Recent reviews by Pol Pot Pie

I am being fully serious when I say this is one of the greatest multiplayer shooters I have ever played. The wild west theme is very fun, and a large part of what draws you into the game, but the gameplay stands up very well on its own.

The guns are slow firing, low-accuracy but very powerful and balanced against long reload times. Every shot counts when 3 hits kills anyone, but it takes 10 seconds to reload your six chambers. Because all accuracy is affected by speed, the switch between running, aiming and dodging is surprisingly skill-intensive. Throw in a dedicated kick button, the ability to dual wield any handguns and a bunch of different loadout options and you have a simple game with a very high skill-ceiling that is so rewarding to play

The game is pretty clunky and unpolished, due to the fact it is a small development team using 2007 technology. The community is small but you can almost always find at least one populated server. I have been waiting years for any game to give me an experience like FoF and none have stepped up.

AND IT IS COMPLETELY FREE. NO MICROTRANSACTIONS. A LABOR OF LOVE

I will admit, I have at least an additional hundred hours in this game from a pirated copy before I came back and bought it for myself

Kenshi is really good at:
- giving you a large open environment to play in and achieve goals you've made for yourself
- immersing you in an imaginative, dangerous, post-apocalyptic world
- providing countless opportunities for self-guided roleplaying
- letting you build a squad of survivors, tailored to your liking
- giving you a very memorable "first playthrough experience" as you learn what the rules are for this strange, hostile moon
- sucking away hours of your life as you wait for your dudes to wake up from their recovery coma

Kenshi is not so good at:
- having interesting and memorable characters
- playing out a scripted narrative with quests and choice
- looking especially beautiful all the time (the game has moments of relative beauty but the whole thing kinda looks like runescape all the time)

Overall, Kenshi is a fun and grindy game to play out fantasies of low-tech post-apocalypse in a harsh and hostile world. It is more akin to a simulational sandbox than a traditional narrative RPG. There is a ton of mechanical depth and interlocking systems that you can use to achieve your goals but if you are here for a good story then you have to bring it yourself because the game will not hand you one. The game is most impactful if you don't know too much going in and explore the world and mechanics naturally as you play. My two pieces of advice are these:
- If you've been mining copper for three hours and not having any fun then try doing something else because I promise you this is like the most boring way to play the game
- losing fights is actually an integral aspect of the early game so don't get too discouraged and feel like getting beat up is a "game over". Getting beat up is a "game begins".

This is a roguelike deckbuilder in the style of Slay the Spire except with grid-based tactical combat with a Kung Fury-style retrowave aesthetic. If you like the sound of that, you'll probably like the game. If you're not convinced, then I think you will still probably enjoy it.

Overall, I think it looks pretty good, with some special attention paid to rooms like the shop or the KID rooms. There isn't much in the way of visual spectacle in either the animations or combat environments. Instead I would describe as "nice" or "pleasant." It is a nice bit of additional effort compared to similar games which often rely on card art to prop up their visuals. I think a lot of the card art in Nitro Kid is quality, and a few of the pieces are standout, but most are serviceable.

The gameplay consistently is fun and replayable. There are three unlockable characters; the starter is an aggressive and mobile martial artist who is good at chaining kills and darting around the field in addition to his unique "burning" damage. Burning is similar to poison in Spire except some cards apply it to yourself for bonus effects. I like L33 the best. but I like the other characters well enough and they all have unique card mechanics. I don't like any of their names though

As far as difficulty goes, I think it is not especially hard compared to other roguelikes. For instance, I beat it on Realistic (read: Normal) on my third run while Slay the Spire took me closer to a dozen. That being said, there are a bunch of increased difficulty levels a la Ascension. The level traversal method in this game is another area of reduced difficulty. Instead of making a linear path from start to boss, each floor has three paths, independent of each other that you can switch between after each encounter. I liked the added level of choice this gave but I could see others feeling it compromised too much in difficulty. The cards themselves are also not incredibly mechanically complex and it doesn't take super long to feel like you have seen most of everything.

I got the game for 5 bucks, I would've paid 10, maybe even 15 for the dozen+ hours of game I got out of it

While this game is nominally about managing an empire of bootleggers during prohibition, it might be more accurate to call it chore simulator. It mostly consists of driving around town to pick up alcohol from one of your stills and selling it at one of the stores who will buy it or to one of your own speakeasies. The only variety to be found comes from whether you are selling wine, beer or moonshine. Once you've bought one crock, you've bought them all. This process can be automated as you expand your territory but if you automate the picking up/dropping off then you've basically taken all the gameplay out of the game becauses there's nothing else to do. Well, there is also a very minimal combat system and close to non-existant diplomacy options for other gangs in the city but there is not much depth and not much of interest

If you are a fan of games where you can make number go up, then you might get a few hours of enjoyment out of this. I played a lot for basically one week before realizing I had better ♥♥♥♥ to do

Edit: I should clarify that my experience is of the Vanilla game. I can't speak to any added features that come from the myriad DLC.

For starters, I am going to admit that an interest in the era is going to go a long way to your enjoyment of the game, so if you are not interested in the Industrial Revolution, liberal revolts or post-napoleonic europe then whether or not you will like this game is going to depend on you. If you're like me and find the 19th century a fascinating era of human history then I think generally you will enjoy this game for simulating the era well enough to not suspend disbelief.

Primarily the game is about running all aspects of a nation between 1836 and 1936 from government to military to economy. While generally, there is a definite 'meta' (liberalize, industrialize, colonize,) each nation starts in a distinct enough position to keep this process interesting. For instance, the challenges of playing as Japan (fight regressive laws, build an industrial base from whole cloth) are quite different than say the Netherlands who have a large navy and industry but lack resources and have a small population.

Rather than a focus on expanding your nation's borders, instead this game prioritizes expanding your internal capacity with industry and legal reforms. Because large and constant wars tend to attract enemies, (ask Napoleon) it is more of a dance about snubbing your rivals' colonial resources than it is straight up conquering them. This era is the origin of the total war and turning your base industries into a war machine is very satisfying. Your nations economy is directly linked to its ability to wage war and so you must balance the supply and demand of your goods in order to avoid a crisis. Rather than sharp accumulations of power, Victoria 3 is about slowly building an economic machine to dominate the world while sabotaging your imperial opponents. If that sounds like fun to you, then I think Vicky 3 is worth it warts and all.

Now for flaws; The diplomacy and war-making are far from perfect. While the Diplomatic Play system allows for more complexity than your standard paradox game, it is easily exploitable and lacking a lot of nuance. For instance, you cannot choose to abandon or add war goals after the fighting has broken out and this can leave you with some unwinnable wars. Wars themselves are dead simple and instead of micro-managing your troops instead you deploy armies to fronts and all of the battling is done automatically with you only able to give basic orders like "attack" or "defend." While I think the war system isn't bad, I won't deny that it is pretty boring. While some new diplomatic options were added recently like the ability to trade states, the non-war diplomacy is pretty barebones, especially when it comes to your colonial subjects. For instance, you cannot build constructions in colonial administrations or subject nations which was a feature of Victoria 2.

Overall, it's pretty good and the DLC (at time of writing this "Voice of the People" and "Colossus of the South") don't add much so don't bother with them

Edit: I think that Sphere of Influence fixes most of the issues present in the diplomacy. Power blocs are a fun mechanic with a small amount of variation that provide new options for expanding your own empire to and within other nations. War and diplomacy are still pretty busted

This is my first Anno game and I don't play a ton of City Builder games, but I do enjoy games that are similar (Rimworld, DF, others.) The 100 gb download size was a bad start and the ubisoft drm was not better. As for the game? It has the hallmarks of a good management game. It scratches the itch of balancing columns on a spreadsheet well as you plan your city to be efficient. The default settings are horrible and the UX is far less smooth than something like a modern paradox game. I spent a decent amount of time not sure if I should click or right click and found myself accidentally pausing productions.

If you like city builders and aren't so spoiled for UX as me then you might enjoy it but I couldn't (or didn't really want to) get into it

This game is a time void. I am not sure what the ceiling is for time in game but I can tell you it is very easy to lose 3-4 hours of your day by playing this. The first night I got it I had to force myself to bed at 3 AM. While that may be a good enough endorsement for some, it is not exactly a review. So here's one of those:

The Long Drive is a slow-paced vibe simulator with driving and car maintenance mechanics. You start in a shack in the desert with a rusted jalopy and a hungry stomach before embarking on your nomadic journey to Mom's house. The mechanics are quite simple to start-- gas goes in the fuel tank, oil in the engine and bacon in your mouth but can become surprisingly complex as you go along. It starts with different fuels and magic baskets then expounds into the various pros and cons of different cars and engines and how to use metals bars that you learn seamlessly as you play. The object interaction system is a bit clunky at first, but soon becomes as natural as picking things up in real life. There are tons of options and minute interactions to finely control things to be just as you want them. The constant reminder text on screen may seem a bit excessive but pretty soon you don't even begin to notice it and push all the buttons on instinct.

Customization is the real name of the game as you get to choose what car you want, what engine to go along with it. You can fix it up to whatever quality you'd prefer and paint it one of many possible colors. As you progress in the game you face constant choices over what to pack along with you and what to leave behind-- do you take the low-quality wheels even if they are sexy whitewalls? How many trinkets do you want to hang from your dashboard? Do you take every can of gas you find or travel light only taking what you need and moving on? In a strange way, your car quickly feels like a sort of home.

Issues I've had:
- Serious framerate drops on collisions or even just when going above a certain speed. Depending on your system this will be more or less frequent but it will occur no matter how good your specs are.
- Items popping right in front of you when going fast. It can feel like BS to hit a rock that spawns 5 feet ahead of your car going 200 kmh
- There is only one way to hit the gas: full force. There is only one way to let out the clutch: fast as hell. I would love it if there was a slow release option for the clutch or a "light step" key to hit the gas without flooring it. I don't know how much of this is an issue for automatic transmission players but if you wanna play manual then know it will be a bit awkward. I had to start every car in second gear to avoid 7k RPM
- Your physics will glitch and bad things will happen to you when it feels like they shouldn't. Thank god for autosaves

Features I would love to see:
- An ability to hunt/cook the rabbits for food
- Part degradation, forcing you to make semi-regular maintenance stops especially after off-roading
- A tow cable, so you can tow smaller cars on the back of trucks/buses (I know this can be achieved with metal bar magic but it feels very janky)
- Enemies with guns or cars/real car combat. I think this is the feature that would make this game a perfect 10/10 but with everything else this game already has going I forgive the developer for not having the time/resources

I killed a beefalo, made a hat out of his parts, found his child, tricked the child into thinking I was his father, killed the calf.

10/10

Fisting robot; 11/10 shoulda been GOTY

why no respek for shephard?