Recent reviews by Huey

Farming isn't an especially compelling gameplay - going up and down in a tractor over the same land weeding, fertilising, planting and so on should be boring af. Except somehow it's not.

It's actually a really nice change of pace from shooters and such, and has a lot of appeal for sandbox lovers who enjoy the challenge of starting with nothing and building a working farm exactly the way they want it. The game absolutely shines with mods, which are very well integrated and don't require any external tools or downloads (at least for the huge variety of officially sanctioned mods).

Very stable and with few bugs now, this is prime time to enjoy FS22 even with FS25 around the corner. The latter will take some time to bed in, and for the modders to make it great.

Excuse me, I have to go prep for spring planting.

Pros: Fun when it works. Lots of potential. Devs seem cool, unlike Tarkov's. Get back to the action fast, but then it slows down which is a perfect mix. Captures tense jungle combat well. Really satisfying difficulty/tension ramp once you get out of the timmy village. Map environment and set dressing is superb.

Cons: Hot mess. Server connection issues, crashes, gear losses including subscriber gear - to which the only solution is an account reset. Hackers already. Unarmoured AI tank a dozen rounds while standing still, then laser one-tap you with cheap ammo through a plate. AI become terminators in higher difficulty locations. Totally unoptimised, and a top-end rig is no guarantee of it working well. No helo queueing, so expect to have to call for extract multiple times. Sound is wack - you can hear AI 3 levels down a concrete bunker as if they're standing next to you. Rubber banding. No quest sharing, so a group of 4 has to do the same "kill the boss" quest 4 times while being careful not to accidentally kill the boss if it's not your turn. And so on.

Honestly, if they fixed just that list of cons without adding any new features, it would be a thumbs up and worth the money. I fully expect to change this review and play the hell out of this as it matures. But right now, I can't recommend it with my hand on my heart. If you get it, don't get the DLC until they fix the subscriber gear bug.

With 276 hours on record at the time of review, I still don't feel 100% qualified to comment on every aspect of the game because it's so massive. I also have every DLC, so your experience might be different without those.

That said, this is the sort of game that you can turn into a second job if you're not careful. It supports a wide variety of playstyles from the casual Han Solo style FPS pilot, to RPG-style completing quests and storylines, to grand empire building and complex industrial/trade styles. And if one gets a bit stale, you can easily dip your toes in another.

If you love Kenshi and want a space version, this is it. It's not the same game, but it has the same vibe. If you love the grand promise of Star Citizen but are frustrated with the current shallow state, this will fill the void. If you want a singleplayer Eve that you can pause and walk away from, this is it. If you grew up loving Elite on the C64 (like I did), this is its spiritual successor. Bannerlord with spaceships? Yep.

The visuals are ok (I suggest desaturating in the options to turn down the gaudy colours) and performance is pretty good on older systems. The developers are very active and mod support is excellent with both Workshop and Nexus thriving. It's not great for streamers as it can be quite a slow burn, but it's largely bug-free and most frustrations are down to player ignorance or can easily be fixed with the right mods. Replayability is high with different starts, dynamic generation and such.

It's not for everyone, but fans of sandboxes will find many things to like about X4.

If you like sandboxes and space, you'll probably like SE. Creativity can really go nuts. Minecraft, KSP etc fans will probably love it.Under constant development with regular DLC releases. Before you whine about paid DLC, none of it is P2W, and if you want games to be maintained for a decade, the company has to pay its developers.Like many games modding is where it really shines. Virtually all the limitations of vanilla can be loosened, or made hardcore, with mods and scripts. Brutal NPCs? Fully reworked combat system? Autocrafting and inventory management? Solar arrays that follow the sun? Radar? All that and more.A great community of modders and server admins have created a very deep ecosystem. Want a casual, PVE survival server? Hardcore PVP? A whole cluster of servers recreating the Sol system of The Expanse? It's all there.One of the best multiplayer sandboxes out there.

I've played through the original DF a few times and always enjoyed it. This was a day 1 buy for me to support the devs, who are awesome.
The steam build itself is the same game underneath with a facelift and some attention paid to making it less intimidating and easier to learn. It's a truly fascinating game, with enormous depth (depending on how far you dare venture down) and replayability.
DF is a memory generator. You'll remember how every fortress died. You'll take those lessons and make a better fortress that dies in a different memorable way. And each time it will be Fun.
Looking forward to future updates that provide keyboard-only control and Mac support. But it's great now nonetheless. Strike the earth.

Ways to enjoy FO4 in 2022:

* Play on survival difficulty - it's a different (and better) game when you can't fast travel, can't savescum and death comes easily to you and your enemies. Survival slows it down and makes it more like an RPG and less like a mindless shooter. Your build and playstyle become a lot more relevant.
* Use mods. If something irritates you, mod it. There's incredible companions (e.g. Heather), Sim Settlements 2, full questlines, curated modpacks with hundreds of tested mods, and badass gear & clothes.
* Accept that it's a Bethesda game and thus it will crash now and then.

Had this on wishlist for some time, as I was a fan of the tabletop game a looooong time ago. Picked it up 60% off and spent a quiet sunday with it.

As a recreation of the board game, it works well mechanically and is both challenging and fun. It's well designed and mostly well executed. It's actually pretty impressive how it captures the feel of the tabletop in a PC format and full marks to the designers for that. There are certain items you'll jump for joy at discovering in the store, and sell almost all your kit in order to afford.

There are two kinds of frustrations with this title. Firstly, the stuff that's an inevitable consequence of recreating the tabletop, which are mostly understandable. Having your carefully scrapped-together vehicle "lost" at the end of a season after a grind is pretty brutal, when the upside is only a new perk and some character unlocks (including a "pro" version of the character you just finished). The timer kind of sucks, but it does put the pressure on. I would have preferred the option to invest more fuel rather than just fail on a 10 minute timer, but whatevs. Trying to manage 2 cars with a wingman is almost too much trouble, and I end up using them as a bullet sponge rather than trying to use them tactically.

The RNG upgrade store is an understandable design decision, but your mission types will be limited by your choices. Hacking jobs require a tough car as you're a sitting duck while hacking. Gang wars require a lot of DPS. If you're too much one or the other, you'll fail or die. And you can't keep a garage of upgrades to switch out as needed.

The frustrations that are harder to forgive are the straight up bugs. Hacking targets getting stuck off the side of the road where you can't reach them. A mission where you have to hack/kill 3 trucks, and you spend 6 of the 10 minutes driving at full speed to see zero trucks. Crashes. Getting stuck in "form up" loops with your cars driving slowly in reverse. Not to say these happen a lot, but when they do they tend to guarantee a failure and you've wasted your fuel and possibly an expensive contract wingman.

Most of the time it works well and rewards playing to your car's and your character's strengths. Completing a sanctioned op season is a genuine achievement, as that final 3-skull mission is a nightmare. At full price I'd be a lot unhappier about the bugs, but for AUD $15 they're rare enough to forgive. Not sure I will grind through all the content as it does get a bit samey, but it's the sort of thing you can come back to occasionally for a bit of fun. Makes me want to find a copy of the tabletop game to play with the kids.

Firstly, the game is in EA, so set your expectations accordingly. There are bugs. It's unfinished. You will encounter problems that leave you angry, not knowing whether you can't do the thing because the game design prevents it, or because a bug prevents it. You accept that when you buy an EA game. Don't buy it if you can't accept that.

The devs seem to be aiming at a crossover between Eve Online, Space Engineers and Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Time will tell how it evolves, and for now it doesn't do any of those games anywhere near as well as they already do. But as a mix, it's something new and that's why I'm recommending it.

That said, it could very well die if they don't get the gameplay and balance right. Space is littered already with abandoned noobships, after players found it too frustrating and not worth the effort to problem solve. It could devolve into a small, un-fun safety zone surrounded by instant death at the hands of big corps. It could just bore players out. Or... it could be great. It certainly has a great dev team - let's hope they have great game designers and the willingness to see it through as it evolves.

Pros: It's playable, it's interesting, it has a great dev team and a solid roadmap. Ship building is deep. It has a lot of potential.

Cons: Gameplay in EA seems very limited, essentially mine and build ships unless you're in a big group, then you can build stations. Hair-tearingly frustrating when something doesn't work as you expect, but that's EA for you.

If you like the genre and the potential, it's worth it - IF you understand how EA works and can be patient.

*edit* 2024:

I abandoned this game because of the devs' toxic response to the fanbase regarding RP. I'm no longer willing to recommend it.

Imagine a WW1-era PVP MMO Rimworld set in an Eve Online-style persistent sandbox, and you're getting close to Foxhole.

There is the surface game of spawning, grabbing a rifle and shooting your chosen enemy on the frontline which is a lot of fun; but for players looking for something deeper there is a wealth of opportunity to try something different if you look for it and get creative. Infiltrate the backline and ambush supply lines. Be a pirate, raiding the coasts in commando boats. Build artillery bases, be a mortar crew hero, man a gun emplacement. Patrol the waters or no man's land. Be a combat medic. Even logistics - building bunkers and trench systems, manufacturing everything needed on the front - is rewarding.

Active and community-responsive developers, solid servers and a well-designed game kept constantly fresh with new tech and a growing player base.

As with every MMO bring a thick skin, and for the love of Callahan, use a microphone. The game is an order of magnitude more fun when everyone is talking/yelling. If you try to play in a solo bubble you're missing most of the value of an MMO - you might even learn some français.

Well worth a look - just remember to take breaks lest it consume your life.

The art, set design and the story up to the beginning of Act 3 are superb. The AI is Unity asset-flip level bad. The game is buggy, rushed and unfinished. You know this if you've been paying attention.

But that's not the worst part.

The endings universally suck, are badly written, confusing and unsatisfying. There is no postgame, and once you complete Act 3 you'll be unceremoniously dumped back at an Act 2 savepoint as if the finale never happened. That's your "replayability" - an increasingly empty Act 2.

To go through Act 3 thinking that the rest of your time in the game will be affected by the events in the finale and the teasers in the credits - nevermind the nonsensical outcomes for some of the characters - only to have that lazily stolen away from you, expecting you to shrug and think "guess I'll grind some more eddies" is genuinely infuriating. It wrecked every last shred of good feeling I had for the developer.

If you want to buy it for the good things, I get it. But be very clear that everything after the beginning of Act 3 is pointless and throwaway. You've been warned.