Recent reviews by grimfalcon

EDIT: Welp, last patch this March completely screwed the stability of this game. My groups played this game 3 nights a week since nearly launch and since this last patch, we can't reliably get 3 of us on the same ship with out 1-2 of us being automatically kicked back to their ship.

Horrible QA, non-existent and it's finally forcing us to stop playing despite what seems like complete radio silence from Arrowhead on this issue.

Arrowhead makes it hard to make a review as each major patch it's a giant leap forward or back.

Currently, it's been a giant jump forward where the game is fun again. Keep it up Arrowhead

One of the singular best games I've ever owned and played in my near 25 years of PC gaming. I was there when BG1 and BG2 came out and I played both co-op in college. I can say without any hesitation that BG3 is the superior Baldur's Gate both in scope and execution. It carries on those great games in such a respectful and innovative way, not bending to nostalgia but instead forging it's own banner in the history of one of PC Gamings greatest RPG franchises.

I love this game, I think about this game all the time, I've played this with 3 of my best friends from college and it's like being that kid again the first month BG1 came out. Larian deserves all the praise it's received and it's absolutely ruined me for every other game going forward.

Zero micro-transactions, zero Day 1 DLC, zero DLC, no money shop, every cancer that's riddled PC gaming the last 2 decades removed completely and instead, an insanely amazing game that's been the best value I've ever spent since the golden days of PC gaming. 250+ hours for one purchase and likely 500 hours more to go.

I wish this was how every game was and I will follow Larian to whatever their next project is without hesitation. Divinity Sin 2 was an amazing game, this is even better and the next I imagine will be the same.

Buy this if you don't have it. Buy this if you love RPGs or if you don't know if you love RPGs. Buy it if you've never played BG1, BG2 or any bioware game of old. It's that good, it'll get you hooked.

A very tight and straightforward update to the Star Wars space sim genre. It does what it sets out to do very well. Customization, unlocks, pvp, coop vs ai, flight model and combat all feel very well done and well thought out.

The only gripes are the lack of private matches as it feels like that is missing from the core game and was overlooked and is the only thing that makes the game feel incomplete and lacking value. With no plans to release additional content (according to their Twitter), I worry the game itself will be a flash in the pan in popularity and matches will become harder to match into far more quickly than it should. I hope they follow the Rocket League design direction and really dive into the Competitive side, giving people a way to practice (Private Matches), invest in the possible eSports fun of this game as it has a lot of potential there and release new maps/modes/cosmetics over its life span. I would 100% pay for an expansion pack to this game.

This game is great but my biggest worry is it won't last long if they don't invest in it. A good deal for $40 and well worth it though.

Very solid tactical FPS game with a still active community. Newest update adds some fun gameplay. Refreshing to have a tactical shooter that's not obsessed with Battle Royale. Co-op is a lot of fun and Competitive/VS is incredibly tense and strategic. Classes unlock after 20 ranks of online play but weapons are all based on server setting and resources making each fight more reliant on skill without any of the "unlock the best weapon" mechanics that have become the rage in online FPS.

Great, solid game.

Great game if you enjoy both hosting your own servers with friends or joining in the mayhem with strangers online. More and more rare to see PC games that allow you to host, mod and LAN all the while having a great game at its core. Fully recommend to anyone looking for a fun time.

I was apprehensive about buying NMS given the way it was received at launch but had bought the game anyway near launch as the vision sounded fun. I played it for a bit (less than an hour) back then, didn't hate it but didn't love it and when it didn't really stick, I stored it away in my Steam Library and moved onto other things.

After this update and the promise of multiplayer, I was quick to reinstall and give it a try and I've been playing it non-stop in my limited free time since (2.5 hours or so which isn't a lot). However, compared to the early days, the game in it's new mode has grabbed my attention and imagination and for someone like me who traditionally passes on games like Minecraft, the Forest, and other survival/craft/building sandboxes, the game has captured my imagination.

For all the bad press Hello Games may have received and possibly earned early on, the game is unrecognizable with this update and is a great deal of fun.

Hoping to spend hours in it with my pals and make some fun memories in the meantime.

Others have said much on this game so I'll focus my review on the item that keeps me most disappointed in this game, a game I backed on Kickstarter.

Lack of Modern Group Play

The tl:dr here is that it's much too hard to fly together as a group and it's hard to do because a vocal minority of players wants this game to be singleplayer.

Here's why:

• Distance vs differing play times: The game is massive. As any group of gaming friends know, there will be those of you that have more time and those with less. If you're looking to get on once a week with your pals but 2 of them play more, distance starts becoming your greatest enemy. The reason is that there's no way to quickly gather together. If you leave a ship in a port and fly another ship elsewhere, you can't jump back to it. There's no home, no base of operations. You are where your ship is. Now, that's very realistic until you realize your weekly game night is being spent either flying to the same place or asking people to get on a night beforehand and fly to the same place. All doable and fine but after a while, it becomes laborious. Multi-crew solves some of this as you can jump to your friends ship but that doesn't solve the larger issue which is, the game isn't designed with multiplayer in mind.
  
• Wing Features: Flying in a wing is great. The radio-filtered in-game chat is fun. But it's clunky. Like, beta-level clunky. Invites don't always work. Linked jumps to hyperspace are finicky and flying together is frustrating. Simple features you'd expect like group waypoints, exit/entry paths, shared missions and party commands are missing or razor-thin in their implementation. Expect to spend lots of time trying to communicate to your team where to meet you or why you suddenly can't find the Wake they left behind.
  
• Wing Size This game made it's wing size for consoles sadly. Have more than 3 friends? It's a pain. It's doable, as many expeditions have shown but it requires an investment in workarounds. "Squadrons" have been a request by many since Beta but there is a rabid, if not fundementalist level group of vocal ED players that feel it's immersion breaking to even allow 4 players to wing. With how razor-thin the game's content is, the lack of ability to provide basic tools that older games like Jumpgate and EVE provide to foster community-based content is frustrating. My midsize gaming group (20+) was excited for this "MMO" as described but playing together was a chore and soon (as it is now) no one logs in anymore as it's not worth the annoyance.

That said, there's some hope on the horizon with new updates promising carriers, squads and the like. But I am pessimistic at best.

The game is gorgeous and has a wonderful flight model. Combat is fun and the universe is massive (but lifeless and a Xerox copy of a handful of sectors after your first few hours).

My hope is they invest in emergent gameplay and fun as the content/story is thin but fun the first time you see a Thargoid. This game has the opportunity to allow the community to carry it into a long life but only if they invest in multiplayer tools to foster that.

Here's hoping!

ARK: DLC Evolved.

Typically during an Early Access/Beta/Alpha, adding new content is an expected part of them developing the game toward a full release.

However, ARK:Survival Evolved has InnoVented a new way to approach Early Access. Charge customers for Early Access and then, when you realize that they want you to actually finish the game, charge customers again for any new content you develop and claim it's Early Access DLC BUT combine it with a P2Win advantage so that customers not wishing to pay this have a negative game experience until such time they are pressured to do so.

This allows you, the developer, to have all of the lack of responsibility in terms of polish Early Access brings with along with the DLC revenue 99.999% of the industry only asks for once their game is in a full release candidate.

Was duped by early Developer videos promising some huge FPS paradigm shift. Ended up being the boondoggle you see before you. Small and random updates now and then but overall, a dying game that will never see an escape from Early Access.

Avoid at all costs.

Remarkably fast turnaround, development-wise, for a Kickstarter game that's moved from prototype to playable Alpha in only a few short months.

While there's bugs, which should be expected, the overall game is fun, competitive and a good bit of modernized nostalgia for anyone that enjoyed the previous Descent titles.

As with any Early Access game, there are hits/misses with patches. Due to that, some reviewers seem to think this game was promised as retail when in fact, it's a work in progress, Early Access game in its truest form.

Those with experience playing Early Access games will understand the bumps each patch provides (which are many and frequent) and hopefully find the underyling game heavily entertaining and fun.

Looking forward to full release.