Recent reviews by Crotaro

Jusant features what is probably the best climbing mechanic and some of the nicest rope physics in any game. It's pretty short, especially if you don't trail off the main path or stop to appreciate the lorestuff. I have done a little bit of looking through nooks and crannies and finished it in about five hours.

The good: Every moment is an engaging moment. Even though it's pretty sad at times (in the way that a game can draw parallels to real world climate change and fill you with existential dread), it ends hopeful and leaves you imagining what could happen in a future sequel.

The only criticism that comes to my mind right now: In the very last level, I was stuck for about ten minutes, because the path to begin my climb wasn't clear enough to me. But I did find my way eventually without a guide, so it's alright.

Fair warning: This is definitely the type of game where Steam's two hour grace period isn't even enough to complete the tutorials (thankfully multiple small ones instead of one long-ass one). Also, my playtime might not reflect it (yet), but I have played this game almost daily for the past month and only not played it when there was too little time to play any game on that day.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic (WRSR from now) is NOT Soviet-themed Cities Skylines and that's really good, especially when you engage with all the game mechanics like needing to manage waste, electricity, heating, ferrying resources and workers to construction sites, keeping your buildings and vehicles in top shape, etc. You can customise every of the aforementioned difficulty aspects, although most of them are just a "yes/no" toggle, so you cannot set the amount of poop you have to deal with, only if you have to deal with poop or not.

In Realistic Mode, do not expect to be building Moscow in your first, second or even third in-game year of playing. Stuff takes an appropriate amount of time to make, from constructiing roads/tracks/buildings to manufacturing stuff in your factories. Even correcting past mistakes (once they're beyond the blueprint stage where no construction has started, yet) via demolition takes time depending on how big the building is. From demolition jobs, you get construction waste and metal scrap for example, which you can recycle to partially turn back into construction materials. But that careful deconstruction takes very long. Alternatively, you can demolition a building with explosives, leaving you with a bunch of mixed waste only, which you could (in theory) sift through, to get some of the construction waste and metal scrap, but is probably better just dumped or sold off to the customs house.
But when you see your grand plan come together and the amount of trucks you need to drive back and forth suddenly decreases by a lot because your cargo train can finally - after a year of laying tracks - bring in goods much more efficiently, it's just the most satisfying feeling!

WRSR has this wonderful charming roughness around its edges and vibe that I adore from other popular eastern games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Into The Radius and Mudrunner. It just feels more tangible and less inherently game-y than games like Fallout, Cities Skylines or Factorio?

So yeah, big recommend, I do not regret paying 40€ for the whole bundle (base game on sale, Biomes DLC and Ukraine Charity DLC) and expect my "official" game hours on this game to skyrocket in the near future.

When I suggested this game to my friends, I already felt a little bad for them, thinking I would be an unstoppable god and would have to go easy on them for us to have a fun time. Boy, was I wrong! This game is incredibly well balanced with the knights having a slight advantage, I would say. If only for the fact that they don't need to take care not to literally bash their real life furniture.
The giant gameplay is super fun and so is the knight gameplay! Instead of automatically adjusting the game parameters depending on number of players, the host can adjust the ruleset freely. This means that they can make the game harder or easier for one or the other party, without actually needing to pull their punches. This makes it an even better party game because it means that very new players can still have a good time and an actual fighting chance.

Like with most party games, you don't want to burn yourself out on them in two or three straight days of just that, instead you'll have the best time if you do treat it as the occasional game with your friends (not only because it's really physically strenuous for the VR player lol). At the current content amount, I think it's absolutely worth the asking price, since only the VR player needs to pay and the knights can play for free.

It's just a little unfortunate how small the playerbase is. So if you want to play this, you better get some friends together, otherwise I wouldn't be surprised if you never find a game in days of trying.

Edit: While part of the issue has been fixed (the mandatory PSN link), more than a hundred countries/regions are still unable to buy the game anymore.
https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/info/
Edit2: Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have also become unable to buy the game anymore
https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/
Edit3: The move to exclude regions which don't offer PSN from games, is now apparently Sony's focus and implemented for many more games (even those which don't have any kind of online component to them, like God of War?). This is no longer about the quality or treatment of Helldivers. Also, as far as I read, those in the affected regions, who already owned Helldivers, are still able to play. It's just that we cannot get additional players from these regions.
______________________
To follow the Keep It Simple Stupid principle:
The game is amazing and if you enjoy any kind of co-op PvE game, you'll likely love Helldivers 2.

Buuuut, my negative review (and absence from the game) stays in effect until greedy Sony alter their course. Right now they are mandating to link your Steam account to the PS Network, which is bad enough, since they're apparently kinda known for having data breaches. But the worst: 177 countries have no access to the PSN, so those divers , who already paid in money and blood on the front, have had their hellpod hatches welded shut and can no longer fight the good fight.
@Arrowhead: Please self-publish your next title. Those who weren't aware of you from Magicka or the OG Helldivers certainly know you now and I doubt the additional marketing from Sony is worth it anymore at this point. for your future endeavours.

It's really good, despite the few occasional bugs. Also, the case structure is a little repetitive, but I was never bored in my playtime so far.

After 43 hours of playtime, my first character, Josephine Moore, was finally ready and able to retire to The Fields. It's said to be a better place. Better than the megacorporate hellhole island that Starch Kola rules with an iron fist...

Shadows of Doubt is probably the best detective game and immersive noir sim that is currently available. Your character won't simply narrate the solution to themselves like in many other games that feature "puzzles". There is no handholding once you've completed the tutorial case. The only "handholding" comes in the form of being able to set a waypoint to any discovered location and certain information being automatically connected to a certain person or location.

Josephine's days usually began with her wandering around town, going to Trinity Fox Tacos or Rosaunnes Restaurant to grab a bite and a can of Starch Kola. Her police radio always primed and ready to pick up information on the latest murder. Sometimes she wondered if it still functioned correctly, as the printing press was able to print and issue newspapers with an article about the latest victim just as quickly as her police radio gave the message that a murder had happened. But that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Only once in her time in the skyscraper-town of Okinawa had she been the first to discover a murder victim before the Enforcers. They usually were very quick, but on that one case, she got lucky. It happened right before her eyes, on a busy marketplace. The screams from the bystanders witnessing one of their peers just drop dead to the floor must have alerted the Enforcers. The killer was able to blend into the chaotic crowd, which quickly dispersed into multiple directions, and so Josephine decided to focus her attention on the victim.
She quickly grabbed the finger prints of the corpse, took a photo and rummaged through their pockets, before the Enforcers would come and make access to the corpse that much harder. Nothing useful aside from the wallet of the victim. Name, adress and a key to their home were now in Josephine's posession. As she was ready to ask a nearby pedestrian if he had seen anything weird, she noticed a crumpled up paper under a foodtruck. And next to it, an empty syringe. Let's play a game!, it read and below it where a bunch of scrambled letters. Using her Print-Scan 800, she added the fingerprints on the killer's love letter to her caseboard.

Occasionally sipping on her coffee, Josephine approached the door to the victim's apartment. Annoyed at herself, that she didn't manage to pin the killer right on scene, she flung the half-empty styrofoam cup down the flight of stairs she just came from. Then, she whipped out her trusty print-scanner and methodically analysed every fingerprint she could find on the door. And there it was: One of the last legible prints on the door handle matched those on the crumpled paper the killer left behind as well as those on the syringe. Now Josephine only needed to figure out who those prints could belong to. A neighbour? A colleague? She headed for the building's security room to review the camera footage.....

Seriously, this game is so fun and not only will it be satisfying when you solve a murder, but you'll also feel incredibly smart, because you were able to figure it out. Not the game.
I only have two or three negative things to say about Shadows of Doubt:

• In a small to medium city, you'll sometimes be able to solve murders very quickly because you have accumulated many citizen's name and fingerprints over the past 30 hours. But that's not actually bad. After all, you put in the work, so why shouldn't you be rewarded for it? (Some players had suggested only rarely finding full fingerprints and more commonly finding partial fingerprint data that needs to be "assembled" into a full fingerprint)
  
• The murderers could use more varying motives for their deeds. (That's probably coming, if I interpret the roadmap correctly)
  
• Currently, the only way you receive jobs connected to murders, is by either stumbling upon the dead victim yourself or hearing about it via the police radio. I would love if, like in the tutorial case, you would receive a letter under your door or in your mailbox, that just goes "Check on my buddy, since I haven't seen them in a while."
  
• The side jobs are fine, but could also use a little more variation. Maybe stalking a person to figure out their daily routine because their spouse thinks they're cheating?

---

That said, if you like the idea of being a private investigator who barely scoots by the law (and sometimes wades through literal poop water) to solve murders, this is the game for you, even in its current Early Access state!

To keep it short:
Domina is probably the best and most fun gladiator simulator currently available. It is tough as nails, at least for me, and most of your attempts to win the game will result in a loss (somewhat akin to Noita, for those of you who played it).

The big problem, as it stands right now, is the developer themselves. They put their dangerous political messages (yes, advising against health/safety measures during a deadly pandemic IS dangerous) right into the patch notes, shoving it into the face of anyone who reads them, instead of posting it on their twitter or private discord, where I couldn't care less about it. But in this case, it's directly tied to their game and thus I have to speak out against it.

The most prominent example of their messages being included in the patch notes follows:
Straight out of the v1.3.18 BETA patch notes:
"TAKE OFF THE ♥♥♥♥ MASKS - Next time you're at the grocery store, try showing a woman your face. Be confident, unafraid of the LIES -- you might get a girlfriend. Women like confidence. Women don't like dudes who cover their faces in fear. What are you afraid of? Getting laid? Grow up."

So, for anyone who read this far: If you can get the game without necessarily giving the developer a dime for it, do it. The game is great fun indeed!

The last time I had as much fun in a co-op game for as long was when I played Left 4 Dead 2.
Quite a few say that DRG has ruined every other co-op FPS game for them and I wouldn't disagree.
Additionally you can customize your dwarf in many ways AND upgrade your gear a lot, to better be suited for the higher difficulty levels and the current "endgame" content, which are the Deep Dives (basically, three missions where you carry over the minerals, ammo and gear you had at the end of the previous mission)

The best thing: Thanks to the (to borrow a L4D term) dynamic storyteller, the game is not only playable solo but very fun still. And if you need an extra hand while solo (because you like to play Scout, who lacks firepower) you can choose to bring a companion drone with you on your adventures.

Even more: The devs really love and live this game and update it quite regularly, often including suggestions from the community.

Should you get it?
If you like co-op shooting games about random caves that need to be explored and looted in different ways: Absolutely!
If you like playing co-op games solo while doing the above: Yep!
If you don't like shooting or light exploration games: Better skip it

I'm not one to review many games, because I'm usually too lazy for that. But I'm trying to better myself and wanted to start with one of my all-time favorites: Factorio

There's a negative review down here that complains about Factorio's archaic interface and graphics. Yes, the graphics rival those of Ultima Online before it received a fancy "3D" graphics overhaul. And yes, the interface is nothing to write home about if you compare it to simpler games like Skyrim, Legend of Zelda or any other game that released in the past 15 years, probably.

Even though this game might start off like Minecraft (in that you are placed in a procedurally generated world with nothing on you except your pickaxe/drill) it quickly shifts its gameplay to you building the foundation of your little factory so that you don't have to mine all that coal and iron and copper and stone by hand.
Once automation has been achieved for the crudest of basic you start combining stuff.
Why have stuff mined, smelted and placed in a chest for you to take out and build something with, when you can extend that conveyer belt into an assembler that tirelessly uses those resources to produce rails for you?
Soon (if you're not dumb like me) you will automate the production of science packs to the point where you can just keep passively researching new technology.
With that, you'll automate the production of ammunition and gun turrets to defend your growing factory with, because those biters don't sleep. They also grow their nests and numbers.
Oh and then after you finally figured out a way to make oil production work well, you'll redesign the very first parts of your factory because now you can feed your furnaces with solid fuel and don't have to rely that much on coal anymore. Then you encounter uranium and see that it's very far away from your growing factory and so you build train tracks to have quick access to that.

And when you look at your factory, that grew to the size of a small city and look out the window towards the rising sun (because all of us have their windows faced eastwards) you will wonder what made time fly by.
...
....
.....
And then you'll notice that if you expand the factory a little more you could optimize the iron income to counter those semi-frequent shortages!
And the factory grows

Absolutely gorgeous and innovative magic system.
For anyone who likes Magicka this is a must-have. This game is less about combining elements together to create cool synergies and instead combining / mixing up cool rune-effects to create ultimate mayhem.

For example: There's this relatively useless spell (on it's own, because it's slow as heck) called Plasma Ball. It's basically what you imagine; a green floaty-boi that deals massive damage, but it is so slow, it's mostly useless in regular combat.

• Modify the Plasma Ball with, for example, a Spread and/or Multi-Shot rune to give it some shotgun-action. Now you're shooting up to ~8 slow floaty-bois.
  
• For the third rune, you can now set a Chaos rune (which makes the spell fire "base elemental projectiles" in random directions).

By doing this, you created multiple slow floaty-bois that rapidly rain fireballs in the direction you're shooting them.
So, you basically now have a makeshift B-17 carpet-bombing at your disposal.

What else is there to say about this gem?
In no particular order:

• rogue-lite with multiple chapters
  
• a lotta randomized equipment, a little borderlands 2 style-ish
  
• the story is told on a piece of parchment, while you travel from node to node. The story-snippets most often are just flavour, nothing that'd change gameplay (basically, you're a unique kind of mage, hunted by the Inquisition, trying to get revenge on the Inquisitor while roaming the mountains and encountering civilians, other mages, bandits and more on your journey)
  
• super processor-heavy because of fully destructible structures, your CPU will burn if mediocre or lower
  
• a handful of "boss fights", but only two are really distinct
  
• the AI could use some more love, especially the ranged enemies, who only seem to fire once you're 20 meters or closer
  
• super responsive developers! I pitched a suggestion and a bug report on reddit and within an hour or so I got a response and the (pretty major) bug was patched out in less than a day
  
• ~12 starting "classes", but you're not hindered by anything to become what you want. A firewielder can just as much become a frostmage, if he finds applicable spells and runes
  
• player melee-attacks consist of only one scroll that conjures a sword and swings it one time (please more options for melee-focused mages (elemental-whips/shields/fists?)
  
• supplementary scrolls that support you or give utility (teleport, stopping projectiles mid-flight, rock walls, etc.) and their effects can be bound into jewelry (as to free up your four spell-slots)
  
• enough different enemy-types (more always appreciated, though!)
  
• highly customizable UI and settings. Almost everything can be turned on, off or has multiple options.

So, what's my so-far final verdict on Fictorum?
A really fun game if you embrace the potential to get creative with the spells and equipment options. In theory, you can finish the game using only a single spell, just like in Magicka (steam+steam+arcane+lightning+lightning, right?), but that'd be really boring.
If you get absorbed in the spell-building you can have the most fun since first discovering insane combos in Magicka or first downloading gigabytes of mods for Skyrim!
Lightning fast piercing Ice Spear shotgun? YES!
Fire Nova that explodes in a forwards line, leaving flames burning the ground? Absolutely!
Storms that rain down familiars who fire Frost Novas at your enemies? It wouldn't be Fictorum without it!
Meteor showers that fire fireballs themselves again? Of course!
Building your own bridges via frost-breath because you "accidentally" collapsed the existing bridge to sacrifice your foes to the void? You name it, Fictorum's got it!

Look at the Alien. It is Mom
Look at its tail. It's spaghetti.
Look at the fire. That's the sauce.
10/10 would eat again (and repeatedly die from food poisoning).