Recent reviews by ZedFury

The best things about Stellaris is that it's backed by a developer that is devoted to its product. There are constant DLCs and the game has evolved over the years - for the better. The game itself is insanely fun with unlimited replay value. I find myself always coming back to Stellaris and enjoying my conquest of the galaxy, over and again, every time. It's a brilliant game with a brilliant team.

As of Early Access September 6, 2021

Not quite the game I had thought it would be. With that said, I basically thought this was going to be Apex Legends, with a whole bunch of customization and WOD Vampire clan content set in a thriving old world urban environment - which is what the trailers seem to advertise.

The gameplay feels a bit clunky, the matches feel a bit empty, sterile, and too monotonous (spray and pray).

The good thing is that it gives me some hope for Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2.

As of August 24, 2021

Been playing for about 5 hours now and I'm definitely having fun. Fireteams are three people, so if you're usually running solo, you won't be waiting in the matchmaking queue very long... I've been finding teams pretty instant.

Basically, you pick a class/role and you kill bugs through mission areas. Each mission has a pre-defined map, but having run the same missions over and again, the paths you take to certain objectives can change from match to match - this slightly changes things up, so you can't totally anticipate where the next fight is going to be. For some encounters, you can, and it helps to prepare for what you're about to go up against.

There's some limited customization for your character and you can skill/level/gear up your role and switch between them before any match. Your character has a combat rating that improves as you mod up your character's weapons and their skills. I went from a fairly clunky squishy gunner to a mutha-flippin'-juggernaut in less than fire hours of gameplay.

If you've got a well-oiled squad of friends, there's always the challenge card system, which adds a challenge to the match for rewards. We just went through a round where someone used the 'all xenos are exploders' challenge card and that was both intense, chaotic, and a helluva good time.

It's third-person perspective, but you can right-click-zoom for more precise aim, which puts you in first-person.

Overall, its fun, especially if you're playing with friends, but also a good time doing pick up groups as a solo act. I absolutely recommend this game. Sheesh, if the global gameplay mechanic was more like Destiny, the game would be mindblowing.

This looks similar to Civilization VI, but, it's got it's own thing going.

Mechanically, it plays similar to Civ VI with some other basic similarities that are often common to these types of turn-based strategy games: explore, earn points, advance to next age, research technologies, etc.

There is a slight adjustment curve if you're coming from a game like Civ VI; I expected to build worker units and have them develop the tiles within your territory, but Humankind avoids that by just letting you build outward directly on the tile (no workers needed).

I like that you can create you own avatar, which seems to earn different outfits based on the cultures you choose during game play and as you advance through the ages. Unlike Civ VI, you don't start with an existing civilization (i.e. US, India, Aztecs, etc.), instead, you choose aspects of them as you advance through the game - one per player, so there's a competition for the really good ones (these aspects also come with special/unit combat units).

As a fan of Civilization VI, I really like Humankind. Humankind has enough uniqueness to it to be different than Civ VI and it's worth picking up if you like these kinds of games.

As of official release August 9, 2021, I've played a little over an hour and my biggest takeaway is that it's a very detailed management simulation. The graphics feel somewhat antiquated, and the gameplay a bit clunky, but again, the management aspect of the game is very well thought out and detailed. I don't see this as a very casual game, rather, something you need to devote a lot of time to, like playing a meaningful game of high risk chess. If you're into detailed micro-management, you'll likely be into this game. I initially thought this would be a game somewhat similar to Empire of Sin, but they're not alike.

As of June 17, 2021 this game is still in development. I have had a bunch of fun playing the game, but it's not yet complete. The campaign is incredibly short and the build mechanics seem incomplete with some things, like upgrades, having yet to be implemented.

I very much look forward to the completion of this game. If you're interested in supporting the developer through what could potentially be a very fun game, then I recommend picking this up. At this time, the game is playable, but clearly not complete.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

After about two hours of gameplay, specifically the campaign, I'm enjoying it. As far as a criminal enterprise simulator goes, this is fun. There's a slight slope of a learning curve to certain mechanics that you might miss if you don't read the instructions, which appear in an open book icon at the top left of your screen. The campaign doesn't exactly take you through these mechanics.

OVERVIEW

The game seems to focus mainly around building your criminal organization mainly through establishing a thriving economic network: build businesses, make money, expand your territorial control for more business opportunities. The bread and butter of your criminal empire are plantations where you grow your drug crops and interconnect them with distribution areas (airfields, seaports, etc.) for dirty money that you'll need to launder through legitimate businesses that you can also establish for legal money.

You'll also be able to hire lieutenants to assist your captain or captains (?), each with their own abilities. Increase their experience to be able to access more of their abilities.

CONS

I wish you could delete roads or maybe I'm missing the option to delete them. It wasn't until after I built my first few farms and connected them to a warehouse that I realized that there should be a specific way that farms and warehouses should be oriented in order to maximize the effectiveness of their transportation system. Without being able to delete these roads, they end up cluttering the landscape and make it difficult to place future structures or even tidy up messy placement.

As of February 10, 2021 Valheim is still in Early Access and there's a whole lot of hype surrounding it, but I'm not entirely sold just yet.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I've got the game maxed out on graphics quality and it's a bit pixelated. The trailer graphics look a lot more crisp, but I think that's just due to many zoomed-out shots. It's not a game-breaker, especially if you're coming from Minecraft, but if you're dropping in from Grounded, Conan Exiles, etc. you're gold to go cold turkey over the lower grade graphics.

2.5 HOURS IN

I've spent a great deal of time harvesting raw materials and attempting to build a base camp. At this time, you don't really get much guidance on where you should go and what you should do, which will likely be frustrating for those who aren't used to survival sims.

Combat is a bit clunky and I've died a few times already from loss of stamina. I went swimming and drowned (no stam). Got into a fight and couldn't evade (no stam), became over-encumbered and loss stam, then ganked by one of those tree ents (no stam).

I also found the building system to be a bit wonky. There's a snap-to function that can be toggled, but at the same time, my structure still ended up being disjointed when I snapped all the walls to the floors. Maybe at this point I'm just too spoiled with the Grounded build system (which is also snap-to).

Most of the trailer content, I have not yet encountered. I'm still running around in my starter rags and my house looks like it's floating because the terrain isn't level and for the life of me I don't see any foundation pieces to create a level platform on the terrain prior to building.

RECOMMENDATION

I'm recommending this game because it has potential and it's still Early Access. I might want to lure a friend into game and see how that goes. If they can tidy-up the crafting/build system and make the combat less clunky - I'll be quite happy.

EDIT: 7 HOURS IN

Alright, well, after 7 hours, I'm having a bit more fun. I figured out how to level the ground in order to better place a structure, so I've got a nice habitable long house. At this point, I'm looking for more content. I suspect I'll have to start venturing much further away from my initial camp, which will require me to max out my equipment, which in turn requires me to harvest resource and build more expansions to my work bench.

The game definitely has its potential and I stand by my recommendation.

As of February 10, 2021, Foundation is an Early Access Game and I'm enjoying it so far.

PROS:

Foundation is artistically very appealing and I mostly enjoy the city-building (with some clear cons listed below). At this point, it's not at all difficult to make a profitable economy, but you'll soon find yourself running out of gold storage - forcing you to expand your Lord's Manor in order to add more components (basically parts of the manor) that can serve as treasuries (to increase your gold cap).

CONS:

There are in-game mechanics that can be frustrating, specifically the fact that your people build their own housing (and improve and expand their housing based on their "citizenship" status) and seem to require a very large space to do so. This can really curtail your city-building efforts and even distort your original city design/plan.

And it's not enough to just designate some distant tract of land for a future suburb. Your people (depending on their citizenship status/rank) can get really picky when it comes to their housing needs. They like living close to work and the higher their status, the better environmental quality they desire. This requires you to tediously and strategically coordinate citizen rank to their job and their job location.

If, for example. you've promoted a citizen, who lives near a low environmentally quality area because they that's just the nature of their job, then you'll quickly find their happiness dwindling - which will bring down your overall happiness rating. And with a low enough rating, your people will leave, which can begin to snowball into bigger issues. And this kind of micro-managing can be discouraging.

Another problem that I'm running into is the random spawning of certain critical minerals (like gold, marble, iron, etc.). In every game I've started so far, iron, a very early game resource has never spawned withing reach, which severely limits your ability to produce necessary tools and weapons - and that leads to your progress slowing or stifling.

RECOMMENDING

I choose to recommend this game as there are more pros than cons and it's a work in progress. The final release version of this game will likely be a very fun game to play.

Writing this as of February 8, 2021. Taking into consideration that this game is still being developed and just made available via Early Release, it certainly has potential. I'm choosing to recommend this game because it has potential - but, you may want to wait for that potential to come along. As of right now, Becastled is playable, however, there needs to be some changes to the in-game mechanics in order for me to be completely sold on the concept.

The concept of the game is basically to use the daylight hours to rapidly build, develop, and fortify your little castle town before nightfall. Every night, your castle will come under siege by an army of blue guys, which increases in size and power each passing night.

The gameplay options allow you to choose how many days to play through, which leads me to believe that the general idea of the game is to survive a specific amount of time. It can get frustrating, especially for those who want a more relaxed colony building type of game.

Even for the more masochistic types out there who like a challenge and like to be punished, the in-game mechanics that I experienced were not developed enough to allow me to survive beyond maybe 6 or so nights. I'm not sure if this was intended, or if it was a bug, but my population capped off at 26 people despite building enough houses to house at least twice that number. With a pop cap and only so many soldiers, I was eventually overrun by a much larger enemy army.

Again, if you're reading this around the time that I'm writing, it's a work in progress and I would recommend waiting for a more polished game. I like to support game developers and while some may hold the philosophy that this is not Kickstarter (or some other crowdfunding platform), I've come to expect that some indie developers have come to rely on the financial support of the gaming community, through platforms like Steam, in order to demo and further develop a game concept.

To the developers, Mana Potion Studios, love the art style and the somewhat hardcore 'see how long you can survive' concept is neat, but I suspect many gamers might come to expect this game to focus more on the base/colony-building aspect (and all that comes with it, including thoughtful placement of structures that eats up day time). If I had more time and better freedom of defense structure placement, the game would have been more enjoyable for me. Thanks.