Recent reviews by Moriarty

Great bones but they just don't appear to be making meaningful progress since the Early Access launch. Right now it really seems like another EA cash grab.

In short, if you're here for the immersive sim, you'll probably be disappointed. If you're big on single-player shooters, this is above average in some ways, and below average in others.

A novel idea with genuinely interesting level design. I love the openness of each level and I love that the game requires you to think and pay attention in order to figure out the goals and how to go about them. System Shock is heralded as a prototype of the immersive sim genre, and its level design and think-for-yourself approach really reflect that. Sadly, as much as the remake does improve on interface, gamefeel, accessibility, and style, it doesn't really improve the design of the level or gameplay very much. In the end, System Shock is a shooter. You're not going to see some of the other pillars of immersive sims, like stealth, dialogue, factions, crafting, etc. As open as the level design is, it feels more constrained the more you play, as you realize that the verticality between levels is constrained to single elevator access, the key objectives of the game really require you to go about things in a certain sequence, and the layout of the station has no real setting coherence. They kind of lore-explain that last bit away, but it didn't move me -- I would have preferred open exploration in a coherent space station setting.

I think I get why Thief Gold is considered a classic; it invented many of the essential components of stealth gameplay modern gamers are familiar with. However, it doesn't really follow through on the premise of the immersive sim genre, likely because it was so novel at that time. In retrospect I'm not sure I agree with so many people recommending it to others interested in the genre because it does often lack a lot of the openness and dynamism that typifies later entries in the genre. I think this game is really only good to people who are interested in gaming history, really dedicated to stealth games, or really interested in getting the full story of the Thief franchise. If you're only somewhat interested in those elements, it won't hold you for long.

This is a toughie. There's a lot to like about Arx Fatalis, and the price is right. However, the things I loved most about the game in the first half really fell away, and the things that were most frustrating about the game really increased in the second half.

As an immersive sim, this feels a bit like a prototype. There are a few open-ended puzzles (moreso in the early half), but there aren't that many options and there isn't that many interactions in the game's sub-systems. That said, the sense of exploration and finding your own way is really strong... until the plot just falls off the rails. After about the halfway point the game just feels sort of unfinished. The plot is half-baked and not well-articulated. And, I get that fans of this genre don't like to have their hands held, but it gets to the point where there's only one obscure, nonsensical solution for you to basically just guess at. I stopped playing when I had to re-explore the entire map in search of anything slightly that might have changed, and what I found was a plot nonsequitur that had nothing to do with player agency or open-ended design. The quests are increasingly like that as you progress, the difficulty spikes without warning, exploration becomes less and less worthwhile, many of the things you probably should have been able to explore are gated off for plot reasons, and most of the content is actually just hack and slash rather than immersive sim. Not to mention it gets progressively glitchier the longer you play.

Arx had a lot of potential, but didn't follow through. I don't regret buying it per se, and it was interesting as a retrospective, but forced too choose between 'recommend' or 'non,' I'm afraid I have to say that most people won't find this very fun for very long, even if you like immersive sims.

CHANGED MY REVIEW TO NEGATIVE

Too many glitches compromise the success of your run, it feels like the main challenge is the game's stability and the player's have no agency over that whatsoever.

This game is fun and has a ton of potential, but you need to know that as of now, it really feels like an Early Access game. There are substantial and frequent glitches that will make you feel like your run has been robbed. These glitches include strange physics which will make you fall or rocket items off the cliffside, items disappearing by clipping into the mountain side, and occasionally more severe bugs like when my friend's screen went completely black after his character fell asleep. The more you engage with the challenges of this game, the more you will need every advantage, and these glitches rob you of your progress constantly. If they keep patching it, fleshing out features, and adding a little more content, it will be very much worth the price they are currently asking.

100% CTD when finishing a map. It's a shame because it used to work.

By far the best economics game on steam. The prices are actually dynamic and responsive to what the players do, and for the most part the game mechanics are driven by real economic principles. The only downside is it can be hard to find games to play with real players because it isn't as popular as it should be. But, there are literally thousands of single-player matches to be played against many AI difficulty levels.

Also the game has never crashed for me.

Remarkably, this free game is actually among the best turn-based strategy games ever made. If anything, the fact that it's free understates how good it is. It would absolutely be worth a typical price tag, but as it's free, there's no reason it shouldn't be in literally everybody's library. If you like strategy games at all, you should give Wesnoth a try.

You're lost in the jungle and you need fresh water to drink because you know there's a 100% chance of parasite in every sip of surface water. You can't drink rain runoff from leafy plants. You can't drink from a waterfall. You can't fire a bowl to boil it. You can't pick up a tribal person's bowl to boil it. You can build a raincatcher, but you can't put a bowl under it. You can't put a can under it. You can't put a nut shell under it. You can't collect armadillo hide, let alone fashion it into some kind of saucer. You can't fashion a broad leaf into some kind of saucer. You can't cup it with your hands. You can knap a stone into a blade but not a saucer.

You can't do any of a dozen simple straightforward things that a real person would quickly do to solve this common problem. You can only do one of two ludicrously obtuse things:

1) Collect water with the very rare coconut shell, or the very rare turtle shell.
2) Drink parasites and intuitively know which fictional colored mushrooms magically heal them.

And that's if you can figure out the controls.

This is a tough one. There's a lot about The Long Dark I want to love -- the setting, the interface, and the condition mechanics are above average. It's just that I can't get past how much this game shoots itself in the foot by being a completely static setup. Some of the most important crafting recipes are gated behind niche tools/workbenches you wouldn't realistically need in order to accomplish the goal. Important items spawn in very specific places -- the same places -- every game. Every region is completely surrounded by cliffs and connected by hidden cave networks. So, in order to do the most important things, you have to be able to travel between the regions, go to the right spot for the necessary item, and then craft an obscure recipe, just to do something you realistically could have just done with simple tools at your home location. All of this requires you to have foreknowledge of the game, like looking up recipes, maps for the region transitions, and locations for the item spawns, in order to do simple things. On top of this, some of the medical knowledge is completely made up for the purpose of making the game more difficult, like contracting parasites from cooked meat. All the biggest problems I had in the game didn't stem from my strategy, they stemmed from my inability to guess at the obtuse logic of the design.