Recent reviews by Halekyn Steel

Do you enjoy games with great music, characters, and a well-written story that criticizes modern work and union culture, all while keeping things fun and engaging?

Then do I have the game recommendation for you!

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a unique game in the story-driven genre. With a satisfying mix of Zero-G maneuvering, physics based destruction, and plenty of things to salvage and goals to accomplish, it will keep you occupied for quite some time. I've been playing the game since Early Access, and was so excited to see it develop into the incredible game that it is today. Did you know that there are still secrets hidden in the game that no one has found yet??

Now, for a bit of *actual* review stuff. Story section will be spoiler-free.

The story follows you, a citizen of Earth, as you join the LYNX Corporation as a "Shipbreaker" - a worker tasked with breaking down and salvaging as much usable material from derelict and retired space ships recovered by LYNX, all to pay off a massive debt owed to the Corporation. You meet your supervisor, Weaver, as well as a few other "cutters" who work in your sector. As you play, you'll learn more about LYNX, your friends, Weaver, and the culture and world you find yourself in. Fret not though - the story gives you just enough time to get used to how things work before it kicks off, and the stakes increase with every passing day.

The music is a very pleasing set list of Americana-inspired tracks, and I can't help but find myself thoroughly enjoying the music every time I play. You may enjoy it, you may not, and that's alright! For those who do enjoy it, I see you ;)

The gameplay is easy to learn, but not too terribly difficult to master. It's up to you to find the best way to use your cutting tool, your grapple tool, your tethers, and even your demolition charges to not only break the ship open, but also make things movable in a zero-G environment. And remember: If it's bigger than you, it will HURT if you get hit. Use those physics to your advantage though, and you can find yourself zipping through a ship, hurling components into the furnace, the processor, or even the salvage barge with ease. It's fairly easy to level up things, though you *will* be limited until you reach certain "certification levels." You can even purchase your equipment at higher levels in order to no longer rent-to-own them to LYNX!

Everyday you'll be given a receipt of your previous day, showing you how much you made towards your debt, as well as your rental costs, food costs, and any respawn costs you had (if you didn't choose the permadeath option). Keep track of this wisely, cutter, and use your growing knowledge of ship components and costs to efficiently pay down your debt! Oh, and there's customization too. You earn stickers through gameplay and completing certain objectives, which you can apply to your cutting and grapple tools to make them truly your own.

There's even multiplayer options available, where you can race other cutters to see who can break down a ship the fastest.

Overall, this game gets a solid 9/10 for me. Why is it not 10/10? Well... I want more ships to break! I've broken just about every kind and variation of ship in the game, but I want MORE!

Get this game today, whether it's on sale or not. It is absolutely worth every dollar you spend, and the devs deserve all the praise for their work.

Till next review,

Halekyn Steel, Rank 27 Master Shipbreaker

TL;DR - Game has promise, I wish the developers well on their journey, but it still needs a lot of work overall before it will really be an excellent title.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, allow me to regale you with my first half-hour of Nibiru. Before that, here are my system specs so you have a general idea of graphics capabilities:

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Nvidia GTX 960
16GB DDR4 RAM
500GB SSD
2TB HDD
4TB HDD
1TB NVMe SSD (where the game is installed)
9th Gen i7-9700K 3.6 GHz

Let's begin.

There is no singleplayer option. You -are- connected to the internet, even if you make a private room. This is the first thing I noticed on the main menu. While I appreciate wanting to advertise and even hype up the co-op aspect of the game, I don't feel that -requiring- internet connection is a good way to do it. Sometimes you just want to play singleplayer offline. You can, however, select which of several servers you connect to in order to run your session, which is nice overall. It defaults to the Asia server though, so be sure to set it for your location.

If singleplayer action/adventure a la Subnautica is what you're hunting for, you may want to skip this title.

I started up a room, put a password on so I could explore on my own without getting any griefers or other players in. Making the room was easy enough, as was setting the password. Loading took a bit longer than I expected, even on my NVMe2 drive, which is saying something. The graphics are pretty well made, and my machine can run it at Ultra with no issues until there's a lot of particle effects/artifacts on the screen, and even then the frame stuttering was minor as the effects only lasted a couple seconds.

I was dropped into the world at a cryopod (the global respawn point for if you die). Immediately I'm greeted by the new NPC that was added in a prior update to my purchase. He DOES have voice acting, though you can tell that English is not the voice actor's primary language based on the way they stress some words. The dialogue does match up nearly 100% to the on-screen text though, so if you have trouble understanding you have a nice little reminder. The on-screen text or quest information does NOT disappear until you hit ESC, however. It will stay on screen until such a time as you do this.

The first quest was simple enough: Explore the crash site of my ship to find some supplies. The quest chest was marked with a chevron on the compass, and I was able to navigate with no issues. Controls are standard: WASD for movement, Shift to Sprint, Space to Jump, Left-Click for primary fire, Right-Click for ADS, E to interact with various items, mouse wheel scrolls through equipped weapon slots (of which there are 4, one is dedicated to a melee weapon). Various creatures roamed around, none of which seemed to take much of an interest in me for the time being. Either they aren't hostile, or I wasn't a threat. Based on my experience with a multitude of the various enemies, I lean towards "not hostile."

After finding the chest, the next quest was to locate a rover. I looked for a quest chevron to give me a general idea of where to go, but alas: There was none! I ran around for a few minutes trying to find if there was a rover inside the wreckage, and there was not. Finally I spot one off in the distance and, armed with the dual pistols, meager ammo, and multi-tool (harvesting tool) I received from the quest chest, I set off on foot towards it.

Running is... decent. Not super fast, not super slow, somewhere in the middle. However, the distance to travel for many of the quest objectives is ridiculously large! From the ship wreckage to the rover took me a good minute and a half of near constant sprinting (limited by a stamina bar). More quest dialogues, more pressing E. I obtained an SMG and some ammo, batteries for my suit, oxygen, healing items, and food. Oh, did I not mention that there's a food system? There's a food system. It isn't obscenely difficult to manage as the food drain is pretty meager compared to other survival games like Rust or Subnautica, but it is a minor annoyance at times. Eating will restore health however, so that's a nice feature.

My next quest was to find a station and get more information. Again, no quest chevron. I opened up the world map to find several locations already marked out, and a quest marker was hidden beneath one of them. I started my trek towards it. After several more minutes of running, I finally made it and progressed a little further. I harvested some iron ore along the way.

The next quest marker had me backtracking across all the ground I had just covered and then going FURTHER just to find a radar dish. I cannot overstate this enough: the distances to travel for these quest markers are INSANE on foot. Especially with no quest chevron, and no indicator on the map of which direction your character is facing/travelling in. It's a constant game of "Press M... am I going the right way? It looks like it..." then repeating a minute or so later.

I finally encountered a couple aggressive enemies and took them down easy enough with my SMG. The gunplay is very excellent actually, on par with games like Destiny and Call of Duty for gun handling while ADS. Recoil is manageable without much movement, as is movement. After the enemies expired, they dropped raw meat on the ground as their bodies POPPed out of existence. No "fading away," no cool effect of them disappearing, just... POP. Gone. Raw meat now.

Encountered a few other enemies as well: some floating robot orbs that engage any and all entities on the map, provided they are within range. They are easy to kill and a few well placed shots from a pistol or SMG finish them pretty quickly. They drop metal ingots, but they also deal a decent chunk of damage if you're not ready to fight. They explode in a nice little fireball when they die. That's... about it.

I went ahead and disconnected after realizing that the iron ore I had collected earlier (and subsequently crafted into something else) was needed for another quest I was on. There was no iron ore near my location, and I didn't want to run another 6km back, and 6km back again, just to finish the quest.

Let's review with a quick Pros/Cons list:

PROS
-Beautiful colors
-Excellent graphics
-Decent gunplay
-Crafting is... okay.
-Storage is... okay.
-Collection of resources is... okay.

CONS
-Lack of quest markers
-Map too large for scope of game
-Lack of intelligent enemies
-Lack of resources beyond certain areas
-Voice acting is... passable... but could be much better if native English speakers were allowed to read the script
-NPC companion uses a sword, cannot die, and randomly plays very loud music/dances which can thankfully be muted... but not turned off. He also functions like Dogmeat in Fallout 4 - stands behind you and blocks your path in small buildings.
-Survival systems are... well, they need work.

Overall thoughts: The game shows promise. However, it should not have left Early Access until such a time as it was truly polished and ready to go for release as a full game. The price point is decent (10$), but not really worth it for what you get.

Save your money on this one, folks. Maybe check it out in a year and see if anything has changed... For now though, I'm getting a refund on it.

I'm actually legitimately pissed off.

I've seen several responses from the devs to other players stating, and I quote, "You do NOT have to buy PRO to create your own worlds."

Yet when I log in, I am unable to create a new world without purchasing PRO. I literally just want to make a private world to play on my own, but cannot do so because of the Devs being misleading about their product.

Ever wanted to build your own city? Think you can design street intersections better than those artsy-fartsy "modern designers"?

Try your hand at Cities: Skylines, then. With challenging scenarios to test your mettle, and the ability to create your perfect city exactly how you envision it, this game has something for everyone.

Pros:
- City-building on a massive scale
- Steady progression and rewards
- Easy-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay
- Relaxing gameplay
- Ability to rename EVERYTHING: Streets, businesses, households.
- Vast library of DLC both Dev-made and Player-made
- Very dedicated and helpful community on Steam, Youtube, and even Twitch
- Unlimited options for building allow you to have fun YOUR way: Level the city with meteor strikes, build a mecca of commercialization and industry, or build the ultimate utopia with a massive skyline

Cons:
- Vast library of DLC costs money... sometimes not that good
- Some game features are not available in base game until you get DLC
- Game can become a slog if you're not sure what to do
- Traffic AI is mildly annoying, but easy to manage once learned
- Achievements can be difficult to earn if that's your thing

Overall, Cities: Skylines gets a solid 8/10 for me. After designing several cities (on PC and on Nintendo Switch), this game manages to keep me coming back for more when I need something to relax with.

Do ya like 2D side-scrolling brawlers? How about goofy powers, goofier enemies, and even more goofy main characters? Then Castle Crashers is for you! Featuring both Keyboard and Controller support, there are different ways to play for everyone. Each character has their own unique magic attack, depending on their color (red, blue, green, etc) and there are tons of weapons to collect! Like DLC? Go ahead and get it! You can get the Blacksmith pack to play as the charming Blacksmith, or the Pink Knight pack to play as the only LADY knight! Yeah!

Long story short, go ahead and get this game. You can play with 4 people locally or online! What could be better than chilling with your friends, beating up enemies in insane air combos with hammers, swords, magic, and lots of other things?

This game is awesome, though a little rough around the edges. With some updates, I'm sure this game will shine in its genre!

If you've played the first Portal game, then you already have a leap ahead in skill than most people who pick up Portal 2 for the first time. WIth witty humor, loveable characters (yes, even GLaDos is loveable), and solid gameplay, this game takes the cake, and easily deserves any awards it is given. I highly recommend this to those people who want to challenge their minds and think in Portals!