Recent reviews by Tank Lowe

This is an innovative, city-building simulator set in a future, ice age. In it, you build a city on a radial grid, surrounding a massive generator. You must manage sparse resources, develop new technology, upgrade buildings, and battle both discontent and hopelessness, all while attempting to survive the brutal cold.

It's fun. If you're into city sims, this is definitely worth a try.

First and foremost, this game is beautiful. The scenery is spectacular, throughout, and save the odd, lighting glitch, is almost cinematic in feel. Thanks to the Unreal Engine, the environment, at times, just feels alive. The gameplay often transitions to interactive cutscenes, and loading times are mitigated by having to climb through passageways on every level, but in such a way as to not detract from the game.

Combat plays like a cross between Jedi Academy and Force Unleashed, with unlockable combos and force powers that work together seamlessly. Though there is no mechanical benefit to changing clothes and outfits, there is a fair amount of unlockable content that allows you to customize your lightsaber, clothes, ship, and droid.

The puzzles offer a fair challenge but not to a degree that slows down the game, and if you spend too long in an area, your droid will offer hints on how to traverse the environment or solve puzzles, though hearing the hints is optional.

Overall, I recommend this game highly. I bought it when it came out and never got around to playing it, and wish I had. If you're a Star Wars fan or like brawlers or platformers, you will like this game.

Halo Wars is a solid RTS that combines Command and Conquer strategy with the Halo universe.

The controls are pretty solid, though the camera angle can be a little clunky at times, and the highlight tool isn't always accurate when selecting parts of a base. However, the wide variety of challenges, units, and maps keep things interesting. Challenges reward Skulls (additional options that change the way the game is played), keeping a moderate amount of replay value.

I recommend it, even though it's kind of old.

The third game in the Metro series (based on the books Metro 2033-35), Metro Exodus does not disappoint.

The developers have succeeded in near seamless integration of gameplay and cinematics, using the same rendering for cutscenes as is used during the game, itself. Though the constant need to clean your weapons, maintain and repair your gear, and conserve ammunition can be a struggle, at times (and in a few places, annoyingly, realistically so), they seem to have perfected the process over the last two releases in this trilogy.

This game can push your computer pretty hard if it isn't up to date, but the environments, collision detection, 3D modeling... everything is meticulous and beautiful. It is a work of art. The people who made this love making games, and it shows.

But more importantly, the story is moving, engrossing, and feels real. Showing empathy is always rewarded (an necessary for the best ending). Many times in the game, enemy soldiers will surrender, and NPC's will not only change their attitudes toward you over time, but will point you toward special, bonus missions that you wouldn't otherwise know about (which greatly enhance the game). Taking the time to be judicious with your gun, kind to your enemies, and standing up for the weak and oppressed is the ONLY way to get the best ending, and I highly recommend it.

The final cinematic of the game, from the good ending, is emotionally moving, and worth all the trouble it cost throughout the game.

I highly recommend this game. 9.5 out of 10.

As close to the tabletop version as it gets, this game has all the technical quirks and brutality that Warhammer 40K is known for. If you are new to 40K, expect a bit of a learning curve (the tutorials help, but don't really dive into the nuance of the different units).

The story line is as rich as you can get with this style of game, and thought there are no real cutscenes, the story boards before and after each mission are sufficient, with voice-acted overlays.

Overall, it's worth a buy, but especially if you're a 40K fan.

This game is garbage. Don't waste your money.

The combat controls are clunky, at best, the enemy hit-boxes are inaccurate, there are no RPG elements at all, and you have to sit through the entire, opening movie every time you start the game (and it isn't short). The AI is horrendously stupid, some creatures take over 1,000 hits to kill (even at the very beginning of the game), and the traps... don't get me started on the traps.

I played this game for a few hours, total, trying to give it a chance, but it's really, really bad. This is what games become when someone knows nothing about D&D, sucks at making games, and just wants to milk the cash cow that is 5E.

At least it's pretty... and that's not nearly enough.

As someone who has not only played through Larian's entire Divinity series, and who happens to be a 5e D&D expert, I decided to give a realistic assessment of this game, here it is:

First, the good. Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty, it accurately portrays D&D lore, and I can tell that Larian tried to stay true to the Baldur's Gate series. The characters are not min/maxed (mostly), and feel like actual characters you will find in a tabletop adventure.

The story has depth, a bit of mystery, and the game incorporates Inspiration (a mechanic meant to allow DM's to reward players for good RP) in an interesting way. Specifically, every character has a background, and certain actions or objects will trigger inspiration based upon that background. There are also specific items that will trigger events with your party members, and story-specific locations that are impacted based upon who is in your party at the time.

Overall, it's fun to play, has a shallow learning-curve, and has a moderate amount of replay value.

Now, for the bad. This game was not built from the ground up to be a Baldur's Gate sequel. This is the game Divinity 2, re-skinned for 5e D&D. The workbenches, anvils, seashells, elemental placement mechanic, and even the interface, are direct ports from Divinity 2. Even though you can open the workbenches and anvils the same way that you could in Divinity 2, they are inert, and you can't do anything with them. The, "dip," mechanic is a holdover from Divinity 2 (allowing players to dip their weapon in whatever they are standing in, like blood, fire, or acid), and there are magic items that allow you to utilize the elemental pools, as well. There is a mechanic for dipping in 5e, but it's pretty different.

Also, the character builder doesn't include even half of the SRD content. No Dragonborn, no Half Orcs, no Gnomes, but... you can be a Githyanki (not a Gith Zerai), which fits the story, but is odd, cannonically. They did add the Druid, Sorcerer and Barbarian classes, but have yet to include Bards, Paladins, or Artificers. The subclasses are also significantly limited. No Champion Fighters, only 2 Cleric domains, and the way they've reworked the Ranger class is an invention all their own.

They've excluded over half of the feats. There is no Variant Human. The cantrips and spells often do not have the same stats as 5e D&D. The action economy is different (everyone can hide as a bonus action, not just rogues), and jumping requires a bonus action instead of movement. In many places (not all) a 1 or 20 on a skill check is treated as an automatic fail or pass, when that is not RAW (rules as written). Critical successes and failures should only occur on attacks, not skill and ability checks (but I can shrug that off as an annoying, house rule).

Now, for the ugly. This is one of the most glitchy games I've ever played. I'm not just talking about annoying things like how people's ears stick out through the wall of their helmet, I'm talking about story-breaking, game-crashing, throw-your-computer-out-the-window kind of bugs. I understand that it's early access, but some of these bugs are game breakingly bad (as of the time of this edit, they have fixed a large number of these bugs, but they still pop up at inconvenient times). It's likely that they will fix them before releasing the full version, but as is? Buyer beware.

tl;dr

It's fun, and worth the money, but it is not a true, D&D experience, and there are loads of bugs.

This is the best survival game I've come across since Minecraft, and it's still very early in. It seems, to me, to fit somewhere between Rust, Phantasy Star and MC, with a splash of something all it's own. Active developers, regular updates, easy to learn mechanics and an immersive world make this one of the most promising titles I've seen yet.