Recent reviews by OneNot

- Very minor stutter and minor hitches between camera cuts in cutscenes. Probably related to asset streaming. Not constant. Happens mostly when transitioning to heavy scenes. Ray-traced shadows exacerbates both issues from barely noticeable to slightly annoying.
- Alt-tabbing can cause controls to get messed up. L2 and L1 both become aim, and while aiming, R1 and R2 both open the weapon wheel. The game is essentially unplayable in this state and only restarting the game fixes it. This did not happen consistently, but it did happen more than once during my playthrough.

The factory must grow

More of the same, but with issues. I'd recommend any previous Far Cry over this one.

It's not a bad game. If you're a huge fan of Far Cry games, you'll enjoy it. I just didn't care about the story or any character, and the gameplay didn't offer anything too interesting in the time that I played. To be fair 2h isn't much. It probably gets more interesting later gameplay-wise. I won't go into it any more than that since I didn't play that far into the game. It just didn't hold my interest.

The tech was woefully lacking too.
- Only available upscaler is FSR 1.0
- Pillarboxed cutscenes on ultrawide, limited FOV range, with certain situations using default FOV anyways. (FOV and ultrawide issues can be fixed with mods)
- I could barely hold 100FPS most of the time, which would be fine enough, but I also got weird spurts of really bad framerates and/or stuttering in some areas (13900K + RTX4090)

Challenging team-based submarine game with survival, combat, and ship management. A mysterious world and story with some personality, role-play opportunities, and general panic.
- Steep but rewarding learning curve.
- Honestly not worth it in singleplayer.
- Some technical issues: connection issues, bugs, crashes. Not too bad these days and is actively being improved by the devs.
- Lots of great mods.

Would hide my energy drink / drug stash from the ship medic again.

Still way too stuttery to recommend. Both shader compilation- and traversal stutter, with the latter being by far the bigger issue. (13900K, 3080ti)
Oh, and it's eating 11 out of my 12GB of VRAM...

Other than the stutter issue, seems like a good game so far.
For me the issue is just barely on the side of things were I'm willing to deal with it and keep playing for now, but it's definitely a big enough issue that I'm compelled to rate the game as "not recommended" on principle.

Might update this with a proper review of the game later after I'm done with it, or especially if the stutter issues ever get fixed.

A relatively short, but good narrative sci-fi game with lots of choices involving identity, espionage, friendships, AI, and mushrooms.

If you're looking for exciting gameplay, complex puzzles, or tough challenges that require a lot of strategizing, this game is not for you. The gameplay is mostly there to serve the story and choices by introducing some randomness and a sense of urgency and growth.
This is done using a very simple TTRPG system and some resource management. That is not to say that you can't fail or make mechanically bad choices, but apart from making some tough narrative choices involving resources and time, playing relatively "optimally" is quite easy. Still, it's complex enough that it's more than just a visual novel with some interactive elements.
Another potential deal-breaker worth noting is that the story involves lots of reading, and none of it is voice-acted. That being said, the great music, environmental audio, and art make it more interesting than you might think.

gg

It's difficult to say if should mark this as recommended or not. If this was the first 2h of the finished game, it would be an easy "not recommended", but it's a teaser to show a prototype and get feedback on the direction of development. I will go with the former in this case as the review does go specifically on the separate teaser steam page/product, but that does not mean the game is unsalvageable or that I don't want to see it made.

The biggest problem is the post processing and performance. The framerate is horrible across the board. I played on an RTX3080ti and the framerate, irregardless of the graphics settings, was at best around 50, at worst like 20 and most of the time around 40.
The camera felt like there was some kind of annoying smoothing and the post processing was obnoxious. The constant motion blur and blurry anti-aliasing method (FXAA or something?) made me feel like I was losing my vision half the time. I dropped AA to Low, which made it look better, but of course that means the positive side of AA was lost along the way, but it was still better than the vaseline slathered screen that the highest AA induced.
I will say that the technical issues might have colored my experience slightly more negatively all around.

As others have pointed out, the main character seems to really like to narrate every single tiny action he takes. The intro really highlights that, which is not a great first impression. Overall the dialogue and voice acting seemed passable at best. Might be just placeholders though. I don't know. Not a deal breaker kinda bad though.

The gameplay is all around kinda janky, but I didn't really see anything foundationally wrong. A lot of it just needs fine tuning and improvements. The horrible framerate doesn't help with the janky feel either.

One of my favorite games, possibly ever.

Movement, as well as a some of the combat, is all about parkour. A lot of the game is spent jumping on everything from zombie heads to light posts, to rooftops and back. It's a good thing then, that the parkour system is well-made and extremely fun. It works by building momentum by running and chaining moves together. There's a level and skill point/perk system that allows you to unlock new moves and all kinds of buffs. Some of those include things like boosting off the ground using zombies as platforms, drop kicking fools off buildings, snapping necks of unsuspecting bystanders, skill rolling to safety, shimmying up walls and so on.

In combat, you can use bladed weapons to cut off limbs and heads, or blunt weapons to break them. You can find interesting and increasingly more powerful weapons or craft and upgrade them using blueprints you find during the game. There are ranged weapons as well, but while the ranged weapons are good and using them can be fun, this is no first person shooter. It's not as bad as in Dead Island, but some similar jank is present here.

One of the better aspects of the game, is its day-night cycle. At this point you might think: "Oh a day-night cycle, how innovative...". The great thing here is that the cycle really matters. The night brings with it extremely dangerous enemies and unlike most games, this here night is actually dark. As in, you really do need to use a flashlight. And remember, you're jumping on roofs and trying to not get spotted by extremely dangerous predators while you're at it. Getting spotted means a chase. At first the nights can feel scary and something to fear and avoid if you can. As it should. Then later on, a fun challenge. I would recommend playing on one of the harder difficulties to properly experience the threat of nighttime.
Having said all this, did I mention you can play the whole thing with up to 4 players total?

You play an agent of an organization that has sent you to the quarantine zone to check up on rumors of a cure.
The secrecy involved in the beginning, as well as the newness of it all keeps things interesting for about the first half of the story, after which the story gradually becomes a fairly standard fare. Even still, it remains entertaining enough. Voice acting and writing seems alright throughout. Side quests are a mixed bag, but still fun for the most part.

The graphics are pretty good. For today's (as of when I'm writing this) standards, it's obviously not top of the line, but more than good enough.
There has been the occasional bug and some performance issues, but nothing major. Depending on how sensitive you are to that sort of stuff, you might notice some very minor stuttering and/or input delay at times. In my experience, playing the game in windowed mode seems to eliminate it. The game doesn't support borderless windowed mode, so you'll need to use Borderless Gaming for that.

So yeah...
Overall I'd definitely recommend this game :)

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