Recent reviews by Lithium

Frag Punk is a game that goes out of its way to break all known conventions in modern shooters. For what it is worth, it does a pretty good job of doing this. For instance, the cards every round offer refreshing new ways to play each round, and offer bonuses that can change the way your team approaches fights.

These cards can range from useless to game breaking, with effects such as "Your opponents cannot crouch or jump", up to "all of your gun ammunition is in one magazine."

They also moved away from the gun purchasing, and instead opted for a system that limits how many times you can buy each gun. For example, in standard you can buy each gun twice. Living with it lets you bring it into the next round, where dying with it means you may only buy it once more. Not having to micromanage economy is a big boost to the scene they have.

Unfortunately, thats about the extent of the good things I have to say about this game. The first issue I have is that the game is essentially more of the same. Besides the cards, it's just another 5v5 shooter in a genre that has grown stale, trying to take on the giants and established companies.

Then, on the topic of jumping and crouching. . . Most 5v5 tactical shooters avoid adding sliding and huge jumps to their games. This is because the addition of extra movement tends to create disruptive metas. Take Fortnite and jump-shotguns, or call of duty and SMG slides. Most comp shooters counteract this by adding hefty negatives to movement abilities, if they can even shoot at all during them (think val). This game has no such reprocussions. One could argue it expands the range of ways to play, although to that I would say it gives rise to tactics that cant really be countered in the long run.

All that says nothing about the detail. The worlds are beautiful, and packed with fauna and boxes and interesting details. Too much detail, in fact. The game is extremely visually noisy, (and audio noisy, but more on that later) to the point where it becomes easy to get distracted. You can hardly tell where anyone is, even with the giant colorful outlines they put on enemies. Shooting enemies gives you a huge colorful popup with the damage numbers that just gets in the way more than anything, and every kill gives you a little sort of confetti explosion. The game tries so hard to be different and "quirky", that the quirk goes over the top.

The agents, they dont stop talking. The entire round, all you hear is quips, voice lines, and the announcer cutting in and narrating everything to a frustrating degree. How many words do you need to use to tell the team they have one agent left? "Have you ever heard the phrase 'one man army'? Well thats your squad right now.' - A direct quote from the game.

On the topic of narrating, the game assumes youre incompetent. Every hall, every floor, every path, has paint all across it with arrows telling you exactly where to go. Every time an enemy is spotted, no communication is needed. The announcer will call it out for you. Deaths, kills, spike movement, enemy spotting, all done by the narrator as the "Lancers" talk over the narrator. When you plant the bomb, the game shows you a big white glowing path to the bomb, and exactly where its planted, basically eliminating any sort of meaningful strategy in hiding it.

Lastly the gunplay. The gunplay is clunky. None of the guns have a viceral feel to them. You know when youre playing val or csgo, and using the OP/AWP and you fire off a round, nail that headshot, and the BANG, hiiissssssss, comes from the gun with a little smoke off the barrel? It feel meaty. It feels like a gun that blew off your targets skull. None of that here. Guns dont feel satisfying to use, they dont look how youd expect, theres too many, and too much to focus on. The damage fall offs feel random, too. An Assault Rifle that does 90 damage point blank fall off to 30 damage at range. Theyre pretty, though.

To put it bluntly, If you want a game that is beautiful, quirky, and has personality when compared to Val, CSGO, Apex, etc; This is your game. There is a ton of character and unique gameplay to be had here.

If constant voicelines and dramatic visuals annoy or overwhelm you, or if you like your strategy to be straight edge and to the point, maybe pass on this one.

Warframe is an amazing game with squeaky clean mechanics. The movement and gunplay in this game is near flawless, and the game doesnt shove its micro transactions in your face. You rarely if ever get directly penalized for being a free player.

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim is a great game, which seems to always draw me back in. I had previously owned it outside of steam, and when i saw it on sale on steam, had to buy a steam copy as well. It is an incredibly fun installment to the series, with a great story, and an expansive world. This game is deffinately worth getting, and the mod support for it means that youll never get bored. Deffinately a powerful buy.