Recent reviews by ✟DEUS✟ Truff

Love this game, I quit back in the day w/ BDO when they first implemented xigncode, and after years many years, they finally made the smart decision and removed the stupid anti-cheat.

Thus, I got back on the moment they took it off, and played it with friends. Been putting in tons of hours, even in a Guild I like and love, however I quit again...Why?

They re-implemented Xigncode again. Why again? I have absolutely no idea but only with myself being left with the feeling of complete idiocy on their part. I uninstalled the game as soon as I could and guess what? Xigncode is STILL in my PC after uninstalling the game just like how it was back a few years ago when they game had it.

Of course I had to go in, search for, and manually uninstall/delete this "anti-cheat" once more, for why in the world would it continue to linger on even after the game that it was implemented for is no longer in my pc anymore?

It scans your ENTIRE PC, going through all of your folders, data, info (remember that an Anti-cheat should NOT be doing this in the first place) and sends them to who knows where, and considering that this anti-cheat is made by a Chinese company with connections to the CCP, well, let's just say I'm not stupid, and I couldn't hit the uninstall fast enough.

Sad really, since I love BDO (my hours prove it!) but not enough for me to keep xigncode running around in my PC.

Goodbye BDO, since this will be my last run with the game until they either remove xigncode once again, or more than likely, transitioning to another game that will not be using such an invasive "anti-cheat."

72% of Siege players are coppers on McDonald’s WiFi, unless they’re on the enemy team, then they’re an ex pro league with a well coordinated 5-stack

There's two directions I can take this review. One is "I recommend, but ..." and the other is "I don't recommend, however ...", and they're both probably going to say the same things. Strap in, and grab a cup of hot chocolate, daddy's gonna tell stories again:

If I compare my experience playing the first game on release to this one on release, this one is much, much better. But how?

The original Cities: Skylines was a relief from the crushed dreams of SimCity fans. It came in as the rightful conqueror of the city building genre, and built a huge community of gamers, designers and modders that have influenced the growth of the game since. It refined the SimCity style beyond expectations, it broke the gridded city building style, it introduced gamers to urban design and planning ideas that they have never thought of before, and a whole sub-genre of urbanist YouTubers rose up from this. However, when you compare the two vanilla games, without the mods and DLC and hundred of YouTube content creators, the first game is great, but a bit empty. It didn't start with a day-night cycle, that was added in After Dark. It didn't start with many of the best transit options, they came in later DLCs. Inland water treatment plants didn't exist until 2020 with Sunset Harbor.

Cities: Skylines 2 starts with everything that the base game should have. It doesn't only have a day-night cycle, it has seasons. It doesn't just have different zoning densities, it has mixed use zones. You don't just place down industry building and print money, the game has a diversified economy, hearkening back to SimCity2000 when you could individually manage tax rates for different industries, but here you can do that to the entire economy. You can encourage and develop an economy based on retail and services, or primary industries, or manufacturing of any kind. You don't just have buses, trains and planes, you have the option to use taxis, buses, trains, trams, subway metros, planes and boats to transport your people and cargo outside cars and trucks. To build the city you don't just lay down roads, you can plan curves and bends and intersections using the various feedback that it gives you, create clean interchanges and intersections, and use a variety of tools to limit turns and eliminate traffic conflicts. You can even obverse traffic accidents affect your roads and disasters affect the city, pollution affecting the environment and a myriad other things that you didn't even think of when the original was released in 2015.

Compared to that, yeah, no questions.

So why is everyone saying "Yes, but ..."?

I won't repeat it in detail, you've already read the other reviews. Basically, expectations for the game's performance and delivery were misaligned between the developers, the publishers and the consumers. Performance issues were a huge problem right off the bat because most people do not have systems that meet the requirements of the game, but the developers have been tasked with making the game suitable for console. Misaligned expectations. The game's economic system was too opaque to clearly understand what was going on, to the point that unsubstantiated rumours began spreading that the economy was fake (it's not). Feedback to the user was not adequate to completely understand what was going on, and many players assumed things were bugs when they were not. Misaligned expectations.

However, the performance issues and opaque UI feedback aside, none of this was helped by the myriad of bugs that have since seen six major patches to clean up, with more work to come out after the Christmas holidays.

Finally, to nail the point home about misaligned expectations: content. I came in to the original game in March 2015, right on release. I was with it the whole way through. I was there when the beacons were lit and Gondor called for aid. I didn't even bother using mods until 2019, because that's when they were interesting and mature enough to really make a difference in the game. By the time the Great Plague of 2020 hit, the original was primed to receive huge interest in the game. Content on the workshop exploded. YouTubers exploded. Everything exploded. It was wild! So when, in early 2023, the new game was announced, a host of gamers came in with huge content expectations and none of the context. YouTubers speculated on the most insane speculations, people were having meltdowns about the new engine staying on Unity instead of hopping over to Unreal Engine. Wild.

And so on release, despite having literally been released with more tools and content than city builders have ever had, with all of the good ideas from everywhere in the broader community being incorporated into the base game, the chief criticism was a lack of content. The game felt empty. Grey (UK)! Gray (US)! Graey (WTF)! Critiques went from blasting CS1 for being too cartoony to blasting CS2 for being too realistic with its browns and concretes. At this point, I stopped listening to shameless and pointless, often contradictory criticism and looked for genuine concerns.

These are easy to list:
- the game is still in need of more performance fixes
- the game's UI needs more obvious indicators of what's going on with underlying systems
- the game is a resource H-O-G
- tools still feel a bit unrefined
- there are missing options that would make things so much nicer (props, prop tools, decorative tools, etc)
- no mods at the moment, we want mods
- no editors, no map editor, no asset editor, none of that yet
- console version still needs to be released
- the bug issues have delayed the Ultimate Edition's Q4 and Q1 DLC releases
- there are still some major bugs that require further investigation

To be frank, though, my stance is straightforward: bugs can be fixed, and these issues will be ironed out over time. The devs have repeatedly shown that they intend to see this through.

So yes, "I recommend, but ...", be mindful of the things that are still to be fixed, and you may enjoy the game. "I don't recommend, however ...", set your expectations appropriately and you will realise this game has enormous potential to be the definitive game of the city simulation genre. The first game rightfully conquered the crown. This one will keep it, even it has to fight for it.

Overwatch is like trying to assemble IKEA furniture with instructions written by drunk raccoons. Every match starts with hope and excitement, but quickly devolves into chaos as your team fumbles around like they’ve never held a keyboard before. The game promises structure, strategy, and teamwork, but what you get is a confusing mess where somehow a hamster in a mech is the most competent thing on the battlefield. By the end, you're left with missing pieces, a broken soul, and the overwhelming desire to flip the table.

"With the launch of ASA at the end of August, we will sunset all Official Servers on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC for ARK: Survival Evolved – at that time, the final save-datas from the ARK: Survival Evolved Official Servers will be uploaded for players to re-host on their own servers or play in singleplayer/non-dedi, as well as slightly earlier snapshots. You will still be able to play on single-player, non-dedicated, player-dedicated, and unofficial servers. "

They are going to kill this game and want us to buy the same game a second time? This is after Jeremy tweeted that the unreal engine 5 update was going to be free for ark 1 (archive link because I bet Jeremy deletes the tweet https://web.archive.org/web/20230331222837/https://twitter.com/jeremystieglitz/status/1617365411510554624/. They also said wipes would not happen, the save data would transfer over. They are out of their minds.

Oh man, Goobah, Joobah, my name is MrChicken, known more colloquially by my sobriquet as Bathboy, and I just love to have a wash. I want to say that this game is really wholesome and based. In fact it does a little bit of trolling, 9MM moment! It’s like handling a Glock sideways like a gangster, screaming bloody murder with the Crips yo. BLACK WOMAN! Yeah I’m quirky, cry about it. Just an alpha Bathboy who likes to nibble mushrooms if you get what I’m saying. But those normies out dere in tha CITY and those YUPPIES who can afford happy meals, don’t know what it means to be a pauper man. They don’t know that I need a 10 percent discount on Happy Meals, so I can buy more anime figures. It’s officially, indisputably, unequivocally over! RED COOLAID. To many promiscuous women in America, I’m blackpill coping right now, hedonism is all about AMRIKA. Whatever, them hoes don’t know what they missing out on yo. Oh and sorry if I’m patronising you WOMEN, I’m just a Bathboy who mansplains and says it how it is. Another win for the chicker wicker, Bathboy out!

I am a 58 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my Son, who is 14 now. My son got this game for Christmas in 2021 from his uncle, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 40 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching Ukrainian men French kissing canines on YouTube. So i decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. I loaded into the game, picked my character and world and started playing but I was stuck on what you where supposed to do. I asked my Son for help and he hosted a game for me to join. I loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminded me that there's fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my Son many happy memories.

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Hgnrhhhh, you all wasted your (Snort) lives on these fetid grounds, when you could have instead been eating (Grunt) schnitzels and trimming hedges with, hrgnhhhhh, me.