Recent reviews by grolis and vomit

If you're reading the reviews about warfare (battlefield like) mode that keep saying that it sucks - yeah, they're right. And yeah it has a sus chinese anti-cheat. I use Linux and keep all my data encrypted and only have a Windows setup exclusively for gaming, so I don't care.

But the extraction mode is exactly what fans of something like The Cycle: Frontier have been waiting for all this time. A rare extraction shooter that's not a yet another "ReAlIStic MiLSiM taCtiCAL" Tarkov clone.

Behind the annoying chinese-mobile-game popups and a billion ♥♥♥♥♥♥ menus with skins and cringe voicelines, there lies a very solid game. Combat feels great, the operator system turned out great, weapons are satisfying, looting is satisfying, maps are interesting, and so on.

This game has consumed me. I have racked up 27 hours over the course of 4 days. I can't believe I doubted whether this game would be fun after after the first 2 hours.

At first glance, it seems silly. “It’s like Truck Simulator, but for trains, right? Isn't it just... less fun, since you don't have to steer?”

Well, turns out driving a train can be a pretty hands-on experience. Going too fast will derail the train, going too slow is... slow, and there's a time bonus. But managing your speed isn't a matter of just turning one lever to the desired speed setting, there's no cruise control. Tracks slope up and down, and you need to decide when and how much throttle to apply, when and how much brake pressure to apply (with the effects not being instantaneous, brake lines take time to pressurize!), when to perhaps start dropping speed ahead of time, when to accelerate before a slope up, when to push the engine to the limit and when to go idle completely to save diesel, etc.

Since the economy of maintaining the train is present, you have to decide how much fuel consumption is okay, how much stress is okay to put on the drive train (sometimes going into the yellow/red will let you take an epic haul at the cost of extra maintenance afterwards, and it can be worth it!), when to refuel and service the locomotive (driving to the service station takes time, perhaps you can do a couple of jobs before servicing)

But that's just one locomotive. There is a variety of different locomotives each with not only unique stats, but also differing drive trains! There is a mechanical transmission locomotive, which requires you to shift gears and has quirks like the ability to engine brake, there is a hydraulic transmission locomotive, which requires monitoring the transmission fluid temperature, and, of course, my favorite - there are FULLY SIMULATED STEAM LOCOMOTIVES. Yes, with the coal shoveling, water injecting, and all that. You will need to monitor boiler water level, boiler pressure, regulate firebox air supply, operate the blower when needed, choose the coal level to balance between fuel efficiency and possible power output, operate the cutoff... And don't forget, you still have to do all the usual speed monitoring!

Do not be fooled by the “virtual reality supported” banner on the Steam page - this isn't a mere VR port, this game is built with VR in mind from the start! Full motion controls, grabbing and pulling and twisting and flicking all the different levers, valves and switches in the locomotives! Holding your map in one hand while driving with the other, or perhaps flicking through the station map while holding the order booklet with
all the necessary info - all possible. All informational items are fully physical, complete with beautifully animated pages turning over.

And yet, the flatscreen version is (almost, nothing beats actually standing right next to a giant locomotive) just as fun, and I find myself playing it when I get tired from VR and still having a ton of fun. The physicalized-items experience is translated into flatscreen surprisingly well, so don't be put off from getting the game if you don't have VR, it's still absolutely worth it!

The only real big negative thing I have to say about the game would be the performance. Unfortunately the game is heavily CPU-bound, and with my Ryzen 5 3600 I cannot hit 72 FPS at Harbor in VR. This means I have to resort to reprojection/spacewarp, with the game actually running at 60 fps. This really sucks, since when you're outside of these performance-intensive zones, the game feels fantastic at 90 FPS. Hopefully performance improvements come later, as the game reaches the final stage of Early Access. These developers have already released their previous game out of Early Access, and have a roadmap for Derail Valley on their website, so I am confident that this is not a "forever-beta" title.

When you see a "cute and artsy" game with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating it's always a gamble. It MAY be something amazing, but more often than not is just "artsy", for lack of a better word, with little to no substance and boring gameplay.

I'm happy to say that this is not the case with this game.

Perhaps one of the biggest pleasant surprises was seeing that the Binding of Isaac-style portion of the game isn't a separate thing you go do while the rest of the game goes on pause - your cult continues to exist and things continue to happen when you are away, encouraging you to be efficient. At the same time, what you do while on a "crusade", as the game calls them, matters - items and followers you find will return to your base, including every single bone of every enemy in the crusade, and depending on how your crusade goes, your followers may think differently of you!

The cult management component is simply excellent. While there are quite a few things that constantly require your attention at first, it's very possible to build your cult to be essentially self-sustaining, allowing you to spend more time admiring your work and interacting with your followers. Even later you get the ability to automate the majority of things required to maintain happiness in your cult, allowing you to go on even longer crusades with better rewards, if you want. Your freedom from repetitive tasks feels earned, yet those tasks never feel like a grind!

And despite all the accommodations you provide to your followers, you really do feel like you're leading a CULT and not a happy hippie charity. Followers are a key resource in the game, but in the end - they are a resource. You can gaslight them into trusting you with bribes, take their prayers and convert them to power, ascend them when they are old, or sacrifice them when convenient. You can feed them toxic shrooms to poison their minds or install propaganda speakers to make them work faster. Should they dissent - you can lock them in and brainwash them until they give up their hopeless ideological struggle. Or you can just straight up murder them. If your followers trust you enough, you can get away with anything, all while thinking that they are happy being in your cult.


Everything is beautifully animated, and the soundtrack is very simple, yet incredibly catchy. Runs perfectly on both my Linux PC and the Steam Deck. Performance is great, but the Deck does heat up a bit if you want to use "High" settings.

This game would have been so much better if it didn't have the "Open World Survival Craft" part.

The combat is nice, the theme and the bosses are epic, but the building system is ATROCIOUS and farming for resources involves a whole lot of tedium. Chests being tiny doesn't spark any interesting gameplay and only serves to increase the number of clicks required to manage your inventory.

Hauling a wheelbarrow full of ore across a dense woods biome full of rocks and fallen branches that cause damage to it, all while enemies continuously spawn and attack it, all while being unable to repair the damage done without cheesing and building a temporary workbench is not fun. It's insanely annoying grind.

Having Steam only download the installer and then downloading resources after you "start the game" all while Steam counts playtime is pretty scummy, not to mention, a terrible user experience.

But that's not where it ends.

This is the most broken content installation system I have ever seen in any software, ever. It has it all! The features include:
- Downloading at 5-10% of your actual internet speed
- Routinely failing to download a file, knocking your progress back a few GB and starting again
- Randomly getting stuck in a download loop, where it downloads the same file over and over again, requiring you to manually close the app, delete the broken file and open it again (yeah, you have to BABYSIT THE 10 HOUR LONG DOWNLOAD)
- ...loading the GPU while it's active? Why?
- Mandatory music that you cannot turn off until the download finishes
- Random chance to completely reset your entire download progress should you touch the "pause" button or should you DARE close and reopen the downloader

I have decided to install MSFS2020 again to give it a second shot, and I have now been "downloading" for 8 hours and I cannot get the installer to go past 10 GB downloaded. It gets stuck every single time no matter what I do. Microsoft doesn't care and their support is useless. The game is quite literally unplayable/undownloadable. I think that deserves a negative review just like a game crashing on launch would.

EDIT: No way, after downloading for 12+ hours it now crashes during loading. Can you guess what the ONLY recommended fix from Microsoft is?

Yeah, it's "delete and redownload all data".

Verifying files on Steam, the most logical troubleshooting step when a game crashes on launch DELETES ALL DATA. Wonderful.

It's shocking how to this day a better RTS is yet to be made. The units in this game aren't just blobs of DPS and health, each unit for each faction (and there are 4 factions!) is entirely unique, with different upsides and downsides. Aside from the basics that you learn pretty quickly, the way you play each game differs so much that it feels like every match leaves a distinct memory of what went down, something to remember for a while! There are even entire Youtube channels dedicated to casting games!

Look up "Forged Alliance Forever", download and and join the matchmaking. Don't worry about being "bad", that's exactly what matchmaking is for - it will put you in fair matches after a few games and you'll start winning and growing in skill :)

By far the worst thing about this game is, sadly, the way its networking works. It was made back when transmitting the positions and current states of thousands of units over the internet was impossible for many, so it uses deterministic lockstep. A single person lagging causes the entire game to lag, and a single connection breaking between any two players will cause the match to break until one of them leaves.

Yes, the game does have performance issues.


But aside from those, which can be improved over time, the game really does offer a unique take on the genre. I was initially on the fence about having random people be friendly, but it ended up bringing emergent gameplay elements. Haven't had a chance to PvP yet, but fighting low-tier dummy AI is infinitely more fun with a team of random people!

This game suffers from a MAJOR technical issue relating to the physics engine, rendering it more or less unplayable on some modern hardware.

If your framerate goes above a certain limit, the character starts to get stuck in the ground. And no, we aren't talking about 1000 fps or some ridiculous number - the issue already appears if you run at around 150 fps, which isn't unreasonable for modern gaming monitors.

The game doesn't support VRR and doesn't include a framerate limiter, meaning your only option (aside from resorting to external hacks) is to enable V-Sync, which is implemented horribly in this game/engine, and adds 100-200ms of input lag, making the game unenjoyable.

The story also feels like something written with the explicit purpose of being sad and getting "the feels" out of people, which IMO is a cheap way to get emotions. I didn't feel interested enough in the story to continue fighting the technical issues this game has.

I hate horror games. I hate being jumpscared for no reason. I hate screamers and I hate the dumb ""scary"" things that every horror game on the planet likes to put in not because it's actually scary on any deeper level, but because it's easy and it gets youtubers to jump in their seat.

This is not one of those games.

The story is intriguing, the music is absolutely captivating, the puzzles and gameplay challenges are unique and interesting, but, above all, the environments in this game are PHENOMENAL. This could be a walking simulator with zero gameplay and it would still be worth it just for the sights alone!

The game doesn't try too hard to be scary. And that's a GOOD THING. Its atmosphere and audio tracks are perfect for making you slightly uneasy, but not enough to the point that a whimp like myself would stop playing. The game also doesn't try too hard to be difficult. Again, it's a GOOD THING. The gameplay challenges are there to engage you and to provide meaningful interactivity with the beautiful (and creepy) worlds you visit, not to obstruct your path.

I was very shocked to discover that this game is so unpopular with let's players. And that made me come to the unfortunate realization about why games like these are rare. They aren't going to make ♥♥♥♥♥♥ youtubers jump and scream and make thumbnail faces, so they fall into obscurity.

Don't let this game pass you by, it really is a gem in the rough and cringy world of horror games.

This game used to be my favorite online experience

USED TO BE

For years now the game has been completely unplayable, overrun with bots that are designed to make people quit the game. And for years now, Valve have done absolutely nothing that remotely comes close to dealing with the issue.

In fact, the game is abandoned. The only updates being made are ones that introduce new lootboxes. Valve continue to milk this once beloved by millions game, while not even doing as much as lifting a finger. They aren't even playing the maps they add once. I'm not sure they are even launching the game at all, perhaps just running some automated tests to make sure it doesn't crash before pushing these cash-grab "updates".

TF2 is no longer on life support. The life support has been disconnected, and the patient is suffocating to death while the doctor stands by and throws random objects at the patient, while pocketing the money donated to save the patient.