Recent reviews by CKTofu

It's a charming little free RPG. Well worth the time.

It's a solid step up from Receiver 1, if you have played that and enjoyed the concept, definitely get this. Playing it is intense and unforgiving, with a unique progression mechanic and interesting story presentation. For the 7 hours it took me to get my first clear, I definitely consider it worth the price, though I wouldn't necessarily say it's for everyone.

If you're unsure, maybe grab receiver 1 first and play for a bit to get a feel for the mechanics and if it suits you, that's what I did. It's a cheap way to give the gameplay a test run.

It feels like a sidegrade from Dying Light 1, to be honest.

After refunding this game, I went back to Dying Light 1 to compare.

Graphics are better. Obviously.

The combat has more depth, but somehow attacks don't feel quite as weighty as they did in DL1. Overall the combat is better, primarily through blocking/perfect blocking as a mechanic.

Movement is a sidegrade. There's more variety but it feels jankier, less smooth, and the addition of stamina to climbing is perplexing, it doesn't add positively to the experience.

Story's bad, but I don't think anyone was expecting it to be stand out. Main character's VA is super flat.

It's pretty buggy in my experience, especially a fun bug that everyone I know experienced, where we can no longer interact with the rest of our computer after playing, both while running the game and after quitting. It's an issue in Dying Light 1 as well, so it's pretty remarkable that they haven't managed to fix a huge issue like that.

I think I'd consider buying it after the game gets fixed, I wouldn't pay full price for it though.

Would recommend.

Pros
- Good story and gameplay
- Solid KB&M controls
- Looks good
- Can't say I've encountered any bugs/crashes
- Hunt robot dinosaurs

Cons:
- Facial animations are dated, though honestly I didn't think they were all that amazing back at PS4 launch.
- Performance isn't quite as good as expected, I feel like they didn't put enough effort into it, but that might just be engine limitations. Running a 9900k/2080Ti @ 2560x1440, I had around 80-90fps most of the time with all settings on High. Taking a quick glance at turning everything to Ultra, I lose around 5fps compared to High.
- Borderless Windowed mode appears to cause the game to stutter, especially when moving the camera around, however swapping to regiular fullscreen mode appears to resolve that issue for me
- Many reports of crashing from other users, I personally have not had any crashes so far, but it could be a problem for you judging by other reviews

Good puzzles, short and sweet.

There are aspects of this game I love, but as it stands, I can't recommend it. Cube World has become a painful experience to play.

Cube World was at it's best when you're moving around quickly, exploring new areas and finding/fighting new things. Currently, it's decent enough (albeit a slow if you don't find the mobility items) when you're in one zone, but it quickly turns awful when you go to a new zone.

Pros:
Great music.

Combat is still decent, if class imbalance is still totally a thing.

Classes feel similar to Alpha but with a couple added abilities, so that's nice.

Added bits of lore is neat, nice to see quests, treasure and neat new things in the wild.

Cons:
Class balance isn't great, especially some subclasses that friends found frustrating.

Static world - I definitely think the game was better of having a changeable world seed rather than a static world.

Oh boy, here we go.

Back in Alpha we'd go on really long glider trips through zones, looking for unique or different zones to explore if the ones right by us seemed uninteresting or too repetitive. Region-locked gear, along with region-locked mobility items, makes this more or less impossible.

Region locked gear. Every time you leave a zone, any gear you've received is immediately reduced to absolute trash (grey, standard rpg rarity colours apply) stats, unless it's a + piece of gear, which keeps its power within a certain set of zones. In my time mostly clearing one zone, I managed to get a single piece of + gear. This is a really, really bad implementation imo. If the gear only dropped 2 rarities, or if there was, by default, a radius of 2 zones from where you got it, region locking wouldn't be nearly the horrifying situation it is now where in a new zone your gear makes you absolutely useless.

Region-locked mobility items. The boat, glider, mount reins, and climbing shoes are all region locked. My group ONLY found the climbing shoes. We (4 of us) were pretty thorough exploring the whole zone (90%+ of my play time is a single zone), and didn't find the boat/glider. Cube world needs the glider/boat in zones, because there's an absolute ton of walking otherwise, and you can't reliably find hints as to where these absolute key items are. And then, to top it off, the moment you leave the zone, those items will all stop working. For a game that thrives off of exploration, this absolutely and harshly punishes it. Single handedly the worst part of the game, even with how painful the region-locked gear is. Having the utility items (harp, whistle, treasure spirit, etc) vanish each zone isn't a big deal. Not an issue like losing gear and mobility is.

The only progression that carries between regions is artifacts. Artifacts give small boosts to secondary stats (lantern AoE, glider speed, underwater breathing time, etc), which suffer diminishing returns. Nothing really makes you more powerful, just makes some things less of a hassle.

Some bugs, etc in gameplay, but between some obvious class bugs and stability issues, it feels like the game was maybe barely tested. Patches are coming, so not a huge issue.

In conclusion, I can't recommend this game in its modern state. The mechanics as is aren't just less fun than the alpha, I genuinely think they create what is ultimately a frustrating and unenjoyable experience. If you have the Alpha access, go back and play that instead. Not that I want everything added/changed in the beta reverted, but some core components definitely need to be either removed or heavily revamped to make this game enjoyable. Punishing players for continuing to play isn't really a great move.

A neat and humorous little game/concept that would totally be worthwhile, but despite being EA there's no sign that it's actually being worked on. Wouldn't recommend it unless you're game for ~1 hour of playing and then probably dropping it.

Risk of Rain 2 is a very good successor to the original Risk of Rain. Honestly, I was skeptical at first when I found out the game was moving from sidescoller to 3D, but it was implemented in very well. It's a good roguelite game with active development, and I'm looking forward to seeing the game develop and playing the new content as it releases.

Monster Hunter: World is a great Monster Hunter game, with some issues that are rightfully criticized, and some that are overblown.

Pros:
- Monster Hunting is great, the gameplay is great. Combat is very methodical and punishing if you aren't learning the monster
- Performs acceptably. From my experience playing on PS4, getting a around 60-70 FPS at max settings 2560x1440 on a 1080Ti. Turned down the volumetric fog from Highest to High to gain another 10 ish FPS without significant impact on the graphics
- Great load times vs my time playing on PS4, SSD or no. The PS4 load times were a constant (minor) source of frustration

Neutral:
- Maybe not as optimized as possible, but personally I think the performance is adequate
- Pretty CPU-intensive. I have an i7-6700K @ 4.4GHz and I'll get about 60-70% load on max settings. Manages to use more than 4 CPU threads, unlike many games. All 8 threads of my 6700K get involved
- Mouse acceleration kills me on the inside, but I think it's partly balance. Being able to aim as swiftly as a normal mouse could be game-breaking Oh, the sweet lord Raw Input has arrived, looking forward to giving m+k a go now that raw input is available.
- The best UX in any Monster Hunter game (not saying much since the UX is still pretty painful at times)

Cons:
- Missing some graphical options I wish were there (Primarily disabling depth-of-field and motion blur)
- Networking issues are currently a moderately significant issue. Seems to be a bigger problem with matchmaking than with custom lobbies with friends, but issues still occur there. (they are looking into it, and hopefully resolve this).
- A Patch has been put out for the networking issues. I personally haven't had any disconnects since the patch, and I haven't heard of any issues from friends who play the game, so everything seems far more stable, and any networking bugs that remain appear to be fairly minor.
- Disconnecting during a multiplayer match just leaves you in your hunt, but suddenly solo. No re-loading or anything, your monster is at the same %HP it was before your disconnect, but you're suddenly not in a group and fighting the multiplayer-HP version of the boss with your Palibro. You don't get kicked out of the hunt or anything, but it definitely sucks that the monster doesn't drop back down to the same %HP but with the Solo HP maximum. Generally not a big deal, but it sucks to restart your hunt if you D/C off the bat. Hopefully a minor inconvenience now with the new networking patch.

Would I recommend this game? Yeah, I would. Monster Hunting is a good time, and I think anyone who thinks they might like Monster Hunter will enjoy this game. Hopefully the networking issues are resolved quickly, since they're definitely the biggest problem.

If you have an interest in the battle royale genre, or games along the line of DayZ, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS is definitely the best iteration of it. It's a relatively simple gameplay loop that's very enjoyable and replayable. You queue in to Solo, Duo, or Squad matches, where your team size is capped at 1, 2 and 4 people respectively. 100 people max per match, but if there are unfilled teams, or people dropping out, the number will be slightly less. You can queue by yourself into Duo or Squad if you want to be alone vs teams, or if you want to join another team that is short players.

The dev team has frequent, detailed communication, and I've been pretty happy with how they've handled things. Patches and updates are regular and come with appropriately informative patch notes. Large additions to the game have been announced (vaulting/climbing, new maps, first-person-only servers), and will add a lot more variety to the game.The only thing I don't like is the zero-tolerance team-killing rule, that punishes players in situations where it isn't justified, but in all honesty it's not a huge issue.

The current controversy in PUBG is the cosmetic microtransaction model showing up temporarily in EA. Normally I'd have a problem with it, but this is a test run that is supposed to only last for the tournament period. Yes, they said they weren't going to have paid microtransactions in EA, but there also weren't going to be any tournaments during EA, so I can wholly understand bringing in paid microtransactions as a test run, and to fund the tournament.