Recent reviews by Donaghue

In this game, I have been bombed, lasered, roasted, bombed again, pancaked, shot repeatedly, abandoned to vile space cockroaches, made to ride the lightning, bombed some more, and occasionally beaten to death, primarily by other heroes of democracy. They have shown no remorse whatsoever for this treachery, at least none that can be made out over the cackling. These same ♥♥♥♥♥ have carried me effortlessly to level 10 over three or four average sessions. All of them were randos. All of them will be remembered with affection. Thanks, guys. I love you all.

Highly recommended.

I love the features and the ability to tweak things just so, a bit clunky though it may be. But the simple act of moving an icon from one box to another or to/from the desktop often causes the desktop to freeze for ten to twenty seconds. I frequently check the CPU/RAM load and look for crashes, but everything else seems to idle happily along while Easy Desktop is drooling on the floor.

I have a lot of crap that accumulates on my desktop, so it's nice to have that crap tucked away. The trade-off, though, is that I can't do anything else while it works, so what's the point? Not recommended.

Generally I don't lean toward PvP games. When you play online games in Australia, you come to terms with the fact that you'll be dealing with the kind of lag that turns grown Americans into snot-nosed children who post long rants with no punctuation and rail against the steady shrinking of their K/D and corresponding epeen (as they should, this being the internet). Dealing with it, however, doesn't mean you're not still playing the game a second and a half behind the rest of the server, and Hunt: Showdown, is particularly brutal in its punishment of failure.

Or, at least, that's what I assumed from the marketing. Having sat with this game on my wishlist for over a year, admiring the footage of stubbly men in muddy ponchos gunning down undead abominations, yet agonising over the breathless warnings of permadeath and lost progress....I am kicking myself for not buying it a lot sooner. As far as punishment for failure is concerned, H:S is actually pretty tame. Sure, you lose all the gear you had on you when you die, but that stuff is replaced cheaply enough if you've unlocked it. The game throws free characters at you hand over fist, each loaded to the gills with their own equipment (which can be removed and used later, if you're not happy with their loadout); and when they inevitably die at the loathsome touch of malodorous beasts from parts unknowns, nay, the very pits of Hell itself (other players), you still collect half the XP you would have if you'd safely extracted at that point, unlocking new weapons and equipment along the way.

And oh, the gadgets! What do we have here.... Tightly-wound bundles of razor wire that explode messily at the touch of an unwary foot? Check. Dynamite? Check. Bigger, boomier bundles of dynamite? Check. Weird demon bugs that you carry around in your pocket then let loose upon the world so they can tap into your optic nerves, giving you an overview of the area, until such time as you fly them down the back of some unsuspecting player's neck and explode poison (and, on one joyous occasion, a nearby highly-flammable oil barrel) all over them? You're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ right. A syringe full of health? Molotov cocktails? Knives? Throwing knives? Axes? THROWING axes??

Check, check, check, check, check, and check.

Honestly, half the fun of this game for me is picking through all the lovely little bundles of death and then tossing them at undead Louisianian ranchers. The other half is lobbing them at players, who will be lobbing them at you. Did I mention this game is tactical as well as twitch? It is. It is good. You will die a lot, but it's fun.

In summary? Well....I bought it at a steep discount, then blew the money I saved on cosmetic DLCs. Frankly, I can't imagine a better endorsement.

Hmm.

So I downloaded this game at a friend's suggestion knowing nearly nothing about what I was getting myself into. The reviews aren't fantastic, but it's free, so what the hell.

Now obviously I've only played for seven hours while other--dare I say "more polarised"--players have much, much longer than that under their belt, and maybe seven hours isn't giving TC:F a fair shot. To this I say that it may be true, but that's plenty long enough to know that it isn't aimed at my demographic: forty-plus, wife, kids, a full-time job, and a burning desire for games to get to the damn point so that my limited me-time isn't totally wasted.

Ultimately, that is my only real gripe with TC:F. I don't like the grind, and while grinding has always been a part of gaming, some games hide it better than others. TC:F is not one of these. The realisation that almost all progress will be reset at the end of the season was, as I put it to my friend, the final nail in the coffin for me. It's true that you do get to keep your skins and such. But I guess I don't care enough about TC:Fs monkey suits to mine the same rocks for another forty days, just to lose everything else.

If you like kill-on-sight open world PvP and have plenty of time to grind, you'll probably have a blast with this game. I don't, and didn't. As I said, probably not the target demographic. I give it a solid 6 out of 10.

I'm not a particularly picky person when it comes to my games. Despite prolonged and ongoing disappointment with Cyberpunk 2077, for example, I can see the game it might one day be and have hope. Never did I think I would buy a game for A$2.99 (a 90% markdown at the time of this review) and be so disappointed after less than an hour of play that I would request a refund.

What's wrong with you, DICE? Your piece of ♥♥♥♥ game constantly forces me into unspeakably awful combat. I just want to run and jump around the place really fast. If I can't have that, I will get my A$2.99 refunded and buy a box of crackers. The ten minutes I spent eating them trumps forty-five minutes of failing missions because I didn't stop parkouring and punch an idiot NPC the proscribed number of times with the approved combo.

The game is rubbish. A terrible disappointment. Don't buy it. Or buy it anyway, I don't give a toss, it's not my money and I'm not your dad.

From where I'm standing, CDPR have a problem, and the name of that problem, oddly enough, is "The Witcher 3". Those who have played and enjoyed TW3 have experienced the limits of what can currently be achieved with a modern open world RPG, and it is glorious. The trouble with making a game that damn good, however, is that your fans expect you to do it again, and my experience thus far - just a few hours in - is that Cyberpunk 2077 does not equal those lofty standards. Yet.

Among the early reviews on Steam I've read praise and criticism alike that speak to my heart. I have seen no sign of some of the technical issues (ever-present trees, frequent crashes, etc) that have plagued other players, leading me to believe that these might be clientside and not directly related to the game, so maybe look into that before assuming that CP2077's launch is broken. Be aware also that some of the more glaring issues I *did* experience - no lip animation during conversations and invisible guns being the most jarring - have already been patched out, which is promising.

On the other hand, some game features that have been fully integrated and function correctly feel uninspired. At this early juncture the mods, augmentations, hacks and the skill tree mostly revolve around boosting your basic combat stats, debuffing enemy damage resistance, dealing direct damage or distracting enemies; there is little variation on these themes. Where is the cool stuff? We have destructible obstacles in the environment, so why can't I augment myself to punch or charge through them? Or run up walls? Where are our crazy sprint speeds? Xray or thermal vision? Drones? Stealth augmentations?

Then there are the weapons. Since most hostile side missions seem to devolve into gunplay eventually, and since all dropped weapons can be looted, you will quickly find yourself neck-deep in dakka. These, however, are mostly clones of the same three or four guns with slightly altered stats. Admittedly, there is no real need (at normal difficulty, at least) to pore over the minute differences to ensure you have a razor edge over the opposition, but that does beg the question of why CDPR chose to include it at all. And again, where was their creativity? Guns typically fall into the Power or Tech categories, with advantages to enjoy depending on how you work your skill tree, but they are still minor variations on the theme of propelling ammo into targets. I'm yet to see anything that promises to mix things up, such as grenade launchers, flamethrowers, etc, but if pistols, SMGs and shotguns excite you, CP2077 has you covered. Weapon feedback feels great, though, with shotguns in particular feeling, looking and sounding very beefy, knocking enemies down and keeping you on your toes with massive recoil. I love me a future shotty.

There's an argument to be had that this tactical content is something to be encountered later in the game and that CDPR didn't want to unbalance the early experience by making over-powered options available (a weak argument for a singleplayer game in my opinion, but that's a whole other rant). The thing is, powerful options *do* exist at the start of the game but are locked behind level and street cred requirements. That CDPR don't even tease at the possibility of more exciting options makes for a less interesting springboard into Night City and does little to motivate the player who likes to experiment.

There are other ways in which CP2077 feels like it has missed the mark. Vehicle handling is distinctive per vehicle (very good) yet somehow sluggish across the board (very bad). I could compare it to APB:Reloaded, in which driving cars was handled serverside....on laggy, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ servers. Further, vehicle AI pathfinding continues to find the slightest road obstruction worthy of backing up traffic to the end of the block; it's hard to fault CDPR for this as it seems to be something that has plagued every open world game with cars, ever. Running into or over a corpse on the road is like driving into a tank trap. NPCs have no sense of ownership and will pay no attention whatsoever as you strip their property of loot. Braindances, well, your mileage may vary; I personally find them kind of tedious, but I'm not a puzzle solver, and I can see the appeal they'd have to other people. All in all, the game lacks polish and gives the impression that it was rushed for release, despite having a longer development time than TW3. All in all, a start unworthy of the devs' reputation.

So, why Recommended?

Well....despite all my complaints - and there are quite a few of them, looking back - Cyberpunk 2077 is actually pretty good! I am a roleplayer at heart, and drawing you into V's blossoming career as a chromed-up, tooled-up, drugged-up, screwed-up merc is something the game does very, very well. Conversations with NPCs flow naturally and make you feel like you're part of a dangerous world. Rarely have I played a game in which I gave deep consideration as to how an NPC might feel about my choices; in CP2077, there is a deep certainty that upsetting the wrong people might have serious consequences. I have read complaints about CP2077 not allowing players to be who they want to be, and this is both true and, I think, missing the point. Cyberpunk doesn't want you to be yourself, it wants you to be V, in the same sense that The Witcher wants you to be Geralt rather than a blacksmith or a politician. You are not writing your own story in CP2077 - you are participating in someone else's. While that does indeed limit your freedom to a degree, it does allow for a more compelling narrative (looking at you, Dovaakhin, picking flowers and completing gem collections while Skyrim burns). The combat also appeals. It may take a little practice and a few loaded games, but once you let the current of battle take you, you will be absorbed all over again, slinging quickhacks, grenades and buckshot with joyful certainty to turn the tide.

I am not one to give a game a good review because it 'has potential' and 'will be so awesome when it's done, you guys', and CP2077 doesn't get a free pass. The early patch does suggest that CDPR are on top of things, however, and I would recommend that anyone having doubts due to negative reviews hold onto their money for now and check it out again in a month or two. I have a feeling that the gaming community - including myself - are in for a real treat.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

VNs aren't really my thing anymore, though I own a few. I played DDLC purely because of its high ratings and non-spoiler reviews. There's little I can say that a thousand people before me haven't, so....

1. Don't read any more reviews--there are spoilers everywhere now.
2. Take the disclaimer seriously.
3. Don't be fooled by the slow start--there's not a single wasted line in DDLC.
4. Even if you're a jaded old bastard like me, you're about to see something new.

When you're done, seriously consider buying the DLC to support the devs. EA's next moneygrubbing clone can wait a little longer.

Six hours in....

It's a good thing this game is free, because Fallout Shelter is the very definition of a grind: inconsequential clicking and long waits with the sole purpose of making small numbers grow into bigger ones.

There is actually very little to do. If it wasn't necessary to click on your vault dwellers when they level up or give birth, or click on rooms to collect resources, the game would probably play itself just fine. Raider attacks and radroach infestations are a joke, as your dwellers will easily overcome them without your input. You can equip them with weapons, outfits and pets to make them more effective, but they don't seem to matter much. Their attributes (the SPECIAL stats that Fallout fans will be very familiar with) seem to dictate how well they do certain jobs, and their level seems to have a major influence on survivability; however, despite the wealth of tips that pop up, it's unclear exactly why or in what way these things matter. Is a vault dweller with high Perception better with a pistol than a vault dweller with low Perception? Fallout lore would say yes, but in Fallout Shelter it doesn't seem to make much difference.

You can send your people into the Wasteland to explore, where they randomly gain XP, caps and items as well as slowly have their health whittled down by enemies. They can be recalled at any time; the longer they are out, however, the longer it takes for them to return, meaning even more waiting. Once you have the Overseer's Office room, you can also send groups on quests that consistently turn up much, much better loot but again have irritatingly long travel times to and from the destination. The gameplay when they get there is a huge disappointment; click on a room to explore, click on an object to loot it, wait as combat happens automatically, click on the End Quest button when it's all over. Again, with a little automation, this rather boring questing could take care of itself while the player concentrated on more interesting activities - of which, sadly, there are none to speak of.

It occured to me at about this point (right before I decided FS wasn't worth any more of my time) that Bethesda missed a golden opportunity with this game. The Vaults in Fallout were each the site of some kind of social experiment. Why on earth did this not carry over to Fallout Shelter? Couldn't we have built the Overseer's Office and then, having built the foundation of a stable Vault, been randomly assigned some crazy end goal to give the player a purpose?

Ultimately, though, that purpose is to send Bethesda a steady trickle of your hard-earned cash via microtransactions. The wait times can be skipped or shortened with Nuka-Cola, and random loot boxes - with caps, vault dwellers, pets, weapons, outfits and crafting materials inside - can help expand on your collection of practically useless equipment, and both can be bought from the store. However, it's just money tossed on the fire to push you more quickly to an endgame that may or may not exist.

Then there are the little things that make the game....less like a game. For instance, your Vault Dwellers will level up over time, but they stop gaining XP until you click on them to acknowledge that fact. Unless you buy the feature from the store to get around that. Which, if I'm reading this right, means that you can pay Bethesda to remove activities from a game that's pretty anaemic when it comes to gameplay already. I mean, I can see the point (money), but I can't see why Bethesda don't even try to hide it.

I think we're hitting microtransaction critical mass these days, in which gamers are so accustomed to pointless cash purposes that devs don't care whether we notice them fleecing us or not. That probably describes Fallout Shelter in a nutshell, so let's get this review over with.

Summary: A freemium game with the life and soul of Fallout sucked out of it and a microtransaction system that will make you weep with it's pointlessness. There may be some goal worth working towards later in the game, but after six hours I've seen no evidence of it and have lost all motivation to keep looking. It gets a point for the Fallout aesthetic, but everything else falls flat. Watch paint dry instead - at least you won't be tempted to pay someone to accelerate the process.

1/10, a complete waste of time.

It looks so real.

Perfect! 1980/1980

Swash yer yardarm an' swing yer Jolly Roger! At the gunner's daughter, yarrr! 0_0

'Tis a pirate game fer me, lads, an' wot a game! Set sail on a voyage of bloody revenge! Romance the lovely governors' daughters! Avoid the ugly ones! Duel scallywags an' slit their gizzards! Wear effeminate shirts! Swash! Buckle! Plunder!

Buy this game! Yarrr!