Recent reviews by VforVeranda

This is a quick review as there is a sale on now and the developer can use a bit of love. It will only be on about 10h playtime and I will revisit this in time and review it more thoroughly.

Frontier Pilot Simulator (which I will short to FPS for the sake of brevity) is a relatively high fidelity space sim. You pilot a futuristic VTOL aircraft and complete a variety of missions including taxi service, cargo hauling, search and rescue. and more. The detailed touches I love sofar are that fuel has weight and affects how your plane handles like in reality. The downwash of your VTOL boosts upward thrust when near the planet's surface, like in reality. Wind chucks you around and busted trusters affect flight in realistic ways.

So with the outline done; I will stick to my own experience sofar: From a technical perspective it is a well polished sim. I have not had any stuttering, crashes, bugs or anything like that. For any interested, I'm running on Garuda Linux with Proton 9.0-3, so, Linux users, rejoice!

I have had a little trouble getting my HOTAS set up as the UI for setting keys is quite clunky... BUT... it does not limit what controller you can use, and how, so in that sense, it still does better than a lot of flight sims out there.
I've been flying with controller for now which reduces the fidelity a bit, so it does also cater for those less masochistic than the usual sim-enthusiasts.

As for game-play: I think it scratches the itch left by Elite Dangerous core mining very nicely and I do think I'll be playing this for a long while.
For now, if you are curious, get it on sale and give it a go. If you are interested, maybe even wait for after the sale as I do think the dev team can use whatever love can come their way.

If you are looking to do some pixel art for fun or for something else, then Aseprite is the place to be.
It's super intuitive, powerful and really fun to use. Instant recommendation.

As a quick and important note: My hours of usage is already multiples of what Steam reports and the reason is, is that it is DRM free.
You can load onto a pc, move the folder and have Steam completely uninstalled and it still runs.
Why I make this point, is because one of the most popular other reviews state that you should buy on Humble to get around the DRM, but it's ill informed.

Anyways, go out and make some art!!

Man, this game was amazing.

The art, music, writing, voice acting.. Was all amazing.

I will say this; Much like Doki Doki, I think this game will hit male audiences hardest as it does need to tap into that lizard-brain of yours somewhat. Not saying the ladies won't love it, just think it wont hit as hard.
Maybe, who knows.

Either way, this game has had me look up the artist and the two voice actors to see what else they have been involved in.
That is really saying something.

If anything, at least try the demo.

Not me. No.

You will have to EARN my goodwill back.

I love that finally Nintendo/Gamefreak stopped being total anti-consumer SHeads and I finally get a pokemon game that is not only on my preferred platform, but also runs really smooth, is a lot of fun and also doesn't try and rip me off by also expecting me to buy their game twice each time.

Hahahaha!

But, joking aside. I will not try and sell you this game, but rather only put down what I told another friend that I discussed this game with:

As a meme game, this game has no right to be *this* good.

Like I mentioned, it's a lot of fun, runs EXCEPTIONALLY well for early access. I have not seen a single bug as an example. Once or twice I have seen something clip a wall and the pal AI being dumb in some situations - like a bird Pal starving because it's sitting on a rock and can't get off as an example - but all in all, for the asking price, it is more than worth it.

As a final note; do I care that it's rather derivative of that other, inferior game. Nah, as a consumer I really DO NOT CARE.
Worst that can happen, is Gamefreak/Nintendo can up their game (Pun fully intended) and sort their crud out...
Or shut up and put up and disappear into the aether.

This is one game where I wish Steam had a "Meh" rating.
The game starts out strong and it's really fun being a SWAT officer. Maps are plenty, vast and varied and very detailed. All in all it seems like a good deal...

..but generally the lack of polish starts creeping in and building up and that is where it starts going south.
I will attempt to keep this as fair and objective as possible. I will start small; like the first annoyances that comes to mind.

Loading times:
Every time there is something to load (Game start-up, loading previous save (SP), loading lobby, loading map) it takes around a minute. Its pretty long, but not a deal breaker. More on that later.

Achievements locked to single player campaign
Dumb, but not a deal breaker - especially if you do not care for them. More on that later.

Objects fall through the floor:
This is where it starts getting more annoying, but not super important on first glance. More on that later.

AI more A than I:
Now this is really where the game grinds my gears. I feel a game like this lives and dies by the quality of it's AI and unfortunately this topic is where you see the forums light up, as in set alight.. riots, if you will.

There are two sets of AI that fail spectacularly in their own ways: Single Player Team AI, and Enemy AI.

Single Player Team AI:
Since I have mentioned that you can only unlock achievements through playing SP, you will need to engage with this at some point or the other.

In SP, you enter each mission with a team of bots. A team of bots that you command and babysit, and boy do you have to babysit them. They shoot well when they shoot, but boy are they morons.
I'm about the third mission into the SP campaign and I have given up, more or less. As an example, I've had my team stack on a door and after ordering them to open and clear with gas, the pointman decided to jog off around the building alone.

The rest of the team stayed on that door, but did not, in fact go in and clear. While trying to get Forest Gump to come back and stop being a moron, a druggy popped out with a AK and MISSION FAILED.

Other times I order them to enter and clear a room, but since the entire house is a room in this case, my team run ahead, all up the stairs and away away away. NONE left in the room I wanted them. Split up in three directions.
Two shot for the effort.
A good friend of mine tries to clear one specific map with S rating, and he finds it better to just leave the bots at the start. More on that later.

Enemy AI:

Oof.mp3
Aimbots. Instant reaction time. Shoot through walls.

A specific example that really got to me, was when a guy stood behind a pillar down a hallway. The pillar is around half a meter by half a meter. He was aiming about 90 degrees away from me with his little assault rifle and some of his arms sticking out, so I shot his arms to dislodge the little assault rifle.
He flipped 270 and no-scoped me with NO way of telling what position I was, and through half a meter of brick. Like WTFITS?
There are SO many examples of things like this, that I can write a book about it. Let me not. There is a mod to "FIX" it. I hate having to mod a game to "FIX" it.More on that later.

General buggyness:
Ironically, I will start by praising the game in regards to latency. I've been playing some with some of my friends across the pond and other far away places and latency is sometimes visible, but mostly not an issue whatsoever.
WHICH IS IRONIC since people disconnect or the game crashes often enough to balance out that W with a nice fat L, I suppose. You guessed it. More on that later.

NO

More on all above RIGHT NOW:
The game works on the basis that each mission is rated on performance. For an S rating, you need to apprehend all enemies with none-lethal force, find and radio in all soft objectives and complete all hard objectives, all without breaking the rules of engagement, like shooting/hitting unarmed suspects or civilians. Oh, and secure all dropped firearms.
As reward for achieving certain ratings, certain cosmetic items are unlocked. Where the achievements are locked to SP, the cosmetic items are not.

To get your S rating, you have to fight active shooters, bad AI, more bad AI, disconns, long-ass loading times and those effing bugs.

That friend I mentioned, trying to get the S on the third map in SP? He did it *MULTIPLE TIMES* but because the dropped weapons fall through the floor, he hasn't gotten it yet. He's been at it for days, the masochist!
I gave up trying after a flashbang uselessly fell through the floor and my moron team got themselves killed one last time.

Do you NEED the S rating? No, but then, I guess I don't need to play the game either.



The point I am trying to make, is that, while none of the small things are in themselves are deal breakers, the combination of them are and make this game hard to seriously recommend.
I was on the fence whether to recommend it or not it until I realized that only one side will **maybe** prompt the developers to sort the things holding this game back, out.

Haha. This game is as much fun as it is fugly.

It's EXACLTY like GTFO, but TOTALLY different.

So, this holiday I got back into playing some poi again and, you know, I gotta say this, but F me this soundtrack is the best thing ever for pois.
If you dunno what pois are, think firedancing. (that hippy thing)

I won't lie, its a pretty mediocre game with a Starship Troopers paintjob. Remove that, and it's pretty meh.
I only played a hour or two and I feel I've seen most of what this game offers and made sure I refunded it before the 2 hour mark.

Games like this should come with demos.

After playing through both the FAR games, I have decided to write one review for both as I would really recommend both and this way I can treat them as one product.
FAR is a simple game with relatively easy puzzles which tend to be more aimed at telling you about the world the games take place in, than to make you feel like a mastermind. That is a pretty important distinction as pretty much everything in this game pushes the steampunk atmosphere to the forefront and keeping it there. Music is absolutely bloody fantastic.

So let's get into the separate games.
Lone Sails (Land-Based Okomotive) is the first and a little more rudimentary. The animation feels more indi (not that it is bad in any way, shape or form) and overall, it is a little simpler. The feeling of utter loneliness really hits pretty hard. In some ways the simpler machine means that you spend more time actually appreciating the absolute gorgeous world you roll through.
Changing Tides (Water-Based Okomotive) is the second game with a bigger budget and more experienced development team, but it does not let up on the atmosphere. The subship is a bit bigger and due to some factors, a little less fun to steer - weirdly enough- as it should in reality be much much cooler. It feels a bit too much for one player. (might have originally been built for coop).

In both variants, some of the buttons you need to push are a bit badly placed, meaning that you hit them by accident a little too often.
Keys can't be changed from WSAD and getting onto ladders felt clunky right to the end.

As for price-point: I think the games are a little on the expensive side for what you get, with 15€ and 20€ respectively.

Either way, if you like games which the developers put so much love into, then really do go for these.
I can tell you this much.. I REALLY hope a third one is on the way. Man, a flying Okomotive would really be the schizznizz!