Recent reviews by Johnston-0557

The "performance patch" completely broke the game on 6000, 7000, and 9000 series AMD GPUs.
Every time the developers make a step forward they make 5 back.

At this point it's not even a guarantee that master rank will fix this game. Go play Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate if you haven't yet, don't buy this unless its on a deep discount.

Almost 900 hours in and Helldivers 2 is still my favorite game. Almost every ounce of this game oozes passion. Realistic weapon handling and mechanics, punchy audio, awesome visuals. This game was crafted with love, and you don't really see a lot of that among modern games.

The gameplay loop is simple; pick a planet, pick your weapons, select some stratagems to blow up, air strike, bombard, burn, gas, shock, beam, riddle with bullets, atomize, {list continues} your enemies, and pick a place to drop. From there, the map opens up. It's 1 to 4 of Super Earth's Finest vs armies of socialist robots, fascist space bugs, or tyrannical mind-controlling aliens, and you have a mission to do HOWEVER you choose to do it.

Don't let the "live service" model scare you off. This isn't Overwatch or Destiny, this is Helldivers. Everything can be earned over time (yes, even the premium currency), and you lose nothing from not having it. Warbonds, the additions that add new weapons, armors, tools, etc. are priced at a reasonable 1000 super-credits (about $10), and show up anywhere from every 1 to 3+ months. They never expire and you are free to unlock them and complete them in any order you choose. The starting rifle, sidearm, grenade, and armor can keep pace at all difficulties, and look good doing so!

Weekly major-orders, events that direct the game's storyline, help pull players to collaborate to attack or defend planets. Daily directives are small challenges you can complete for medals (something used to unlock things within warbonds). You are free to participate, or ignore these (rumors that choosing to ignore these will be noted down in your helldiver record and you will receive a visit from your local democracy officer to inquire why you did not participate in the battle for [planet] are unfounded).

The atmosphere of the game is a "hell yeah" generator. The humor is steeped in parody, jingoism, and patriotism, that manages to both take itself seriously within-universe (another rare characteristic) and be fun (without being preachy). The same kind of fun humor that would have you cheering "For the Emperor" in 40k, or blasting a national anthem through proximity chat in your FPS of choice.

Lastly, and most importantly, the game is fun. And I do mean fun. It brings back the same kind of antics and experiences that I grew up with playing Halo with my friends. The soundtrack and visuals hearken back to the likes of Starship Troopers, Terminators, or War of the Worlds. The visuals don't let up and the whole mission from start to finish is one chain of firefights to another. Every major update this game soars back up to the hundreds of thousands of players, and despite it being a solid few weeks since the last major update it still sits around 50-60k players peak on any given day.

For $40, this is a steal.

If you AREN'T yet fighting for Super Earth go and make the most important decision of your life.
Become A HELLDIVER.

Destiny 2 is certainly a game with ups and downs. Unfortunately the game is more downs lately than ups.

The best times to play this game are either right after a yearly update (and maybe a few weeks after the new raid comes out), or in the very last week of a season (should you choose to purchase the $100 yearly content pack or $10 seasons individually) when all the content is available upfront.

The content is hardly worth the $10 (or $100 in the full year pack) as, once you get to the root of it, each week is:

1. Talk to seasonal maguffin
2. Do seasonal thing
3. Talk to maguffin again
4. Do other seasonal thing
5. Listen to bad dialogue from shallow, poorly written "heroes".
6. Repeat in 7 days.

And in their infinite wisdom, bungie has decided that you - the consumer - haven't paid them enough, so they sectioned off the dungeons (the only truly interesting or difficult pieces of content this game has outside of raids) to an entirely different payment plan. This leaves you in a terrible place of "pay up front and get burned on bad seasons" or risk losing out on content. AKA "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out), which this game seems to continually tread toward. Bungie wants you on this game every week doing the same uninteresting activities over and over.

This isn't a game for PVP players as the whole mode is a joke. Once you get into any decently skilled bracket of players it changes from people working off skill to succeed and moves to players abusing whatever is the cheapest, easiest, or downright broken strategies to win. Put plainly, it's not a fun pvp environment like previous bungie titles.

Additionally, Bungie wears their heart on their sleeve. Unfortunately it's quite a politically motivated heart, and bungie likes to use their game as a platform to push any and every motive. If you're a veteran, officer, firefighter, paramedic, etc and you think "oh will I get a shoutout?" No, you won't. You aren't special enough. And this activism pushes itself into their writing. Villains who are otherwise excellently written, larger than life, charismatic, and (frankly) more interesting and deep than your allies are and put down by Marvel-esque dialogue quips from adults acting like teenagers.

It's clear that the talent behind destiny 1, halo reach, and earlier halo titles has moved on. The art direction has soured for most of the "side" content (expect to see the same gun model coming back season after season, usually with random junk taped on). The style is directionless, it's not the gritty semi-sci-fi semi-military armor and weaponry you expect from D1.

If you're on the outside looking in, I cannot advise starting destiny 2 in 2023. The company holds the playerbase in low regards and its apparent. You aren't a player to please, you're a wallet with bungie's name on it. Expect to be treated as so while they spit in your face and degrade anyone with actual morals.

A shame, really.

Avorion strives to be the ideal open-ended, open-world (read: tons of locations) game that few other titles could only dream of.

Some things of note: Avorion is, at heart, a game where you design your own fun. You're tasked with reaching the center of the galaxy. How you get there is entirely up to you. The only handholding you receive is in the starter system, beyond here you're entirely on your own.

To players fond of minecraft, space engineers, or other "creative building games", Avorion will feel like home to you- with only a little less gravity.

The ship creation is 100% open to however your creativity strikes you. Recreate ships from Star Wars, Star Trek, Eve Online, whatever sci-fi inspiration, or go off the beaten path and explore your own styles as you build up from scratch a new vessel.

I've only played around with stations for a brief moment, but you can fully supply your own chain of operations for manufacturing goods or weapons, complete with automatic mining or defense ships. These ships can also follow you through gates and jump, giving you a mobile armada (if you fancy). It's a little fickle, but overwhelming firepower is almost always going to pull you through to victory.

Avorion is the vast emptiness of space with a ship builder. If you think you can make something of it, go for it, get the game! If you have trouble conceptualizing or working with abstract ideas and open-ended / freeform gaming, you might want to look elsewhere.

Despite the little-to-no retaliation against players abusing third-party cheats and hacks in the online portion of the game, TakeTwo has decided to do something now. What did they do?

Essentially ban single player modifications, modifications that have no interaction with the multiplayer scene.

T2 and RStar have earned themselves this outrage over a foolish decision, and it would be wise to not trust them in the future with your time or your money.

A new review update for a newer game.

As said previously, this game does see weekly small updates and bugfixes through an active and vocal team (discord server, yeah!). The most recent round of large updates was focused on bringing a better, less janky physics system to the game. If you had been playing this before and left because you disliked the fact that rotors turned into black holes and pistons somehow defied quantum physics, fear no more. Your time is now!

The greatest appeal for me for this game is the open environment in which you are expected to construct your vehicles and such. There is little forcing you to do anything in particular, and a lot of your creations can be labeled as a spur of the moment "what if" creation.

For the creative, the experimenter, the theorist, the explorer, this game is something you should try out at least once if you have played and enjoyed games such as minecraft.


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Space engineers, as a game in development, has many many many small nuances that will bother you.

However, due to the active (read : weekly) updates and interaction from the development team (they have a public discord), these small nuances are inevitably always patched quickly once brought to attention.

Space engineers is minecraft in space, with physics, and rocket launchers! While I can't speak much for survival mode, creative opens up a whole new world in regards to what creativity can be. If it's programming, mod making, ship design, engineering solutions to problems, or exploration, this game will offer that for you. Imagination IS required!

I can't reccomend space engineers enough if you enjoyed playing games such as minecraft, terraria, or if you like space.

Keen Software House has put out a fun and engaging product that has captured my attention for the past year or two.

Definitely worth a play.

I haven't been able to play in a while.

Performance isn't the kindest to lower end machines.

Overall it gave me tons of fun hours flying and gunning down baddies. No game really comes close to this scale as an FPS.

Needs work, but it's fun.

Really fun game. I was recently gifted this and Recettear, and when I'm done crying because I never get further than the third week in Recettear I come play this. Similar art styles, similar fun.

That and I pretend I'm an adventurer working for Recette.

Give the demo a go, it's not for everyone, but being my first games of this type I would be lying to say I haven't had a lot of fun.