Recent reviews by Rusty One Two

This is hands down one of the best video games ever made. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. This game achieves everything you hope to see in games as art and games as science fiction and quite a bit of it is done with incredible finesse that will leave you gasping for more.

This is a really special game, and it is tons of fun to play. I really got a sense of role play from it, and felt like the choices I made mattered. There were several times that I had to weigh which characters mattered to me more and what the next step would mean for them. Fantastic writing, story, really smooth UI, all the hallmarks of a classic. I plan to play it through several times, and I love just being in the universe it created, as dark as it is.

There are so many dimensions of excellence in this game that it is hard to tell where to start. The experience uses every element of gameplay to tell the story and include you in it, both through the actions available to you and those that aren't, and through the emotions and state of mind it provokes. Playing through it I felt trapped, I felt like there was no way out, I felt remorse for things in my own life that could be compared to things in the main character's life, and I felt frustrated about what I could do and what I couldn't do. This game accomplishes in it's short form what few other games have ever managed.

In short, this is a masterpiece. And I truly mean that. There is no element of this game that is not perfectly tuned and designed to achieve a precise effect. And that includes the short length and the relatively few choices you get along the way. This is an incredible example of how to use the video game medium for dramatic and emotional effect. I expected a lot from this game and still my expectations were exceeded. The more I reflect on it the more I enjoy it.

12/10

This is a fantastic game that just keeps getting better every year. What I've enjoyed the most about Stellaris has been exploring different empire concepts and self imposed challenges. Probably my favorite empire so far was the psychic cats who had subservient humans. There was a Chosen One and everything. The game offers enough choice and branching play to really let you express yourself, and these choices expand a few times a year with DLC. There's nothing else like it.

This is honestly a really special game. It's one of if not the only rural survival game out there, and it does a great job of it. The ways you can die beyond the typical starvation etc are exactly what they should be, environmental hazards, carelessness, drunk drivers, or the cruelty of others. Just getting by is a game all on it's own, and as a survival game fan I found interesting and engaging challenges.

I didn't know much about cars when I picked this up, but through mostly trial and error and the help of some great people on twitch I've gotten Satsuma built and driven it around. Impressively, the things that can go wrong with it show symptoms real life mechanics can diagnose. Building the car is a fun challenge, and getting it through inspection is a rewarding result.

I honestly can't recommend this game enough. Survive in the town for a while and find things to keep you entertained while working and saving up for that next part for your car, and maybe you'll learn something about yourself on the way.

I love it when the dungeon is already on fire before I even get in there.

Probably one of the most innovative RPGs I've ever played. It's one of those games that will define the games that come after it.

Your skills participate in conversation with you.

Your skills carry penalties for being too low and too high.

You have a thought cabinet wherein you ponder big ideas and internalize them to become part of your personality.

We'll see these motifs again, and hopefully we'll some day see something as compelling and original as Disco Elysium.

This game is an evolution on the XCOM-2 model and includes elements that utilize setting appropriate spycraft, reward patient and careful play, and generally offer multiple solutions to any given scenario.

It's also a refreshing entry into the espionage genre, an underutilized setting in video games that is in dire need of new blood.

The developers are highly responsive, transaprent, and that's always a good thing.

The quality of design and content in this game is astounding. Precious few games have captured a sense of urgency, secrecy, and discovery as well as Cultist Simulator. Your time in a given play through will last long enough to be satisfying, not so long that it overstays it's welcome, and just short enough to leave more to be desired, which it enticingly invites with alternative starts and play styles.

The pathways to exaltation and perdition are just numerous enough to give one the sense that there is a hidden world underneath which one is blindly searching, while still having room for expansion in the future. Surely this thing that I just tried *should* work, but maybe I'm not doing it just *so* and therefore must try again or try something else. The sensation of blindly stumbling into an occult world of horrors and gods is very nearly perfect, and I give that caveat only because I know the developers are planning expansions.

There is *so* much to see and find and learn about this game, I cannot recommend it enough.

I'm not sure that I can recommend Heat Signature quite enough.

Get it. Play it. Play it more. Crash through everything until you are frustrated and die frequently and lose and retry and DO think about the story of your character.

It's not a broad, sweeping, epic. It's not a hundred thousand word professionally voiced cut scene enhanced sweeping tale. It's straight forward. What are you trying to do? Kill the guy that tortured your friend, rescue your son, steal the thing so you can retire, etc.

Some of those might hit a nerve. Rescue your son was the one that got me.

After a lengthy, desperate, poorly planned incursion in which I exhausted all the resources I had brought along just getting TO my son and preventing the ship from leaving, I was pinned in with him, unconscious, facing a dozen armored, shielded enemy with nothing to fight them.

Using the natural game mechanics, I blasted us through the hull into space and with mere seconds to spare caught him with my pod by remote, and then myself.

I'll admit, my eyes were a little wet by the time we got back to the station.

A game that can naturally create emotional situations and desperate encounters, that does so without heavy scripting and lots of dialogue and voice acting, is really special. For that reason, I suggest you get it, play it, feel free to suck at it, and see for yourself.

Heat Signature really is something special.