Recent reviews by G'lek

No longer recommending this game. Publisher pulled a bait and switch, suddenly changing the requirements of the game to include linking to a third-party account system (Playstation Network). This is an underhanded tactic at best. Will be contacting Steam for a refund and, if they refuse, taking necessary legal action to get my money back.

Hoo boy, this one is... This one is a doozy.

Let me be clear up front, I WANT to recommend this game. The core game play is fun and the setting is beautifully brought to life. I cannot, however, recommend it in its current state. In fact I would advise staying well clear of it in case the review score didn't give you that impression beforehand.

So what's wrong? Well, besides the core game play, literally everything. I'm going to put a summery here as I don't have the time or energy to write the literal short novel that would be required to express all the problems I have with this game.

* The game STILL crashes routinely and for no reason that I can discern from the logs and I'm a programmer. This is still the case months after the beta launch, never mind the full release.
* Performance on my system is still terrible. I have to run on low settings to get a stable 60 frames per second and I have a RTX 2080 SUPER and a 16 core Ryzen 7 3700X with 64 GB of DDR4 RAM. This is not acceptable.
* Weapon stats are completely random and getting anything good is basically like playing the lottery. That's not an exaggeration. Your odds of winning the lottery might even be better than rolling a good weapon.
* The weapon store refreshes every hour (real time) which is WAY too long in my opinion.
* Crafting is still not finished despite multiple promises from the developers that it would be done for launch and then for December 2022.
* The Pox Hounds teleport around the map. I suspect this is due to poorly implemented networking code but either way it makes them a real pain to fight. More than they should be, at least.
* There is no story. The most story you'll get is the intro cinematic and a few random cutscenes smattered throughout the game as you rank up and even those are lacklustre at best.
* Achievements and weekly challenges are a complete joke and not in the good way. Achievements REQUIRE premade groups with specific builds to have any chance of completing them. Weekly goals are beyond grind-intensive and reward you with yet another currency that you can spend on either questionable gear or randomly rolled items. The shop reloads once per week.
* All the cosmetics that aren't in the cash shop are just recolors of the same base item. Same goes for weapon skins that aren't from the cash shop.
* Cash shop loads but half the time the images won't load for me and I have to go into the actual bundle descriptions to see the skins.
* The cash shop offers almost exclusively bundles. For every three to four bundles there's one single skin purchase available. You cannot buy things from bundles individually, period.
* I am STILL missing cosmetics from watching the game on Twitch despite the developers saying they fixed Twitch Drops weeks ago. No communication on this.
* My cosmetics menu says I have new cosmetics but there are no new cosmetics to see. It has been this way since day one.

Astroneer is a fun game but I do have a few complaints about it, despite giving it a thumbs up.

## The Good ##

Astroneer is genuinely fun. There's a good balance between exploring and base building. The planets all feel different and unique with their own challenges and quirks. The terrain deformation feature is solid without being like Minecraft blocks as so many other games that feature destructible terrain are. The recent addition of the VTOL and Terrain Leveling Block are welcome additions that really open the game up and make completing it a massive amount less of a slog.

## The Bad ##

Completing the game takes far too long for what needs to be done to complete it. For the record I consider completion to be beating the game and unlocking the entire tech "tree". Getting around some planets is also a massive chore due to the way the terrain is formed. The game's engine also struggles later in the game with odd graphical artifacting when moving between planets as well as routinely getting stuck on invisible lips in the terrain.

## Overall ##

Enjoyable but not overly replayable. Would recommend.

I was originally rather unsure about Oxygen Not Included. It seemed like a goofy game with a very cartoon visual style. 2240 hours later and I can't express more how wrong I was in my initial impressions of the game. There's a literal mountain of depth here, more than Dwarf Fortress has on offer in some respects. What materials you build things out of matters a lot more than in Dwarf Fortress because of the game's thermal simulation. That's right! You can actually heat substances up to the point where they melt or vaporise! Different materials have different properties and that has far-reaching effects on how your base performs or if it does at all.

If you love Dwarf Fortress, especially its sometimes comical aspects, then I can wholeheartedly recommend Oxygen Not Included. If you like colony games and are looking for something more complex than the usual fare, definitely give Oxygen Not Included a try. It tickles a lot of the same itches as Factorio and Satisfactory. Don't let the somewhat cartoon, cute art style throw you off. This game is a genuine gem.

Factorio is a hard game to describe. It's something of a base builder, a resource manager, and a real-time strategy game. Yet, at the same time, it's none of those.

Factorio is best described like so:

"Everything you can do by hand can be done by machines, only faster and better."

That is the core of Factorio. Automation and production line design.

If you like games like Big Pharma, this game is that on steroids.

## 2018 ##

Hard to believe it's 2018 already and I've clocked over 1300 hours in Factorio. The developers continue to polish and add new stuff at every turn. Every change is well thought out and makes them game even better.

This is a game where the limits truly are your imagination. Especially with the ample modding community.

Wube Software has done an amazing job and I can't wait to see what the final Factorio looks like and what they do after 1.0.

## 2019 ##

Damn, 2019 already? I'm now up to over 2000 hours and Factorio continues to be my number 1 favourite game. More polish, more features, and just more good stuff all around.

## 2020 ##

Well damn, here we are. 2020 and the game is fully released. The last year has brought a few major game play changes and balances but the core of Factorio is still as strong as ever. More importantly this game has been polished to an immaculate shine compared to a lot of other games.

I cannot recommend it enough if. Time and time again I've seen people scoff at it before sinking hundreds upon hundreds of hours into it. Seriously, give it a chance. It might surprise you!

## 2023 ##

2023. Goodness, what a year. We've seen a significant slowdown in Wube's communications about Factorio but behind the scenes they've been hard at work! Major engine changes to facilitate a brand new expansion with tons of new challenges and features on the horizon! If you want to get into this game, now is the time!

Please be aware that while I recommend No Man's Sky (abbreviated to NMS for easier typing), it's not a game for everyone. If you like games like Elite Dangerous, I'd say NMS (while not as complex) is worth a try.


Exploration in NMS is always interesting, though not for the reasons you'd expect. The biggest factor is the planet's environment/weather. Incoming storms, natural hazards like radiation or extreme cold, and the wildlife make exploring a dangerous task, which is how it should be in my opinion. Exploring an uncharted world does not mean pandering about in a field of flowers without any risk. It means dealing with whatever the planet throws at you. When you're low on resources, that going out in that heat storm is a necessary risk in order to keep your ship and life support systems fueled.

Ground combat is your standard FPS-like experience. Your multi-tool can shoot mining lasers (which can do damage since it's, you know, a laser), energy bolts, or plasma grenades, so there's some variety. Various upgrades can turn the 'Boltcaster' into a shotgun or a SMG depending on your preference. I haven't played with either or the grenades because I avoid combat, preferring not to get in trouble with the local 'police' (called Sentinals).

Space flight is simple and intuitive and there's always fuel around for your Pulse Engine (used to rapidly move around inside a star system), which is good since jumping between planets would take hours otherwise. Speaking of, the planets are properly planet-sized and the moons as well are correctly sized, which is a pleasant surprise as the trailers always conveyed a sense of the planets being smaller than real planets.

The game also dumps you on a planet with little to no instructions on what to do beyond how to control the game. I like this a lot as it means I'm free to do whatever I want from the first second. No hand-holding, no voice in my ear nagging me to do things, and no arbitrary restrictions for the purpose of teaching. Just a planet and a ship that needs repairing.


Space combat is bad. There's no other way to put it. You can't run away as most pirate ships are faster than you and your Pulse Engines are disabled while they're nearby. Having to recharge your ship's shields by entering your inventory and charging them from oxides (such as Iron or Zinc) is cumbersome in the heat of a fight and leaves you up to getting blasted. The game randomly will summon pirates to attack you if you have anything remotely valuable on your ship and I have not won a single one of these encounters yet. 3 vs. 1 is not fair given how hard combat is.

The constant need to keep your life support systems running is annoying, though I understand why it's needed. Having to constantly find resources to charge your personal life support system makes exploring feel a bit more like a grind. Walk a bit, go find resources, hope the Sentinals don't get mad when you mine, repeat.

Speaking of the Sentinals, these flying robots are... They make no sense. They hover around and if you change the environment somehow, they come to take a look and then if you did something they don't like, they get mad and summon help to attach. Things they don't like include breaking into abandoned facilities (slightly understandable), over mining a resources, or killing wildlife that didn't attack first. The Sentinals have yet to be explained in the game, so they're a mystery why they do what they do.

NMS also suffers from technical problems. I frequently see terrain vanishing only to re-appear (the developers say it's the Steam Overlay causing it). The sound sometimes cuts out only to come back in a few seconds. The game randomly starts stuttering for no apparent reason. It's still perfectly playable, but these issues impact immersion.


In short, if you like games like Elite Dangerous, NMS might be a good game to pick up. I would wait a few weeks for the worst technical issues to be ironed out before getting it, though. If you don't like exploration/survival games, particularly those where the developer has openly admitted that they don't want you to ever feel safe, NMS is probably not a game you need to play.

Have you ever wanted to feel like an unstoppable ninja badass? Do you hate games that require button mashing? Do you like games with very simple controls? If you answered yes to any of those questions, this is the game for you.

One Finger Death Punch is exactly what it says on the box. You have two controls, left and right. These can be the left and right mouse buttons, arrow keys, etc. Given there's only two buttons, it's definitely possible to play with one finger. Most normal enemies fall in one hit, hence 'Death Punch'.

The game has a variety of level types to keep things interesting, though the main level type is 'Mob Round' where you need to kill a given number of enemies to beat the level. Other rounds include speed rounds (kill all the enemies within the time limit), defender (block all incoming range attacks) and light sab-errr... Light sword rounds, among others.

The interesting things about One Finger Death Punch is that you cannot button mash. Pressing an attack button without an enemy to attack means a 'miss', which paralyzes your character briefly and gives a single enemy (if they are close enough) a free hit. Thus, button mashing is a very fast way to die in the game.

I really want to give this game a recommendation, I really do. When the game works, you feel like a true Sith. Throwing things at enemies, firing Force Lightning at them or just flat out throwing them off ledges/into walls is immensely satisfying. You feel like a god among men. The problem, though is that the times the game works are few and far between.

Overall, the game just feels wrong on PC. The combat controls are loose and the camera is painful, even with an Xbox 360 controller. Several enemies have way more melee range than you do and are guaranteed a knock down. Their animations are also hard to interrupt, meaning the fastest way to defeat them is actually to use Force Grab and throw them off the nearest cliff/down the closest pit. Using Force Grab to throw things at enemies just does not work most of the time. It sort of works with a controller and about 30% of the time, you'll throw it at an enemy. The other 70% of the time, you'll either throw it off a cliff or into a wall about 30 feet to the side of the enemy. Trying to do it with keyboard/mouse is even more impossible.

Force Lightning is satisfying, but only with the second upgrade where you can actually hold the button and fire lightning for as long as you have Force energy. The first level is useless for the most part as it only affects one or two enemies, though it's nice for stunning them.

I won't comment on the combos because I'm terrible at combos in any game I play and thus consider them stupid in all games.

The quick-time events (and there are a lot of them) are far too quick. You will have to repeat them at least once unless you have above average reaction time. This would be alright except that failing a quick-time often will heal the boss/miniboss, which is a terrible but effective way to pad out a fight's length.

The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the game is riddled with bugs. The game crashed for me three times in the same boss fight. The only time it didn't crash, the boss' attack knocked me out of the world, trapping me outside the boss arena and making the fight impossible to complete. There are numerous other bugs I could add to this list, but those are the worst offenders. Having to restart a boss fight four times because of bugs/crashing is unacceptable and frustrating.

I have been playing Stonehearth since very early access (Alpha 2 roughly). It has been a true joy to watch this game grow from the core mechanics into what it is now.

I will not say that the game is complete or necessarily good. There is a lot of content still to implement, features to add and polish to be put in, but as it stands, Stonehearth is playable and offers several hours worth of gameplay in its current state. Given the price of almost $30, I would not recommend buying it unless you want into the early access system. The game does not, currently, have $30 worth of content.

In spite of that, I do strongly recommend this game, both now and most likely when it leaves early access. The team is dedicated and communication is open and transparent. The game's modability is very good and new content rolls out every few weeks, showing that development is definitely active and lively.

This is a game that clearly has not aged well, unlike some games from its era. The graphics are decent, for the time period, but that's about it. You'd exepct a game that's essentially a six degrees of freedom shooter to have appropriate controls, but the controls are more like a FPS, which does not mesh well with what's going on.

The story is... Confusing to say the least. I was able to determine that, after a terrible nuclear war, humanity began living underwater. Beyond that, I'm not sure what's going on. The audio balancing on the cutscenes is so bad I could barely make out the voices past the music. The conversations are so seemingly random, with the plot simple jumping in several points without warning.

Perhaps the game's worst offense, and it's one that's seen a lot in games of this era, is the terrible escort/protect the objective missions. The game throws so many enemies/turrets at you at once and your allies will blindly follow their programmed path that protecting them, or an objective, is so incredibly difficult that it's hard not to just skip levels. Even playing on Easy, which was proving overall unchallenging, I failed each and every protect/escort mission several times.

The idea is great, the world is interesting, but the game itself is more of an excerise in patience.