Recent reviews by <LBB>Xolia

You will log in to a symphony of butt floss bikinis, but if that’s your thing, then this is your game.

If you’re okay with women in battle bikinis blasting aliens with spells and sci-fi guns, The First Descendant is actually a pretty fun ride.

It’s basically Destiny with magic, a sprinkle of Once Human weirdness, and a whole lot of visual flair. Gorgeous environments, slick character design, cool monsters—it’s all here.
The character/gun build system is deep, with plenty of community help if you're into min-maxing. I've got over 100 hours in, and I still haven’t unlocked the full endgame.

The Good:
Beautiful graphics and effects—characters, maps, monsters all look amazing.

Build variety is fun and flexible. Lots of room for experimenting.

Long progression if you’re into grinding and unlocking stuff.

The Bad:
– The game is definitely over-sexualized. Expect impractical outfits, lots of skin, and plenty of jiggle physics.
– It can get grindy. Some materials and upgrades will have you farming the same missions over and over.
– Progression often nudges you out of your comfort zone. You’ll need to play different characters and try new weapons to move forward.

The Ugly:
Nothing major—it’s a solid game, just be ready for a sparkly, grind-heavy time.

If you like Destiny or Once Human, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. I’d recommend both of those first, but hey—this one’s free, so give it a shot.

And if you do? Maybe drop some cash on your favorite character and a growth pack. It helps.

[edited after completing my first season]
I would recommend Once Human. If you like Fallout 76 or Destiny, you might like Once Human. The main issue is, finding a server that has enough room for you and all of your friends to play on. You might have to wait until a new server pops up, and you are all online and you all join on the same day.

if you plan on only playing by yourself, I recommend the game. It has a generally fun game loop, and nice visuals. If you like Destiny, but want something a bit easier, you'll like this. Other than problems playing with friends, I would call this game "What Fallout 76 should have been". If you like Fallout 76, you will probably like this game.

The good the bad and the ugly:
The good:
Good general game loop, go out and just do what you enjoy and you will get levels, and items and junk and stuff.
when you can play with friends, it does play well with friends. The general "defend the thing" scenarios are good. The dungeons with friends are good and the boss fights are okay.
Client performance is generally good. I'm able to play at very high settings on a 3080 stock card.
The game has better community features than Fallout 76, but these are hampered by perceptively low server populations.

The bad:
Server performance hits unacceptable levels when doing end game PVE content called "Prime Wars" becoming unplayable. As a community we addressed a lot of it by 1) having people not teleport to the war 2) do not build fields of fences and 3) cleanup buildings after the war is over.
Forcing the metering of the season is annoying. It blocks you from progressing if you get a chance to binge play a weekend. If you join later in the season, this isn't a problem.
Group size of 4 (this might not be a bad for you) but I generally want to play with 5 or more people. Would be nice to have more flexibility here or content geared to "raids" like in other games.
The Once Human version of a guild is a "Hive" and can only have 8 people. Far too low.
The servers "feel" empty even when they say they are full. This can lead to not enough players for end game content, even on a "full" server. I also almost never see anyone other than the 8 members of my hive.
There was a major bug related to housing that blocked myself and a few friends from playing effectively. They did compensate us, and eventually fixed it, but it took 4+ days to fix. UPDATE: I have only once encountered a problem like this in the ~6weeks I have played.

The Ugly
Server player counts per server are too low, and at the same time, server performance in end game content is almost intolerable. End game wars target 60 players, the server can start dying at only 30. On top of that, the server feels empty.
Cannot play with friends. If you play for a weekend and have a good time and tell a friend it is likely you will need to re-roll on a new, underpopulated server to be able to play together.

The game is F2P. Don't let my review stop you from trying it. If it looks interesting. Download it and give it a try. there is nothing to lose here.

I would recommend MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries to anyone who is a fan of the series, and looking for some progression aspects, in the form of building up wealth, mechs etc. The game seems to generate most of the missions randomly which can get a little old. I strongly recommend the DLCs which have better designed missions in them. If you played this game vanilla, I recommend a second try with the DLCs.

The good:
The DLC missions are pretty good.
Multiplayer is excellent!
Building mechs is fun! But I wish there was more flexibility.
Walking through Battletech universe history as the years go by in the game. The news reports are fun.
The DLC introducing melee combat is a MUST HAVE. The Melee Combat is very satisfying.
All mech weights are valuable. Even having player driven light mechs in heavyweight battles can be good.
You can choose your own difficulty here. You can go in overweight on a mission and curb stomp it or go underweight, or even with less than 4 mechs to make it more difficult.

The bad:
Not entirely bug free there is the occasional crash, or people losing the ability to lock targets in multiplayer.
The vanilla missions can get repetitive.
It is hard to find what you are looking for. For example, you see a news article about a new mech in this region of space, you go there and find nothing, then 10 in game years later when you have completely forgotten about it, "Oh look! There is that mech/item I read about. Too bad I don't care anymore!"
Being a neutral merc isn't a great option profit wise, but siding with a house, while very profitable, can cause people to miss out on a large part of the game and get bored quickly. Would be nice to have better negoiation based on your overall level rather than how much they like you.
Would be nice to scale up, have missions with more than 4 (a lance) of mechs like 12 (a company) of mechs. In all the old books most of them followed 12 person merc companies rather than 4 person lances.
It is difficult to be a "mech collector" as it becomes prohibitively expensive quickly.
The pre-mission intelligence is low and the missions are often completely random which makes it super difficult to tailor pick your forces to the mission at hand. Sometimes you are forced to tick a square peg into a round hole.

The ugly:
Nothing! When I first played vanilla it got old pretty fast, but I've put weeks into it with the DLCs and still going strong.

If you are a fan of the battletech universe, you will like this game. If you are looking for fast paced, mecha combat you will NOT like this game. The DLCs are important to the experience, in particular the melee combat one.

Stranded Alien Dawn is your typical early access colony manager, it has the minimum amount of features and a twist where there is an "end" where you build up and then build down to have your people escape one by one. It isn't finished, so if you are not a fan of "Early access" just wait for it to come out. It is on the right track and not feature complete.

The good:
The build system is pretty good. Looks like the one from the Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo etc which is pretty good.
The mechanic of "building down" at the end is pretty cool. It isn't done yet, there needs to be more automation in place, but it is a new twist to your typical build up.

The bad:
Not very replayable. The characaters are static, and the maps are not procedural. A single playthrough should do it for you.
The map is kinda too big. There is no way you'll use it all.
Scale is small, you never really get more than 10 survivors.
Game isn't "done" yet. but it is on the right track.

The ugly:
Nothing really. It is a pretty good game with a good future.

If you are interested in the game, but haven't played Rimworld or Going Medieval I would recommend playing those first, they are better games (at the time of this review) but this game has future potential and is a pretty good game. I would just recommend Rimworld or Going Medieval over this one at this time.

I have just over 1000 hrs played on this game on Epic. I recently purchased it again on Steam to use on SteamDeck. This review covers my whole experience with Satisfactory.

I strongly recommend Satisfactory, it is one of the greatest games I have ever played. You will like this game if you have OCD, enjoy building/exploring and enjoy playing with friends.

You may not enjoy this game if you are looking for deep combat, or character progression, a story, a survival game or challenging mechanics.

The good:
Good visuals, maybe not astounding, but good.
The progression of building. There are 9 tiers (at the time of this writing) to work through and it will take you hours and hours and hours to get through it.
Excellent game world which allows for some fun exploration.
You get to apply math in a game. Math teachers take note!
It is super fun to build factories with your friends and see how each of you solve problems differently. This leads to wanting to tear it all down and use the best from everyone and do it again!
Dedicated Server support
This runs well on Steam Deck.


The bad:
Combat is easy and not frequent.
There is no story to the game (yet).
This runs well on Steam Deck, but the controls are not iron clad, you'll need to use the touch screen for inventory management.

TL;DR Stop reading this and play this game.

Stray is proof that less is more when it comes to games. The story is short and sweet, you could probably finish it in one marathon sitting but it is worth it. This is a different take, and lets you watch a story unfold from a different vantage point. I play a lot of games, and this was a refreshing different take and nothing but a joy to play.

The good:
Story
Characters
Art
This is something different.

The bad:
Nothing. Seriously, there is nothing bad about this game. Some might think it is too short maybe?

The ugly:
Nothing, seriously, nothing ugly about this game.

In the end, this is the best game I've written a review for in a while. Bravo! Bravo! In a world of half finished, grandiose yet missing the target games I've played on Steam in the last few years this is a welcome breath of fresh air and proof that your game doesn't need to try to cure cancer to be great!

We played several rounds of this on vacation with friends and it was a blast! It works like Jackbox games do. One computer runs this on the TV while everyone signs into a website using phones and tablets. You write your own riffs and watch them together and have a great laugh!

The funnest part is that there is a bot player using actual riffs from the Rifftrax crew. Sometimes the bot wins! What can I say, they have some great jokes!

Well worth the money, nice to have around if you ever have a few people visit.

Just some context, I played EVE many years in the past so consider this a long time away returning player. I liked it before and like it even more now.

The good:
Visuals are still good, the space backgrounds are nice.
Music was awesome before, still awesome now.
Deep, deep ULTRA deep gameplay. It is a game you will never master. That being said, it is hard to learn.
Much more help for new players than before. Super helpful new player channel with near instant answers to questions and a lot of documentation to help new players.
Much more PVE content. If you just want to fly around high sec space and have some space adventures you can! It is much more "carebear" friendly.
Good community. The community is welcoming.
Scratches that empire building itch, even if you just want to stay in high sec space.
A lot of new ways for new players to help close the skill point gap.
Tutorials and decently good tutorials. Long ago, there was nothing like this, now the new player experience is 1000x better. Newbie quest lines help get you the basics for several ways to play.
Exploration, this wasn't around when I played long ago. It is a solo friendly way to play at a pace you would like, and has very low barrier of entry.

The bad:
Steep learning curve, but tempered with helpful community and good documentation.
Without putting in some money for starter packs plex etc, progression can be *painfully* slow for a new player.
More than half of the documentation is expecting your character to have a lot more skills than you would as a new player, be sure to check in the new player chat anything you are planning to invest in. They can help you with the fine print.
Ganks still exist, but that can be a good thing (ganking can be fun). Also, you get a lot more ships as a newbie now so getting ganked doesn't have the same impact as it did in the past for new players.
You can make a bad ship, but tempered with helpful rookie channels and documentation.

The ugly:
Nothing really. It is a good game, you should try it!

Even years later, this game is still a lot of fun. If you finish it and want to play again, download some mods and play what seems like a new game. If you like fallout 3, you will like this one.

The good:
Decent story, with good characters.
Multiple endings, there is likely one for your liking.
Excellent modding community, even years after release.
With all the DLCs a lot of content, you will get your money's worth here.

The bad:
Gunplay is pretty bland without using mods. Great if you use mods.

The ugly:
none!

It is a great game. If you haven't played it, play it you will probably like it!

I picked up this game as a joke, but turned out liking it! While it has excellent character customization and you can play dress up with your unrealistic succubi, it is a decent hack and slash game, loot chaser. The difficulty is low, but fun to chop your way through the undead on your way to reclaim the land and chase some gear upgrades.

The good:
Excellent character visuals.
Mindless hack and slash fun.
Consistent updates with new content and fixes. It is only getting better.

The bad:
Has some bugs, pathing of your minions for example. Nothing game breaking.

The ugly:
None, its a pretty good game.