Recent reviews by CodeVortex

Despite the fact that my resultant assessment is a positive one, the game has its share of major flaws. I will start with those as I find more merit reading about the negative aspects of a title rather than facing myriads of pointless praises. That is unless the positive feedback is supported with evidence or details, which is sadly rarely the case.

1. The game uses the Vulkan api which unfortunately doesn't bode well with Steam overlay. That means no screenshots, no build-in browser, no achievements preview will be available to you during playtime. If you try to manually open the overlay you will see some grey empty rectangles and maybe some unreadable text within and that's all. View these discussions for details:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/612880/discussions/0/1479856439029553782/
https://bethesda.net/community/topic/117934/steam-overlay-not-working/10?language%5B%5D=en
Sadly, 3 years after the launch this is still the case.

2. The collision detection being applied when traversing complex terrain, such as bent and busted pipelines or broken woodwork and furniture within buildings, is severely flawed and will give you headaches while trying to keep a steady pace wading over or by them. You will find yourself jumping way over some obstacles only to be blocked by "an invisible wall" or unable to move while crouching in a seemingly unhindered path, only because a few pixels of a tiny piece of pipeline may be blocking part of your hero's hitbox!

3. The numerous collecticles (Gold, Cards, Concepts, Toys, etc) are not just pointless, unless you are aiming for the respective achievements, but actively destroy your overall gameplay experience with their erratic key-bindings and modal pop-ups. Once you pick up one of the accursed collectibles you must resist your innate human curiosity to see what exactly it is that you hoarded this time, in your invisible magical Santa Claus bag. If you dare to take a peek you will need different key to view it (J by default I think) and sometimes another (E) to close the dialog or other times combination of J and ESC to rid of the unnecessarily complex cascade of menus. What the hell you ask yourself.. It's like Witcher trying to ready a potion or oil a sword all over again. Ridiculous annoyance and hindrance that you wouldn't expect in a prestigious AAA title. My advice, unless you're OCD ridden with gathering everything you can find, just skip those pesky collecticles altogether.

4. And speaking of pesky, annoying and hindrances, behold the behemoth of them all... the atrocious in-game navigation or better lack of any thereof. If you are looking for an overlay minimap or hints for any nearby collectibles well you are out of luck. The combination of intricate and rather uniform levels (due to the theme of urban wasteland that you constantly encounter) and their usually single-way-out design by putting "clever" obstacles in alternative routes, guarantee that you will often need to refer to a navigation companion of sorts. The only thing available is the objective marker hint activated by hitting G by default and a horrendous minimap that you have to adjust constantly its zoom and pan, which is ONLY available in the fullscreen modal menu mode when hitting the J key. The map shows only "points of interest" and a general outline of the immediate area in the same elevation as you. As you going up and down stairs you will have to constantly pause the game to bring up the mission map, scrolling in and out and panning in every direction to get the correct bearings of where you are and where you might want to go; you're never certain until you memorize every area overview for the different elevation levels. To be fair, the in-game hints include flashing ammunition so at least you're always loaded.

5. The "stealthy" aspect of the game is severely flawed, but that was the same with its predecessor, so it's not a "new colossus" only thing. You don't have any clear visual or auditory indication of the enemies location or their perception range apart from the actual visual on them (but that means it's almost always too late as they spot you rather fast). You might say that it's normal as this game was mostly intended to be played guns blazing rather than crawling in the shadows. Then again why the heavy design & development investment on suppressor weapon upgrades and upgradable skills for silent kills with throwing hatchets. Wasted development time that could be well invested on better navigation mechanics instead.

So, after all this flak why the positive review? Well it's a hell of an action-packed first-person shooter and I really love the genre. It's like playing DOOM with nazis instead of demons (well is there a real difference anyway)! Nevertheless, I'd rather not pay the full price for it if possible, so just add it to your wishlist and wait for a good discount.

Nostalgia hit me hard with this little gem that I found randomly while browsing the steam store. In my 40s I relive the emotional state of my 10 yo self playing the same superb game that had me hooked at that age. The enhanced graphics and music do not detract from the overall experience, but if you want the authentic look and feel of the coin op version you can do it by hitting the Y button on your controller.

I do not expect anyone to be playing an arcade platform game on keyboard, but just to make this clear: just don't! In the unfortunate case that you do try the keyboard controls you may run into some issues, namely key syncronization and lost keystrokes, so this is one more reason to just avoid it completely. Just pick your favorite gamepad or joystick and give it a go.

If you want to hone your reflexes, you love parkour and you are ok with a wishy-washy background story and a linear world, this is your thing! Both the controller and mouse+kb combo are very good controller options, mostly because there is no much shooting involved. Overall, a nice choice for a few hours to kill pleasantly!

Don't let the cartooney graphics let you believe for a second that this is a casual or an easy game. It is the Dark Souls of platformers; you will die A LOT and the puzzles and secrets are quite challenging as they require not only mastery of the game mechanics but also a vivid imagination at times.

Having said that I enjoy this game the most when I play along with my daughter: one being the consultant (suggesting possible solutions to a puzzle) and the other the actual player.

Another installement in this series, I think the previous one, is the "Stealth Bastard Deluxe", which I also strongly recommend.

You will get mixed feelings of triumph and frustration with this title! It's either ultimate achievement or horrendous disaster. And the closer to the end the more frustrating a possible defeat is.

Point at hand, in one of my (many) playthroughs I lost to the final boss leaving him with only a splinter of life left. On the bright side my new keyboard is mechanical with reinforced backplate and I love it!

The definition of the shoot'em'up genre in one of its finest implementations. Vivid graphics, nice power-ups, and adequate enemy variation. Once unlocked, levels are replayable in increased difficulty.

You start playing Terraria thinking of it like a casual silly game with old-school graphics but then you realize that you are obsessed with it and actively google how to do various things and sinking hours in it. Admittedly, the game could use a more elaborate hint/tutorial system, to avoid all this information scavenging on its wiki, but apart from that you will be drawn to its immense ecosystem and wake the explorer in you.

You can feel the old classic coin-op experience and rush with this one! Truly remarkable job from the iDreams team. If you didn't know it yet, the game exists on Android as well and, I dare say, it's one of a handful of mobile games that worth investing money on and also honor the MBs of their installation on the device. But I digress..
The desktop version sold on steam delivers wonderful graphics, enticing music that matches the action, great variation of enemies, bosses and power-ups, co-op support on the same machine, and decent control mechanics. Having said that, you will find it much easier to play with a controller or a mouse+keyboard combo, as it is rather difficult to accurately control the aircraft with the keypad arrows.
Finally, one pet peeve that I have with this game (and ports from other platforms for that reason) is a total lack of mouse support on home screens or any menu for that matter. Prepare to wade through nested menus or select levels on the game map, using arrow keys and enter/esc combinations. Suffer this despite full mouse support as a valid in-game controller. I simply cannot wrap my mind around this one.. It's the equivalent of having built a wonderful state-of-the-art skyscraper and you forget to provide an elevator. "Huh, the staircase should suffice" you think and start running to the top! After all I told you that the view is great from up there :)

Extremely Bad: Unskippable dialogues with enemy captains. The taunting, humiliation, or cutscenes of defeat or victory are enjoyable at first, but after a while they become somewhat tiresome. It would be ideal if there was either a menu option to permanently disable them (as some other people have suggested) or just a key to skip them -- the most sensible and common option. Unfortunately, neither exists at the moment of writing this review.

Bad: Glitchy and intertwined run/jump/dodge mechanics. A sad side-effect of assigning multiple vital (normally discrete) actions to the same key (SPACE for keyboard players). I understand that this smooths out -- to a degree -- the learning curve for new or inexperienced players, but at the cost of granular player control and a more sophisticated gameplay.

Bad: Poor targetting while fighting a mob. While targetting individual orcs for shadow striking or arrow shooting works like a charm and is super accurate, picking individual enemies to dominate or drain from a surrounding mob proves to be very problematic and usually you will end up picking the wrong target.

Good (or bad, depending on your OCD levels): There is a multitude of collectibles that will excite hoarders and collectors alike.

Good: Socketable gear and upgradable gems. Your armor and weapons can be enhanced by inserting different types of gems into them, which drop randomly from enemies. Moreover, you can combine lesser gems into greater forms (Diablo-style).

Good: online vendettas where you take revenge for other players' deaths and gain treasure chests

Very Good: Allies that fight on your side and command them

Very Good: challenges on inventory items to unlock extra properties on them and make them more satisfying because you feed that you earned them rightfully.

Extremely Good: Multiple locations where you can unleash your killing sprees.

Extremely Good: Great variation of enemy traits, ranks, personalities, even clans.

All in all, a good purchase in general and a must-have during steam sales. It will leave a slight bitter taste for players who have tried the superior combat mechanics of SoM, but will promptly wash it down with ample Orc blood.

Contrary to what the title suggests, the stealing of cars is the most innocent thing that this game is about. Addictive gameplay and unique switching between multiple main characters, each one with his own personality and traits, which also introduces some interesting mechanics.