Recent reviews by GoldMan27

As someone who both doesn’t have the room for a drum kit, and is learning percussion, this is a fantastic tool to use! I highly recommend using a drum throne or low-seated stool to play though, both for sense of realism and so you aren’t bashing your arms against your computer chair armrests or backrest.

Overall, I’ve briefly tried out the guitar portion of the game, but I enjoy the drums so much more. I could definitely see using a physical guitar controller with this game being a blast!

My suggestions to the developer:

-Allow the music editor to be used for Drums. I’d bet there are a lot of guys that just want to create a freestyle track or even a beat track for their favourite songs that they can practice to.
-Offer support for physical drum controllers. Not just the RB/GH kits either, if it could support digital drum kits I’d probably buy a compact set to play along with!

Also, a small bug I’ve noticed, when you play a Drum song in Campaign that has “Errors Allowed”, it sometimes reappears when you try to play the song in Free Play afterwards.

All in all, I’d say if you can afford it, and are like me wanting to learn to play but lack the space for a proper kit, definitely get this game!

I used to be heavily invested in a voxel shooter much like this years ago (on my iPad 2), but eventually I got tired of it with the in-app purchases getting ridiculous. I actually even helped run a fan forum for the game a good few years back.

Reminiscing aside, Pixel Strike 3D is pretty good in most respects. Yes it is a PC port of a mobile game, but overall the game controls pretty well. The in-app purchases aren't as invasive, and are purely for cosmetic purposes this time around (and even if you don't like that, you can make your own skin by paying a small fee using the in-game currency instead).

Gunplay is where things get interesting. There are some perks and even weapon attachments that are still buggy apparently (heaven knows why), but all of that aside, most of the guns handle very nicely. Being that it is a mobile game originally, yes snipers tend to be the "meta" of the game, but I myself have found some other weapons that are highly effective regardless.

Overall, I'm already max level (I would prestige, but apparently that's also pretty buggy from what I hear from my friends who introduced me to it), but I still enjoy the game regardless. And I haven't even played FPS games all that much in the past aside from Star Wars Battlefront 2004!

Could you get CS:GO instead? Yes. However, I like it for how lightweight the game is in terms of filesize. I was almost going to download CS:GO, until I got hit with the 25GB filesize! This game on the other hand is barely 1GB (2 at most), and still has a lot of great game modes and fun to be had.

So, do I recommend it? Well, if you want a discount CS:GO that while not as refined, is good on the filesize (and arguably, more kid-oriented for those folks out there), I'd recommend it. It's lots of fun when you start getting into it (even if the snipers may seem to dominate at first). Do some Team Deathmatch first before you decide to rage quit after 3 rounds of Free For All. :)

(Also, forgot to add, there is a bit of "de-sync" with the server response times, so don't be alarmed if you suddenly get taken out behind cover, or get taken down by the guy you were about to backstab with a knife.)

As a fellow person who also added this to my Steam wishlist several years back (when it was considered a Star Wars Battlefront title), I can say it's definitely changed a lot.

Galaxy in Turmoil, which is developed by a bunch of volunteer devs, unlike most other dev studios, has had a very rocky and difficult road in the past few years trying to become what it has (and I suspect the road won't be much easier in the coming future either). The game was originally slated to be a F2P Star Wars title, until Disney got involved and shut them down (because EA's Battlefront was on the horizon at the time).

However, I am proud of the guys at Frontwire for sticking to it, and aiming to create a F2P shooter that mimics the style and gameplay of one of the best sci-fi shooters ever, SWBF2 from 2005. Although the game is very much a conceptual demo at the moment (with sound issues and a perhaps poor choice for a single multiplayer map at the moment, among other issues people have mentioned), there's definitely promise in this game. Despite the very dark and hard-to-see layout of the map and character designs (due to the dark atmosphere of the map), the game's feel is highly reminiscent of the SWBF2 of old. If you look past the issues the games has right now, I do feel that with some more features/maps and issues fixed, the game could definitely be a quite fun and near-spiritual successor to SWBF2 Classic in some ways.

My only other issue is the lacking explanation for the lore of the game. I don't doubt there's been lots of lore developed for the game, but the game itself isn't doing a great job showing it. Might be more worthwhile to actually add some section in the game to explain the factions and why some of them are at war with each other (there are brief little lore texts in the loading screens, but kind of needs more than that).

Overall, if you're expecting a fully polished FREE] game from Early Access, keep looking. But, if you're looking for a game that ever-so-slightly recaptures that gameplay from SWBF2 Classic, this isn't that far off. The guys at Frontwire have a long road ahead of them, but I think this game has potential for sure!

So, do I recommend? If you want to support the guys and provide feedback, I'd say give it a try at least. If you want more features/less issues and such, might be wise to wait a bit before giving it a go.

I may have not logged an entire amount into this game just yet (being first day of release and all of that), but having played 45 mins of it thus far has definitely helped me form an early impression of this game.

First off, the core gameplay is all there relatively. The arcade physics, Virtua Racing-inspired graphics, and overall appearance of UI and such definitely give it a solid retro arcade racer vibe. The racing is the perfect level of arcadey IMO, however, can't say I'm a huge fan of off-track areas/barriers completely eliminating my speed the moment I make contact with them. The AI alone make it pretty brutal in the higher difficulties, so have that going against a player for some may be a welcome challenge, others not so much. An option to toggle penalties would be a good recommendation here.

Gameplay aside, the game is lacking in some areas, such as a way to configure controls in settings. I don't know of many people who use "X" and "B" to change gears personally on a controller, but personally I'd love to change that up. Of the more finer details, I was quite surprised by a total lack of a "Quit" option in the main menu even, forcing me to Alt+F4 the game to close out of it. Might've been an oversight, but even so.

As for other suggestions, the idea of multiplayer outside of competing on the leaderboard would be a great idea (perhaps even a way to create a friends-specific leaderboard would even be a nice touch).

Overall, for a first impressions release, the game is pretty good. I'd definitely recommend if you want the retro-arcade racing feel straight up, however, if you'd like more creature comforts/usability features to complement the experience, might be better to hold off for now until some updates get rolling. That said, $14.49 CAD isn't a bad price either for a release price of a game.

(NOTE: I'll likely edit this review later as I log more hours/more updates and features are added to the game.)

My 1.8 hour tally for this game may make my review seem a tad pre-mature, however I will review it regardless. Granted of course, my laptop doesn't do too hot with Unreal Engine-made games, so naturally, my gameplay experience was horrendous compared to what the average PC gamer could experience on their twice-as-powerful rig. I also was unwilling to try multiplayer, also due to the fact I suffered horrible framerates of 3-8FPS in singleplayer, and fared around 10-12FPS in the tutorial, alongside some rather glitchy sound issues in regards to the AI speaking.

Angels Fall First, where do I start? Well, it is definitely what it says it is, a combined-arms, sci-fi wargame. It goes full scale with combat, perhaps the most in-depth I've seen with a combat game. You literally can do just about anything in this game. From being a commanding player, ordering your troops to attack/defend objectives on a ground/space battle, to being a footsoldier in the force, either apart of a dropship for boarding an enemy battleship, or a squad on the ground to hold a position. AFF literally provides players full freedom over how they play the game. You can even modify loadouts for just about anything from the gun you're holding, to what armaments go on your ground vehicle or ship. You can even personalize the UI with colors, among other things. The maps also look beautifully detailed, and the gameplay seems fairly solid, even in singleplayer.

Of course, due to lack of playing multiplayer, I have no idea how the community of the game is, but basing it off previous reviews before me, I am to assume it has a rather small playerbase, with some latency issues in space battles.

To wrap the review in a nutshell of course, it's what Star Wars Battlefront III could have been. It's what the new Battlefront should be. This game drives home the class-based gameplay that made Star Wars Battlefronts I and II live for so long, even beyond the noted GameSpy shutdown of 2012 (seriously, those games are still alive guys). I hope to see this game become great like that someday (and I hope to have a better computer to actually play it on as well). It has so much potential to become something big. But of course, the game is in Early Access. It doesn't quite have all the quirks worked out of the system, and still needs to be smoothed out around the edges before it can truly become something great.

Overall, do I recommend this game? Well, if you grew up loving the class-based gameplay of Star Wars Battlefront, or like the gameplay of PlanetSide 2, I would recommend this. Plus, the game will only rise in price the more polished it gets. For me, this is one of those games where I'll buy it to play it later on (mostly due to my hardware). However, I do support the developers, and so I would say if you have the hardware for it, play it.

Well, this is probably the most tumultuous time to write a review for this game, given it's recent uproar over the microtransactions. Nonetheless, perhaps this review might be a diamond in the rough of the thousands of negative reviews the game is suddenly receiveing in outcry to the recent occurrence.

Allow me to break it down to the beef of the matter. Payday 2 is a heavily co-op/multiplayer-based heisting game, where you break into warehouses, rob banks, and jewelry stores, all for the payout. The key however is to do all of it together (granted you can definitely solo heists as well, however you may want to try that once you've established yourself a little with the gameplay mechanics). With the payout you get, depending on how you completed the mission (i.e., whole crew was alive, no civilians killed, what difficulty, etc.), you can use it to buy/upgrade your weapons, and buy/customize your masks. However, you only get a 20% cut of what you made off the "contract" as each job is called. The other 80% goes to your "Offshore Account", which you use to buy more contracts, and/or level up for infamy (think prestige levels of Call of Duty).

Thankfully however, (with the power of DLC as well), there are many contracts to choose from, and some reward a higher payout for actual spending money than others. You can even select which difficulty you want to have for your contracts, from a normal mode to understand the basic gameplay mechanics, to a fully-intense Death Wish difficulty, only recommended if you have some high-power gear to go with. Do note though that some missions must be completed in stealth, meaning you can't be detected by a security guard or a camera, otherwise the whole mission gets tanked. Other missions can alternatively only be done "loud", guns blazing and all. Some missions can actually be completed both ways (however sometimes the stealth option can be easier/harder than the loud option, depending on the contract).

The multiplayer community as a whole however is perhaps not the most cheerful nor pleasant, at times anyways. There have been multiple posts stating how certain players were kicked from contracts due to their choice of weapons, their infamy rank/lack thereof, and more recently, for having weapon skins (part of the whole microtransaction fiasco that's been happening). In regards to playing it with friends/tight groups however, the gameplay is very fun. It can have its nail-biting moments, such as when one of your friends is trying to sneak past a security camera, and you happen to see a blue question mark where they are. Or even times when you are taking on a Bulldozer (one of the most heavily armored enemies in-game), head on with poor weaponry and armor, only to be downed in seconds, hoping one of your teammates will help you up in time.

All in all, the game is going through a fairly major crisis with microtransactions right now however, so do be weary if you are wanting to join public missions, as some of the community might get offense on ya. However, despite the conflict, the gameplay is solid, holds a pretty steady replayability value, and can be loads of fun and sometimes barrels of laughs with friends. I would recommend this game for sure, however I would advise going with the free play week to see how you like it before you decide to support the developers. Might even want to hold off on buying until the ordeal is mildly resolved as well. But aside from that I would recommend getting the game (and the DLC as well :)).

Ahhh, TrackMania United, the perfect arcade-based racing game.

I really don't know where to start this. Off the bat, TM: United is an arcade racing game, where you build tracks, perform loop-de-loops, crazy stunts, jumps, and tricks. This game houses several environments to race in (with Stadium being the most popular), and different cars for each environment (some cars may have better handling than overs, however most often the cars are tuned to the environment's racing style). The game's racing action is fairly solid, so handling and steering shouldn't be an issue (except on Coast, if you aren't familiar with rally racing).

The track editor is also very intensive and detailed (if you click the Advanced editor anyway). The track pieces pretty much go together like lego bricks, so the only way you can mess up a track is if you happen to forget a track piece to add in, or perhaps overshoot/undershoot your car's speed for jumps or sideways tracks. Believe me though, if you spend enough time in that editor, you can pretty well make some very challenging maps.

In addition to making your own maps, you can even set times on them. You can race your own creations, and try to set the best time, so other people can try to beat your time on your track. You can also choose to share your maps either via TMX (a website that specializes in maps for all the TrackMania titles), or via a Manialink (an in-game, hub store where users can upload their creations and buy them with in-game currency called credits (you cannot buy credits by the way, you earn them through logging in daily or by winning bets on the servers).

The other thing about TrackMania is that there is a paint option, so you can pain your cars very extravagantly and make them unique. Optionally, there's also user-made skins on TrackMania Carpark and on several Manialinks you can download. So if you feel like that old Stadium car is looking boring, you can download a BMW Z4 or a Mario Kart, or even one of the vehicles from F-Zero and race that instead.

Finally, the community of the game. I will admit off hand, I have logged a good lot of time into this game (was even playing its freeware version TrackMania Nations before I bought United), and in that time, it's tough to find good people there. To sum it up, you might not be that happy if you are a North American player, since the North American community (which is VERY small), tends to rank up on the global leaderboards in the top 10,000-100,000 range. While this may seem intimidating, there's also the EU community (which is VERY large), which can be ranked anywhere from the top 100,000-12 million range. Due to the wider range in the EU community, you might have better odds at placing in events on the EU servers over the North American ones (since the NA servers are few and far inbetween). On the upside though, your car doesn't crash into other players, so the only way you'll end up crashing is by human error.

However, if you don't quite want to roll with the multiplayer crowd, there is still the singleplayer, time trial maps you can play to earn medals (which do boost your ranking to some degree). Some of them can get very hard to beat, but it's still a good challenge if you feel like doing those sorts of games.

All in all, the game can be praised for it's creative prowess in regards to track building and racing, as well as the graphics too (which are still incredibly good despite the game's age). The multiplayer community might leave you wanting to have competition that isn't so incredibly skilled so you can have a chance to place, but the content that the community still pushes out is still impressive nonetheless, and still keeps me coming back for more.

To summarize, I recommend this game if you are the type that likes a good arcade racer with solid controls, and the ability to create maps.

Being a somewhat newcomer to the Garry's Mod scene, you can pretty well call my review "premature" if you compare to the players who've reviewed this after spending thousands of hours on this game. However, perhaps a fresh perspective is sometimes needed for a game of old.

Anyways, Garry's Mod, where do I start? Well, it's a physics sandbox for starters, meaning you can pretty much build stuff, make a rocket bathtub, etc. The tools the game has are quite fun to use. From posing ragdolls, creating whatever your heart desires, to strapping on thrusters to a slab of stone with a driver seat, you are pretty much only limited to make whatever with your imagination.

Now, the Mod part makes more sense when you get into the Workshop for this game. Loads of community-made content, literally terrabytes of this stuff. Pretty much anything from Bugatti cars, to awesome weapons of insane destructive power, to maps that recreate awesome vehicles and scenes, like a fully functional Star Destroyer from Star Wars. I heard people mention there's mountains of FNAF content in the dupes section and whatnot, though I personally haven't seen it really (then again, I myself rarely look for dupes, and prefer to search for specific content). Also, some mods will require textures from other games, or from Workshop-made texture packs. Most common for games though are Half Life 2, and Counter-Strike: Source. There's also a workaround to just install the textures from the games into your GMod, however I've apparently heard this is frowned upon. (Because we all need to buy games we'll never play to enjoy mods on Gmod, or so some of these people have told me.)

Now, to the beef of the matter, the community. I'll admit off-hand I've spent more time playing this with my friends via Hamachi than I have on a public server. Reason being the community of Garry's Mod isn't exactly all that welcoming to newcomers, moreso if you are a mature player who just wants to have a good time with some people (considering the fact mature players are a rarity in this community). If you intend to play this game with some of your friends on Steam (or IRL) via a Hamachi server (or a private dedicated one, whichever works), I would definitely recommend this. Prop Hunt with friends can be a barrel of laughs) If you are more the type to browse public servers and hope to find some friends, you just might regret getting this game if you intend to seek good multiplayer fun over a fun singleplayer.

All in all, Garry's Mod alone is a good game. It's pretty good if you just want to venture and try out the mods in single player (or build something of your own design). The community-made content expands on a daily basis, so there's always new stuff to download and try out. The missing textures and the fact you may need a game or two to actually enjoy some of the content is a downside, but as said, there is a workaround for it (just google it and you'll find it). The multiplayer community of Gmod won't be as cheery and helpful as others would be lead to believe based off the content, however it's still barrels of laughter to just play with your friends via Hamachi or a private server.

To conclude, I would recommend this game if you intend to play it with friends, or just want to have a good sandbox game in your library to fool around with from time to time.

Lots of fun in this game.

To sum it up, it's as if I got my love for airships from Guns of Icarus Online, merged with the creative powers of Minecraft. The game is insanely open-world (lots of systems depending on the server), and there's always something to do. From taking your starter ship and building it up to a massive warship, to fighting off against the Magmasite Queen, you'll be hard-pressed to find yourself bored of this game.

The freedom you have in this game is only limited to your imagination for the most part (and what resources you have on hand). The only downside you'll see from this game is the lack of server availabilty (last I checked there's only 3 community servers, and rarely a private server or two hanging around), the small playerbase (which is unfortunate), and the maximum limit of your shipbuilding. Sky Nations lets you build your ships in a 32x32x32 space, which, while it is still plentiful to have (and believe me, I built a ship 32 blocks long), you might find yourself still shorthanded if you like to build big ships (like replicas of the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer). Of course though, the latter is my own opinion, based off the near 85 hours I put into this game.

If you want to build ships or structures of your own design, build up an HQ for your clan (or "Nation" as they are called), or have a hearty crew to fly around with, firing off your arsenal of cannons and turrets either at players or a massive beast, this is definitely the game for you.

Personal Note: I bought this game out of my love for two seperate games, being combined into one. Odds are if you love Guns of Icarus Online, or Minecraft, you would love having this game in your Steam library. The community is so very friendly, while small, still friendly. The developer himself even hops on the servers occasionally to check out other people's creations and play alongside other players. I played this game with some friends before, and we had a blast flying ships, building our own ships, and even fighting off a Magmasite Queen in one of them. If you want to see this game with a bigger playerbase, buy the game and be apart of it for starters. The servers are fairly decent if you are worried of lagging much, and you can pretty well customize how you look, what you're flying, and how your Nation's capital looks. I fully recommend this game if you want to fly your own personalized airship, and explore the open-world of flying mountains, islands, glaciers, and other lands with ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered.

Very fun game!

For being an MMORPG with 11 classes (and more coming), this is surprisingly good. All the classes are very well-balanced, and the gameplay is very clean and simplified. Although the wait times are a pain in the behind (pending on when you get on), it's a very good MMORPG, coming from someone who's only tried to play MMOs in the past. Although I can see how some people say beyond Level 10 is a bit of a grind, it's still got some good gameplay, and a very well kept Wiki as well.

Of course, I've only logged 5 hours in (and I'd say maybe 4 of those hours was gameplay), so my ambitions for the game may seem a tad premature. Though since I'm already a Level 7 Gunslinger, I feel it's still got some good gameplay to it. My only minor complaint alongside the wait times is that most of the cosmetic stuff is with premium currency, however I'm just glad you don't have to pay to advance (even though I am planning on buying the Power Pack at some point).

Long story short, I recommend this as a fun, easy-to-get-into MMO, and many first-timers (sort of like myself) to the MMO field will probably enjoy this game. If you have lots of patience, the wait times probably won't get to you as badly and you might find it worth the wait. Otherwise, I'd recommend giving it a few weeks maybe (considering it was released 4 days ago on Steam, though I've heard the Alpha's been out longer), at least until they can sort out the wait times so they aren't so incredibly long (since many believe that the devs need to get more powerful servers to handle the loads).