Recent reviews by Sam

I payed for an expansion, an expansion which is now gone, it wasnt great, but why is it gone?

Best mod for Half Life 2 I've played, the author truly "gets" how to do good level design, easily on the level of minerva and the base game (which is high praise)

Very good fun, with the BIG proviso that you have a group of friends to play this with, and just remember, what happens in the game, stays in the game, lying is a part of it, don't take things personally when your friend stabs/beats/shoots you in the back

Great port of a great game (written at the time that only halo reach was available), very well optimised for a rather smooth experience

However, there are some flaws that need to be ironed out, like a sound bug that overlaps the sounds over top of one another to create a deafening crackle

And the matchmaking, which seems to degrade the more people you have in your party (as well as if you turn on ip masking relays in the options, seems to not work at all). The matchmaking itself has inherited the old hosting system for social games, which is fine for the most part, only had one instance of a host migration dropout, the ranked (invasion & mlg slayer) appear to use dedicated servers, and have not been a problem

Hopefully these will be resolved by the next (especially the sound bug)

My Game of the year for 2018

Dusk is one of those shooters that seem to be popping up a lot now that capture the nineties fps spirit, but rest assured that this isnt a pretender, it feels like an evolution along the lines of the first quake (before they slowed turn the pace of the combat for the sequel).

Don't let the graphics turn you off, trust me when i say that this game really does have an intensely creepy and enthralling atmosphere

This game is very good, but you'll want the reactive drop version (full review there)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/563560/Alien_Swarm_Reactive_Drop/

this has more content then the game pretending to be the sequel to it in 2015

and space combat, with flying controls that don't make you think your pilot has a constant drip-feed of Vodka in his mouth

(edit: they even restored the online multiplayer, and its still fairly active)

- The play time on steam does not count the amount of time spent on the pre-steam builds, originally only availible through the dev's website -

First off, DO NOT let the "early access" bit put you off, this is one of those times where early access is done right (see also: starbound, darkest dungeon...).

This is a case where the game in its current state is well worth the asking price, and it can only get better from here...


Well I suppose I should start out by saying that this game is the antithesis of those "you need a wiki to know how to make an axe" kind of craft-'em-ups, the inventory/crafting screen tells you everything you need to know about what you want to craft, what components are required and the purpose of said thing you want to craft.

That said, the UI is sleek, practical and customisable, pinning a crafting machines little menu to the corner of your screen so that you can check its progress without being locked in one position is much more gratifying than it has any right to be, just because its not that often you see a game that is *drum roll....* Well Designed!!


But the immense gratification from factorio comes from the fact that it is a game very much about efficiency, and the tools that it gives you to automate even just the process of mining, feels hugely rewarding.

What suprised me the most about factorio is how natural it was to scale up my operations, from simply finding out how to self regulate a simple electrical system, to completely automating (and optimIzing) The creation of the science packs, the resources of which are required to get to your end goal, the rocket ship to take you off this hostile alien world.


Factorio is so skull-splitingly fantastic and I'd highly recommend it to anyone that wants to grab a couple of friends and play this for twelve hours stright, even on your own, it's a hell of a good time.