Recent reviews by Scrimshank

Extremely high chance of this being my game of the year.

Very good gunplay, catchy soundtrack, great artwork, great gameplay, great voice overs from all the cast (Kiryu's original VA, Darryl Kurylo does a great job here!).

Highly recommended! Best character is your Mission Control, she's great.

Cute game, lasts about half an hour to an hour if you want all the badges. I can't find the last candle for the summoning circle though which is genuinely infuriating. Otherwise, it's a fun game.

This is an extremely fun game marred with bugs and server issues, to the point where I would say this game is unplayable.

If you buy it, which I don't recommend at this point in time, be prepared for long queues to get in, and spotty performance once you're in. I've had mission objectives bug out (unable to be interacted with, soft locking the game), battle pass unlockables not unlocking (pretty bad as that's how you get new guns) and enemies act in bizarre ways (big boss enemies not attacking or not moving correctly, rendering them harmless).

This is a great game, but as said above, marred by server availability (I've had friends wait for 30 minutes - 1 hour only to just give up).
Wait a month, then pick this up.

I liked Marvel Midnight Suns!

I think it's a great first attempt and I would have been excited to see a second attempt, but I fear it's killed Firaxis as we knew it. I blame the fact that the first thing you see on the storefront is the fact there are 3 seperate versions (including a legendary version) AND premium curreny on top of a season pass for a single player game.

I got the legendary version which comes with everything eexcept for one blade skin which you get for linking your account with the 2k launcher. I recommend disabling the 2k launcher as it causes a number of performance issues.

The general gameplay is this: Each hero has a specific playstyle dictated by their cards. Magik focuses around moving characters around, Captain America has a lot of cards around block and protecting allies. You take 3 heroes and enter a mission, which can be taking down a singular enemy to destroying a particular target. It's fun and each hero is unique and fun to use, but the balance can be a bit off at times. Ignore tier lists as they are generally very end-game focused, Spider-man is great during the campaign, but falls off as environmental attacks don't scale.

The only 3 heroes I would say are bad are Captain Marvel, Blade and Deadpool. Captain Marvel deals pitiful damage until you play 3 of her cards, then she does okay damage. Blade revolves around single target damage and bleed, but doesn't really do THAT much damage and has no way to inflict bleed. Both characters were effectively merged into Morbius, a DLC character who does both Captain Marvel's and Blade's jobs better. Deadpool is the worst character in the game by far, a terrible thing to be when people pay £12 to get you. He feels designed for a different game. His research is literally the best in the game, offering you a free attack (more or less) and was absolutely crucial in some missions for me.

The post-mission stuff is fine. The abbey is neat and fun to explore, but you can do all of it by the beginning of act 2 and it doesn't track the mysteries you've solved. There is FAR too much talking in this game, which is odd as it caps at level 8, but there are 80 (!) potential levels to get (12 base heroes + 4 DLC heroes, who each have 5 levels). You'll max out your friendship level long before actually maxing out your friendships, so it just becomes a grind which is what drags out your playtime. It doesn't help that a bug stopped hangouts (your main way of getting friendship xp) from happening, meaning I had to drag various heroes with me to get small drips of friendship xp with them.

The actual conversations are fine, I liked them! Deadpool is a hard character to get right (he can be Borderlands tier awful in a bad writer's hands) but here he can be actually funny! I liked each character and I don't think I disliked any of their arcs, however Ghost Rider's arc of him working through Imposter Syndrome struck me as annoying (like c'mon, you're a spirit of vengeance hand picked to avert the apocalypse, you're clearly in the right place).

A side effect of the friendship grind was the fact that the abbey stuff became repetitive. Wake up, open gamma coil, select research, daily sparring, upgrade cards, select hero ops, pick mission, then bed. I was kind of hoping for a research to allow me to do all that in a menu, instead of walking around the abbey constantly, causing what could be a minute to be extended to 5 minutes.

In terms of bugs, it crashed quite a few times, some characters would flee of screen only to rubber-band back to the map for no reason. This isn't a bug, but Venom (another DLC character) is pretty broken, there's no animation of him transforming so many cutscenes that aren't specifically Venom's (which are like, in hell, or being chased by Demons) have just plain old Eddie Brock in the cutscene, only for Venom to magically appear in the cutscene. It's hard to explain, but it's wierd seeing all the other characters fighting demons, and Eddie Brock is just fist-fighting a demon dog, like, why are you not Venom right now?

Customization is lack-luster. All characters have unique clothes, but they are all variations oft-shirt, jumper, tanktop, some type of bullet-proof vest for some reason or hoodie. I would have preferred a smaller number of clothes but that suited each character.

Enemy variation could be better. There's no many and most strategies boil down to 'Just deal as much damage to them as you can in a single turn'.

All in all, I liked this game, I think it's a great first attempt and if you enjoy tactical RPGs you'll love this. I will admit there's not much depth (each hero is an independent character and their decks don't really mesh, generally you can just take whoever and you'll be fine) but even then this is still a lot of fun. 8/10

It's...fine.

Good:
It captures the 40k spirit, the weapons are great and each has their use, some fights can be great. Pixel-art cutscenes look nice and generally the art and sprite-work is very good.

Bad:
Levels use a bunch of similar assets, so each episode feels identical. Levels can be very maze-like (ESPECIALLY Grand Elevator), so it's very easy to get lost in a relatively simple layout.. There's no point using the chainsword once you get the titular boltgun. Your character has two abilities, limited invulnerability at low health and a charge, the invuln is good, the charge is useless.

The odd:
This is a sequel to 2011's Space Marine? Your character never speaks, outside of a Taunt button you can push that has no purpose? They recorded (apparently) over 100 lines of dialogue for your Taunt (that doesn't do anything?)

Overall, a good boomer shooter/doom like. If you want to get a great boomer shooter, play Dusk or Ultrakill. If you want a decent boomer shooter and like 40k, get this.

I went in expecting 'STALKER meets DOOM' and instead got a love-letter to Czechia and Czech culture. (I say Czech here as opposed to Czechoslovakian as most of the guides explaining the cultural references stated it was more Czech cultural references. Apologies for any offence).

It's fun, most of the levels are enjoyable, but there's no real 'WOW' moment like in Dusk with the Escher labs. Really, the most interesting thing about the levels is that they are mostly based on real places which is neat.
It doesn't take itself too seriously, level 2 you'll fight a gorilla with rocket launchers for hands and the games iconic enemy is a horse with a gas mask named after a Czech legend about a leaping horse.
The weaponry is fine, most weapons are okay and have a purpose HOWEVER, the super shotgun is completely overpowered and really ruins the games difficulty curve (it one hit kills most enemies in the game and deals more damage than the rocket launcher). The game can be quite stingy with health, until it starts giving you so much wine (a portable medkit) it makes it kinda hard to die (I will add I played in Normal only, so maybe that's to be expected that is was kinda easy).
The colour scheme is hard to discuss, it is mostly brown, but that drab colour scheme goes well for a game set in a Soviet republic. I can understand why some people might think it's ugly, but I think it works.

Overall, a fun shooter, pick it up and enjoy being baffled by being attacked by medieval wagons, a pommel horse that shoots rockets or a statue of an old woman and then reading a guide to see what is going on and learning something about another country.

EDIT: I should also mention this game allows you to poop in toilets then flush them.

To sum it up, this game is unfinished. It is essentially in early-access.

This makes it really hard to say, but I can't recommend this game. The actual combat is incredibly fun and the moment to moment gameplay once in a mission is a blast.

BUT, it's everything else that lets it down.

Character creation is largely pointless. The biggest influence ANY character selection will have is the marksmen, who can come from Cadia to get 2 eye colours and a new voice. That is the largest difference the entire character creation process has. Every other class can create a large backstory that will never be used in game.

The weapon store is annoying. Every 30 minutes or so, it refreshes with a new selection of weapons. But, if you unlock a weapon, there's no guarantee you'll unlock it in the store. So you could want to try a new weapon and be completely unable to.Somtimes also, a weapon will appear in the store, but you're unable to buy it as you're too low-level. It's annoying.

The psyker feels unfinished. They share most of the same weapons as Zealot and Marksmen, leaving them in an unhappy middle,being worse than both. Their special ability is a push that doesn't push enemies all that far, and their 'grenade' makes one enemies head explode. However, most of the time you'll be charging this ability and someone will just...shoot the enemy in the head, killing him. It swings between being totally useless and life-saving, which I suppose is balance, but I'd rather have a happy middle than swinging between extremes. Their force-staves are okay, but some are better than others (the Trauma staff is not great, but is very fun when you ca land an explosion in the middle of a horde). But, most gameplay as a Psyker (aka the Wizard) is...playing the game largely like a Marksman that can occasionally make someone's head explode.

The mission selection is functional. That's the nicest thing you can say about it. Essentially a random selection of missions are available for you to choose from, some have modifiers (more elites, more dogs, less hordes etc.) and some have secondary objectives (think VT2s' grimoires and tomes). However, looking at literally any other game on the market shows a better way of doing this same system. Deep Rock Galactic's mission screen, compared with it's contracts system, would've been a way better of way of doing this system. Hell, even vermintide 2 has just a simple 'pick the mission from the story you want to do' and it's better than this. Also, the grimoires are incredibly difficult, slowly lowering everyone's max health, meaning if you take too long, you can be stuck with around 20% health and if you die, the grimoire is destroyed. The light's out modifier is the worst. Just a mission in pitch blackness. Not fun and not tense, just annoying. I should also mention here that many of the missions feel similar. Not repetitive, but more, I cannot tell most of the maps apart. Like, 2 maps start in a sewer or have you go into a sewer.

The penances are bad. Basically, if you don't want to spend money for cosmetics, you have to do 'penances'. These are achievements, but the problem is, is that they are either suicidal, or so difficult you need a premade or VERY forgiving random players to do them. One Ogryn penance is to charge into 6 of the biggest toughest enemies in the game (normally leading to certain death shortly after). A psyker one is to more or less kill a boss enemy single-handedly (seriously the achievement is to deal 90% damage to the boss). If I were a paranoid person, I'd say they do this so that you eventually give up and pay for premium cosmetics, but I honestly just think that they rushed it out and came up with a bunch of achievements that are TECHNICALLY achievable, but not actually fun to achieve.

The story is barely there. There's a lot of world-building about the setting, Atoma Prime, but the actual events of the story are non-existent. The 'events' of the story are 'There's a heretc on board' and every cutscene is you walking up to one of the NPCs and them saying to you 'Keep up the good work!'. That's it. That's largely the story. Even the aforementioned world building is difficult to get to, as it's reliant on teammate dialogue. Depending on which voices are present, you might never hear certain lines or phrases. There are some cool elements (like the Psyker who has a Beloved who may or may not the Emperor of Mankind speaking to him) but it's unlikely you'll hear them, so you'll probably just be relying on youtube compilations of the voicelines.

BUT. The actual moment to moment gameplay, once you get into a mission, is incredible. My personal favourite moment was where I was unloading a heavy machine gun into a horde and realised I hadn't missed a single shot, not because I was aiming, but because the horde was teeming with so many enemies I couldn't miss, was a great moment.

Sending some annoying Rager enemies flying with a heavy strike from my shield was another great moment and the new dodge mechanic is very fun to use once you get it down.

So that's why it's so hard to not recommend it. The actual gameplay itself is incredible, but everything else just drags it down. So yea, you'll see that my playtime will probably have increased and yea, I've bought premium currency. But I don't think you should buy this game as of 14/01/2023 (3 months after 'release'). If you want 4 player co-op fun, go buy Deep Rock Galactic, or even Fatsharks previous title, Vermintide 2, which had 15 classes at launch and a full campaign with a complete story.

Look back on this game in 6 months to a year. It'll probably be on sale and have far more content, and it'll be an absolute blast. But I do not think you should buy this game now, unless you're okay paying £35 - £50 for an early access title with a cash shop.

A great puzzle platformer with a banger of a soundtrack.

Just skip the cutscenes, at best they're boring, at worst the characters are cringy and you can tell precisely their entire arc within 5 seconds of meeting them.

Campaign starts bad then gets better, too many kleer makes for annoying fights sometimes, but the coop multiplayer survival mode, depsite being only two maps, is tons of fun.

I really liked this game but I couldn't find the stupid cake.