Recent reviews by Poozer

FOR SUPER EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTH

Set sail in the most immersive and detail rich pirate game since the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO (which lives on in The Legends of Pirates Online, and I would highly recommend to try if you like this game).

This game is beautiful in it's graphics, and you need look no farther than the water to realize that. It's highly stylized in a cartoonish manner, and the body proportions of characters comes straight from ARK, but it fits in a wonderfully silly way. And, surprisingly- it performs incredibly smoothly. I've never so much as had my frames stutter, and the networking is immaculate, with the only interruptions being when you're merged into a new server, and even that occurs almost seamlessly.

The mechanics and gameplay are simple in concept, but with a lot of room for mastery. You're given an incredible amount of freedom to choose how you want to play- PvE, PvP, exploration, story missions, Boss Hunts, etc., and all of it is meaningful and rewarding. There's a decent tutorial to run you through the basics, but the mechanics themselves are so simple that they can discerned and learned at a glance. A new player will figure out the rigging of the sails and catching headwinds within five minutes of logging on for the first time, it's just that intuitive.

You get three types of ships of to choose from: Sloops, Brigadiers, and Galleons, and each is larger than the former, with room for more crew.

Sloops are the smallest ships, with 1 sail, 2 cannons, and room for up to two crew members. It's small, but nimble, and it's small size makes it easy to handle even for a solo player, and Solo Slooping can be one of the best ways to learn the game and relax a little.

Brigadiers (often shortened to Brigs), have 2 sails, 4 cannons, and a crew of up to 3 members. This one is still soloable fairly easily once you've got the hang of it, and the extra sails make it capable of a faster speed, although the size makes the handling less responsive than a Sloop. Still, the greater size, speed, and combat potential makes it the perfect ship for handling larger quests and whatnot. The main sail when fully dropped does obscure vision from the helm, however, so get used to keeping that partially up, or relying on a navigator to be your eyes.

Galleons have 2 sails, 6 cannons, and a max crew of 4 members. Trying to solo this thing is next to impossible when having to micromanage 3 sails for maximum speed, so teamwork is necessary to run this optimally. Like the brig, the sails actually limit your visibility from the helm, and the responsiveness of the ship's handling is like trying to single-handed drag a planet out of orbit. Enjoy turning the wheel three times to be able to shift slightly left, or simply having to plan all your maneuvers far in advance to account for how unresponsive a Galleon is. That aside, the incredible number of cannons, as well as the highest crew potential in the game makes this beast of a ship a monster to face down in combat.

Personally, the Sloop is my favorite vessel, while I prefer to avoid Galleons unless I have a full friend group to play with- and this game is much, much better to play with friends. Solo Slooping is nice and relaxing, but the hijinx available with a full crew are unmatched in their excitement.

The progressions systems are decent, but somewhat passive, focused on a Reputation system spread across multiple factions, including:

The Gold Hoarders, who love treasure and will make you rich for your exploring and looting.
The Order of Souls, a great faction for PvE focused players.
The Merchants, whom only get played when people are trying to grind to Pirate Legend, then promptly ignored from then on.
and...
The Reapers, who are for PvP players who thrive on letting other players grind for hours for loot, only to gank them at the last second and generally be the most toxic people you've ever run across. I can count on one hand the number of times an encounter with a Reapers crew didn't involve slurs of some kind being thrown out.
(I know some of ya'll will say something along the lines of "He's just mad a piracy in the piracy game lelel", and while I'll admit frustration when hours of gameplay are reduced to nothing because of suddenly getting jumped by a Galleon at Outpost, I would be, and generally am, much more amenable and able to let it slide and have fun when it isn't done by the most toxic people using the cheapest tactics.)

The community of this game is very much a mixed bag. Running into another player is almost always a fight. I'm never one to shoot first, but I've been sunk many times in return for my pacifism. If you have something, they'll want to take it. If you have nothing, they'll want you dead just to make sure you don't try to take anything. You'll very rarely find an alliance, and it's almost always a very temporary one that ends the moment someone has the advantage to screw over the other. Running an Open Crew is also a risk, as it's a 50/50 tossup whether you'll get someone who will actually help you, or is going to firebomb and keg your ship in the middle of the ocean, despite the fact that it loses them money, too. For this reason, I recommend friends in Closed Crews.

The community aside, my only other complaint is that the multiplayer aspect doesn't allow for friends to bring multiple ships together. If you're not on the same Crew, there is NO way to ensure you get into the same server as your friends, and that becomes extra frustrating if you have more than 4 people total. In addition, I do feel the crew limitations are somewhat arbitrary for the ships. I think Sloops could go up to 3, Brigs to 4, and Galleons at least to 6, if not simply outright doubling the max crew for all.

Still, if you're looking for an immersive experience that takes you out to the seas and gives you the absolute freedom to do what you want, I'd highly recommend Sea of Thieves.

Ahem...

N E X T W E E K

I want so badly to love this game and recommend it. On the baseline, this game seems great. And really, it has all the core elements that it needs to be. The gameplay is solid, some of the best, most visceral skill based hybrid combat of any game I've every played. The visuals are a fantastic and one of the most faithful representations of 40k I've ever seen, and the music is heavenly.

Unfortunately, around that golden core of Darktide, is an absolute mess of missing features, content, and other peripherals that make it a failure of a game in it's current state, and a development team that shows no interest in actually improving it.

You'll see it in just about every review, but I'll run down a quick list.
- Less stable than a heavily modded Bethesda game. Not hyperbole- my Fallout 4 running over 700 mods crashes, lags, and stutters significantly less than Darktide in a single session. This has improved slightly over time, but my load times and crashes are still notable enough to be heavily frustrating.
- Graphical bugs out every orifice. Have fun loading into the Mourningstar to find your character a naked conglomeration of severed heads, arms, and torsos for at least 3 minutes until everything loads in. Again, improved somewhat now, but still prominent enough to frustrate. I had a not-insignificant period of time where my Zealot's breasts clipped through the breastplate of a premium Krieg coat. It was not as enticing as it sounds.
- A network infrastructure that'd make Nintendo blush. Get disconnected from matches for literally zero reason.
- Load times long enough to have significant progress done on government-funded public infrastructure by the time it's done.
- A fraction of a "crafting" system, in which you can craft nothing, but you can "refine" items, so long as you're fine only refining half the weapon's perks and blessings while the others get locked in, and everything is chosen by RNG, so you'll have to dump hundreds of resources to still not get what you wanted.
- A "Penance" achievement system that offers free cosmetics... if you either completely grief your team or perform some impossible feat (some literally so... Flash Missions).
- All the cosmetics purchasable in the in-game shop being absurdly expensive... and simply recolors of the basic gear.
- Meanwhile, the only stable and quick-loading way to get actually good cosmetics is... the Microtransaction Store! (Thanks, Tencent!)
- Half of those premium cosmetics are also recolors! Hooray for having FOUR of the exact same Veteran welding mask!
- Weapon stats are RNG based! You have no way to ensure the weapons available are actually better than your current ones, nor any way to actually improve your weapons. It's actually pointless to buy any weapons until your max level, because they're so abysmally under-statted that they're complete garbage. Try a 180-rating and 365-rating of the exact same weapon, and it's the difference between a rubber band and a Howitzer.
- Missions are locked into a specific difficulty, and randomly generated so that you absolutely cannot choose a specific map or game type.
- Some of the contracts have objectives based on specific maps and modes... that you have no reliable method of even having the ability to play!

There's so much more I could include, but ultimately, it comes down to this:
Darktide, at it's core, is an incredibly fun game. But every moment you are not in a game blasting heretics and daemons is pure, utter agony. And even worse than that, there has been no real effort made by the developers of Fatshark to rectify it, past nonstatements and corporate apology letters. Almost a year later, and it STILL hasn't completely fulfilled it's launch promises, and it's added only a handful of new missions/maps, and ALL the "new weapons" are just stat-shifted new marks of existing weapons.

I want this game to succeed and have a redemption arc like No Man's Sky and Fallout 76... but for every redemption arc, there's a lot of stories that end with a bad game staying bad and being forgotten, and Darktide hasn't started well at all, and the devs haven't shown a true commitment to turning the ship around. And even if they do, they've wasted their first impressions, and Darktide will always bear the mark and reputation of a game that promised much, and delivered little.

If things change, I'll edit this and recommend it. Otherwise, I can't honestly do so in good conscience.

In the meantime, I'm leaving Tertium to go back to Super Earth, and if you're looking for a good horde shooter that does it right, and is handled by honest, hardworking devs who make the effort to treat their community right, I'd recommend Helldivers 2 instead.

Where to even begin with this absolute gem of a game?

If you like the frantic horde shooting of Left For Dead, the humor and class structure of Team Fortress 2, with a little bit Minecraft and Starship Troopers, this is 110% the game for you.

The devs are fantastic, too. The monetization of this game is virtually non-existent, save for a few minor cosmetic DLCs that in no way affect the game. There's free season passes to progress on for unlocks, and even if you miss those, everything from them just drops into the loot pools of gear you can passively unlock via little events that pop up in your missions.

It can be a bit repetitve in the gameplay loop, but in the best possible way that won't get tiresome unless you absolutely no-life the game.

My only complaint is the unfortunate lack of true crossplay. XBox and the Windows 10 version have crossplay, but Playstation and Steam players are locked to their respective versions, and it seems the developers have no intent to make it truly crossplay.

Still, this game gets my highest recommendations, and an obligatory ROCK AND STONE!

Wake up on the beach, naked with only a rock and a torch. Smack a tree. Smack a rock. Try to work your way up from there. Die. Lose everything. Rinse and repeat.

That's Rust in a nutshell for you. Brutal survival where your biggest enemies are everyone else you meet.

Visually, it looks solid. Not the prettiest, but good enough. Could be better optimized, though. If you're not on a high-end system, you'll probably notice your system running hot, and the load times can be pretty egregious.

Not much to say in terms of audio. There's a bit of music, and it's actually pretty good. Too bad it's very sparse.

Mechanically, the gameplay's fairly simple. More realistic Minecraft. Gather supplies, craft better supplies, build a base and try not to die and lose your stuff as long as you can- although it only delays the inevitable. Satisfying to play, devastating to lose. The gunplay is satisfying enough, and some of the latest changes help make it a bit more balanced. If you're a primitive like me, you'll mostly be running bows, spears, and melee, though. They function well enough, but there's nothing too fascinating with them. It's a far cry from the complexity of Mordhau or even the fun simplicity of Skyrim. The building mechanics are alright, if a bit barebones, more focused on snap-grid type construction which is fairly limited in what you can make. You'll typically see little stone boxes and octagonal towers more than not, and that's partly because of the limited designs, and also because of the necessity to design optimally against attack rather than make anything particularly interesting.

One of the best features is the Wipe. Maps and blueprints get reset regularly, meaning everyone has to start over from nothing. This keeps anyone from becoming too dominant on any server that others are effectively blocked out

The biggest thing to be wary of is the other players. This game is... very competitive. You can't really trust someone if you don't know them personally, and 9 times out of 10, they'll kill and rob you on sight, and there's a good chance you'll be called some form of racial slur or something equally derogatory and hateful. I'm not gonna lie, it's a toxic place. For that reason, my recommendation is to avoid vanilla servers at all cost. Play community servers, usually a noob server or something that has a 'No KOS' (Kill-On-Sight) tag is the best bet to get a decent Rust experience that offers everything, but in a more laid-back, enjoyable experience.

Another thing is that, by the nature of the game being an always online and evolving situation between wipes, this is a game that effectively demands constant attention and play. If you're not online regularly to ensure you have the materials to keep your buildings from decaying, gathering your farms, or simply ensuring someone hasn't blasted it all to kingdom come and taken everything, then things aren't likely to go well.

If you've got the time, and you want the challenge of a game like Rust, I'd enjoy it. Just stick to the safer servers and be wary of others. There's plenty to enjoy if you just take it easy and explore more than just trying to ruin someone else's day. Though that can be fun, too. If they deserve it.

Honestly, one of the best active MMOs available.

I'm not a big Final Fantasy guy. Honestly, that was the biggest barrier of entry for me. I've mostly done other MMOs like SWTOR, GTAO, and DCUO, but after a strong recommendation from someone dear to me, I gave it a try.

However, that leads me to my first criticism of the game- the price point. Having to pay upfront and sub is just ridiculous, in my opinion, if not borderline predatory. Drop damn near sixty bucks on a game that you can't play at all unless you shovel out a quarter of the initial price every month. Let that sink in. To play this MMO for a year, you have to pay enough to buy a new copy of the game THREE times. Drop the cost of entry and make it run purely on the subs, it'd hardly hurt the profit margins and open up the player base.

*There's also plenty of extra services and microtransactions for Cosmetics, Retainers, Level/Story Skips, etc available for SE to still profit off the users, so it makes a $60 price of entry just outright ridiculous.

Moving on from that, to the game itself.

First off, visuals.

It's Square Enix. It's gorgeous, detailed, and surprisingly well optimized. Very anime, as is to be expected- but in the best ways. This is a game that will have you stop, sit down, and enjoy the scenery- it's genuinely worth it.

The music isn't far off from the visuals. I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't absolutely love the Shadowbringers theme, and that should tell you about the benchmark Square Enix operates this game at.

Mechanically, it's some of the most polished gameplay I've ever seen. Still a tab-target hotbar game, unfortunately, but it gives you the incredible freedom to be literally every class and level them independently to try everything you want and see what works. I personally loved tanking as Warrior/Marauder, though I've since transitioned to a Machinist on my main to channel my inner cowboy. Lancer/Dragoon and Archer/Bard are also incredibly fun. The magic classes, I haven't quite fully explored- I'm more into the physical combat and actual weapons than going too deep into fantasy, but what I have tried is solid enough to earn my recommendation.

The mechanical polish isn't just the combat, though. There's plenty of subclasses that have nothing to do with combat- instead focused on crafting and gathering. Go to any of the major cities and you'll find many people sitting around crafting all day, without ever having the slightest interest in raiding to take on a Primordial or anything. I took on being a Miner and Gatherer to do some old fashioned frontiering and putting up loads of Limestone, Wood, and Ores up on the market and made enough to build myself a small little Western-style saloon in Ul'dahn. And I love going out to a watering hole in the middle of nowhere to fish peacefully, watching the sun rise and set, and cooking up my catch.

It's also wonderfully set for a roleplayer. The story itself doesn't exactly give you much in the way of choice, but with other players, there's a lot to do, and the housing really makes things come alive. People make clubs, spas, theaters and libraries. My brief stint as a saloon owner was enjoyable, offering an Old West twist in a setting that's more known for it's Eastern tastes. The emotes, posing, and animations you can pull off in FFXIV are just more immersive than anything else I've ever played.

*Of course, people have a tendency to try to use these features in more... interesting ways, but that aside, the mechanics allowing people to be more expressive, immersive, and engaging to essentially make their own content is something I've love to see in more games. As a roleplayer, I wish SWTOR had half the RP focused features that FFXIV has.

The story is... well, I've heard it's amazing...
But truth is, I still don't care for Final Fantasy's setting. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, per se- it just doesn't capture my interest the same way that something like Star Wars or The Elder Scrolls does.
Final Fantasy's storytelling is a bit tropey and complicated. There's a lot you have to know before going in, and trying to keep on top of it feels like homework if you're not 100% sold on it already. Half of the cutscenes seem to drag on a little too long, and are a bit too frequent for my tastes, especially since they predictably just end in 'go punch this thing till it dies', and I really don't need much motivation to do that already, much less a 15 minute cutscene on why the trees are mad at the elves because a poacher thought it'd be cool to get some pork out of season.
It doesn't help that everyone is British for some reason.
Also, your character has no dialogue. Not even in text. They barely have animation. They just stand there like a flat board and nod occasionally and pull out their weapon when a fight is about to start. That's it. I suppose it's all supposed to be 'theatre of the mind' type stuff, but it just feels hollow.

All in all, the game is incredibly well made in all of it's functional aspects. I'd say it's one of the most polished MMOs ever made. But the content itself, outside of player interactions (with a wonderful community who almost singularly carry the game's value), are a bit hollow on closer inspection. Honestly, it comes down to if you love Final Fantasy and that type of setting, and are willing to immerse yourself into it 100%. If that's you, I'd recommend it. If not... I wouldn't go for it at this price point.

I'm a massive DC nerd. Love Superman and the JSA and those classic comics. So, I've always wanted a game that lets me make my own superhero in a DC setting and play it out.

So, DCUO is the obvious choice, and I picked it up.

First thing you'll notice- it's kinda old. The graphics and animations are very dated and limited, even on the highest settings. I wish I could say it was 'stylized', and more of a unique art style, but, in truth, it's just old graphics. SWTOR looks better on equivalent settings. That's not to say it's an ugly game, by any means. You'll still find plenty of nice looking outfits and landscapes, but there's a general lack of graphical polish that just feels a bit... incomplete, and I think the character models probably show the worst of it.

The audio itself is serviceable. Nothing impressive, and the music doesn't really stick out to me. You're not getting any John Williams/Hans Zimmer Superman themes or Dark Knight's Joker theme, just your bog-standard orchestrals and whatnot. It fits, but you probably will mute it to put on your own stuff. The voice acting is typically better, with a lot of the voices being on par with the Justice League animated cartoons. Solid stuff, but nothing mind blowing.

The mechanics is where this game can seem tricky to analyze. It can feel fairly clunky at times, and isn't the smoothest in the world. But there's also something more unique than other games. When making your character, you can select movement types, powers, and weapons, and all of these come together to create a massive number of possible combinations and unique 'loadouts' of abilities to really customize your character's playstyle how you want it. My only real complaints is that you don't really have enough ability slots to do much. You get six abilities and 4 items, so most of the combat is down to your weapon combos. It's fairly streamlined, and obviously designed with consoles and crossplay in mind, but I feel the player could be given more room to operate. 10 abilities would be ideal, in my opinion. I'm also not a huge fan of how your powers shoehorn you into specific roles. Every class has DPS, but they also have secondary roles, such a Fire being a Tank power, or Light (Green Lantern) being a Controller. I wish you had more options and abilities to branch out into the role you want while using the powers best befitting your character.

The content is about what you'd expect. There's a lot of lore to dig into if you want (fairly obvious given that this particular setting is devised from literal decades of comics), but you only really have to engage in the basic storyline which has you hopping around various world spaces and dungeons to beat people up and get better gear to increase your Combat Rating (CR). The stories can be fun diversions, but with the graphical and animation limitations, it can feel very underwhelming when you see Superman and Lex Luthor making the same emotes at each other in every conversation, or playing through The Death of Superman and watching Doomsday and Supes throw the slowest, wimpiest looking punches you've ever seen and falling over in the jankiest ways you'd think could only come from Bethesda. It's standard fare, engaging enough to give you a reason to go places and punch things, but it's not SWTOR and FFXIV with enthralling stories you really immerse yourself into.

All in all, it's a solid, but dated MMO. It's clearly got some neat ideas, and it's still getting developer support and an active community, but unless you're a DC diehard willing to overlook some of the lack of polish, it might not be for you. But if you're into DC and want a place you can be your own superhero, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.

I have spent a lot of time in this game- a lot more than I ever thought I would.

When I first heard about this game, I was trying to decide between Skyrim and this, and I was much more into the medieval fantasy of Elder Scrolls than 50s Americana retrofuturism of Fallout, so I went with TESV, and didn't come to this one until years later. Now it's one of my favorite games I keep coming back to.

Firstly- Performance.
...It's Bethesda. There's not really much to say, there. None of their games have ever run well. Frame drops, bugs, and crashes near constantly- even on a high-end system, which can surprisingly make it even worse, somehow. There's gonna be a lot of times that you're fighting the game just to get it working, reloading saves, having to delete your saves that get corrupted for unknowable reasons, and sometimes having to reinstall a massive game just to get it working.
It's a level of jank that I can easily see turning people away, and yet, if you look above, the reception is... Mostly Positive. That might raise some questions, so I'll continue one to hopefully explain it.

Graphics:
This game looks good. Sure, it's not quite up to the highest modern specs, but it still holds up. People look like people, not Homunculi of the Uncanny Valley. The guns look good, the landscape is nice, it's all very visually appealing, even for a bombed-out wasteland littered with two centuries of decay and nuclear fallout. It manages a sort of charm that's difficult to put into words, but you know it when you see it.

Audio:
Fallout has always been one for a solid soundtrack, but it's more of a Spotify playlist than anything, Don't get me wrong, some 50s swing and classic rock can really get you grooving, but I can't give Fallout too much credit for riding on Elvis and Bing Crosby. When it comes to Fallout's actual, Bethesda-made soundtrack... it's serviceable. The main menu music and the Sanctuary themes are the only two I actually remember, and I only do because I hear them so often, rather than having any actual feelings about them. Sure, it's got some classic tunes, and those are great, but outside of that, you're gonna have a hard time finding anything that hits you quite like 'Streets of Whiterun' or 'The Dragonborn Comes'.

Gameplay:
Despite all the boomers and Reddit intellectuals who swear by old Fallout (specifically New Vegas), there's simply no contest when it comes to Fallout 4. The gunplay is some of the smoothest stuff I've ever played, and if you play DOOM 2016 or Eternal back-to-back with Fallout 4, you'll definitely feel some ID influence with how fast paced you can make the game feel if you're really going for a fight. Or, you can play COD, sit back far away and snipe. Or do lethal amounts of Psycho and punch a mutated bear to death. Honestly, the amount of options you have in combat are awesome, and with the crafting/modification system for weapons and armor, it only gets better.
Some folks might lament the simplified SPECIAL system and perks, but, I'm not particularly attached to the old ways. Fallout 4's perk system might be more simplified and lack certain degrees of nuance, but there's more than enough to allow you to customize your playthroughs exactly how you want. It's not DND, but there's still plenty of room for RPG, with some minor issues...

Story:
You're either a veteran soldier or a lawyer that gets stuff in a fridge when your house gets nuked, and the evil bad scientists take your baby so they can make their Terminators a little more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. You get out of the fridge and realize you've missed dinner a few thousand times. Now you're out in Buawstin where inner city crime and drug usage has risen marginally, where you must survive an absolute lack of hygiene, so that you can completely ignore your stolen child and build Guantanamo Bay where you enslave the local gardening club to collect soup cans and make bullets so you can fuel your drug-crazed mass murder spree.
Along the way, you can meet a number of interesting groups such as:
Shut the ♥♥♥♥ Up, Preston
Shut the ♥♥♥♥ Up, Desdemona
Shut the ♥♥♥♥ Up And Give Me Your Clothes, Elder Maxson
and, of course,
Shut the ♥♥♥♥ Up and Give Me Your Whole Faction, Sean.
But, wait, with DLC, there's more! Such As:
Your Own Faction Wants You to Shut the ♥♥♥♥ Up, Allen
DiMA, What the ♥♥♥♥?
D I V I S I O N
and, lastly,
Porter, Shut The ♥♥♥♥ Up and Let Me Go Back to Preston.

They are all uniquely annoying in their own ways, but everyone has their favorites. Boomer Fallout players swear by the Brotherhood of Steel because they're the closest thing to the Enclave. Verified Twitter users screech about the Railroad saving synths, but we all know you played it just to get The Deliverer. Institute apologists are just basement trolls using the Institute as a cover to defend why they're in thousands of dollars in debt for a robotic sex doll Kickstarter campaign. Anyone playing Raider just likes Linkin Park at eardrum shattering volumes. They will try to convince you that morality is subjective and being a Raider is the only way to survive in a post-apocalypse. Further inspection will reveal that these people are just varying degrees of degenerates, from the standard weeaboo furry, to the kind of sociopathic sadist that will eventually become your local DMV worker. New Vegas fans are still too busy arguing about the NCR and Legion to pick any faction here.

True chads play Minutemen because there is nothing more American than getting a bunch of dirty peasants together to wear cowboy hats, build giant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ artillery cannons and violating the ATF with hand-cranked laser guns, and then use all that power to simply tell people to ♥♥♥♥ off and let me grow my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tatos.

All in all, there may not be the most depth to everything, and I'll admit, the writing isn't New Vegas- but there's a lot to do, and a lot of choices you can make in how you invest your character into eveything. But, the game doesn't give you everything, so if you're looking for the perfect RPG in Fallout 4, most of the RP is on you to do.

Modding:
Modding is the bread and butter of all Bethesda games, and it's honestly the best part of Fallout 4. Don't like something in the game? Mod it. Want to add more guns and ♥♥♥♥? Mod it? Are you a degenerate looking to do some depraved ♥♥♥♥? Mod your soul straight to the deepest pits of Hell.

Personally, I keep it reasonable- graphics/performance tweaks, new weapons, some AI and combat overhauls- all stuff that still fits the game and keeps it Fallout, but just improves it. And, honestly, that's why I've been able to stick with it so long and why I enjoy it. Vanilla Fallout has a lot of things you can do, and it's pretty decent on it's own, but it's when you start adding mods to tweak those elements to your liking that Fallout 4 really becomes incredible.

All in all, I'd recommend it. I'd give vanilla a few runs just to get a feel for the base game and then start modding to fine tune your experience, and I promise you'll like the end result.

So, I've been playing SWTOR for about three years now before it ever came out on Steam, and I'll say it's one of my favorite MMORPGs out there, if not my absolute favorite.

I'll admit a bit of bias, as I've always been a huge Star Wars fan, but I think that also goes for how well this game nails the aesthetic, themes, and vast potential of storytelling and creativity of Star Wars in general.

In a short summary, SWTOR is a VERY story based game, and is something you can play almost entirely solo, save for endgame operations, PvP, etc. You get to craft your own Star Wars story though the eight classes, your choices, and interactions, and it's awesome in that regard.

Performance wise, it can be a bit iffy, depending on your system. Mine is fairly beefy (though I won't pretend to know computers enough to be the ultimate judge), but even on lower settings, it can be somewhat demanding on your system. On Ultra graphics... you might just be able to use your system to reheat last night's takeout. And, if an area is really populated (say, 100+ people in an instance), you might have some lag, which is also somewhat prevalent in the multiplayer sections, such as PvP, GSF, etc., but in general, you'll get decent frames and run fairly smooth. All in all, not perfect, and certainly not optimized, but at the very least, it's stable.

On the aesthetics, the game nails Star Wars to the finest detail, and really puts a lot into lore and design, though it's also not afraid to play around a bit. It strikes a good balance that maintains immersion, but doesn't restrict the player from making their own experience. The music would definitely make John Williams proud, and the visuals are nice, especially at higher graphics settings, but they're also admittedly a bit dated.

Mechanically, it's functional. That is to say, what you see is what you get. Stats, abilities, gear, etc., it all functions pretty much as expected, though there's a few minor bugs that come up every now and again. It's nothing impressive for MMORPGs, but it's suitable enough for general gameplay. Basically, it's not quite as refined as something like FFXIV, but it's certainly got everything you need.

Now, a big ticket- I know a lot of people look at the developers (oh boy, EA and Bioware...), and think it's gonna be a money sink. And while, like many other big ticket MMOs, there's plenty of room to sink money in the game, I would hesitate to call it over-monetized. In particular, I would say the game isn't Pay-To-Win, or locks progression behind a paywall, but you're also missing out on a fair bit of stuff if you're not invested in at least a subscription. Money caps, Guild Bank access, Artifact Gear/Mounts, and most importantly, access to the latest expansions. That said, you don't quite have to be permanently subbed or dumping money for that, as former subs or people who've purchased from the Cartel Market are 'Preferred' accounts, who get a slightly better deal than pure Free-To-Play.
One sticking point I'd really like to point out with SWTOR, though, is the price point for a sub. It's honestly a very reasonable asking price, about $15/month, and you get some nifty perks and rewards out of it.
TL;DR on monetization: Playing free doesn't impact gameplay, but being subbed is worth it, and it's generally a better price point than most MMOs (looking at FFXIV being a $70 purchase that still wants a sub to just play >:( ...)

Story is most definitely the strongest aspect of this game. There's eight classes with unique stories, and you can progress them your own way. It's great fun, and absolutely something to just lose yourself into. You might find yourself replaying classes just to try out different things, and there's lots of memorable moments to enjoy. That said, it's not quite KOTOR, so don't have your expectations too high...

The community is mixed. I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say the Star Wars fandom is a... unique one, and SWTOR is no different. If you liked 2013 Xbox, you'll love Dromund Kaas and the Imperial Fleet chat. If you like the tone of the average Reddit thread... Republic Fleet might be your speed. It's something of an acquired taste, and you'll meet all sorts, but it's honestly a fun time no matter what, so I'd advise to take it all in stride and just enjoy the show.

All in all... SWTOR is a good game, hell, even a great one. I'd recommend it highly to anyone looking to get immersed in Star Wars and just looking for a fun time. It could use some tweaks and polish, and it can be a bit par-for-the-course in terms of MMOs, but it's still the best online Star Wars experience besides maybe Battlefront and the long-gone Star Wars Galaxies. 8/10

*This review has been ammended below the line. This top section is my review from the original launch. I am keeping it for reference.*

So, I've played Dead Frontier 1 for a long time, and I've always wanted to see it come to a fully immersive RPG. And that's exactly what Creaky Corpse delivered.

The graphics are incredible- a huge upgrade from the first. There's a lot going on, and it all looks good- from the rain, to the blood spatters, to the lighting and shadows. My only complaint is a lack of animation. Everything looks good, but nothing does much other than basic loops and walk cycles. I'm not saying we need full cinematics- but something a bit more lively would be nice.

The audio is also pretty nice, but it can be kinda repetitive. The ambience is nice until you realize you've heard the same girl screaming the exact same way at regular intervals literally everywhere. That, and the zombie death screams could stand to be lowered a bit- my ears don't need to bleed for me to know I killed the damn thing.

The gameplay is solid, and everything I expected from Dead Frontier 2. Pretty much everything from the first game has been translated over, but into a more immersive environment. The combat mechanics are good, the movement mechanics are decent, and overall, the gameplay is functionally sufficient.

The handling is probably the worst technical issue with the game. I've had a few times where the game freezes up or straight up crashes. That said, the (singular) developer is working VERY hard to keep things on track, and has already released some patches that have done a decent job patching up most of the issues.

Now, a few personal nitpicks. Take them with a grain of salt.

The in-game economy and market is decent, but solely relying on that for sustainable cash flow isn't quite feasible on it's own. The original game helped deal with that by having the Scrapyard, allowing players to scrap their items for a set price. This helped decide the market value, while allowing players to sell unmarketable items much more feasibly. This needs to be integrated into DF2, in my opinion.

And, secondly, give us the map again. DF1 had it, and it was a lifesaver. Being able to see where you are and the layout around you was a godsend. Now that we're fully immersed, rather looking at a top-down style, it's even more important to give us the ability to find our location and see where we need to go. On a secondary note, goal markers. I spent two hours trying to re-find a questgiver in the Sunny Dale Apartments, going through everywhere I could think to look, only to give up because there was simply no way to find them other than continuous trial and error, which is extremely frustrating to me, personally. It shouldn't be vastly more time-consuming and difficult to get to the questgivers than it is to complete the quest.

Overall, though, DF2 looks good, and I know the dev will be working hard to do more with it and make it better, so I'd say it's certainly a good game to try out.

*And, because I'm an immature child- 10/10 you can walk around as a naked chick. Tig Ol' Bitties for the win.*

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4/5/2020
This new ammendment may be considered like a wholly different review in a sense.

Neil has made some changes. Big changes. For the longest time after posting my original review, DF2 was put on limbo, but recently, Niel has been back on the wagon and working his ass right down to the bone, and it shows.

So, what's changed?

Graphically and mechanically, not much. The game has been optimized, but hasn't seen much alteration. A lot of old bugs and whatnot have been worked out, and the game is very stable.

I would still like to see more detail and interaction with the world and the players, such as the occupation system allowing players to have more detailed engagements, like Farmers making food or Doctors applying medicine... little things like that to spice up the core loop of gameplay.

That said, the Open World update has helped in that department a lot. This game is finally feeling like the improved Dead Frontier 1 we've all been hoping for. The world is bigger, there's more people, and overall, the increased scale has been a great spectacle. It's not perfect, but the core framework is solid, and will no doubt allow for some awesome things in the future.

The gameplay loop is the same as it's been for the whole series. There's zombies, and everything has gone to hell. Survive. Scavenge food so you don't die, and get better gear and guns... so you don't die. Overreach yourself and die anyway. It's honestly a solid loop, and the power creep doesn't feel too exhausting. You can make yourself a solid zombie-slaying scavenger fairly quickly, and move to take on the harder challenges. End-game isn't much more than grinding the harder bosses more or less for bragging rights, though, and the Prestige system leaves much to be desired.

My biggest complaint for the gameplay would likely be the gunplay. It's rather... unorthodox. I understand the premise of it, and it makes some sense, but in other ways, it makes some things completely impractical. The time it takes for the aim cone to zero in, combined with the fact that it resets after every shot makes shooting most weapons a bit... tedious. I have to fire my SMG in 2-round bursts in order to reliably hit anything. I can't imagine trying to add an LMG type gun (or any other new kind) to the game without changing the fundamentals of gunplay. I think there should be some way to hip-fire or something with some form of reliability. That said, it's not the worst thing in the world, and I enjoy the concept and working with it- I just don't want to see people turned off by this game because they view it's gunplay as less accessible.

All in all, there's not much new to say. This game is clearly a passion project, and it shows. It has lots of room to improve, and I mean that in a good way. It's got strong foundations, a devoted (albeit singular) dev, and what I hope to be a bright future. I'd absolutely recommend this game, and support it wholeheartedly.