Recent reviews by The Flaming Pike

What can I say that hasn't already been said about Rimworld? It's for many people the greatest colony sim depending on your taste. While there are other games with better graphics ( Frostpunk or Star Haven ), others with more content and depth ( Dwarf Fortress ), others with better animations ( Oxygen Not Included ), it seems that Rimworld offers something utterly optimal in terms of gameplay and that's what matters the most for a lot of people, me included.

Many games in this genre have a huge problem when it comes to logistics, in my opinion, and you are stuck with the game's mechanics that don't always make you do the things you want. Rimworld on the other hand is very intuitive, logical and it gives you exactly what you are looking for, granted you do the hard work first. In that sense, it's a very organic-feeling game. You can have total control your colonists if you want, which is a huge step forward in this genre that usually can only have you a bystander when tragedies occur.

Direct control of your little people also makes them more unique to your eyes, you feel more engaged in whatever journey they go through, you end up caring for them, especially your leaders or the most vulnerable ones, you love your sheriff-like characters who maintain peace and order, and you love to hate your lazy, bickering or incapable colonists too, because every single character is an integral part of the story that unfolds on your screen, day after day.

Whilst there are many random quests in this game, they're more or less important. What matters most is managing your colony, seeing it grow and seeing how the colonists fare in this harsh world. The initial world creation settings are top tier, and you can really mold your games with it, making the game casual or extremely unfair depending on your playstyle. It's one of the top games ever made when it comes to replayability.

I do feel like the DLCs are greatly overpriced. Now, it's a matter of how far you want to support this small development team which initially started with just one person, because even though the DLCs do add some depth and new features, they are quite lackluster and the features aren't always on par with the vanilla game's sandbox elements. All the DLCs have a hit and miss feeling, and we have yet to see a "great" DLC for Rimworld, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like the modding community outran Ludeon with the more obvious DLC-ish content that could've been official DLCs, and that the development team lacks the ideas for original, fun, and sandbox-friendly DLCs.

Needless to say, Rimworld is an absolute classic of the genre and a cornerstone in colony simulations, just like Dwarf Fortress, its "daddy" used to be before it. It's tons of fun, and the base game is definitely worth the price. I know, the graphics and presentation made me doubt too before I bought it. But I was a fool, and so are you if you are wary to buy for those reasons. It's one of the most fun games you'll ever play. I always go back to play a little bit of Rimworld once in a while and I honestly don't think I'll ever get tired of playing this game.

Not a big fan of this one. I wouldn't say all of it is bad but if given two choices, I take the thumbs down.

I'm a huge survival game fan and I'm a 3rd generation wilderness enthusiast, and I'm Canadian. This game had been calling for me for a long time until I gave in.

First of all, the setting is great. Surviving in a harsh, cold environment is a theme that has always been a fascinating topic to me, from Roald Amundsen's real life journeys to the north to movies such as Never Cry Wolf or Into The Wild. Choosing this theme for a game is a really good idea. However what is great about those stories is the ingenious ways one can find to survive. Here, you are very limited in what you can do with your tools. I could craft a thousand more things with what I'm given in this game, and it's frustrating to not be able to fully exploit your imagination and survival techniques to the max. There are many objects or furniture that you could use in various ways in a more complete survival game, but here you can only destroy those with no benefits. You have hacksaws and you can saw metal, but no chainsaws for some odd reason, when in reality every single house owner in Canada, especially in remote regions, have chainsaws.

Walking on snow without the ability of crafting snowshoes is by far the worst thing ever.

Even control-wise you are limited, as there are no ways to jump, when in reality you will jump and leap all the time while hiking in the wild. This aspect of the game makes me feel like it's unfinished.

Another thing that makes the game feel incomplete: the amount of animal species is extremely small which hurts the gaming experience because at some point after seeing all those rabbits, wolves and bears everywhere all the time, you are reminded that you're playing a game and your immersion ( a key element in such games, in my opinion ) is damaged. So my question is: where are the many other animals that comprise the Canadian forests, knowing that many more could figure in the game's setting? Why are we limited in such a small number of animals in this game when hunting is so important for your survival? Where are the foxes, the otters and many more? It seems that wildlife diversity should be a prime requisite for such games.

The decay of items in this game is all over the place, with canned food decaying at ridiculous speeds ( within days you see them "slowly" decaying ) when in real life you could keep canned food for several years. The idea of storing items goes out the window when you realize this, and it removes a fun part of ANY survival game, which is to create huge stockpiles and just gazing upon them afterwards. The game forces you to play in a semi-nomad manner when in reality a true sandbox open world would actually let you play the way you want, and the very setting of survival within a hostile cold environment would naturally and normally imply sedentarization with few excursions once in a while. Here you can't really stay at the same cabin, because, once again, the game won't let you through its limited crafting and tools, so you can pretty much only use cabins as outposts and going from one to the other in a neverending, excruciatingly long amount of time walking from one place to the other with nothing much to do in-between.

Those involved in the creation of this game have absolutely no knowledge of survival techniques, even less real crafting techniques. You can't make bow strings with intestines, no matter how dry they are...

I often felt like the makers of this game made it based on Canadian stereotypes and lack of understanding of what real Canada is. The vast majority of houses/cabins are the exact same but with different items to loot when in real life any real Canadian knows there's not a single house that looks the same, especially in more remote regions. You stupidly drink entire maple syrups as if it was a bottle of water. There are no snowmobiles. No snowshoes ( I can't stress enough how bad it is to make such a game without giving us snowshoes to wear ), the technology is inexistent except for ( oddly ) broken flat screen TVs so clearly we are in the 21st century and now my question is... Where's the rest of the technology? Are we Canadians really buffoon enough not to have generators, chainsaws, solar power, etc.? Yeah, I don't think so. Putting a tiny Canadian flag on a home doesn't make it any more Canadian to me. This looks more like the deepest confines of Siberia, maybe. Not Canada.

I haven't found anything that reflected our Canadian history or heritage, no historical pieces of evidence that made me think "Oh yes, this is Canada after all" except for the stereotypes. No mention of the first nations whatsoever. French speakers are nonexistent. Oh and by the way, the french translation uses words nobody in french-speaking Canada, from one coast to the other, uses. That translation must've been made either through Google Translate or by some dude from France who believes we go to work by riding our own private moose mount. And to think they got money from Canadian taxpayers to replicate all those stereotypes. Even the wolves aren't spared, and we go back decades ago when the big bad wolves would be part of old wives tales! All we need now is Big Foot, heh!?

Look, it's not that bad. It's fun for what it is. But man, there's just too much bad about it at every nook and cranny. Whenever I enjoy something in this game, there's three more things about that thing that I don't like. It's challenging, and the challenge is fun. They got many things right, such as wind direction and what it implies, changing weather, the music, the sound effects and a few more things, but to me it's not enough to "survive" for a long time in my library. It'll be one of those games I'll play a little then move on. It could've been much, much better.

If I could give it a "meh" instead of a thumbs down, I'd give it that. There's good things in this map, but more bad stuff.

I feel like this map DLC was not designed for hunters. First of all, it's one of the most impracticable maps for this game, with many areas that you can't cross without making huge detours. There are rice fields, rivers, fences and even a broken bridge that keep even ATVs from passing through. This results in many wasted minutes trying to find your way to an area you want to go to.

Some hunting spots are great, others not so much. It seems to me that they wanted to do a jungle map but were afraid to go all the way. They should've gone all the way and just stick with the jungle theme, because the result here is half-baked. The map mainly has two different biomes, one that is jungle-ish, sometimes similar to Mississippi Acres or Vurhonga Savanna, and the other that looks like a copy paste of, oddly, Yukon Valley or other western location maps. I'm no flora expert but I couldn't distinguish what made the pine trees and plants different from those previous maps, so I'm assuming they just used old assets and didn't care what species were native to Nepal. A huge chunk of this map seems to have been paintbrushed with a huge pine tree brush, with very little noticeable details, making the forest feel rather plain and boring.

There's a lot of areas in this map that look like previous DLC maps. It seems to me that this is a highly uninspired map design-wise, especially when we compare it to maps such as Silver Ridge Peaks or Yukon Valley. This map is more like Rancho del Arroyo, like they didn't know what to do with the theme given to them. The hills don't give you a great view of the surrounding areas, and the more mountainous area is extremely difficult to exploit since there's so many rocks and dead trees keeping you from riding your ATV and forcing you to go on foot in areas that have little to no animals to hunt. The lookout points are lackluster, with very few offering great views.

Finally, for the negatives, I have to add that this map feels scarce in terms of game. Unless you explore it before starting to hunt, you will spend a lot of time just walking and waiting. It doesn't help that your field of view is highly limited in most areas and that you are likely to scare your preys on a regular basis if you're a walker hunter.

For the good, I'd say the tiger is definitely a big win for this map. Whenever you encounter one, it's exciting! You will have a few jumpscares for sure. You will sometimes wonder if you're the hunted and not the hunter. I'm very happy that the devs finally recognized that killing rare animals in a video game is completely harmless for the real animals nobody in their sane mind would kill in real life. They should definitely go further on that path because there's a lot of animals that have yet to be hunted in this game due to the long lasting stupid desire to make it ethical.

The rest of the animals available to hunt are yet more reskins of the old animals you can find in the other maps.

I haven't seen AI glitches with the animals in this map yet, so I'm assuming it's alright on that front.

Overall I feel like this map is overpriced at the moment, so I'd suggest you wait until it's a bit less expensive on a sale. This DLC map is not the worst but it's definitely below average and could've been way, way better.

I could write a very long review like I usually do, but honestly, I feel like a short review would reflect the game better.

Because this game is unfinished, and it's a crying shame that it is.

Starbound was pretty much a 2D No Man's Sky, with tremendous potential. It normally should've KILLED Terraria. It had everything and then some, at least on paper.

But the developers just gave up on it despite its huge player base. After playing Starbound for a while, you can feel the emptiness as you progress because the things you discover begin to grow thinner and thinner in depth which is the total opposite of any game that is properly finished.

Of course, there are tons of mods for this game, thankfully, and it makes the game much more fun to play with them, but I will not review the game based on that, obviously, because it's not the base game, after all.

Eventually, all you do is complete boring quests and build bases without a purpose.

This is probably the game with the most wasted potential I've ever played.

Understandably, I'm playing No Man's Sky full time and pretty much gave up playing Starbound, because the NMS devs persevered and they turned their game into a classic whilst Chucklefish did the complete opposite. It's a shame that Chucklefish let go of this game to focus on developing other games which, let's be honest, aren't very interesting in comparison to Starbound, and are nowhere near as popular as Starbound, YEARS after its release...

Ever played Tiny Glade but wished the buildings had an actual purpose and that the whole world would be cursed and covered with eldritch, monstruous creatures? Well, Cataclismo is that, and more. I personally call it a cross between Tiny Glade and Grim Nights.

First of all, don't go thinking this is a tower defense game. Whilst there are side-quests with tower defense levels in the campaign, this is not what the bulk of the gameplay is about. It's much more of a CASTLE defense game. If you play with a tower defense-like mindset and spread your defenses far from one another, you will most likely fail, because the creatures will tear your little towers apart. It's much better to concentrate your fortifications and forces in just a few key areas on your fortress. Your main goal is protecting your main building and main character with multiple layers of defenses, and creating buffer-like strategic fortresses.

Efficiency is key in this game. Your ressource management will be a huge factor in your victory or defeat. You will have to spend wisely. You will have to design your fortresses so that your units can react in time if one side is weakening. You will absolutely need to boost your units with special fortress pieces if you want them to pack a real punch. You must design your fortresses so that there are no weaknesses exposed to enemy attacks, make sure your logistics are optimal, etc., so there's a lot to think about when compared to other RTS games which often only rely on units. Here, your units are much less important than your fortress design, and a couple of units in a well built area will make a huge difference compared to the same units in a weakly designed area.

Most of the gameplay, aside from the previously mentioned tower defense side quests or the unit-based exploration story levels, involve building your fortress and withstanding waves of assaults. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan: This is pretty much a battle of Helm's Deep simulator. Don't go thinking this is Age of Empires or Starcraft - you can't fight back, because your enemies spawn in "mist" areas that you can't destroy. You can only prepare yourself for the next time they crawl out of those mist holes.

The actual building part is a lot of fun and you can make great blends of efficient and cool looking constructions. The destruction of buildings is really well done. Piece by piece, creatures eat through your defenses and you see things crumbling down.

The units are not very original, unfortunately, and the impact of their hits is lackluster - creatures barely react to the hits. Personally, I think a big mistake is to make the creatures mindless insect-like monsters since they have no personality and killing them is not as satisfying as it would've been if they would've been orcs or some enemy human army, for example. Only a few monsters are actually cool looking - the bosses. I think another mistake is to not add melee units with which you could have more direct control during wave battles, because when waves occur most of what you do is just looking at the swarms attacking and crossing your fingers that your defenses can stand the onslaught. Unfortunately, all of your units are ranged in this game. I feel like it would've been much more fun if the game had ventured in a Total War-like gameplay. With more units and with units having different ways to attack ( such as melee ), it would've added more depth to the overall gameplay experience, and you would've felt more involved in the combat.

You can pause or fast forward the game, so you never have to wait or worry about running out of time before the next wave. Good!

You can save the game whenever you want. Saving and loading are part of the lore ( they call it time anchors ), but in reality it doesn't have any real gameplay value, it's just that they labelled the concept of saving and loading to make it lore-friendly. It's similar to Assassin's Creed or Prince of Persia games that have used similar concepts.

Visually, I like the overall design of the game but I feel like the biomes are too much like one another. There could've been more decorations. I wish units and enemies looked a bit more different from one another. It's a dark looking game! Not for everybody.

The story mode is just long enough so you don't get tired of it. I wish we could've had more side-quests though!

The level editor is super fun and there is major replay value potential in it. You can build entire maps out of scratch and then add your dream fortress on top of it. With this in mind, you pretty much have Tiny Glade-like map building, PLUS you can have battles... So yeah, I know the styles are different, and Tiny Glade is a casual game, but to me this game buries Tiny Glade right now in terms of what you can do, and the sandbox building blows it out of the water.

I really like the voice acting in this game, although sometimes the overall atmosphere of desperation kinda drags you down. The narration and dialogues make the characters sound tired and sad, so this may not be something everybody will enjoy. Personally I'm okay with it, but sometimes I feel like the atmosphere is pretty heavy. The music is dark too and doesn't sound very hopeful.

This game is dark and it may not be for everyone, but the various difficulty settings can make it into a very casual or very hard game, depending on how you want to play it.

Overall this is a really fun little game which I know I will keep playing, well worth its price on a sale. It's not 100% perfect but it certainly fits a demand for such games, and there is a high replay value after finishing the campaign, with other game modes and the level editor.

I played the original game non-stop, in a total frenzy, because it was extremely fun. This one, however, feels like a bland and uninspired product made only to profit from the success of the first game. After five hours of game time, I can already tell you a lot of things that I don't like about this game, and there's so many that I kinda gave up on playing it for now, even though I do want to finish it one day.

Many assets from the original Subnautica game which takes place in a tropical world are recycled for this arctic planet which makes absolutely no sense and greatly damages your immersion, which is a key element for this franchise. This is a big, big problem with this game. Most of the plants and wildlife look like they don't belong there.

You are spoonfed very quickly with everything you need and then some, making the challenge of survival much lesser which in turn makes your gameplay less engaging. The vast majority of items and blueprints are the same from the original Subnautica, giving a same-old same-old feel to collecting ressources or discovering blueprints, which eliminates the thrill of uncovering things or gathering ressources to create an item for the first time. There are many ground areas in this game which kinda makes you feel like it's less of a Subnautica game and more of a survival with some swimming gameplay. The ground areas, much like the original, are poorly designed and you will sometimes get stuck while walking or jumping in places the devs did not expect you to go.

I'm not done. You character speaks, which is very annoying since in the first original game you truly felt so immersed due to the non-verbal aspect of the game that it felt like you were in there, on the planet, yourself. They totally killed the immersion in Below Zero.

This should've been a DLC for the base game and it should've been 75% less expensive than it is right now.

Absolutely stellar game carrying the core OG Star Trek spirit in which discovery and exploration are strongly dominating over violence and destruction. There are many mysteries to unfold, and it's extremely rewarding whenever you reach a step forward throughout your journey. The feeling of being isolated on this planet grows on you over time. You will feel lonely, scared even, and sometimes you will doubt yourself and you'll ask yourself what's the next course of action, making this a real personal journey as well as a video game adventure.

It's a beautiful game with stunning colorful visuals, accompanied with mesmerizing music that changes from one biome to the other. The swimming gameplay is off the charts, the best of any game I've ever played.

What makes this game stand out is that there are no real enemies to kill like in so many survival first person games. The "enemies" are just animals who try to survive in these shallow, deep or abyssal waters, so killing them is mostly pointless and that's more than okay in my book, as it encourages compassion rather than mindless slaying of living creatures.

The base building is top tier, comparable to that of No Man's Sky. You can make very impressive bases. I kinda wish we had more options to modify the parts we build, but other than that it's all good.

There's a few things that are somewhat bothering me, however. First of all, the places where you can walk, run and jump are not very well made and it almost seems like the devs didn't really plan to do that in the first place. You will sometimes get stuck in the plants or debris on the ground, for example, and you feel slower on land than on water which can be annoying at times. There's also a lot of back-and-forth in this game, as you will have to go to specific areas to collect specific material, but then maybe you didn't have enough storage space or missed something on the first round, so you go back again, and you bring your stuff back to the base and at some point it gets boring and tedious. I hope that for the next game we can craft some kind of drone or other "delivery" item that could allow us to ship our items to the base without having to travel to it all the time. There is no fast travel in this game, unfortunately, and while I understand why, it's still a big issue for this game which otherwise is very smooth and organic in terms of gameplay.

Once in a while you will get stuck, not knowing what to do. The key is to remind yourself to go to places you haven't been before, even if they may scare you at first ( because this game is definitely scary at first when you don't know its biomes and creatures ). Eventually you always end up in a new area if you truly scout the areas efficiently, and things will go back on track. However, I kinda thought that a long range scanner indicating an approximate location for some specific things across the map could've been a good thing. There's a bit of a grind sometimes when you need a particular item but can't remember exactly where you first saw it. Your base can indeed scan the nearby area, but not the whole map, so you either have to build more bases across the map to scan more areas, or you just venture blindly into the unknown hoping you'll find the place you're looking for.

One final issue I have with this game is the poor draw distance even on high graphics. I understand some areas outside of the ocean may be hidden on purpose so it's more of a surprise to stumble upon them, but I still feel like the draw distance is way too short.

The vehicles are very efficient and fun to use. They all have their purpose. I wish we could have more upgrades available, such as modifications to make them faster, cloaking devices, integrated item scanner and such.

The crafting system is simple and logical. There aren't many combinations of items you can use for recipes. Most items only have one use. There's a bit of a scarcity in a key ressource, copper, that makes you hunt copper for a long time in this game, contrary to titanium which is very easy to find.

I'm not sure if this is a game I'll replay anytime soon. I feel like it's a one time kind of experience, then maybe years from now, you feel nostalgic and play it again. There's no real replay value to this game since the adventure is heavily scripted and the sandbox aspect is limited. However, I'm looking forward to Subnautica 2 which seems to be a very inspired sequel aiming to pick up with the best things that came with the original and adding more content.

Overall, if you are fond of exploring, adventure, crafting, survival and sci-fi in general, and if you are ready to get goosebumps once in a while, you will definitely have a blast with Subnautica.

This is a pretty solid game and a great game adaptation of the Mad Max franchise. I was actually positively surprised at how loyal it is to the movies in terms of lore and atmosphere without dragging us down in too many details. You can feel the makers of this game actually felt important to transfer the Mad Max universe into a game and didn't just use the Mad Max name to create a cash grab. If you enjoyed the great Batman Arkham games, it's a lot like those games but in a totally different setting.

Of course, we can't talk about Mad Max without the cars. Being able to modify your car and collect other cars really adds a lot to the depth of the gameplay. You can do many different modification combinations and make your dream Mad Max car. It includes whole bodies, from the classic Interceptor body to more outlandish ones. The cars are fun to drive because you can feel their weight. Handling them is rewarding when you perform jumps or when you get rid of enemies. These are all mostly muscle cars so the weight was important.

The newly introduced characters are all pretty cool with very interesting desgins. They're not very deep, but then again it's like in the movies - all characters with cool designs and somewhat unknown backstories. However, I feel like the "story rich" tag really does not fit this game... This is far from being an RPG. The characters are either enemies or quest givers, you will get a few dialogues with the important ones and that's about it.

I also felt like some other tags for this game are just plain wrong. By seeing the "survival" tag I thought this game actually had survival mechanics such as hunger and thirst, and it makes you believe that but as soon as you begin playing you realize food and water are only used to recover health, just like potions in other games. You never get hungry or thirsty, you just lose health while fighting and the only purpose of the dog food cans or drinking water is to recover that health.

This dumbed down "survival" aspect of the game is a real missed opportunity. This game could've had deeper gameplay, such as real survival stuff, kinda like Fallout New Vegas, and it would've been much better.

The combat is just like the Arkham games. You have three options: punch, block and roll/evade. The enemies come as different types, some weaker, some armed or armored and some with attacks that you can't parry. At first, the combat is very satisfying as your hits connect really well with your adversaries and Max delivers some really crushing blows thanks to very well made animations. However, the more you fight, the more you realize how easy it is and how redundant the combat becomes. It doesn't help that the augmentations you apply to your character make him overpowered rather quickly. I feel like the enemies should've been more diverse in terms of looks but also attacks and abilities, and I also feel like the ones who are tougher should've dealt more damage. The bosses that inhabit some areas all look like Lord Humungus, just with different colors and skin tones, which make their encounters more and more bland as you progress in the game.

This is a game for completionists who like to explore and find every single detail on a game's world map. There's a lot of sub-objectives that will keep you busy between the (very scarce) main quests. I feel like the game lacks content in that aspect. You quickly get tired of destroying scarecrows or unearthing land mines with your dog.

Like many AAA games, it feels like this game was bloated with a lot of unecessary content while discarding core gameplay content that could've made the game more captivating. There's a lack of depth behind all those tiny objectives scattered across the map.

Some moments however are very fun, The convoys that you must destroy are exciting to chase and reflect the great ending action scenes seen in the movies. The dialogues you have with Chumbucket, your sidekick, are funny. Just riding your car and traveling randomly from one point to the other is fun, and you will often want to test your car's power by crossing gaps, jumping on ramps or falling down cliffs at high speed. The combat, even if a chore at times, can be fun if you attempt to beat your highest combos or try to kill enemies in specific manners.

Overall I wouldn't call this game perfect. I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10. I think the greatest Mad Max game has yet to be made. But it could've turned out way, way worst for this game. I just feel like it was released a little bit too quickly and more content should've been included. Maybe they didn't want to push it too far since it was clearly made for consoles in the first place.

I liked this version of Deadpool, but the DLC is just too lackluster to be worth it. On a 80% sale, it's worth it, but below that, I wouldn't recommend it.

Deadpool is very popular nowadays but people seem to forget that he also has a human side and we kinda get glimpses of that once in a while with our dialogues with him. He himself will admit it to you that his behavior is a defense mechanism for him to prevent him from making friends and getting hurt. This is something the recent Deadpool media representations seem to have forgotten at times, but it was there at the very beginning when he appeared in comics. I like how they unearthed the real Deadpool in this game.

Combat-wise he is a very interesting character. You don't really need to focus 100% on him and his cards, but you need to protect him from getting hit to make him stronger. The more he hits, the stronger he gets. You can deal severe damage after a couple of turns. It's a character made for offense and he has a great array of different attacks that can suit any situation, whether you are facing many enemies or just a few.

The DLC missions are very forgettable and you feel like they did a lot of recycling here. Overall all DLC missions for each DLC characters are kinda lackluster due to the fact that they don't add that much new content. However the cinematics are top tier, especially for this one in particular.

I could count on a single hand the number of times I used Deadpool's food truck ability... Not very useful IMO.

I feel like this DLC could've been better but it still slightly passes the test for me. Venom's design is very cool, and his size really makes him look like in the comics. The only problem is that he is as big, and taller than the Hulk - IMO Hulk should've been bigger in this game. They also didn't include a transformation animation from Eddie to Venom or vice-versa and resorted to a fade out screen instead to make the switch which is really dumb because one of the coolest things is to see Eddie Brock turning into Venom in front of our eyes.

Venom's combat abilities are solid and make him quite versatile. He is strong and can take a lot of hits. He has some cards that can do serious damage to single enemies, and also has cards that can hit multiple enemies as well.

Eddie Brock's dialogues are perhaps the most interesting in the game because he talks about his issues quite openly with you. He also has some funny dialogues with Peter Parker from time to time. They turned Eddie into a conspiracy theorist and it's hilarious.