Recent reviews by Toarcian

I wish there was a mixed option for steam release, but alas, i'll just have to go with a negative review so far.
In the grand scheme of things, civ 7 is fun, its not a bad game, but it is clear things were lost along the development road.

- The Civ 6 art direction was lost. It was fun, colorfull and generaly a lot more interesting to look at, and it helped the franchise stand out amongst the vast crowd of drab, realism normie titiles. However, a very vocal minority of fat ugly americans living in their moms basement who's "masculinity" were so frail they'd never want to be caught playing anything more colorfull than the washed out mustard stain on their wife beater, managed to complain just about enough for the devs to revert the art direction, and return the franchise to its former realistic, washed out art direction. Fantastic. The game is now more unreadable than ever, what was otherwise a perfectly color coded game where you instantly knew what part of your city you were looking at, is now straight up grey urban vomit, nothign stands out, nothing is color coded, its just generic buildings that don't give any visual information to you.

- The UI of Civ 7 is, horrendous. What was otherwise a perfect UI in civ 6, has now become a grey, unintuitive mess. Its confusing, overwhelming, and bogged down. Somethings gives you no information at all, and some things leave you stranded as what to do. Overwhelmingly dissapointing, i don't know how they worked on Civ 6 for so long and then took no cues from its successfull UI in Civ 7.

- Age transitions and the mixing of cultures and leaders are a big fat bag of good and bad. Age transitions are fun, and generaly encourage to keep you playing because it feels refreshing when a new age starts. However the way it resets your cities and armies are aren't great. Were you just about to defeat another player? Sorry all your troops are now sent back to your towns and cities, all are changed into new units, some are completely lost, and all wars are concluded. All your towns, even the ones that sincerely have no reason to be a town, will be turned to cities, which is annoying because of course im going to straight away turn my massive 32 population town that can't grow any bigger and has all luxury tiles covered, back into a city straight of the bat.

- The cultures, and leaders have never been worse, periode. Which is a massive bummer because they are the heart and soul of the game. Whilst the swapping does keep the game fresh, and none of the cultures or leaders are overpowered, the way they are presented is arguably the worst in the entire franchise. Leaders don't adress you anymore, they adress each other in a theatre-style play, which could have been fun if they had unique interactions and lots of flavourfull animations, like what if augustus and benjamin franklin had unique dialouge between each other? Fun ideas, but the final product is just leaders staring awkwardly at each other, and having one boring animation for each interaction. There is nothing unique about it, and its an overwhelming downgrade from previous entries where they spoke to you directly and you got to see the beautiful background art of each leader.

- Due to the mixing of leaders and swapping of cultures, it also has resulted in everything loosing its presence, previously you might feel a certain way knowing that the Romans were your neighbor and that they are led by an intimidating emperor, it carried a presence and personality that really gave the franchise its heart and character. In Civ 7 this doesn't really matter, the Romans can be led by anyone and they'll turn into some far flung culture in 20 turns anyways so who cares.
I thought i would be excited to see Hawaii being brought back but as they come with no hawaiian leader and are ultimately restricted to the 2nd age, it was difficult feeling excited for their inclusion. Everything feels like this, nobody has any character, cultures are passing fads that carry no presence, and its such a shame to see such an important aspect of civ wither away.

- The game is generaly undercooked, it is riddle with tons of little bugs that really should have been squashed before launch. Its everything from directly affecting gameplay to missing words on the UI. It is dotted with weird quirks that i can't wrap my head around. Why can't i name my cities, why is religion not a victory condition anymore and exclusive to the 2nd age, why isn't there a true earth map, why does the narrator only read a tiny paragraph of the text on the loading menu, why did they scrap the timelapse animation for when building wonders, etc, etc

- Also a ludicrous amount of DLC at launch, and the way they have seperated leaders from their cultures, means they can and will now sell them individualy. Even then since both leaders and cultures are generaly less flamboyant than before, like not needing as many animations, soundtracks or background art, and don't actually have to shipped together, ultimately means that they can be produced much more cheaply and we'll most likely see a wave of leaders and cultures, and everything inbetween monotized towards us like never before.

Whilst this was definitely not what most fans wanted, and despite the fact that it felt like Ghost Ship studios wanted a piece of the "vampire survivor" hype-pie, and eventhough they were obviously way too late on the trend for the hype to really pay off, i can still confidently say that the game that arrived is fairly solid, and the developers who are responsible for the game do carry the renowned the respect and excellency that the og DRG team was well known for.
To be fair, it is not comparable to the other of its genre, but i think its to be expected of something that has just launched into early access. Whats currently here is solid, fun, and i have personaly enjoyed this game a lot, it pairs very well with the Steam Deck.
I think the developers just need to make the whole thing even better. More weapons, more biomes, more mission, better uppgrades, more interesting dynamics between weapons and upgrades, enemies, items, etc etc. As far as im concerned, that is currently their plan.

TLDR: In its current state its not mind blowing, but it is fun. The game is pretty solid and i think the pricetag is pretty fitting from what you're given. I can recommend

So far so good, however in its current state the game does not have enough to keep me going.
The gameplay becomes very samey, the monsters loose their scare factor, and after visiting the paid planets you've more or less experienced most of what the game has to offer.

A nice return to formular, this title is likely they closest Frictional games have gotten to capture the feeling of the first game.
Its good, its scary, though short and focused.
You're a soldier stuck underground in a bunker with a hideous beast, the officers ran and blew the exit shut, so you gotta plunge into the depths and find the tools neccesary for your escape.

Im very much fond of this setting, the little rooms, cells, storage areas and deep tunnels make for a chilling atmosphere that you can immerse yourself in.
It is very much an open (metroid style) non-scripted game, and you can approach the game however you want. There are multiple ways to solve issues and use your tools, and the game certainly encourages you to do so.
The new monster is always present, and very alarming, though not super difficult to avoid (Just like the games before, hiding in closets and under tables will pretty much always prove to be a viable strategy, the monster never ever checks these places).
The way it works is fairly simple. As long as the generator is on, and the hallways are lit, it will remain inside the walls unless you make a ruckus. However should the lights go out, it will enter the bunker and search for you. Should you run into a situation where hiding is not an option, you can try and hurt the monster by shooting it, gassing, burning, or however you might find yourself defending your life. none of these methods will kill it, but it will deter the monster and send it back into the walls, beware though it will grow more and more tolerant towards the stuff you throw at it.
I found it to be an easier but scarier variant of the Alien Isolation Xenomoprh, i had my playtrough on normal difficulty and i didn't get caught by it though, im sure things are different on hard mode.

Its a short game, it took me 3 hours to complete, thats about two sessions spread out over the span of 2 days. Although i had the advantage of having watched gameplay videos before, i assume someone who might come into this game blind, will be spending an extra hour down there.

As for critique, i think this game isn't as random as the devs advertise it to be, codes, traps and items are scattered about on different locations, but the layout remains the same. You might not find fuel in the same place before, but mission objectives like the boltcutters you will always find in the prison. I think i would have liked for some of the areas, if not all of it, to be randomly put together.

All in all i very much enjoyed this game, i hope Fricitional games will consider an expansion to this game

Been wanting to get into these colony simulator type of games, but the issue is that they're always so deep and intricate that they end up being very unwelcomming to newer players like me. Fortunately, Oxygen not Included is not like that. It is a vast game that has a lot of depth to its systems and world, whilst also being welcomming to newer players. Very lovely game, i look forwards to waste many hours in it.

Once again, Steam needs a "Mixed review" option.
This game is cool and all but its also deep into early access, and anyone who comes into this expecting actual gameplay will be sorerly dissapointed.
If you're satisfied by dinos and sandbox games, you'll probably like it in its current state, but to anyone else, you're probably better off waiting ti'll the game is further into development.

Psychonauts 2 puts other games to shame.

Another game where if i could, i would give it a "mixed" review. But alas.
I got one thing to say about this game.
Run of the mill.
This game is alright, nothing extraordinary, nothing too bad.
Here Comes Niko stays true to its word, and presents simple 3d platforming troughout its entire run time.
Would i recommend that? No, that price tag is glaring, and i can only recommend this game when it eventualy goes on sale.

It's fun, but unfortunately this game seems to have issues about as old and persistent as the mummies themselves, and it seems like the developers have no intention of fixing the issues. Right off the bat, the game has no audio, and the textures are stuck on the lowest setting. I worked my way around the first issue, but i still got the washed out ugly textures.

Great time-waster