Recent reviews by _jerieljan/

This game is a fantastic and unique experience and I want more games like this, thanks to its Pacific Northwest setting, car-centric gameplay and its zone anomalies and dangers. I can go looting and going through the game's zones repeatedly and play for hours and not get tired of it, as long as there's something to improve for either the car or tech or story progression.

That said, the game has its flaws too — UI is pretty, but UX is not intuitive at first. And while accessibility options helps fix some of the quirks, a lot of it needs fixing or rethinking imho, from button-holds where it shouldn't be present (opening storage) to multiple button presses that I feel could be merged ("E" and LMB imho), to lack of clear tells, like when the auto-vac sucks up ingredients and spits the box but no indicators that you have to interact with the actual unit.

That said, this game is still great, and those complaints are minor and can be fixed by later patches and the devs seem to be listening.

A fun ARPG with all the goodness of Falcom's finest. Add in a modern-day setting, a decent port and exciting boss fights (like Ys) and it's just so damn good.

This game.... no. The entire Trails series is something that every RPG fan should play and experience for themselves. For a JRPG that seems to have simple mechanics with fluctuating levels in difficulty and with simple (aged) graphics, the entire series spans across multiple games with an entire well-written rich storyline in a cohesive, consistent game world.

This game is harsh and cruel. However it remains balanced and fun for those who are up to the challenge. On one part of the game, you're managing your adventurers, improving their gear, keeping them stress-free and sane and healthy, while on the other part, you're fighting all sorts of beasts, monsters, and all sorts of horrors. Combat is equally harsh on both sides, and it's up to you to think many steps ahead to finish your enemies swiftly while keeping your party alive.

For Darkest Dungeon, the interesting features are its use of sanity and afflictions / virtues on stress, the party placement and how it affects combat, the daunting, but possible and rewarding progress and its overall visual style.

Despite purchasing this game before the Steam Sale, Darkest Dungeon still feels so much worth it.

This game has a hell of an identity disorder. Sometimes it's soccer with cars. Then it becomes frigging volleyball and racing, then it becomes basketball whatever with cars dunking balls with cool aerials.

And that is freaking awesome. It's just pure fun with cars hitting balls to goals.

The Steam Link is very well made, hardware and software wise. It supports most peripherals you can throw at it, and plays very well with the Steam Controller -- just like you'd expect from a console experience and works right out of the box. After the lengthy, mandatory initial update and turning on your main gaming PC somewhere else in the house, you're ready to jump in on the game with the Steam Link.

The gameplay experience with the Link is very great, provided that you have no bottlenecks caused by the network or your gaming PC. Latency is difficult to notice, and lag spikes and frame rate drops only occur rarely. The quality can sometimes dip depending on the situation presented by the game, but once again that's entirely up to your network or how well your PC can stream your game. (the Link can use wireless, but it's highly recommended to use wired Ethernet cables for both your PC and the Link, along with a capable home router)

As for the negatives, they mostly lie under Valve's Steam streaming experience in general: You can't use the streaming PC for other tasks, games with launchers or display prompts may cause the link to hiccup, and some games can be problematic (i.e., crashes, slower performance) while being streamed over the network.

All in all, the Steam Link is great for a very specific scenario: if you truly want to play games on the big screen and if you cannot afford to bring your laptop or desktop next to it (or if you don't want to spend crazy lengths in cables) and want to play games with your powerful PC.

The controller feels great, works great and is a unique piece of hardware. It feels comfortable to hold and use, the buttons and triggers feel just right and it has these new additions -- a pair of touchpads, grip buttons and a gyroscope. The grip buttons are easy to adjust to and are convenient, but the main addition of the touchpads may need some time for you to learn and adjust to use. The gyro is a rare, if not odd case, but that also takes time to getting used to.

Valve's software support for the Steam Controller is superb, and it grows better every day. It's a plug and play experience to a Steam Link, or any PC that has Steam running in it, and games work on it in ways you can customize. The degree of customization for the controller is very high as it covers what keypresses it should follow, which modes it can perform, and more. It's even more detailed with the touchpads since they emulate either joysticks / analog sticks, a mouse, a touch menu or stylus-like input. You can customize how it performs as you scroll towards the outer ring, the deadzone and when you press it and many others.

With an update, the Steam Controller also provides the benefit of personalizing it to your needs (with a name and beeping tones when you turn it on) and it actually stores your controller layouts to particular games. It's convenient when you're moving across PCs or friends and you want to bring back your controller layout just like at your PC.

I highly recommend the Steam Controller, but only to those who are willing to experiment, to learn and to tweak minute details on how they play their games. This isn't great if you just want to pick up a controller and start playing. It takes getting used to, and it'll feel sluggish and slow at first and may want to go back to KB+mouse or a traditional controller. But once you get over that, you'll be able to make your gaming experience that works comfortably on a couch or off the desk on games where it couldn't on a controller.

(Reviewed after three weeks of use, with the following games: Cities: Skylines, Crypt of the Necrodancer, XCOM: Enemy Within, XCOM 2, The Witcher 2, Trails in the Sky SC, Spelunky, Tales of Zestiria, Civilization V)