Recent reviews by Massive Backlog

The Steam early access title Distance shows lots of potential. The self described "survival racing" feels a bit like Trackmania or Trials but the player is driven less by good runs and more by survival and exploration of their environment. The gameplay is rather deep, far more than I initially expected. Your car has the ability to boost but that's just the start. Wall-riding, mid-air flips, and even flying are often combined to traverse more difficult areas. I've been playing solely the adventure mode and there is much left to explore. I’m looking forward to development of this mode because it seems to hint at a more fleshed out story. A rarity in any racing game. Although, it’s still too early to say what’s under the hood I think it’s worth a ride.

A couple of hours in and still learning new social behaviors, there is so much depth to this title I highly recommend it. It's a puzzle game with a fun and quirky personality. When I get close to double digits worth of play I'll be happy to go into greater depth about this game. But so far it's great, even when the cards are NOT in your favor it's still a blast.

I followed the wandering development of The Bureau: Xcom Declassified for a number of years. Patiently I observed as it transitioned from FPS to 3rd person hoping that it would not suffer in it’s long development cycle. I’m sorry to say that despite some rather nice visuals it suffers from serious design bloat. As teams changed, development laboured and it seems as they moved onward they continuing to tack on new fresh ideas. Perhaps this was done to show progression and relevancy for upper management. But it comes across as a series of continuously muddled concepts that were never truly flushed out.

Combat jumps between uninspired to slightly broken. Agents can take shots through some obstacles or take excessive damage sitting flush against walls. The sparks of laserfire can be seen clipping through various barriers and my snipers can shoot through several layers of walls. Grenades are a bit off. The enemies can seem to toss them across the stage while my weak human arms can only lobe a grenade a few feet further than a effective shotgun blast. I bet the enemies can lobe grenades a bit further if they were to throw them towards me. Rather they throw the grenade upwards and vaguely in my direction. I’ve been counting the number of seconds from when a enemy throws a grenade and when it lands on my feet. On average I’m aware of a grenade is on it’s way for 4-6 seconds. Then another 4-5 seconds before it detonation I could be half way across the map before it goes off. Not a very effective weapon, at least for them.

Speaking of ineffective you learn quickly that as your allies are made of paper and the close combat of the shotgun, and alien equivalent shotgun are the most useless weapons in the game and I can not think of a single instance where close combat would be recommend unless you want to kill you allies. But they seem to do that quite well on their own. They are eager to jump into the action early in the game, but while I enjoy their eagerness to prove who can go down in a fight the fastest its recommend you keep them out of harms way until they prove themselves to be useful in a couple of levels.

Although being a powerhouse can be fun overtime the missions are tedious. Pop all skills and target the biggest enemy. Rinse and repeat. It's rare to jump between cover with a few expections during the last few missions. Other than a single boss battle all combat mission play out the same. The variety of enemy types is varied but can nearly all be destroyed with the same tactics again and again. But enough about the combat because that’s the best part of the game. While it’s a bit too easy, too-linear, and mostly uninhabited "hot" zones there are far worse offenders.

In the brilliant 2012 X-Com the time spent at your bunker was filled with activities to improve all your stats build new areas etc...Let’s not dwell too long in comparisons as it’s simply not fair. The return to your bunker goes between serviceable to unbearable. The conversations you have with the members of X:Com are done with dialog trees. Perhaps showing it’s influence from mass effect a bit too much! But the conversations are pointless. Full of false choices or at their best tedium to unlock a extra mission you can’t participate in. The nuggets exploring this area are banal conversations, in-active NPC’s & and fetch quests. Most of them can be skipped or simply forgotten. Some of these conversations will lead you to a mini game where you scan an area by holding L (360 controller) where you can see objects that need your attention a-la detective mode. These seem totally optional and only open paths for your extra team mates to go explore and level while you are following the main story.

Frankly I’m having an ok time with it. I don’t want to throw it under the bus, it’s pretty boring outside of combat and after you get a few levels on yourself and your team mates it simply becomes a slaughter fest where nothing can harm you. I highly doubt we will hear about this franchise again and it’s a shame because at it’s best you can see what it could've been. It takes too much inspiration from better games and does not improve on them. It's a project that just needed to get out the door. Too much time, money and engery was spent re-hashing a collection of mechanices, techniques, artistic approaches over year to simply have them all go to waste. At least it was released and we'll never have to wonder, "what -if?"

5.5/10

Recommend by if it's on sale. I'd kick myself for spending more than $20.