Recent reviews by Rychard

As far as soda drinking simulators go, this one is just okay.

The game seems like the result of a final project for a college-level programming class. It's an interesting concept, but unlikely to capture anyone's attention for more than a few minutes.

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed the original SPAZ, I've played SPAZ2 off-and-on throughout its "early access" lifetime, and have never felt the game to be anything less than enjoyable, and mostly complete.

This sequel expands upon many of the gameplay elements from the original while reducing the necessity of some particularly tedious ones (e.g. farming for Rez), so there's more than enough added value in terms of QoL improvements over the original to justify its price.

The move from 2D to 3D is impressive, though it should be noted that you're still effectively locked to the same 2-dimensional plane as before. Your inputs are primarily correlated with the ship's yaw, though your ship will roll to corner more effectively.

The developers have stated that they intended for most players to use the third-person camera, but as someone who prefers the overhead view of the original, I appreciate that I was able to play through the entirety of SPAZ2 in that way, though I wish there were a checkbox in the options so that I don't have to change the camera (the 'C' key) at the beginning of every battle, as it defaults to the third-person view.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the (admittedly corny) humor, the environments, and the replayability of the game. Everything has been packaged together into a cohesive product; nothing feels out of place, and it's clear that a lot of time went into tuning the systems to keep everything consistent.

I can confidently recommend this game to anyone interested in the premise of a "Space-based Strategy/Action/RPG".

You could be playing this game instead of reading this recommendation.

I love Fallout 3. I love the environment, I love the storyline, I love the gameplay.

Bethesda really outdid themselves with Oblivion, and then again with Fallout 3. Their recipe has just the right amount of RPG and FPS elements that keep me interested.

However, despite that...

I regret purchasing this game, knowing that my money is funding the future development of games with great storylines and features, but extremely poor support.

I'm lucky if I can get Fallout 3 to run on my PC for any amount of time. This is unacceptable.

While normally I shrug off the games that clone the popular GTA genre (non-linear sandbox what-have-you), I found Just Cause 2 to be surprisingly enjoyable -- for at least a week or so.

At some point after that initial week, I realized how mundane and repetitive the game's objectives were; travel across the island, find hidden boxes, shoot people, take over areas, etc.

It's a little stale, but during my time playing, at least I had fun.

Summary: It's a lot like a dumbed-down GTA.