Recent reviews by DallasFourTwo

-- UPDATE -- 03/10/26

I have now beaten Cairn on the normal difficulty setting, and I can say, this game rocked me to my core! Truly amazing! Unlike anything else that I've ever played!

It not only has the gameplay I imagined as described below, but wraps it in a compelling story with beautiful presentation!

I don't want to give away too much, but if you're on the fence, I definitely recommend playing this game! One of the freshest gaming experiences I've had in years! Now I'm over two hours into a Free Solo climb of Kami! So far, so good!

Original Review Follows:

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I've never climbed a mountain in real life (I'm too chicken), but I've always wanted to, and I admire real-life mountain climbers who are among the biggest badasses on the planet! I don't have much time in this game yet, but I'm compelled to write a review. You see, I've been dreaming about a game like this for years - A game where you actually climb a mountain like a real mountain climber, seeing your character on the wall of the mountain, reaching for hand and footholds in various directions. This game pulls it off in a way that is fun and elegant in a way very much in line with my vision.

Beyond that, it seems like there are survival elements here. You have to watch your food, water, and stamina, and there are various buffs you can get to help you for a time. There's also a story, which is pretty interesting so far. Most importantly, the presentation is beautiful. This is a beautiful game! You just get the feeling that the devs poured their hearts and souls into this one. And that moment when you get to the top of the "training" mountain and see the REAL mountain in the distance... EPIC!

Too early for me to say whether it will have that long-lasting appeal, whether the story will pay off, or whether it will be a value for the asking price. I didn't get it on a good sale (10% off, $26.99), but I was compelled to buy because this is the closest thing yet I've seen to my vision. If my opinion changes significantly, I'll update this review, but for now, BRAVO to the devs for bringing my vision to life!

I picked this DLC up the day before Scotland dropped, and now that I'm getting into my Great One Wild Boar grind, I have to say, the barrel feeder is a game-changer! Instead of hunting at night with night vision on the drink zones, you can set up these barrels and cull the boars in the daylight hours! Just makes things so much easier!

If you have your heart set on getting a Great One Boar on Scotland, seriously consider picking up this DLC if you haven't already.

I haven't played with the other types of feeders yet, but I imagine they would be useful in certain situations.

If you're not sure, wait for a good sale.

I like this! For only four bucks at regular price, it makes all the trophies in my lodge a little bit shinier, and gives me more customizability. I like visiting museums when I have the chance, and looking around my lodge with these nicer plaques and platforms is like visiting a nicer museum rather than a low-budget one!

This DLC is not a huge game-changer, but if, like me, you've spent countless hours wandering around your lodges trying to get things to look just right and admiring your trophies, you might enjoy this DLC as I have!

If you're intrigued but put off by the price, just wait for a sale!

I bought it first thing this morning and played all day - had a blast! The map is beautiful, with great ambience and nice music. The main reason I play this game is to get lost in a beautiful natural place with no other people in it! For that, this map is great! Ever since Braveheart, I've also been fascinated by Scottish culture, myth and history, and there's a fair bit of that on offer here, too!

I focused on the main quests and after playing all day, I haven't finished them all yet! There is also a generous assortment of side quests. This is an improvement over some of the maps in the past that had barely any main quests and sometimes no side quests at all! I like doing the main quests at least because they take me on a tour around the map and let me experience multiple aspects of the game. If you like missions in COTW, you'll probably enjoy this map!

I think I managed to harvest at least one of every animal on the map except the badger. All the new animals I saw were interesting and fun, and the remodeled animals look great from what I've seen so far. However, be warned that the biggest trophy animal on this map is the Red Deer, and most of the game on this map is on the small side, with lots of birds and small mammals. If you're a die-hard big-game hunter, this map might leave you wanting more, but if you like hunting birds and small-to-medium sized game, you'll really enjoy this one!

I always try to get a value of at least $1 per hour of play time from my gaming purchases, and even at full price, I nearly got that on day one, and I'm not even done with the main quests yet! Easily dozens of hours of fun to be had in this one!

I'm an intermediate player with no Great Ones to my credit, so I can't speak to how good this map is for that. I did appreciate that much of the map is wide open with minimal cover, allowing you to see game from a long way off, especially in the highlands, but there are some thickly forested areas as well. Overall, I found it to be a good variety of biomes.

So far so good as far as I'm concerned! Looking forward to putting more time in and uncovering more of this map's secrets!

I was gifted this game around a decade ago when it was in (very) early access, and let's just say, it was rough. I could see the concept they were trying to get across, but after 20 hours, I was done.

Fast forward around a decade, 7 Days has finally been released in a full 1.0 version, and the same friend who gifted it to me convinced me to give it another look. I'm glad I did! Since then, I've put around 110 more hours into the game, and I feel prepared to share my thoughts.

The biggest thing I didn't like about the game in the early days was that it was quite tough and punishing. But now, to my pleasant surprise, the devs have added all kinds of options to allow the player to customize their experience (including difficulty) in a wide variety of ways - wider even than most games! By turning down some settings and playing a few hours that way, I was feeling confident and ready to take on a greater challenge, and started a new world with the difficulty at the default settings.

Even still, this game doesn't do a lot of hand-holding and you may need to look some things up online if you can't figure them out for yourself in-game. But I like that. I don't like it when a game tells you step-by-step how to do everything. I only found myself looking online 2-3 times, but then, I also had a good friend playing the game simultaneously and we compared notes.

Both my mutual friend and I were veterans of the early Day-Z mod for Arma 2 (I think). We loved everything about that game except for the fact that you were forced to play on persistently online servers, where griefers could and would log in, hide in the hills with a sniper-rifle, and wait for you to go into that convenience store to grab some loot, and as soon as you came out, POP! Next thing you know, all your hard work goes down the drain and these jerks were off with all your hard-earned loot.

That's the other thing I love the most about 7 Days - If you want to play by yourself, you can! All you have to do is create a private world and nobody else can log in there unless you want them to. What an amazing idea! I pretty much just won't play a game anymore if it forces me into that kind of situation. That said, if you want to play multiplayer, all those options are available, too.

As for your character development, you have several skill trees to go down. In a single playthrough, you can probably master one tree and dabble in a second. I myself mastered in Perception, which helped me with Rifles and Spears, and later moved into Agility, helping me with Pistols and Stealth tactics. Other trees have things like fists, shotguns, robotics, and more! There's a reason to play the game again to try a different build.

The game is broken up into what are referred to in the community as POIs or Points of Interest. Each building, structure or compound is a POI. Some are more complicated or difficult than others, as indicated by a number of skulls. This gives you a convenient way to see, when you get nearby, how tough that place will be.

There are also NPC Traders who also act as questgivers who can direct you to POIs of the challenge level you're seeking, and completing these quests rewards XP and other rewards. It's a nice progression system that gives you something else to do besides just survive the horde nights.

Speaking of the Horde Nights, also known as Blood Moons, these happen every 7 days (what was your first hint?), and consist of you having to survive a night of constant zombie attacks. For this purpose, many players build a specialized horde base, and engineering this can be a lot of fun. Every 7 days, you have a chance to test out your design, look for flaws, devise improvements, and implement them before the next Blood Moon. So you're constantly juggling between questing/doing POIs, just surviving, and preparing for the next Horde Night. It's fun because you can't get too deep into anything before turning your attention elsewhere.

You can also craft multiple different vehicles, from the humble bicycle on up, which make getting around a lot easier. These really change the feel of gameplay and make you feel like you've evolved into your next form!

In the later game, you'll venture out of the tranquil Pine Forest to explore more difficult zones, which harbor additional challenges. The diversity of different biomes adds some interest to the game, but I wish the devs would further differentiate these biomes and encourage players to venture into them sooner. I also wish the POIs in each zone would be more unique. But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent game, which will undoubtedly continue to get better.

All in all, 7 Days to Die is (in 2024) an extremely solid zombie survival sim, and on a single playthrough, you could expect to experience on the order of 100 hours of content or possibly more. Now that I've done that, I'm going to give the game a break, then come back later and try again with a different character build. Until then, try to stay alive, survivors!

I love all these Artifex Mundi hidden object games! I've played many of them. Some are better than others. This one is average, amongst those I've played.

The graphics here are very nice. The story is pretty good. The atmosphere and setting are great. The music is awesome!

However, the puzzles in this game are super easy to complete. I played on expert difficulty and solved all puzzles without skipping.

The hidden object puzzles, however, were a little tougher. Mostly they were easy, but every so often, there was an object I just couldn't find. I found certain objects almost impossible to find without a hint. Granted the game takes place hundreds of years ago in Eastern Europe, and objects looked different than they do now, but still, some of these asks were a little hard to fulfill.

Unfortunately, that was the biggest challenge this game had to offer! Not fair! The hidden object puzzles should have been a little more straightforward and the other aspects of the game should have had a little more meat on the bone for players who are experienced with other AM titles. Perhaps a little more depth.

I can't complain too much, because I paid less than $4 US for it. I feel I got my money's worth. It's not a bad game, but I've played other AM games that were better. Get it on a good sale, and you probably won't be disappointed either.

If you have never played a Paradox Grand Strategy game before, such as Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, or Stellaris, you have to understand, they do things a little different. First and foremost, the way this company does business, you're going to buy a base game which, to use an automotive analogy, would be a box-stock, bare-bones basic model, which, don't get me wrong, is still very good all by itself.

As time goes by, they are then going to attempt to sell you a bunch of add-on parts: expansion pack after expansion pack, each one at a premium price, some more useful than others, many only adding small features to the game. If you look at the comments for each expansion pack on the store page, you will no doubt find many people complaining that these features should have been included in the base game. Because that's what most gaming companies do... they include a lot of features in the base game.

This company is not like that. You just have to accept that the base game is only the beginning, and the game will continue to evolve and grow for years to come. Much of that happens free of charge due to patches to the base game, but there are many features you can't experience without buying the expansions.

My advice: Wait for a sale. Wait for a sale on the base game, and then wait for a sale on the expansions. They go on sale frequently. Pretty much every major Steam sale, you'll see many of the Paradox products on sale.

Another thing to note about Victoria 3 and other Paradox Grand Strategy games: It's a steep learning curve. The developer has gotten better about putting in tutorials and helpful tooltips and Victoria 3 is the best game from them I've ever played in that regard. There's also an in-game encyclopedia that can help you understand certain things. Despite that, you may need to consult websites or YouTube for more detailed information until you get up to speed. Stick with it! When you figure it out, it's very rewarding!

If you've ever played a Total War game, just think that this game is like the map mode of that game, but does not have the tactical battles. It's basically a really detailed chess game.

The base game itself is good for dozens (if not hundreds) of hours of gameplay. This game tells the story of the century between 1836 and 1936. So far I've been playing as the United States. I restarted after a few hours after I understood the gameplay a little better. Since then I've been killing it! I've managed to stave off a civil war so far and I'm trying to expand westward. There have been many themed events in line with real history, and you can make choices that spin the narrative in whole new directions. It's a lot of fun!

As a big history buff, I can say this is among the most detailed and accurate representations of this period of American History that I've ever played. I can't wait to try some of the other interesting countries of the period and see what that's like!

To conclude, if you're interested in this historical period, willing to put in some work to learn the game, and not afraid to spend a little money on expansions going forward (especially if you get them on sale), you can do a lot worse than Victoria 3. I think if you give it a fair chance, you'll fall in love with it like I did! And if you enjoy this one, check out some of the other Grand Strategy franchises from Paradox that I mentioned before. They're not paying me to say this. I'm just a frequent player and fan!

I last tried this game in May of 2024, and at that time, I couldn't give it a positive recommendation, mainly because it was not solo-player friendly.

However, I'm happy to say that this has changed. The game now has a well-integrated AI squad that helps you and you can issue orders to. The Training and Campaign features are both new since the last time I played, and both are great.

I've got a whole new lease on life as far as this game is concerned! I'm looking forward to diving into the new features. Back when I wrote my previous review, I said if the Devs made the game more solo-friendly, I'd edit my review and give a thumbs up. So here I am. Thanks, Devs! Great job on the new stuff over the past year or so!

A great old-skool RTS with a loosely historical WW2 theme based on the allied advances into Western Europe in 1944.

I love this historical period, but I typically don't love RTS games. The perfectionist in me wants to get everything right, and in the chaos of most RTS games, that's a major challenge. I'm not as young as I used to be and my actions per minute have slowed over the years.

However, this game has a great feature that allows even me to have fun with it: You can pause the action at any time, issue orders to your units, then unpause and they will go carry out your orders. So anytime the action gets hairy, you can pause and figure out what you want to do. Combine this with frequent saves, and the campaigns are totally do-able even for a very casual gamer such as myself.

The game is a great value even at full price. At the time of this writing, I've put 28 hours in the game and I haven't finished the first campaign yet. There are several more campaigns after the first one! Some of those might require DLC. I think I bought a package that had them all. If you get the game on a discount, it's really a steal!

This game was released in 2006, and the graphics are a little rough at times (especially cutscenes) by today's standards, but as long as you can accept that, you should have a lot of fun with this one!

I can't comment on multiplayer as I'm strictly a single-player campaigner.

- Great gameplay design: Colors, shapes, and sounds clue the player in to items, pathways and points of interest. Controls are tight and the game is fun to play. Weakened enemies can be "glory-killed" which is very satisfying and rewards health drops. Frequently there are big battles where many enemies will spawn in and you'll have to fight off several waves. Boss battles are fun and challenging.
- Great art design: Many of the levels have a similar overall aesthetic - red Martian landscapes, metal catwalks, rocky areas - and there could have been more variety, but the details are awesome. The worlds are alive with environmental effects, lights, colors, and atmosphere. The graphical interface on the computer terminals and such is awesome. Monsters look great, and some are pretty large and terrifying. Certain weapons work better against certain enemies, and discovering this was enjoyable.
- Story is not terribly important to the overall experience, but it's there, and it's not bad. Usually it is delivered through cutscenes and data entries that provide info about environments, equipment, enemies, etc.
- Fast-paced: I spent the first few levels trying to sneak around before realizing that this game rewards run & gun gameplay. Once I realized that, I sped up my pace and had a lot more fun. Don't worry about missing stuff - you can always come back and play the levels again to find stuff you missed.
- Secrets and Hidden Stuff: Tons of secret areas, items, and upgrades, many of which are pretty challenging to find. You can return to levels and play them again to find things you missed.
- Weapon, Armor, and Suit Upgrades: A robust weapon upgrade system rewards you for exploration and successful combat. Each weapon has multiple fire modes and challenges to complete in order to max out its performance. Armor upgrades are hidden throughout the levels to reward exploration. Occasionally you'll get an upgrade that allows a choice between extra health, armor, or ammunition, allowing some customization to your gameplay experience.
- Rune Perk System: Hidden throughout the levels are rune challenges, which allow you to unlock runes, which are little perks to enhance gameplay, like making you run faster for a short time after you kill an enemy. After you unlock your full capabilities, you'll be able to equip three of them at a time, and they allow further customization of your play experience.
- Campaign took me about 15 hours to complete, going at a fairly casual pace. Found about half the secrets on the first play through. Would be easy to spend another 5-10 hours or more going through each level with a fine-toothed comb trying to find all the additional secrets. I bought this game when it was already several years old for $19.99. I feel justified and satisfied at that price point, but I probably would have been left wanting more if I had bought it the day it came out for $59.99.
- Arcade mode is a fun diversion which I messed around with after I finished the main campaign. Allows you to revisit levels trying to chain together kill-combos in order to get the highest possible score. Keeps track with online leaderboards.
- Map designer and healthy catalog of community-built maps to experience once you finish the main game - though I found even the best of these not even close to the quality of the main campaign.
- Never tried the multi-player, so I can't speak to that.

OVERALL: Great fast paced action shooter. Fun for what it is. Just don't expect too much from it.