Recent reviews by Caffeine Slipstream

An instant classic of an RPG, with well thought out characters, storylines, and a developer who loves the game as much as the players do. A must buy.

An excellent city builder picking up where EA's failed Sim City 2013 left off. Like many Paradox titles, there is an excessive amount of DLC, not all of which is good quality. Most of these DLC can be skipped as they add primarily gimmicky new playstyles rather than improving some QOL issues from the base game.
That said, the game is excellent and has a strong modding community. After the disaster that was Skylines 2, look at this one to see what you're missing.

Side note: this game is made in Unity, which has an asset limit. You can easily hit this asset limit on larger maps. It's also very CPU limited with all the Cims that are simulated.

A fantastic third person shooter (with first person ADS if you wish) with a hearty dose of horde shooter. Think Deep Rock Galactic meets Starship Troopers.

It's a very solid, decent looking, fun mission based shooter. Unfortunately it also is owned by Sony, who are famously tight fisted with how they run their IPs. While Sony's attempted rugpull (and some mixed comms from Arrowhead) was unsuccessful, be mindful if you buy this it may well have the PSN requirement reintroduced in future.

It's rather annoying with live service games that you never truly "own" what you buy - what you buy is an evolving product that may eventually fall prey to enshittification by massive corps that only want extra money. What's great one day may not stay great forever. Support small devs like Arrowhead, ♥♥♥♥ on AAA.

Fun game, great gunplay, love the stealth options and tagging.

Story ranges from excellent to ham fisted.

Buy it on sale, it's five years old - no reason it should be max price $90AUD still.

EDIT: Updated review after patches have improved stability.

While I am still facing some issues which I will outline below, game stability is significantly better than it was at launch.
- Game reliably launches even with EAC now. It takes almost three minutes to reach the main menu but the game will at least consistently launch now.
- Game crashes on any USB hardware change (for example, if i plug my headphones in, or if I want to remove a controller)

Other than that, the game's fantastic. Like I mentioned in the previous review, Elden Ring is a culmination of previous Soulsborne design decisions and is an excellent option if you're willing to stomach teething issues.

I'll tentatively change the recommendation to a Yes on the basis of improved stability.


-----------Old review
Since purchasing this game, i have attempted to play multiple times. I have encountered the following errors

- Failure to launch Elden Ring
- Crash on main menu after Bamco logo
- Menu unresponsive to mouse and keyboard if a controller is plugged in
- If a controller is plugged in during Elden Ring being open the game crashes
- The one time I got in i experienced framerates as low as 35fps in open world sections (running an i5-10500 / 3080ti / 32GB RAM).

Troubleshooting has included

- Running Elden Ring as Administrator
- Disabling any overlays running
- Disabling EAC
- Verifying Steam files
- Restarting steam
- Restarting PC
- Deleting and redownloading Elden Ring

The good:

The one time I got ingame it was gripping. Definitely feels different to the Soulsborne games, seems like a lot has been taken from Sekiro and inspired by Breath of the Wild. It was great, as well as absolutely gorgeous.

EDIT: Finally got the game to launch. All it took was creating a file called steam_appid.txt in the game's directory, and in this text file entering 1245620, then launching the game directly from the game's directory. After that, it was flawless! Still, it disables EAC and therefore online features, but hey! Glad I got a working game after hours of troubleshooting and paying launch prices for it.

In its current state I can't recommend this game. When these issues are fixed I will amend my review.

EDIT: Apparently i've played 21 more hours since this review somehow??? I tried launching the game once more and I guess the game didn't terminate properly?????????

An excellent game marred by some serious compatibility issues on modern hardware. Graphical glitches and consistent crashes to desktop are common on Windows 10.

This game is one of Bioware's RPGs, set in its own universe as sort of a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and similar. By now, it's likely the reader has heard of the Dragon Age series - this is where it all began in 2007ish.

Some configuration is required to ensure that this game can run properly on Windows 10. If you do not have the know-how to configure programs in this way, then buying this game in its current state is a waste of time unless you're prepared to put up with crashes.

Mordhau, the spiritual successor to Chivalry, is an interesting, unique creature.

There are some amazing design choices, fluid combat, relatively decent graphics, and plenty of fertile memelands.
I'm going to break this review down into positives and negatives.


Gameplay:
+ Excellent meaty combat. Few weapons can one hit kill, but the threshold is high enough that well placed hits feel very rewarding. Very few weapons feel light or floaty.
+ Generally well balanced weapons. Most weapons are viable in combat with a few being bad enough as to be situational only.
+ Your builds revolve around point buying armor, weapons and perks. It's possible to set yourself up as MAUL DADDY with maul (big ♥♥♥♥ off hammer) and three blocks of level 3 armor, eschewing perks. Or you can play a fragile class kitted out with the expensive perks like Bloodlust (refill all health on kill), Dodge (jumping while moving backwards or side gives a small burst of movement with no iframes), or anything in between. My personal favourite is a defensive build that assists in building and healing, and is able to do some frontline combat if it really has to as well.
+ Numerous systems that interact well allow the relatively few inputs in combat to mesh together, creating impressive freeform combos. Weapons can clash (when two weapons intersect the same space, they both cancel each other out), chamber (using your attack as a combined block/attack by mirroring their attack at exactly the right point), parry (pretty obvious), feint (cancel your attack, much like chivalry, at the cost of stamina), morph (cancel an attack before its windup completes into a different attack as a different type of feint). Weapons can be accelled (accelerated) by moving with the swing and looking towards the point you're swinging towards, or dragged (slowed) by moving against the swing or looking away from the point. Most of these systems have soft counters, and weapons interact differently with different systems - the maul and other slow weapons benefit from drags, some of the shorter weapons have devastating accels (war axe).
- A few weapons can feel ineffectual out of where you'd expect them to be. Many weapons fall off very sharply against armour despite their efficacy otherwise.
- Camera manipulation is very hard to fight against - adjusting the camera allows you to manipulate your swing like the aforementioned accels or drags - the logical endpoint of this involves masking your attacks until they've essentially already connected.

GRAPHICS:
+ It's okay. It's an indie studio - they don't have the resources to make amazing models. That being said, weapons and first person graphics are good. Faces are dated looking but possess a certain charm.

SOUND:
+ Sound provides important cues. A common trick against lower level players is to listen to their "grunt" as they swing - this indicates their attack is now committed and can't be altered other than drags or accels, allowing you to react accordingly. In higher end play this is no longer effective as camera manipulation can cause strikes to come out before the "committed swing grunt" occurs. Horses and armor both make loud, obvious sounds.
+ Music is okay. It's thematic, atmospheric and pretty good overall.
- It's a little bit repetitive, and few tracks are in the game overall. Of course, the music by design must take a seat compared to the sound design. This can also be because the above - the studio is spread out across several nations and is an indie studio withotu gargantuan resources backing them.

COMMUNITY:
Mordhau's community is a very mixed bag.

+ Many members of the community are in it for the gameplay alone, along with behaving like most "quality" Mount and Blade or Chivalry players, congratulating good fights or wins, displaying etiquette in a duel, etc. These groups are also happy to assist others to improve.
- Some people are exceedingly toxic. This has died down somewhat due in part to Triternion's actions to implement the Motivational Mute and Profanity Feature features, as well as Mordhau's "flavour of the month" status passing by.

In general, the community, especially duel servers (death match servers with Duel in the name) are quite friendly and willing to help out.

SUPPORT/UPDATES:
Mordhau is from a small indie company. It does get frequent content updates and polish - the community clamours for new content though the game shipped with a decent amount of content.
Mod support for custom maps and game modes is due to be implemented in the near future.

BARRIER TO ENTRY:

Make no mistake - it is a complex game with systems quite different to traditional "fighters" or first person melee games. Expect to sink in lots of time to learn the combat.



CONCLUSION:

Overall, Mordhau is a promising game. If it can sustain its playerbase, it stands to reason that it can follow a similar path like Cities Skylines did to Sim City.

Basically the same as the original Skyrim. The only major differences are:

+ 64 bit engine rework. This largely means that it can use more RAM, and not run into memory issues quite so often as the original Skyrim did. This is, in theory, good for modders, as they can add significantly more content into the worldspace without running into the 3.3GB limit.

+ Runs a little more smoothly and stably. I haven't noticed any crashes yet. Framerate is significantly more stable on lower end hardware than original Skyrim.

+ Due to engine overhauls and increased memory, larger scale battles are possible. Of course, these aren't implemented; but in original Skyrim, if you spawn significant numbers of NPCs that are in combat you may notice some simply don't fight back. In Skyrim Special Edition, these extra NPCs can fight properly.

+ Graphics are slightly improved, and a few bugs are fixed. Textures are somewhat higher resolution - don't know just how much, and i believe meshes are slightly improved in detail as well? Z-Fighting, a long standing engine issue where two textures overlapped (especially noticeable with distance mountains) and the renderer couldn't decide which one to show on top, resulting in rapid flicker between the two textures.

+ It's Skyrim. It's incredibly fun, and will drain all your free time. It's made even better by modding, but this leads on to the next point.

- There are very few mods available for it. Much of the original Skyrim's modding community relied on a script extender called SKSE, by the wonderful folks over at Silverlock, known for their script extender plugins for various Gamebryo/Creation engine games by Bethesda. As a result, while big name unscripted mods (ie. texture replacements, mesh replacements, and certain mods that modify existing data without relying on scripting) have been ported, there is a significant gap in user-friendliness as a result.

- The user interface has not been overhauled one bit. It is still the clunky, designed-for-console, made by crab people for crab people mess that it always was, with cascading menus. For original Skyrim, there was an incredible mod called SkyUI, which used SKSE to entirely overhaul the menu systems to a more mouse-and-keyboard friendly setup. SkyUI also created a "mod configuration menu", which allowed users with mods to, well, modify various parameters in the mods without having to use a scripted item that gets added to the player's inventory, like in the days of Oblivion. Skyrim Special Edition entirely lacks SkyUI, as SKSE64 is still in development, and SkyUI is unlikely to be ported as it is a finished project.

- There is no new content. The three DLC packs, Hearthfire, Dragonborn and Dawnguard all come bundled with SSE, but there is no added content by bethesda. Well, that's a lie, some items are available when they were not previously, like the nigh-useless Torturer's Hood. But there are no new quests, nothing.

- Graphically speaking, SSE looks like the original version of Skyrim with a couple of basic graphical improvement mods added, stuff like Purity, SMIM (static mesh improvement mod) and similar. It is starting to look somewhat dated, as the game itself is six years old now (I know!)

In short:

Buy this if you want slightly improved graphics and stability, with a smaller modding community that is still struggling to get off the ground. It's still selling for $39USD last I checked, where original Skyrim is $34USD for the base game and $55USD for the game plus DLC.

So yeah, it's cheaper than original Skyrim, but it is also hampered by the main thing that makes Bethesda games long lasting; its moddability.

Honestly, I'd say it's worth paying more for the original game for its extensive library of mods, but if you aren't a person into modding or one who hasn't played Skyrim before (those exist?), get this.

Rocket League is one of those perfect mixes between "party game" and "e-sport". It has a very high skill ceiling, but the learning curve is very gentle. The game's controls are quite intuitive, and the concept is incredibly easy to pick up.

Given the attention it's gotten in media in the last year or so, I'd say it's fast becoming a modern classic in its own right.

So, War Thunder has been an interesting game for quite some time. It's one of the premier airplane dogfighting simulations out there. It feels sufficiently arcadey that it's accessible to new players, plus it's free-to-play!

Basically, you take control of an aircraft or tank in various team battles. It's very good fun, and the controls are simple and easy to pick up. For anyone familiar with flight sims, the controls are much the same, albeit simplified.

It is also very easy to pick up and play.

However: I have a few gripes.
- Lack of local servers.. I have never found a match that didn't have at least 233 ping. This is simply a fact of life in Australia, but it is still annoying.

- Extremely grindy progression.. While the beginner planes are usable, they're fairly pathetic at anything above the bottom-most tier. You'll be spending a LOT of time grinding for the necessary points required to research X plane or Y tech, then more points for "pilot recruitment", then more points for repairs, then more points for hangar space. It's one of those F2P progression systems where it's "buy-to-avoid-grinding". Expect to pay if you want to remain competitive, one of the cardinal sins of microtransaction fueled F2P games.

- "Russian bias" . This is an issue that has largely divided the fanbase. The Russian tech-tree, especially with regard to the tanks, is far more fleshed out than most of the other nation's tech trees. This means that matchups can be occasionally lopsided against Russian tanks, if only because the other side hasn't got tanks of comparable ability implemented.
People will swear black and blue that it is a thing, and just as many say it is not. I haven't put enough hours into War Thunder to be able to say whether it is a thing or not, but knowing that the community is so divided is telling in itself.



That said, given it's a free game with a pretty fun setting and concept, I'd at least give it a shot. The worst that could happen is you've wasted your download bandwidth, but hey!