Recent reviews by Warhawk

Team Fortress 2: 'The Big One'. The defining multiplayer class-based First Person Shooter (FPS) game. Since TF2's release, Overwatch and many other big titles have tried to imitate/clone TF2's success, but none have quite succeeded. Despite being over 16 years old now, TF2 still has a very large and thriving community of active players. And despite TF2's considerable age, and a total lack of major updates from Valve in recent years, it continues to be very relevant on the internet in the form of memes and fan creations.

"After 9 years in development, hopefully it would have been worth the wait." -Gabe 'GabeN' Newell on the primary Team Fortress 2 Developer Commentary node. A famous quote that in of itself has become a meme, living on beyond the game.


I personally used to play Team Fortress 2 almost daily from its release on October 10, 2007, as part of the Orange Box, up until the Mannconomy Update in 2011. I stopped playing TF2 in March 2014, primarily due to being sick of my main Class Heavy being repeatedly nerfed over the years around that time, whilst planned concurrent nerfs to Demo got cancelled due to Demo mains complaining and petitioning in large enough numbers (Heavy mains had no such luck).

I primarily mained Heavy, Engineer, and Spy. I carried hundreds of games and beat some of the world's best tournament players as Heavy.

I was also very active in the thriving TF2 mods scene, having played thousands of rounds of a variety of mods, especially Zombie Fortress, Zombie Mod, Saxton Hale, Prop Hunt, Fort Wars, and Randomizer. I also played Death Run, Dodgeball, Glass Attack, Random Minigames, etc. I had a +99% win rate as Hale over hundreds of games.


Team Fortress 2 overall has excellent gameplay design and mechanics that seamlessly compliment one another, effectively accomplishing the fast-paced, dynamic, and variable class-based FPS action that Valve was aiming for with the title. It's not just a worthy successor to Team Fortress 1/Classic (TF1/TFC), but most people would consider it almost universally better than its prequel. There's not much bad to say about it, other than the in-game hats and economy being divisive ever since their release, and recent controversies over a lack of Valve updates, bots plaguing online games and Valve's lack of a swift response to it, the Sniper being 'uninteractive', etc.

The nine mercenary Classes and their flamboyant, caricaturized personalities are some of the best and most memorable video game characters in the industry, period. And like the game itself, they've taken on a life of their own outside of the game via internet memes, fan creations, epic fan stories/series', etc.


Team Fortress 2 remains my all-time most played game on Steam as of the time of me writing this review. And despite me not having played it since March 2014, I continue to fondly regard it as one of my favourite games of all time, and as one of the best games of all time.

Left 4 Dead 1: The original, legendary co-op FPS experience. The game that pretty much every other game released in the genre since has attempted (and often failed) to imitate/clone.


I personally closely followed Left 4 Dead 1 before its release on the Steam Forums and the 'Left 4 Dead 411' site, played the unofficial 'Left 4 Dead' mod on Counter-Strike Source, talked about it a lot with friends on Steam and elsewhere, pre-ordered the game, and played it frequently after its release, up until the release of Left 4 Dead 2.


Development started on Left 4 Dead 1 in mid-2005, the game was officially announced by Turtle Rock Studios and Valve on November 20, 2006, and it was later released on November 18, 2008, on Windows and Xbox 360.

Left 4 Dead 1 was originally developed by indie game developer Turtle Rock Studios as a cooperative, Player-Versus-Enemy (PVE), Survival Horror, horde-based First-Person-Shooter (FPS) modification for Counter-Strike Source, with a focus on extreme replayability via semi-random procedurally enemy/boss-populated levels and item/weapon placements. After this demonstration version showed a lot of fun gameplay potential, they then decided to make it into a fully-fledged Source Engine game, with the help of Valve, who trusted Turtle Rock for its earlier work on Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Whilst the two studios worked on Left 4 Dead 1 together, Turtle Rock Studios would eventually be purchased by and merge with Valve on January 10, 2008, becoming 'Valve South' (which they remained until they left Valve under mutual agreement in June 2009, due to a variety of workflow and communication issues).

A sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, was announced on June 1, 2009, and released on November 17, 2009 (just under 1 year after the launch of Left 4 Dead 1).


A big part of what made Left 4 Dead 1 so special was its AI. Common Infected and Boss Infected are capable of rapidly and dynamically calculating the optimal route to their target, and can intelligently climb over obstacles, props, etc within reach in order to take shortcuts and reach the Survivors wherever they hide. Hordes/Mobs of Common Infected will also try to fan out and 'flock' like Boids, in order to create a more realistic and visually impressive presentation. The Special Infected navigate the level more like the Survivors, jumping over obstacles and climbing up special 'Infected Ladders' pre-placed into levels, in order to give them full access to the rooftops and heights (Common- and Boss-Infected can also use these ladders). Which all comes together and adds a tremendous amount of flare and intensity to the game.

Another big part of the game was its old analog VHS movie-esque visual aesthetics, lighting, shaders, film grain, movie poster loading screens, and gritty post-processing effects.

And yet another big part of the game was its innovative music and sound design, which includes instrumental leitmotifs/stingers to telegraph the spawning in of a Special Infected (each have their own unique stinger), the spawning of an impending horde/Mob, the capture or death of a Survivor, etc. And the Boss Infected each have their own dedicated musical themes that play when a Survivor is in their presence, rather than stingers.

The rest of the game's brilliance comes from its 'AI Director'. Much of Left 4 Dead 1's procedural generation magic is controlled by a suite of relatively simple AI systems collectively known as the 'AI Director', which consider metrics like map length/'flow', rate of progress/'flow', and each Survivor's health/item/ammo 'score'; which it tries to consider as an average, and then tries to actively balance around by converting items ahead into more or less useful variants, or by removing them altogether.

There's also flat percentage-based RNG that determine whether chance-based pre-placed items/weapons/ammo will appear in a given session (the odds of which are pre-determined by the level designer on a per-item basis), some of which the AI Director can presumably then alter/remove based on the average Survivor scores.

Other core gameplay elements such as Special Infected and Common Infected hordes/'Mobs' are determined by simple timers. Special- and Boss-Infected spawn numbers per timer/Chapter are simple presets determined by the Gamemode (IE 3 Special Infected min/max spawns and max 1 Tank + 2-3 Witches per Chapter on Campaign, 4 Special Infected min/max spawns and max 1 Tank + 1 Witch per Chapter on Versus, 5-7 min/max Special Infected spawns and max alive 2 Tanks on Survival, etc). Every Chapter of a Campaign has a set chance for a Tank or Witch(es) to appear, with these chances being lower on the first Chapter and the finale Chapter.

The game additionally uses a huge, dizzying number of customizable 'sv_' and cvar files to streamline the experience (like specifying the max alive idle Common Infected, disallowing idle Common Infected to spawn within a certain range of Boss Infected, and everything else in the game; from the health and speed of Tanks, to the capabilities and actions of the AI Common Infected, Special Infected, Boss Infected, Survivor Bots, etc, to the damage of weapons, and more.

There's also an internal lingo around the game design of Left 4 Dead 1/2 within Valve and Turtle Rock, referred to as the 'Left 4 Dead Dictionary'. The Left 4 Dead Dictionary is used to reference complex game design elements, game mechanics, internal game variables/settings, etc. And it served as a way to effectively streamline employees' thought processes and coordination as they were actively developing the game.


There's not many negative things to say about Left 4 Dead 1. The biggest gripe most people have with the game is that since the announcement and release of Left 4 Dead 2, there haven't been many content or balance updates. Infinite bashing is still OP.

Both Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 have major issues related to griefers and even hackers, who to this very day will join games on Expert for the sole purpose of friendly firing everyone to death, suiciding, and then leaving, suiciding their character and then leaving when they can't FF people, joining and starting false votes such as attempts to restart the campaign, change level, kick people, kick the host of a local server (thus ending the session), etc. Some hackers in the present even have plugins that enable them to start votes and have them automatically succeed. This issue is so prevalent that it's almost impossible to go through a full public game on Expert without encountering at least one griefer (often you'll get multiple per campaign), thus forcing you to either play with friends in private lobbies with bots, or local host with a full suite of anti-griefing and administration mods to counter and auto-ban the onslaught of griefers.

Both Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 also have issues related to rushers, who essentially try to outrun the AI Director's ability to dynamically populate the world with Common Infected, as well as exploiting the fact that Special Infected spawn based on timers. Rushing can be extremely effective, to the point of trivializing the game even on Expert difficulty, although it can also backfire spectacularly.


As aforementioned, Left 4 Dead 1 is the game that pretty much every other game released in the genre since has attempted (and often failed) to imitate/clone. This even includes the original developer Turtle Rock Studios itself, which has since released two major (largely) failed games in the same/similar genre, those being 'Evolve' and 'Back 4 Blood'. This highlights that Left 4 Dead 1's breakout success was far more than random chance, and that both Studios' ideas and involvement were crucial in that huge success.


All this said, since Left 4 Dead 1 hasn't received many balance or content updates since the announcement and release of Left 4 Dead 2, it's widely considered inferior to its successor at this point. Hence, most people, including myself, stick to Left 4 Dead 2.

As much as it pains me to write this, I simply cannot recommend Death Road To Canada at present; despite it having a lot of wonderful game design choices, great mechanical depth, and an excellent original soundtrack. I really, REALLY wanted to like this game; but I simply can't get into it, nor can I 'COOL IT'.


Pros: Inexpensive (currently on sale for $4.24 CAD until January 5th), one of the best Original Soundtracks (OSTs) in any game, zombies, a novel post-apocalyptic road trip setting, multiplayer gamemodes, a strong sense of humour, an in-depth stat system, an intricate perks and traits system with synergies and anti-synergies, tiered melee and ranged weapons system, physics-based object and weight system, food-based economy management and trading system, rare special characters that each have their own unique mechanics, abilities, and quirks, custom characters that you can create and customize, special locales that often have rare encounters, unique vehicles, text events, etc, and stat-checking text events that test your knowledge of the game and its many interactions.

Cons: The controls are some of the worst that I've ever seen on a PC game (most 1980s arcade game emulators have better controls), there's no support for mouse-based aiming or attacking (intentional or not, this is a big con for a PC game), the key binding options are extremely limited (there's no way to bind weapon slots to keys such as 1-3, you can only swap weapons numerically forwards but not backwards, there's no Previous option for weapons, there’s no way to automatically exit out of menus without tediously navigating to their exit buttons and pressing ‘Interact’, etc), the User Interface (UI) is terrible (instead of having all of the relevant information on one screen, DRtC breaks it up into three screens and then further breaks these three screens into four more screens for each character (12 screens in total that you need to continually navigate between and micromanage); one for each individual character's loadout, stats, supplies, etc), weapon/item swapping in menus is slow and tedious despite being an essential and constant part of the gameplay (switching weapons/items in DRtC is tile-based and swaps tile places rather than allowing you to put down an item on a tile and then automatically pick up and move any item(s) that were previously occupying that tile), the Heads-Up Display (HUD) is lousy and has no option to constantly display your team's status during combat sections (health and supplies only appear briefly after you take damage or pick up a new supply), the graphics are not immediately clear and intuitive (some things are part of the background and others are solid, some things can be partially walked on whilst others have a massive collision box that greatly exceeds their visual model, etc), hitboxes for players, zombies, objects, walls, and buildings are often inconsistent and do not match their visual models in terms of the space they occupy, hit detection can be spotty (several times in my time playing I noticed that my melee weapons’ cleave visual would pass through a single lone zombie without hitting it; which could sometimes allow them to grab and/or bite and kill you), there’s no official Steam Workshop or other mod support on the game (allegedly due to programming restrictions tying the developer’s hands), and there’s not enough game, graphics, or sound options.

I've been watching gameplay of this game on Youtube for years and have a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of it and its wiki. I finally decided to try it for myself whilst it was on sale for Xmas this year. However the controls on PC, the UI, and other issues disappointed me after doing a number of experiments and a partial playthrough in-game. I've been told that it plays better on mobile and console, but I can't vouch for these statements.

Despite a rocky Steam release which was just a poor port of a mobile game with microtransactions, Ninja Kiwi's continual free updates to BTD6 and the addition of Co-op Mode have made it a worthy successor to Bloons Tower Defense 5. Thanks to these updates, BTD6 now has good overall game design, lots of tower variety and interactions, many different modes and maps to play on, and more enemy variety than ever before in the series.

The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth is still one of the best roguelite games currently available. With tons of characters, items, unique item synergies, trinkets, pickups, rooms, enemies, bosses, and more that are semi-randomly selected to appear in your run using a procedural generator, the game has a huge amount of variety and replayability. It's also a challenging game that rewards real-time skill, planning, tactics, strategy, and memorization; allowing you to overcome even the worst odds and triumph in nearly any situation the game throws at you.

New players should use the wiki or an item info mod to learn about new items until they've memorized everything, as there's literally hundreds of them and tens of thousands of synergies between them and their different effects. I'd also recommend installing the fast travel mod on the Steam Workshop if you own Afterbirth+, as it really helps make the game more fluid and fun.

The only problem with the game worth mentioning is that some of the floor curses in the game can add bad RNG elements. For example making you unable to see what item you're picking up before you take it, thereby opening up the random potential that you may get stuck with one of the few items in the game that really harm your run (and not taking any items on a floor is nearly as bad). For this reason a curse disabler mod may make the game more fun for some people.

The game receives regular content updates in the form of large DLC packs and free Booster Pack content for Afterbirth+. Afterbith+ also adds Steam Workshop integration, allowing you to customize your game in any way you desire for even more additional content.

This is how my experience with Bioshock Remastered went whilst I was doing an achievement run (trying to get them all in one playthrough like I did on the original Bioshock 2).

I started a game on Hard, and it crashed when I looted the first Splicer, resetting all of my settings and forcing me to restart the game and watch all of the cutscenes again. I then started a new game on Hard and got all of the audio diaries and tonics on Medical Pavilion, and it crashed just before I fought Steinman, erasing my quicksaves, settings, and forcing me to reload my autosave at the beginning of Medical Pavillion.

I then proceeded to get all of the audio diaries and tonics on Medical Pavilion again and reached Neptune's Bounty, only to realize that the game had for some reason changed the difficulty of my playthrough to Medium after loading the autosave, rather than Hard (thereby forfeiting my ability to get the 'Beat the game on Hard' achievement for the playthrough).

I then restarted the game completely on Hard, raced through Medical Pavilion again while getting all of the audio diaries and tonics, and was 1 room away from reaching the bathysphere to the next level before it crashed on me again.

Once again my quicksaves were erased, my settings were reset, and the only thing available was an autosave that put me back to the beginning of Medical Pavillion (on Normal rather than Hard once again). Fortunately this time I had backed up a copy of the quicksave file that had the vast majority of Medical Pavilion on Hard complete, and I proceeded to replace the current file with it. However, this didn't work, and the game still only recognized my autosave.

And like many others have reported, the game consistently had major freezes/stutters, audio glitches (skipping and repeating), props occasionally disappearing and reappearing, and terrible mouse acceleration.

Thus I can safely conclude that Bioshock Remastered is currently unplayable. DO NOT buy this game (or even try to install it if you were given it for free) until 2K releases some solid crash and stability fixes for the game.


Update March 2021: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/409710/discussions/0/3103516354864715628/ .

Based on this, it would seem that the issues with this game are still quite prevalent, but less predictable. Overall I would still highly recommend just playing the original version of Bioshock, which IMO still looks and runs great and didn't really need a graphical remaster so soon (the game wasn't even 10 years old yet at the time). The nicer textures and effects of the remaster are not worth the potential for game-breaking crashes and lost save progress ultimately.

Half Life 2, like Half Life 1, is a legend of gaming; it launched more mods and official games using its Source engine than you could wave a dozen crowbars at, and it pretty much set the standards for FPS' of the 2000's. Like its predeccesor, it is and forever will be a classic of gaming.

It was the second major singleplayer video game for the PC that I ever played (back when it released in late 2004), and I've played through its entirety at least 4 times on the hardest difficulty (although likely more than that) since its release.

The game is a First Person Shooter, and it is the return of the famous fictional hero Gordon Freeman. It starts out with Gordon awaking from G-Man's stasis to find that Earth and all of humanity has been taken over by an intergalactic alien race called the Combine, who detected the portal storms that started after the Black Mesa Incident. He almost immediately is discovered by the remaining human resistance in City 17 who tell him what he needs to do, supply him with some basic weapons, and send him on his way. Armed once again with his HEV suit of armour, trusty crowbar, and an arsenal of guns; Gordon fights his way through the Combine forces and different alien creatures who still remain on Earth since the Black Mesa Incident.

Just like Half Life 1, if you still haven't played this game, then you have no idea what you're missing. I highly recommend picking it up and playing it if you haven't already.

Counter Strike: Source is the second major multiplayer game that I played. I started playing it in early 2005, shorlty after it came out in late 2004. I almost never played the main game modes that it offered, but I loved its many different community-created gameplay mods. Including ones such as Zombie Mod (the main one I played), Zombie Hell, Gun Game, and various other fun mods available. I played the game as recently as 2011 before I stopped playing altogether.

As it's the only Counter Strike game that I have played at the time, and due to me seldom playing the official game modes, I can't compare it to the other games in its series. However, it had a lively community that made many fun mods for the game, which allow it to live on even to this day. While most of the mods that made it so great are likely to be recreated in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, I'd still recommend the game for its community-made mods alone.

It's basically a remake of the original multiplayer component to Quake using Half Life 1 weapons, mechanics, and models. It's a straight forward FPS deathmatch game where players compete for points that you get by killing the other players.

I played Deathmatch Classic every once in a while after I discovered it in early 2002. Then in 2005, Half Life Deathmatch was released, which was basically the same game except for a return to Half Life 1's combat style, improved graphics, and different gameplay mechanics. I stopped playing it once Half Life Deathmatch came out.

It's little more than a simple deathmatch game, but it still has that nice charm and feel that very early PC games and Half Life 1 mods are known for. As far as I know, its deathmatches still rage on to this day.

Half Life: Opposing Force is the first official expansion of Half Life 1, where you play as a HECU grunt named Adrian Shephard. He originally is sent in to Black Mesa in order to stop the alien threat, but he ends up getting trapped in the facility and must then fight his way out (mostly) alone. There are many new weapons and some returning ones, many new enemies and returning ones, some new bosses to fight, and some features that are completely new (including using HECU soldiers as valuable allies instead of brutal enemies).

I first played this game in early 2002, after Half Life: Blue Shift. I have beaten it at least 3 times on the hardest difficulty since then.

Being that it is an official Half Life game and a very fun FPS on its own, I highly recommend buying and playing through this game at least once if you haven't already.