Recent reviews by Xer0

What a masterpiece this game was. I dare not even try to describe anything that occurs in the story for the sheer fact that it unravels into an amazing mystery that takes a lot of wit and exploration to uncover.
Easily one of the best experiences I've ever had interacting with a story like this.

Amazingly fun and charming social game. A nice cool down from the stress of life.

Amazing side scrolling beat-em-up very much cut of the same cloth that Streets of Rage and Final Fight were; but, with a wonderfully advanced and deepened combat system that adds an extra element of fun as you learn to juggle your enemies to death.
Also funny 2010s internet reviewers as characters.

It's a silly drug dealing sim type game that leans heavily into the absurd and comedic. Though early game may feel like a bit of a hassle, trying to juggle all the drug production processes by yourself, hiring NPCs for automation allows you to scale up to a very large distribution service that is constantly churning out product as long as you focus on one at a time.
Some bugs and odd glitches at times; but, for an early access game, it's certainly more well handled than most AAA releases these days.

Despite being pretty early access, this game has a very fun experience to enjoy. A lot of people have the water system as a much more perceived inflated problem than it actually is. Each quest you complete gives you at-least one day of water and finding water itself can be absurdly easy. I got myself to more than a months worth of water in less than 10 hours.
The combat itself feels great, enemies do feel a bit sponge-y above the grunt level; but, that is somewhat to be expected. You are not that guy. You are a rat, trying to lurk inbetween the shadows and corners of the world to pick off the scraps of what is left after the warring factions do what they do in your area. That being said, building yourself up to become that guy and getting a fireteam does seem in the cards at some point. You do still go out on missions to eliminate certain types of enemies and the game does expect you to start taking on bigger guys at some point. There is actual bullet travel and height over bore physics with the guns, which is a nice touch to the gunplay. There's really no form of armor other than leveling up your character's base HP or getting reinforced attachment points on your bag which have a chance of blocking shots from the back.
This game really expects you to run away from most things. The enemy AI isn't exactly the smartest at times, nor is their sight or hearing the best. You can go through most of this game just running away from enemies, vaulting up into high spaces, and sneaking away to the extract. Being a PvE game, it's pretty much devoid of all the pain that usually surrounds extraction type games like this: mainly cheaters and extreme levels of gear fear. You're always able to try and pick up your corpse loot to retrieve your special items. While you do lose your guns, you never lose your rigs, just all the items attached to them. So you can rest a bit easier knowing that your main tool to making more money is secured.
There are some cons with this game still; but, they are mostly understandable because of their early access status. Some ground textures in the map don't really connect with each other properly. There's certain areas on the map that will dead you stop in your tracks despite it looking like something your character would naturally step over. Really takes you out of the immersion for a second as you realize your legs are basically just tank tracks with a run animation on them that are entirely unable to climb any height that isn't at a perfect slope. Additionally, enemy spawns can be very flawed at times, spawning literally right in on top of you or just a couple feet next to you. This can sometimes even happen right when you're at extract. Enemy patrols can be really dumb too at times, going between maybe 2 or 3 waypoints in a very short 25 meter radius until they eventually get pulled away by combat. Other times, they're just kinda there the whole time and you will have to do something to pull them away, wipe em out, or just sneak by them in order to get to extract.

The core of the game is great, needs some polish here and there; but, as long as they respect how good the current gameplay-loot loop feels currently with some fixing of the AI and map design, it'll be a great full release. Still a great early-access. Would defo recommend getting it currently. Devs tend to update the game often and listen to player feedback as well, so who knows, maybe after this update I'm currently patching on the 30th of September 2024, some of the problems I just mentioned will have disappeared.

This game is practically unplayable without QoL, bugfixing, crashfixing mods; but, spend the time to install the Viva New Vegas mod list and approved of mods from their lists. Get the B42 mods and you've practically turned Fallout: New Vegas into Stalker: New Vegas.
The core problem with New Vegas was the gameplay itself, everything else around it is pure perfection in terms of role playing and world interaction. Mod it out to fix that and you got yourself a game to dump boatloads of time on.

I only have 36 minutes on Steam but that's because I use the Fixt mod which modifies this game into an endless enjoyment of the CRPG masterpiece that it is.
Does it move at a snails pace? Yes.
Are combat encounters more painful than passing a kidney stone? Absolutely.
Is it still a great tabletop gaming experience ported to the computer? 100%.
Get this game, get Fallout Fixt and find out what makes the Fallout lore so great.

A very fun game, just that it can get a tad repetitive at times over the long grind to getting all your classes to max rank. The variety of the gameplay between the classes alone should be enough to convince one to continue playing through the game; but, it's a tad long-winded with little variation over time to see.
Very fun to play with friends regardless.

This is such a golden PC port. I really need to finish this game but this is such a great way to get yourself introduced to the series if you were too poor for a PS3 as a child.
Does it play like any other zombie game you've ever played or liked? Definitely not; but, that's why it's still such a great game that has aged beautifully over the years. Great story, great cutscenes, great player-world interaction, alive story that is very respondent to your actions.

However, it is hard as BALLS to get everything done perfectly from the onset. You have to be on some speedrunner status in order to get your objectives, sub-objectives, and rescues all done before they cannot be. I would suggest swallowing your pride and running some cheat tables to take some of the stress off the timers the first couple of times through until you memorize the game for a legitimate run if you still wish to do so.

I have a big love/hate relationship with DayZ's development and modding community.

DayZ is a game that is consistently in development hell. Updates take forever and often only ever add in or subtract features already existent in the game that modders end up fixing anyways. Let's not get started on the fact that the next DLC is obviously a very late response to the popularity of snow survival maps like the ANCIENT Namalsk from the original ARMA 2 DayZ Mod (which is still playable and has /some/ servers up). The game is severely unoptimized and required me to upgrade from a Geforce 1650 to a RTX 3060 in order to run consistently at 60fps. Not to mention the amount of hackers that can haunt the official servers at times, headshotting you from kilometers away the second you get close into their range.

If you ever decide to try and host a server for this game, get ready to deal with the absolute dumbest people you will ever meet in your life with the lowest amount of reading comprehension; yet, simultaneously being paradoxically really talented at ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the game. Lots of pay-walled mods with functions you can very easily find in others if you just take the time sometimes. Lots of pay-walled mods with mod creators that don't have any customer service skills or general ego management skills.

So what does make this game worth it? For the many things that this game ♥♥♥♥♥ up on, there are many things it got right from the start and that's just existent within the intrinsic core design of the game, and that is difficult to ♥♥♥♥ up. The survival aspect, the inventory management, the gunplay and maintenance, the civilian and military equipment, the incentivized interaction culture between players, and the experience of the "zombies" themselves (in-lore, they're more like a rage virus situation but let's just say zombie). Managing upkeep, decrease, and guarding of different stats between hunger, thirst, body temperature, stamina, life, blood, and inventory weight adds a great depth of difficulty to navigating the game between fights, scavenging, and sustenance. You are very rarely in a situation where you are well-off, able to just "chill" without immediately needing a supply of a certain material, medicine, food item, water container, building material, maintenance tool, firearm part, or equipment piece. The distance between areas of high value loot in Chernarus is often far and has their direct routes embedded into swaths of forest and open fields, not that you would want to approach a prepared ambush on the road from walking on the roads consistently. It is very easy to be able to rightfully point to a poor roll of the dice on not finding good loot as being the primary cause of a lot of deaths. Even if you learn to hunt for mushrooms in the woods and cook animal meat, animal spawns are localized into specific parts of the map and unless you know the map from memory, nothing short of an actual GPS will help you navigate it. An easy(?) way to begin navigating the map is often to just walk up to a boundary corner of the detailed map area and discern where you are from there. However, this is a tremendously difficult journey and often a strategy I reserve for being on official servers where map functions are not as player friendly. All of this very much incentivizes an aggressive culture in player interaction, which you will find to be the opposite of what you've expected from watching DayZ videos online as a kid and seeing funny hold-up/hostage situations. Your day can be ruined in a matter of seconds. I love it.

The mods really make this game. Some of my favorites are Morty's guns and optics, SNAFUs gun mod, and MMGS military gear + furniture. Base Building Plus is a must for anyone who wants to live in a sizeable base or perhaps introduce some prefab mods to chill out in their mansion. The mods for this game can get ridiculous and I absolutely love it. Download yourself DZSA launcher and just take a look around to different servers you want to try out; however, do heed caution, some of these servers can run up to 100gbs of mods at times. Are they worth it? That's very relative to any space that you would need to use on your PC to install them, to me, I love em. I love the goofy cannabis mods, the silly airsoft mods for PvE servers, the helicopters, the music radios, the game just wouldn't be the same without them. Preferably however, I usually join the minimalist servers who just enjoy utilizing the modular ability of real life military equipment and geek out on setting up the perfect plate carrier and duty belt combo, or the best infiltration/stealth low visibility, or the best redneck hunter kit, the best long-term bushcraft sustenance kit. This game is a blast if you're into tacticool stuff.

Definitely get this game on sale though. Give these people the least amount of money as possible.