Recent reviews by Derrick

A simple seeming roguelike with mammoth depth, it's not easy but it's often deeply rewarding.

I hate this game. It's awesome.

Absolutely phenomenal game.

The best couple dollars I've ever spent. Runs spectacularly on everything (of course) and provides countless hours of fun.

It's way more fun than it has any right to be.

Absolutely wonderful game that really masters the survival aspects in a fun way: Food sets maximum health and stamina, so they're crucial to adventuring, but when working on your base or faffing about at home you can ignore them completely. This creates a situation where there's not constant pressure to survive making it less fun to spend time just working on your base.

It's an astoundingly beautiful game as well, despite the blocky style graphics.

Now a classic, between this version and the original I've got about 600 hours played, and I've enjoyed them all. Great game.

An outstanding story building game disguised as a colony management sim, Rimworld is one of the few games that has seen me play literally thousands of hours over many years. Follow the lives of your pawns through tragedy and triumph, sickness and health, success and failure.

This is one of the few games where I've had more fun with failure and loss than with success.

This is a great game, but it's a lot - there's somewhat of a steep learning curve if you're not a veteran of the X games.

As a player who's been around since November 2012:

MWO is a solid game that delivers one experience, and delivers it wonderfully: Getting into big, stompy battlemechs, and blowing up other big stompy battlemechs.

Without a doubt, the mech vs. mech combat in this game is the best there's ever been - far superior to previous Mechwarrior games as well as other Mech-type games. Mechs feel large, heavy, powerful. Sound and graphics are fantastic, controls are solid. It's good, solid fun.

As well, Faction Play is still fairly new, and allows a hardcore style game mode for conquest of the Inner Sphere. This isn't for everyone, and isn't fully finished yet, but can be a lot of fun. Unlike quick play matches, it doesn't feature skill based matchmaking: Gather up your friends, form or join a mercenary company, and conquer worlds! You *can* play it solo, but you shouldn't - solo play is lots of fun in Quick Play matches, but solo players in Faction Play will find themselves facing organized units... And that just ends badly for disorganized solo players. In the end, if you're looking for an awesome group activity, Faction Play (formerly Community Warfare) is it.

As well, I'll address this: You'll see some really negative reviews. These are predominantly from older "bittervet" players. To be sure, in the early days of PGI (and their former publisher, IGP) there were some profoundly stupid community management blunders. Those people have a valid reason to be upset, but their complaints are complaints of things that happened years ago. Give the game a try, stop by on the mwomercs.com forums and check out the new players section for very valuable help.

In closing: This is a very fun game, but it's a complex game as well. It does have a fairly steep learning curve, however it really rewards spending the time to learn. If you're a Mechwarrior veteran, it's largely as you'd expect. If you've never piloted a Mech before, though, don't be afraid to ask for help.