Recent reviews by Hans mit de peer

Just amused about the angry so called fans of Victoria 2 making up stuff how shallow and empty it is compared to Victoria 2. Wanna talk about imbalance, puddle deep mechanics and missing content? Look at Victoria 2.
Trade? Well you can stockpile stuff......thats it. Victoria 3? You have markets and open trade routes that are more profitable than your home market and make money just with trade.
Wanna play a German minor? In Victoria 3 you can without the choice of not being part of the North German Federation taking away from you because the AI of Prussia pressed the magic button.
You want a more realistic politics system? You get it, gone are the days where the new party in power just magically changes your abilities over night. You tell me when the Green Party comes into power the state suddenly can't subsidize companies?
And who didn't love the random science in Victoria 2. Magically having a black friday because why not and having to wait for important discoveries was so much fun. NOT

the only good thing i can say about the game is that the graphics look really good, but the rest of the game is just not good.
The game tries to be multiple hot first person shooter at the time and fails in the end as a game. The shooting feels like straight out of Call of Duty, ultra high rate of fire and reload time, close to zero recoil and you don't feel any impact of your gun except, well your enemies dying. Also the sound of the weapons is just horrible, where are the meaty sounds? This game plays in the Warhammer 40k universum, the guns should blast my ear drum out, instead the guns sound like some pea shooter.
And what exactly is the health bar for? I have been so often on low hp but it didn't felt like i was close to death. Sure you die but the gameplay feels so weak that you wonder around and think to yourself: "shouldn't i die if i play like a prick?". Just aweful. Combine that with the horrible hit detection where you are never sure if you got hit or you hit your enemies, everything just flies by.
Next thing is the sound, good god Hired Gun made me think the developers of Squad are some überhumans for making Squad sound so good. So many sounds in this game are either way to quiet that you miss them or flatout missing. You see a cut scene where something happens......but there are no sounds, making the cut scene look like directed by Tommy Wiseau. Man the cut scenes are just horrible, some enemy standing without any movement, neither facial or body, but the game plays a voice line and you are not sure, does the voice come from him or someone in the background the game doesn't show you?
While i am having fun with the weak grapling hook i am less happy about the stuff besides the shooting. Do we really need the whole collecting tons of garbage and leveling system? I just want to shoot some stuff in this incredible looking world. The developers themselves didn't put much thought into this system other than "what do the kids nowadays like? Right pointless progression".

I am just dissapointed, is it that hard to just make a good first person shooter in this incredible world?

This is a clicker game, not a farming game

This game is my favorite walking simulator of all time.
The game starts sloppy, i was wondering why nothing happened since i couldn't move. Quick look in the menu shows they put the AZERTY layout in by default, no biggie just change and voila the game starts moving for me. I relly enjoyed the story telling that don't pick sides and shows evil on both sides. The voice acting is perfect.
But 24,99€ is too expensive for roughly 5 hours of playtime, buy it on sale

The game has not a lot of content and tries to stretch the playtime by forcing you to craft more and more ludicrous amounts of tools and weapons to go forward in tech. Also the AI is stupid af and while i can totally deal with the low poly models the low res textures is something i really have a problem with.
It doesn't really makes it a bad game but simply not good enough for the 20,99€ price tag, wait for a sale

This game made me so happy i have a hard time writing a review about it. This game is oozing personality, starting with the adorable little girl you are playing, the themes of each chapter to the characters. But gameplay and level design is what really makes this game for me. Super Mario Odessey felt quite small, all bosses felt the same in terms of design and how you fight them and was not challenging at all. You don't just wait for the boss to do his thing and then hit him once and repeat that 3 times no each boss plays differently. The levels are huge and you have a lot to discover. And man the level design in the 4th chapter was a treat. I really love 3D platformer and i really wanted to love Super Mario Odessey but the gameplay feels so weak compared to A Hat in Time.

Overpriced and boring
I bought the game back then when Polygon raved about how great this game is because of the atmosphere, 90s references and story. There is no atmosphere. The 90s references are on the nose and you have seen them everywhere.
But by far the worst thing is the story. So not only the references are from the 90s the story is too, because the "progressive" developers think copying 90s cliché stories about lesbians is "progressive but it's not, it's just lazy and insulting to adult gamers.

I don't know if it's me or the game, but i expected to love the game after really enjoying Just Cause 2. But my opinion of the game fell instantly when i noticed that the driving still didn't improved and driving cards feels like driving a train. Seriously developers, this is the third part of the series and you still have the ♥♥♥♥ driving of Just Cause 2. Yes flying around the map is fun but being forced to do it because driving is so unfun is just lazy developing.
Then innovation. This game gets boring really fast. It does the exact same thing as Just Cause 2 but with a too large map and really boring missions.

As much as i want to recommend it i can't because of the amount and severeness of the flaws.
So you start the game and you notice how strange the controls are. Pressing attack does either a melee or range attack depending on what other key you press, it's weird but you learn to adept but will still get frustrated at some points into the game. So you finish the first 2 level and then go to the boss and.....have no clue what to do. I managed to defeat the second, third and final boss without help but the first and 4th one were just hard to figure out. After you killed the boss you go back to the camp, get the first magical arrow........and learn that you are forced to backtrack to collect seeds. Without a specific amount of seeds you won't progress to the next season.
When you are basically forced to replay every level at least once you notice how empty the levels are and that they feel stretched out for no reason. You also notice how pathetic the jump is. The normal jump is so weak that you can't even jump on things that look like the fox could do it but nope, you need double jump. You notice it especially in the first season's second level when jumping on fruits. When i already talk about that level lets talk about how frustrating some level are by design. You will die a lot in this game not because you made a mistake but because the design was unfair and/or can't see what comes next. The whole third season area is pure frustration. In the first level you are climbing the insde of a tower but there are so many parts where you have to decide where you want to go and then see that the other direction had a seed but you can't go back without dying. The second level is just annoying. Way too many ghost will spawn who are also way too fast. The cake takes the auto scroller in the last season. You fly through a cave and the developer it was cool to have an additional layer above the area you are flying through. So what happens when you play the level for the first time? You mistake the front layer as the layer you are flying through and dodge the crystals and rocks........but you still die because you touch things in the "real" layer. You think this is the worst about that level? Nope, it also doesn't allow you to switch you weapons and flatout locks it in certain spots so when you need to fire a specific magical arrow at a target to pick up a seed....nope you have to die on purpose and swap the arrow. That's it will you say? Nope, they thought: "let's force the player to choose between 2 path but put a collectable on one lane but he won't see on which one".....yeah you have to suicide again and fly the right lane.

Don't give Double Fine any money, Tim Schafer has proven over and over again that he can't be trusted with money on his own.