Recent reviews by RadKit

Not recommended.

Tried to play 5 matches, and either locked up (players all running in place) , lost connection, error to main menu, or CTD each time.

The graphics are also extremely bad looking, which is a shame because the style is interesting.

Enemy design is lackluster and right a way just feels like shooting a wall or popping balloons.

Map design (from what I was allowed to see in-between crashes and connection losses) was already getting very repetitive, same colors, same layouts, with an unbelievable amount of empty side rooms and dead ends with only ever one path forward.

There's several other games in this genre that are much better, I hope this one improves but right now I don't see any reason to play it... even for free (weekend).

I don't think I have ever been so annoyed by a game before.

After about 3 attempts to get into this game it just blows me away how constantly the game gives zero F's about your time and just how cringe annoying this game really is.

At first glace the game seems sandboxy in the sense that you need X and to do or get that you could do A, B or C... But the B and C routes take hours and hours of grinding, where as A is almost no time at all... But to do route A you also need to get Y. No problem, I like grinding things out I'll ju---NOPE. Plot twist: you can't actually grind it out anymore because now you need to do something else, let's call it Z, to un-road block your ability to grinding... okay well I'll just...

Do you see it yet? No? Let's keep going.

Now to get Z you'll just need to do D, E or F... easy peasy, but E and F again are mindless grinds for hours on end (that again are roadblocked by something else), and again you could just do D and not grind at all but D is actually locked behind T, U and V, which are locked behind Y... oh that's not so bad because we wanted to do Y anyway... so we'll just do T, U and V to get to Y but NOPE another plot twist... to do any of that you need to do something entirely different that totally doesn't (sarcasm, it does) go down the exact pattern again but from the beginning.

The amount of times that the game makes it seem like you have your choice only to then blindside and railroad you into the choice it seems to think you should go down is staggering.

On top of the above the game also has at least 5 more layers of progress slowing mechanics like real time spent forging, reputation systems, wealth systems, tool decay, a lot of inventory management and on and on and on.

I don't know if it's meant to pad out the games length or if its trying to be the worlds most annoying tutorial or something else, but I really dislike a lot of the design choices made here.

Maybe at some point you overcome all of the blockers and get to at least make more of your own choices.. but I cannot seem to make it that far into the game even using guides or looking up exactly how to do something it seems to take hours and hours to get to a point where you aren't being forced down this tunnel of illusionary choices.

TLDR: I love the idea and look of the game and even the gameplay itself but constant roadblocks and unexplained arbitrary walls and dead ends to the player's progress make the whole package into something I utterly loathe.

Okay... this game is really, really good.

I'm not going to talk much about why it's really good, but more about what it is and isn't.

First off currently you cannot play OFFLINE, so if that is a gaming requirement for you stop there, check back later.

UPDATE: Recent patch allows OFFLINE play via LAN mode.

If you're still reading then know that V Rising is like Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen (one of my favorite games ever, now available on GOG!) and Rust (no penis) or Ark (no mounts other than horses that I see yet, or poop) or Conan (yes, slaves) had a baby.

It's got survival, base building, world persistence, ARPG combat, building decay, raiding, RPG stats, quest lines for unlocking recipes and V abilities, and a lot of vampire gameplay and mechanics.

Now if you don't like the PvP stuff in that list, the game still has a lot of options for you like PvE servers, Hosting or Renting a server, or playing ONLINE private (invite only) or ONLINE solo or OFFLINE in LAN mode. Like Rust, Ark, and Conan almost every aspect of the game can be changed in the server settings tweaking any or every aspect of the game.

Don't like X, Y, or Z? Turn them down or off, or join/find a server that fits you... not saying it's going to be easy to instantly find someone else's server that's perfect for what you want, but the settings do allow for it to be made.

As far as Early Access there seems to be a goodly amount of content already ask far as base building, crafting, and gear/skill/ability progression (which includes boss fights) and the game runs (for me 2700x/1070ti) very well.

Will I set up a clan of friends and take over an entire PvP server dominating all other players there? Probably not. That's just not me, but will I enjoy the ONLINE/OFFLINE solo? Yes, absolutely, I'm only a couple hours in but I will definitely log dozens more, and I genuinely feel like the game is worth 20 bucks even in this world where most 60-70 dollars games aren't worth 10.

And who knows maybe once I've learned the game I'll find a co-op friend and we can PvE together or maybe I will eventually try official servers, but unlike a lot of other ONLINE survival games, I feel like there is actually a fun solo game for those that want it.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions (which are like buttholes), and YMMV, also I'm only like 2 hours into the game so I might be completely wrong about somethings and oblivious about others, I may or may not come back to edit this review later so it may or may not be completely out of date or riddled with errors, or who knows, 100% accurate!

Here's the thing:

Odyssey is Good, Okay and Really Bad all at the same time.

If you love Elite Dangerous and want another layer to it that is almost a standalone addition and the price doesn't really matter for you... then you probably already own Odyssey.

Odyssey is a nut shell:
It looks great, when it works right.
Everything is fun, the first time you do it.
It feels amazing, until you've done the same thing too much to be able to handle it.
It runs great unless you're one of many who get frames dropping to nothing or the camera starts twitching like a madman or shadows that flicker like a black strobe light.

Honestly I think this is a growing problem with many space games as there just isn't really too many ways to create "new" game play, at least that anyone has come up with, so you end up with hollow, shallow feeling experiences that quickly become repetitive and have no emergent game play.

Where ED:O really falls horribly short however is its mission design... aside from the tutorial (which you do not get to keep loot from) missions in Odyssey are laughably bad, its scary to think this is already 7 months post Odyssey launch.

Other than transport missions there's basically two types of mission:
1) Uses a base type layout that has everything you saw in the tutorial and nothing more.
2) Uses a very hokey "crashed" item point of interest.
Not to mention both mission types feature a lot of the same cut this panel, scan this, shoot that.

Base missions are a bit more dynamic with their variations and how you get to play them but suffer from a lack of refinement to stealth (really bad) and FPS (extremely mediocre) game play, and seem to be very prone to spawning bugs where a lot of the time the mission will just not set up correctly. Sure there are many variations on these missions but they all are the same thing just slightly tuned differently.

Crashed item missions are so bad I can hardly believe it.
My first had literally one box to interact with. So I walked up to it, clicked to open it, clicked to retrieve the item... mission complete. My jaw honestly dropped. So I did several more and after about 10 of them... I feel confident saying that this is some of the weakest design I've ever seen.

Problems of lacking any real depth continue throughout Odyssey. I think there are only three (well kind of 4) different concourse and hanger areas, meaning for the 400 billion star systems... you'll see the same thing a lot. It is immediately breathtaking to get out and get a real scale of your ship or wander the concourse but it wears off almost as fast and you know instantly there will never anything new or interesting to see again.

All in all I do like Odyssey because the money was nothing to me, and it's worth it to add a little bit to my Elite Dangerous universe... sure it could be about a million times better but maybe they'll keep working on it.

However I can really, very easily, extremely easily, so so so easily understand how many, many, many people are only going to be extremely let down by this product... even now 7 months later, so... I do not recommend it.

I'm enjoying it very much, its definitely Silent Hill... maybe not quite as good as 2 or 3, but what is?

The game does run for me at 1080p but certain items like the in-game map (which if you know Silent Hill, is at least a little important) don't work right. So I'm running the game at 720p, still a big upgrade from console. I did have to edit the cfg file to set the resolution without crashing, if you know nothing about computers that might scare you, but it took me less than a minute to fix.

I have had a couple of crashes (other than changing the resolution in game) but only 1 was during any kind of gameplay and the others were when the game went to reload the save after my death. Took 2 seconds to restart the game and continue playing.

I have been getting a few lag spikes, usually when first entering a new area, I did have one of those crash but I was also spamming buttons which might have triggered a "not responding" crash. The other spikes I've managed just to wait out 1-2 seconds and then there's no more trouble until the next area.

These tech issues might bother some but I routinely play games that are "old" and almost none of them work 100% correctly and there are some even on GOG that require some workarounds, so they don't bother me any.

Another "old game" issue is the controls... I've always called these "tank" controls... because it feels like you are driving a tank, pretty similar to things like Resident Evil 1,2 and Silent Hill 1,2,3, and well a lot of games at the time. So with a gamepad at least I'm not really having any trouble with the controls, mouse and keyboard probably is worse... but I don't see it as a unique problem to Homecoming.

As far as the game it self, I personally think for the age that it looks great, runs decent and is an underrated game. Sure its not any of those fantastic games I mentioned earlier... but I would still call it a good game. While I wouldn't say it does anything perfectly, it does very much look, sound and feel like a Silent Hill game.

Homecoming is certainly not Resident Evil, it's not Outlast, it's not Amnesia, it's not Evil Within... and to me, that's a great thing because there's just nothing else out there with this very specific Silent Hill style.

How anyone can win at ELEX:

This is a weird review, and maybe it's more of a strategy for how to enjoy the inital difficulty of the game but I feel like the only reason to not recommend this game is the crushing start it throws you into...

A little backstory:

Back in the days of games like Gothic (same company as ELEX), Breath of Fire 1, 2, Final Fantasy 1-6 and other classic RPGs, it was expected of the player to "grind" out some levels often in the very beginning of the game. For example almost every walkthrough of Breath of Fire 2 recommends grinding to least level 5, at the very least, the moment you first step onto the over map.

The above doesn't just apply a little to ELEX, it's just about required for things like combat and many of the game's mechanics. I think makes a hugely unfortunate roadblock that is stopping a lot of gamers from enjoying a pretty good open world, post-apoc/sci-fi (ruined earth) action role playing game.

A little about the "problem":

Experienced ELEX-er's probably can bulk up more around level 10, and ELEX masters who have memorized item locations and quest paths know how to do this in hours. The problem is... and its a big one... brand new players coming in blind will need probably a dozen or more hours productively building a character before the difficulty curve starts to level off a bit. Again, It is my opinion that 12-15 hours is way too much to ask a gamer to grind a character before really beginning to use all the systems in the game like magic, skill checks, psi, ranged weapons, crafting, and even a lot of character developing quests.

There were times I was definitely frustrated trying to do what in my head I assumed was a level 1 quest, only to run into large packs of level 10-20 creatures, impossible skill checks, and a complete lack of ranged weapons, and any buffs or crowd control.

Fortunately, there are ways to work around this... you can do a lot of fetch or just dialog quests to level up very quickly, this will require more than a little running (and screaming) away from monsters and some not so fun long distance jogs around the map. By far the best way to earn EXP in ELEX is by completing quests, many early quests granting you 50 to 100% of a level up.

Also there is one... almost game breaking way to get into combat right away, it is right in the game's difficulty settings and such isn't really a "cheat", but once you know how to use it, it really feels like one. So stop reading now if you don't care about using this slightly cheesy strat.

This isn't really a spoiler but it is a bit of a revelation about the games combat mechanics, I've seen a couple videos about this, but honestly, they don't get it right or at least take it as far.

Basically you can melee combat down just about any creature in the game at level 1 with any melee weapon by exploiting the games "combo" mechanic... just totally not the way the game teaches you to.

The game teaches early on to use light and heavy attacks in combination to build up your combo meter and then unleash special attacks for high damage... this does work to a degree but it is not the right way to do the most damage, the real secret, that I haven't seen a single person talk about is that the game has a hidden damage multiplier that continues to increase near infinitely with every linked combo strike .

So, don't use heavy attacks, don't use special attacks... only use light attacks linked together and even with a lead pipe (20 attack damage), if you can string together 10+ light attacks you'll be doing 1000's (yes 1000's) of damage.

The less game breaking or cheesy way to abuse this is just to really buff your stamina and attack POWER, with rings, amulets, skill points, attributes and so on... this will let you chain more hits while also staggering your opponant so you don't get hit back and can keep the combo going.

Taking this to the next level though is dropping the game settings to easy and then selecting the option for attack to NOT USE STAMINA. This makes it so that even at level 1 against a level 20 creature virtually every hit will stagger and you can link 20+ hits in melee which would probably kill anything in the game 1v1.

Now this doesn't make the game a complete cake walk as you'll still need to deal with groups, ranged combat, missing attacks, lunge or running attacks, magic, explosions, and on... but my point is that using this trick or strategy, I honestly believe just about any gamer even the most casual could get over the initial difficulty hump and really get to enjoy ELEX, rather than just dying or running 90% of the time the first 12 hours.

An incredibly good (and FREE) survival game.

Probably one of the best things I've played for free that wasn't a clicker or idle game: Arid was made by a group of students for a college class project. Now, that would usually be the type of thing that would intrigue but ultimately annoy with bugs or bad design choices or just low quality unprofessional work... but that was absolutely not the case here.

Arid is a real game, and a real good one too. Beautiful visuals and effects on a very well designed map, decent voice acting, a bit of a story line, some lore style collectibles and sub-plots, well balanced survival mechanisms like trapping, skinning, crafting, foraging and so on.

Basically you use your survival skills to stay alive in the desert, managing your sun exposure (watch those tan lines), health, thirst, hunger, energy and general well-being; while completing objectives towards the story line. You unlock new areas and backtracking shortcuts by repairing structures which requires a combination of exploration to find specific parts (of which there's plenty in case you miss some) and crafted or foraged components. The part that makes it a good game is that these systems seem well balanced and well designed.

I'm about 3 hours in and I have the impression I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the story, so I'm expecting about 7-10 hours of gameplay, although to 100% the game and find everything of interest would probably add a handful more hours.

Arid's one weakness is probably re-play-ability as the maps and item locations are static but there are multiple difficulties that increase the survival aspects and that might be fun to replay the game with added challenge.

What is OUTRIDERS?

First let me tell you what it is not:
OUTRIDERS is not a "live service" game.
OUTRIDERS is not an MMO game.
OUTRIDERS is not a squad based game.
OUTRIDERS is not a game with any randomized content.

So again what is OUTRIDERS?
OUTRIDERS is a 1-3 player story driven looter TPS with RPG elements, replay-able story and side missions, 15 difficulty settings, and an endgame with 12 rotating missions with 15 additional difficulty settings.

OUTRIDERS does not do everything perfectly.
OUTRIDERS does not have the best story, but its decent.
OUTRIDERS does not have the best voice acting but its fair to good.
OUTRIDERS does not have the best camera movements, but its decent.
OUTRIDERS does not have the best cover system, but its fair.
OUTRIDERS does not have the best endgame, but its far from the worst.

OUTRIDERS does do somethings very well.
OUTRIDERS does have an interesting art style and setting, and the story/voice over is decent.
OUTRIDERS does have interesting RPG style character development with gear, skills, and class points.
OUTRIDERS does have skill based weighty feeling gun and ability play.

I've played about 20 hours between the demo and the actual game now and looking at what the game does well and does have and then thinking about what I want from a game right now... I have to say I'm very pleased. The gunplay and abilites feel great, the difficulty levels let you push the envelope or fall back if you run into something too hard... the character classes feel diverse enough that I want to play all four. The gear, crafting and class points allow you to really build a specific character within one of the classes. It doesn't have the most content but I'd like to remind people that looter games often DONT... you can finish the story line in Destiny 2 in a handful of hours. You can play through the story Diablo 3 in 3 hours. You can do all 10 acts in Path of the Exile in 8-10 hours.

40 hour update: I've 100% the game as far as missions and difficulties on one character now and I thoroughly enjoyed my time, I've played a few hours of the endgame and it's not my favorite thing ever but I will probably continue to try to max my character out. I'm currently at 13/15 difficulty for the end game missions. You can solo these missions but most people will need very specific character builds to do this or a group. These missions aren't the best, they are too intense and too risky without enough reward to compensate. I'm going to hope they work on this mode with patches. Now a lot of people are complaining that it's just too repetitive and this confuses me a little because you could also replay the story at the higher difficulties (like many other games) and this gives you all those quests and side quests to do again. So to me it looks like there is a quite a bit more content than people seem to be implying but I will agree the main endgame grind does burn you out fast if you do only that.

TLDR:
To me, OUTRIDERS has plenty of content via reseting/replaying and difficulty settings, great loot, great gunplay, great character building, an interesting setting with good graphics and a decently written decently voiced story. It's not perfect, but I'd say its very good, borderline great.

I hate this game. It looks like crap, it has tons of bugs and glitches and horrible free running detection.
Worst of all there is way way way too many insta-fail conditions in the missions.
I've been trying to play through it for years but it feels (and looks) like decades. I hate it.
Okay I feel better now.

Does it have bugs and glitches and open world jank? Yes.
Does that actually impact how awesome the game is? Not. At. All.
If you've been waiting your whole life (like me) for a cyberpunk immersive first person open world sandbox RPG then there isn't anything else you should think about doing besides playing Cyberpunk 2077.

I've been gaming since the early 90s and Cyberpunk 2077, to me, is hands down the best game I have ever played.