Recent reviews by dxmc

So I got this game from one of those mystery deals, had no idea what I was getting. I've played over 2300 hours of Factorio and over 700 hours of Dark Souls 3 so this was quite a bit different. A game about Tamil cookery. Nothing is trying to kill me and I don't need to build a nuclear reactor to power the stove. I thought I should at least check it out and I was surprised, for what it is it's a good game with an engaging story, and I also learned a little about the food and culture of another place. Kind of a visual short story with some forays into cooking. Although not my usual thing I can see that it would be popular with a lot of people, and for those who like these kinds of games, this is a small gem.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a good game in spite of a few bugs and gameplay weaknesses, like an unusually dumb AI. The missions in this one seemed to be lengthier and more involved than in the first one, which I felt was an improvement. But this sequel retains the core gameplay that was central to the first one, challenging long-range sniping. And beyond that, a good mix of stealth and close combat, more than enough action to keep it from getting dull. And there's side bounty missions, collectables, challenges, upgrades, pretty much everything you expect in this type of game. So you can blast through it pretty quickly or you can take your time and have a leisurely playthrough, it works either way. It looks good, it's well-designed, it ticks all the right boxes for this type of game, and it scratches a certain FPS itch. Not perfect but I'm happy and if you like these kinds of games it's worth the price.

I've played a lot of building games and I played the first Shapez some time ago. While I liked the basic concept I thought it could be more well-developed, and that's what you get here. The same basic idea but considerably improved, as the game goes to 3D and a much more eye-catching presentation.

I like the idea of having just one building game where you can just build without restrictions. You don't have to mine ore, process it, produce the belts and machines, you don't have to build nuclear reactors to power it all. You're not pressured to get those turrets built before the critters swarm over your walls. In that sense it's a very Zen experience.

It's visually appealing, and it gets increasingly hypnotic as your structures grow and increase in complexity. With no time pressure you can just stop and watch the machines working away, appreciating what you've built, no need to worry that your factory is going to go into a death spiral if you stop watching everything for five minutes.

It may not be Satisfactory or Factorio but then it's not trying to be that kind of building game, and for what it is, for the way it now realizes it's basic ideas in this much improved iteration, it's a great game and I recommend it.

I loved the first Frostpunk and did pretty much everything you could do in that game. But Frostpunk 2 is an entirely different game, a strategy game like a lot of other strategy games. It revolves around factions and politics, and on that level it's just too depressingly a reflection of what's going on in the real world now. Playing this game is as depressing as watching the six o'clock news has become.

So now instead of building you create districts. Instead of a small group and a focused challenge you have a huge, dense city and thousands of pops. Trying to meet their various needs, while at the same time trying to figure out exploration, and juggling council meetings and politics on top of that, proved to be quickly mind-numbing. I had difficulty figuring out how to mange available personnel to do things like exploration, and that's only one of a fair number of complicated systems, like the various tools for monitoring everything from housing to generator output. The in-game information is not all that detailed and gameplay tends to feel awkward and disjointed, as you try to figure out how everything is supposed to fit together into a coherent whole. Should I drop my exploration efforts and focus on more districts around the city ? How important is it to deal with all these laws and associated meetings and votes ?

Keeping up with the politics involves reviewing all sorts of text, all sorts of laws, demands, negotiations and so on. And how much time do you want to spend trying to absorb and retain all that while everybody is complaining that the generator is going out and people are freezing to death ? In the first game you felt that you had control over all aspects of the game, here it doesn't feel like you have any real control at all, you're like some hapless middle manager trying to maintain peace between competing departments. In an environment where you can't even collectively order a pizza without lengthy negotiations and a voting process.

So I appreciate that they wanted to try something different, but the things that got me hooked on the first one just aren't in this one. I suppose it's somebody's game, probably a lot of somebody's, but not mine.

I've played a lot of city builders and RTS games over the years but I don't think I've ever seen anything like Against the Storm, it's one of those games that keeps you totally hooked even when you're losing badly, like me most of the time so far. And when you do get a win and start levelling up it's very satisfying.

Some of the games mechanics could be explained a little better, and it took me a while to understand how difficulty and progression are tied together in this game, it's not unusual that in order to get access to certain parts of the map and certain challenges you have to level up, but the way it's handled in Against the Storm is different. Here it's not a matter of just picking a comfortable difficulty level at the start and sticking with that as you steadily level up, here you have to increase the difficulty level in order to keep levelling up and progressing the story.

It's also taken me a while to get used to the idea of timed city building. The win condition is straightforward, you have to max out your reputation meter before the Queen's impatience meter maxes out. The impatience meter increases steadily, and your reputation meter increases as you fulfill various kinds of tasks, explore the forest, and improve your pop's morale. So there's different approaches to winning a run, you can win just by managing to keep everyone's morale high enough to keep your rep increasing at a steady pace, or you could just focus on trying to fulfill orders. And there's different ways you can do that, like focusing on trade or expansion. But it takes time and experience to work out the best approach for your particular playstyle and that's where a lot of the intensity and the addictiveness comes into play, as you struggle to come up with creative solutions to all those challenges and all that RNG as the clock slowly but steadily ticks down.

This has been a surprising experience for a gamer who's put thousands of hours into Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program and many others. Superficially it looks simple and cartoony, at first I didn't think it was something I'd be interested in, but what made me think twice about it was the consistently good reviews it gets. I was curious and thought it might be a little different, and what I got is something like Animal Crossing meets Stellaris. It offers the complexity of a Paradox game combined with the aesthetics of Stardew Valley. In some ways it reminds me of Spellforce without the high fantasy, and I think that's one of the better compliments you can give it. In a little over ten hours I've become totally engrossed in managing my little microcosmic world of humans, beavers and lizards, it's a nail biter every time they venture into a dangerous glade. I very much see why it gets all those great reviews, I also highly recommend it.

I wanted to wait to write a review until I was a good ways into this, and at 185 hours I'm only just getting into the endgame on my first playthrough. And with a game of this size and scope I think you really need to get pretty far into it before offering an opinion.

I've played all the Souls and Soulslikes and I went into Elden Ring with expectations based on those experiences. But what I've found is that it's not really a Souls game, it's Dark Souls 3 meets Skyrim, and necessarily more Skyrim than Souls but with less structure than either of them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, there's nothing wrong with mixing genres, but I think that a lot of players will find their expectations challenged no matter which direction they're approaching it from. You could be an RPG gamer looking for an edgier Skyrim or a Souls player looking for something similar but a little less demanding. So it takes some time to get used to the unique feel of the game but beyond that initial learning curve it's a game with very broad appeal.

It's a huge open world game, and coming at it from the "I want Dark Souls 4" direction, I've found progression to be slow and a little confusing. I've gotten bogged down at times exploring, doing side stuff, but then that's not really any different than what I did in Witcher 3, a game I loved, and other RPG's. I've also found that when you focus on progression the difficulty ramps up a lot, you're clearly expected to take your time poking around, killing birds for arrow feathers, checking out dungeons, and so on.

It's this mixing of genres that's the essential concept of this game. In terms of other aspects of the game like combat mechanics Elden Ring doesn't reinvent the wheel, the combat is pretty similar to what Souls players are used to going back to the first Dark Souls. It has a plot very similar to Dark Souls 3, requiring you to kill a list of bosses in a series of different areas in order to unlock the final area and final boss. What's different here is that in Dark Souls 3 the vagueness of your goal isn't problematic because you're going to be channelled along in a linear manner. But here you're just presented with a huge world and told to figure out how to accomplish your overarching goal on your own, without any direction.

So if you're a big fan of open world games and you just want to have a lot of fun roaming around, exploring, fighting a few bosses, without being pressured to get to specific goals, then Elden Ring works beautifully, And particularly if you have limited time for gaming you could happily spend months exploring the Lands Between. And players looking for a more structured experience can also have a good time here, provided you keep an overarching goal in mind and stay focused on that and as long as you have some sort of a plan for how you're going to get there. So one player may spend a lot of time dungeon crawling to get the runes(souls) needed to keep levelling and another player may just skip all of that and go farm for a while. Works both ways.

And that's the beauty of it, it's intended to appeal to a lot of different gamers, and it's done a very good job with that, particularly in drawing in a lot of players who haven't played a Souls game but are looking for something similar but more approachable. They clearly put a lot of thought and creativity into it and you have to admire them for what they've accomplished here. It's not a perfect game, there are problems , the various pieces don't always mesh well, but it's a unique experience, full of interesting content, and after a lot of thought I very highly recommend it.

I put hundreds of hours into the first Nioh, and I wanted Nioh 2 for quite a while but had to wait until I upgraded my gaming machine. I'd built up pretty high expectations over the years and I'm delighted to say that Nioh 2 not only meets but has exceeded those expectations. They've expanded and deepened the game, and although there's some disagreement about this I think it's more challenging and even more absorbing than the first one. Sure, you'll die a lot, and I mean really. really die a lot, but as you dive into the mass of stats and upgrades and other mechanics you'll steadily improve and with patience and thoughtful build creation, you'll end up feeling like a master Samurai. Great addition to the "OMG this is hard" genre.

Doom Eternal is an amazing game, head and shoulders above most other shooters, one of the best in recent years. I was a fan of Doom(2016) and it was Interesting to see how they'd expanded and improved Doom since then. Doom Eternal is much more challenging than Doom(2016), with more enemies, longer battles and more complicated levels, as well as a lot of platforming. But you also get more gear and upgrades to cope with the heightened difficulty. It's a visually striking game, as you would expect, the graphics are excellent. It's also much more story focused, with a lot of lore, again much more than in previous games. A great achievement, going beyond Doom(2016), which was itself one of the great shooters. I think any Doom fan will quickly get hooked on Doom Eternal.

This is an extraordinary game, and although I'm not really that far into it I can see myself playing this for a long time. Captain of Industry is a unique and deeply challenging game and the years of effort that went into it's development are apparent in every aspect of it.

What sets this game apart from other building games like Satisfactoy, Factorio and Dyson Sphere program is the number of available products to create and the increased complexity and sophistication of basic processes, and the number and type of machines used in those processes. So rather than just producing a few products and doing little more than expanding, here you are constantly challenged to learn new mechanics throughout the game.

In most building games mining involves little more than putting down a bunch of mines and some belts on a deposit. But here you have to build excavators, designate a mining area, have trucks carry the product, and more. In Factorio making complicated electronic chips involves nothing more than combining copper wire and iron plates, here it involves an extremely lengthy, complicated production chain and numerous products.

This approach has it's pluses and minuses, but it's really a matter of interpretation. What would take a few minutes in most building games takes much longer in Captain of Industry. And the complexity of basic mechanics can make for frustrating difficulty in the early game, particularly when you combine that with colony management features like food production and waste management, and I've struggled with issues like vehicle pathing and mining/dumping designations throughout my time in the game.

It also requires a higher level of micromanagement. It's not the kind of game where you can just go for coffee and leave it running. It can be fairly easy to get into a death spiral if you're not paying attention to food storage, fuel level and so on, and this again can be a problem in early game when you don't really know what you're doing.

But as you would expect, greater challenge leads to an experience that is in a lot of ways more rewarding than a lot of other similar games. It's also more engaging and informative. And when you get the basics figured out it becomes completely absorbing, as your settlement grows and increases in complexity to a level that is truly amazing and very much puts Captain of Industry on a level with the best games in this genre.

So if you've played other building games and are looking for something different and more challenging this is a must play game. And if you're new to building games I think this will easily get you hooked if you're patient and willing to spend some time dealing with the learning curve. I've played thusands of hours of Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program and I highly recommend Captain of Industry for all building game enthusiasts both new and experienced.

I loved the first Subnautica so I was naturally interested in playing this, and I was determined to judge it on it's own merits rather than judging it by comparison to the original. But right from the outset the differences were so glaring that right through the whole game I was really just thinking about how much I'd prefer to be replaying the original.

There's a plot of sorts here, but it's so thin that it barely counts as a story, with no more depth than a Saturday morning cartoon. There's only one other character, but your encounters with her are brief and many hours apart. And eventually the story just kind of fizzles out, no suspense, no drama, nothing to engage with.

But beyond that the whole thing is completely random, with no structure at all. The game doesn't subtly guide you from plot point A to B to C, rather you randomly stumble over plot point D, then A, then F then who knows what. You stumble onto areas early that you're not supposed to go to until late game, and an important area that I should have found early on I didn't find until very late. So the whole experience is jumbled and confusing, and again and again the game just leaves you hanging with little idea where to go and what to do next, leading to far too frequent Googling.

There's a secondary plot line involving an alien but that again turns out to be confusing and convoluted. You're supposed to gather a bunch of different stuff to help this alien, and while you're initially given some signals telling you where you need to go eventually that too runs out, and that was the point at which I quit, by that point I was just fed up with having to look up walkthroughs constantly.

The gameplay is excessively grindy, far more so than the first one. Blueprints are extremely hard to find for many useful items, and I only found the last blueprint I needed to make the ultra high cpacity O2 tank near the end, and I never did find all the blueprints for the propulsion cannon and numerous other items. So exploration is extremely difficult and discouraging. That problem is compounded by extreme darkness underwater and extreme storms on land, so you find yourself wasting huge amounts of time just randomly floundering around trying to find various key locations.

Base building was, for me, a big part of the original. But here it seems to be an afterthought. While there's a lot you can build and a lot of customisation, by the time you're in a position to get into base building the game is practically over. And with a much smaller map there's little point to base building because there's little to explore and no point to exploring. You've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer in terms of it's world building in the first couple of hours.

I could go on but there's little point. This game feels like it was slapped together on a Monday morning with little real thought or effort. It's barely a game in any meaningful sense, with so much missing that should be there. I had been hoping for the kind of immersive experience I had with the first game and there was no feeling of immersion here at any point. A big disappointment, definitely not recommended.