Recent reviews by WarriorDan

As an early access title, HAWKED shows a great deal of potential, BUT there are some significant issues that 100% need to be addressed.

Pros:
-Fun & invigorating basic puzzle-solving mechanics
-Decent allotment of weapons and perks
-Alternating between PVP and PVE keeps things varied & interesting

Cons:
-The vivid intensity of the color palette is a bit much at times.
-The UI can become a bit cluttered at times. (Pls allow us to disable the onscreen comicbooky SFX captions)
The social hub is small, boring, and lifeless.
-Lots of server disconnect issues. (Yes I did extensive network testing on my end, it's not me.)
-Enemy AI is dumb af sometimes. You can walk right up to them and they won't attack unless you actually bump into them and/or attack them.
-The audacity of the devs to push multiple paid editions of this game, an in-game paid item shop, AND a battlepass is insane. I'm all for devs fairly earning a decent income, but this is early access, learn some restraint. Also, the paid item quality is really bland compared to stuff you'd find in other item shops.

Overall the good still does outweigh the bad, but I'm not going to be anywhere near as kind if this gets pushed out of early access still more or less the same as it is rn. For those interested in a more thorough review, I've attached my video review below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYXyKICVNI

The only thing more dead than the Sega Dreamcast-quality zombies iin this game is the developers' chances of redeeming this game into something vaguely playable, especially since they're seemingly too preoccupied banning people from their discord and otherwise silencing anything vaguely resembling critique.

The performance is abysmal, unplayable even, and I'm playing off a Nvidia 3070, on an i7 with 16 GBs RAM, using an SSD. The options menu is nonfunctional, and is missing any graphic options for some reason, and the game insists on only using my intel integrated GPU, despite the fact that all my Steam games by default use the Nvidia card. I even manually in my Windows settings had the Dead Matter exe launch via the Nvidia card, but as soon as I got past the main menu, the game insisted on reverting back to the Intel integrated GPU.

I spawned in the midst of a zombie horde and died immediately. This kept happening because the spawnpoints are broken. There are no items to pick up, and vehicles don't work.

It's been days now and there's been no developer apology, no public disclosure of upcoming fixes, no willingness to concede that this disgraceful abomination is entirely a mess of their own making, etc. You don't release a game in this state, then not communicate at all, other than to show your active contempt for your own playerbase. Well, as a certain recent popular movie says: "You get what you f***ing deserve".

Don't buy this garbage and support such unethical developers.

King of Seas has a lot of potential, but it also suffers from a lot of drawbacks as well that really hinder the overall experience. It's one of those games where I really feel Steam should have more than "yes" & "no" options when it asks you "Do you recommend this game". But I'll list my pros and cons below. If you want more details, I'll link my full video review at the bottom.

Pros:
-Gorgeous overall art style
-Decent sense of humor and self-awareness
-Decent RPG-esque features, like level-based gear,
in-game merchants & traders, etc.
-Sound effects are spot-on
-Extensive skill tree with lots of useful skills,
which can all be upgraded for increased effectiveness.

Cons:
-Combat feels very stiff and clunky.
-Music soundtrack consists of barely 4-5 tracks,
which can be very annoying on long voyages.
-The story itself feels like an unnecessary & rushed addition.
-Menu navigation is downright unforgivably dreadful.
In order to alter SFX or other options, you're required to
quit the game and return to the main menu.
-Camera zooms are extremely limited, with only 3 specific presets.
-Players are unable to rotate the camera, which is very odd for an action-RPG.
-Gameplay balance is incredibly inconsistent. At level 15, you can sink
normal enemy ships that are up to level 25, if you know how to dodge at all,
but an early-game level 15 boss required me to be almost level 30 to survive even 3 hits from him.

I could go on, but if you're interested in more details, I just released a lengthy game review that goes over many more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0j8I1L-L8g

In all my time playing and reviewing indie games, I've rarely seen a game as broken and unredeemably awful as Nemesis: Race Against The Pandemic. The screenshots barely represent the actual in-game footage.

Pros:
-None that I can think of.

Cons:
-Completely broken enemy AI
-A crosshair that is barely visible at any point
-Nearly-blinding visual glare that left me with a headache after barely 30 mins of play
-Tons of frame drops and screen tearing
-An insane number of texture clipping issues
-Almost all buildings are completely empty, and none have any similarity in art style,
as if the developer just tossed together a bunch of unity assets with limited to no alteration whatsoever.
-Enemies all spout the same handful of voicelines. Voice audio quality appears very LQ.

This "game" feels like a rushed half-finished prototype you'd normally expect to see on something like GameJolt. The idea that the developer is charging any amount of money for this travesty is insane. I in no way recommend playing this game, even if normally you'd into playing bad games. Some games are "so bad it's good." But this isn't one of them.

Full review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wObfFlITIVo

Pros:
-Loot system is surprisingly generous and rewarding.
-Boss battles vary from entertaining to passable.
-Outrider abilities are generally quite fun to use.

Cons:
-The cover system is downright broken.
-Sprinting is broken. The character will often break out of sprinting inexplicably, and the only solution is to keep spamming the shift key a few times to start again.
-Optimization is terrible. Very frequent massive framerate drops, especially when entering/exiting areas. The only way I could get this game to run consistently at an acceptable framerate was to set most settings on medium or high. (I have a Nvidia 2070 RTX gpu, a intel i7-7790k CPU, 16 GBs of RAM, and a 250 GB SSD, in addition to my main hard drive and external. Outriders shouldn't be coming close to testing my GPU or CPU.)
-The story is painfully generic.
-Dialogue particularly is downright awful, sounding like a 12 year old wrote it.
-The skill tree system is incredibly boring. Almost all upgrades are just minor stat buffs, and not anything of substantial effort.

Full review video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d2tj3gvmdY

The Infected is a surprisingly decent survival sandbox game, though it definitely has a fair number of problems. Just to keep things simple, I'll just list the basic pros and cons. (If you want some more extensive feedback, I did a game review video I'll link at the end.)

Pros:
-A fairly good build menu, allowing you to build a diverse variety of items.
-Every buildable item for the most part has its own specific purpose that separates it from the rest as unique.
-An in-game season system, where you experience all 4 seasons of the year, each of which can influence the gameplay.
(Currently, it's really only winter that feels like it plays a major role, but hopefully eventually the other seasons will offer additional specific gameplay opportunities.)
-Some mechanics, like the hunger/thirst system, have a surprising amount of depth. You actually need to eat a variety of foods to stay healthy. You can't just survive off of an endless amount of one food type, like you could in other games.

Cons:
-The zombie AI is dreadful. If you even hit them once, they'll run away like 50 feet, stop, then come running back, roaring at you as if they just remembered you still exist.
-The hit registration on many of the weapons are really narrow and unreliable. Unless you're standing still, face-to-face with a zombie or animal, it's more likely than not that your melee attacks will miss altogether.
-The actual base-building is really glitchy, especially when placing down walls and windows. The outline keeps jumping around making it hard to place properly.
-Crafting needs to be a bit more streamlined. Too often, you run into instances where if you want to craft multiples of something, say turning stone into sand, you can't simply drop down 10 rocks and get back 100 sand, you need to do it all 1-by-1. It's needlessly time-consuming.
-The in-game tutorial is dreadful, completely unhelpful. I have a fair bit of experience with survival sandbox/base-building games, and I still was confused by this game. I ended up watching a few YouTube walkthroughs to get started, and while I'm grateful to the community for making those, it shouldn't be the community's responsibility to do what the developer didn't.

I know it may seem like I'm coming off as overly negative, but I honestly do feel the game has a lot of potential. What major problems it has, the developer can easily fix over the course of this early access period, if they want to. Whether or not they will though remains to be seen.

My full video review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23W2FDnDzqQ

Before getting to the pros & cons, let me just say there is a good game to be found here. The problem is, it's buried beneath layers of flawed AI design and a plethora of still-unfixed bugs, among other things. The problem is that the developers shoved this out way too early. This game needed another few weeks or months of work before releasing, because this game has faults that no simple handful of bug fix patches are going to necessarily fix.

Pros:
-The Prohibition-era aesthetic is one that's rarely explored in videogame form, and from a historical angle, this game is a pretty accurate (if obviously exaggerated) depiction of said era.
-The visual quality is impeccable, no complaints there, especially during mob boss sit-downs.
-The soundtrack likewise is a joy to listen to.
-The overall city management is pretty well handled, although not quite as elaborate as other prominent business/city simulator games.
-The companion characters are surprisingly detailed and memorable.

Cons:
-Building upgrades have almost no meaningful variety to them. While each building technically has its own unique upgrades, they all fulfill nearly identical purposes across the board, distinguishable really only by their visual icons.
-There is no automation for any task. You better love handling everything manually without exception, because that's effectively the only playstyle this game supports, even if it's for something as minor as handling a customer who might secretly be a government spy looking to bust you for breaking prohibition. I hire bartenders for a reason. What's the point in paying AI staff to work for me if they won't even handle anything? This kind of thing gets really annoying the 100th time it happens in a single game.
-The game will frequently soft crash during combat sequences. I've had a single character continue to spray bullets for upwards of 5 minutes at a time nonstop, just looping the animation nonstop.
-Hope you really love seeing the same lethal finisher animation again and again, because your character seemingly only has two: 1 for their primary weapon, and 1 for their melee. My character just cackled insanely like Mark Hamill's Joker while spraying bullets into the enemy's chest, or slitting their throat with a knife. With the cackling, it was kind of creepy over time.
-The skill trees for both the player character and the NPCs you hire are laughably simplistic. It felt like an honestly good concept that was given almost no depth, when the game could've really benefited from having more depth.

This goes to my biggest overall gripe with this game. It doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Does it want to be a more streamlined action-driven XCOM 2 like experience? Or does it want to be this slow methodical experience that appeals to more traditional RPG and city simulator type players? The end result feels like a failure on both ends.
I do not hate this game, there are some aspects I really enjoy. It is on the verge of being what I would consider an amazing game. But its lack of focus, and overall mediocre quality even now, almost 3 weeks after its initial launch, means I sadly cannot recommend it to anyone in its present state.

My best wishes to the Romero Games staff. The fact that you guys were able to work on this game during this time is a testament to your dedication and work ethic. I just wish your team was allowed a little more time to focus on polishing what is otherwise a very solid game.

(For my full thoughts on the game, I put out a video review, linked below.)
https://youtu.be/XMXmJyZIQk8

Pros:
-The winter lodge aesthetic looks really nice at times.
-The voice acting is decent, although nothing memorable.
-Some of the puzzles are decent, others are meh.

Cons: (oh where to start...)
-This is probably one of the buggiest games I've seen all year, tied with Marvel's Avengers.
-The story development and dialogue at times is completely bizarre, not unlike Ride To Hell: Retribution.
Things just happen haphazardly for no reason, and the game expects you to just go alone with it.
-The player is given no reason to either like the main protagonist, nor care what happens to her.
-The animation quality is borderline subpar in many areas.
-The gameplay devolves into endless repetition that may drive you as insane as its villains.

Overall: Speaking as someone who greatly enjoyed the prior game, Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Remothered: Broken Porcelain does little to expand and improve on the foundations of its predecessor. It ultimately goes farther in the opposite direction. It's a boring, sometimes hilariously bad horror game that fails to scare anyone after its first few halfway decent attempts.

Edit: After the first hour, the game became so boring that while I was streaming it to my friends via Discord, that my friends began literally asking me to end it because of how boring it was. That is, when we weren't alternatively busy hurting ourselves laughing so hard at some of the weirder bugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmpfBusBsk

Pros:
-Fun platforming puzzles
-Decent although remarkably easy boss battles
-Art style is quite impressive.
-Soundtrack is on-point

Cons:
-The dialog isn't always as clever as the game clearly thinks it is.
-The character has an almost insane amount of health compared to most other 3D platformer games.
-The game is prone to occasional crashes and bugs.
-Lots of frame drops during transition areas.

Full review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7YElEwiauE

Phasmophobia takes an interesting and fairly unique approach to the co-op horror game subgenre, but it's definitely not without its faults.

Pros:
-A very interesting core game mechanic of jotting down observations about the ghost's activities in your in-game journal in order to score points at the end of the match.
-Each ghost offers a fair amount of gameplay variety, as do the maps themselves.
-The strong focus on communication, both to uncover clues and for teamwork purposes, adds to the immersion.
-Sound design definitely stands out.
-Player progression is a thing and is pretty well handled.

Cons:
-Networking and general optimization isn't great, lots of bugs, exploits, and crashes.
-The in-game tutorial is terrible and does a poor job explaining several things you need to know.
Players are oftentimes better served learning from YouTube let's plays than the in-game tutorial.
-Ghosts have a very limited number of animations. Get used to seeing the same jumpscare every single time.
-The process of identifying the ghost in your journal is far too simplistic at present, only requiring 3 basic symptoms. The mechanic needs a little more fleshing out and more detail.

Overall:
Phasmophobia is quite an enjoyable early access game. It has all the telltale bugs and issues of any early access game, and I do sincerely hope the game elaborates and adds onto its current map pool, ghost lineup, and ghost-hunting tools, to add even more gameplay variety in future.

I also put out a 20 min video review on this game, so if you're looking for my full thoughts on it, a link is provided below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMfyWJLdNWA

Also an updated video discussing the state of the game in 2021:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWPGVH7c1Kk