Recent reviews by Stickman

Taxed my peasants into starvation. 10/10 would play again

10/10 can make Krakow #1 GP

Pretty fun

It's good, but it could be better.

While this game has the best handling model yet in the series and excellent controller feedback, it leaves more to be desired in the more community focused aspects of the game.

The positives:
- Solid physics model
- Excellent feedback on controller, it is now possible to be competitive with a controller and no assists. (Big improvement on f1 2018)
- Exciting new my team mode, which adds a whole new aspect of customisation and depth to the game. This new mode lets you create your own f1 team and take them from the bottom of the grid to championships.
- Beautiful graphics. Even without ray tracing, this game makes me marvel at the level of detail at all the tracks and on the cars.
- Online multiplayer is excellent with friends.
- New splitscreen multiplayer is very useful in some cases.
- Classics cars are fun to drive and are nice to have in game.
- F2 cars can be a nice intro into a career mode.

The negatives:
- AI are stupidly fast at some tracks such as silverstone and slow at others such as Monaco.
- Online multiplayer experience is not great when playing with randoms. Penalties seem to be given to victims more often than the instigator of incidents.
- Safety car is still kinda broken. May never appear in career mode and in multiplayer can break races.
- No mod support ):
- Can be a bit buggy.

Some potential improvements for the game:
- Let us choose our design concept (eg low vs high rake, long vs short wheelbase and front wing designs)
- Give us mod support on the steam workshop please.
- Please improve the balance in my team career mode to stop us from becoming op after 2 seasons.

Overall, the game is good, probably the best yet in the series. (I have played f1 2015 and f1 2018), but still has a way to go before becoming truly worth the price tag.

"As long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead" - TF2 Sniper

The third instalment of the Crusader Kings franchise brings not only a refresh to the bloodbath of the previous two games, but whole new levels of depth to the murdering people. Your actions have consequences, but are also much more rewarding.

A medieval strategy game with heavy elements of roleplaying and storytelling, Crusader Kings III has big shoes to fill after the success that was CKII. Well, Paradox has done it again, another excellent title has been produced.

Characters actually feel like they have personality in this game, thanks to the hugely improved character portraits and the new stress system. Who would have guessed that doing things against your own morals would stress you out? The stress system and increased role of personality traits makes decisions much more impactful. Sure, I could be greedy and extort significant amounts of gold from the church, but as a zealous character, this doesn't sit well with me, and with the recent death of my best friend, I might be pushed over the edge and start finding vices to cope with my stress with.

Further, the individual feudal contracts with each vassal add an additional layer of control to managing vassals. Do you give your loyal vassals a tax break? Or do you placate the disenchanted vassals while taking more from the happier ones? Individual feudal contracts allow for you to build up your realm to what you want it to look like, particularly once marches and scutages become available.

Additionally, the espionage system is hugely improved. The role of RNG has been reduced, making it more clear as to when something might occur (such as an assassination). However, once you have gotten away with it, don't think you will hide your secret forever. A new system to the series, known as hooks and secrets, adds a whole new layer to espionage. You may have gotten away with the murder of your wife, but ten years later, while drunk at a feast, you might let the secret slip to a vassal, who can then use this secret as a hook to blackmail you or he can just expose you for the murderer you are. Plop your spymaster in the byzantine court to search for secrets and watch the secrets roll in. Followed of course, by unlocking the golden obligations in the stewardship tree, so you can turn the hooks into gold. Yes, you are profiting from blackmail and the misery of others, but they deserved it.

The new dynasty system is a welcome refresh. No more playing pokemon with bloodlines, instead, use your dynasty's renown to unlock perks for all your family members. Also, got some random uncle who somehow inherited all of France? Well now, instead of remaining part of your house, dynasty members can create cadet branches that they have control of, which adds not only to the historical accuracy of the game, but also enhances the depth of the game, your distant cousins in Spain of a cadet branch of your dynasty will now feel like

However, there are some problems. The AI are the worst allies I have ever had. HOI4 Italy is more useful as an ally. The AI will watch you die to enemy troops from one province away while they could just more one tile and not only save your arse, but destroy your enemies. Additionally, the AI haven't figured out what a matrilineal marriage is, so if a female gets land, she won't care that her heir won't be part of her dynasty, she will just throw it all away and marry normally, letting some other dynasty inherit the title. Holy Orders are practically unusable, because not only do the AI never seem to make any, but when you create one, they use it all the time, giving you no chance to grab it when you are defending against the infidel hordes, because as soon as one AI ruler is done with it, they instantly pass to the next. Perhaps add a queue to the holy order for the player to use so they can actually get it or let us found more than one holy order to help supply the huge demand.

Technology is changed, it is now tied to your culture and development and feels much more realistic. Development is now a visible statistic that impacts income, technology and levies and development growth feels much more natural than other Paradox games such as EU4. The new prestige and piety systems let you spend prestige and piety without compromising your overall buildup to a paragon of virtue or exalted among men.

However, I would like to see merchant republics added back to the game, to properly model the role of sea trade in medieval economics, as well as boosting our often empty coffers. Additionally, I feel like Primogeniture should not be restricted to beyond 1200 AD, just to beyond around 1100 AD and should be based more on technology than date. If you are so advanced that you discover all the innovations in an era before the next one opens up, you shouldn't have to wait just because you are reforming your kingdom faster than real life. The domain restriction penalty should also impact control, control is the perfect system to use to represent the impacts of divided attention, so I am surprised it was not used. Further, becoming a saint shouldn't be unavailable for content or humble characters, because it feels strange to stop the most saintly people from becoming saints.

Ultimately, although there are a few problems with the game, the design of the game is fundamentally sound (unlike Imperator: Rome) and is highly enjoyable to play. It does not feel like a slog, but rather like an exciting story of hope and despair, victory and defeat, plans and surprises in the medieval era of human history. While sometimes it may feel like the AI are all trying to bang your wife, don't forget that the murder scheme exist for a reason. "someone is gonna want someone dead".

10/10 would put down peasant revolt again.

Having also played F1 2015, as well as various GT and DIRT games, I can say that this game has one of the best handling models yet, a well designed interface that allows more skilled players to manage their races (control fuel, battery, tyres, brake balance, etc) and has decent graphics. Night races look excellent, while day races feel clean and fresh. I greatly enjoy the game, and you will too.

My preferred learning method is to disable all assists and learn by crashing. After only a few hours, I can feel my abilities quickly improving as I learn to reduce wheelspin, deal with oversteer and learn braking points. This, while difficult, is greatly rewarding and I highly enjoy it.

I play on a PS4 controller and it is an excellent experience, no real need for fancy simulator setups with wheels and pedals unless you are playing league in my opinion. Keyboard isn't that great though, you will need assists to survive.

After a decade of "bannerlord when?" this is it, the game we have all been waiting for, the sequel to the acclaimed Mount and Blade. So, how did it turn out?


Well, not great, not terrible. As an early access game, the promise is certainly there. Excellent graphics (if you can run them), the same sandbox gameplay we loved in the original and intense combat. Apart from the graphics, other notable improvements from Warband include:
- Significantly better tactics for commanders during battles, which honestly make life so much better when commanding armies.
- Larger world map, with much much more to explore.
- Incredibly better sieges, with siege engines such as trebuchets and ballistas, a stark improvement compared to the ladders of death of Warband.
- A deeper and more realistic character levelling system.
- Improved renown and familial relations, with a clan system that feels intuitive and makes sense.


However, despite all these great features, this game is nonetheless early access, which brings some issues:
- Frequent crashes, expect to discover about one each hour as you find bugged interactions or just break the game.
- Questionable performance. The graphics come at a cost and even on medium-low settings, the game can continue to be challenging to run unless you drop it down to very-low, at which point, it looks like Warband again. This appears to be from lack of optimization, as the game does manage to load all cpu cores and the gpu evenly, which is very impressive.
- Some features that you would expect are not present yet, until today kingdoms could not be created outside the main quest.
- Not all towns/castles/villages seem to be unique, which is something that of course will come with time.
- Long load times, which I suppose is expected with such large maps, (and I do have the game installed on a HDD, because it is ~70gb), but even talking to people on the world map causes a loading screen, which I find quite disrupting.


I have noticed that the texture streaming setting (the one which uses Vram), can safely be put up to very high if you have at least 4gb of Vram, which hugely decreasing the amount of things visibly popping in and out of detail as you move around. I recommend spending a few minutes in custom battles of 100-800 men tuning the graphics to find a good compromise between performance and aesthetics for yourself, as the initial settings are, well, questionable.


This game clearly has potential, it has the engine and all the groundwork for something fantastic, so if the dev team sticks with it, this game will age like fine wine to become a masterpiece. But it is not there yet.

So, to conclude, the game is playable, it is fun and it is something I will play in the future. However, it lacks the level of polish many have come to expect following a decade of development. So, overall, I recommend this game as a solid 7/10, where there is fun and engaging gameplay, but the polish is not there yet. It very much feels Early Access, so you do get what it says on the box. So, if you having been waiting for this game, or want to check it out, go for it, but if you despise instability, then perhaps hold off for now.

One of the absolute best games of the decade. I wish I could play this for the first time again. It is simply a masterpiece, with intuitive game design, intriguing story design, a very unique game concept and most importantly, the high quality polish that Valve is known for. Anyone and everyone should play this game, it is truly a magical experience.

First off, beware that this game may not work with some (but not all) windows 10 systems due to its age.

Quite and enjoyable arcade experience. The storyline is surpisingly enjoyable, as you do face consequences for sloppy performance in one mission in the next and the development of the other pilots alongside you is also quite interesting. I thoroughly enjoy playing this game every once and a while and diving back into the enjoyment of this arcade game.

Also, one last note.
Machine guns go brrrrrrrrrrrrr.

A very intriguing game and certainly one I recommend playing in this day and age because of the very unique perspective this game brings.

Remember folks, there is always a bigger fish...