Recent reviews by Rix Raw

They did it! They made a GOOD, new Jagged Alliance game! This one really holds up and made me feel the same way I felt back when I first played Jagged Alliance 2. As a long fan of the series, from Jagged Alliance 1 through Deadly Games to Jagged Alliance 2, I can confidently vouch for this one. I know the "anti-political correctness" crowd was desperate to find/make up something to be offended by, but if you're a fan of this series, you're probably too old for that whiny nonsense so just enjoy the ride!

I remember the amount of hype surrounding this game when I first learned about it, I guess about a decade if not more ago. A weird, cool idea in a setting that - at the time anyway - was unusual. Sir, You Are Being Hunted can get genuinely scary at times and the atmosphere generated by the music, the visuals and the in-game sounds can feel weighty. Unfortunately there is not much else going for it. The game is mechanically shallow, you loot food items and gear to either kill or distract the robots hunting you while you proceed to collect a set number of items from 5 different islands.
Even the story and the unfortunate looking intro presentation make it feel like SYABH was created in a rush for a game jam. The game surprisingly has functional multiplayer, but I can't see myself recommending anyone to get it to try it with me.
Sir, You Are oozing with unrealized potential and could do with a remake, but instead a remaster was planned to release in 2022, which didn't happen.
I will say that the whole game is very much of its time with the poorly thought out overall concept, the trademark indie look of the mid 2010s and an unexpected Professor Elemental rap during the end credits.
Beating the game left me feeling a bit of emptiness and sadness. A mixture of nostalgia for those days and also mourning the unrealized potential of this weird, indie survival title.

Fast cars, danger, fire and knives!
No, wait, it's:
Danger. Darkness. Dwarves.
That's the one.

Procedurally-generated areas that somehow don't get boring or look overly samey. Tons of updates, a really dedicated developer. This is a good one to pick up, even with their new spin-off game on the horizon.

SEASON 3 UPDATE:
One of the main issues, cheating has been improved upon somewhat: fewer cheaters, but it is very clear that the systems in place -both preventative and reactive- seem to fall short. It doesn't help that the developers do not share statistics about (caught) cheaters. At the same time a toxic and aggressively anti-intellectual community covers their eyes and ears while opening their mouths to both defend cheating/pretend there is none, as well as to wet the developer's boots with their saliva.

Season 3 also introduced performance issues, crashes and failures to launch.

At this point, I can no longer be hopeful about this game's future and thus I can't recommend it.


The technically battle royal predecessor of The Cycle: Frontier known simply as The Cycle brought a lot of original ideas to the table, spicing up the gameplay, making it stand out among the countless other entries in the genre. Most of these did not make it into the Escape from Tarkov inspired follow-up. It could be argued that the varied gameplay would not have worked with the extraction shooter genre, but their absence is felt.

Variety is definitely one of the weaker points of TC:F. Missions and jobs (as quests/tasks are referred to in the game) tend to be very repetitive, often only the items and locations involved changing, while objectives remain the same. Even a single stash quest feels like too many, but the game just keeps throwing them at you.

The gear system is poorly thought out and results in balance issues. In Escape from Tarkov a skilled and knowledgeable player CAN possibly overcome any player versus player encounter, even if they are outgeared and outnumbered. Aiming for unarmored body parts, using shrubbery to your advantage or slithering away from bulky opponents to name only a few tactics one can successfully employ. In The Cycle: Frontier however, skill alone will not save you from an enemy rocking gear that is several tiers above yours. There is no drawback to high armor and no weak points to take advantage of. A fight against a player with better gear is not so much yours to win, but theirs to lose.

The game's economy feels weightless with no flea market/auction house forcing you to farm for everything specifically, instead of making money and utilizing your resources in trade.

Cheaters have also been a major issue -as you would expect with a free game-, but as of now, no working preventative measures are in place. You'll occasionally get lost gear back as cheater compensation (note that only gear, not any loot you lost), but sometimes reporting the most obvious cheaters won't get you even that. Trusted lobbies will be introduced with Season 3 which might solve this issue for those with trusted Steam accounts. Those who got an account to play this specific free game or free games in general will still possibly be playing in cheater dominated player pools.

Visually this game is really pleasing - except for the character designs. As you would expect with modern games, everyone is the same height and same body type, but even beyond that the characters are not very pleasing to look at. For those with very little to no understanding of how a video game can be balanced, aimboxes might be an explanation for the former, but certainly not the latter.

Wonky sound design often gets in the way of hearing the movement of other players precisely and in time - although I definitely feel an improvement in this area as of late. The soundtrack is really great, especially the music that plays in faction offices.

With some aspects of the game reworked, such as quest design and gear balance, the cheating issue resolved and maybe some character body variety introduced, TC:F could definitely be a contender in a genre that does not seem to be very well understood by those who seek to make games in it.

A more active take on Vampire Survivors inspired games with very satisfying gameplay and somewhat more exciting and interesting upgrades than most titles in the genre.

Try the demo, 10 Minutes Till Dawn!

A cool, goofy and fun "immersive sim" and listen, I'm only writing this for the steam achievement thing. I definitely have a lot to say about this game, but it's so hard to find the time and the right state of mind to put dem thar thoughts into words.
It's a really good game, get it! <3

Fresh Start update: The game's early quests have been revamped with voice acting that is mostly functional this time around and is on par with the writing in terms of quality - which is to say, it feels straight out of a Sunday afternoon cartoon. Very bad stuff.
A lot of the bugs that plagued the game at launch are still present and of course the big, conceptual issues have not been remedied either.
Hilariously, the Twitch integration is also still not functional, which is really in line with the recent developments with both New World and Twitch.
I have given this game way more time than it deserves and I'd still just rather have my money back, but I spent more than 2 hours in those early queues so that immediately went out the window. Extremely consumer friendly refund policy there, Steam!


A troubled launch for a game full of issues, some of which are already remedied and some that will surely be, still leaving a couple that were made at the drawing board and will most likely remain unaddressed.

New World launched almost a month ago at the time of writing this review and we only just recently got the option to transfer servers. Why is this important? The problematic first days of the MMORPG had a lot of players spend hours, in some cases dozens of hours in queue, forfeiting our chances at refunding the game - which once again highlights how viciously anti-consumer Steam's barely better-than-nothing refund policy is.
The attempted fix for the ridiculously lengthy queues was the introduction of new servers and the increase of player capacity on existing ones. Players were encouraged to create characters on the new servers with the promise of a free world (server) transfer being introduced shortly afterwards so they could join their friends on the then hopefully queue-free servers and play together. Except the server transfer option took nearly a whole month to fully implement, leaving players to progress alone and at different paces from their friends.

Other than the horrid launch, the game is riddled with weird bugs and design decisions. Floating, unreachable nodes, quests requiring you to kill specific enemies in specific zones where merely stepping out of the zone hinders your progress while in other cases your targets simply do not spawn in (or even near) the zone where you're supposed to kill them, making the quests impossible to complete.
Even when the quests actually work, they are extremely dull, you either open chests looking for specific items or kill enemies, either to get a set number of kills or to get loot drops for them, maybe skin them for a special item. Sometimes you also get quests that require you to interact with highlighted areas/objects on the ground. To get to these quests, you spend a really long time running. Fast travel points are few and far between, their use consumes a special currency which has a very low cap.

PvP is often messy, wars consist of a huge number of players in a small area, forming blobs of violence which is an extremely uninteresting way to do combat even in games where you have a wide variety of skills to unload on your enemies. The deliberate, slow paced combat of New World absolutely does not work in this style of player versus player gameplay.
Despite the crowded feel of wars, a lot of players are left on the sidelines, since 50 versus 50, while definitely too much for the arenas in which the fights take place, is a very low number considering the amount of players on each server.

It is very clear that the problems of the game were made on a management level and it would have benefited from spending significantly more time in development (and in planning).

New World does look gorgeous and you can have good experiences in it. Elite areas and dungeons are fun and open world PvP can lead to some exciting encounters. Nevertheless, I would refund the game in a heartbeat if I had the option to do so.

A fast paced free to play battle royale first person shooter in which you play as one of a growing roster of characters (legends) that come with their own unique look, kit and playstyle. Unfortunately the game is dragged down by sheer incompetence when it comes to balance with one baffling update after another, leaving viciously overpowered legends to dominate unbothered while nerfing kits that can only amount to little less than a minor annoyance. Numerous patches and 8 seasons in, it seems naive to expect any form of competence on this front.

I personally stuck around with the game for a long time despite everything and have only witnessed the balance get consistently worse with each update. I can’t in good conscience recommend this game in its current state and shudder to think about what depths it’ll be pushed to by the amateur balancing.

Disclaimer: I attempted to pay for this product.

Can't invert mouse, please arrest the devs.

Hellpoint: The Thespian Feast does not try to hide its inspiration: this is sci-fi Dark Souls. You have your familiar fog gates, bonfires, the game's stand in for souls, but also certain tweaks, such as its own Estus flask alternate that regenerates charges when you land attacks on objects or enemies. The dynamic movement and unique visual design is a breath of fresh air.
The game feels like it has had a lot of work put into it (assuming no store bought assets were used, but I wouldn't recognize them if there were) but it does seem like it could benefit from some more fine-tuning.
Sounds that are too quiet, while other sounds are always present and in the way, janky enemy hitboxes, weird animations, attacks that feel unwieldy and the occasional Dark Souls 1 like camera controls often get in the way. The game also does not do a great job at explaining its mechanics. I genuinely hope the devs have the resources and time to flesh the game out further, because I would definitely like to see more of this.
As of now, this preview as a free pick up I'd say is worth your time if you're hungry for some souls.