Recent reviews by ChebyPattern

Bought it, played it, had fun with it, however

AMD Adrenaline saved clips from the game in Chinese, naming folder and video file prefix as "天龙八部3" which translates into "Dragon Ball part 3".

I don't really know what to say about this game, it feels incomplete, hollow?

I played a lot of "numbers go brrr" games, but this one I feel like lacks something, I can't really explain it.
You select a character, kill enemies, buy/get gear, challenge the boss, teleport to shop or next location, repeat.
It may sound like a good enough cycle, and in some cases it can be, but the longer you play this game, the more tiresome it gets.

I think the best comparison to RoR2 I can make is Megabonk.
Yes, Megabonk is a much younger project, but it does a lot of stuff better.
I'd also add Gunfire Reborn to this, but it's completely different.

Oh, also Epic Games servers, which causes a lot of issues from time to time.

So it's just not for me.

If you don't like reading, scroll to the bottom and check the score.

It is a big shame that the game barely gets any attention whatsoever, considering the amount of effort that went into it, especially if you realize that the game was made by one person.

Yes, a lot of people will look at the store page, read the title and think:
"huh, that's game about piss".

Despite the fact that the game contains a lot of elements about urine, it's not some sh*tpost or meme, it has a lot of lore or rather clues about what's going on, interesting clues, because people won't suddenly turn into explosion-propelled meaty cannonballs after interacting with urine any way.

"Why all of this happened?" - the question you will start asking the more you play the game.



THE BASICS:
On surface level, there's nothing extraordinary, you have an axe to collect building crafting/building materials, you forage for some food that isn't a protein bar, and etc.

There is a day cycle, it's decently long, but I suggest on finding a place to stay, because the flashlight you have at all times is not infinite, you need batteries for it.
And when it gets dark, it gets pitch black dark.

Materials do respawn, but in boxes all around the world, so make sure to loot those too.

! Additional advice - carry at least 1 trash bag if you find one, you will never know what you will find in your travels.

! Additional-additional very important advice - don't forget to save at sinks or wash basin, there is no auto-save or in-progress saves, you gotta remember that before venturing somewhere, otherwise you will lose progress and time if you die like 2 hours later after not saving!


FOOD/COOKING:
We all know that mealworms are very delicious and have a lot of protein, which is why every single protein bar in the game is made out of some sticky substance and mealworms. It's an okay food source, but you can find a better one, like meat and bug meat.
You can cook food on the campfire, although there is a cooking pot which you have to find in order to make something more complex like broth or clean water.

! In order to collect big items/objects like cooking pot or fluid tank, you will need a trash bag.


BUILDING:
Surprisingly, this game has a very cool building mechanic. Unlike a lot of games that use pre-built sections from different materials, this game has free shapes.
So far the main 4 building materials are metal sheets, plywood, wood and wires.
If you need a fast, simple house for basic needs, you can construct wooden hut with 25 wood. It's extremely useful.


EXPLORATION:
This game is very, very fun to explore, not only because the landscapes look cool and built by hand, this game doesn't have separate locations like in Half-Life or Stalker. And the exploration always rewards you well, and the game's story also encourages you to explore.
And yes, there are vehicles in this game, several!


ENEMIES:
The game has a lot of enemies, and dependent on your actions, mainly the hazardous fog level, you will meet more of them, both in quantity and variety/types.


HAZARDOUS FOG:
This is the most appealing part about this game to me, also considering the exploration, world and other concepts of the game of course.

What's a hazardous fog? Imagine it's like Stalker emissions, but it's happening because of your carelessness, and it won't stop until you fix it.
I also think it might be an allegory on Earth pollution, but I digress.
I don't really want to fully explain it, so you will have to find out about it yourself.


STORY:
I will not spoil anything, but I'm just gonna say it's interesting because you're given more mysteries in form of bread crumbs, and those bread crumbs are all around the world, and only some answers are in the facility.
! I will say however, the story ending was added only recently, so what I assume can happen is the Dev will add more or make the existing one even better.



This game felt like a combination of:
Darkwood, Stalker, Half-Life, and maybe Valheim for house coziness?

Weird combo I know, but when you're exploring contaminated world full of mysteries, insane people with mutants, all-time present hazard and there's a way to just chill in your own house - I guess that's a way to describe it.

I highly recommend this gem, and I don't know if the Developer will ever add co-op into this game or not, but so far this is a very, very enjoyable singleplayer experience. I haven't discovered every single mystery or place on the map, but I am planning to in the future.

My only gripes are the fact that the model size of items in the game are often inconsistent, and playing it on AMD GPU may cause some visuals glitches, especially at the endgame location, but both are fixable so I will just announce the score:

A strong 8.8/10.

Too much dialogue (hated Iris), I expected the gameplay process to be way faster like in Gunfire Reborn, but instead there's a story? The "Corrupted Virus" thing is being mentioned very often and it sounds so stupid, I don't know what else to say, it's just bone with no meat - for me. Maybe someone else will find this game amazing, but I didn't.

This is the last time I will ever trust GSC with any project.

I was expecting some minor improvements to graphics and perfomance of the game.
What I got was censorship, lack of Russian language, even more bugs, actually worst looking game and no optimization.
I can't play the game because it's taking a toll on my PC, and additionally my eyes hurt to look at the blurry image.
And it's to the fact that it feels like typical Unity project.

Before you ask, I'm Ukrainian, and I always enjoyed this game in Russian. And with this bs going on about banning anything related to Russian language or soviet elements is beyond absurd, especially when it comes to old media.

You can't rewrite or delete history GSC, with these changes you're part of the propaganda, but also a lazy gamedev studio. A lot of people believed that you could pull this off despite the hard times, despite the war, but turns out around half, if not more, of your team is not even in Ukraine! So you have no excuse releasing stuff like this, that plays worse, looks worse and lacks in content compared to old games.

A better gift to the Stalker community would be not releasing these piles of garbage you're calling "Enhanced Editions".
And also, a funny hiccup on their part, UAF used Russian language when flying over you on a helicopter, meaning there was no quality control whatsoever.

The Long Drive walked so Drive Beyond Horizons could run.

Unlike classic roguelikes, Peglin is punishing player for progressing.
At first the debuffs you get are mild, but later on it gets so bad, losing doesn't come as learning experience, instead it leaves you filled with frustration.

To clarify for those who haven't bought this game yet, the only means of progression is for you to increase the Crucible level, basically difficulty.
Unlocking 3 additional classes is a thing you can do, and all of them have their own benefit during the run, but at the end, you're unlocking higher difficulties.
Each class has to unlock it's own Crucible level, so if you're playing the default class, the other ones won't progress at the same time.

At higher levels you will lose more than 20 runs, sometimes even 40 in a row, (runs that can last up to 30 minutes) because RNG didn't bless you with specific items that stay relevant in your traversal.
A lot of orbs become irrelevant, but if you do want to make them efficient, good luck getting them AND relics through RNG. Not only that, constant need in healing and upgrading the starter orbs to have some chance of survival will leave you with a small amount of gold.
Not only that, game gives you more junk into your bag, more default pebballs and 2 literal trash orbs to interrupt your deck queue.

If you do want to give yourself more chances of winning, exploit the save reload. It will start the latest battle or event from beginning, so if you were about to die, there's your chance.

I started doing this after Crucible 16, because losing 20+ runs was too much.

Close on reaching Crucible 20 with Spinventor, so far I have a grudge against this system and I just want to see what an ultimate form of sadism looks like.

Do I like this game? Yes, it's about numbers going up, but do I recommend it? Not for everyone, however, you can still play on previous difficulties, no one is stopping you.

Bought it the first time back in 2022.
Opened the game, changed settings to medium and joined my friend's lobby.
Below 10 fps and statters.
Attempted to lower the settings to minimal. Nothing changed.
Refunded it and never looked at it again, not until recently.

This time I have dedicated SSD for games and new CPU installed. Same friend bought AND hosted the game once again. Joined the lobby and have 35-45 fps, which is not great, but good enough for me.


Here's my list of issues that occurred within 3.5 hours of us playing:
1. User Interface mechanics:
- You have 3 toolbars, and all of them work as a shortcut to the item you have in your inventory.
- If you're using all 3 toolbars for separate items, say goodbye to 24 inventory slots.
- You need to press 1-8 on your keyboard in order to select different tools/items.
- Mouse scrolling goes through toolbars, and not the items on it.
- Inventory in general is very buggy. Sometimes if I deselect items from toolbar, they just disappear, or somehow reappear on a different toolbar.
- I wanted to select food item on the hotbar, but instead my character started eating it right away. Because I thought if I select it, I needed to use LMB for it to be eaten, guess not.

2. Base building (probably a bug, there's a lot of them):
- I couldn't build anything for almost an hour in my friend's lobby. I was able to add materials to existing blueprints, but not the ones I put down.

3. Food and Water:
- We can make campfires and workbenches at the start of the game, build bases, but we can't make some sort of a bottle to store in our inventories in case we need to hydrate.
- We can eat raw mushrooms, but can't eat berries. Berries are somehow used in armor?

4. Scaling:
- Just aesthetical critique about how acorns are large themselves, but when used on spinning wheel, they're now small? And how the hell do they fit in our inventory, but some grass "planks" can only be held in hand?
- Why dry grass also fits in our inventory? We may never know.
- Maybe it's not about aesthetics anymore.

5. Spiders:
- I personally have no issues with spiders themselves, I'm glad I don't have arachnophobia, but oh boy. The game is full of spiders. I think developers wanted to add some sort of reoccurring enemy in the game, and decided that whenever you go anywhere - there will be spiders, bushes, water, ground.
- In the amount of time that we played I saw 4 ants, 4 ants and 50* spiders.
- Actually there's way more spiders than all insects combined in comparison.

6. Exposition:
- That damn robot wouldn't stop talking.

7. World richness:
- Despite being shown through the perspective of an insect, it's.. bland. Not much you can find, feels pretty empty. But honestly, the only thing that you will find in huge quantity are spiders.

8. Exploration:
- Running around is fun, climbling the bush as if it was a massive tree is also fun, anything else - pretty boring.
- Fall damage shouldn't be a thing for us in this scale, and you can't change my mind.

9. Crafting:
- Some crafting recipes felt tedious or illogical.

But generally, game had quite a few bugs, and I'm not talking about "bugs", and considering that spider is not a bug, you know what I mean.

Overall, if you liked this game and disagree with my review - I'm glad you had fun. For me, it felt like I was just wasting my time, thus I do not recommend it.

My last review was about high hopes and believing into developer, now all I see is them abandoning the game and breaking it with the patch.

Do not buy, it's not worth it.

I accidentally drank tainted water, which made me sick.
Then I accidentally vomited on my friend, which made him sick too.

We were like walking fountains, and it was beautiful.