Recent reviews by Kuro

10/10 Never has a game so successfully transported me somewhere else, and very seldom does a highly anticipated game EXCEED my expectations, but Dune Awakenings has done that bigtime. As of writing this, I played 25 hours beta weekend, and 40 hours so far in headstart launch, and everything about this one is hitting on all cylinders.

You know when a movie trailer shows you all the good scenes and when yer in the theater you feel like you've already seen it? Dune is the OPPOSITE of that. Every time I arrive at something I saw pieces of in a video clip, being there turns out to be 10x more interesting, more exciting, more atmospheric.

Not everyone likes every game, so I'll describe a little more of what it's like and WHY I like it. ATMOSPHERE ATMOSPHERE ATMOSPHERE. This game has an extensive story, and lots of combat, but this game is 70% about navigating (and enjoying) the world, understanding its dangers, figuring out crafting, and finding things.

There is a TON of resource grinding, but it doesn't "feel" grindy, if that makes any sense. This isn't just a one-and-done 60 hours through the story game, it's a game where when you're going to spend hours collecting stuff to make your first buggy (2nd vehicle in the game), and if you are careless with it, a worm will eat it, and you'll do it all over again. There is REAL consequence. A reason to pay attention to your choices. And I love love love it.

See you in the sand.

VRising is next level gaming genius.

Mechanically, it is a refreshing blend of repeatable ARPG grind optimization, like Path of Exile, with a survival crafting progression, like Minecraft.... with optional small-clan (2-4 people!) open-world PvP. The online play is a federaion of small-servers where your progresison is unique to each(minecraft style), rather than a single cloud character progression (diablo3/4 style).

Thematically, it is vampire life incarnate. The feeding, day/night cycle, blood management, abilities, tight combat, castle building, and prisoner taking -- all work together to really sell the vampire immersion. The musical score is amazing. I can't say enough great things about it.

The one drawback of the game is that new player onboarding is quite "complicated", because there are so many options of how to play the game. I recommend *everone* new to the game start a solo-private game, and tweak a few settings (teleport bound items, stack size, resource colleciton), because experiencing the whole progression is fun, and is only the beginning of your VRising journey.

Stop playing loot bag PVE games that get easier and easier as you play, and come enjoy a world of challenge where instead of your character getting radically more powerful, the enemies do. Come be a Helldiver! Show the universe what you are made of.

Warframe is simultaneously one of the best and most engaging games of our era, and one of the most insulting and infuriating.

It presents us with an amazing story, amazing combat system, amazing build optimization space, and an amazing grind progression... that sets the expectation we are building towards some difficult game play challenge or meaningful endgame, neither of which ever arrives.

I wanted to be collecting, learning, and optimizing all these amazing warframes and weapons for some hard to achieve goal, with some kind of recognizable reward. Instead, the content only gets easier and easier, and the only point is playing the "collectables game" often called "fashion frame", which I couldn't care less about.

I'm an achiever player. To me the silly digital items in the game are only valuable in so much as they help me achieve some very difficult and socially recognized (but equally silly) digital achievement. In Warframe, that challenging task never comes.

While I absolutely loved every minute of the 500+ hours of investment I put into the game, it ultimately led to the realization that that I was duped into thinking it was leading to an endgame challenge that doesn't exist.

And in the ultimate insult, I can't even re-roll on the same account and replay the fun part of the grind while using from the slots and things I've purchased. The only way to reroll is to create a new account and spend even more useless money with DE.

A fresh extension of the Battle Royale format into melee fantasy-ninja combo style combat. Prepare yourself for an investment in learning the combat system, as it takes a while to get decent, and a long long time to master. I consider this a big positive of the game, as it provides more room for skill to trump cheats and loot luck.

Another really positive element of this is that aimbot cheats will not ruin it like they do in virtually every gun-centric game (though other cheats might). There are ranged weapons, they are just not dominant, and everyone gets a very strong grapple aim-assist.

If there is a negative to the game, I'd say it's the new-character glyph-leveling system, where new players are forced to play at a disadvantage until they "earn" the fully glyph set. New players are already bad at the game. Why do they need to be made worse through inferior glyphs?!? The game should be *fair* for all players entering a match. Period. That said, this is a short-term issue, as every dedicated player will earn all their glyphs and eventually be on a level playing field.

This game is *SO* good. The story, the combat, the setup, it's soo engrossing. It's important not to come at the game thinking it's one of these "everyone gets a cookie" MMOs. It is a harder game, that will punish mistakes when you make them -- and I love it! It's as closed as I've seen to that thrilling feel of open-world PvP games while playing Solo. At the same time, if you are the type who prefers to grind and "collect all the gear", i'll want to turn off the music (and medbay music), because what feels awesome and atmospheric at first can become a bit grating after the 100th trip to the medbay.

I did have a little trouble with video settings at first, as it kept saying the game needed to restart to change those settings, and then it would hang, or go super slow mo, or do some other weird thing. However, I finally got it setup at 1440p, windowed fullscreen, and it's been stable every since.

Big thumbs up on this game. The combat is great. I've tried other souls-like games because of the hype, but this is the first one that feels smooth and fluid for me (on PC mouse-keyboard).. Plus, the story and visuals are really fun and well done.

HINT: for new players: in the beginning, you'll be repeatedly killing the same couple guys, and "resetting" at the medbay thingie. And you need to learn to cut-off body parts. Watch a youtube video if you have to.

WARNING: There are currently some crashes in Surge2. A beta seems to have fixed the problem, and the developer seems reasonably responsive. If you have not played Surge-1, I would start there, and then come back here when all the bugs are fixed.

It's like a better version of Diablo3, with more build variability... and specs and items which are both more overwhelming, but more amazing.

If you enjoy SC2 ladder play, and are looking for something new, I highly recommend this game. Given the small developer, it's amazingly close to Starcraft2 level quality. Visuals are awesome once you get contrast/gamma tuned up. Multiplayer ladder is very engaging. Cheese exists, as do cheese counters. As a novice, gameplay seems a bit slower and more positionally strategic compared to SC2, though there is certainly room for micro APM to make a huge difference. There are a few "first release" bugs, but pretty minimal and as-expected. Windowed-Fullscreen works well. Steam shift-Tab chat stuff is a little clunky compared to SC2/battle.net, but that's half because of steam.