Recent reviews by Avionix

This has become my go-to combat flight sim. It's performant and easy on disk space. The simulation mechanics are top notch. The playerbase is active. The DLCs are reasonably priced and add plenty of neat content. Unlike Certain Other Flight Sims, the developer is well worth supporting.

The game is very dead. It's easy to see why.

The guns don't feel right when shouldered-- they seem to be offset from one hand. But that's not important because the guns are so inaccurate that your aim doesn't really matter. There's only one gamemode (Halo Oddball). The 3 teams gimmick is pointless because you'll never find 3 concurrent players online. The menus and branding appear to be done well (including the microtransaction system), but I don't understand why the devs would spend time on those when the game itself is not fun.

Suggestions for improvement:
- Make the guns (much) more accurate.
- Port and Outpost feel like Block Fort from Mario Kart 64. They should probably be scrapped or seriously reworked.
- Consider introducing singleplayer or coop gamemodes. With so few (0) active players, they are necessary.
- Reconsider the pricing. IMO, this game is not good enough to charge $11 for. I'd rather spend a little more and get Contractors or Pavlov, both of which outclass Bounty City in every way.

Gaijin's management of this game has been inexcusably poor over the years, and it's getting worse. Do not expect it to get better. Do not give them your money.

Works flawlessly on Linux. Windows/Linux crossplay is also perfect.

I don't like this game. Performance is universally abysmal, updates are few and far-between, and it's been in "alpha" for 7 years. Clearly the developers don't intend to ever finish the game and it shows. For $25 I could hardly think of a worse value.

TF2 is a very good game, with lots of unique and original features.

But it's dying.

A lot of players seem to struggle with denial of this fact. As of right now, 26 December 2019 (basically peak player count), SteamCharts [steamcharts.com] reports that there are 79,115 players online.

That number seems optimistic at best. https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics reports only 17,162 players right now. Teamwork.tf claims "The significant detail here is that we only count players that are in an actual game server playing TF2. Steam reports based on Steam users having the game open. The difference can be explained by a lot of Steam users who are idling in the main menu of the game, or are simply bots faking to be actual Steam users (e.g. trading bots). We think the Steam stats are a misrepresenting the playerbase."

Given that it can take >10 minutes to find a low-level competitive match, I'm inclined to believe them.

I also want to mention cheats. In my 1100 hours, I rarely noticed TF2 hackers in game. Seriously, only 2-3 times overall. But there has been a dramatic spike in hacking recently. Every other game I join now has a spinbotting Sniper headshotting invisible spies, or a Medic with anti-aim, or a Heavy with minigun spread compensation lasering people across the map. To the community's credit, obvious cheaters tend to be reported and promptly votekicked. But they don't seem to get banned.

Rest in peace, TF2.

CS:GO is a disaster. It tries to accomplish nothing special (an improved version of a simple shooter from 20+ years ago) and fails catastrophically. A few examples:

Unreliable hitreg and hitboxes.
64 bit servers.
Rampant weapon imbalance.
A toxic community.
A rampant, uncontrolled cheating problem.
A barely functional replay viewing system.
"Silver Hell" matchmaking.
Bots that literally cannot play the game.

Despite the above, Valve's priorities remain attuned to monetization. The recent game updates include things like:

Free to play. (If you pay Valve for Prime Matchmaking you might have a match without a cheater.)
A battle royale gamemode.
More skins.
Removing community maps to a "Scrimmage" pool.
Paid playermodels (That offer visibility advantages on several maps.)
Brainless weapon balance changes that are immediately reverted. (AUG?)
Weak PvE scenarios for the $15 Operation Shattered Web.

CS:GO is a bad game developed by a developer bridging the span between incompetence and greed. Despite that, I've had fun times playing it. Any game, no matter how bad, can be fun if you get a group of good friends together. I just wish we'd all bought something other than this dumpster fire.

Review written December 2019

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Edit July 2022:
Many of the problems mentioned above have improved substantially.

My personal statistics recorded by Convars[convars.com] indicate a massive improvement. In 2019, 31.5% of my competitive matches contained at least one (eventually) banned cheater. I haven't played a match with a confirmed cheater since December 2020.

There haven't been as many stupid changes (R8 debacle, changing the Negev's behavior wildly, AUG and SG553 prices) as there once were. Balance changes still happen (M4A1S magazine size) but they seem to be less slipshod when they do.

A small improvement was made in 2020. It's still terrible but slightly less bad.

Community moderation tools (like automatic muting of especially toxic players) have greatly improved the user experience without requiring orwellian enforcement. (Looking at you, Ubisoft...)

The solution here was unconventional. Bots were removed from competitive play. At the same time, bot logic was improved for non-competitive matchmaking.

Scrimmage was replaced with unranked skill-based matchmaking.

Map lighting was widely improved to reduce the advantage some playermodels gave. It's not perfect but it's better.

This is still a problem. Weapons like the M249 are still useless.

Skins are sadly still a massive priority. Valve makes a ton of money off them, so it's not surprising.

The above improvements have earned the game a recommendation from me.

An excellent shooter. The vanilla game has a solid collection of weapons, maps and vehicles to play with. The Eden Editor is a beautifully easy-to-use tool for designing your own missions and campaigns, and the modding community is superb. I have well over a hundred gigabytes of mods installed that my friends and I regularly use to play everything from WWII missions to Halo campaigns.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, though. Arma has some of the worst performance optimization I have ever used. My PC is quite capable, but the framerate in complex environments like towns or cities consistently slows to a crawl. I've also been encountering some strange crashes lately that are difficult to pin down.

The system for DLC Bohemia uses is also worth a mention. It's great. In a time where enormous parasites like EA seem to be squirming everywhere, BI has a refreshingly generous approach. Buy the DLC if you want to use it. If not, it won't impact your ability to play with others, and you still get access to the updates that come with it. Other developers, please take note of this system.

My current favorite RTS. It runs well on Linux!
The game has excellent controls and battlefield control features. The PIP and unusually powerful unit order queuing stand quite impressively among the field of modern RTS games.

The unit diversity and planet creator offer widely varied gameplay options. One seems to always be able to play with new and interesting strategies. Mod support is excellent and divided between client-side and server-side mods, allowing you to use many quality-of-life changes on any server.

My biggest complaint is with regards to naval unit balance. Once a halfway-competent commander seizes an ocean, it becomes very difficult to invade successfully. Virtually impossible if they've fortified and you're attacking from orbit, as can happen in free-for-alls. The Typhoon aircraft carrier is practically useless, costing 6500 metal, draining economy, inflicting pitiful damage, and having 40% less range than the Leviathan battleship. Yet the Kraken submarine costs only 1800 metal, does 1000(!) DPS with its main armament, and also is radar stealthed. What?!

Aside from that, it is a worthy successor to the first game. The balance changes and new units are very nice. And the Titans are actually a very useful gameplay addition. I expected them to be a gimmick.

Another interesting game. The idea of skiing and jetting is very good, and is quite usable. It makes the gameplay more fluid, and requires prediction and anticipation. The maps are pretty, with the rolling hills and mountains. However, there are some major issues. First off, the vehicles are terrible. There is absolutely no reason to get any of them, as they are weakly armed, reasonably expensive, and slow. As well, there are far too many classes. Yes, some are justified as classes, such as the spy-based one. But others like the Doombringer and the Juggernaut have no reason to be separate classes. There are many other things that I like, such as the beautiful graphics, and function of the skiing, but there are many things I dislike.

Do I recommend this game? Yes. It's a true free to play, so why not? It has issues, but that always happens when strange new mechanisms are made. Perhaps a modification of this game would be in order.