Recent reviews by Wolfe

Conditional recommendation as this is still early access.

There is quite a lot going on in this game and the promises made are super appealing. My main concern is that there are too many promises and that as content for the various pillars gets richer, more fundamental clashes will occur. So far though, the casual minigames for skill execution are simple, but varied and there is no pressure to grind one beyond a point it would be fun. You feel comfortable to switch what you're doing any time and trust you'll catch new opportunities for "grindable" materials in the future.

The art style is very appealing and the scope of sound content is great, but balancing both volumes and quality of sound assets, especially voices is something that needs work.

It's got the invitation of epic scope from other western RPG's but an easy casual feel that makes it something special in the genre.

Clear focus on a novel core mechanic makes WWAAtD a good game; the love and attention given to all the other features around that core make it a great time. Developer is very active and engaged on the Discord server.

Adding in many of the systems left out of V and now with living world events for the first time since Civ III; Civ VI stands poised to seize the crown of best Civilization game yet.

When I started my first game I was overjoyed at how they created a feeling of a vast, deep, unknown universe. This is the first of very many 4X games that made me feel like a 'starfleet commander' making interesting decisions about the ethics, trust and direction of my empire. The early 'exploration phase' of the game, is solid gold.
*deep breath* but... The mid game becomes less interesting pretty quick, random events, and empire direction decisions start thinning out, soon even diplomacy is limited by the state of the 'status quo.' it's still good, but my passion was dimmed.
Then.. the end game. Not a fan. There was a loooong wait of minimal tech increase (no new abilities, just increments on variables that already exist) Then the end game crisis! I had been waiting for this, preparing, but with nothing at all to do but prepare, no wars to fight, no dilemmas to limit my growth, the long wait was more than enough time to build a navy so strong that I wiped the crisis out before they took a single world. *Sigh* what now? 'victory disabled.'

TLDR: Exploration starts great, but there is no end game. Set your own goals and stop when you hit them, the game will never tell you you won.

A good translation of Battletech tabletop with an approachable but rich management element. Just like tabletop there is an RNG element to the game, and just like tabletop you win by minimizing the risks. Spreading out and praying for a hail-mary headshot on every turn, guarantees disaster. You want to leverage a crushing tactical advantage from the word go; good luck financing it.

EDIT: While I still maintain that the actual required specs are way more than the listed minimum specs, that's a petty argument for what turned out to be a rock solid game.

While this iteration of Mafia inherits some jank and immersion breaking aspects, it easily has the best writing of any title in the series. It's easy to compare Mafia III to GTA V and you'll see the difference right away, GTA is very polished and smooth, Mafia III is not; but at it's heart, the story of Mafia III makes you think and the characters are much more real and alive than GTA.

If GTA:O has hollowed you out and you want to play something similar, but with a soul You can do worse than Mafia III.

The AI is still totally crazy though.

Old Review: Played the game for just over half an hour and the intro documentary was cool, I got to listen to the audio for two cutscenes that ran... just the audio... all the cutscene relevant assets were frozen, the 'filler' people and cars in the background kept moving, which was nice. The ai managed to be confusing and annoying in only one trip, which impressed me. The freeze during the tutorial 'stealth' section was what put me off though. In 30 mins of play I had 2 (100%) cutscenes fail, 1 game freeze, 1 random civilian jump screaming from her car in the middle of the street for no reasons and 5 people cross a crosswalk in front of me and stop in the middle of the road, right in front of my truck. one of them did have the curteousy to jump under a passing vehicle for me, so that was nice. Can't evaluate the game itself but the technical execution is not up to snuff or requires significantly more rendering power than I thought was available in 2016. Maybe I'll try again after a system upgrade, but most likely I'll have long forgotten this exists by then.

War from a very different perspective. Bomber Crew's got a good tempo, good pacing and interesting choices. Balance the lives of your cute but capable crew and their mission objectives, usually to end the lives of faceless enemies on the ground and in the air. The light, childlike style is a terrifylingly wonderful mask over the horrors of managing a total war death machine. Take the cute gloss as an invitation to think about whether you want this kind of mask over real life events, or if you would prefer to turn war to a striclty simulated occurance.

While it's on sale grab it! The reasons to hate the sales team are really well outlined, everywhere. Fact remains the game is solid! Get it. Thanks CA.

The soundtrack and dialogue seal this deal. A casual, engaging spacefarer with good scope, interesting story, cool characters and just nails the feel. You won't get closer to flying with Mal Reynolds than this; browncoat not included.

This gives me alot of what I wanted from Elite: Dangerous without having to spend hours and hours waiting for my space-truck to get where its going.

Compact, dense and brilliant this is just a great game.

And my humble thanks to the author for sharing it with us for free and with open source. You, sir, are a star!