Recent reviews by Rusty

It's awesome and very addicting. Way better optimised than ARK ever was. The artstyle is amazing and the systems feel well balanced out and put together, so you can easily explore and learn the game without the necessity to look up online guides. It's been a while since I just enjoyed exploring a world and learning as I go.

So I had hoped that the game would have some proper Updates by now, addressing the major problems and bugs that occur on the regular. But that just doesn't seem to be happening. While there's a good foundation here, my previous assessment was that waiting for patch 1.7 to play might fix things but I don't really see that happening. While some of the Warfare issues have been alleviated with some of the bugfixes, there's still some major issues here.

For one your armies teleport around. Especially in colonial regions, where an uprising for Colonial Rights can kick you out if you're unlucky because your Army after a naval invasion or despite ports in the area can't be there and just telports across half of Africa, instead of stomping out the Uprising.

In other situations with the front moving forward, the game decides that your armies that have just been at the front and pushed the enemy back, now need time to move to the front. So while you're winning it can happen, that your armies are being pushed back out because they can't reach the frontline quick enough as the enemy army just moves past them somehow. Making it a race to see if they can reach the frontlines again, before you're completely sieged out.

Naval warfare also makes little to no sense, often stopping much needed naval invasions dead in their tracks with fifty inconclusive battles at the sea that take forever, as the enemy AI cycles more and more fleets into the fight, so you can never stop fighting them. At the same time if your Commanders are defeated, they gain the defeated tag which theoretically should lift when the manpower of their fleet exceeds half again. But that's only true if they move back to their homeport. Which they don't. They go to the nearest, leaving the defeated flag on them forever or until you recruit a new admiral so you can move the fleet back to their homeport again. Which just baffles the mind.

So colonial and warfare mechanics are still the most problematic parts of this game, as everything about it is extremely unpredictable.

More minor gripes are that some goods just don't seem to be very good. Something as game changing in reality as Electricity, seems rather boring in the game. But I got some hopes for that at least, since they changed the Barbed Wire technology (for your ranches) from being introduced in a Level 4 tech (where you literally start building Zepplins in other techs with) to a Level 2 one. So I think some rebalancing might occur in the future with that as well. As it stands at the moment goods like Iron, Coal and Wood are still reigning supreme. And speaking of Goods and Warfare, all the warfare goods also seem extremely lackluster already from a baseline system. I think overall the problem also seems to be that there is no real stockpiling mechanics in the game itself so far. Making the 19th century feel like a perfect on time delivery economy. Which it really wasn't. So even the economical aspect feels odd, as seasons would've still been a major factor in all operations, but here all the seasons feel the same.

So dunno... maybe check back with this game at 2.0? Maybe then they'll have fixed the issues with teleporting armies and warfare can be somewhat reliably used.

If all you need is a timekiller in the early 20th century London with Vampires I can recommend this game, but everyone that claims that the story is anything to write home about is lying to you or themselves. The dialogue seems to be quite busy with trying to convey that you are indeed in the Victorian era, instead of actually making sense. As an example during a certain sequence the Protagonist is grieving. A sidecharacter comes along and he proclaims that he needs to move past this grief. The sidecharacter implores him to not let go of what makes him human so quickly. He then agrees and decides to hold onto this feeling, only for the same sidecharacter in the same dialogue tree to remind him that their enemies know that Vampires are weakest when in grief and that he needs to overcome this.

Half the bloody time I didn't know what was going on or why Jonathan Reid suddenly knows a person upon first time meeting them, even though he only briefly heard about them in some branched off dialogue or written of in one of the many many letter collectibles. The dialogue is the one I will harp on about the most, because it's so weird, awkward and confusing. At a certain point I just decided to skip most of it, by just pressing forward and reading the subtitles as I don't care much for the delivery of this nonsense only to learn that you skip the entire persons dialogue until your reply happens. Which isn't much by a longshot. But that means that you're missing half the dialogue and so the game is holding you hostage as you have to explore these dialogue trees and suffer through their delivery. A better system there would work wonders for my personal enjoyment of the game.

The story itself could be intriguing but it is the same stuff as ever. Vampires, ghouls, secret societies and a plague. At least some of the people in the game wear their masks, so maybe some good role models here? Anywho. The neat twist with Jonathan being their doctor and that their XP value goes up when you decide to treat and get invested in them could be intriguing, if you could trust the game that those characters will survive and not just get knocked off with one of the story beats. One character I simply decided to erase the memory of for example lost the 6k XP value because for some reason that character turned into a Skal the night after. Which brings me to the weird levelling up system. To level up you need to rest. Which makes a night pass and thus every time you actually wanna spend your XP you gotta decide whether or not you can survive the 12 lvl higher monsters still in exchange for possibly having enough time to follow the story without everything going down the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The gameplay itself is trying my patience at times as it's sometimes quite difficult to figure out what exactly has killed you now, as it isn't that visually clear about it as for example Dark Souls, which it tries to ape with the stamina and dodging mechanics. The savepoints though got your back here and if you remember to turn of the auto-lock on "feature" you can actually control your character alright. It can become quite fun to use your abilities, but the way the level up system is implemented you can't for example really crave one ability just needing a little bit more of extra XP and then decide it's time for your best friend Chucky to go and give you his life force, without you then going to bed like a good little Vampire Doctor and investing the points only to wake up and having to brew medicine for the 20 or so people who have gotten sick with something and then hand it out to them by running across the entire map, so you can either keep the districts afloat or at least chug their blood later on.

A refinement of this level up system and the dichotomy of drinking other peoples blood and making it more obvious what your choices entail throughout the story could make this more enjoyable. So it's overall a neat exploration of a new mechanic, but overall too much of a hassle. It needs some more refinement to be interesting and rewarding, as even the Vampire powers feel a bit lacking, considering that just to survive you need to sink most your points into health and stamina upgrades and there is little leftover for the abilities that are supposed to make those fights easier. Which they don't really manage to do in the first place.

So I can't really recommend it unless as mentioned at the start, you just need a Vampire timewasting game in early 20th century London to keep you busy until the new Vampire: The Masquerade comes out.

Liberated a town to deliver 9 Coffee beans and immediately proceeded to collect taxes. 10/10.

Pretty good.

Pro:
- You get to play with Sinon

Con:
- You got to suffer through Kirito's monologues.

To be honest though, the game is fun as long as it allows you to just play it. During the first hour of the game I was seriously considering to just stop playing and uninstall, considering all the dialogues you have to suffer through. The game basically begins with a tutorial where you can have a lot of fun with gunplay and stuff, but there are constantly characters popping up who demand that you stop the enjoyable activity of just shooting things and think they have incredibly valuable information. After the first three dialogues I basically skipped everything and it still took me about an hour to get back to the fun gameplay portion.

The game itself also constantly pulls the brakes so you have to go through another dialogue and another and another... stuff you can happily skip without missing anything, considering most of it is just about the glorious friendship and how great everything and everybody is... if you're a fan of the characters from the show and always wanted to insert your own OC into the story who everyone appreciates and wants to help out I think this game might actually nail that, but it wasn't for me personally.

The Gameplay itself is solid though and I have tons of fun just idly running through the different areas of the wasteland and shooting everything that's appearing in front of me. It's kinda sad though that the world isn't just constantly populated by the enemy A.I. though and they rather spawn in when you get close, making a sniper build less viable. Honestly I had hoped to actually shoot my enemies from afar, but the game is not well equipped to handle that. Instead every battle will get into close quarters fairly quickly. Of course you can try to keep your distance, but most of the time all the enemies are way faster than you are and will be within melee range within seconds of them noticing you, so that's a little bit of a downside but I can still recommend Fatal Bullet for everybody who enjoys dungeon crawlers and wished for one in third person with guns.

This game is a fun little timewaster to enjoy on your own or with friends. The mechanics are solid and relatively intuitive to learn. Basically it's like worms, only with a bit more variety in weapons and instead of worms you get tanks to shoot at one another with. There is an incredibly large variety of different weapons to unlock as you progress through the game, as well as a level up mechanic which is rather mystifying for me, considering this isn't really so good to actually have a fair game here.

Considering the weapons are bound to it as well, you can easily be outclassed in a Deathmatch not only by gaming experience, but also the weapons and levelups for the tanks itself, which decide on how steep a hill you can drive, how far you can drive, how much damage you deal, health you have and how many weapons you get per crate.

On the bright side though there's a game mode that allows for an even playing field and a wider variety of game modes, where you not only have to shoot one another but also can try to shoot a ball into the goal, hit targets to survive and quite a bit more even. So I can recommend this game for anyone who likes the game concept of Worms basically.

It's hard to figure out whether or not to actually recommend this game. I tend to say no, as there are some major issues with the game, but it has some interesting basic concepts as well. These get undermined though due to the poor game mechanics and the overall apparently lackluster performance of the game, the characters and the storyline if there even is one. So I guess I won't recommend this game.

If you're looking for a game to simply waste a little bit of time on, it could probably serve but it really isn't all that great. On the bright side you have the ability to build up a home with a few spots on which you can decide what kind of facility will be built. For that you need to scavenge Resources and Survivors can help you in fights or even get them for you if you call them in over the Radio. This is basically the feature that intrigued me the most, but for some reason the game just doesn't really pick up.

The problem with that is mainly that you need to scavenge for Resources to actually expand your home base, but the Story tries to pull you away immediately. Giving you no time to scavenge for Resources in between, as you get nagged over the Radio all the time to get to the next Story mission instead of getting the most basic Resources to ensure that the Survivors at home continue to survive. You also can't send out Survivors to scavenge on their own really. Or at least I didn't find any option to do so, making all the people at home essentially useless. At times the game even stops dead in it's tracks, as your Survivor gets fatigued and if you have a wounded one home or two wounded at the start of the game, you can't simply go to bed with your Survivor and just skip the night. You actually have to stop playing the game or play with a wounded or fatigued Survivor, which essentially gives you a disadvantage in your ability to survive.

The basic fighting and even movement mechanics are even worse. The game tells you, you can sneak up on Zombies from behind to immediately kill them, the problem with that though is the Zombies seem to have eyes in the back of their heads 90% of the time. Essentially making that feature useless to begin with, as you can't reliably take out Zombies with Stealth, even though the game would profit from that a whole lot, as it is pretty good at killing you.

Combating several Zombies at once is pretty difficult especially alone. As your Stamina will run out and the Zombies swarm you, which is sort of realistic, but escaping Zombies is practically impossible. They run faster than you do and they never run out of Stamina. So the only Option really is to find a nearby car. If there is none, you will have to fight. Considering there's no counter combat you're essentially ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if there are four or more Zombies at a time and you have no gun, as your only option is to mash the button to hit them as often as you can and hope for the best.

Each Zombie though takes several hits before they go down only rarely immediately dying from one hit, but simply lying down on the floor where you have to finish them with a special button prompt, where an animation starts as your character takes his sweet ass time to kill the Zombie on the ground. Making it easy for any other Zombie to interrupt you in the meantime.

Shooting the Zombies is also difficult as the Hitboxes are really weird, often not registering headshots which are obviously the only ones that count and basically the fact that all the guns in the game seem to have an implied misschance even if the Zombie fills out the crosshair.

Naturally there are also even stronger Zombies that you can barely take on at all without the correct Equipment, which makes it even weirder that basically the third or fourth rushed Story mission pits you against an enormous Zombie that basically rips you to shreds if you don't have a shotgun, which you won't get simply by following the Story itself. The weird thing being that this Zombie was at least twice the size of the door, he went through to essentially pin me in a room with no option to escape as the house was also swarmed on all sides with other Zombies killing my Survivor.

That is basically not the end of the game itself though, as you have other Survivors you immediately switch over, but here the linearity of the Story shines through as your next Survivor would be able to start the mission anew, while mourning the loss of his friend that died during the same mission, where he was basically tasked with securing a house where other Survivors were in. Basically starting it anew while you as the player still suffer the consequences as you're now one Survivor down, which is even more of a burden considering it's most likely your best one, as each Survivor has the ability to gain more abilities and upgrade Skills like Shooting and Fighting, basically making it a tiny little bit easier for you to fight the Zombies and scavenge.

Last but not least, the game would certainly have profited from a Multiplayer mode where you can play with a few friends and establish a base with them instead of random NPCs. But as it is it's a Singleplayer game and the Story is barely there. It's basically just a list of chores for you to do, hindering you to explore the open world on your own.

I will certainly recommend this game, but first off I have to warn you that this game is probably very frustrating for any Newcomer to the Series. This is not because it is badly designed, bugged or anything, but rather because it's so utterly complex. This game basically simulates several economies for each race, sector and how you as the player influence it due to your actions. It takes a long time to actually be able to make a difference and that only if you have become familiar with the game. But if you can stick with it and hit your head often enough against the wall that is this games difficulty and make some spreadsheets and notes on the side, you will find the game to be extremely rewarding.

With that warning, you start the game generally with only one ship or two, depending on which start you pick. You basically only have a few Credits and then have to decide on how to spend them to make more money. So you start out with a few Milk runs here and there. Trade a little and slowly start generating Income. Usually you would just trade at first, so you can make some money to buy another ship and remote control to trade with it as well on the side to make more money.

You could also decide to pick up a mission here and there, but until you have gained some experience with the game it's hardly a thing I can recommend to just go and do. The fight missions will usually end with your ship getting destroyed easily, as everything around you is basically bigger and stronger than you are. Charging in head first will inevitably get you killed. Building a station is also something you can't do at first, as you lack the money to buy one and then set it up, not even talking about the ship you need for that. Freight missions can often become impossible for you as well, as your ship isn't fast enough, you haven't explored the Sectors around you yet or your Cargo bay is not designed for that freight. And if you transport people you need a Lifesupport System.

Basically what I'm saying is: The game will not tell you whether you can actually accomplish a mission or not. You have to figure that out for yourself.

Every action you take basically also affects your relationship to the other races surrounding you. So if you shoot down a lot of Argons for example they'll get pissed at you and shoot you down at some point whenever they see you. Antagonising factions, except the ones you can't get around due to circumstances is generally a bad idea as each Race has it's own specific stations you'll probably want to buy at some point and setup elsewhere to make a Profit off of it. You can build a better relationship simply by trading with the race or doing missions for them.

You can also interact with the Stock Exchange, basically buying Company shares or Resource Shares and sell them if you have figured that part out. Depending on your actions you can actually influence that Stock exchange yourself, as company shares actually drop if you shoot down their freighters. And the Supply / Demand for Resources shifts whenever you would destroy or build a station which provides that Resource to the area. Even the Traders you setup can make a difference there.

To summarise:
It's an incredibly well executed Sandbox that can be utterly absorbing if you're able to actually stick with it. Considering it's the most complex game I ever played and even dropped it once in the past, it is hard to not accept anyone who would simply just let this pass by. But in the end it's probably also the best Space Sim out there in which you actually pilot a ship.

The game is enough to kill some time. The twists can be seen coming from miles away, if you have a brain but the art is good and it has some hidden secrets that made the Internet run hogwild for a few days. Essentially though it is basically just a promotion for a bigger came coming up, but as I said ... it's enough to kill some time and considering it's for free I can recommend it.