Recent reviews by Wrawmon Newdole

Good news is it has one of the better babysitter interfaces I've experienced in a turn-based FPS.

Yes, it is a turn-based FPS. What is that? It's your regular FPS that has a babysitter interface that you use to prep an AI team. When you hit "execute", you take your turn. Good guys do things, bad guys react. Then the bad guys reorganize a bit on the other side of the next barrier, you prep your AI team again, etc...

Bad news is after a certain point you're spending -hours- on a single mission just trying to not get smoked by someone in a blindspot that peripheral vision would have probably saved you. Also a walking speed seems to be as fast as you can go, which means you're not getting to cover or back to cover without getting absolutely smoked every time.

Game would be a 9 / 10 if your blind spot wasn't 290 degrees and had VR so you could check that faster.

As is, it's an "on sale" game. Wait for it to hit $20-$30 and pick it up then. It's just not a $50 game.

"What can we do, with minimal effort, to turn CS:GO from a great game back to a minimum viable product?"

- The CS2 developers (probably)

The biggest slap in the face is swapping CS2 in for CS:GO. Not only does that remove CS:GO from my library, it also allows a terrible game to ride on the reviews of a decent game.

They knew it was trash when they released it, that's why they did that

Neat concept and runs really well for not being "complete".

Can't recommend it until it gets Steam Workshop support for mods and maps instead of mod.io.

Update with even more of a reason to avoid this game:

Developers added a new mechanic "Badwater". Now you have to micromanage everything surrounding water.

It was great fun worrying about the water side of things for the first part of a game, then as it progressed you could really get that to the point you could focus on building out a beaver empire. You could spend less time micromanaging your water and more time setting up all the new buildings you've unlocked.

Now you have to jump every time "badwater" is called for during a drought, reconfigure everything to dispose of this threat... then remember to come back and undo all that. There is no relaxing anymore. It's somehow boring with all this. Like I'm being taken away from what I want to do in the game and forced to do some arbitrary tasks so I can get back to doing what I want.

You could also get a great start, even a good way in, and bam! you forget to reroute the "badwater" (even accidentally miss a dam) your entire colony is now dead and you're starting back from a save, your time wasted because you didn't go open and close the right dams on time.

Makes for a very unpleasant experience. So much so that it's been 2 months since I've opened the game. Just zero desire to subject myself to this.

I guess they've created a means to cap the "badwater" but it looks so expensive that it's something you'll have to fight and grind hours to reach. That may be good for a first play through, but it gets very boring after that.

Bye, Timberborn, you were fun while you lasted.

Not much has changed yet compared to the first, but the graphic design of the UI is absolutely terrible. I think it's meant to look like some retro display, maybe? It is just terrible to read and spend time in game. Feels like a giant step backwards and it ruins the entire experience.

It is 2023. We have anti-aliasing. We don't need dot matrix garbage.

Fire whoever thought it was a good idea.

Update: A year on and very little progress. Do NOT buy! I feel scammed.

The gameplay is actually pretty interesting, except its impossible to get 100% on every ship... simply impossible. Which takes a lot of the fun out.

The story is a bunch of propaganda.

The "do not recommend" comes from not being able to skip the story and cutscenes not being rendered in game so they look very 1999'ish and way out of place. Really doesn't feel like it's going to be fun to replay the story, even in a few years. I paid you for the game, let me play it as quick as -I- want.

Update: Completed the "story". Lots of plot holes. The team leader "Weaver" gives you his ship about 1/3 of the way through. At the end of the story, you need a ship to terminate your contract with "Lynx". Somehow Weaver, without a ship now, is able to terminate his contract. Yet you still need the ship. (The ship isn't a hard goal to meet).

You can tell the story developer watched a documentary and read a single book, then fell in love with a romanticized version of unions. They never experienced how corrupt they are in real life. It's as bad as dealing with a corporation, except you pay the union for the "privilege". Never got to hear from a union rep how great a "union conference" was at a vacation destination hotel, paid for by your dues... and the conference was just having a couple motivational speakers in that they ditched to go lay on the beach while nothing changes for the better back at the plant.

So I guess they did correctly represent unions in their propaganda after all. Sacrifice the hardworking lowly new guy for the benefit of the union reps and the untouchable supervisor class.

Defintiely a fun game. Almost like a cross between Half-Life and Garry's Mod, with a similar-yet-more-advanced graphics engine than Minecraft. Very little performance issues and pretty good stability. A speed runner's dream game because almost everything is geared toward that type of play.

If you're looking for just a puzzler, this really isn't the game for you. Thought there are a few options to reduce the speed run nature, like being able to increase the time limits and increase the base ammo. Those make it a bit more like a puzzle game, but not quite enough to scratch that itch.

You can tell the developers actually use the play data they collect. Excellent balance of grind and exploring. Can be frustrating at times when you go a long way from home/storage and forget something and have to go back (sometimes quicker to load a save and go back a step).

I think the Space Elevator objectives are too costly after the 3rd one to even make a strong attempt at them. Plenty of other stuff to do so it's no big loss to just say 'stuff it' and treat the space elevator like a side quest. Especially once you unlock oil, there is a lot of other stuff you can do to keep you busy.

The game mechanics and object placement/control are insanely great overall. There are some instances where I wish you could attach things like splitters and mergers directly to a machine or storage unit. It sucks having a lot of little short conveyors between things that sometimes are hard to see during an upgrade. At least you aren't micromanaged to death having to supply power to the conveyors!

Speaking of power, the only thing that feels arbitrary and spiteful is the power poles, the mark-1 poles only allow 4 connections, so the best you have is 1 in and 3 out. I feel it would be better if it were by megawatt.

You can upgrade some things in-place (like conveyors, power poles, pipes). Other things you cannot upgrade in place and it is really annoying upgrading those (splitters, miners).

Performance wise the developers have again put in a lot of effort. Most games with this much going on start to crawl and chug, this one is quite happy even with a large factory complex. It is impressively efficient.

Overall this game is probably as great as the original Half-Life or Sim City 2000 were when they came out.

Unimaginative gameplay mechanics is the best phrase to describe this title.

You end up running in circles and never once being able to get ahead of the enemy. Makes leveling up pointless and the missions are all the same anyway (just the names and places change). The enemy is well supplied, always more well equipped, and always just a level above you no matter how hard you grind. So you end up just turning and burning during combat, taking out each squad one at a time (which such battles just get longer since the enemy is unimaginatively scaling 1.12:1 with you. You being the 1 and enemy being the 1.12). Then, you get to do your mission task which are always the same things: Get this item(s) and/or destroy that thing and/or fix that thing.

If there were some other tactics or some way to stay a step ahead of the enemy it would be worth playing. Maybe if the enemies gave up if you went stealth or evaded them? (Space is kind of big, maybe you jumped out when you went behind that boulder. You can do that, but if you did kill some enemies, they are magically back when you jump back) Maybe if you could do real recon and prep your ship for the special needs?

One mission has a shielded turret, but you don't know that till you get there. You take weapons that don't damage shields? too bad: fail when you jump out to go get them. Wouldn't be so bad if you didn't spend 30 minutes fighting in to find out you have to fail out.

Oh, you used the shield breaker missiles already or sold them/disassembled them to try and get gear to survive that other mission? Now you get to jump to every spot on the map trying to find some, using up your other consumables during other battles. Except now the enemies that are back in this area you already cleared 3 times prior are now way stronger than you so you have to use even more consumables than the last 3 times and they drop even less stuff. Oh joy!

Your inventory on the ship is so limited and you have to save space for the missions where you need to grab stuff (or you'll have to sacrifice parts you need to upgrade when you do need room). You just can't ever take enough with you.

The community around this title is just awful. A few gamers in there, but mostly its just the trolls that have stuck around because this isn't a gamer's game.

Even the story is as tiring as this review.

The one dude "Dex" just asks you to "trust me, that's all we have out here in the DMZ is trust, we don't have weapons or armor but trust is what we really need, just trust me! Why won't you just shut up and trust me?! WE don't even have food or water or parts for your ship or equipment to save your frozen friend, but we must have trust in limitless supply out here in the DMZ because we don't have anything without TRUST!!!?! WHY AREN'T YOU TRUSTING ME!!!??"... even though he's not doing really anything to actually help you.

Meanwhile, all you want to know is the plan for why you're out there getting shot up. But I guess he doesn't... trust... you with that. Given all the talk of trust, I'm betting he ends up turning on you for some 'cause' that he believes is for the 'greater good' and the player will end up with relatively nothing after grinding all that time ...based on the lack of imagination in the gameplay anyway.

The demo was fun. Probably just going to return the game and just play the demo. It has the same replay value of the actual game. Since you can't get past level 5... your enemies won't ever be OP.

Edit: The last update really sucks (3.0 "♥♥♥♥"). Interesting name since a kick in one is exactly what it feels like to learn how to play a game and have fun with it, only to have it entirely change ruining a save game you might have many hours in...

The game changes entirely every time I go for a replay. While that sounds awesome, it is not. Each time it is changed, new bugs in the events are created and you end up not being able to complete all the parts of the game because of it. Terribly annoying to have to throw away hours of grinding just because an event bugged out and you now can't complete it.

You'd think somewhere in all these MASSIVE game play changes, you'd think something small like being able to re-order your fleets in the "outliner" would have been put in... No. YEARS later you're still stuck with whatever order they end up in.

So many times you end up trapped because doors don't open or events don't trigger. Just better to play the original, that WORKS.

Lots of crashes!