Recent reviews by Festive Human Bartender

My name is Jackie Daytona, regular human pioneer and I approve of this electronic video game.

If I were a vampire, which I am most certainly not, I would definitely be up all night, playing this game - although the lack of horse drawn carriage logistic option does upset me somewhat, that is offset by the fact I get a chainsaw.

9/10 - The developers have most certainly earned a regular human alcohol beer.

ROCK AND STONE, YOU FOOL OF A TOOK!

If you're a fan of games like VCD, then you'll love this.

There's little stories that come with every crime scene, there's secrets to find, things to steal, bodies to bag up and plenty of blood to clean up.

The levels are great in detail and variety, with little easter eggs and things to find in most little corners of the map.

My main gripe, is that I wish the game were longer! I finished all of the current content with perfect ratings and have a handful of achievements I need to figure out before I'm at 100%

There's clearly more content planned as there's evidence as some things are marked "unavailable" so I'm hoping the game continues to develop and grow going forward.

I've played enough city builders to know almost off the bat, if I'm going to enjoy the game in the long term or not.

Manor Lords is going to be a big ol' like. I love the graphics, the setting, the prospect of complex resource chains, the slow paced gathering and building (which you can easily speed up in game) and the free form of it all.

It was nice putting down a rough "plan" for a group of housing and then watch my villagers and ox go back and forth from the woodcutters, collecting materials and then building completely different buildings for houses without my input at all. It will really give every village you build a unique feel.

Whilst I haven't dipped my toes into any warfare - as a big fan of stronghold I can see this being a great additional feature and the fact that your own villagers are supposedly enlisted as troops will make combat more impactful.

Things i'd like to see (if they aren't implemented yet) would be events such as epidemics, potentially plagues, fires, possibly random villager interactions if that's possible...maybe too complex a job to be worth it but if there are families then dynamic friendships and rivalries would be cool.

Regardless if any of those get implemented - I'll be keeping a close eye out for a roadmap and on future updates. Not to mention spending a good chunk of time actually playing the game myself.

As to if it's worth buying now? As with every other EA game - it's down to if you'll get enjoyment out of it and want to contribute to development. If you're iffy about bugs, lack of content or endgame, etc - then perhaps invest in something like Anno, Pioneers of Pagonia or The Settlers. :)

Review in progress...

TLDR; Bloody good fun so far! (seriously, there's so much blood!).

After sitting in development limbo for so long - Dead Island seems to be back with a bloody vengance!

LA (or Hell-A as it's affectionately known as in this game) is absolutely stunning and whilst it lacks the ray-tracing goodness of a few other modern games, the graphics still hold up and is an absolutely gorgeous game.

The combat is absolutely visceral and good fun - combining elemental damage with weapons that have different attack patterns, speeds and finishing moves making slashing through zombies not only fun, but damn addictive. I've often found myself getting distracted, heading over to a lone walker just to test out a new pair of knuckle dusters I've found and ultimately ended up caving it's face in.

Which leads me onto my next point - combat looks so damn good too. The zombies have a fully fleshed out rig, and different weapons will cause different visual deformations of the undead you're fighting. If you constantly go for the head - jaws will break, eyes will pop out and you'll get Glenn from TWD flashbacks, blades will slice where your blows land and tear into flesh, guts will spill out if you go for the belly - it's downright brutal and I love it.

The game does have a few flaws. Sometimes I find the hitboxes a bit janky and I'll be taking damage despite doing what I feel is a pretty decent dodge. The voice acting can be a bit cheesy, but I guess that's kinda the point and some weapons are clearly better than others when dealing with hordes of undead.
There's also the hot debate of EOS being part of the game - but as someone who's played plenty of games that uses EOS and am grateful for the cross-play features, I can't say this is an issue for me.

7 hours in and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I'm going to slowly work my way through the story, explore Hell-A and find it's secrets and enjoy collecting as many limbs as possible along the way.

This game gives your big brain shots of serotonin when you crush someone in pvp with a 180 IQ play, all because you rotated a squirrel 90 degrees so it'd eat more food and steal all your opponents buffs.

10/10

I'm going to give this a positive review for the time being as when the game launched on EA I got about 5 minutes in and had to turn it off and shelve it, due to all the issues.

Fast forward to the "foundation update" which I think was a nice surprise for most people and the game is actually in a half decent state. The graphics are much better, the combat and gameplay smoother and I can run it without it looking like a slideshow.

There's apparently a bunch of new survival features I haven't tried yet and I think that if they can keep up this quality and pace of updates then DM has the potential to have a great redemption arc after everything that the game's been through.

I'm hoping for more impactful combat, perhaps some gameplay/survival tweaks we can make when playing solo as currently loot is pretty easy to get on zombies and more zombie variety as for some reason all of them look a bit like my dad.

I understand the communities pessimism and frustration regarding this game - but I'll leave them to express themselves in their own way. In my opinion, the game is worth keeping an eye on and for those that have paid already, redeem your Steam key via their website and give the game another crack!

Oh...and can we get some official servers that aren't just US? :D I want to play online but can't atm due to servers being so far away.

The gameplay loop is absolutely fine but from hitting 1.0 LE has suffered extensive server issues - most of which have been curbed.

However, I can't play for more than 10-15 minutes without dying to a huge lag spike and it's incredibly frustrating as, up until that point, I'm usually enjoying myself.

I'll happily change my review if/when servers aren't borked - but currently they're taking all the fun out of the online play with my friends.

Whilst Paranormal itself isn't necessarily awful - the game has been abandoned and a lot of stuff is either half finished or was never implemented at all.

After 2 successful Kickstarters - Paranormal set out to be what I'd consider the original haunting/investigation sim and it is a shame it never realised it's full potential. As games like Phasmophobia and Conrad Stevenson's Paranormal P.I. have shown is that there was huge demand for this style of game.

Sadly due to Steam having next to no rules when it comes to end of life on EA games - this game still continues to linger on the Steam store and I wish the dev would make it unavailable to buy as there seems to be no intention of completing the project so even "early access" feels misleading.

Poker?

I hardly knew her.