Recent reviews by Mort

If you have never played C:S, buy C:S2. If you have played C:S without mods and enjoyed it, buy C:S2. If you need mods/DLC to enjoy C:S, I recommend waiting to buy C:S2 until there is official mod support and DLC.

There are still bugs and performance issues, but assuming your PC is strong enough to run it decently well, the game is still very playable.

For anyone who hasn't played any of the other SMB games, I highly recommend this game. Its presentation is arcade-y, but the gameplay is superb, and very challenging once you increase your ego (difficulty level).

For those who have played SMB3: It's not hugely different. The traits have been substantially improved, and the shuffle draft system is great. Many animations have also been improved. Some things (sounds and UI) have been made worse. Otherwise, there aren't a ton of changes.

The franchise mode is significantly better in SMB4 compared to 3 (mainly due to the aforementioned new trait system and shuffle draft), and the pennant race mode should be populated for awhile. Is it worth the $50? If you are a fan of baseball and haven't played any prior SMB games, then absolutely yes. If you are a veteran of the series, it's debatable. Maybe wait until it's on sale.

Slapshot is pretty hard, but also very rewarding. It may take 10 or more hours of experience to figure out the basics of puck handling. Nevertheless, pulling off a nice backhander or deking past an opposing defender feels great, and is well worth the effort put into learning those moves.

For the price of free, the game is definitely worth checking out. A high skill floor plus a high skill ceiling makes for an intense and entertaining multiplayer experience.

Positives:

• The ego (difficulty) system is terrific. If you're dominating the AI at 40 ego, maybe up your ego to 60. Maybe that's too much, so in the same game you can switch it back down to 50. 0 ego is comically easy, and 99 ego is comically difficult. I like to play at an ego where I win around 50-60% of my games.
  
• The AI is smart. As an opponent, it's not bad -- it largely depends on the ego you're playing at. What the AI is really great at is doing the little things right. Positioning the cutoff man smartly, or using the pitcher to backup whoever you're throwing to. I hate making throwing errors, but it's really cool to make an error and then see the AI back me up.
  
• It's not early access, or particularly buggy. When was the last time an indie game was released with this amount of polish at launch?
  
• Metalhead (the company that made the game) is communicative on Reddit and is planning on adding more content/features down the road.
  
• Customization. You can create your own team with its own logo, colour scheme, players, etc.
  
• Hitting dingers feels amazing.
  
• Thicc ladies[/b]
  
  Negatives:
  
• Fielding feels a bit more awkward than it ought to be.
  
• Pitching doesn't feel as good as batting. It's not bad, and it is pretty satisfying to throw a perfect power pitch, but the mechanic isn't the best. But hey, they have to make it challenging somehow.
  
• No official MLB license. :(
  
  Overall I rate the game 9/10

This is a good game for if you want to play a game while listening to a podcast, because it doesn't require a very high amount of concentration. I wouldn't want to play it just by itself though, since it can get a bit tedious. For someone like me, who's unfamiliar with the inner workings of cars, the game basically functions as a puzzle game. I recommend getting this game at a discount, since it's not worth its full price, but for $5 it's a nice time-waster of a game.