Recent reviews by Stik

I bought this when it first came out, i was a long time fan of Quake3 so it's just the sort of thing i was waiting for. It's a little bit microtransaction-y now, but it's only cosmetic stuff, there's no pay-to-win mechanic.

I see a lot of negative reviews recently, particularly around performance, but i have never seen any issues with it, either graphics-wise, or network. You do need to select which datacentres you would like to use if you want a reliable ping under 100ms, the default selections seem a little silly, but around me (UK) i've got 5 or 6 options to chose from, so i'm never waiting long for a game. I used to run this at 1440p on a GTX970 at 60fps+, and it was fine. Now i've got a 1080Ti and it's happy at 144fps with everything on Ultra.

Gameplay is fast and smooth, like you'd expect from a re-imagining of Q3/QL. Rocket-jumping feels "right" and is a valuable tactic, bunnyhopping is kind of still a thing, but more of a feature for specific characters than how it was in the olden days. They've even included two of the most popular Q3 maps, re-built in the modern style, and they're glorious (DM6 and DM17)

They do keep releasing patches that change the way the levelling system works (still purely cosmetic stuff), which i think is annoying some people. Doesn't change the gameplay.

Things that don't work so well: Either they don't have enough players to do matchmaking properly, or their algorithm just sucks. Particularly in the new CTF modes i frequently find the teams are horrendously unbalanced, with matches ending up 20-to-0, which is not a challenge for the winning team and is deeply frustrating for the losing team. It causes people to ragequit, they then get replaced with (even more useless) bots, which just makes the inbalance worse. Considering the amount of statistics they should be able to gather about each player i feel like they should be able to make a much better decision on balancing the two teams. I feel like providing an option to switch teams would help here. Most players are reasonable, and i think teams would tend to self-balance.

I would also like to see the option to run dedicated servers as well, like how FPS games used to do it 20 years ago. Everybody used to have their own bunch of favourite servers, and you would get to play with the same group of players which built a nice sense of community. Maybe you wouldn't progress your level/loot boxes this way, but you could always stick with public matchmaking if you wanted that. It would be a bit like the old "pickup" style games you used to join via IRC servers and the like.

I think it could also do with more variation in maps. They've been steadily adding more characters and maps, but i guess since the environments are so detailed it takes a long long time to make one, so it's been maybe two new maps a year. Perhaps time to open it up to the community and see what players can come up with? There've always been very active mappers for previous titles in the series, and ID might be surprised at the quality some of them come up with.

Bring back Klesk!

This was pretty nice, nothing particularly stunning about it but it was a pleasant couple of evening's story to play through. As ever with these sorts of games the individual character paths are not very satisfying on their own but once you've played through them all there's a nice "true" ending to make you smile. The skipping interface works quite well for doing repeated playthroughs. Definitely worth a tenner. Where else do you get to hang around with dragons :D

This is great fun. I never played the original so it doesn't have any nostalgia value for me but it stands up really well on its own. There's a definite shortage of good VR games that aren't just elaborate tech-demos, but this is definitely one of them. There's no ragged edges where it hasn't been finished, everything is complete and fits well together. The graphics are well themed, simple and polygon-y, presumably as a callback to its parent, but bright and with enough depth to please the eye. This is definitely one of my favourite VR games.

Runs really smoothly on my 970. The game adapts well to VR, the tanks have nice big windows that let you look around naturally. The controls are: left stick for forwards/back and strafe, the right stick is aim/turn. There's no "teleport" type movement, i guess since it doesn't really make sense for a tank. I didn't feel any sense of nausea or discomfort, but i don't seem to be very sensitive to that anyhow so i'm not a good judge.

Single player is weirdly difficult (or maybe i'm rubbish at it) but playing co-op with a friend is much more entertaining. Gameplay is a little repetitive, but there's a variety of enemy units each with their own tactics, plus various little story elements that pop up from time to time to break it up, and a lot of different weapons that all have a unique "thing". Each zone you visit has a goal to achieve, like "destroy all enemy units", or "defend your ally's base". I don't know if it's auto-adjusting, but when playing co-op we almost always seem to be right on the edge of surviving, so game balance seems excellent.

I wish it allowed mouse and keyboard for movement, i've never been a console gamer so my ability with game pads is poor and i struggle to aim accurately because of it. I see no reason why it couldn't use a more traditional input. Also, it claims that my 360 controller isn't compatible, which is clearly a lie as when you get into the game it even shows a little picture of it!

It could also do with a multiplayer save/load feature. Even on the shortest campaign it takes two of us a good hour and a bit to play, personally after about an hour i'd quite like a rest from having the headset on.

There is a "Classic Mode" too, which reimplements the original game. Haven't really investigated it much yet.

Brilliant :)

There's nothing i can say that other reviews haven't - this is incredible

As a game in its own right, this is moderately entertaining, but as a successor to The Neverhood it really is terrible. The Neverhood managed to feel like a whole world that you moved around, a world with an interesting and mysterious backstory, whereas this comes across as a series of disconnected rooms, one puzzle after the next, with a predictable, weak, and very short, story underpinning it. There's also not a lot of originality in the puzzles, the same three or four get repeated several times with slightly different colours/icons/sounds/etc

From a production standpoint the animation/clay is nicely done, however the voice acting is appalling, both in script and in recording quality.

The weird music in the Neverhood was always a favourite of mine, and when i saw the same guy was doing the score for this i had high hopes, but with the wild variations in volume, the buggy sound and the speed with which you can complete each section meant i didn't really notice it :\

At 4 hours of playtime i feel a bit short-changed. It's not really a game you would replay, so it works out pretty expensive if i look at it from a cash-per-hour-of-fun perspective!

Seems pretty buggy too, for such a technically simple game, particularly the sound. Several times it just cuts out entirely until you quit and reload. A couple of the puzzles don't seem to store their state properly, for instance it's possible to retrieve certain objects multiple times. Nothing that broke the gameplay, fortunately, although it did make me nervous. When you're stuck with a puzzle it's all too easy to wonder if the game's just broken.

Overall, i'm a bit dissappointed. Had this been made by a couple of students as a college project then i'd say "this is awesome", but as an offering from a professional team, it's embaressingly poor.

I'd recommend this game when it's down to a couple of quid in the bargain basket, but until then, just not worth it. Find a copy of the original Neverhood instead :)