Recent reviews by j0lty

To new players who may have only played games like hero shooters, or battle royales, extraction shooters:

I recommend giving TF2 an earnest try! It's a different flavor of shooter with a few game modes, like capture the flag, king of the hill, payload (which is used in Overwatch and Marvel Rivals), and capture points. There's a lot more, but those are the main ones played by the casual community. There's a niche for everyone, even for people who don't have much aiming proficiency.

There's a lot of depth to the game to the point that you may find this game to be the perfect launching point if you want to get good at shooting games in general. And for those who want to get serious, there's a community competitive scene as well who plays mainly 6v6 capture point gamemodes. It's probably easier to get into these leagues than most private leagues for other games, because there are lots of beginners. There are also a lot of easy to access community servers that are great resources for practice, like "MGE" servers, and rocket jump maps which helps make it easy to learn more in-depth mechanics.

The gunplay in this game is unique because every weapon has a bit physics, a bit of push and pull to it. This means that if you get hit by an explosive rather than just having to sit there and take it, you can jump and "surf" the the explosion and strafing in mid air to position yourself better and dodge further damage. It's the same with almost every weapon. This style of gameplay helps to make the game feel fair in almost every interaction with other players, which you may find to be rare in a lot of other games where you just have to accept what's happening. That also means the skill ceiling is insanely high.

The netcoding is also very responsive in this game. You have a degree of player control to use the net settings that most suit your environment, and I find this system makes the game way more responsive than any other shooter out there. This is a game where you can see where the opponent is aiming, and actively dodge their point of aim. That is, unless the ping difference is too high. That said, in other games you may never experience that even at the best case scenario, often being defeated by opponents that never seemed to be looking at you.

This game still has a huge player base and you'll quickly find a casual game every time. Casual is truly casual, you don't have to think about a single thing. The games are 12v12, so there's less of an individual responsibility. Yet if you become quite good at the game, you will find that you can have a huge impact even in a 24 player server.

No one has ever tried to make a copy of TF2, exactly the way that it is, and I think that's a testimony to how well they did it. 👍👍

I'm now about halfway through the game. My impression is that it's just about everything I could want from a sequel. The gameplay is very similar to the originals, with recurring locations from the originals, and it's a technical advancement by being a seamless open world.

There's new and old factions, and the story ties in with the original story well, though I suspect for a lot of people STALKER is more about going around by yourself, shooting and looting.

At launch the game was very unstable, but as of the latest patch and latest drivers I'm encountering crashes rarely now. I was able to have a 4 hour session with no problems. I have encountered a mission that had a bug but I was able to get through it. Just one of those quirks of these big open world games I suppose. I think they'll fix it eventually.

If there would be one thing I'd say annoyed me was the high amount of a certain mutant. In the past, they were rare and a very scary encounter. Now they're actually common, and fighting them starts to feel like a chore rather than a thrill, as you'll often encounter packs of them now. I'm referring to the Bloodsuckers .

I'm already 50 hours in and I feel like I've only explored a fraction of the map, so there's plenty to do for those who love exploring. 👍

I am having fun with the game, but to be honest I cannot recommend it right now in its current state. It seems doing things like visiting the inventory, or changing vocations causes crashes. Many are saying they have low frame rates. Personally I don't mind 30 FPS, but even when I lock the game at 30 FPS the frame rate is jittery. I'm hoping that patches will be released soon, and I'm sure they're coming.

For reference, I am currently using a Ryzen 5700x, GTX 3060ti, and 16GB of memory. The SSD is a Samsung Evo 870 with full performance optimization mode enabled, so I believe the system meets the minimum requirements. I have tried the lowest settings but it doesn't seem to help increase the performance.

Edit: While viewing the resource monitor while playing the game, I noticed the game would usually crash once the RAM was used up. Upon upgrading the RAM to 32gb 3200mhz from 16gb 2600mhz, the game no longer crashes. It seems the actual minimum required RAM at the moment is 32gb.

I believe I've finished all of the main faction quests and a good deal of the smaller quests. I generally would recommend this game to others.

Many reviewers have mentioned that it's broad but lacks depth, but I think the broadness is more important for this game than the depth. This game sets its eyes on the horizon. It has the potential, as many have mentioned, to set the imagination alight.

But this all comes from someone happy to wander, I've played games such as Daggerfall and mod projects like Tamriel Rebuilt, and such games may be vast with not much to "do", but I don't think vastness should be necessarily ignored.

I hope people don't ignore the potential and, feel compelled to add onto it, because that's what I think the game encourages. Not every adventure needs to be a guided tour, some can be an aimless wander as well.

This game will help you to really feel what its like to be a mud covered crappy smelling peasant in 14th century Europe.

You'll get your noggin caved in a few times to begin with, then you'll continue to get your noggin caved in until the end of the game. The combat never gets easier.

The game is very realistic, but at least this game the gets "Most Convenient Horse of 2018" award.

Medieval is up there in the RTS genre. I don't claim to have played many RTS games, but this one plays well for what it is. The campaign is long and replayable. Trying out different factions keeps things interesting. Retrying the same factions can be interesting as well. I suppose the only problem is how vague the diplomacy system seems. If you're trying to be peaceful or clever, things won't always go your way.

The only reason I played this game is because my computer at the time was very old, and I was always looking for stuff on Steam that I could run with no problem. Well, this game holds a special place in my memory. I don't think the story is totally engrossing by any means. It's actually the rare kind of RPG game from that era that I found fun because of it's game mechanics. The magic system is quite cool. To cast a spell, you draw the correct pattern with your mouse. And to me, that adds a bit of skill to the game, where players who can memorize spells and cast them quickly will have an advantage. Highly recommend it to those who have an old computer, and just don't know what to play. Or, someone who is looking for a different experience, and isn't afraid to try older games.

My friend bought this game for me, and it's probably the best game that has ever been gifted to me on Steam. Even with as many hours as I have in the game, I'm still somewhat a scrub at it. There's just so much to learn, so much nuance to this game! One of my favorite things about it is how chess-like a battle with a powerful enemy can be. It definitely rewards careful, methodical playstyles. But there's enough luck factor that even if you don't feel like putting in a ton of thought into every move, you can speed through the dungeons and quests, gathering powerful items and making your character become godlike. Highly recommended game for someone who doesn't mind sinking many hours into a game to really learn it, and appreciate it's nuance.

This is the kind of game where you might wonder "Why in hell's blazes did I like this game so much?". It's not a piece of gaming history, the game engine wasn't groundbreaking, even at the time of release, and the gameplay is kinda... mehh. I guess I liked it because of the main character, and the story. He was a bit goofy in his way of talking, and handling things. And the world that the story takes place in is somewhat interesting. I guess it also helped that it is a game with very low hardware requirements, so I was able to play it easily on my old desktop.

So yeah, despite barely being able to find reasons to recommend this game, I still feel inclined to do so. It's a unique experience, if anything.

Started off not being able to play this game for more than 30 minutes. After years of being told that it's a great game, I kept trying it, and failing to see anything in it. So I finally decided to FORCE myself to play it all the way through, half out of boredom, half out of curiosity. I ended up liking it by the time I finished it. It's one of those stories that can grip you if you get immersed in it enough. So if you're like me, and just can't figure out why it's generally held in high regard, maybe if you force yourself to finish it like I did, your view will change.