Recent reviews by R9T3

I used KovaaK while I was into competitive gaming and focused on ranked modes. As opposed to Aim Labs, KovaaK is diversified in exercises beyond basic tracking, clicking and switching targets. Even the ability to customize exercises is a lot more comprehensive than Aim Labs, though—to be fair—I never experimented with this function; what mattered to me was the accessibility of challenging exercises, both local and available via the workshop, and KovaaK didn’t fail me there.

One prominent downside (as mentioned by other reviewers) is the leaderboard-style of ranking your score as opposed to comparing them to your previous session. Not a deal-breaker to anyone looking for a quick warm-up without fretting about measurable improvement, but in that case…

If you’re just looking for a quick warm-up before playing, I’d honestly stick with either (1) a free version of an aim trainer like Aim Labs or (2) an in-game training mode already or readily available, e.g. Terrorist Hunt, dedicated workshop map, etc. But for those willing to make an excel sheet, KovaaK is the way to go.

Oh, Holy Digital Extremes. Thou blessed upon us a gift taken once for granted; a free-to-play formerly panned en masse as a space ninja’s wet, cybernetic dream. This was a title fallen short of its scope – a fraction of what was to be. Lo and behold, we witnessed a great Transfiguration scarcely seen in the games media. Few give praise void of comparison to the bowels of Destiny 2, or the RNG hellfire of AAA damnation. I hope that the Word here gives ample evidence that despite DE’s shortcomings, Warframe is among the paramount examples of games as service done right.

“Power, Fashion: It’s Your End-Game.”

Cast any opinion about the importance of narrative in video games, and ire will rear its head. Without story, there is no goal or end game, let only a path to deviate from; it leaves the player to construct their own narrative with a false sense of user autonomy. If I wanted to make a story so bad… why wouldn’t I just go outside?

Warframe shies away from this popular advertisement in games despite the aimless introduction to the narrative. You awaken as a robot ninja badass – rightly named a “warframe” – to realize your cryo-nap was interrupted by space communists. Their captain wants what you have: immeasurable power from the Void, an abstract bastion of light and chaos strewn about in the galaxy. The setup to follow consists of a comprehensive tutorial disguised as your escape, and proceeding plot, to thwart alien Stalin and his fetish for your power.

By “comprehensive tutorial,” I should say “superficial guidance” because you’re not exactly being taught anything groundbreaking that a veteran player already knows about the game. Sure, you’re going from planetary node to node, performing each task with your best John Wick impression in mind, and finally defeating your space stalker/communist friend gives a bit of liberation to explore the tyrannized Solar System. But what’s that foundry segment in my ship do? Why do I have three rooms that I can’t access on my ship yet? What am I exactly; I thought I was a robot, not a “Tenno?” What are mods? Is every mission the same? Ordis- SHUT UP.

This is inevitably the “weed-out test” of any game with a large devotion to customization in terms of both playstyle and aesthetic: can you suspend your disbelief, and extend your curiosity, to get pass the overwhelming repetitiveness of RNG? Indeed, Warframe is a rewarding experience given that sufficient research and time commitment is offered by the player. You’ll learn quickly that a new Warframe is just on Mars for your taking – but, ooh! There’s the trading bazaar; I bet I can get something there. Oh ♥♥♥♥, that guy has a “Riven Mod?” All I have is this [DEFAULT WEAPON]. ♥♥♥♥, what was I doing?

Alternatively, you can put those thoughts on the backburner and create bullet storms and gib showers with three other powerful robot friends until you feel like the focused grind is a go.

See, that’s the beauty of Warframe from its beginning: you start out with little knowledge of who you are. This can be a scary thing, especially with the immense power you wield and the universe’s seeming demand for it back. The only solution to this dilemma is stop your ♥♥♥♥-giving and explore space – akin to humanity’s own identity crisis on a pale-blue speck in the universe. Is Warframe as poetic as our journey around the Sun wondering whether we’re alone?

It depends: is your idea of an end-game an insatiable grab for the most powerful warframe and weaponry, or is RuPaul’s Drag Race in Space?

Mechanically sound, Warframe is a circus of cybernetic aerobatics in a “rack ‘em up” style shooter MMO. I cannot recommend this game more to anyone suffering from a malnourished RNG diet. Be the most you can be as a robot space ninja, show off your looks – it doesn’t matter: it’s your end-game.

PUBG is a “walking or working” simulator at its core, but I don’t wish to go against the grain too much here. In any case, you better have friends to become head Slav of the bunch.

Drop in alone, with a friend or three and fight to the last man/men standing. Simple as that.

My tirade with PUBG has mainly to do with the fact that it is still in an alpha state. Still. Through several recent updates, developers have tweaked some latency issues and hit registration, but the game is desperately incomplete with choppy frame rates and an egregious amount of cheaters. But hey, at least there’s less people botting.

Don’t let that all fool you into thinking the game is anywhere near being dead (au contraire). Chicken dinners are decadent meals sought after by hundreds of thousands. A new desert map is on the horizon, in addition to a deadlier blue circle of death. Despite the alpha state, the devs care to make this game playable, even if it means igniting debate over paid cosmetic crates.

In summary, play with friends. Get your best bud or a group of three together with yourself to scour a fantasy Ukraine. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time running around alone with a pan to cover your ass.

The Korean Warframe

I'm in no way ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on Warframe here; I would rather play Warframe, sincerely, despite the opinion that even that game can be a little too grindy. Therefore, here's my simple list of pros and cons:

Good
+ Skill tree points can be refunded free of charge and reapplied indefinitely
+ The marketplace is saturated with much-needed items that can easily be traded or bought cheaper
+ Fighting mechanics are the game's way of encouraging the player to experiment and build player-specific combos

Bad
- PvP and raid level thresholds are too damn high; get ready to grind your ass off
- Turn off all chat
- UI elements at times glitch or glue onto the screen impairing visibility

Check my hours and take this with a grain of salt.

Gigantic equates to the casual gamer's hero-based MOBA, but it has a lot to offer for competitive players as well.

Choose between a weekly rotation of five heroes ranging from assassin to tank and every hybrid class in between. Matches consist of summoning creatures that gain power toward attacking the enemy Guardian. Level up your hero and gain power by upgrading summons, racking up kills and destroying the enemy's creatures. It's as straightforward as that, and perhaps what makes the game oversimplistic.

However, there is some strategy involved in this casual F2P title: having no medic on your team means spawning a healer as your summons, as opposed to cutting off lanes with the Cyclops' walls or visualizing enemy map positions with Cerberus. Also, players who've farmed enough in-game currency to purchase the two accessory summons (the fiery artillery Drake and the paperweight Obelisk) add a layer of tactical considerations for their enemies. While there is variety in which you level-up your hero, there's almost always a surefire build that dominates the playfield for each character. Thankfully, Motiga have recognized certain imbalances and attempts to mix up the meta periodically.

Overall, I like to imagine Gigantic as the casual gamer's over-the-shoulder MOBA; the community is tight and friendly, and toxicity is yet to be found as I've played. Match waiting times can be a hassle, considering the size of the game's current audience; but it's worth a shot if you've been windowshopping for a MOBA and haven't really been convinced to buy one.

A water-colored, Kung-fu style PvP with a deep combat system and NPC brawls that hurt just as hard as other players. While you can play for the PvE, Absolver is a PvP at its heart, done right with an excellent community resembling masters and their disciples fighting to the top.

(This is a long one so, TL;DR: there’s a Drunken Master stance that makes me appreciate this game for more than its great community or martial arts mechanics, so you should at least try it if you enjoy online fighters.)

Story: Play as a prospect thrown into a lost Empire world, punching up the ladder to become an Absolver. While the story is primarily a backdrop in this game, it provides a sort of creative freedom for the gamer to personalize their character as their own.

Art, character and sound design: Absolver is very much a mute-colored Wind Waker, each setting like a water-colored background laced with bullies wearing tattered clothes and armor. Every so often, you’ll come across the Big Boss wearing fur-collared, regal apparel that matches the forsaken landscape. These chieftains stand out in comparison to the drab prospect NPCs laid out across each of the four zones.

As far as sound design goes, ambient noise accompanies your trek between areas while a tense guitar introduces boss battles. The game’s overall aesthetic interplays with each variable, and it works well whether it’s an intense fight to the death or a campfire meditation.

Gameplay mechanics: I prefer playing this game with a controller for two main reasons: (1) I’ve always kind of tenaciously associated fighting games as best played with a controller or game pad, and (2) Absolver’s combat is highly dexterous, dependent on fighting stance, fluidity of combos and some intermittent power-up abilities such as heals or shockwaves.

To give you the rundown, there are three combat styles to choose from in the beginning with a fourth one (Stagger Stance a.k.a. Drunken Master Jackie Chan) becoming unlocked once you’ve obtained all the moves from beating enemies. Your character has four directional stances that can have a maximum of four moves for each stance (three moves that combo together and typically a strong attack that can shortcut a combo to the next stance).

In short, while reaching max level might provide the preferred attacks and combos for higher-level PvP, the entire combat system in and of itself is deep, complex and ripe for experimentation. This provides a substantial learning curve for new players, and – to top it all off – there isn’t a level restriction when queuing up for a 1v1. For some, this might be discouraging when you’re Level 15 and your opponent is Jet Li Level 60.

Luckily, there are a few options to get started. First, the community is particularly helpful with aiding new players in their grind for moves. Invite someone to co-op, Steam message them and usually people are pretty willing to farm for and trade moves. Second, fighting schools are available after reaching a certain level in PvP so that this first process can be accelerated. Finally, if you enjoy the NPC and boss combat enough, you could also traditionally grind for moves, but it’s much quicker when linking up with a friend or a random person.

Summary: Overall, this fashionable martial arts title is definitely worth a try as compared to something like For Honor and Dark Souls. Though I believe it requires a few hours of gameplay to separate Absolver from these comparisons; it really is an inspirational draw from those games, but it is one of a kind.

Run-of-the-mill grind-to-play that isn’t worth its payoff in one-shots and mindlessly holding your shift key.

Don’t get me wrong; mindless entertainment is a necessity after a tedious day, and F2Ps aren’t the most complex of games – I don’t typically mind dying immediately from a bullet to the foot. But you still should set the bar somewhere.

For Blacklight Retribution, everything feels light and your character breaks like glass. To improve this, you can grind away for in-game currency to spend on more protective helmets and armor at the cost of speed. Here’s the kicker though: either rent that item for one day at a reasonable cost or keep playing for another 10 hours, all while fighting the tempting microtransaction, and buy the item permanently at a much, much higher cost.

In this case, it really comes down to whether you have the attention span to get the most out of a day’s worth of equipment or the mental equivalent of a lobotomy to grind for currency.

Nothing in terms of the maps or weapons necessarily bother me as much as the methodology of the point above, but I can also see the opposite argument being made here. Renting weaponry and equipment can suppress gamers who exploit overpowered mechanics or factors of those very same weaponry and equipment, thus providing balance as a responsibility on part of the gamer. However, this is a counter-intuitive incentive to “git gud” or grind away, since there will always be that someone who has paid to win.

Overall, if you like mindless fun in its purity, here you go. If not, I wouldn’t waste my time.

An accessible free-to-play arcade title that leaves much to be had but is nonetheless fun at its core.

For the sake of the dreaded game comparisons, if you combine the aesthetics of the retro-arcade-favorite Tempest with a Geometry Wars that’s taken some time off its steroids, you get Null Vector.

Late 80’s-inspired visuals and rock synth create the atmospheric vibe of a day at the arcade clad with tucked-in shirts, rimmed glasses and sweaty determination. In Null Vector, you traverse procedurally generated, grid-layered rooms fighting off opposing geometries.

While gliding across these random battles, the triangular protagonist can apply various, yet limited upgrades to its ship – often coming across wielding stations that permanently attach these improvements, allocating space for newer items.

At face value, the game’s fast-paced, reactive environment makes for a re-playable title; dying just short of completing a floor when you’ve completely upgraded your ship fuels motivation to beat the game in one fell swoop.

However, this is also part of a larger problem: the game is too damn short now. Other than its difficulty, there’s a lacking incentive to replay the game once you’ve beaten it.

Though, this shortcoming shouldn’t be rapped on too much; what is clearly a F2P title has much room to grow and expand its level. Overall, I’d give it a go for the sake of lost nostalgia for the stellar 80’s atmosphere.

Tired of every team-based shooter clone post-May 24, 2016?







Good. Welcome home.

It's a roguelite mixed with a CS:GO surf map and a LOT of gore.

I've had the game since it's launched when it wasn't receiving positive reviews. Since then, multiple patches have ensured that the game runs smoothly since its rocky start and that the player has a bit more survivability. As far as mechanics go, bunny-hopping is pure fun; combo this with a shotgun and you have yourself a hit-and-run playstyle that was intended for this game.

Procedural generation of levels is akin to other shoot-em ups like Enter the Gungeon, with enemies getting progressively harder each level. It makes for great replayability even if fully completing the game becomes a frustration.

My only critiques are subjective tweaks: the assault rifle and laser gun don't see much use whenever I boot up STRAFE. While they are viable choices once upgraded, they aren't as practical to begin the game with in my opinion. Nonetheless, this isn't a huge drawback; like I mentioned, you receive upgrades that improve accuracy, lethality, magazine capacity and bullet RPM. You will also have the option to change the type of firing mode your gun has with modifications found on every other level (e.g. C4 firing shotgun alt-fire, a buckshot of grenades, a chaingun firing mode for the assault rifle, a burst-fire laser rifle, etc.).

Definitely worth a try for good, mindless fun.