, you've once again made a game that I cannot put down and can only feel invested in. All I can ask is that you dont keep us in the dark about the next one, as I was already worried about not being around to see the launch of this game.

I hope this tempered review gives you a good idea of what to expect when you play this game, so long as you immerse yourself & go into this with the expectation of a slower paced game thats got a lot of depth to it, you'll love this game a lot. And it helps do not be a cynic or nitpick any small detail you may not agree with. Its a very good game, and its few flaws are made remarkably obvious because what they did right, they did very well.

TLDR; dont listen to the negative reviews, its a very fun game with a lot of funny moments & matches the original 4 games in quality while doing something different. The cast isnt iconic but they are still well rounded characters with a lot of charm to them and so long as you dont take this game way too seriously, you'll have a really fun time.

This game is pretty great and don't let the score dissuade you, This IS a Saints Row game, just a different gang, in a more ridiculous situation that ends up making the game more realistic while still keeping the ludicrous charm of the newer games. It toyed the line of realism & absurdity really well and its so far been a blast to play. There's been a lot of care into this game, but its so much easier to be angry so hardly anyone has noticed it. The Red Faction Easter eggs and the insanity of some of the treasure hunts quips are greatly appreciated. I can tell that the people who made this game had a lot of fun, and it shows.

No one likes it when a series changes, but the story of the original gang ended 10 years ago, and people cant accept that & choose to choose to hate this game for being a different gang in a different setting. And a lot of people are mad they didn't get a remake of the first or second game, and if you read the negative reviews its almost always because they wanted a different game or a remake of a game that had its prime during a completely different era & their expectations were obviously not met.

I admire Deep Silver for sticking with their guts on this one, they made a very fun game, and I think they did the reboot as well as they could have considering the fact that no one was going to be happy regardless of what they did, so they just made a good game instead.

I played this at launch, and all of my gripes with the game at launch, are gone. It still has some visual bugs, but a majority of them are simply visual, they don't break anything, and a simple restart of the game fixes those if you can't stand bugs period. They even spent a lot of time improving the game since launch because a lot of the empire missions have been made to be quicker & less time consuming. Almost all of the time-wasting that was present at launch has been removed. Almost all of the problems I had with the game were fixed. And now I get to launch myself across the map with a dumbell cannon, its an absurd but down to earth game that's more fun than people are willing to give it credit for.

Am I mad about the Epic Exclusivity at the start? Yes of course I am, Epic is a knob
Am I mad that this is a story about a different gang than the original one? No
Am I going to complain about this game every waking moment of my life because its not a reflection of an era that ended almost. 20. years. ago.? No, I love the original 4, and I love this game too.

All in all, if you're still on the fence, buy it, don't take it too seriously, and you'll have fun, and if not? It wont have killed your children like some people want to suggest. This is a great game that people want to hate because they find it easier to complain than admitting that a good game has been made here.

In the last 8 hours I have...

Launched a Gnome into space
Beat up a hag with a salami
Pushed a Dwarf into a hole he most definitely digged
Opened up a book filled with forbidden & dangerous erotica
Found an enlightened ogre & convinced him to seek Jesus
Was seduced & killed by a vampire
Annoyed some squirrels to death
Threw a Goblin child at another Goblin, killing them both

Theres no amount of paragraphs that can explain just how amazing this game is, grab your salami and charge a hag wielding it.