Recent reviews by Duckhorse

Doesn't run

Having bought (and having finished) this game, the story is nice enough, but the gameplay quality is disgusting. There are constant bugs, especially in the last two settings, the Indian Jungle and Gaipajama. The most annoying ones are camera tracking issues, voices not synching, and the character voices turning off, leading to just the subtitles remaining. I certainly don't recommend it at the moment, maybe one or two months after release.

There are also quite a few uncomfortable racial stereotypes (the Fakir comes to mind), which I assume comes from adapting a comic from 1934. I'm not one to comment on how to adapt a story that I personally haven't read, but at the very least don't portray an Indian man as skeletal and starving.

I set out to become a judge and reform the caste system little by little. But I tried to appease everyone and only caused the separation of my family and the deaths of my friend, my mother, and my partner, leaving me no choice but to become a Robespierre-esque figure and lead a revolution as violent as the French Reign of Terror.

It's fantastic, and I recommend you buy it, even if it's not on sale.

Solid game, I really liked it. Play it with a controller because otherwise it's impossible. I'm writing this review for Steam Awards.

It was either this or two Guaymallén Alfajores.

First off, I want to say that I really appreciate the developer making a game as niche as this. I never thought tycoon games would get as specific as focusing on a South American drink that's relatively obscure outside the continent save for a few countries. It's really clear that this was a passion project and that the dev really put time and care into Yerba mate Tycoon and genuinely likes working on it.

The gameplay is very similar to Game Dev Tycoon in some aspects, but it introduces new gameplay aspects as well. The first ones that come to mind are the abilities to purchase rival companies and the fact that the process for making your Mate is more in depth than making your game in Game Dev Tycoon. The soundtrack is pretty upbeat, it's not the highlight of the game, but it adds enough so that the game doesn't get too boring.

As for critiques, I'd say that, even though the gameplay is more in depth than Game Dev Tycoon (GDT), it does eventually fall into a gameplay loop of "Make the new mate, train workers, buy stock, repeat". In GDT you got to see your office expand more as you grew your company, and while that does happen here, all that changes is the background looking more like a store and your character getting older. In GDT you could see the whole office itself, along with each individual worker at their desks. Granted, you can have way more workers here than in GDT, but I wish there were more classes of this the workers could specialize in other than "researcher or regular worker" (if I'm wrong and there are more specializations then I'll gladly edit and correct the review). and there are four specializations which they can belong to (leader, worker, marketer, researcher) and the dev plans to bring in more as he mentioned in the reply below.

The other critique I have is that because the gameplay loop is so repetitive, you do eventually get bored with doing the same thing over and over again. The ability to buy stocks of other companies is a great idea and I hope that it'll get expanded upon. Basically, I want more things to do other than the previously mentioned loop of "Make the new mate, train workers, buy stock, repeat". I also think that each country could have a special ability and not just different starting stats. The dev is already doing this by giving Brazil the ability to make Chimarrao at the start, so that's cool.

Nevertheless, it's very clear that the dev cares about his game and the criticisms people have against it, this can be clearly seen with the frequency he puts out updates. The game is solid so far, but it is still lacking because it's in early access, however, I feel like it can really improve in the future and be much better.

I recommend that you buy it. It's cheap, fun, and a good game to play for a while after you finish work or over the weekend.

EDIT:
The dev replied below, be sure to check his response :)

HEIST is the first game by Australian studio Atomizer Games, and I'm very impressed by it. Despite the fact that it has a few issues, it's still very well-made and a fun way to spend your evening. Please note that my playtime above doesn't reflect my actual playtime, it's actually around three hours, but Steam didn't register it for whatever reason (I think it's because my Wi-Fi was down and Steam wasn't online).

Much like the description says, you play as a cat burglar in the Depression Era trying to avoid guards, pull off various heists, and escape without being caught, no false advertising here folks. The black and white color scheme gives off a noir film feel, and it works very well, so don't fret if you think it'll be bland and boring when you play it, I assure you it's not.

First, the good stuff. There's a story in HEIST, but it's fairly simple, so don't expect Bioshock levels of storytelling. It's straight and to the point because much of the game revolves around and focuses on the gameplay. There are 7 levels, so the game, while short, is concise, with the developers focusing their time on perfecting these specific levels instead of flying off the rails and having the game stray from its main focus, the stealth, and its level design. I love stealth games, and I'm a huge fan of the Metal Gear series, so if you are too I think you'll like the gameplay at the very least.

The level design is fantastic with each room being a puzzle in itself with you trying to decide how you'll tackle the challenge and steal the item/escape. There's no time limit on any of the levels so don't stress over that. HEIST is a game about taking your time to pull off the perfect heist and focuses on strategy over action. After every level you get a new tool to aid you in the missions, these include, but aren't limited to trip wires, smoke bombs, and cherry bombs (purely for distraction purposes). There is an arrow to guide you to your objective, so you don't get lost in the levels (it'll pop up when you press the TAB key).

I guess the only con I can give HEIST is its AI. The guards are incredibly easy to exploit, and you can pretty much cheese your way to your objective. This is because there are green objects (couches, desks, etc...) that you can hide under and become invisible even when you're being chased, they also act as a sort of "quick save" point. Theoretically you can sprint to the next one if you know where it is and work your way towards your objective that way. If you make enough distance between you and a guard that's chasing you and make it to a dark area it's fairly difficult for them to find you. Effectively, the game isn't that challenging in this aspect. I also did run into one bug where the guards kept colliding with each other, meaning that I had to restart the level (granted, I'd only played five minutes of said level up until that point, and it only happened once). I recorded that moment and uploaded it to YouTube, and it's accessible via the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1DgwXsow-4

Once the devs fix this collision issue and point it out in this review's comments I'll gladly edit the review to reflect that.

Nevertheless, despite the AI issues, HEIST is a fairly good game where you can just sit down on a weekend and have a tea while you play it. It takes around three hours to beat, so don't worry about it getting in the way of your work. The game was cheap in my country but if you feel that it's too expensive for a three-hour experience wait for it to go on sale and see if the price warrants the playtime at the discount that it's on when it goes on sale. Overall, I feel like HEIST is pretty good and worth your time, and it's very impressive given that as far as I know this is Atomizer Games first game. I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the next game they release in the future.

As Reggie Fils-Aime once said, "if it's not fun, why bother?".

Arkane Studios has a few good games under their belt, and Prey is underwhelming to say the least. You're stuck on a space station à la Bioshock, but it doesn't feel like Bioshock despite the influence the developers took from it. Bioshock conveyed a feeling of "claustrophobia" for lack of a better word because you were stuck underwater with seemingly no way out and terrifying enemies always lurking nearby.

Bioshock always gave you a sense of dread (or at least until halfway through when it stopped being a horror game after you got better weapons). Prey doesn't convey a feeling of helplessness or dread. Sure, you're stuck in a foreign place, and you're trapped, but Talos I (the space station), while taking inspiration from the art design of Rapture, is lit up like a Christmas tree, so you don't feel scared because you're not trapped in the dark. Don't come into Prey expecting a horror game, because you won't find it here. The enemy that can morph into inanimate objects (Mimics) is a novel design idea, but they don't pose a threat when you figure out that a few hits from your wrench can kill them (or that you can just immobilize them with a certain weapon and kill them while they're frozen). Another type of enemy is called a "Phantom", and while they're certainly stronger and bigger than the Mimics, the same tactic of immobilizing and beating them with a wrench is just as effective, so they don't really pose much of a threat.

I stopped playing Prey after 4 hours when an item I was supposed to get for a mission was bugged and wouldn't show up. At this point I felt that I was just wasting my time. It's Summer where I live, and I feel like I could be having a better time watching movies or clearing the rest of my backlog than playing through a 16+ hour game which didn't grab my attention after 4 hours. I trudged through Duke Nukem Forever but at least I finished it. I'll keep Prey installed on my PC, and hopefully I'll come back to it later to see if it manages to catch my attention. I wouldn't recommend it, especially if you're expecting a horror game and menacing enemies, because you certainly won't find those things here, go play Alien: Isolation or Bioshock instead, Prey isn't worth your time or money.

It's fun to play, but the current version is an unoptimized mess. I fixed it slightly by following the instructions here, but I could still expect one crash around every 45 min-1 hr mark. The game has a manual save system, so the only way to really fight this is to go back to a save station every time you beat a mission or do something important so that you repeat as little as possible when you eventually have to relaunch the game.

Besides that, the game is enjoyable, and even though it most certainly isn't perfect on the optimization front, it's cheap, and you'll get a feel for the game in the two-hour refund window to find out that it crashes too much for your liking or that it's not your type of game. I'm marking Bully down as recommended, but it barely scraped by. Were it not for the fact that there's a fun game underneath the crashes I'd have done the opposite. Regardless, the fact that a game from a studio as big as Rockstar has widespread crashing issues on Winodows 10 is inexcusable and should be fixed ASAP.

The only reason I'd say Duke Nukem Forever is worth buying is so that if you hate a game worse than this you can say "this game is complete garbage, and I played Duke Nukem Forever" or the classic "I couldn't even finish (insert game here), and I beat Duke Nukem Forever."

It's bland, boring, and a waste of your time.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season is the culmination of seven years of emotional, powerful games, and by God did it deliver. Words can't describe how much I love it. No movie or game has ever made me more invested in its characters and made me cry harder. It's nothing short of a masterfully made work or art.