Recent reviews by rustbucket

Right of the bat, I really like this game; would i recommend it? Well...

On the one hand, it has a solid story, great characters, decent game play, plenty of content, and a pretty good overall atmosphere. I've played fot 100+ hours (At the time I'm writing this review) on PC, and probably close to the same on PS3 years ago. So a like an 80/100 if we're looking at it in a vacuum.

On the other hand, this is one of the most bug ridden games I've played AND it loves to crash. A lot of the fan base will tell you that this can be fixed with mods, this is true. However, you will probably need a decent amount of them; it all really depends on how much patience you have for the game's glitches, and how long you're willing to spend installing mods.. It's a balance really. Also it's not really that intuitive to install mods either, it's not just dropping files into a directory like a lot of other games.

So all that being said, I recommend this game if you have the patience for modding and tinkering.

SimCity 4 is arguably one of, if not the best city builder games out there. It is unmatched in quite a few ways.

In terms of graphics,, it's timeless. i'm amazed how well the visuals have held up over the years. I think the realism mixed with a distinct art-style is what does it. The not quite isometric camera angle and 3D assets go a long way as well.

Game-play and simulation is what really make SimCity 4 stand out though. You're not just zoning a bunch of RCI and watching all the money roll in. You actually have to be careful and manage your funds or else things will go south quickly. Yet at the same time, it's extremely rewarding to see your city succeed.

You're also provided with a plethora of ways to keep track of what's going on in your city. Not only do you have advisors and graphs; but you also can also turn on a bunch of different overlays to look for pollution, traffic, crime, etc. One of my favourite features though is the query tool. With this you can check how and where residents commute on top of other things.

With Residential and Commercial; not only can you choose 3 different density levels, but you can quite easily control the wealth too. There's also 4 different types of industrial (Farms, Dirty, Manufacturing, and High-Tech) with 2 density levels for all except farms.

I could go on and on about how great this SimCity 4 is but there's just so much. That's not to say it doesn't have flaws though. Vanilla traffic path finding is pretty bad, there are some game breaking bugs, and it just does not like modern computers very much. Fortunately most of this can be fixed with a few surprisingly easy to install mods and some launch options.

In the end i'd highly recommend this SimCity 4 to anyone who enjoys city building games.

This is a really good mo; I very much enjoyed it. It introduced some new mechanics and added well written characters. I also felt that the humour was on par with Portal and Portal 2. As for the difficulty, i'd say it was a little bit tougher than Portal 2. I honestly can't really go into anymore detail without spoiling things; and I feel that going in blind is the best way to play it.

The only real issue with the game I had was it crashes quite a bit on Linux whenever any sort of gel is on the screen. Forcing the game to run in Proton did fix the issue though.

I've used Linux on my desktop for a long time; so back when this game came out I couldn't even dream of running it on my computer. This was pre-Proton and running any sort of DirectX game in WINE was a crapshoot. Fast forward to this year, I can play more games than ever on my desktop (Including GTA V). Long gone are the days of spending hours configuring WINE prefixes in hopes of at least getting to the main menu of a game without crashing.

Now imagine my frustration when I find out that Rockstar added Battle Eye anti-cheat and decided not to enable Proton support, locking out anyone who isn't playing the game on Windows from GTA: Online. To top it all off, the only way you can buy this game on Steam, is bundled with a starter pack for GTA: Online.

What a wonderful and unique game. I've done a few play throughs at this point and I've enjoyed every second of it.

The game play may seem pretty basic at first, but trust me it's not. The amount of stuff you can pull of with 3 keys + WASD is amazing. The developers also did a really good job of easing you into it as well; by the time you finish the story, you'll want to go back to the start so you can find all new routes with the skills you've picked up. Plus the game is just super satisfying, it feels great to pull of complex maneuvers. Combat on the other hand, is not great outside of some melee takedowns. It really slows things down. On the bright side you can play most if not all of the game without it.

The overall art-style is absolutely stunning, it really stands out in comparison to other games of the time that were different shades of brown. Even today it still holds up very well.

I think the most overlooked but I'd argue equally important aspect of this game is the sound. I'm not talking about the (rightfully so) almost universally praised soundtrack either. The sound effects in this game are top-notch. From the sound of fingers slipping as you grab a ledge, or the squeak of your shoes as you go around a corner, to the thundering boom when you kick open a door. It's some of the best sound design I've ever heard, truly a work of art.

The story is not great, but not terrible either. It's just pretty basic and way too short. So by extension, the game itself is too short. It took me like 5 -6 hours on my first play through, that was without getting all the collectables though. There are some additional challenges outside the main story mode as well. Realistically you're probably looking at like 13-14 hours of total playtime, plus any replays you may or may not do.

Even with it's downsides, this is probably in my top 10 favourite games of all time. It's just a fun experience.

I really enjoyed this game, It sort of felt like the game went back to it's roots a little bit.

Just like the firs Mass Effect, Andromeda really focuses on exploration. While there are less planets to visit; the size of most of them are drastically bigger and much more detailed. Each one has various side-missions scattered around to keep you busy as well.

The story also feels similar to the first game too. It's very close in (for a lack of better terms) scope and scale. I don't think it's as good but it's still solid. While this might be a bit of a controversial opinion, playing as a brand new character is nice. I'm not saying i don't want Shepard's story to continue (I really, really do.), I just think a spin-off in the Mass Effect universe is a great idea..

Combat and movement in this game is by far the best in the series. Being able to jump beyond just hopping over waist-high cover is so nice. I think the best bit is that silky-smooth cover system. Again similar to the first Mass Effect, it's auto-cover. So you just walk up to a wall, rock, ledge, etc. and you'll just take cover. It's way better implemented in Andromeda too..

Now for the negatives... A decent amount of the side-quest just feel like filler and are pretty boring. Some even have you hop from planet to planet which can take a while. I don't like how ammo types are consumables now either, halfway through I just stopped using them altogether.

There's also a decent amount of bugs. One of them was so bad I had to turn a bunch of lights and and turn down the brightness on my monitor so my eyes would stop hurting. During a pretty long section of one of the story missions, the screen would be flashing large white boxes on my screen really quickly. Even after re-launching the game the glitch was still there.

My biggest complaint though is those doors on Kadara, WHY DO THEY TAKE SO LONG TO OPEN!?!

Overall I'd say this is a great addition to the franchise(?), and I think if people looked passed those now (mostly?) fixed launch bugs and treated it like a spin-off, they'd probably enjoy it.

In all seriousness, yeah I'd recommend this game. I couldn't stop laughing while playing; it's just so goofy. Also there's custom maps which is amazing. I didn't know this game had a mapping community at one point.

A (once?) controversial game amongst RCT fans, but it's my personal favourite in the series.

When it was released it brought a lot to the table. For one it introduced new coaster types some of which only had prototype real-life counterparts. (The Pipeline Coaster for example) Besides the coasters many more things were added: new scenery, more flat rides, fireworks shows, and in the expansions; pools and animal exhibits just to name a few. All of this stuff wasn't just thrown in there either, they did a very good job at making everything fit. They also had some insane attention to detail, especially with the new coasters.

Most of the old bugs seemed to have been fixed over the years, but some still do remain. There are two major issues though. For one the game runs on a single CPU core, so large parks will lag. The second being it's 32-bit; that limits you to 3-4GBs of RAM. that is also bad for large parks.

Overall though, it's a solid game that holds up pretty well and is definitely worth a buy in my opinion.

I've been a fan of the Mass Effect trilogy for 6 or 7 years now; played through it multiple times back on the PS3 and I like it even more on PC.

There are a number of improvements over the original games; all the DLC is included (minus Pinnacle Station, but that wasn't in the PS3 version either), lot's of QoL additions, many bug-fixes,, drastically improved graphics, and the Infiltrator is an actually usable class in the first game now. It's also worth mentioning that it runs extremely well on Linux; I never had any frame drops or stuttering.

There are still flaws of course, It still has a decent amount of bugs, very few graphics options, bloom that seems to be hard-coded in, and some more small things that I can't really be bothered to list. However, the biggest issue is the EA App. In a nutshell it breaks achievements in the 2nd and 3rd games; unless you set it to offline mode. If it loses connection mid-mission it may prevent you from getting said mission's achievement unless you restart it. It happened to me right at the end of the Citadel DLC.

EA App and Legendary Edition aside, the actual games are truly amazing. Each of them are very different from the others in terms of gameplay. Mass Effect is very much a 2000's BioWare RPG. Mass Effect 2 is still an RPG, but with more action-adventure elements and a less comprehensive skill tree. Mass Effect 3 is basically an action adventure game with skill points; not in a bad way though.

The overall story throughout the trilogy is solid and they all mesh very well together and they're well written. My only real complaint about the story is of that most of the (once) DLCs' don't really fit too well. they're just kinda thrown in there. Don't get me wrong, they're still good, they just stick out.

Despite it's flaws, Mass Effect :Legendary Edition is very good, and I highly recommend it.

UPDATE:
Achievements are fixed

I played the original version on the PS3 years ago loved it then, and still love the game all these years later on PC.

This game has one of the best melee combat systems of any non-fighting game I've played. Everything feels so fluid and you just naturally pull of combos. The environmental attacks are such a nice touch as well. As for the rest of the game play, it's solid but the melee is certainly what stands out here.

The story is very good too, it had me engaged the whole way through. It was also the perfect length for this sort of game, it doesn't need to be 100+ hours long

I also really dig the outfits from various movies, it's cool that i can just run around in the game wearing clothes from some of my favourite films.