Recent reviews by Erusaert

A childhood classic for me, playing, looking and feeling exactly like it did back in the early 2000s when I first was introduced to this gem of a game; now brought up to look better than it ever did before, and on a platform saving me from the woes of losing my physical disc.

The gameplay, in a similar manner to Crusader and its... sequel? Is iconic, smooth and easy to grasp, but naturally for an RTS, hard to fully master. Somehow this game has never actually gotten old for me, despite having played it since I was four years old and terrible at the game. Now I'm in my 20s and terrible at it!

Without going into obscene detail about graphics, gameplay loop, aesthetics, design and the game's feel? It's as amazing now as it was when it first released, and if you're here? You're probably already familiar with the game. God knows anyone introduced through the later games deserves better than those atrocities.

TL;DR that was already shortened? Buy it. Play it. Fall in love with it all over again, or if you're lucky? For the first time. It's a special game and nothing has ever quite matched up (aside from Crusader).

Do you enjoy classic games that have been obliterated by corporate greed?
If you answered yes, then go ahead and play. The cash shop will be waiting for you the instant you finish the tutorial. As much of an eye sore as ever.

I come back to thinking about this game every now and again and it always makes me wonder what it could have been. It was really fun for what it was, back in 2014. But so much potential went to waste when it got canned.

Somewhere deep down I hope that some day something else captures the magic of the immature fun the game spawned, even if only for a time. I miss you, Loadout. Even if as a dumb 14 year old at the time I had no idea that you'd be gone so quickly.

Surprisingly great little game, even after only an hour or so of playing.

The gameplay, while simple as they advertise, is simultaneously engaging enough to be fun and keep my attention and relaxed enough that I can partially watch a YouTube video in the process of playing. Challenging but fair, accidentally becoming the bullet hell boss that a horde of enemies are trying to take down is a miraculous feeling that genuinely made me laugh as I realized evolving one of my weapons (the first time I did that) made it completely different from what it started out as! Genuinely a really fun game that I didn't expect to like nearly as much as I do, but I can see myself trying to grind out every single global upgrade and then some. Hoping to see more content from these devs, both for this game and other games in the future.

Y e s.

4.6 hours and I am already deeply in love with this gem of a game. It takes a format which previously I really didn't much enjoy (Looking at you Slay the spire) and turned it into something that even for someone who doesn't enjoy a ton of action movie-esque stuff can absolutely adore.

Not every card is immensely useful and frankly if you don't get good rolls on repositioning cards some of the tankier enemies are an absolute chore to whittle down even with careful utilisation of friendly fire but despite that? The bad cards are few and far between (and I still find myself discovering some new ones that make me wonder about the potential applications) and as such you are probably going to be seeing a lot of fun little tricks popping up that are only possible with careful positioning and thought.

I intend to keep coming back to the prologue until the game comes out and will be buying it day one and I'd suggest others give this a quick shot and see if the same feelings aren't found somewhere. I personally just finished a run where I exclusively killed enemies via cards that push/reposition and while it took a bit of luck? I was very capable of beating the game even in a manner as silly as that. Nothing is impossible to use and difficulty is fair, so long as you use your brain.

Massive props to the devs and fingers crossed that the full game comes out matching expectations!
(And maybe with workshop support? This game being modded would be a dream come true.)

Just... no.

Read some of the other negative reviews for this to see the plentiful issues.

Two words.

/Syncing mods./

I love not being able to play with friends, great job guys! :)

Edit: 8 months in and still zero support for 1.4 content. So well handled, you guys really care about your product here!

Edit 2: 2 years after initial release and only now are we seeing that 1.4 will finally be supported. Next month. I've never seen such incompetence before, honestly. It's genuinely embarrassing and I would be afraid of my name being associated with this disaster if I were on their 'team'.

Nah, my dude.

Year Long Alarm is a short and rather disappointing mod for our oh so beloved Half-Life 2 and it is one that leaves me puzzled as to how the hell it got reviews claiming it to be as good as the likes of Research & Development.

This mod, even if you mess around playing with some of the physics objects within that are less common in other mods, explore each level thoroughly and play passively half the time will earn you an at most half hour distraction. Unfortunately for Year Long Alarm most of the time spent in it is doing the same dull tricks between the laughably easy fights (on hard difficulty) consisting of tossing a grenade over and through an area to knock something down/blow something up. That trick alone is overused after the first instance of its use and really just acts as a way to artifically slow the pace of the mod so it doesn't end up being twenty minutes.

Combat despite being in the sandbox of potential that is Half-Life 2 and source is really just a chore as none of the fights will ever come close to risking your death and won't last you any more than a minute and a half a piece at most. If you're slow. Dull fights with standard opponents, tedious "puzzles" and a final fight with a gunship that made me question what the hell had just happened. Blinking more than once will see you finish the "climax" of the mod before you even noticed you'd reached it.

All in all? This mod does nothing unique, it has multiple flaws in the level design to let you simply skip large chunks of the maps that felt like a bored teenager made them one afternoon, provides uninteresting combat scenarios and really isn't worth the twenty to thirty minutes you'll spend on it.

I regret taking the time to install it.

Where to begin with this bug of a game? [TL;DR is located at the bottom for those of you too lazy to read.]

- That the devs care more about your money than your in-game experience?
- That next to none of them know what the players want in the game or what balance is actually needed, instead going off their own baseless desires that typically only hurt balance?
- That they'd like it if you just went and played Civ for a while rather than playing their "game"?

I've spent a disgusting amount of time in the bug formally known as Dead by Daylight for reasons I couldn't come close to understanding. I despise nearly every aspect of it yet I come back to it not because I want to, not because it's fun but simply because... it can be quite addictive? Addictive in one of the worst ways one could imagine when it comes to something virtual like this. I don't mean it as anything close to a compliment.

This game has been massively troubled for a large portion of its life, nearly half of it being able to be classified as "Dark times" by a fair portion of the community that was around back then. The devs since day one have been more or less clueless as to how to make an asymmetrical game balanced and fun for both sides, there constantly being certain features that are over the top in how powerful they are and others that need months of dedicated work just to make slightly viable. The devs don't care about these outlying instances because it doesn't make them money.

Money, it's an important thing, it's something everyone wants and something most people could use more of. Behaviour wants yours and they're not ashamed of it either. They take pride in releasing or changing things to be incredibly broken in terms of strength, even if only for a few months because the community must wait 3 months or so for any real changes to the game at any given time. They're happy to release killers and survivors that often are immensely powerful with little to no counterplay. Their semi-recent Spirit going entirely invisible, moving incredibly quickly while doing so and with no real way to track her location most of the time leaving your fate up to chance.
Their old but still overpowered Nurse - actively ignoring every possible defense survivors have in the game with no more than two or three weeks at most to get good with her and be able to destroy nearly any team without effort.
Their Wraith who released with the game, has ever since his release been at the very bottom of any and all tier lists or just above the bottom. Time and time again they "try" to fix things and barely change a thing about them.


Development for this game is slow, the game itself can be a tedious slog waiting at times for ten plus minutes only to get a game that lasts you eight if you get unlucky with who you're playing against. The gameplay itself is the exact same thing every time you try and play. Find one of the many generators spread across their maps, hold mouse one and sometimes press another key/button to hit a very easy to accomplish "skill check" that's no more than a glorified quick time event. Sometimes if you're extra lucky you'll get chased by a killer, a lot of the time though you won't. There's three other people competing for a chance to do something more than hold mouse one.

Something I personally find greatly amusing is their response to anything the community doesn't like. In desperate attempts to ensure it looks like they actually listen and care they will often nerf things into the ground or buff them up to the point they break the entirety of the game.
- Their attempts to make the game "fairer" for survivors by removing the "skill" based actions of pallet and flashlight saving teammates.
- Freddy upon release was met with people screaming he was overpowered, which he wasn't, and he was promptly made the weakest killer in the entire game and still hasn't been changed once aside from a secondary nerf to him later on.
- Their upcoming changes to Legion turning a killer people found annoying to play against into an unusable sack of garbage that will be good at nothing but holding W and pressing M1 to hit people, their ability being crushed in all senses.
- Changes to certain perks making them immensely strong for short periods of time, usually at the release of a new chapter to draw people in and make money off those who want to use the broken perks. Laurie Strode on release, Ash Williams on release and still currently, Bill, despite being free, came with a horribly strong perk in Borrowed Time to make people look at their new content and urge them to buy more.
- Constant promotions through social media and recently in-game to try and subtly push people to buy merchandise or characters to do better in events.

TL;DR
This game, despite what some will tell you, is horribly broken and is not going to be fixed any time soon. It is plagued by an issue that can't be remedied in any meaningful sense. It is under the control of people who don't know what makes video games fun, what balance entails or how to truly make an enjoyable experience for anyone but the bottom tier of players which they themselves inhabit. They actively try to milk money out of people every time they get a chance with merchandise, characters with perks that will be horribly over powered for a couple months, exclusive cosmetics and more. The game itself is tedious and boring and often will leave you with a sour taste in your mouth and a longing for something more fulfilling than anything it can provide you.

Don't buy this game, it's not worth your time despite what some reviews will tell you. It's going to die in another year or two and the devs are likely to go back to making mobile games (which is something they still actually do, if in a separate department).

Edit: If you do decide to buy this game? Set your comments to friends only. You WILL recieve death threats and other whining simply for doing well (or poorly, if you play survivor) in the game. This community is made up of a bunch of immature teenagers who can't accept the concept of losing in video games. Unless you find that sort of thing funny? Friends only comments. It's easier that way.

Bedlam: One of the few games making me wish I could give a neutral recommendation rather than a strict yes or no.

To start things off I'd like to make it clear that Bedlam is best experienced if you have low expectations going into it however that's not to say that it is a bad game. This game, like all others has its flaws.

I received Bedlam from G2A (Thanks for censoring G2_ steam) buying a few random keys with some left over money and took one look at the store page and said "This looks like a mess, probably another indie dev trying to make something cool but really just ending in a clusterf-" well, point made without having to incur steam's wrath. To a slight extent my initial thoughts were correct, this game is a complete (I suppose I'll say CF in place of the previous word) CF though not necessarily in a bad way.

Map design:

Overall the quality of maps is about average for what you could expect from a game this price, perhaps a bit better from personal experience. No two maps in Bedlam feel alike, sometimes it feels great but other times it is an utter nightmare. This game unfortunately suffers from poor map design where it matters most, objectives are confusing to find and at certain points within the game progression can be ground to a halt because the map was laid out poorly. That being said there is still an appreciable level of quality to them all, they all feel natural despite being confusing at times and generally end up being enjoyable to explore and take in, not on the level of Skyrim or similar but it has its own unique charm though despite this some of the levels can be downright infuriating, especially towards the end of the game.

Plot:

Bedlam's plot is simple yet sweet, Starting out with a blank slate in a white room, your only information being your character supposedly having some form of surgery performed on her only to wake up within a virtual world themed around numerous different video games from Quake to pacman. Your goal throughout the entire game is attempting to find a way out of the "gameverse" and back to your life though as it would be expected, you run across numerous roadblocks along the way. Grunts in quake to aliens in space invader or world war 2 German infantry. Along the way you are "assisted" vocally by numerous other individuals in the same predicament as yourself and eventually end up teaming up with another individual to attempt to take down the one behind the "gameverse" you exist in and earn your freedom once more. Though this story had potential it felt a bit bare bones, I realize this type of game would have a bit of a lackluster story line focusing more on gameplay however despite this it felt a bit weak with little explained to the player and ultimately being left on a cliffhanger with only our thoughts to figure out what may have happened beyond the end of the game.

Combat:

Combat in Bedlam is tolerable and at times enjoyable, if you can find a weapon you like and then ammo for said weapon however there is a large and somewhat disturbing power gap between early and late game weapons, carrying around tons of weapons to only end up needing 3 or 4 which is highly disappointing as the further into the game I got the more I wanted to use some of my older weapons, only to find that they were next to useless most of the time which to an extent falls into the mapping category, the enemies most certainly get stronger with time however the weapons suffer most because of range. Range will be your worst enemy in this game, enemies will often blend in with the scenery or snipe you from a distance assuming they haven't all rushed you like brain dead children with no sense of self preservation. In their defense though, they all have incredibly good accuracy to the point you're probably gonna get hit if you're not behind cover.

Performance:

For a game coming out when it did with graphics like these it's unfortunate to say Bedlam runs somewhat poorly, optimization was done poorly as throughout the game I would experience infrequent however quite noticeable hiccups and frame tanks when using certain weapons, the rather bad ass looking fire shooting sword received roughly halfway through the game would cause frame drops of 20+ frames when equipped no matter where I was. Some portions of the maps start to get a tad sluggish with high enemy counts though if your computer is above potato status these drops will be minimal at worst. Potato PCs should avoid this game if good framerates are a must.

Pros:
Interesting story
Amusing dialogue
Decent weapon variety
Adequate map design variation
Nostalgia
5-6 hours for a relatively low price.

Cons:
Poor optimization
At times confusing map layout
Little explanation of anything
Bullet hell. The unfair, hair pulling kind.
Power creep
Anticlimactic, overall pathetic "boss" fight ending on a cliffhanger.

Overall:

Bedlam is a decent little game for its price range, it has its moments where it's something than can be quite lovable. Even if a few minutes later is has you swearing at your monitor because the quality suddenly dropped. The game has noticeable flaws, more than it has strengths though if you can catch it on sale (or better yet, free) I'd suggest picking it up to give it a go. At worst you waste a few hours on an overly ambitious project from some Scots that evidently tried to make a good game but had some difficulties. This game is far from being great, unfortunately as I loved the concept but it is also not a bad game. Bedlam is one game truly deserving a mixed rating, such as it has now. Not everyone will find what they're looking for in Bedlam, some people will hate it and others (myself included) will attempt to love it for what it is, regardless of how flawed it happens to be.